EXTRA: Governor Rauner damned if he does or even if he doesn’t; Part 2

Gov. Bruce Rauner has gone out of his way to avoid taking a firm stance on health care reform; knowing he’s going to take a hit no matter what side of the issue he comes down on.
 

RAUNER: How can he win?

But this won’t be the only issue where the governor will face a dilemma; in fact, he may well take a bigger body blow from abortion. And this is one where Democratic political operatives are eager to make the governor squirm more than a little bit!

FOR THE STATE Senate on Wednesday gave its approval to a measure the Illinois House of Representatives already has signed off on – a measure related to abortion and its public access.

Specifically, it deals with the fact that back when the Supreme Court of the United States issued its early 1970s ruling that struck down various state statutes that criminalized the termination of a pregnancy, the Illinois Legislature passed a law that included a clause saying that abortions would automatically become an illegal act in this state if the courts were to ever change their stance.

Now I know some legal experts have said the clause is so vaguely worded and convoluted in concept that it is highly unlikely to ever be implemented into state law.

But we’re in the Age of Trump where the conservative ideologues of our society think they’re entitled to push for measures that real people find despicable, and where Trump talks as though he’s inclined to grant them their wishes.

WHICH HAS SOME of the activists who fight for a woman’s legal right to end a pregnancy concerned that something could happen. And that motivated Democrats in the Illinois Legislature this year to push for a measure repealing the clause that supposedly reinstates abortion as a criminal act automatically without further government activity.

It got mixed into a bill that brings up other points – such as removing restrictions on Medicaid and state employee health insurance programs covering abortion. And in fact referring to abortion as just one of several options related to pregnancy-related care for a woman.

The Democratic majority that runs the General Assembly’s two chambers had little problem passing this measure, which now goes to the governor.

And where Rauner has made statements previously indicating that his veto pen is eagerly awaiting the chance to reject this measure.

THIS COMES ABOUT even though Rauner in the past has been a financial contributor to Planned Parenthood and other groups supporting women's issues, and generally has tried to avoid engaging in rhetoric about abortion that would infuriate people.

Rauner wants us to think he’s not an ideologue and that his conservative leanings don’t go farther than wanting to mess with organized labor and the unions that represent state government employees.

But now, Democrats are putting the Republican governor in a spot where he’s either going to have to support them or else risk their wrath come Election Day. Heck, this issue could be the one that infuriates certain voters to turn out and cast ballots against him come next year’s election cycle.

Then again, if he doesn’t take the conservative political stance and reject the issue, he could have many of the Republican interests deciding that his re-election isn’t worth their time or hassle.

IT WILL BE interesting to see just how low-key a manner Rauner handles this issue – hoping that his action somehow goes unnoticed. Perhaps he’ll get a day when there’s so much government activity taking place that this issue will get lost in the shuffle.

The last thing he’s going to want to do is to make a big deal about it. He stands to lose, no matter what.

He also has 60 days from the point in time the bill formally arrives in his office.

Which makes mid-to-late July to be the key point in time to watch the governor – even though I’m sure he’d rather you plan your vacation for that time period or find something else to preoccupy your time.

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It’s a whole nuther world when one ventures east of Indianapolis Boulevard

I’m sure Sunday was a day of glory and gloating in Indianapolis, as Big Ten officials announced that their brand-new end-of-season football championship game will be played in the Hoosier capital city.

In choosing to make Indianapolis a place of sporting significance beyond the Memorial Day auto race, the Big Ten rejected a bid to play those games in Chicago – specifically at Soldier Field.

CONFERENCE OFFICIALS SAID one factor in their decision was that Indianapolis has a domed arena in which to play football, while Soldier Field in December would be downright cold – if not snowing as well.

Now some will argue that real football ought to be played in such conditions. But I’m not going to get hung up on the decision, largely because I think such a game should be played on a college campus. This should be a debate between Champaign, Ill., and Bloomington, Ind. (along with Madison, Wis., and Ann Arbor, Mich., to name a few).

So fans of Big Ten football will get to venture off for a pre-bowl game in Indianapolis. Maybe that city is capable of providing an integrated sporting experience that allows people to ignore their surroundings (rather than all the distractions of Chicago – which are what make it a far more intriguing city to live in).

Once the games are over, we all have to return to the real world. And in that world, I can’t help but wonder what goes through the minds of Indianans when they contemplate the political spat their state is now engaged in with the United States of America. There is a reason I don’t like venturing any further east than Indianapolis Boulevard (about two miles from the aptly-named State Line Road).

THERE WERE A few states this spring that had their conservative ideologue-led Legislatures pass measures meant to take those right-wing ideals and ram them down the throats of the masses.

Wisconsin drew much of the attention in that regard. Yet let’s not ignore our neighbors to the east – some of whose legislators fled to the sanity of Illinois to escape getting caught up in the partisan nonsense.

One of the measures that GOP-led state Legislature passed was their attack on Planned Parenthood. Indiana officials want to cut off the funding the group receives from state government because that group helps women at its health clinics if they are interested in aborting a pregnancy.

Which led to the federal government, in the form of the Department of Health and Human Services, telling Indiana officials last week that they are the ones in violation of the law.

THEY WENT SO far as to threaten to cut off Medicaid money for any services, unless Indiana state officials do something to repeal the bill they approved this spring that Gov. Mitch Daniels signed into law.

Which means we’re now in a staring match. Who will blink first?

If this follows through to conclusion with everybody standing pat, it would mean that all those people who live in Indiana who rely on Medicaid to cover their medical expenses would not get their treatment.

Indiana officials already are trying to spin this situation as one where the federal government will be willing to risk the health and lives of low-income people, and they desperately want to believe the public at-large will see things that way. Yet another reason to vote against Barack Obama come 2012.

NONSENSE. HOGWASH. PURE rubbish.

I think the bulk of people will see this as the state willing to let the health and/or lives of its residents be put at risk so they can make some morally-crass ideological statement about abortion.

The only people who are going to see things through the Hoosier-colored glasses are those whose ideological hang-ups are so intense that they can’t accept the reality that abortion is a legal medical procedure.

The idea that the state should be doing ANYTHING to make it more complicated to obtain an abortion is of questionable morality. It definitely isn’t an issue where they can claim the moral high ground.

THE TRICK IS to see how long the political stalemate will last before the day comes that some sort of emergency legislative session is held in Indiana so as to do the legalistic paperwork that would alter their new law just sufficiently for sense to prevail.

I’m sure the political people there will rant and rage against the federal government imposing some mandate on them. I’m just curious to know if any Hoosier-type speaks honestly enough to let the words “state’s rights” slip off his tongue. That would really make this issue all too similar to the old days when states tried to justify morally repugnant policies solely on the grounds that they had the “right” to do so.

DANIELS: Calling a special session?



Personally, I think such policies are all the more reason to think of it as a pathetic joke every time Daniels goes on WLS-AM and makes some sort of anti-Chicago or anti-Illinois diatribe. There may be a way of viewing Indiana as a place that has a lower-tax rate. But living there means you also have to put up with goofs in charge who will push this ideological tripe.

Enjoy your five years of football games, Indianapolis. If there’s any cosmic justice, Indiana and Purdue universities won't play in any of them.

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Urban versus rural – Who will prevail?

I will be the first to admit that I write from an urban perspective. The little exposure I have received to the more rural parts of this country just seems too isolated from reality for me to ever want to live there.

PHELPS: Chicago owes concealed carry?



Which is why it can seem as such a “shock” to our sensibilities when political people from rural areas try to come up with public policies meant for all of us – they just come across as too radically different to make much sense.

THIS IS TRUE no matter what part of the United States one is in. This isn’t just an attack on those people from the rural parts of Illinois – the ones who always complain that Chicago prevails over their lives because two-thirds of the state’s population lives in the Chicago metro area.

I also comprehend the idea of compromise, and that everybody ought to be getting something. Yet I can’t help but wonder just how far compromise is expected to go before it starts causing negative impacts upon us all.

I started thinking about this again after reading an Associated Press dispatch about the fact that the Illinois House of Representatives is expected to take up the issue of people carrying concealed firearms on their person when they meet on Thursday.

It has been reported that part of the reason the Democratic leadership isn’t just squashing this issue as vehemently as they have in past years is because of a thought process that says urban Illinois residents this year got to see the abolishment of the death penalty and the recognition of “civil unions” for gay couples.

SO WE OWE rural people one of their ideas as law, and they’re choosing “concealed carry.”

In that wire service report, the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Brandon Phelps, D-Harrisburg, is taking the attitude that this idea is owed to rural Illinois, saying, “Agree or not, abolishment of the death penalty – lot of downstaters would disagree with that. Civil unions – lot of downstaters disagree with that. We haven’t got anything. This is one thing we ask.”

But do we really owe rural Illinois the “right” to wear a shoulder holster in public with a loaded pistol? Or letting a person keep the weapon in their purse or gym bag or whatever they happen to be using to carry their belongings?

Admittedly, the bill recommended earlier this week by a rural-motivated Illinois House committee includes exemptions that the gun-rights advocates are upset with – no firearms on college campuses or in government buildings, and businesses would have the right to declare their officers off-limits to such weapons.

BUT I CAN’T help but think that any legislator who decides to vote for this, just because they want to buy into the logic that we “owe” rural Illinois something is being ridiculous. They’re probably the type who, as parents, give a child anything they want just to keep them quiet.

There comes a time to say “No,” particularly when it involves firearms, since only the absolute biggest fool believes that a pistol is something that a person is entitled to. It strikes me as being something similar to an automobile – which just about every public official I have ever encountered agrees is a privilege. There is no “right” to drive!

Sadly enough, this kind of logic isn’t limited to just firearms. Or Illinois. I kind of wish this were just a problem for our state. It would make me feel less concerned if it were just something in the soil of central Illinois that causes local people to think like this? Instead, it’s more widespread.

Take our neighboring state of Indiana, where their state Legislature this spring (their session is complete, while we still have a month to go) approved a bill that says the state has the right to withhold federal funds that it is supposed to distribute to the Planned Parenthood group of women’s clinics.

OF COURSE, TO some people, the very name “Planned Parenthood” means nothing more than “Abortion Clinic!!!!!!!!” That is what is motivating this action.

State officials who supported this measure want to kill off Planned Parenthood in Indiana, even though reports indicate that only four of the group’s 16 clinics in the Hoosier State even offer abortion among their services. But those people who come from isolated communities where a woman has trouble getting an abortion just because the service isn’t readily available now want to make the whole state as isolated as their rural home towns.

DANIELS: Giving the ideologues something



Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels often gets the ideological label of “moderate.” Sure enough, he was influential in keeping that state from giving in to base instincts and trying to follow the lead of Arizona with regards to getting local officials involved in federal immigration enforcement.

But let’s keep in mind that Daniels has indicated he will sign this Planned Parenthood measure into law when it gets to him. Daniels has his own aspirations to run for president, and perhaps he thinks he can get the GOP nomination in 2012 and turn the general election into an “Illinois versus Indiana” campaign.

SO MUCH FOR being moderate. Then again, he doesn't want to get tagged as the "liberal Republican" by people like Sarah Palin!

I’m sure both of these matters will wind up in the courthouse, no matter how they are resolved politically. What a way for this to end.

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EXTRA: Preckwinkle wants women’s vote

Toni Preckwinkle, the Chicago alderman who’d like to run on what’s left of Barack Obama’s coattails for the presidency of Cook County Board, is counting on getting a significant share of the women’s vote if her campaign is to succeed come Feb. 2.

Preckwinkle is the African-American candidate whom some pundits say is the one black person that African-American voters want nothing to do with.

SHE’S A PRODUCT of the same Hyde Park neighborhood that gave us Obama (he used to represent the area at the Statehouse in Springfield, compared to Preckwinkle making the trip downtown to City Hall).

But while the African-American vote, some polls indicate, seems to center around city Treasurer Dorothy Brown and incumbent President Todd Stroger (not everybody thinks he’s a goober), Preckwinkle is the one who ran in second place in a recent Chicago Tribune poll, behind Brown but ahead of Stroger and Metropolitan Water Reclamation District head Terry O’Brien (a.k.a., the white guy).

It was with that in mind that Preckwinkle made public on Monday a list of groups that endorsed her – including Planned Parenthood of Illinois (the first time that group has ever bothered to get involved in a county board campaign).

The group cites the fact that they long supported her as an alderman and that she was a backer of the Bubble Zone Ordinance – the measure that prevents anyone from getting within eight feet of a woman trying to enter a clinic where abortions are offered.

SHE ALSO GOT the support of Democratic organizations in Chicago’s 49th Ward (the far north side), along with Evanston, Northfield and New Trier townships (the far northern suburbs of Cook County), and with Citizen Action/Illiinois – a good government type group.

In short, it looks (http://www.tonipreckwinkle.org/page/22) like the same kind of white people who had no problem voting for Obama for president are the ones most inclined to prefer Preckwinkle for county board president.

Which makes me wonder if we ought to quit paying much attention to O’Brien, who was only being taken seriously on the mistaken grounds that white people would mass around his campaign.

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Anti-abortion activists want to pressure United Way to score political points

It was a few years ago when the city council in Lockport, Ill., was set to give formal approval to a resolution praising the charitable work done by the United Way when one of the aldermen insisted on turning the symbolic gesture into a political stink.

That particular alderman in the Will County city of nearly 24,000 people was heavily influenced by his religion – he was Catholic. He also was determined to use the resolution to make a public statement against the concept of abortion being legal in the United States.

HE ADAMANTLY REFUSED to let his colleagues take a vote on the measure until he was personally given assurances that the United Way chapter that served his hometown did not provide any financial support to women’s health clinics that made abortion of pregnancy available.

In the end, the resolution passed (the chapters in Will County did not provide any financial aid that could be tied directly to abortion-related services) and the alderman in question piped down – having made his point.

What makes me recall this moment from my reporter past (I was writing for a newspaper at the time and I covered the hearing when this happened) is that there’s a good chance we’re going to see similar outbursts all across Illinois in coming months.

The Glen Ellyn-based Illinois Family Institute (somehow, I’m on their e-mail list) distributed a commentary written by a Peoria-based pastor who wants everybody to start cracking down on the United Way chapter in their hometown to make a statement against abortion.

REV. JAMES McDONALD, in his commentary, said his problem with United Way is that local chapters across Illinois make donations to Planned Parenthood – the long-demonized group that operates health clinics (some of which make abortion-related services available) and provides other services meant to help women who are pregnant.

Since United Way chapters provide their financial help to a common Planned Parenthood fund for Illinois, that means indirectly, every United Way chapter is providing aid to the local Planned Parenthood facilities that offer abortions, even if the ones in their local hometowns do not.

Or, as McDonald chooses to see it, financial donations to United Way from rural residents are being used to support the, “large abortion clinics in Aurora, Champaign and Chicago.”

“I encourage you to end your support of any organization that gives monies to the cause of darkness,” McDonald wrote. “Should a Christian support any organization or any candidate who endorses this modern-day holocaust?”

I COULD NITPICK against the attempt to dredge up Third Reich imagery through use of the word “holocaust” by pointing out that in Nazi Germany, the government of Adolf Hitler was vehemently opposed to abortion, and actually considered it to be a capital crime by doctors and (on occasion) the pregnant women themselves.

But giving in to the overly hysterical rhetoric of the anti-abortion right does not accomplish much.

What really disgusts me about this plea couched in religious terms is that it is a blatant attempt by rural activists to impose their view on the issue across the state. If anything, that viewpoint is already too prevalent.

Many health care professionals see the issue of abortion access as being one of it not being easy enough to obtain. Abortion services are not equally available to all of Illinois’ residents.

ANY WOMAN WHO lives outside the Chicago area (with the exception of those living in Champaign, or perhaps Bloomington/Normal or Springfield) is going to have a hard time finding a local clinic where the medical procedure (and that’s exactly what it is) can be obtained under safe conditions.

A woman who desires to end a pregnancy is either going to have to make a lengthy trip to a strange place, or accept the fact that her rights deriving from the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in “Roe vs. Wade” do not apply to her because of where she lives.

Too many of the local officials in rural communities are willing to use their political influence to keep women’s health clinics and other services out of their areas. Perhaps that is their right. But it is silly for them to start thinking they can somehow impact the services made available in those “wicked places” such as Aurora or Champaign.

THEY WANT THE pressure put on United Way chapters to make their abortion-related statement, even though many do not provide any direct aid to women’s clinics. And the idea that ties between various chapters of a common organization is somehow insidious strikes me more as being ridiculous.

If anything, I wonder how much these people would be complaining about Planned Parenthood if their chapters in different cities and towns made no effort to work together. I can already hear the rhetoric lambasting the organization’s fundraising efforts as doing little more than paying for wasteful administrative expenses.

The same thing can be said about the limited cooperation that takes place between United Way chapters across the state. Reducing money spent on bureaucracy does not mean a scary organization is looming over the Land of Lincoln.

I’M HOPING UNITED Way chapters manage to stand firm against the verbal barrage they will be hit with in coming months. Because I have no doubt the rhetoric will become ugly. For what it is worth, Rev. McDonald has copy written that he will make available to anyone who wants to use it to write nasty letters to their local United Way chapter.

I recall the Will County United Way officials from a few years back thought it incredulous that anyone seriously thought they were providing direct assistance to abortion.

I would hope that same attitude prevails today.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Perhaps I need to quit reading my e-mails from the Illinois Family Institute (http://www.illinoisfamily.org/news/contentview.asp?c=33945) so as to avoid reading rubbish such as this commentary.

Access to abortion related medical (http://www.abortionaccess.org/content/view/59/62/) services depend heavily on where one lives.

Mention the name “Planned Parenthood,” and you are destined to provoke a verbal (http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=19751893&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8) brawl.

Planned Parenthood relies on far more than the United Way to raise money to pay (http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB121417762585295459-lMyQjAxMDI4MTI0MzEyNzM3Wj.html) for the services it makes available to women.