Capitol Fax

Rich Miller’s commentary on State Government

Four years ago during the last Republican gubernatorial primary, dairy magnate Jim Oberweis was sharply and widely criticized for running false newspaper headlines in his TV ads. Now, it’s happening again with a different wealthy gubernatorial hopeful.

Republican Andy McKenna’s latest TV ad stays with his original theme of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s hair. The spot begins the same as his first ad, with a visual of a Blagojevich-like wig on top of the Statehouse and a Blagojevich look-alike walking into the shot. McKenna’s first TV ad placed the wig on several previous governors, including George Ryan and Dan Walker, as well as on a baby. The hair is supposed to be a metaphor for the state’s history of corruption.

The McKenna ad’s announcer then claims the state faces an $11 billion deficit while “Governor Quinn hides the truth.” The accompanying visual is the phrase: “Quinn hides the truth,” and a reference to a November 18th Chicago Tribune article.

Trouble is, the Tribune published no such article with that headline. The article itself is about a contentious public debate between Gov. Quinn and his Democratic primary rival Dan Hynes, but nowhere in the article does Hynes accuse Quinn of “hiding” anything.

The McKenna campaign claims the reference is to the governor’s statement that day that his administration has had many “missions accomplished” during his first year in office. The Tribune reporters questioned the political smarts of parroting one of former President George W. Bush’s more infamous quotes, but the McKenna people say Quinn’s line “hides the truth” about what’s really happening in Illinois.

Obviously, that’s more than a little bit of a stretch.

It’s not like Quinn has hidden the grim realities about the state’s crippling budget deficit or the need for a tax hike. Considering that most Illinois politicians want to sweep this budget and tax problem under the rug until after the election, Quinn’s been downright honest about the whole thing.

If anything, it’s people like McKenna who are “hiding the truth.” McKenna and the rest of the Republican candidates know full well that there’s no way to balance the state budget with cuts alone. The deficit is almost half of the budget, for crying out loud.

Here’s the “truth.” Most of the budget is education and health care. So, unless you want to cut most of the $8 billion in state K-12 spending (which would just necessitate insanely high local property taxes) and kick tens and tens of thousands of children and poor people off of Medicaid, dump the mentally ill into the streets, and then quit doing the other things that the state does, like patrol the highways, you can forget about balancing the budget. Yet, to hear McKenna and the other GOP candidates talk, all that’s really required is a nip here and a tuck there. Ridiculous.

Anyway, back to McKenna’s TV ad. You’d think he’d be more cautious about making up headlines, but he’s using an out-of-state media consultant who probably doesn’t know about the 2006 Oberweis fake headline blowup.

A Washington Post columnist claimed last week that McKenna’s “hair” ads are the best he’s seen this year, but the ads have yet to move McKenna past his rivals - probably because, while visually striking, it’s tough for most viewers to remember that the ad is for candidate McKenna. The spots have attracted plenty of media attention, however, and have probably been the subject of quite a few water cooler discussions.

McKenna is likely to stick with this “hair” visual throughout the primary, so people may eventually associate his name with the hair spot, although that may not work all that well, either. McKenna, for one, has a nice head of hair himself. And associating such a strong negative image so closely with a candidate could be dangerous. McKenna could become the “hair guy,” and since “the hair” is portrayed as such a strong negative, that’s a risky proposition with low information voters.

It’s also unclear how this negative ad will fare as we move into the holiday advertising season. Usually, candidates try to avoid negativity starting around Thanksgiving because viewers can be easily turned off by a negative tone during the holiday season.

False and counterproductive. But, other than that, it’s a good ad.

Senate Week In Review

November Nov. 23-27
A view from the Illinois Senate Republican Press Office

SPRINGFIELD – The potential sale of a state prison to the federal government continued to raise questions and concerns during the week of Nov. 23-27, according to State Sen. Tim Bivins (R-Dixon).

Also, an investigation by a Chicago newspaper revealed that many persons hired from a Blagojevich-era “clout list” remain on the state payroll, despite Gov. Pat Quinn’s pledges to “fumigate state government.”

The hiring investigation by the Chicago Sun-Times revealed that at least 70 persons identified in subpoenas related to federal investigations into hiring practices under Blagojevich remain in state jobs under Quinn – including many who were hired when state agencies circumvented military veterans hiring preferences.

Bivins said Quinn’s refusal to address the Blagojevich appointees is seen as part of a larger problem. Many Senators have been frustrated because Quinn has left in place programs and policies enacted by Blagojevich, who was impeached and removed from office in January. Even programs that led directly to Blagojevich’s impeachment have been untouched by the Governor.

The purchase of Thomson Correctional Center as a facility to house federal prisoners, including detainees from Guantanamo Bay, continues to drive debate amongst government officials and Illinois residents. Bivins said that Illinois needs to consider numerous factors before the state proceeds with any sale.

Senate Republicans say that more information needs to be provided, including facts addressing security concerns, confirmation on whether lawmakers should weigh in on the sale, and a proposal outlining the sale of the facility and how proceeds from the sale of the prison would be used. Illinois still owes about $80 million on the prison.

Quinn continues to insist that he can sell the facility by declaring it “surplus property.” However, lawmakers say that could set a dangerous precedent that could apply to virtually every piece of state property. Other lawmakers believe that if the federal government offers to purchase Thomson, the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability must hold hearings on the potential facility closure, which is required by state law.

As the holiday season approaches, the Illinois Attorney General has released a home safe-shopping guide, which is available online at www.illinoisattorneygeneral.gov. The guide details toys and infant supplies that have been recalled for safety issues over the past year.

Time Bombs in Senate Health Bill

In the Nov. 25 issue of the Christian Science Monitor, Sue Blevins, president of the Institute for Health Freedom in Washington, and Robin Kaigh, an attorney and medical-privacy advocate in New York, warn Americans of at least five time bombs hidden in the equivocal language of the U. S. Senate’s huge new health care reform bill.

“Whether you’re for or against federal efforts to help people buy health insurance,” they warn, “what most of us know about the Democratic bill is that it requires nearly all Americans to have health insurance.  What most of us don’t know is that it requires us to buy a minimum level of insurance approved by the federal government, and forces health plans and providers to share our personal health information with the federal government and other entities.

“If this bill becomes law, we could each be assigned a national beneficiary ID number or card (possibly an electronic device).  And our personal health information will flow electronically to the US secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) – and many others – without our consent.

“Sound farfetched?  Buried in the bill’s 2,074 pages are provisions that actually permit and foster such things.  Freedom and privacy are often lost in the fine print – which is why we’ve been studying the Senate bill since it was released Nov. 19 to help uncover the facts. Here are five highly invasive provisions Americans should know about: 

(1) Mandtory Insurance

Bill text: “Sec. 1501. Requirement to Maintain Minimum Essential Coverage.... An applicable individual shall for each month beginning after 2013 ensure that the individual, and any dependent of the individual who is an applicable individual, is covered under minimum essential coverage for such month.”  Translation: Uncle Sam will now serve as your national insurance agent and force you to buy “minimum essential coverage” – or else you’ll have to pay an annual fine.   However, what Congress considers “minimum essential coverage” and “essential health benefits requirements” includes comprehensive coverage that many neither need nor want.  Plus, those who prefer to carry catastrophic-only coverage won’t have a free range of options for such coverage.   Bottom line:  In a free society, the government should not force citizens to buy any product nor should the government mandate citizens’ level of health-insurance coverage.   Rather than imposing penalties to coerce people into government-sanctioned health insurance, Congress should offer incentives to help those who wish to buy insurance but find it unaffordable.   Congress could allow everyone to deduct the full cost of health insurance (and provide tax credits for those with no tax liability), while offering assistance to those who can’t afford insurance and subsidize high-risk pools for those with preexisting conditions.   Helping those in need is a much better way to reform our nation’s healthcare system than overhauling the entire system and putting Big Brother in charge of deciding what is acceptable coverage for nearly every American.

2. Electronic data exchanges

Bill text: “Sec. 1104. Administrative Simplification…. (h) Compliance. – (1) Health Plan Certification. – (A) Eligibility for a Health Plan, Health Claim Status, Electronic Funds Transfers, Health Care Payment and Remittance Advice. – Not later than December 31, 2013, a health plan shall file a statement with the Secretary, in such form as the Secretary may require, certifying that the data and information systems for such plan are in compliance with any applicable standards (as described under paragraph (7) of section 1171) and associated operating rules (as described under paragraph (9) of such section) for electronic funds transfers, eligibility for a health plan, health claim status, and health care payment and remittance advice, respectively.”   Translation: Requiring everyone to buy federally sanctioned health insurance, and then forcing qualified plans to comply with Administrative Simplification requirements, provides the government and health industry with power they would not be able to exercise in a free market.   Administrative Simplification rules are a product of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996.  They lay the foundation for a nationally linked database of personal health information.  A federal “Nationwide Health Information Network” (NHIN) is well under way in the United States, without assurances that individuals will control their personal health data.   Bottom line: Americans should be able to contract privately with the insurance companies of their choice.  Patients should be able to decide whether to have electronic or paper medical records, and not have the government require electronic records, which are then included in a nationally linked database.

3. Real-time health and financial data

Bill text: “Sec. 1104. Administrative Simplification…. (4) Requirements for Financial and Administrative Transactions. – (A) In General. – The standards and associated operating rules adopted by the Secretary shall – (i) to the extent feasible and appropriate, enable determination of an individual’s eligibility and financial responsibility for specific services prior to or at the point of care.... (i) Eligibility for a Health Plan and Health Claims Status. – The set of operating rules for eligibility for a health plan and health claim status transactions shall be adopted not later than July 1, 2011, in a manner ensuring that such operating rules are effective not later than January 1, 2013, and may allow for the use of a machine readable identification card.”   Translation: Administrative Simplification rules are being expanded to gather real-time financial and health data on individuals through a tracking ID, possibly a “machine readable” ID card (electronic device).  Bottom line: Moving forward with real-time data collection without an ethical patient consent provision means everyone loses his or her health-privacy rights. Congress needs to enact strong patient consent provisions for all health data, especially data collected “real-time.”

4. Health data network

Bill text: “Sec. 6301. Patient-Centered Outcomes Research.… (f) Building Data for Research. – The Secretary shall provide for the coordination of relevant Federal health programs to build data capacity for comparative clinical effectiveness research, including the development and use of clinical registries and health outcomes research data networks, in order to develop and maintain a comprehensive, interoperable data network to collect, link, and analyze data on outcomes and effectiveness from multiple sources, including electronic health records.”   Translation: Your personal health information may soon be studied by government scientists.  Washington is creating a new research center that plans to use patients’ electronic health records for conducting research and creating disease registries.  The data network is comprehensive and includes use of electronic health records.   Bottom line: Federal funds should not be used to collect data electronically and conduct research on patients’ personal health information without their consent.

5. Personal health information

Bill text: “Sec. 6301. Patient-Centered Outcomes Research…. (B) Use of Data. – The [Patient-Centered Outcomes Research] Institute shall only use data provided to the Institute under subparagraph (A) in accordance with laws and regulations governing the release and use of such data, including applicable confidentiality and privacy standards.”   Translation:  Think your health privacy is protected?  It’s not.  This language refers to “applicable confidentiality and privacy standards,” but HIPAA’s so-called privacy law permits individuals’ personal health information to be exchanged – for many broad purposes – without patients’ consent (See 45 CFR Subtitle A, Subpart E – Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information; section 164.502(a)(1)(ii) “Permitted uses and disclosures”).   Bottom line:  Trust is a must for ensuring quality healthcare.  Thus, as stated above, Congress needs to pass a strong, ethical patient consent law that ensures patients have control over the flow of their personal health information. 

Blevins and Kaigh ask: “What about the consent of the governed?  All told, the national mandatory health-insurance bill puts the federal government in charge of individuals’ insurance choices and data privacy. This philosophy of governing is the opposite of America’s founding principle: consent of the governed.   Without health freedom and privacy rights, Congress is opening the door for many wrongs to be committed – all in the name of covering the uninsured.”

If you don’t want this kind of “change,” let Senators Durbin and Burris know before it’s too late.  Durbin won’t listen and Burris neither cares nor understands, but they still keep track of calls for or against.  No call means you’re for it.

Richard O’Connor

Pearl City, IL

Concerned About Water Bill

I heard that the City of Lanark wants to raise our water bill. When Medallion closed in January, a lot of people lost their jobs – including me. I am barely surviving on what I get for unemployment every month. I am sure, I am not the only person living this way right now – the way the economy is.

What I think the city should think about is I am the only person living in my house, there are about 4 or 5 people living together in other houses, but we are all paying the same amount for water a month. One person isn’t using as much water as a family of 5 is using.

I also think if the city does raise the water bill, a lot of people in this town will be upset. Everything that I wrote in this letter is strictly my own opinion.

Teresa M. Stajcar

Lanark, IL

 

Guest Commentary . . .

With Obama All The Way

How long will it take Congressional Democrats to catch on? Forgive my rudeness, but how thick headed is the Party of the Donkey? Haven’t they realized that the head of their ticket, Barack Hussein Obama, is not your average politician? Don’t they know that he is willing to forego reelection in 2012, so long as he can make the maximum use of the four years he has to bring America to her knees? Don’t they realize that they will be complicit in the undoing of America, a country they profess to love?

An old expression says you can’t put ten pounds of sugar in a five pound bag. Some people use more colorful language, but you understand the concept. Apparently, this truth, as basic as the Law of Gravity, is not subscribed to by the Democratic Party. We knew there would be massive spending by this President, but could we have guessed how much? Could we have guessed that a president who criticized his predecessor’s spending would do far worse than double a fiscal year budget? He would double the entire national debt by 2012! If Obama’s programs are enacted, the non-partisan CBO estimates the debt will triple by 2019!

The creation of a new healthcare entitlement will bankrupt the country – already the Senate bill has 10 years of taxation paying for the first 7 years of healthcare. The public gets nothing until 2014 in the Senate version -- 2013 in the House version -- but taxation starts immediately. That way, it is “revenue neutral.” But the next ten years? And the ten after that?

These men in Washington are playing with our very lives. The new protocol reducing the frequency and delaying the first mammogram to age 50 is no surprise. No cancer specialists were on the panel making the recommendation, by the way. Lorraine Pace from Breast Cancer Help said, “Coming on the heels of the current healthcare debate, one has to ask if this is how healthcare panels will ration early detection screenings and life-saving care. Do we really want bureaucrats in Washington making these calls, rather than a women’s physician?” Welcome to the new world, Lorraine.

Don’t you wonder, as I do, whether Democrat lawmakers will suddenly wake up and smell the coffee? Will they finally see that governments, like families, cannot overspend continually? Will they recognize they are sabotaging the very job growth they say they want with their policies of spending and taxation? Nah! Not gonna happen. After all, they have that attractive, sweet talkin’ man at the top of the ticket. They’re going to stick with him. All the way. All the way to the end of America, as we knew her.

Editor’s Note: Jane Ryan Carrell is a stateline area freelance writer on political and social topics. She can be contacted at

Capitol Report

By Jim Sacia

State Representative

89th District

At the request of Governor Quinn, I, along with Senator Bivins, arrived at Thomson Prison on Monday to find a daunting number of reporters, heads of local municipalities, law enforcement officials and others with a need to know more about the proposed plan to sell the prison to the federal government. We were immediately ushered to the front of the briefing to join Iowa Congressman Bruce Braley and my good friend State Representative Pat Verschoore (D-Milan).

The briefing itself lasted about two hours. It was impressive and thorough, and it answered much of the “coffee shop spin” that was already gripping Northwest Illinois. It was conducted by the Governor’s Chief Operating Officer Jack Lavin, Illinois Department of Corrections Director Michael Randle, Jonathon Monken the Director of the Illinois State Police, Harley Lappin the Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and Phil Carter U. S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs.

Without this briefing, there would still be far more questions than answers. Several very important considerations have influenced my strong stand in favor of the state of Illinois selling the Thomson Prison to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

First, the 1600-bed maximum security facility in Thomson has sat nearly vacant since its completion in 2001, breaking the hearts and dreams of those in the surrounding community who invested their life savings and all they could borrow into businesses to support the anticipated opening of the prison. Many are now bankrupt.

Second, as a state legislator I have no control over President Obama’s decision to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (GITMO). If the detainees now housed there are coming to American soil, I’m all in favor of housing approximately 100 at Thomson and filling the remainder of the facility with maximum security federal prisoners. Both Mr. Carter and Mr. Lappin assured us that the GITMO detainees would never be co-mingled with other federal prisoners. They would have their own segregated wing under the control of the U.S. military.

A fact not known to many of us before the proposed sale of the Thomson Prison is that there are already 340 former GITMO detainees currently being housed in federal prisons in the United States, 40 of them at the federal facility in Marion, Illinois. It wasn’t made clear this week how many may be housed at other federal Illinois facilities in Greenville, Pekin and Chicago. It appears the transfers of those prisoners weren’t newsworthy because they weren’t tied to the closing of GITMO.

No, the transfer of detainees here won’t result in the creation of terror cells in Northwest Illinois. Detainees are not allowed visits from anyone other than clergy, lawyers and the Red Cross. Other prisoners at Thomson would retain normal visiting privileges.

Please remember folks, we are not breaking new ground here. Our federal facilities already are housing 340 of the worst of the worst with no problems. Thomson would simply fall in line, but of course, it is tied to the closing of GITMO, so the politics have gotten out in front of practical reality. This is an opportunity for up to 3200 new, direct and indirect jobs – many of them federal law enforcement positions. There will be local hires and transfers from the state system to the federal system. The facility will have an $85 million per year operating budget. – that’s money pumped back into our local economy.

Thomson prison is new, it’s practically vacant and our state can’t afford to fully open it. Yes, you can make an argument that we need it open. I, along with the citizens of Thomson have been making that argument for eight years. It’s time to plow new ground.

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

Representative Jim Sacia