I may have mentioned it before, but ever since 2006, it's been a dream of mine to run for City Council here in Chicago and be an Alderman. It all started on that fateful day when the Chicago City Council unanimously voted to ban the sale of foie gras after they were shown a shock video by PETA and asked to vote on this law.
The aftermath: Chicago was mocked by other cities, the ban was proved to be useless by restauranteurs, and even the Mayor said it was the "silliest law" until it was finally repealed two years later.
I made up my mind. I would run for Alderman just to make sure that SOMEONE on the Chicago City Council would be the voice of reason whenever PETA rolled around. I expanded my idea by wanting to be a city representative who could see both sides on an issue and be able to play Devil's Advocate - as well as to speak up when any alderman is (in my opinion) completely wrong.
This spread out into even more ideas about being a young member of City Council who could spruce up the webpage for our ward and respond to questions using YouTube and maybe do Ward Podcasts.
And then I found out in 2007 that I missed my chance to run. But I vowed that I would do everything in my power to run in 2011 and get my name on that ballot and - who knows - maybe even win a seat on the City Council of Chicago.
Every now and then since that day in 2007, I've tried to find out how the heck one even runs for public office - let alone run for City Council specifically. I've checked message boards, Googled the question, surfed and rummaged through the Chicago City website - and no definite results.
About a month ago, I started e-mailing. I sent e-mails out to any info e-mail address I could come across, asking the same questions, hoping that someone earning a government paycheck could point me in the right direction so that someday I might earn one as well.
Yesterday, I actually got a response.
Hi:
You will need to direct your email/inquiry to the Chicago Board of Elections. You can visit them on the web and obtain pertinent contact information at the url: http://www.chicagoelections.com
Thank you.
Office of the Chicago City Clerk
So I was getting closer. Somehow my searching hadn't pointed me to this site, probably due to the keywords I was using. So I searched and found nothing to answer my question. But there was yet another e-mail address to query, and query I did.
And that same day, I got a response from someone at the Chicago Elections website.
Dear Voter,
Please note that we will be posting information on the 2011 election cycle on at chicagoelections.com under the "for candidates" section in coming weeks. However, the information that we post and the information below is all subject to change with any new legislation in Springfield or rulings in court cases.
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Any potential candidate is advised to consult with the Illinois Compiled Statutes, the Election Code, the Municipal Code as well as an attorney who is well versed in election law and related case law. This is intended to be general information and not a legal opinion, as the Board cannot provide legal advice to candidates or potential candidates for two reasons: (1) the Board determines the legality of candidates' nominating petitions; and (2) state laws are subject to change. With those caveats, the basic qualifications for appearing on the ballot to run for alderman in the City of Chicago are that the candidate: (1) be an elector (registered voter, 18 years or older and a U.S. citizen) who has resided in the ward for at least one year prior to election; (2) be in compliance with all other restrictions/requirements under Illinois law, which include, but are not limited to: having submitted a petition with sufficient valid signatures of qualified electors from that ward; not having been convicted of a felony; ot having any outstanding fines, penalties or debts to the municipality; and having completed other necessary paperwork, such as the petition, statement of candidacy, ethics filings, etc. For more information, prospective campaigns are strongly advised to review all relevant statutes ( http://www.ilga.gov/ ) and strongly advised to consult with an attorney who is versed in the Election Code.
----------------------
State laws may change between now and the filing, and the numbers of signatures needed will be determined, under current law, based on the results in the 2010 election cycle. With those caveats, we have attached the 2007 Election Calendar, which lists documentation rules that were in effect for that 2007 election -- solely for reference purposes. Please note that the Election Board will be updating its web site to include information on the 2011 Municipal Elections in the months after the Primary Election. We hope this information is helpful and thank you for the opportunity to be of assistance.
Communications
Board of Election Commissioners for the City of Chicago
69 West Washington Street, Suites 600/800
Chicago, Illinois 60602
So now I have more of an answer and I can begin preparations. The document had a lot of random information, but there are pieces I can ascertain based on what lies within.
For the 2007 Elections:
September 19, 2006: First day to circulate for signature candidate nominating petitions for the offices of Mayor, Clerk, Treasurer and Alderman.
December 11, 2006: First day to file candidate nomination papers for the offices of Mayor, Clerk, Treasurer and Alderman with the Board of Election Commissioners.
December 18, 2006: Last day to file candidate nomination papers for the offices of Mayor, Clerk, Treasurer and Alderman with the Board of Election Commissioners.
December 26, 2006: Last day to file objections to candidate nomination papers for the offices of Mayor, Clerk, Treasurer and Alderman for the February 27, 2007 Municipal General Election. File in the office of the Board of Election Commissioners.
February 7, 2007: Last day for candidates for the office of Alderman to withdraw as a candidate. File in the office of the Board of Election Commissioners.
February 27, 2007: MUNICIPAL GENERAL ELECTION for the offices of Mayor, Clerk, Treasurer for the City of Chicago and for the office of Alderman in all wards of the City of Chicago. Polling places are open from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
So there you have it. Sometime in June of 2010 they will be posting this document regarding the February 2011 elections. I'll be able to officially start my campaign to collect signatures in September, and if I hit the right number by December, I'm in (unless the encumbent goes all lawyer on me and objects to me being on the ballot). If I make it on and it causes me such grief that I want to get the hell out of there, I've got over a month afterwards to figure it out. (Unlikely!) And then in February it all goes down!
So how many signatures do I need?
See "Table A: Minimum Signature Required on Aldermanic Nominating Petitions - City of Chicago"
Basically by ward, they tally up the total votes from the previous municipal election (in this case, 2007) and they take 2% of that number (and round up) and that's the number of signatures I'll need to get.
So if in February 2003, my ward had a total of 12,518 votes placed, in order to get on the ballot for February 2007 I would need (2% of 12,518 = 250.36) signatures from 251 registered voters.
I do believe the numbers for the February 2007 elections show my ward having cast 9,861 votes - ergo I should only need to get 198 petition signatures!
This is it, folks. I'm excited!
More to come as I wait for the process to finally begin - or if I get some cool comments/questions to answer that would warrant more Prologue to the story before my campaign even becomes official.
So ask me some questions! Show me support! Just leave a comment!
And then Digg this article!
Read more!
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Penny Problems
The rising price of metals means that the government is losing money by making pennies and nickels - about $100 million last year alone, according to Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Illinois, whose subcommittee oversees the U.S. Mint.
By my calculations, it's different - but the validity of either figure depends on the accuracy of the rest of the information provided in the article.
Pennies:
A penny, which consists of 97.5 percent zinc and 2.5 percent copper, cost 1.26 cents to make as of Tuesday. That's down from the end of 2007, when even higher metal prices drove the penny's cost to 1.67 cents, according to the Mint. In 2007, the Mint produced 7.4 billion pennies. Even at the lower current price of 1.26 cents to produce a penny worth 1 cent, if you multiply that loss by the 7.4 billion pennies produced in 2007, that's $20,280,000 that the government is losing just by MAKING the coinage for pennies. I realize that this 1.26-cent cost is NOW, but at end of 2007 it was even more and I'm sure there were fluctuations along the way for 2007.
Nickels:
A nickel -- 75 percent copper and the rest nickel -- cost 7.7 cents, based on current commodity prices, according to the Mint. In 2007, the Mint produced 1.2 billion nickels. With that 2.7-cent loss, you're looking at another $32,400,000 in loss for the US Government at the hands of the US Mint. So in total, it looks like the estimate of $100 million by Gutierrez is about $47 million high, but it could be that these figures are just regarding the price of the METAL and don't take into account the cost of STRIKING these worthless coins. Upon further research, I learned that this is not the case. The costs listed in the article are indeed metal and production and shipping fees.
Other Coinage?
Luckily, not all coinage here in the United States is screwing us all over financially (after all, taxpayers pay for the government's mistakes like these). Dimes still cost a little more than 4 cents each to produce. The quarter costs a little less than 10 cents to produce. The dollar coin, which might actually have a lower approval rating than the penny (if you asked random people on the street which we should get rid of), costs only about 16 cents each to produce.
So what can we do?
Well, my first thought was that if the materials used to make pennies are worth more than a penny, the next logical step would be to melt down pennies into those two materials and sell them and profit. It should be as easy as that.
And it WAS.
The real issue is that in reality, the metal content of pennies now being produced is actually NOT more than one cent. In 1982 there was a shift in the composition of pennies from 95% copper and 5% zinc to the current 2.5% copper and 97.5% zinc, obviously due to the price of copper. With the current prices of zinc and copper, post-1982 pennies are worth (from a strictly-metal standpoint) about .7 cents each. The pre-1982 pennies are worth about 2.6 cents each. So what's to stop someone from sorting through pennies, finding all of the pre-1982 pennies and melting them to turn a 160% profit?
That's what went through the mind of Walter Luhrman of Ohio. This metallurgist created a new company, Jackson Metals, which purchased truckloads of pennies from the Federal Reserve. He developed a system to rapidly sort the pre-1982 pennies from the less-valuable post-1982 pennies. The copper pennies were melted and turned into ingots to be sold, while the zinc pennies were returned to circulation in cities where pennies were scarce, thereby saving the U.S. Mint the hassle of making fresh batches of zinc pennies to service these locations. One would think that the U.S. Mint would be happy with these results.
On December 14th, 2006, the United States Mint implemented new regulations that made the melting of pennies and nickels a crime (as well as limited the export of these coins) that has a punishment of up to a $10,000 fine and/or up to five years in prison.
So my dream of profiting as such is now gone. As I'm sure is yours, as you were no doubt rifling through your pockets or nearby change jars for pennies from before 1982 just to at least see the difference, if not scheme about profiting from these otherwise-useless bits of metal.
And the truth is that pennies are useless. So many countries have eliminated small-denomination coinage for similar reasons. New Zealand has even eliminated its five-cent coinage, not to mention reduced the size of the ten-, twenty- and fifty-cent coins. Canada also has plans to eliminate their pennies, which will lead to their plans to eliminate the five-cent pieces as well - following in New Zealand's footsteps. So why isn't the US trying to do the smart thing and rid ourselves of the accursed one-cent coin?
We tried. Several times.
In 1989, Rep. Hayes of Louisiana and Rep. Kolbe of Arizona proposed the Price Rounding Act, which would require all cash transactions to be rounded to the nearest five cents, thereby eliminating the need for one-cent coins. But of course, for every seemingly-good idea that would counteract a seemingly-bad idea already in place, there's a powerful group or lobby that became powerful by profiting from the seemingly-bad idea. In this case, it would be the Americans for Common Cents group.
The group receives its financial support from Jarden Zinc Products, which is one of the nation’s largest producers of zinc, and which has supplied the U.S. Mint with penny planchets since the copper-zinc crossover of 1982. For the non-financial power, they enlisted the services of an economics professor to claim that this "rounding" of transactions would ultimately mean the public would wind up spending more as a result of all their cash transactions, which he deemed a "rounding tax" that we all would wind up paying over time with each transaction. And once you call something a "tax", it doesn't fare well.
The Price Rounding Act was quickly killed. In July of 2001, Kolbe made a solo attempt (since Hayes had retired) to kill the penny through the Legal Tender Modernization Act. The bill itself was a failure, but it at least got some notariety thanks to the TV show "The West Wing" where it was featured in an episode and also resulted in failure.
There are only three machines in the United States that accept pennies:
1) Coin-wrapping machines that are used to get rid of pennies
2) Coinstar machines that are used to get rid of pennies
3) Automated tollbooths, but only in Illinois
Why only Illinois? Because it's the birth state of Abraham Lincoln, the man whose face resides on the obverse of the penny. (That's right, the head of a coin is the "obverse" and the tails side is the "reverse" - you may have just learned a new word!) In fact, Illinois nutjobs are some of the only proponents of keeping the penny alive, aside from the A.C.C. and their monetary sponsor, Big Zinc. Other nutjobs who are in favor of keeping the penny are groups that hold "penny drives" for charity (another way for people to get rid of pennies) and people who just plain don't like change. (I mean 'change' in the sense of nothing being different than it is right now.)
Kolbe made one final attempt in 2006 to bring down the penny, when zinc prices were at a record high and the penny's purchasing power was therefore at a record low. He was once again unsuccessful, and retired the next year. There is currently nobody in Congress left who loathes the penny enough to take up the fight.
That is why I vow that if I am elected to the Chicago City Council as an alderman in 2011 (the next election), I will do everything in my political power to fight the penny and work with elected officials next-in-command to do the same. I don't care that I live in the Abraham Lincoln birthstate - the penny is useless and it's time to take it down for good. And for the Lincoln-lovers out there - pipe down.
He's still got the freakin' $5-bill!
Do you agree that it's time to get rid of this useless coin once and for all? What are your thoughts??
(The article about the penny's current uselessness)
(An article about the history of the penny's uselessness)
(Wikipedia page on the "Cent" - the actual name for the U.S. penny)
Read more!
By my calculations, it's different - but the validity of either figure depends on the accuracy of the rest of the information provided in the article.
Pennies:
A penny, which consists of 97.5 percent zinc and 2.5 percent copper, cost 1.26 cents to make as of Tuesday. That's down from the end of 2007, when even higher metal prices drove the penny's cost to 1.67 cents, according to the Mint. In 2007, the Mint produced 7.4 billion pennies. Even at the lower current price of 1.26 cents to produce a penny worth 1 cent, if you multiply that loss by the 7.4 billion pennies produced in 2007, that's $20,280,000 that the government is losing just by MAKING the coinage for pennies. I realize that this 1.26-cent cost is NOW, but at end of 2007 it was even more and I'm sure there were fluctuations along the way for 2007.
Nickels:
A nickel -- 75 percent copper and the rest nickel -- cost 7.7 cents, based on current commodity prices, according to the Mint. In 2007, the Mint produced 1.2 billion nickels. With that 2.7-cent loss, you're looking at another $32,400,000 in loss for the US Government at the hands of the US Mint. So in total, it looks like the estimate of $100 million by Gutierrez is about $47 million high, but it could be that these figures are just regarding the price of the METAL and don't take into account the cost of STRIKING these worthless coins. Upon further research, I learned that this is not the case. The costs listed in the article are indeed metal and production and shipping fees.
Other Coinage?
Luckily, not all coinage here in the United States is screwing us all over financially (after all, taxpayers pay for the government's mistakes like these). Dimes still cost a little more than 4 cents each to produce. The quarter costs a little less than 10 cents to produce. The dollar coin, which might actually have a lower approval rating than the penny (if you asked random people on the street which we should get rid of), costs only about 16 cents each to produce.
So what can we do?
Well, my first thought was that if the materials used to make pennies are worth more than a penny, the next logical step would be to melt down pennies into those two materials and sell them and profit. It should be as easy as that.
And it WAS.
The real issue is that in reality, the metal content of pennies now being produced is actually NOT more than one cent. In 1982 there was a shift in the composition of pennies from 95% copper and 5% zinc to the current 2.5% copper and 97.5% zinc, obviously due to the price of copper. With the current prices of zinc and copper, post-1982 pennies are worth (from a strictly-metal standpoint) about .7 cents each. The pre-1982 pennies are worth about 2.6 cents each. So what's to stop someone from sorting through pennies, finding all of the pre-1982 pennies and melting them to turn a 160% profit?
That's what went through the mind of Walter Luhrman of Ohio. This metallurgist created a new company, Jackson Metals, which purchased truckloads of pennies from the Federal Reserve. He developed a system to rapidly sort the pre-1982 pennies from the less-valuable post-1982 pennies. The copper pennies were melted and turned into ingots to be sold, while the zinc pennies were returned to circulation in cities where pennies were scarce, thereby saving the U.S. Mint the hassle of making fresh batches of zinc pennies to service these locations. One would think that the U.S. Mint would be happy with these results.
On December 14th, 2006, the United States Mint implemented new regulations that made the melting of pennies and nickels a crime (as well as limited the export of these coins) that has a punishment of up to a $10,000 fine and/or up to five years in prison.
So my dream of profiting as such is now gone. As I'm sure is yours, as you were no doubt rifling through your pockets or nearby change jars for pennies from before 1982 just to at least see the difference, if not scheme about profiting from these otherwise-useless bits of metal.
And the truth is that pennies are useless. So many countries have eliminated small-denomination coinage for similar reasons. New Zealand has even eliminated its five-cent coinage, not to mention reduced the size of the ten-, twenty- and fifty-cent coins. Canada also has plans to eliminate their pennies, which will lead to their plans to eliminate the five-cent pieces as well - following in New Zealand's footsteps. So why isn't the US trying to do the smart thing and rid ourselves of the accursed one-cent coin?
We tried. Several times.
In 1989, Rep. Hayes of Louisiana and Rep. Kolbe of Arizona proposed the Price Rounding Act, which would require all cash transactions to be rounded to the nearest five cents, thereby eliminating the need for one-cent coins. But of course, for every seemingly-good idea that would counteract a seemingly-bad idea already in place, there's a powerful group or lobby that became powerful by profiting from the seemingly-bad idea. In this case, it would be the Americans for Common Cents group.
The group receives its financial support from Jarden Zinc Products, which is one of the nation’s largest producers of zinc, and which has supplied the U.S. Mint with penny planchets since the copper-zinc crossover of 1982. For the non-financial power, they enlisted the services of an economics professor to claim that this "rounding" of transactions would ultimately mean the public would wind up spending more as a result of all their cash transactions, which he deemed a "rounding tax" that we all would wind up paying over time with each transaction. And once you call something a "tax", it doesn't fare well.
The Price Rounding Act was quickly killed. In July of 2001, Kolbe made a solo attempt (since Hayes had retired) to kill the penny through the Legal Tender Modernization Act. The bill itself was a failure, but it at least got some notariety thanks to the TV show "The West Wing" where it was featured in an episode and also resulted in failure.
There are only three machines in the United States that accept pennies:
1) Coin-wrapping machines that are used to get rid of pennies
2) Coinstar machines that are used to get rid of pennies
3) Automated tollbooths, but only in Illinois
Why only Illinois? Because it's the birth state of Abraham Lincoln, the man whose face resides on the obverse of the penny. (That's right, the head of a coin is the "obverse" and the tails side is the "reverse" - you may have just learned a new word!) In fact, Illinois nutjobs are some of the only proponents of keeping the penny alive, aside from the A.C.C. and their monetary sponsor, Big Zinc. Other nutjobs who are in favor of keeping the penny are groups that hold "penny drives" for charity (another way for people to get rid of pennies) and people who just plain don't like change. (I mean 'change' in the sense of nothing being different than it is right now.)
Kolbe made one final attempt in 2006 to bring down the penny, when zinc prices were at a record high and the penny's purchasing power was therefore at a record low. He was once again unsuccessful, and retired the next year. There is currently nobody in Congress left who loathes the penny enough to take up the fight.
That is why I vow that if I am elected to the Chicago City Council as an alderman in 2011 (the next election), I will do everything in my political power to fight the penny and work with elected officials next-in-command to do the same. I don't care that I live in the Abraham Lincoln birthstate - the penny is useless and it's time to take it down for good. And for the Lincoln-lovers out there - pipe down.
He's still got the freakin' $5-bill!
Do you agree that it's time to get rid of this useless coin once and for all? What are your thoughts??
(The article about the penny's current uselessness)
(An article about the history of the penny's uselessness)
(Wikipedia page on the "Cent" - the actual name for the U.S. penny)
Read more!
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