What Are The Chances For Real Change In Illinois?

It has been noted that, despite the reputation of Illinois for political corruption, this is the state’s first gubernatorial impeachment.

It should also be noted that while many Illinois public officials, including several governors, have been tried and convicted for criminal offenses, no major public corruption case has ever been brought by an Illinois prosecutor. They have all been federal, investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Like this one.

The Illinois General Assembly has done its duty by removing Rod Blagojevich, but it needs to do much more. Everyone involved in Illinois government must concede what they all know. Corruption here is routine and Governor Blagojevich’s offense was one of scale, not of type.

Even in corrupt systems, there are sometimes limits. The guys behind the guys set those limits. Exceed them and you threaten the entire, corrupt edifice. Therefore, any person who goes off the reservation like Blagojevich did must be removed. It always goes down the same way. Federal authorities mysteriously receive enough evidence to begin an investigation. In time, they receive enough evidence to convict the targeted individual, and perhaps some co-conspirators, but never those at the center of the web.

Look at the Michael Segal, Near North Insurance case (2002-2004). One day he was favored, friend to the great and near great, then he was a goat. What changed? Did the feds just happen to discover his crimes or had he outlived his usefulness? Who made that decision?

It is likely that the prosecutions of Tony Rezko, Stuart Levine and Ali Ata were probably meant to send a message to Blagojevich, to get with the program or he would be next. He didn't and he was.

What does it say that not one of these guys has sung? Not one has told the tale and really laid out how it all works and who calls the shots. Once convicted, they quietly do their time. Levine sang, of course, which netted Rezko and others, but he has probably told all he knows. Segal, Ryan, and Sorich (Mayor Daley's patronage guy) have all been mum. Not one of them has told the whole story. Why is that?

It is hard to discuss the corruption of government in Illinois without reference to Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass. He calls it "the combine." Its members consist of corrupt political leaders, both public office-holders and private citizens, Democrats and Republicans. The third leg is organized crime.

Because they are all part of a criminal enterprise, they value secrecy and eschew publicity. Anyone who calls too much attention to themselves has to be removed. Periodic demonstrations of this fact, including evidence that even a governor is not immune, serve their purpose. In itself, the removal, conviction and imprisonment of Rod Blagojevich does nothing to change the system.

Only when crime doesn’t pay will it cease.

David Ellis, Good Writer, Named As Impeachment Special Prosecutor.

Yesterday I wrote about the Illinois House impeachment committee report. Among other things, I said it was well written and wondered who wrote it. Now we know.

Today, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan named David Ellis as the special prosecutor for the Illinois Senate impeachment trial of Governor Blagojevich, which begins January 26. Ellis, Speaker Madigan's legal counsel, was the committee's lead lawyer and primary author of its report.

Ellis also is the author of five novels.

Publisher's Weekly called his debut, Line of Vision (2002), "a wicked courtroom thriller." His next, The Hidden Man, is scheduled for a September, 2009, release.

A Winter Reading Recommendation: The Blagojevich Impeachment Report.

I just finished reading the “Final Report of the Special Investigative Committee,” the Illinois House of Representatives committee that recommended Governor Rod Blogojevich’s impeachment last week.

I recommend it, especially if you are a citizen of Illinois. Yes, it has been in all the papers, but I got a lot out of reading the actual report.

You can find it, in PDF format, here.

Just so you know, the PDF logs in at 78 pages, and the body of the report is about 60 pages. That’s what you need to read. It is written in the form of a legal brief but it is very well written and easy to follow. No special knowledge is required to understand it. Whoever drafted it did a very good job.

It is well-known that the leadership of the House of Representatives has been at odds with the governor for some time. It is easy, following their battles in the media, to assume it is all just the usual political maneuvering: power plays, jockeying for position, trying to influence public opinion. You get a very different picture from the report. Its drafters also took pains, while making liberal use of the U.S. Attorney’s criminal complaint against the governor, to also document abuses of authority and violations of state and federal law, committed by him, that play no part in the U.S. Attorney’s complaint. (There are concerns that the impeachment investigation might compromise the federal criminal investigation.)

Anyone who believes it is just about the governor’s alleged attempt to sell President-Elect Obama’s former senate seat will be disabused of that notion quickly.

Some of these offenses date back to 2002-2003, which is disturbing in itself, as I don’t recall them being raised during the 2006 election campaign, when he won his second term. It should disturb every Illinois citizen that these abuses were all public knowledge, to a greater or lesser extent, and little action was taken to prevent them or stop them, or really raise a red flag about them. While the report is excellent and the House is to be commended for taking the action that it has, it took the U.S. Attorney’s arrest of the governor and issuance of the criminal complaint, with the resulting national publicity, to bring everything to a head and force the legislature to take action.

The first part of the report does a great job of explaining impeachment. The body of the case against Governor Blagojevich begins on page nine. If you feel you have a good handle on the senate seat issue, start reading at page 17. If you just can’t manage the whole thing, cherry pick from the table of contents. Some of the charges that come late in the report are the most interesting, and have been reported the least. I found the tale of the Governor’s Agency Efficiency Initiatives (starting on page 43) especially riveting.

So put a log on the fire, curl up in a comfortable chair, and dig in. Or, perhaps, if you have a family, take turns reading aloud from it around the dinner table. It’s a teaching moment, for sure.

Except for some of the language, sanitized in the report for your protection, it is all G-rated.

Nope, Nothing Suspicious About This.

This is about Illinois government. I promise to keep it brief.

I got a Legislative Update from my State Rep, Greg Harris. It explains the House's proposal to lease the Illinois Lottery and how it differs from the governor's proposal to lease the Illinois Lottery. Here is his list of the key differences:

Among them are the inclusion of strict ethics requirements, anti pay-to-play provisions, requirements for competitive bidding of the lease, caps on transaction fees, dedicated funds to guarantee use of the proceeds of the lease only as intended and not for political purposes, protections against exploitation of poor communities by the lessor, requirements for MBE/WBE/DBE participation, and protections for lottery employees.

Despite, or perhaps because of all those explicit ethics protections, I feel like my pocket is being picked. Oh wait, state-run gambling taxes only gamblers, and I don't gamble, yet I still feel like my pocket is being picked. Why is that?

My Rep Panders Too.

I've given it to my State Senator Heather Steans lately here and elsewhere.

But I shouldn't let Greg Harris off the hook. He's my state representative (D-13th) and he and Senator Steans are close allies. If my pet peeve with her is the Alcopop Law, which he supported, my pet peeve against him is the civil unions bill, HB1826, which she also supports. She bragged about Alcopop in her Legislative Update a few days ago. He brags about HB1826 in the one I received from him today.

Hummm. Direct mail Legislative Updates? Is there an election soon? Sure enough, both Harris and Steans will be on the November ballot. Steans is running to complete the balance of Carol Ronen's term. (I wrote about that sweet piece of business here.) All rep seats are up this year.

So what do I have against civil unions? Nothing, except in Illinois, and apparently some other states, legislators have gotten civil unions passed by expressly permitting heterosexual seniors to use civil unions to scam Social Security. I've written at length about this issue before, so I won't go into a lot about it here. Suffice it to say I think it taints the righteousness of demanding equal spousal privileges for same sex couples.

Finally, I plead with you to pay as much attention to your local elections as you do to the presidential race. The your-vote to effect-on-your-life ratio is much greater for elections that are closer to you, like for your representatives in the state legislature.

Senator Heather Steans, For The Children.

Although she downplayed it in an email to me, writing that "there are far more serious problems we need to tackle," Illinois State Senator Heather Steans (D-7th) continues to boast about her role in "banning promotion of alcoholic energy drinks to children." Since no one was promoting alcoholic energy drinks to children in the first place, I guess she can claim success.

I happen to live in Senator Steans' district.

Of the five legislative accomplishments she chose to tout in her Legislative Update sent to constituents last week, this one ranked second:

This spring, I was chief sponsor of legislation that prohibits the marketing of energy drinks containing alcohol to children and requires improved labeling to assist parents and businesses with identifying these products which are not safe for children.

It came after one headlined "Ending Pay-to-Play Politics" and before "Working to Eliminate Poverty." Senator Steans is nothing if not ambitious.

But her work on the so-called Alcopops Law (235 ILCS 5/6-35) is a non-solution to a non-problem.

This sort of thing drives me crazy because it falsely accuses the good people of the beverage alcohol industry of seeking to harm children, a serious and completely baseless charge, made for the purpose of pandering to parents, including some who want to blame their children's substance abuse problems on someone other than their children and themselves, and who better?

These charges are also an attack on the advertising industry. Since for a long time I worked in the advertising industry on alcohol accounts, I take this personally.

Who in government doesn't blame marketing and marketers? How about the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which investigates such things and has consistently found that the beverage alcohol industry does not market to underage consumers. Instead of falling for neo-prohibitionist propaganda like Senator Steans does, read the FTC's most-recent report here. (Right-click to download the PDF.)

Critics will, of course, dismiss the FTC as in the pocket of Big Alcohol, and Senator Steans knows all about that since she is the scourge of "Pay-to-Play," but in its 86-page report the FTC found little to fault in the performance of alcohol marketers, and while it made some common sense recommendations for improvement, none of them involve anything like the measures of which Senator Steans is so proud.

The Legislative Update gave this additional example of Senator Steans wasting government resources to make it look like she's doing something "for the children." It announced her co-sponsorship of a bill creating the Illinois Commission on Children and Youth.

Illinois achieved statehood on December 3, 1818 and I can't imagine how her children and youth have survived 190 years without this commission.

Nothing New in the Adult Beverage Wars.

Just a follow-up to last week's post's about my state senator and her support of the latest attack on the marketing of adult beverages. The gist of that post was sent to her by way of a reply to her reply. She answered my first inquiry in about 24 hours. This time, it's been a week and no word.

She may not reply and that's okay. The first email was a direct question. The second states my opinion. She isn't really obliged to reply to that. I also have no illusions that I have changed any minds in the Steans organization.

I'll keep you posted if anything further develops.

A Call to Arms.

I always try to pay attention to the neo-prohibitionists.

I need to try harder.

Illinois just passed a new law aimed at alcoholic energy drinks like Sparks and Tilt.

I wrote about some of this on Sunday and again yesterday.

In reading SB2472, I discovered that it basically amends an existing law aimed at what they call "alcopops." Among other things, I am outraged that such a prejudicial colloquial term would find its way into a statute. The industry does not use that term because it does conflate the ideas of "alcoholic beverage" and "soda pop" in a potentially confusing way, and may even make those products more appealing to under-age youth. In other words, by popularizing the term "alcopop," the neo-prohibitionists are doing exactly what they falsely accuse the beverage alcohol industry of doing.

That alone should get your dander up.

I'm not going to go into a lot more about it here. Scroll down to read the older posts. It's also easy enough to research it on your own.

My point here is to urge everyone to add neo-prohibitionist legislation to the list of political things you pay attention to, and react accordingly. I don't expect to ever taste Sparks or Tilt, and I might even argue they're a bad idea, but this affects all of us who enjoy the responsible use of beverage alcohol products.

For a peak into the neo-prohibitionist world, check out GetSerious.Org.

Alcoholic Energy Drinks, Part Two.

I received a prompt answer to my inquiry to Senator Steans. It's a good answer; factual and reasonable, at least as far as it goes. What I wrote to her is here. This is her answer:

Thanks for your e-mail. The products in question are named Tilt, Sparks, BudExtra, and LiquidCharge and are manufactured by Anheuser-Busch and Miller Brewing Co. These beverages are over 6% alcohol. My staff members have found Tilt and Sparks in grocery stores in the district. While they are located in the alcohol aisle, the products look so much like normal energy drinks that when my 24 year old intern purchased one in a local store, along with non-alcoholic drinks, he wasn’t carded.

All over the country, police officers and parents have complained that these beverages look so much like energy drinks that it is difficult to tell them apart. Here are links to a few news articles about alcopop energy drinks, reporting on this labeling issue:

(She provided one, here.)

This new legislation in Illinois changes the labeling requirements so that consumers can clearly tell that this product is alcohol. The labels on beverages in Illinois have already changed. Pictures of the previous product labels are available here. We took these pictures after purchasing the beverages locally.

These products are being marketed towards young people. Attorney generals from 30 states have written a letter to federal authorities expressing concerns over the marketing of these beverages. For example, you can see the website for Sparks at www.sparks.com. This site is clearly youth-oriented, even cartoonish in nature. Several of these beverages advertise on facebook and myspace, used by millions of teenagers.

While I am pleased to have been able to address this issue, I believe there are far more serious problems we need to tackle, including the need for higher quality education for all kids in the state, reducing the regressive nature of our taxes, changing our culture of corruption, decreasing violence in our communities, and addressing our state’s fiscal crisis. I am working on these issues as well, and appreciate any suggestions regarding other concerns you feel we should be addressing at the State level.

Regards,
Heather Steans

Alcoholic energy drinks have been around for a couple of years. They haven't been particularly successful and their footprint in the marketplace is very small. They are like Smirnoff Ice and its ilk in that they are beer with most of the flavor and color stripped away, to be replaced by sweet citrus fruit flavors. Like Red Bull and other energy drinks they contain caffeine, taurine and ginseng.

As the Toledo Blade article points out, it should concern parents if their kids are consuming large quantities of even the non-alcoholic energy drinks.

I'm pretty much with Senator Steans through her third paragraph. We part company at the part about them being marketed to kids. Yes, the products are being marketed to young adults, but the web site she cited has an age requirement like all alcoholic beverage sites, and standard alcohol warnings, and the "cartoonish" claim, dubious even if true, isn't.

I don't know if I would go so far as to call these products irresponsible, but they may well be a bad idea for their makers. I haven't had one and don't know the actual effect but alcohol is a depressant and the other active ingredients are stimulants so, on paper at least, the effect should be ... nothing. They should cancel each other out, though it probably doesn't work that way. I know plenty of people who drink vodka and Red Bull or Jaegermeister and Red Bull. It just seems like a bad idea, no matter who is doing it.

The fact that some retail clerks are unfamiliar with these products, may not realize they're alcohol, and may not card purchasers is a problem. It's a problem for retailers because that's a very easy way to lose your license. It's also a problem for producers, image-wise. As someone who would like to see the whole beverage alcohol industry be less harassed, these products are not helpful.

The pictures she pointed to, of the old and new packaging, don't show much. Ironically, because these are marketed as malt beverages, not beer, they are able to show their alcohol content on the label. In most states, beers are prohibited from putting their alcohol content on the label, which was supposed to prevent brewers from competing to offer the highest alcohol content products. That worked well. Senator Steans might want to look into changing Illinois law to require all beverage alcohol labels to clearly state the product's alcohol content.

The last paragraph of Senator Steans' reply is also somewhat disingenuous, in that it was she who listed that legislation first among her personal legislative accomplishments in her legislative update.

But it's the advertising-to-children claim that always gets my goat. As with the character dubbed "Joe Camel," ads are deemed to be directed at children solely because they are illustrated. Illustrations, especially those that can be characterized as cartoons, appeal to children, ergo Joe Camel was being used to advertise cigarettes to children. It became an article of faith among anti-smoking activists, then came to be treated as a statement of fact. There was never one iota of evidence presented that Joe Camel was intended to influence children or ever used in such a way as to reach children. The charge was based solely on the conclusion that Joe Camel must be targeted at children because he is a cartoon character.

Likewise, "alcopop" is a term of derision coined by anti-alcohol activists (aka neo-prohbitionists). That term has never been used by the producers. The non-energy versions of these products have been around for many years – the Coors product Zima was the prototype.

Like their energy counterparts, those products are deemed by their critics to be directed at children solely because they taste good, and taste similar to soda pop. The fact that most of these products bear the names of well-known distilled spirits brands is further evidence that they are not trying to pretend they are anything other than alcoholic beverages intended for legal age adults. This is not true of the alcoholic energy drinks, but it doesn't seem to matter. The same critics are making all of the same claims.

Most beverage alcohol advertising is directed at young adults, as is most advertising for automobiles, music, electronics, clothing, health and beauty aids, and a wide range of other consumer products. Young adults are attractive to advertisers because they are still forming brand preferences. Also fundamental is that there is no way to create advertising that will appeal to persons of legal age but won't appeal to anyone younger than legal age. There is not some kind of switch that is thrown at age 18 or 21. Kids, especially older kids, like many of the same things young adults like. It is not possible to effectively advertise to persons at the low end of the legal age scale without some of that advertising reaching individuals at the high end of non-legal age.

This is why claims that certain products or ads are nefariously directed at children are, at best, an unfounded personal opinion and, at worst, a deliberate falsehood.

There is one objective way to determine if advertising is directed at children, and that is by examining the medium in which it is run and determining who views or hears that medium. The standard followed by the beverage alcohol industry is that advertising for those products is placed only in magazines, on television shows, on radio shows, or in other media, where at least 70 percent of the audience is expected to be adults. The Federal Trade Commission has consistently found that the beverage alcohol industry adheres to those guidelines and, therefore, does not market to underage consumers.

I Read Their Legislative Reports So You Don't Have To.

My State Senator, Heather Steans, sent me a legislative update yesterday. Here's the legislation of which she is most proud:

Better regulating energy drinks that contain alcohol (SB2472). I was the lead sponsor of this bill that requires energy drinks that contain alcohol to have better labeling and prohibits them from being marketed to youth. Research shows that energy drinks are consumed primarily by youth. As a mother of 3 kids, I was very concerned about the easy access underage kids had to the alcoholic version of these beverages.

So I sent Senator Steans the following constituent inquiry:

Dear Senator Steans:

As the lead sponsor of a bill that requires energy drinks that contain alcohol to have better labeling, and prohibits them from being marketed to youth, who you allege have “easy access” to said beverages, could you please give me the names and makers of the products that concern you and point me in the direction of your evidence that these products are being marketed to youth, as well as your evidence that “underage kids” have “easy access” to these products. In particular, I would appreciate knowing what specific evidence convinced you that this is a serious problem within the 7th District.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

I'll let you know what she says.

We've been down this road before. I'll cut to the chase for you. This is a phony, non-solution to a phony non-problem, the kind of stunt legislation legislators from this district are famous for.

The Difference Between Right and Legal.

One of the first things you learn in law school is the difference between law and morality.

I’ll pause for a moment as you fill in your own punch-line.

The simple point is, things aren’t necessarily right because they’re legal and they’re not necessarily wrong because they’re illegal. The second of those two statement is the more complicated one, and doesn’t really concern us today. We’ll stick to the first concept.

Just because something is legal, that doesn’t make it right.

This comes up in part because of my recent comments about the Social Security scam that is being used to promote domestic partner/civil union legislation in Illinois. A similar arrangement is already law in California. The argument has been made, and acknowledged by me, that if the practice is legal, as it apparently is, then there should be no stigma attached to people taking advantage of it.

Maybe, but that doesn’t make it right.

If this concept still seems a bit hazy, here are some other illustrations, all helpfully provided by that same cast of characters.

One of the advocates for the civil unions scheme is my State Senator, Heather Steans. Ms. Steans got her job through some shenanigans involving the carefully-timed resignation of her predecessor, Carol Ronen. Though dubious ethically, it was all legal.

In the Senate, Ronen was Governor Rod Blagojevich's floor leader. Earlier this year, he hired her as a $120,000-a-year senior advisor. She resigned eight weeks later, ostensibly to volunteer in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, although that organization has yet to acknowledge her presence.

In doing all this, Ronen “earned” a state pension whose amount is based on her final salary, so her yearly pension (Ronen is 63-years-old) will be $102,000. That is $38,000 more than she would have gotten as a retired senator. Her old salary as a senator was $75,000 a year. How many hard-working Americans get to retire on a pension that is higher than their salary?

In the military, it is customary for lifers to get one last promotion just before they retire, so their pension will be figured at the higher pay grade. The difference is that everyone there is treated the same. Everyone gets the extra bump before they retire. What Ronen got was a special reward for a loyal insider, available to only a select few. That's the sin of the thing.

Governor Blagojevich, who because he says nothing with a straight face can effectively say anything with one, claims he didn’t know about Ronen's scam (there’s that word again) until he read about it in the newspapers.

Pension scammers like Ronen are entitled to say they haven’t done anything illegal, but I contend they can’t say they haven’t done anything wrong. Here is how one state legislator characterized this pension enhancement practice: "It's an outrage. It's not the way people expect government to run. It's not the way government should run." Who said that? Senator Carol Ronen, in 2003, when the outgoing Republican administration was pulling the same stunt. She predicted that the incoming Blagojevich administration would set a higher standard.

Is the practice actually legal? Quite possibly not, technically, but it is effectively legal since there is no way to prove the conspiracy to defraud that would be necessary to call it illegal. That it is wrong should be clear to anyone with even a passably-functioning moral compass, but those are pretty rare in Springfield.

Illinois Legislator Promotes Civil Unions as Social Security Scam.

Once again, my representatives to the state legislature are not making me proud.

Greg Harris (D-13th District) is promoting civil union legislation with a unique argument. He is touting it as a way for heterosexual senior citizens to get certain benefits and privileges without jeopardizing their spousal Social Security benefits as they would by remarrying. He isn't calling it a Social Security scam, of course. Here is how he positions it:

While a lot of attention has been focused on how civil unions would benefit same-sex couples, little attention has been given to the largest group of potential beneficiaries of civil unions in Illinois: senior citizens. This week, I along with Senator David Koehler, Senator Heather Steans and a group of seniors held a press conference to highlight these benefits. The fact is that many seniors who are widows or widowers stand to lose their pension or social security benefits if they remarry. However, without legal recognition of their relationship, such as a marriage or civil union, these seniors can be denied the right to visit partners in the hospital, participate in healthcare decision making, and disposition of a deceased loved one’s remains.

(The underlining is mine. The non-parallel dependent clauses are all his.)

As you may recall, Harris's ally Senator Heather Steans is my state senator, and I've had some past complaints about her and Rep. Harris. This story is useful because it illustrates how their political minds are wired.

In fairness to Harris and Steans, this district has a high concentration of senior citizens and pandering to seniors seems to be key to political success here. The current U.S. Representative, Jan Schakowsky, built her political career as a senior citizens advocate.

The late columnist Mike Royko proposed that the Latin phrase "Ubi Est Mea" ("where's mine?") should be the Illinois state motto. Many Illinois seniors are way too comfortable with that particular ethos of Illinois politics.

Unfortunately, the benefits to seniors in this proposal are illusory.

Rep. Harris is the only openly-gay member of the Illinois General Assembly and if he does not support same-sex marriage, I'm sure the vast majority of his gay constituents do. I support same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage you can support on principle. Supporting civil unions always involves situational political considerations, since they are to marriage law normalization what medical marijuana is to drug law normalization.

One of the arguments for same-sex marriage and, by extension, civil unions is that life partners without legal status cannot access spousal benefits in Social Security and pensions. The simple argument in favor of civil unions in lieu of marriage has always been that they allow the redress of certain clear injustices without getting into the emotionally-loaded same-sex marriage argument.

Unfortunately, as civil unions have become more common, this use of them has been undercut in significant ways, probably most notably in 1996 by the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which, by the way, was signed by President Bill Clinton.

DOMA defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman, and explicitly denies to same-sex couples marriage-based federal benefits. These include Social Security benefits, veterans' benefits, spousal benefits under qualified retirement plans, the unlimited estate and gift tax marital deduction, the ability to file income taxes as a married couple, and the ability to make split gifts as a married couple.

While DOMA makes civil unions useless for claiming federal benefits and privileges, they can still provide a number of benefits under state law, including the ability to receive state benefits, and the right to be involved in health care matters that normally are restricted to family.

HB1826 and SB2436 are the two pieces of civil union legislation pending in Illinois. They are unique in that they would provide for civil unions for both same-sex and opposite-sex couples. In all states that currently recognize civil unions, they are an option for same-sex couples only. The only rationale I have heard for allowing opposite sex couples in Illinois to opt for civil unions instead of marriage is the Social Security scam proposed by Rep. Harris.

The scam is also being promoted at CivilUnionsIllinois.org

If, in fact, Illinois does recognize civil unions between opposite-sex couples, how long do you think it will take for Social Security and every other affected entity to plug that loophole? DOMA defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman. Would it not then be reasonable to argue that DOMA effectively also defines marriage as any legally-recognized union between a man and a woman, regardless of its name?

Barack Obama, who Steans and Harris support for president, is on record as against same-sex marriage but for civil unions for same-sex couples. He also has said he supports allowing the states to legalize same-sex marriage if they want to, and to that end he opposed DOMA. (Symbolically, as he wasn't in a position to vote on it.) One can certainly imagine DOMA being repealed or substantially revised early in an Obama presidency especially if, as expected, Democrats control both houses of Congress. Assuming anyone falls for this silly proposition in the first place, how do you think heterosexual seniors who supported civil unions on this basis will feel when their little scam blows up on them?

Government and politics as practiced by Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his legislative supporters gets more surreal by the day.

See Heather Carry Water For The Machine.

For my fellow politically-frustrated Illinoisans, spend a moment with this editorial from today's Chicago Tribune.

The hapless Senator Steans is my State Senator. Last year, the incumbent senator from the 7th District announced that she would not stand for reelection because she was joining the Blagojevich administration. She also announced that, after the primary, she would resign her office so that the winner of the Democratic primary could be appointed to fill her unexpired term. The announcement was unexpected and carefully timed to leave a minimal amount of time for potential successors to decide to run and secure a ballot position. Heather Steans just happened to be ready. One opponent, who helped expose the charade, managed to scramble and get on the ballot too.

In the campaign, Steans called herself an "independent Democrat," but she has shown herself to be machine through-and-through, her sad water-carrying today being only the most vivid example.

For more background about what passes for democracy in Illinois, go here.

The point of the Tribune's editorial was that we residents of Illinois should contact our senators and let them know where we stand; on the recall amendment as well as the income tax amendment. I say recall-recall-recall, and let's not give the guy any more tax money in the meantime. (Illinois has a flat rate income tax. The amendment would double the rate for persons with incomes over $250,000/year.)

So I wrote to my State Senator. Here's what I wrote:

Dear Senator Steans,

I just read the Tribune editorial from today. Welcome to life as a machine politician.

I am one of your constituents. I voted for your opponent. I didn’t know anything about you, but didn’t like the way you got your office. From your campaign materials, you seemed like a nice person. It’s a familiar story. You want to get involved in the political process in a serious way and make a difference, but in Chicago there is only one way in. If you’re on the outside you can’t do anything. On the inside you might be able to do something. So you take the deal.

Today you got a good dose of why it’s a lousy bargain, even if there isn’t any better one available.

But maybe you liked the Tribune’s editorial. It said your seat is safe for as long as you want it, but you know that’s not true. You know it’s safe only as long as you’re on the team. Just see what happens if you start to think and speak and vote for yourself, instead of according to party discipline.

It’s hard to hate the machine. We like the bread and circuses. But at the end of the day it’s just not democracy.

So for the record, please vote for placing the recall amendment on the fall ballot. I also oppose changing the income tax under the present circumstances.

From Bad To Worse.

Leave it Governor Clueless to compound the tragic shooting that occurred two weeks ago today on the campus of Northern Illinois University (NIU).

As you probably heard, a former NIU graduate student shot and killed five students and himself in a lecture hall, wounding many others, for reasons still unknown. Classes resumed at NIU earlier this week.

Yesterday, Governor Clueless (aka Blagojevich), who has no lack of other problems, announced a plan to demolish Cole Hall, where the killings took place, and replace it with a new classroom building and memorial, to the tune of $40 million. The money will come from an emergency appropriation he is proposing to the legislature. Cole Hall was not damaged in the assault, beyond some broken glass, nor was it scheduled to be replaced anytime soon. No, this is all about...here, I'll let NIU president John Peters explain it, as reported in today's Chicago Tribune.

"I talked to a lot of people, and very early on I made the decision that we had to raze that, we had to demolish that building and replace it with something fitting, something fitting our needs and as a memorial," Peters said. He said it was necessary to "consecrate" the site.

That's the going rate for consecration these days? $40 million?

Thankfully, the legislature is not falling all over itself to comply. Some lawmakers are even making sense.

Senator Christine Radogno (R-Lemont), who coordinates budget matters for senate Republicans, suggested slowing down to "get a little distance from the tragedy."

"We need to make good public policy, and making decisions based solely on emotions is not going to create good public policy or good use of tax dollars," she said.

Amen to that.

President Peters can perhaps be excused because (A) Governor Clueless is his boss and (B) his campus will get a new, unbudgeted $40 million building.

Cole Hall was built in 1968. It is a centerpiece of the campus, consisting of two 500-seat lecture halls. Anticipating suggestions that it merely be remodeled, the Trib notes that it "likely cannot be used for other purposes." No, but it can be used for all the purposes for which it was used before February 14, and why shouldn't it be?

On February 2, five women were shot and killed in a Lane Bryant store in a shopping center in Tinley Park, another town in the Chicago area. That shooting was every bit as senseless and spectacular as the one at NIU a few days later. Nobody, yet, is talking about tearing that down and replacing it with a new, bigger and better Lane Bryant store. They probably would if they could get tax dollars to pay for it.

I certainly don't mean to diminish either tragedy, or any other of the thousands of tragic and senseless deaths that occur around the world every day. If the standard becomes that we have to spend $40 million every time there is a senseless killing, we're going to need a lot more money.

And please, fellow Illinois taxpayers, note that "we" and think about what other pressing priorities $40 million could address in our state.

Like just about everything that comes out of Rod Blagojevich's mouth, this is a bad idea. It sets a terrible precedent and is a grotesque grandstand play by a clueless governor who will do anything to distract attention from his administration's disastrous performance.

Credit Where Credit Is Due.

I received an email this morning in response to my inquiry yesterday about the legislator lookup feature on the Illinois General Assembly web site.

It was from an Election Specialist at the Illinois State Board of Elections. Here is part of what it said:

"I have contacted the Chicago Board of Elections, and they emailed me a map showing that THEY have you coded correctly in the 7th Senatorial District, and the 13th Representative District. I have forwarded this information to our IT Department in order to get our District Lookup corrected."

Bravo. My faith in Springfield is restored.

Nobody Knows Nothing.

About three weeks ago, I thought I had discovered that the person I believed was my state representative was not, in fact, my state representative. Then I found out my discovery was wrong. He is my representative after all.

The bad information was provided by the Illinois General Assembly (IGA) itself, specifically the "legislator lookup" feature of their web site.

You've seen this sort of thing. You enter your address--your zip+four is sufficient--and it tells you who your elected officials are and what districts they represent. I assumed everybody who offers this sort of service (the U.S. Congress web site has one too, and so do a lot of political advocacy groups) is using the same database, compiled from Boards of Elections around the country. Apparently, where a given address falls in the myriad of different, overlapping jurisdictions is public information, available to anyone. So it makes sense that there would be one database for this and everyone would use it.

That is, after all, how office-seekers know who to send their fliers to, not to mention also capturing your phone number for the robo-dialer. (Government office-seekers are exempt from the Do-Not-Call list.) Obviously, they say "give me all of the voters in such-and-such a district." All of the mailings I got were addressed to "Charles Cowdery or Current Resident." The address is the thing.

So how did the IGA get it wrong? And how do I know they got it wrong?

The first question I can't answer, although I have told them and asked for an explanation. The second question I can answer. I voted on Tuesday and the information on my ballot was different from what the IGA told me. Let it be said that I know I'm on the border of a couple of districts, but that shouldn't matter since it's based on the exact address. Fearing that maybe it was something with the zip+four I tried again with the full address. Same wrong result.

"Is there a higher authority?" I asked myself. For me, the source of the information is the Chicago Board of Elections, so I tried their web site. Sure enough, their information was different, and consistent with what my actual ballot showed me on Tuesday.

My best guess is that whoever is running the service for the IGA is working from an out-of-date database, which seems crazy but it wouldn't be even close to the most incompetent thing the IGA has done.

Lying for a Worthy Cause.

Every time this comes up, I get worked up about it all over again. Today I received a constituent newsletter from my State Representative, Mr. Greg Harris. One of the things he is bragging about is legislation he sponsored "to ban the promotion, marketing and advertising of alcoholic beverages to children."

To me, that phrase is like waving a red cloth in front of a bull. So, of course, I sent Rep. Harris a stern letter of complaint, as follows:

Dear Representative Harris:

Although alcohol abuse is a serious social problem, and preventing children from obtaining and consuming alcohol is a worthy cause, I am disappointed to see that you support a phony solution. I know Senate Bill 1625 is now law, but I wanted to let you know my opinions on this matter anyway, as I expressed them to Senator Ronen when this legislation was introduced back in January.

It always bothers me when well-meaning people lie in support of a genuinely worthy cause, especially when kids are involved, but that is what the Illinois Alcoholism and Drug Dependence Association (IADDA), and now The State of Illinois, has done with this legislation to supposedly “ban(s) the promotion, marketing and advertising of alcoholic beverages to children.”

Lying to kids, even when it is for their own good, almost never works out the way we want it to. Let there be no doubt that I consider keeping kids away from psychoactive drugs of all kinds, including cigarettes and alcohol, to be desirable. But teaching kids to tell the truth is worthwhile too and we do kids no favors by lying to them. When they find out that we have lied to them about something like this (and they always find out), why should they believe us when we tell them about all the real harm the misuse of psychoactive substances can cause?

When this legislation was introduced, IADDA spokesperson Allen Sandusky accused beverage makers of targeting youth media with ads for so-called "alcopops" such as Bacardi Silver, Smirnoff Ice and Mike's Hard Lemonade.

"This is just like Joe Camel cigarettes that were advertised to kids years ago," said Sandusky. Senator Ronen made almost the identical statement at her subsequent press conference announcing the introduction of SB 1625.

They are the same, in that anti-tobacco crusaders lied about Joe Camel and now anti-alcohol crusaders are lying about “alcopops.”

The truth is as follows.

Advertising that used the character dubbed "Joe Camel" was deemed to be directed at children solely because the character was illustrated. Illustrations, especially those that can be characterized as cartoons, appeal to children, ergo Joe Camel was being used to advertise cigarettes to children. It became an article of faith among anti-smoking crusaders, then came to be treated as a statement of fact. There was never one iota of evidence presented that Joe Camel was intended to influence children or ever used in such a way as to reach children. The charge was based solely on the assumption that Joe Camel must be targeted at children because he is a cartoon character.

Likewise, "alcopop" is a term of derision coined by anti-alcohol crusaders. It is meant to describe flavored malt beverages such as the brands mentioned. These products start out as beer but are processed in a way that removes the characteristic flavor and color of beer, which is then replaced by other flavorings and sweeteners. The flavoring is usually some kind of citrus fruit, such as lemon, lime or orange. Consequently, they taste like a soft drink (e.g., 7Up) but contain alcohol, about the same amount as beer. These products have been around for many years – the Coors product Zima was the prototype. They have become more prominent recently, but have not been the success many in the beverage industry expected.

These products are deemed by their critics to be directed at children solely because they taste good, and taste similar to soda pop. However, these products also appeal to a great many legal age drinkers who want to consume a beverage alcohol product but don’t like the characteristic taste of beer. Functionally, these products are little different from a mixed drink that combines a neutral spirit, such as vodka or white rum, with a soft drink such as 7Up. The fact that most of these products bear the names of well-known distilled spirits brands is further evidence that they are not trying to pretend they are anything other than alcoholic beverages intended for legal age adults.

The beverage industry has never called them “pop” or used any terminology that would lead anyone to compare these products to soft drinks. The anti-alcohol crusaders have done all of that.

Two additional facts of relevance. First, most beverage alcohol advertising is directed at young adults, as is most advertising for automobiles, music, electronics, clothing, health and beauty aids, and a wide range of other consumer products. Young adults are attractive to advertisers because they are still forming their brand preferences. This is Marketing 101. Also fundamental is that there is no way to create advertising that will appeal to persons of legal age but won't appeal to anyone younger than legal age. There is not some kind of switch that is thrown at age 18 or 21. Kids, especially older kids, like many of the same things young adults like. It is not possible to effectively advertise to persons at the low end of the legal age scale without some of that advertising reaching individuals at the high end of non-legal age.

All of this is common sense that anyone short of a blinkered fanatic should be able to accept. It is why most claims that certain products or ads are nefariously "directed at children" are, at best, an unfounded personal opinion and, at worst, a deliberate falsehood.

The second fact is this. There is one objective way to determine if advertising is "directed at children," and that is by examining the medium in which it is run and determining who views or hears that medium. The standard followed by the beverage alcohol industry (similar to that followed by the tobacco industry before cigarette advertising was effectively banned) is that advertising for those products is placed only in magazines, on television shows, or on radio shows where at least 70 percent of the audience is expected to be adults. The Federal Trade Commission has consistently found that the beverage alcohol industry adheres to those guidelines and, therefore, does not market to underage consumers.

I am aware that SB 1625 primarily targets outdoor advertising, not the specific media mentioned above, but it still is fundamentally dishonest and a disservice to the very people it is meant to protect. With a little bit of honest examination, I think you can see that SB 1625 and the noise surrounding it has been simple demagoguery, wholly empty and phony. The law is so vague that it probably is unenforceable and it will not do anything remotely like what you and its other supporters say it will do to “help prevent alcohol abuse.”

I am very disappointed to see my state representative associated with such a sorry piece of work. I continue to expect better.

Sincerely,
Charles K. Cowdery