Letters & Commentary

Capitol Fax

Rich Miller's commentary on State Government

If you ever wondered whether Gov. Pat Quinn would do whatever it takes to win reelection, all you need to do is look at his latest TV ad.

The spot is perhaps the most misleading TV advertisement of the season so far, but it packs quite a wallop. Quinn cannily "accuses" his Democratic primary opponent, Comptroller Dan Hynes, of having "signed off on every single state check."

"Now Hynes claims he'll cut the budget line by line, but as comptroller for 12 years he signed off on every single state check," the Quinn ad alleges.

The Quinn campaign claimed after the ad aired that they were trying to say that Hynes' statutory check-signing duties meant he ought to know what the budget is all about already and that Hynes shouldn't need to go over the budget line by line after he's elected to figure out where to cut waste and over-spending.

While the Quinn campaign's explanation for why they worded the attack ad the way they did is an interesting after-thought, if you watch the spot carefully you'll see that what it's really trying to say is Hynes is somehow responsible for the mess the state is in.

Effective advertising is all about the message received, not the message sent. So when you pick apart a TV ad, you have to try to understand what the advertiser wants viewers to take away from it. And what the Quinn campaign is partially trying to do here is say that Hynes was somehow responsible for the budget meltdown under disgraced former governor Rod Blagojevich.

The Hynes campaign quickly launched a counter-attack via press release. "(T)he Quinn campaign has opened the door to a discussion of who really stood for fiscal responsibility during the Blagojevich Administration. While Dan Hynes repeatedly warned of overspending and pending fiscal catastrophe, Quinn stood silent. As recently as September, 2006, Quinn said of his two-time running mate: 'He's always been a person who's honest and one of integrity. I have confidence the governor does the right thing all the time.'"

It was probably only a matter of time before the Blagojevich card was played. And we can probably expect that to continue throughout the rest of the campaign. Blagojevich is the ultimate in political radioactivity. Combine "His Hairness" with the state's horrific budget deficit and Pat Quinn's resulting push to raise income taxes on the middle class and it's easy to see why Quinn would want to begin laying the groundwork to take Hynes down with him.

By the way, that new Quinn ad is entitled "Spa."

The title refers to a claim within the ad that while Governor Quinn was hard at work on the state's budget, "Hynes skipped town, flying to Washington, taking a vacation, hitting a spa in Chicago."

Hynes claims the "spa" is a place just down the street from his home where he got a haircut. His longtime barber had temporarily moved to that location, so Hynes followed him over there. Speaking as someone who has had my hair cut by the same person for almost a decade, I can relate. By the way, she cuts hair at a "salon," just in case anybody ever thought about doing an attack ad on me.

Hynes' Washington, DC trip was for an Obama campaign event attended by President Obama, Hynes' campaign claims. Ironically enough, shortly after the ad began airing, Gov. Quinn left Illinois for a Washington, DC fundraising trip and skipped an important meeting with mass transit officials.

The vacation mentioned in the Quinn ad was a family break with Hynes' three sons and his wife. Yes, it was taken while the General Assembly and the governor had not yet wrapped up the state budget, but Hynes didn't leave town when the Legislature was in session.

Whatever the actual truth is, the Quinn ad's subtle connection of Hynes to Blagojevich and the overt taunting of Hynes for lolly-gagging in a spa while the state burns makes this a very effective advertisement. And like I said above, it shows that Quinn is no "high road" campaigner. He'll get right down there in the dirt and the mud and the blood if that's what it takes to win.

And he'll definitely need every trick in the book if he wants to survive what's sure to be the toughest campaign of his life.

Responses

I feel I must respond to the two guest commentaries in this week's (11/11/09) issue.

First, I couldn't AGREE more with John W. Whitehead (Why Your Representatives Should Make You Mad as Hell). The problem seems to be "How to convince the electorate to get rid of the 525 people in Congress". I don't know what political party Mr. Whitehead belongs to if any but he doesn't seem to be playing favorites. Be they Republicans or Democrats in Congress their sole concern is getting re-elected and living the good life.

Second, I couldn't DISAGREE more with Jerry Wilson (The Gathering Storm). Wilson seems to be one of the MANY people who like to say the Constitution is being abused. Their problem is that they don't really believe in the Constitution of the United States of America.

The United States of America has elections every year. Not all offices are elected every year because of term lengths. So no one took anyone's country away. American Citizens voted as they have since this nation has begun. The people who were elected won the majority of the votes. That is plain and simple to understand. That is what the Constitution of the United States of America calls for.

Wilson appears to be in my age group. He states that we'll be saddened when we realize that we have lost the way of life that we grew up with. Maybe Wilson should pull his head out of the sand. The world I grew up in was a change from my father's world, my children's world was different than mine, my grandchildren's life is different and their children's life will be different and so on. We no longer live in the horse and buggy era. Old beliefs do not wash with the young people of today. It is their world and even though I don't necessarily agree with everything I must admit that they show us at home and serving abroad that they are just as good as any other generation. Like many crotchety old people Wilson cannot cope in today's world.

Wilson mentions that groups are forming across this country that he believes are not terrorists or militias as the government designates them. I sent Wilson an email in which I told him that those groups are the equivalent of the BROWN SHIRTS in Germany during the 1930s. Wilson is one of the fanatics who have no concept of what a democracy or republic is. He believes that guns can solve everything. So we can only come to one conclusion and that is that Wilson and those that think like him are NOT true Americans.

Harry Cello

Lake Carroll, IL

Fear of Change

Many letter writers in this space, the Commentary Column and in other forums seem frightened. They profess that they are concerned that the Constitution, at least the Second Amendment, is under attack, they're afraid of Fifth Columnists and higher taxes. They think that immigrants are refusing to learn English and draining our treasury dry. They look back on the fifties as a lost golden age and view the present age as immoral and corrupt.

I'm now convinced that they are frightened, but they're not afraid of any of the things that they profess to be afraid of. They're not really afraid of death squads or higher taxes or even big government. What they are afraid of is change. And the reason that they are so angry with the Democratic Party and President Obama in particular is that Democrats have embraced change and Obama is the main proponent of change.

The irony is that the naysayers don't understand that humans have always lived in an ever-changing environment; people have always been agents of change. Men and women lumbered out of the jungle onto the African savanna and they have been on the move ever since. On the one hand we embrace change, but at the same time we resist and sometimes we even attack the agents of change. The most change seems to take place when folks aren't paying attention, aren't making long range plans, and aren't asking about unintended consequences. They make a small change and go about their business, not realizing that the smallest change will influence their next decision and will result in more change. A small example: They buy a refrigerator with a slightly bigger freezer compartment and before they even realize what's happened, they have changed their shopping habits. A bigger example: They buy a new home in the suburbs, thinking nothing will change, that everything will remain the same. Not true, everything changes. Ten million people, one at a time, buy homes in the suburbs and the whole country is transformed.

It seems that since the Second World War change has been accelerating. All over the world, the amount of change, population growth and consumption of natural resources have been inconceivable. Perhaps, all of this unplanned change with its accompanying unintended consequences has finally proved to be too much for many people. Most of us can't even quantify the amount of change or describe the effects. Not all of the change has been positive and some of the negative aspects are hard to live with. We have created rural poverty and urban sprawl, but, at the moment, we don't know how to fix these two situations. We don't even know how serious they are.

Some people feel that they have lost control of their own destinies. Social mores are changing, the sense of community is disappearing, and it seems that more and more decisions that directly affect our very lives, even our personal lives, are made somewhere else by faceless people we don't even know. And now people are talking about global warming/climate change which you can't even see. Others who cherry pick the literature claim you can even find some evidence that global warming/climate change may not exist. Finally, they simply want change to stop. They scream, "Stop now and let's go back to the way things were, when change was manageable, when we were in control of our own lives and to a greater extent the world."

If that's not enough, Obama doesn't want to give us a chance to catch our breath, to integrate the effects of past change into our lives and make those positive changes part of our culture and weed out the negative changes. No, we are now being told that most of the change we've just experienced was unplanned and unknowingly we've created some big problems which need to be corrected, now. We are now being told that we need to generate as much change in the next fifty years as we created in the last fifty years and to the extent possible we have to start planning change as we implement these changes. We can only plan by talking to each other and almost every decision we arrive at will involve monumental change. It is the reality of living in a dynamic world. A world, by the way, that has in my lifetime gone from party lines and manual typewriters to cell phones and laptops; a world that has gone from less than three billion people to nearly seven billion people and is projected to reach nine billion people by 2050. The world has already changed, continues to change; like it or not, we simply have to play catch-up.

To be continued . . .

Chuck Wemstrom

Mt. Carroll, IL

Savanna Recognizes Wright

Savanna has been home to many illustrious people that received their education in the Savanna schools. Some that come to mind are Wayne King (the Waltz King) of the Big Bang Era. Astronaut Dale Gardner, and Dr. L.B. Hussey are to be included. Dr. Hussey raised two exceptional sons. Dr. Jack Hussey became a kidney transplant surgeon, and Dr. David Hussey became the Head of Radiation Oncology at the University of Iowa. Many others could be added to the list.

Gene Wright is not a native of Savanna, but he spent most of his teaching career as a social studies teacher in the Savanna Schools. Gene was well known for his use of mannequins dressed in Civil War uniforms and he often dressed in the appropriate uniform for the lesson he was teaching. These were his "teaching tools," and he was appreciated for "making history live" for our children. Gene has received much recognition for his work and has just been notified that he will receive the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award 2009 (PA, 11/4/09).

Gene Wright will receive this award at 7 p.m. at the Savanna Historical Society, 406 Main St., during the Savanna Christmas Walk. Please join us for the Chili Supper, serving from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Friday, November 27. Tickets are $5. Enjoy the Christmas Walk, then be sure to come back to the SHS for the award at 7:00. If you had Gene as your teacher and are going to be in Savanna that weekend, please attend and let him know how much he was appreciated for his many years of excellent teaching.

The Savanna Historical Society came into existence as a result of wanting to secure a museum to house Gene's 90+ Civil War soldiers, hand carved and authentically attired. These will be on permanent display on the 3rd floor of our very large 3-story building.

Please join us as we honor Gene Wright for this much-deserved award.

Tom & Lydia Root

Savanna, IL

Capitol Report

By Jim Sacia, State Representative, 89th District

At a Veterans Job Fair on November 10th, at the Freeport Library, I along with Senator Bivins, County Board Chairman John Blum and Mayor George Gaulrapp welcomed the veterans and thanked the Illinois Department of Employment Security for hosting the event.

John Blum, as you may know, is a Captain with United Airlines, flying internationally. Recently, as passengers boarded his aircraft in Frankfort, Germany, en route to the United States he noted eight marines in their dress uniforms in the cabin and walked back to thank them for their service, as he was sure they were on their way home after completing their combat tours of duty in Afghanistan or Iraq. At the Tuesday event, the seasoned Captain choked up as he spoke about discovering that each marine on the plane was escorting home a fallen marine in the cargo hold of his aircraft. A movie that I encourage everyone to watch, "Taking Chance", is the true story of a fallen hero and the fellow serviceman who escorts him on his final journey home. Just make sure you have a box of tissue handy; you'll need it.

The men and women fighting for our country deserve everyone's utmost appreciation and respect whether or not you support the war efforts in the Middle East. The recent funeral for Private First Class Devin Michel in Stockton caught the essence of a community thanking a fallen hero for the second time in as many years. The Illinois House of Representatives will pay tribute to Devin when we return in January and it is my prayer that his family will be able to join us.

"Upside Down" is a term used in the auto loan industry to describe someone who owes significantly more on their car than its worth. The great State of Illinois is "upside down", owing far more than our income can sustain. The anger and frustration of taxpaying families across the state grows daily. The calls and e-mails to our office keep coming, demanding a fix. Many of you rely on state funding to local agencies, and it is the state's obligation to pay you. The number of agencies and organizations waiting more than 180 days for payment from the state is staggering. "You better fix it, Sacia, or we'll throw you out." Please believe me when I say that if I thought my leaving would fix the problem, I'd be long gone. The fact is that Illinois has a systemic problem of spending far more than we can afford. No, I will not be a part of raising your taxes. The "tax and spend" culture in this state must end.

One young lady that I've known and respected for years writes "I am sharing this as a warning as well as a suggestion.we want to know that Springfield knows that we exist and we will no longer be patient and allow the abuses of non-payment." Yes, we know you exist, along with thousands of others needing the support of the state. Yes, I am committed to fixing it, but until we address such programs as providing free rides on mass transit for seniors who can more than afford to pay (to name just one of many), I'll remain prepared to negotiate.

As always, you can reach me, Sally or Barb at 815/232-0774 or e-mail us at jimsacia@aeroinc.net. You can also visit my website at www.jimsacia.com. It's always a pleasure to hear from you.

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