Mike Billy

A brief word on spoilers

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:43:01 -0400

To anyone who has ever complained to someone for posting a spoiler: The world has no obligation to shield information from you. It is your responsibility to avoid it. If I want to talk about something that happened on TV five minutes ago and I want to share my thoughts on social media, that’s too bad for you. It is not my responsibility - and certainly I have no obligation! - to avoid talking about it for your sake. It is your responsibility to avoid reading it. /endrant

The season finale of The Office wasn’t the greatest moment...

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:19:28 -0400

The season finale of The Office wasn’t the greatest moment in TV history, or probably even the best series finale I’ve ever seen. It certainly wasn’t the best episode of The Office. But it should have been satisfying to any fan. It was a great wrap up. And this moment was awesome!

Laws are like cobwebs...

Mon, 06 May 2013 18:39:00 -0400

“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.” - Jonathan Swift

— Mike Billy (@MikeBilly)

May 6, 2013

"If you’re not a terrorist, if you’re not a threat, prove it… This is the price you pay to live..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 12:29:52 -0400

““If you’re not a terrorist, if you’re not a threat, prove it… This is the price you pay to live in free society right now. It’s just the way it is.””

- NYPD Sgt. Ed Mullins

Filed Under: Only in Illinois

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:06:41 -0400

RT @scottreeder: State of Ill.sent a two-page fax to let reporters know about their Earth Day effort to not use printed material. #twill
— Mike Billy (@MikeBilly) April 22, 2013

Jolly Pumpkin’s Fuego del Otono (Autumn Fire)

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 21:28:21 -0400

Jolly Pumpkin’s Fuego del Otono (Autumn Fire)

The majority that wasn’t: When 52 percent of the vote just...

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 10:44:00 -0400

The majority that wasn’t: When 52 percent of the vote just isn’t good enough

Check any dictionary and the definition of “majority” seems pretty self-explanatory: it is simply a greater quantity or share.

But in the city of Macomb that definition is under dispute. On Monday, April 8, a judge will rule on what the definition of a majority is when it comes to elections: simply having the most votes or the most plus one more.

This debate started back in February during an alderman race between Western Illinois University student Steven Wailand and incumbent Kay Hill. When the votes were tallied, Wailand received 17 votes – Hill got 16.

Wailand thought that his 52 percent of the vote was enough to win the seat, but the city disagreed and instead scheduled a special election to determine the winner.

Wailand’s lawyers then filed a lawsuit on Wailand’s behalf to stop the city from proceeding with the new election. A hearing was held on Thursday to determine if the election should take place. The judge did not make a ruling at the Thursday hearing. Instead, he postponed the hearing until Monday, because he said that Hill should be named as a party to the case.

“Steven Wailand went to bed that night thinking he had won the election and other people had been congratulating him,” said Diane Cohen, who is Wailand’s lawyer and general counsel for the Liberty Justice Center, at a news conference after Thursday’s hearing. “When he woke up that morning he read in the paper that the city was saying, ‘not so fast, we have a different definition of majority. You are not the winner and we are going to subject you to another election.’”

Macomb’s city code is plain: A candidate “receiving a majority of the votes cast” is the winner. But city officials’ interpretation of this definition don’t match up.

When Wailand asked Macomb City Clerk Melanie Falk why he would not be certified as an alderman, she said it was because he did not receive a majority of the votes, which she said the city and county define as “fifty percent plus one vote of the votes cast in an election,” according to the lawsuit.

Using that definition, Wailand did not receive enough votes. There were 33 votes cast. Under the city’s alleged definition, Wailand would have needed 17.5 votes to win the election. His 17 votes were half a vote short.

The problem, according Cohen, is that the “50 percent plus one” rule appears nowhere in the city statutes, and the municipal code requires that words should be defined by their common usage.

“You can scour the Illinois election code, the Illinois municipal code, the city of Macomb special charter from the 1800s, the city of Macomb ordinances and you will not find any reference to any term that says 50 percent plus one vote [is a majority],” Cohen said at the news conference.

Cohen also said that the Illinois Supreme Court has ruled that a majority is “a number more than half.”

By that definition and similar definitions found in the Merriam-Webster dictionary and other reference books cited in the lawsuit, Wailand should be declared the winner unless the city code officially defines a majority in a different way.

According to the lawsuit, there is no other definition of majority found in the code.

When Wailand asked to be shown where he could find the “50 percent plus one” rule in the statutes McDonough County Clerk Gretchen DeJaynes was unable to do so and told him, “That’s how we have always done it,” according to the lawsuit.

DeJaynes refused to comment. The mayor’s office and city clerk’s office did not return multiple calls requesting comment.

The next hearing will be held at 10 a.m. Monday, April 8, one day prior to the special election’s scheduled date.

I demand a right to beer arms!

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 17:12:42 -0400

I demand a right to beer arms!

In which I’m quoted in a Daily Caller about energy drink...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 13:59:27 -0400

In which I’m quoted in a Daily Caller about energy drink regulations in Illinois:

Caffeine was likely dropped from the bill in order to make it more popular, wrote Mike Billy, a reporter for the Illinois News Network.

“I think the legislators knew the bill would never pass if they included caffeine in the definition because caffeine is too popular and people would realize just how ridiculous the regulation is,” Billy wrote in an email to The DC News Foundation. “A server at a restaurant would have to check the age of anyone buying a soft drink.”

But practical considerations aside, permitting caffeine while banning taurine makes little scientific sense, he said.

“Caffeine actually has health risks and there have been no reports of negative health effects associated with taurine, guarana and ginseng in the amounts found in energy drinks,” he wrote. “It’s an arbitrary way to define an energy drink without any regard to science and it accomplishes nothing.”

Read the whole thing here.

Check out this graph (via The Cato Institute) of what the...

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 15:57:17 -0500

Check out this graph (via The Cato Institute) of what the sequester cuts actually look like. Notice how spending is still increasing. So next time you hear that the budget is being slashed to death by Michael Myers-esque Republicans in a Capitol Hill rendition of an 80s horror flick you can can look at whoever is saying that and laugh. Unlike the airheaded blonde in those movies who always makes the dumbest decisions, the country will survive.

Lawmakers ‘borrow’ taxpayers’ charitable donations to fund...

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 18:12:00 -0500

Lawmakers ‘borrow’ taxpayers’ charitable donations to fund government

My original story published on the Illinois News Network:

Illinois taxpayers can use the state’s income tax form to donate to child abuse prevention, childhood cancer research and military family relief.

But if you want to make sure your money actually gets to the charities, you might want to give them a check directly instead of using the state as a middleman.

That’s because the money in these charity funds isn’t protected from pillage by politicians.

“Illinois is in a state where they are financially destitute and people think these funds are restricted, but they aren’t,” said Gordon Jumper, a Jacksonville, Ill., certified public accountant. “It’s an account that is controlled and under the discretion of the state of Illinois and it’s not protected.”

In 2010 the state took $434,000 from these charity accounts through sweeps, or transfers, into the general fund. There is no requirement for the sweeps, which were approved by Gov. Pat Quinn and the Legislature, to be paid back.

In 2011 Illinois borrowed $1.1 million from the charity funds, which it eventually paid back.

Tom Williams, a 48-year-old Springfield resident, compared the sweeps to theft.

“If you mailed a bill to the electric company and the lady at the electric company took it home and spent it on something else that would be theft,” said Williams. “If you are making a charitable contribution to someone, that is where the money should go.”

Susan Hofer, spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Revenue, said that money will not be swept from the charity funds this year, but she did not rule out the possibility of borrowing from the funds.

“If it’s borrowed and repaid before any charities can receive the grant money then it has no effect on the charities,” she said.

But Jumper said the fact that these funds are even subject to sweeps or borrowing should be enough to keep people from donating their money through the income tax form.

“I don’t think it’s particularly well known that the money in these accounts is subject to these sweeps,” he said. “If it was, there would probably be less people donating through the tax return.”

Statism: The most dangerous religion in the world.

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 17:59:00 -0500

Statism: The most dangerous religion in the world.

“Under Democracy one party always devotes its chief...

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:54:49 -0500

“Under Democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed and are right…” - H. L. Mencken

“I wonder if a Guiness Book of World Records category...

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 19:00:28 -0500

“I wonder if a Guiness Book of World Records category exists for the most people simultaneously telling a lie in one place.” - Michael Maharrey, Tenth Amendment Center

Photo

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 15:38:00 -0500

Photo

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 15:18:00 -0500

A joke about economists Two economists were walking down the...

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 18:11:00 -0500

A joke about economists

Two economists were walking down the street one day when they passed two large piles of dog poop. The first economist said to the other, “I’ll pay you $20,000 to eat one of those piles of shit.” The second one agrees and chooses one of the piles and eats it. The first economist pays him his $20,000.

Then the second economist says, “I’ll pay you $20,000 to eat the other pile of shit.” The first one says okay, and eats the shit. The second economist pays him the $20,000.

They resume walking down the street.

After a while, the second economist says, “You know, I don’t feel very good. We both have the same amount of money as when we started. The only difference is we’ve both eaten shit.”

The first economist says: “Ah, but you’re ignoring the fact that we’ve engaged in $40,000 worth of trade!”

VIDEO: Senator Mike Lee on FISA: “We can’t abandon...

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 17:10:26 -0500

VIDEO: Senator Mike Lee on FISA: “We can’t abandon constitutional rights for temporary security”

I don’t think JFK would have been welcome in today’s...

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 20:19:00 -0500

I don’t think JFK would have been welcome in today’s Democratic Party

“By calling attention to ‘a well regulated militia,’ the ‘security’ of the nation, and the right of each citizen ‘to keep and bear arms,’ our founding fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy. Although it is extremely unlikely that the fears of governmental tyranny which gave rise to the Second Amendment will ever be a major danger to our nation, the Amendment still remains an important declaration of our basic civilian-military relationships, in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country. For that reason I believe the Second Amendment will always be important.”

- John F. Kennedy, sourced from the UCLA Law School

"Have a happy whatever it is you celebrate today. Even if you don’t celebrate anything I hope..."

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 11:01:06 -0500

“Have a happy whatever it is you celebrate today. Even if you don’t celebrate anything I hope you have a year and life full of health, love, happiness, and liberty.”