Sen. Matt Murphy lets it rip on ethics legislation
State Senator Matt Murphy (R-Palatine) didn't hold anything back last week in calling for Senate President Emil Jones to pass meaningful ethics legislation. The clip below shows Murphy at a press conference, surrounded by somber Democrats like Attorney General Lisa Madigan (daughter of House Speaker Mike Madigan), State Senator Jeff Schoenberg (who shares responsibility for the abhorrent financial mess our state's in as Appropriations committee chairman), Lt. Gov Pat Quinn (who shamelessly helped to elect Blagojevich and now is calling for recall) as well as a couple of others whose faces should have been red for their shamless hypocrisy.
Instead, they appeared colorless when Murphy let it rip. Congrats for giving us real hope for real Republican leadership in the days to come, Senator Murphy!
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From the Murphy for Senate press office Wednesday, Sept 17:
State Senator Matt Murphy has implored Senate leaders, including President Emil Jones (D-Chicago), to immediately return to Springfield to act on the House’s override last week of the governor’s veto of an ethics bill and to restore funding from the cuts Governor Blagojevich made to developmentally disabled and substance abuse services, state parks, and historic places.
“The games being played with real issues by Governor Blagojevich and the Senate President have gone on long enough,” said Murphy. The ethics reforms contained in HB 824 were introduced in the Senate in March of 2007 and Senate Republicans like Murphy have pushed for these critically needed ethics reforms for months on end. HB 824 restricts the campaign dollars constitutional officeholders can accept from businesses with state contracts.
In the past two years as your Senator Matt Murphy has toured or met with the leaders of a variety of sites that serve the developmentally disabled like Clearbrook, Countryside, Little City, Misericordia, and Maryville. As a result of these encounters, Senator Murphy understands how truly well-served our developmentally disabled community is by the not-for-profit entities that care for them. That is why Murphy was outraged at Governor Blagojevich’s recent cuts to the state funding for these types of recipients.
“I am appalled at the extent to which the governor is playing politics with needed funding for the developmentally disabled, our state parks, and historic sites. Make no mistake: our budget is out of balance and needs to be cut, but this is a matter of setting priorities. The Governor cut tens of millions for the developmentally disabled and substance abuse out of an almost $60 billion budget while leaving in a comparable amount of pork spending line items,” said Murphy.
The pork Murphy was referring to includes expenditures similar to the $25,000 that was given to a legislator’s sister to teach dance to four students, money for afterschool programs that the Tribune found rarely provided any services to students, and numerous other questionable expenditures.
Murphy explained he was even more upset when he heard that Jones was meeting with some of his (Senate Democrat) members over the weekend to discuss funding for Senate campaigns while a number of important issues languish. “This is why we have to change the culture of corruption in Springfield and refocus government on public service. As long as these campaign cash fundraising limits are not in place the Governor can continue to rake in the cash under the old rules. Given the questionable track record of the parties involved here when it comes to ethical behavior, I guess this stonewalling should come as a surprise to no one.”
http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2008/09/gop-senator-mat.html
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Senator Matt Murphy of Illinois Set to Ban His Own Blog from Libraries?
Senator Matt Murphy from Illinois, the legislator who has introduced the most restrictive ban on social networking sites in the nation, held a very interesting "live chat" online tonight. It took place at 5:30-6:30 p.m. in the comments on his blog at http://senmattmurphy.blogspot.com/, which is an interesting use of blogging I haven't seen before. There are 69 comments that constitute the discussion, a back-and-forth between Murphy and the commenters.
In the blog post itself, Murphy sounds fairly reasonable and balanced, saying he filed the bill "to raise awareness of the threat predators on these sites pose to our kids" and "to advance a dialogue on how we can minimize this threat." Neither of these reasons really explains why he chose to introduce a full ban on a class of sites he can't even define (nowhere does the legislation explain what is meant by the term), but I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt as I read his responses anyway.
Unfortunately, I got as far as the 12th comment, in which Detective Bob Riordan, who is working with Murphy on this legislation, notes that Blogger is in the list of "top 10 social networking sites."
What site is Murphy's blog on? Blogger. So apparently, Murphy's current bill would ban his own site - where he hosted the "live chat" to discuss banning social networking sites in libraries - from being accessed in libraries, even by adults.
In addition, I got *really* scared by the following statement from the police detective:
"A possible solution to alleviate the problem would be to issue library users a screen name or a PIN number when they initially apply for a library card and monitor the internet content through the predetermined PIN or screen name."
I hope he was failing to articulate a position of filtering based on access level (child versus adult), but that still doesn't justify singling out social networking sites like this and outright banning all children from using them. In fact, I find Murphy's excuse of starting at such a restrictive point in order to "advance a dialogue" troublesome and even irresponsible of an elected official.
Murphy doesn't respond much in the comments, probably because this was a poor format for a chat and it must have been difficult to keep up with the flow. I look forward to hearing how he more clearly and directly responds to the many concerns expressed in the thread. I am particularly anxious to see how he amends his legislation in light of them, especially given that if his current bill is passed, any similar chats he holds in the future would discriminate against school and library users.
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