Letters to the Editor and Commentary

Capitol Fax

Rich Miller’s Commentary on State Government

I began to reminisce during Gov. Pat Quinn’s Chicago press conference last week. Quinn had called the media together to announce he was closing seven state facilities and laying off almost 2,000 state employees because the General Assembly had passed an inadequate budget.

Wait, I thought, haven’t I already seen this movie?

Back in May of 2009, Gov. Pat Quinn warned that if the General Assembly didn’t pass his proposed income tax increase within two weeks he’d have to implement a “doomsday budget” and lay off over 14,000 teachers, cancel preschool for 100,000 children, cut 400,000 students off of college aid, kick 650,000 people off of healthcare rolls, eliminate all funding for public transit, slash a billion dollars to local governments, lay off 1,000 state troopers and release 6,000 inmates from prison early.

Two months later, Quinn threatened to lay off 2,600 state workers because the Legislature’s budget was inadequate.

Two weeks after that, Quinn had pared down the total threatened cuts to a billion dollars, including $225 million for college student aid, and said there was no way the government could operate through the end of the fiscal year without a tax hike.

Almost none of that happened, even though Quinn didn’t get his tax hike until almost two years later.

But, come the following spring, Quinn was back with the same playbook. Quinn said he’d have to cut education by $1.3 billion if a tax hike wasn’t approved.

That didn’t happen, either.

This year, Quinn repeatedly threatened huge cuts to human service providers, then somehow found the money to prevent the tragedy. He also warned in late spring that the bipartisan budget being prepared in the Illinois House was full of “radical” cuts and repeatedly vowed to stop it, then signed the bill into law.

And then last week he once again blamed the General Assembly for forcing him to close those facilities and lay off those state employees - all in order to save a paltry $55 million.

Quinn’s playbook is, by now, pretty darned clear: Blame the General Assembly for causing Armageddon, announce horrifically draconian countermeasures, then eventually find a way to somehow prevent the pending disaster.

He’s like an arsonist firefighter. And, frankly, this is really starting to get old, and it’s more than a little disturbing.

Can the governor comprehend what even the threat of a facility closure does to a small Downstate town? Fear spreads like wildfire. People immediately stop spending money. The local economy instantly shuts down.

Yet just about everything Quinn has done since the end of the spring session has been aimed directly at Downstate.

His reduction veto of the Medicaid budget spared inner-city hospitals. His vetoes of $100 million in school transportation funding and regional superintendents operations left Cook County virtually untouched. Last week’s layoff and closure announcement included just one Chicago-area facility. Every other state facility on his list was in a Downstate Senate Republican district.

“Let me know when ‘Good Pat” rides in on his white horse, wouldya?” cracked an otherwise quite worried state Sen. Tim Bivins (R-Dixon) last week. The Mabley Developmental Center is in Bivins’ district and it’s on Quinn’s closure list. Bivins’ wisecrack referred to a recent Sun-Times column of mine about how “Bad Pat” will deliberately create a crisis so that “Good Pat” can swoop in and solve it.

Yes, there is a budget problem. I get it. I’ve written about it many times. Anyone who doesn’t get it is a fool. But if the governor had done the hard work of governing, rather than just hold a splashy Chicago press conference announcing the end of the world, all of this could have been prevented.

Quinn’s budget staff met with legislative staff a few times over the past several days to lay out the situation. Trouble is, the Quinnsters had a different explanation for how much money they needed to free up at every meeting. A memo handed out to staff late last month, for instance, had the budget hole at $180 million, which is a far cry from last week’s claim of a $313 million hole. It’s no wonder that the House Democrats have said they aren’t willing to adjust their revenue estimates to help Quinn out.

People’s lives are not fun little Chicago press conference games, governor. And you’ve been messing with those lives almost from the moment since you were elevated to your position. Grow the heck up, man.

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

Listen, Learn, and Vote

It is time to write my September editorial and I am not sure what subject to address. There has been so much dismantling of American ideals. What used to be wrong is right and what used to be right is wrong. How about the threat of violence by union boss Jimmy Hoffa on Labor Day saying that his union is the soldiers for President Obama and they are ready to march and take these Sons of B’s (referring to the Tea Party) out, (Mafia term for kill.) And how President Obama came on stage afterwards and said nothing about the violent rhetoric? Of course, how could he when his V.P. Joe Biden was in Cincinnati the same day saying that we have to “Keep the Barbarians from the gate” referring to the Tea Party.

Or should I talk about the President’s Job Czar and CEO of General Electric Jeffery Immelt shutting down his X-ray plant in Wisconsin and taking it to China? Now he is going into partnership with China to build jets that will be in direct competition with USA Boeing. And by the way, Obama’s administration is fighting to stop Boeing from moving to South Carolina, a right to work state. Many citizens are taken in by this orator, but actions speak louder than words.

Should I write about the agreement we have with the United Nations/ Agenda 21, which is designed to put all countries on a level playing field? Their laws can now be implemented in the USA. - example- America Mfg. Gibson Guitar was raided by police, workers threatened, records confiscated because they were using rare woods from other countries and it is against UN laws for American workers to process the wood. Guns owners are concerned that Agenda 21 will also be used to take away our second amendment rights.

Should I talk about the Federal Reserve tripling our money supply, with worthless paper money so the government can borrow money to pay its own debt, (Quantitative easing/ QE 1, QE 2, and working on QE 3) thus devaluing our $$? It’s like the old moonshiners expanding their corn liquor with water. Should I talk about Obama’s job stimulus that cost the Taxpayers $278,000 per job?

The Stephenson County Tea Party will continue to promote a non-racist, nonviolent tone. We do promote educating the voters not tarnished by lobbyists influence, and political correctness. Listen, Learn, and Vote!

Bill Dietz

Lena, IL

Overcoming Evil

In reaction in part to an article written by Berry Friesen in The Mennonite and the general tone of the public discourse around the coming ten year acknowledgement of 9/11, I want to agree that much of Christendom seems to have missed the teachings of Jesus on the response to the hatred, fear, and violence of it.

Jesus begins his teaching ministry in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 and Luke 6) calling for a way of living that transcends hatred and claims life anew. The first century Church would live this overcoming evil with good by seeing what is evil and bringing the light of truth and reconciliation to it (Romans 12:1-21). Taking human life is outside of the will of God for humans and has been judged critically from the beginning when “the LORD said to Cain, ’Where is your brother Abel?’”(Genesis 4:9) and when with the flood God spoke a break in the continual violence of humanity (Genesis 6:5-14).

The foreign policy Jesus taught and practiced calls for believers to something very different than an eye for an eye blood thirst. When he said, forgive that you may be forgiven; he was not writing bumper stickers or starting an advertising campaign. He was teaching his followers to live in the real world where violence, hatred, and fear is real; invaders conquer; leaders are driven by a capricious public; and friends betray.

But he lived for those who loved him, those that feared him, those that hated him, those that wanted to ignore him, those who killed him, and for you and me the redemption of truth and forgiveness that gives new life, now and in the times to come.

The events of September 11, 2001 and its many responses were a long time in the making as fear and hatred birthed the hideous rage: 100’s of thousands dead, many more mutilated and maimed, millions displaced, truth and integrity lost; just to begin the measure.

So what do we do with where we are here 10 years later? God forgive us for taking part in the carnage, coercion, and craving of our day. We are Cain, look what we have done to another. God, forgive us. And yes we must forgive those who have sinned against us. God, help me to forgive, that I may fully live for you.

Dan Rusmisel
Pastor of Community Mennonite Fellowship

Commentary . . .

Obama’s New Stimulus Czar

By Daniel Hanson

Obama’s selection of Alan Krueger to head the Council of Economic Advisers might be an upgrade from Austan Goolsbee, but not by much. Obama’s new economic adviser lacks the foresight to craft an economic agenda to actually put Americans back to work, and his selection demonstrates the Obama administration’s stubborn refusal to part ways with a failed ideology.

Krueger, a well-respected Princeton professor, is top-notch in many respects; as a researcher, his work on statistical fallacies related to education, terrorism, and the structure of labor markets has helped expose many problems in public policies. Yet, while his work in these areas makes him good at analyzing economic data, it does not necessarily make him good at devising the right kind of economic policy.

Insanity entails doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results, which is precisely what President Obama seems to be doing with his selection. Krueger’s resume includes advocating a value-added consumption (VAT) tax in addition to our dysfunctional income tax, directing economic policy at the Treasury from 2009-10, and creating the Small Business Lending Fund, a program modeled on the low-cost mortgage lending that produced the housing bubble. For an administration that claims to be searching for new policy options, bringing in Krueger seems to broadcast a reluctance to change.

The president assumes that bringing a labor economist on board will help rejuvenate a dying jobs agenda, but Krueger’s record is anything but pro-job creation. Krueger is an ardent advocate of a stricter regulatory environment to curb carbon emissions, posing a massive threat to the energy industry, one of the few industries currently booming in the United States. As a member of President Clinton’s Labor Department, Krueger, using his case study of the fast food industry as evidence, famously predicted that raising the minimum wage would create more jobs for low-skilled workers. Yet, African-American male youths, facing 40 percent unemployment today because their labor has been priced out of the market, know all too painfully the economic damage inflicted by such wage controls.

The reality facing the Obama administration is that its Keynesian tools have failed, and the economic advisers that continue to prescribe more intervention to bolster markets refuse to acknowledge their impotence. Krueger is the master of short-term Keynesian stimulus, structuring both the “Cash for Clunkers” program and two homebuyer tax-credit programs. Such programs provided a minor short-term boost for the economy, but once the delirium of the cheap-cash binge wore off, the hangover sapped away any minor gains that were to be had.

By appointing another Keynesian apologist to direct his economic policy, President Obama is confirming his intention to steamroll the efforts of his own deficit-reduction commission to spur economic activity. Last December, after eight months of deliberation, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform—established by President Obama—delivered a sterling plan to create a sustainable future for U.S. fiscal policy. The commission’s commonsense approach advocated lower marginal tax rates financed through the closure of arbitrary tax loopholes, regulatory reductions to drive innovation, entitlement restructuring to fix Social Security and Medicare, and spending cutbacks through the elimination of wasteful and redundant programs. Most importantly, its recommendations would roll-back federal spending to about 19 percent of GDP, roughly consistent with historical post-war levels.

Both parties have given lip service to the commission’s recommendations, but the White House has thus far ignored the recommendations carte blanche, choosing instead to endorse the failed policies of its first two years in office. The ghost of Keynes is looming large in a White House that stubbornly refuses to listen to American innovators and entrepreneurs, who have consistently complained of the hostile economic environment born from Washington’s failed stimulus and regulatory policies.

Perhaps Krueger will buck the trend of his career by offering truly refreshing, commonsense solutions to President Obama. He is a good statistician, and the numbers do not lie. The economy has been crushed under a burden of unfair taxation, ballooning deficits, and exploding regulation. Unemployment remains persistently high despite the deluge of policies explicitly targeted at job creation. Maybe Krueger will look at the numbers and ignite a renaissance in free markets within the White House.

Given Krueger’s historical record, the Obama administration is not banking on it. He will be expected to put lipstick on a pig as he dresses up the numbers to make President Obama’s Keynesian agenda look healthy for an anemic economy. But maybe—just maybe—Krueger’s love of numbers will enable reality to trump ideology.

— Daniel Hanson is a researcher on issues of economics and public finance, focusing particularly on monetary policy and state wealth management. He is also a 2011 graduate of Grove City College and a former student research fellow with The Center for Vision & Values.