Capitol Fax

Rich Miller's commentary on State Government

I spent a few hours re-reading the federal criminal complaint against Gov. Rod Blagojevich and chief of staff John Harris late last week. As I did, one image kept coming to mind over and over again: Howard Hughes.

Hughes, of course, was the kabillionaire whose aides allowed him to die an emaciated, bedsore-ridden mess. Instead of really taking care of him, they indulged his insanity, mainly for fear of losing their jobs.

The federal complaint is far from a complete document, but it paints a picture of a bunch of enabling hangers-on too timid to tell the man "No." I always knew they were sycophants, I just never realized that they went to such extremes.

For instance, one of the governor's DC consultants, whom Blagojevich has paid millions over the years, is caught on tape actively indulging the governor's mad fantasy of a deal that involved appointing President-Elect Obama's preferred Senate replacement in exchange for a job heading up the Change to Win organization, a splinter group of the AFL-CIO. The consultant apparently didn't discourage Blagojevich's bizarre plan to have Obama-connected billionaires fund a 501(c)(4) organization that Blagojevich could eventually run.

Blagojevich and Harris are on tape discussing the idea of appointing the estimable Deputy Governor Louanner Peters to the Senate seat. Blagojevich said that if it looked like he was going to be impeached he could count on Peters to give up the seat "and let me parachute over there." Replied Harris: "You can count on [Peters] to do that."

Almost the entire complaint reads like that. It was "Yes, governor. Yessir. Okeedokee," to the goofiest schemes imaginable. "Deputy Governor A stated that it is hard not to give the Secretary of Energy position to a Texan, but with Rod Blagojevich's coal background it might be a possibility." Like Barack Obama would ever make Rod Blagojevich his Energy Secretary.

Instead of telling the governor that his plots were not just silly, but flat-out crazy and maybe even illegal, they humored him right until the end.

There are a couple of mild push-backs. "Advisor A," a former deputy governor who is now a lobbyist (and I'm pretty sure I know who he is) suggested that appointing a certain controversial wealthy person to the Senate in order to help Blagojevich raise money might not be a fantastic idea. "Advisor A responded that it would be hard to put Senate Candidate 6 in the Senate seat."

But by the end of their discussion, Advisor A and the governor were allegedly talking about finding somebody close to this possible appointee. "Advisor A agreed to find out who is close to Senate Candidate 6." (Just to be clear here, there is no indication whatsoever that "Senate Candidate 6" was ever informed of this conversation.)

Their guy, the man who made them what they are today, was falling off the deep end and endangering them all, yet they allowed him to carry on. Gov. Blagojevich is to blame, of course, but his so-called friends ought to be absolutely ashamed of themselves.

* There are some other interesting little tidbits in the complaint that haven't come to light. For instance, the governor and his DC consultant discussed appointing Attorney General Lisa Madigan to the US Senate as a way of "getting more done as Governor." Independent sources say the governor was convinced that he could cut a deal with Speaker Madigan on the appointment that would allow him to pass a capital bill, enact grand new healthcare programs and do all sorts of other wonderful, pie in the sky things. One very well-placed source claims the governor even settled on the Lisa Madigan appointment idea the day before he was arrested.

Speaker Madigan hasn't returned the governor's phone calls in years, and Lisa Madigan did not enjoy life as a legislator. How the governor could even imagine that such a scheme could succeed is beyond all reason.

And John Wyma, who made millions lobbying the governor, is seeking immunity, according to the complaint, "in exchange for [Wyma's] truthful information." The footnote claims that Wyma (identified as "Individual A") is a "subject, but not a target, of the criminal investigation concerning activities at the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board." That gives you some idea of what might possibly have brought Wyma into the fold.

Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and thecapitolfaxblog.com.

Taxpayers Will Remember

As a Republican I was pleased to hear John McCain give one the most eloquent concessionaire speeches I can recall ever hearing. Iwas pleased white voters, both Republican and Democrat, provided more than 60% of Barack Obama's votes. This tells the world that a vast majority of Americans feel the color of a persons skin has nothing whatsoever to do with their capabilities.

For those officials going back to Washington in January, with unexpired terms left to serve, I would say to you, mark the date on your calendar when your term is up and let that remind you, your voting record between now and then will determine your future employment. For those who are going to Washington for the first time, remember what you promised us before election day. You are only elected for one term at a time. If you promised not to raise taxes, keep in mind that a deficit is a tax far worse than a tax on income. Fees are taxes also that are worse than income taxes.

You might ask why are these taxes worse than income taxes? Because you have to pay for them even if you have no income. In the sixty-some years that I have been filing income tax returns, the years that I paid the most taxes were the exact same years that I had the highest income, and the most income left after taxes. The very reason Congress has found it necessary to print nearly $1 trillion for the Bush Bailout Fund is because his administration spent several $trillion more than they had the backbone to tax for. I believe this was a mistake. However, I feel an even bigger mistake is allowing Lame "W" Duck and his appointed administration to decide who does and doesn't share in this nearly $1 trillion. These are the very people responsible for this financial crisis. Does anybody remember how many Treasury Secretaries "W" has appointed and fired?

I was certainly pleased to see the interest the younger voters showed in the November 4th election. It appears they are getting tired of these immoral deficits they see their parents and grandparents leaving unpaid in the last eight years. That is a good sign. Americans need to be more careful who they allow into these offices.

We taxpayers need to take more interest in what is going on in Washington D.C.. Judging by some letters to the editor recently, there is more interest here in Northwest Illinois in the disposal of Cow Crud inJo Daviess county than there is in all of the Bull Crud flooding out of Washington, D.C. and theyhaven't evenbuilt a lagoon to contain theirs.

Now that the Bush train has switched from the Capitalistic track to the Socialistic track, how long will it be till we return? In just a few weeks Government is already involved in Banking, Insurance and the manufacture and design of Automobiles and salaries and bonuses paid to their employees.

Is it possible that Big Oil is now in the process of forcing the price of fuel and crude oil so low that the ethanol industry will end up on the auction block? The oil companies have enough excess profits from the last few years to buy up all of the ethanol plants at bankruptcy auctions for 10 to 25 cents on the dollar. Whatever happened to the Sherman Anti-trust Act? Today when you drive into a town the price of gas is the same at a huge majority of the filling stations, and it goes up and down the same day. That is "price fixing", and wasn't allowed when the Act was beingenforced 30 years ago.

Ken Moll
Shannon, IL

Festival of Trees

Nineteen years ago, a group of community members joined forces to create the first Festival of Trees benefiting hospice services in the Sauk Valley area. Now, nineteen years later the Festival of Trees continues as a tradition encompassing the entire Sauk Valley area.

We are blessed to live and work in generous communities where the idea of investing in our resources is a priority for all. The Festival of Trees would not be possible without the contributions given by these communities. The Hospice of the Rock River Valley says thank you to all businesses, organizations, volunteers, decorators, chairpersons, sponsors, donors and the general public for the generous amount of time, talent, and financial support given to the Festival of Trees. We realize your resources are limited and precious and we truly appreciate your expressions of support in an effort to help us continue helping others.

The proceeds from the Festival of Trees assist Hospice of the Rock River Valley in providing care and support to the terminally ill and their families. The professional staff and team of volunteers have offered expert and compassionate care for over 25 years to those during a most vulnerable time. Services include nursing care, social work, pastoral and bereavement services, volunteer support, inpatient and respite care, as well as medications, medical supplies and equipment. Although Hospice services are reimbursable by Medicare, Medicaid and insurance, the reimbursement does not begin to cover the actual costs of providing our services.This is why Hospice of the Rock River Valley relies heavily on community support to maintain our commitment of not passing on costs to our patients or their families.

On behalf of the staff, board of directors and volunteers, please accept our sincere and heartfelt thank you. Please know that through your generosity, you have helped to provide hope and compassionate care to your fellow community members.

We wish you and yours happiness throughout this holiday season.

Sincerely,
Hospice of the Rock River Valley
Carolyn Spencer, Executive Director
Karen Voss, Marketing Director

Organ Donations Questioned

Regarding the Nov. 26 response to my letter on organ donation, the author is mistaken about the impact of the 2006 law. It does not nullify previous organ donations on driver's licenses.Here's Secretary of State Jesse White's own statement from his "Life Goes On" web site:

"Join the new First-Person Consent Organ/Tissue Donor Registry.A new law, effective Jan. 1, 2006, created a new Organ/Tissue Donor Registry, making a person's wishes to be a donor legally binding, so a person's decision to donate cannot be reversed by grieving relatives. Additional witnesses or family consent is no longer required for donation to occur. If you are listed in the old registry, family consent is still required for donation to occur. Individuals will not be automatically transferred from the current registry to the new one. To ensure that your decision to be an organ/tissue donor is honored, you must join the new registry."

The law I referred to, H.B. 5259, became effective January 2007 and has nothing to do with the above registry.It does just what I said it does.Here is part of Gov. Blagojevich's press release of June 26, 2006: "the new law will allow hospitals to begin organ and tissue preservation for later donation when the wishes of the patient or the family are unknown. House Bill 5259, sponsored by Rep. Tom Cross (R ­ Plainfield) and Sen. James Clayborne (D ­ East St. Louis), permits hospitals to use preservation techniques in order to maintain the viability of organs and tissues until the patient's family can consent to or deny organ and tissue donation."

Comparing numbers misses the whole point.The morality of this practice is not determined by the number of "successes" vs. "failures." We simply don't know how many people might/could/would have recovered from "death" if given proper care.If the eight people I mentioned, who barely escaped being killed for their organs, had not been so lucky, would it have mattered? It did to them.Would it matter more if there were 80 such cases, or 8,000?

Determining when death really occurs is almost impossible.Several members of the Pontifical Academy for Life, who were invited to the Vatican-sponsored 2005 conference on the ethics of declaring someone brain dead, broke protocol and published their papers privately because the Vatican refused to acknowledge their dissenting opinions.As a result, the Vatican scheduled a similar conference in 2006 to which none of the dissenting experts were invited. Touché!

The Pontifical Academy for Life, the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, and the Italian National Transplant Centre sponsored yet another conference on organ donation this past November in Rome.Billed as an International Congress, the conference is titled: "A Gift for life. Considerations on organ donation."The conference brochure leaves no doubt that the conference will be promoting organ donation.In addition to the fact that it is being run in conjunction with Italy's national transplant centre, the brochure says plainly that it will address "the importance of spreading the culture of organ donation."

The controversy hit the front page of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano with an editorial by Professor Lucetta Scaraffia, vice-president of the Italian Association for Science and Life and a member of the Italian National Committee on Bio-Ethics.She said that a declaration of 'brain death' cannot be considered the end of life in light of new scientific research. She also noted that in Vatican-run hospitals, "the certification of brain death is not used."

Roberto De Mattei, vice-president of the National Research Council of Italy, said that "the concern of many is that the Vatican has not taken the appropriate position when doubts exist about the end of human life ... The moment of separation of the soul from the body is shrouded in mystery, just as the moment when a soul enters a person is."

Dr. Shewmon, vice-chair of Neurology at the University of California and a participant in the Vatican study in 2006, has stated that brain death alone "results in a terminally ill patient, deeply comatose, but not a dead person."

It is widely known that a patient whose heart has stopped beating for 15 minutes after a heart attack can recover if they are treated by cooling the body to 33 degrees Celsius, cardio-pulmonary by-pass, cardioplegia, that is, stopping the heart beat chemically, and a slow increase in oxygenation for up to 24 hours. Up to 80% of these patients can be discharged from the hospital, 55% having a good neurological outcome."Clearly, the assumption made by physicians that a patient is dead five minutes after the heart has stopped beating is incorrect," wrote Drs. Weisfeldt and Becker in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Brain death can be used for purely utilitarian purposes.In 2005, Dr. Robert Spaemann, a former philosopher at the University of Munich, told the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that the brain death approach to defining death reflects a new set of priorities. "The prevailing factor," he said, "was no longer the interest of the dying to avoid being declared 'dead' prematurely, but rather the community's interest in declaring a dying person dead as soon as possible."

Two reasons were given: 1) Guaranteeing legal immunity for discontinuing life-prolonging measures that would constitute a financial and personal burden for family members and society alike and 2) Collecting vital organs for the purpose of saving the lives of other human beings by transplantation.

According to Dr. Robert Traug, an abortionist who prefers doing away with all definitions of death, the goal is to move to a society where people see organ donation as a social responsibility ("the culture of organ donation" mentioned above) and where donating organs would be accepted as a normal part of dying, so that in cases where a person chose to withhold recording a specific choice about donating his or her organs, the surviving family members would agree to a donation. In the U.S., Federal regulations require institutions to contact local organ procurement organizations concerning impending death to insure that the family will be approached at the appropriate time by a professional skilled in presenting the proposal of organ donation.

As Dr. John Shea notes, the recent widespread move to involve palliative caregivers in the organ donation process is another ominous development. Those caregivers are said to provide "skills and principles applicable to donation after cardiac death." In effect, they are to be the agents of a soft-sell program to make the family "feel comfortable and supported during this extremely difficult time."

This movement is in keeping with the Institute of Medicine Report Brief, 2006, on "Organ Donation: Opportunities for Action." TheIndex and Option Marketgoal is, as Dr. Traug said,"to move toward a society where people see organ donation as a social responsibility" and where "donating organs would be accepted as a normal part of dying, and in cases where a patient died without recording a specific choice about donation of his or her organs, the surviving family members would be comfortable giving permission."

In my Nov. 19 letter, I did not say or suggest that there is a conspiracy afoot, but the more you read about the controversy, the more you have to wonder.

Sincerely,
Richard O'Connor
Pearl City IL

Letter To The Editor

Dear Editor,

Yet another Illinois politician has been arrested for brazenly abusing the power of public office. Thank God for U.S. Attorney Peter Fitzgerald! Perhaps the degree of the corruption is the knock upside the head Illinoisans need to wake up from their moral slumber. And perhaps this is the painful price we have to pay for our willful ignorance and complacency of the blessing of self-government. Even if we muster the energy to vote, we often do so with no understanding of the character and political positions of the candidates for whom we vote. According to one study, the average American adult watches five hours of television per day, and yet many can't find the time to learn about the character of the men and women who make the laws and set the policy that affect all of us. The elected officials issuing statements of shock and disgust hoping to distance themselves from Blagojevich are probably praying their own dishonesty won't be exposed. If it wasn't so serious it could almost be funny. Illinois politics as usual. Have we learned the lesson yet? Character does matter.

Sincerely,
David E. Smith,
Executive Director,
Illinois Family Institute

Capitol Report

By Jim Sacia, State Representative, 89th District

December 9, 2008 will not soon be forgotten. It will go down in Illinois history as the day FBI agents arrested Governor Rod Blagojevich at 6:05am and took him away in handcuffs, charged with two counts of political corruption, wire and mail fraud, and solicitation of bribes.

Following a swarm of phone calls from many of you and the media, I finally had a chance to read the 70-plus page "information" that was filed with a federal judge by the FBI asserting allegations resulting in an authorized complaint that led to the issuing of the arrest warrant. I can't tell you the number of times since U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald ordered the FBI and other Federal Investigative Agencies to begin an investigation into alleged wrongdoing by the Governor that I have been asked "when will he be indicted". My response was always the same, "assuming the allegations are true, in white collar and corruption cases, time is never of the essence, beyond the tolling of the statute of limitations." I would go on to say that as a 28-year veteran FBI agent having worked many white collar cases, the only way the federal system would move fast would be if there were extenuating circumstances.

Enter extenuating circum-stances. As I stood for nearly an hour watching the press conference conducted by Mr. Fitzgerald and the federal agencies involved, I was mesmerized by the audacity, and I'm sorry to say, stupidity displayed by our Governor. Knowing he was under federal scrutiny that may include the recording of his conversations, he allegedly continued to commit serious criminal acts that were captured on tape. Let me assure you, the phone recordings and legally planted "bugs" will withstand any legal challenges. In such a significant case they would have been authorized by the U. S. Attorney General himself.

According to the recordings, not only was the Governor trying to sell "The Pride of Illinois" President-Elect Barack Obama's U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder, he was also holding for ransom two significant bills authorized by the General Assembly. One was our authorization of $8 million to the Children's Memorial Hospital. Governor Blagojevich was demanding $50,000 for himself from the hospital CEO before he would release their money.

In November the General Assembly worked very hard at passing legislation to get more funding from the casinos to the racetracks in Illinois. Recorded conversations reveal Governor Blagojevich was holding out for $100,000 on that one.

It is also alleged that the Governor was attempting, through covert means, to get two Chicago Tribune editorial writers fired for writing less than flattering editorials about him.

Can you imagine the fallout if any of these four issues, listed above, had actually occurred and later was returned in an indictment? Simply put, the United States Government had to act. I have always been extremely proud of the FBI, but this week I can say that I have never been prouder.

So, where do we go from here? Monday and Tuesday (December 15th and 16th) the House and Senate will convene in special session. I am sure the first item of business will be stopping the Governor from appointing Mr. Obama's successor in the U. S. Senate. It's safe to say that initiating impeachment proceedings will also be high on the list. Will Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn make the Senate appointment? Will we have a special election? These are uncharted waters. Stay tuned.

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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