Walker “fight” a waste of time

So Scott Walker gets to keep the political post – governor of Wisconsin – to which he was elected in 2010.

WALKER: Still the guv!



The politico who has been blatantly hostile toward organized labor interests, and working people in general, will remain as the state’s chief executive at least through the 2014 election cycle.

AS MUCH AS Walker’s policies and ideological streak offend me, I can’t say that I feel all worked up over his victory Tuesday in the great recall election – an effort that we’re told makes Walker a “first.”

As in, the first governor to successfully keep his post despite an effort to recall him from office.

Somehow, I suspect that Walker is going to take great pride out of that designation and try to make it into something that it is not worthy of. I just got through reading an e-mail from the Heartland Institute, the Libertarian think-tank based in Chicago that offered me a batch of “quotes” from their leadership for my use telling me just how wonderful Walker’s victory was!

Then again, I also thought the whole recall election effort was misguided. I wish those people in Wisconsin who put their efforts into trying to dump Scott from office in mid-term had instead focused their efforts on trying to build a strong coalition behind a single candidate who could have dumped him from office when his term expires.

INSTEAD, THEIR EFFORTS have given him yet another electoral victory – and one that makes him all-the-more battle-toughened. It may make him harder to defeat two years from now.

And that is what is truly harmful about what has happened in Wisconsin.

It makes me thankful I don’t live there.  And that my own home state does not have the recall election option. Because I have no doubt that our political people in Illinois would misuse it beyond recognition if it existed here.

As I have written here before, I don’t care for the concept of recall. It always strikes me as being the tactic of sore losers. It strikes me as being a move bordering on a coup d’etat.

IT SHOULD BE incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to dump a duly elected government official from office. And that is what Walker is – he won that 2010 election cycle.

If a government official truly turns out to be incompetent or venal, a part of me believes the people covered by that respective government entity ought to have to live with the shame of having such an official.

Walker ought to be Wisconsin’s embarrassment – somebody they have to live with for two more years.

Instead, we have a situation in Wisconsin where Walker will feel emboldened. He’s going to try to claim that this is a “victory” for the people, or at least the segment of the people who deserve to be represented by their government.

WHICH IS REALLY what offends me the most about Scott Walker and other political people just like him.

These are the conservative ideologues whom I often rant about – the ones who want to win by slim margins consisting solely of their equally hard-line political backers.

This way, when they get elected, they can look out for just themselves and can totally ignore the needs and desires of the masses of the populace. These are the people who want to think that “compromise” and “negotiation” are dirty words!

Whereas I find the notion of someone who thinks that only they deserve the benefits of government to be the truly obscene concept.

AND IN LOSING this effort to recall Walker from office, the activists who were most eager to do this have given strength and credibility to this man and his “cause.” Which ultimately will hurt us all.

In fact, about the only concept that gives me any sense of justice these days is the hope that come autumn, the Chicago Bears will knock the stuffing out of the Green Bay Packers and make a whole batch of Wisconsin-ites feel bad.

I’d say that the Chicago Cubs would whomp on the Milwaukee Brewers, but I’m realistic enough to know that that has about as much chance of happening as Scott Walker suddenly developing into a responsible politician concerned about all the people of his home state.

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Is Jacobs the lone voice of reason?

Back in the days when I was a reporter-type person covering the Illinois Legislature, one of the few legislators willing to speak his mind on a regular basis was then-state Sen. Denny Jacobs, D-East Moline.

The now-retired legislator from the Quad Cities most definitely considered himself to be “old school.” He wouldn’t have flinched from the label. Most likely, he would have looked down upon anyone who tried to use that label as a pejorative.

I COULD EASILY envision Jacobs (who once told me that 99 percent of what legislators say during sessions of the state Senate and Illinois House is “nonsense that should be disregarded”) being among the few to stand up and vote against the measure considered on Thursday that creates the concept of recall elections whenever a significant number of people get ticked off at the governor.

That is why I was glad to see that when the state Senate voted 56-1 to approve that nonsense bill, the lone legislator to show some sense was Mike Jacobs – Denny’s son. Mike replaced Denny when the elder Jacobs decided to retire from the Legislature in 2005 – following more than two decades representing the Quad Cities and northwestern Illinois in Springfield.

The younger Jacobs, who once was presented with a pair of boxing gloves as a gag by his colleagues after he got into a verbal altercation with then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, said what some of his colleagues agree is true, but were afraid to back up with their vote.

I know some people are going to vehemently disagree (and some may start sending me obscenity-laced anonymous e-mail messages), but Jacobs is correct when he says the concept of recall elections can, “lessen the independence of a governor.”

THERE ARE TIMES when a government official has to be prepared to stand up for what they believe to be truly proper – without having to worry about whether enough people will have a political hissy-fit and start screeching, “recall.”

I also happen to believe that if an official gets himself elected with a majority vote, that majority ought to have to live with their mistake until the next Election Day.

If there really are circumstances taking place that are so abhorrent that an official ought to be removed from office, there is the option of impeachment. For those who will argue that impeachment imposes a high standard that is next to impossible to achieve in most cases, I say that’s a good thing.

It should not be easy to remove a public official from office. When an official takes that oath of office, we ought to have some reasonable assurance that they’re going to finish the term to which they were elected.

RECALL IS OFTEN the tool of the sore losers who can’t stand the fact that their preferred candidate didn’t get a majority, so they become obstructionists (rather than opposition, there is a difference between the two terms).

And the answer is “no.”

I don’t consider it to be a significant compromise that this measure approved on Thursday is limited solely to the recall of Illinois governors.

A bad idea is a bad idea, even if it only affects one political person at a time – rather than all elected officials.

I DO EXPECT this idea to eventually come up, since Gov. Pat Quinn throughout the years has been so eager for the general concept of “recall” that I can easily envision him signing the measure into law, then getting all worked up in coming months trying to get people excited in the November 2010 general election about undoing the results of the past.

Anyone who has read my commentaries published here in the past will not find this viewpoint surprising. I have always thought recall was one of those political concepts that was absurd – something done in places that have much less common sense than Illinois.

Like California.

Do we really want to be copying this costly, complicated measure that threatens the outcome of elections just because a few loudmouths want to scream?

THAT IS WHERE Jacobs was coming from when he became the lone opponent to recall, although the Chicago Tribune reported that a few other senators (including Kwame Raoul of Chicago, who represents Barack Obama’s old neighborhood in the state Senate) expressed the same theoretical opposition and said they were “reluctantly” voting “yes” on the recall.

I can understand where they’re coming from.

I fully expect the same people who would have been willing to lambaste them come Election Day will try to devote a little bit of their conspiracy-theory oriented approach to life to trashing me for writing this commentary – and perhaps many other pieces I have published in the past.

It’s just a shame that we don’t have more political people willing to stand up to the loudmouths of our society who want to shout down their opposition to the point where our society would become as deadly dull as they are when it comes to their ideology.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Will Mike Jacobs become as unpopular in coming weeks as state Rep. Deborah Mell, D-Chicago, who still gets grief from some people for being the lone (http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2009/10/illinois-senate-sends-quinn-measure-asking-voters-if-they-want-power-to-recall-wayward-governors.html) legislator to vote against impeaching Rod Blagojevich (a.k.a., her brother-in-law)?

Vote “no” on recall elections

It may only be a non-binding referendum, no more significant than the ballot question voters in Berwyn will be asked as to whether federal funding for the military effort in Iraq should be limited to, “that which is required to bring all U.S. troops home safely.”

Perhaps I should best ignore the measure about recall elections, and just vote “no” when I go to the polling place on Nov. 4.

BUT THERE IS something about the countywide referendum question that voters in Cook County will be asked to take a stance on that bugs me. Part of it is that I disagree with the premise. But I also am offended by the secretive way in which the measure was placed on the ballot – although a good part of my disgust is with the people who were stupid enough to let this get past them.

At stake is the concept of recall elections, which currently do not exist in Illinois and which the General Assembly in recent years has refused to consider creating.

Voters in Cook County will get to decide on Election Day whether the concept should exist for the offices of Illinois governor and the other state constitutional officers.
The man who is motivating many of the people who want to bring the concept of recall elections to Illinois is guilty here of nothing more than bad taste in clothing. Photograph provided by State of Illinois.

The referendum means nothing. Even if an overwhelming majority of Cook County residents were to vote “yes,” nothing would happen.

IT WOULD REQUIRE action by the General Assembly to approve changes in the state constitution to allow for recall elections. Or, it would take a binding referendum question statewide, which requires such a high level of support from voters that there would be no way to slip the issue onto the ballots across Illinois.

Now I have written before that I oppose the concept of recall elections. I always thought it was one of the few things our political people got right when they did not include such provisions in our state’s constitution.

What bugs me about recall is that, all too often, it turns out to be inspired by people who were supporters of the opposition candidate who lost on Election Day. These people amount to little more than sore losers who use the threat of recall to badger elected officials. It amounts to harassment that gets in the way of anything being accomplished on behalf of the people of the state.

And even if the candidate in question turns out to be a numbskull who now offends the people who once supported him, there is a part of me that thinks the voters who picked him ought to have to live with their mistake for a couple of years.

THAT IS WHAT will teach them to cast a ballot more logically in the future.

For the cases where an elected official engages in some sort of criminal behavior, there already are provisions in existence for impeachment – if removal from office becomes all that important.

For those people who argue that requirements for impeachment are set too high, I say that is a good thing. It ought to be next to impossible to kick a political person out of office in mid-term. That is what makes us a Democracy, rather than a hackneyed republic whose leaders are constantly being deposed in coup d’ tats.

I would be more comfortable if the people who are setting their sights on the concept of recall elections were to focus instead on trying to put together the kind of campaign operation that could defeat their desired dummy in office.

TAKE HIM OUT on a future Election Day. Come up with a better candidate. If you do, I may very well support you with my vote.

But casting a “yes” vote for the referendum just strikes me as siding with the political sore losers, many of whom in this specific instance are motivated by the fact that Rod Blagojevich has managed to get elected to two terms as Illinois governor even though they would have rather had someone else.

I also hate the way this thing got on the ballot.

Normally, to get a referendum question on Election Day ballots across Cook County, it takes about 5,000 valid signatures of support on petitions. Those petitions have to be filed with the Cook County clerk’s office in advance of the specific election. In the case of the upcoming Nov. 4 elections, these petitions had to be filed during the summer months.

AS TO THIS specific referendum, the nominating petitions only contained about 900 signatures. But in one of the quirks of Illinois law, a referendum question goes on the ballot when the relevant petitions are filed, and can only be removed once a legitimate challenge is filed with the county clerk’s office.

In this particular case, nobody bothered to file a challenge – even though the fact that the petitions had less than 20 percent of the minimum number of required signatures of support would have meant that any challenge would automatically have succeeded.

So come Nov. 4, the recall question will be put to Cook County voters because people within the political organizations got careless and were not paying attention to what was being submitted at the county clerk’s office.

Aside from thinking that some lowly political hack deserves to have his paycheck dinged for not doing his job, I am curious to see how much support such a referendum gets.

IF THIS WERE in a downstate Illinois county (particular Sangamon County, the home of the Statehouse Scene in Springfield), I would expect it to pass overwhelmingly. Blagojevich is the subject of much hostility because of his residence in the Second City more than any other issue.

For those of us Chicago-area voters, I do not doubt that some people think our governor is a nitwit.

But the governor also has his share of supporters up here, many of whom look at the people who rant and rage about Blagojevich and see it as evidence that he must be doing something right (usually because they can’t stand the people who are doing the complaining).

And me, I’ll be voting “no” because I don’t care for the idea of such a tiny minority (only 900 people out of a county of just over 5 million) trying to impose such a controversial concept because they can’t wait until 2010 to cast a vote against Blagojevich.

BUT I LIKELY will vote “yes” to the other countywide referendum question, the one that asks whether voters think the federal government ought to fully fund the Department of Veterans Affairs so that “all honorably discharged U.S. veterans” receive quality healthcare services.

It’s the least they deserve.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Lt. Gov. Patrick Quinn, a long-time supporter of the concept of recall elections in Illinois, thinks that a solid show of support for the Cook County referendum (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-governor-recall-ballot-03sep03,0,2487200.story) question this year could influence the way people across the state vote for governor and other statewide offices in the 2010 elections.

Here are the referendum questions that people in various parts of Cook County will be asked (http://www.voterinfonet.com/sub/candidates_all.asp?ref=true) to vote for come the Nov. 4. general elections.

Recall elections in other states have sometimes been used responsibly, but also have been used (http://hnn.us/articles/1660.html) for ridiculous premises as well.

I'll believe it when I see it when...

… Illinois state government approves some plan to overhaul Wrigley Field without involving state tax dollars, and

… the Illinois General Assembly actually manages to put a state constitution amendment on the Nov. 4 ballot that provides for recall elections.

NOW I HAVE written before about the substance of the two issues, and my basic stance has not changed. I think recall elections are for sore losers who want to un-do the results of the majority, and I think the majority should have to live with its Election Day mistakes.

Meanwhile, in today’s day and age, governments are involved in the development of stadiums used by professional sports teams, often with leases that are meant to allow the ball clubs to financially rip off the government.

So to argue against some sort of state involvement in the future renovation of Wrigley Field on the grounds that government should have no role, well, that’s cute, but shut up. Nobody cares.

You might as well be arguing that all the riverboat casinos in Illinois should be shut down because gambling is immoral.

WE HERE IN Illinois had our officials make a decision years ago when they built a new Chicago South Side stadium for the White Sox, then provided some assistance for the Chicago Bears to renovate Soldier Field and for the Chicago Black Hawks and Bulls to get their own West Side arena.

Is this a 1929 panoramic view of the future Chicago Cubs State Park, sponsored by ComEd (or some other garish corporate entity)? Photograph provided by Library of Congress collection.

To claim now that there is something repulsive about the Chicago Cubs “getting some” from the state is absurd. It is going to happen. It is just a matter of what form the aid will take.

That is where I get skeptical.

Former Gov. James R. Thompson, who now chairs the government agency that oversees U.S. Cellular Field for the White Sox, says he has figured out a way that no state or local tax dollars would be put into a state purchase of Wrigley Field, with the state then being responsible for providing the significant reconstruction needed on the 94-year-old building to ensure that it can continue to be a viable sports stadium for several more decades.

THOMPSON WOULDN’T TELL the Chicago Tribune what this magical way of government finance without use of government money actually consists of. Chicago Cubs officials also claim to have not heard anything specific about how this transaction will occur.

I suspect that in the end, the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority will come up with funding for the purchase and renovation in ways that some government observers of a curmudgeonly nature would believe is state and/or local money.

It is going to be a matter of how strictly one wants to define what constitutes tax dollars, similar to how when former President Bill Clinton famously said, “I did not have sex with that woman,” the truth of that statement depends on how one defines “sex” compared to what he did with intern Monica Lewinsky.

The newspaper, in its reports, hinted that the purchase of the ballpark (which would enrich the Tribune Co. owners of the team who want to sell after 28-years-and-counting of running a team that hasn’t won a thing) could come from money raised by selling the naming rights to Wrigley Field.

BASICALLY, NEW TRIBUNE Co. (run by Sam Zell, as compared to the old Tribune Co. geeks who sold out their interest in the “information and entertainment conglomerate”) would be allowed to pocket the money derived from offending Cubs fans by giving the building at Clark and Addison streets some sort of corporate name.

But renovations of the building along the line of what the New York Yankees did with Yankee Stadium in the mid-1970s or what the Bears did to Soldier Field in 2002 would be pricey – as much as $400 million, some officials estimate.

If the Cubs’ personality and potential profitability weren’t so tied into the cutesy image of their building, they would be better off financially going for a new stadium somewhere else. But the mentality of Chicago political people keeps the sports teams at their current locations – the White Sox will always be on 35th Street, while the Bulls and Black Hawks are on Madison Street. And the Bears have become the team of the lakefront.

So the Cubs can’t seriously think of having a stadium built for them somewhere else without upsetting the politicos. But those same politicos really don’t want to pay for the expensive overhaul of the one-time Weeghman Park.

THE BOTTOM LINE is that those two thoughts are contradictory. One of them will have to give. My guess is that it will be the ban on government funds being involved in the project, which wouldn’t bother me so much if only the state were willing to take a hard line and demand a significant rent payment from the Cubs to play in a stadium maintained at state expense, which would boost the Cubs profitability in and of itself.

But political officials enjoy being able to go to sports events and pretend they are big-shots while they sit in the crowd wearing too-tight caps with their business suits. So they won’t take a hard line.

Another thing they won’t do is actually get a constitutional amendment on the upcoming general election ballot for recall elections.

The Illinois Senate is considering a vote to approve something related to a recall when they meet Thursday. If they actually take the vote and give enough support to approve it, the measure would then have to return to the Illinois House of Representatives, which previously voted on its own recall election measure.

THIS IS A case of everybody in the Legislature wanting to pander to the people who think recalls are a “nifty” idea. Each legislator wants to be able to point to some bill that has him or her voting in favor of the idea.

But since the two chambers never actually agreed on the same identical bill (they agreed on two different bills that were virtually identical – not the same thing), they have not voted to approve anything that can be put on the Nov. 4 election ballots.

By law, any potential amendment to the Illinois Constitution must be approved by the Legislature at least six full months before the Election Day for which it is intended. That means Sunday is the deadline if anything is to happen in 2008.

Recall elections have become the equivalent of pay raises for legislators. Everybody in the General Assembly postures that they are against giving themselves more money at a time when the state is in tight financial times.

BUT SOMEHOW, THEY always manage to fail to agree on a single bill that would reject the pay raises, which means the raises take effect automatically.

The fact that Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, hinted at having the House in session during the weekend just means he wants to put on the appearance of trying, really, really trying, to get something done.

Which means the Blagojevich-bashers of the Illinois political world (who are the people really pushing all this recall nonsense this year) likely will have to find another way to harass our goofy guv with the overblown hair.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: No government money for revamping Wrigley Field? (http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-wed-wrigley-field-cubs-apr30,0,5382365.story) Prove it!

The Illinois House could have to endure “capital punishment” (defined in politico-speak as having to spend a weekend in the capital city of Springfield) to put on a show (http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2008/04/madigan-says-ho.html) that they want to place a constitutional amendment on recall elections on this year’s ballot.

Recall could drag down Quinn legacy

I’m going to tick off a lot of people with this statement, but I have always considered the concept of a “recall” election to be one of the most Un-American things permitted in U.S. politics.

I always took a bit of pride in my home state of Illinois for not succumbing to the silliness of allowing people to un-do the results of a perfectly good electoral system.

NOW, THE PEOPLE who couldn’t defeat Rod Blagojevich on Election Day in ’02 or ’06 want the possibility of ambushing the Illinois governor with special elections at their whim to try to undo the will of the majority of Illinoisans – who actually voted for this goof to be guv.

The Chicago Tribune is trying to throw the muscle of its editorial page behind the concept, which doesn’t surprise (or concern) me all that much. What really bothers me is that the lieutenant governor, Pat Quinn, is giving the ridiculous recall concept his backing.

He is supportive of the measure pending in the General Assembly that would allow for people to call for new elections, if they could get significant support on petitions. It also would provide for an immediate replacement election (so no, Pat isn’t calling for a recall, just so he could move up to the gubernatorial post).

I realize lieutenant governors don't have much in the way of official duties (which is why Pat Quinn had time to do the "first pitch" honors at a Kane County Cougars game), but somebody needs to find something of substance to keep Quinn busy. Photograph provided by State of Illinois.

I will be the first to agree that there is a high level of discontent with the political performance of Blagojevich – more so than just the usual malcontents who want to “throw the bums out of office” regardless of whom the bums actually are.

BUT I HONESTLY believe the American Way of doing things would be for these people to focus their attention on the next Illinois government elections in 2010. Get yourself organized and put up a credible candidate who can challenge Blagojevich.

If the level of discontent with Rod is truly as high as they want to believe it is, they should be able to defeat him. If they can’t, then they should quit whining like sore losers.

All too often, the people in states where recalls are permitted who screech the loudest are the sore losers who are just too miffed that a majority of the public didn’t agree with them on Election Day.

And in the cases where a government official turns out to be a political mope, I happen to believe that people tend to get the quality of public officials they deserve. Maybe the majority of us who voted for Blagojevich (including myself, both times) deserve this.

MY OBSERVATIONS ARE that the people pushing the hardest for a recall provision in Illinois law are those Republican followers from rural Illinois who have seen how the Land of Lincoln has turned Democrat in recent years. They want to come up with another way to get rid of a states chief executive who won’t cater to their demands over those of the bulk of Illinois.

With the condition the Illinois Republican Party is in now (virtually brain dead), I’ll be the first to admit that Blagojevich’s chances of winning re-election to a third term in office in the 2010 election cycle are excellent.

Even when they had a respectable candidate in 2006 (Judy Baar Topinka), the Republican political mechanisms have become so rusty they were unable to do anything significant to help her. A tainted Blagojevich was able to beat her easily.

Now some people are going to bring up (probably, they have been screaming all through reading this commentary) about the sleazy details that will come out of the federal corruption trial of Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who helped Blagojevich raise funds for his political campaigns and who helped pick some of the people who got government appointments during the Blagojevich era.

THERE HAVE BEEN people who for years now have insisted that Rod will wind up facing his own criminal charges for political corruption, and could someday wind up doing time himself in a federal penitentiary.

To my mindset, that is not a good enough reason to whack the people of Illinois with the concept of a recall election. If it turns out that Blagojevich truly has done something seriously illegal, Illinois law already contains provisions for impeachment.

For those people who will argue that the standards required to impeach and convict a public official to remove him from office are too high, I say, “So what?”

It is supposed to be hard to remove a public official from a government post. The burden of proof ought to be on the accuser, not the politico. This is a Democracy we have in Illinois, where the results of an election of the people, by the people and for the people (remember the Constitution?) ought not to be cancelled out just because a few individuals in our society are sore losers.

JUST THINK OF how ridiculous the spectacle would be if all the malcontents of our society were to decide to want a recall of President Bush. It serves us right for voting for him twice (or voting for him once and allowing the Supreme Court to pick him the other time).

Actually, we don’t have to imagine how pathetic the concept of recall elections are in actual practice. We saw for ourselves a few years ago in California, when voters there got worked up by the malcontents and went along with the whim of dumping Grey Davis.

As if replacing him with actor Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t silly enough, we got to endure the spectacle of a special election with more than 100 candidates – and not a single legitimate pick in the batch. If I had been a Californian back then, I may very well have voted for Gary Coleman just as a protest of allowing electoral politics to devolve into a circus.

YET THIS IS the direction that Quinn would like to take our fine state. Here’s hoping that the Statehouse observers are correct in saying that the recall measure will never come up for a vote in the Illinois Senate. If true, then Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago, will have performed a great service on behalf of all the people of Illinois – even though some will be too blind to realize it.

Quinn is among the blind. During an appearance earlier this week on WTTW-TV’s “Chicago Tonight” program, the lieutenant governor insisted that a recall measure is necessary to ensure good government. In reality, it is more likely to cause chaos by making it easier for a disgruntled minority to wreck havoc on the majority.

What is sad is that Quinn is the man who already has earned his place in the Illinois history books for leading the effort that slashed the Illinois House of Representatives from 177 individuals to 118.

THAT MOVE BENEFITTED politics by eliminating excess politicos, particularly those who were only managing to get elected because state law required every district to have officials form each major political party (Republicans in Chicago, Democrats or Independents in rural Illinois).

The people who got dumped from the Legislature in the “cutback amendment” were those who didn’t have the support of the constituents they allegedly represented. The old way of compiling a Legislature created the illusion of bipartisanship, whereas the current way is probably more honest to the feelings of the people.

By pushing for a recall, Quinn threatens to undo the good he accomplished back in 1981. Pat needs to quit while he’s ahead, or else he threatens to reinforce the image that political observers joke about – the egomaniac who just loves to have a press conference with the Statehouse statue of Abraham Lincoln looming in the background.

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