Opinion Pike Press
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Wednesday, December 10, 2014, Pittsfield, Illinois
This Week's
Poll Question Week of Wednesday, December 10, 2014
lines may Q: Power be built across
Our View Power lines
Pike County.
Take time to be informed
1. I am in favor of power line projects. 2. I am opposed to power line projects. 3. It doesn’t matter to me either way. Share your answer at pikepress.com
For airline passengers, Midwestern states are often referred to as “flyover country.”
Last week's poll results When it comes to Christmas trees… 1. I prefer a “real” tree. 2. I prefer an artificial tree; less mess. 3. I like to cut our own tree. 4. No tree at our house.
Those who have not taken the time to get to know us prefer to pass over at several thousand feet while traveling from coast to coast. The tactic, however, is not universal. While people can take a “no contact” route, other goods and services cannot. Electric power, for instance, is not something you can put in a box and send on an airplane. In recent months, Pike County has been visited more than once by companies wishing to build new power transmission lines. It’s a complicated process. All those lines must be held up by supporting structures and those towers and poles must inevitably be sited on someone’s land. Here in Pike, that land can be pretty valuable for farming. And the wooded areas don’t gain any points with outdoorsmen when the vista is interrupted by a power line. When such projects are envisioned, the elephant in the room is always “eminent domain.” Will landowners be required to participate, even against their will? No one ever wants it to come to that. Which is why years of scouting, planning and discussing precede any actual project. The community is asked to contribute information about unique aspects of their area. Where are residences, churches, cemeteries, historic sites? All of Pike County, especially those landowners who may be directly affected, are urged to be informed, dig for answers, seek out groups who have a specific interest in the project. We all want power to be readily available; we want the light to come on when we flip the switch. But when major transmission lines are proposed for our county, we want it done right.
Do your part. Stay informed.
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interest. Letters should be no more than 300 words long and must be accompanied by the original signature, address and daytime telephone number of the writer. No personal attacks will be printed. Letters should be addressed to the editor and not to an individual. We reserve the right to edit for brevity and fairness and to withhold letters that are determined to be libelous or untrue.
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Guest Column: Scott Reeder
W
hen a tax hike is put in the hands of lame-duck lawmakers, taxpayers should expect to be goosed. We found that out four years ago, during the final minutes of a lame-duck legislative session when lawmakers shoved through and Gov. Pat Quinn signed a “temporary” 67 percent income tax increase. And low-and-behold many of those outgoing lawmakers landed high-paying jobs within the Quinn administration. Their very last act as elected officials was to do as Gov. Pat Quinn asked and vote to raise taxes. The measure passed without a vote to spare. Some folks even campaigned that they wouldn’t vote to raise taxes, but then after they lost the election they did just that. Did they have a political epiphany that Illinoisans were under-taxed? Or could it be they heard the siren call of state jobs in the future?
Time to end lame duck sessions We’ll never know for sure what was going through a particular lawmaker’s mind in the waning minutes of their political careers. But we do know some of these folks the voters took off the state payroll once again were drawing state paychecks. Just consider: n Former state Rep. Bob Flider is the now director of the Illinois Department of Agriculture. The job pays $133,273. That’s a pretty sweet gig for someone who has never lived on a farm. n Former State Rep. Careen Gordon became a lawyer handling real-estate licensing for that state. The job pays $88,200. Gordon left that job in November after Quinn lost his reelection bid. n Former State Rep. Mike Smith, who died this year, snagged a job with the Education Labor Relations Board that paid $93,926. In fact, of the 12 lame-duck legislators who voted for the tax increase at least half ended up with state jobs.
During their final moments in elected office, were they more concerned about their own employment prospects or serving the voters who just kicked them out of office? We’ll never know for sure what these people were thinking. But sadly, in Illinois politics, situations like these are all too common. Illinois shouldn’t have lame duck sessions. Rarely, do they serve the interests of voters well. We just finished a quiet lame duck session in Springfield. Pat Quinn told journalists before the election that he hoped to see lawmakers make the temporary tax hike permanent during the lame duck session. But that didn’t happen. Could it be that lawmakers had little incentive to please a governor heading to the unemployment line? Well, his lame duck legislative agenda died faster than a mallard pumped full of birdshot. Not only did lawmakers not vote to hike taxes, the House ignored Quinn’s
call for raising the minimum wage. If lawmakers are going to vote on issues such as these, it should be when they are most accountable to the voters, not the least. That’s why lame-duck sessions should be eliminated. Four years ago, the temporary tax increase was sold as a way to get the state’s financial house in order. But it hasn’t worked out. Despite the state’s staggering debt, Quinn and lawmakers upped spending when they received the extra tax dollars. Proof once again, that Illinois has a spending problem, not a revenue one. And the legislature functions best when voters can hold them accountable. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– ■ Scott Reeder is a veteran statehouse reporter and the journalist in residence at the Illinois Policy Institute. He can be reached at sreeder@illinoispolicy.org.
Guest Column: Jim Nowlan
S
erious political money has begun to infect judicial elections in Illinois (and across the nation). What should be done about it, if anything? Will we do it? I am still rankled by the election for the Illinois Supreme Court more than a decade ago. At the last minute Democratic Speaker of the House Mike Madigan poured about a million dollars into a campaign for unknown Thomas Kilbride of Rock Island to defeat a highly qualified candidate in Carl Hawkinson of Galesburg (Harvard Law; distinguished service as chair of the state senate judiciary committee). (By the way, Mr. Kilbride may have developed into a fine justice; I just don’t know. And that is the problem: you and I just don’t know.) I think that election was the start of it. Then in 2004, business, health care and trial lawyer interests spent almost $10 million in a state Supreme Court race in southern Illinois won by Republican Lloyd Karmeier. The issue was tort reform, that is, big, even multi-billion dollar awards to plaintiffs suing for malpractice of one sort or another. Karmeier was seen as a defendant’s judge and his opponent as a plaintiff’s judge.
Justice to the highest bidder? In November of this year, after 10 years on the high court, Karmeier was up for a retention vote, as required by the state constitution, which requires a 60 percent favorable vote to remain on the court. This time, plaintiff law firms with an interest in a $10.1 billion judgment case against Philip Morris, which will come before the state high court again soon, poured about $2 million into a last-minute campaign to knock Karmeier off the bench. He barely survived, with 60.7 percent of the vote. More and more, judicial campaigns are turning into plain old nasty, big money political jousts, and the judges may be pulled down from their high perches into the swamps of low respect with other politicians. My first brush with judicial politics goes back to 1960, when I was just out of high school and a delegate to a GOP judicial nominating convention for a state high court slot in my region of the state. I remember it wasn’t pretty, as few of the delegates knew anything about the candidates other than where they came from—“and it was our turn to name the judge.” In 1962, Illinois passed a constitutional amendment that called for popular election
of judges (taking it out of the hands of a small group of politicians at conventions) with retention elections after 10 years. That is what we have today. I was a young state lawmaker in the heyday of Boss Richard J. Daley of Chicago. Daley slated all judicial candidates personally, including those for the high court, who were then dutifully elected and knew where their bread was buttered. On political issues that came before the court, they did his bidding. Illinois is one of only 10 states that still elect supreme court justices. A majority of states use a procedure patterned after the “Missouri Plan,” in which panels of lawyers and other citizens make recommendations to the governor, who then selects judges. There is no perfect process for selecting judges. The president appoints all federal judges with the advice and consent of the Senate, who serve for life. Even here, politics (the struggle for power and position) seeps in. Home state senators of the President’s party enjoy senatorial courtesy, which means they can play a big part in who is selected, so there has been sometimes furious politicking to get a senator’s nod.
I think, overall, the Missouri Plan would be better than election by voters who know nothing about the candidates. But it will never happen in Illinois, because it would require a two-thirds vote of the legislature to get the idea onto the ballot. Many lawmakers sincerely prefer election to appointment. Many other lawyer-legislators see themselves as future judges, where they can roll their lawmaker pension credits into those of the judicial system, where salaries and pensions are much richer. So what can be done? I propose that the state high court justices clarify and tighten the standards for recusal, to provide clear direction that judges up and down the line be required to take themselves out of cases in which their big contributors have an interest. At the least, this might reduce the enthusiasm of law firms and interest groups to make big donations to their favorite judicial candidates. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– ■ A former Illinois legislator and aide to three governors, Jim Nowlan is co-author of “Fixing Illinois: Politics and Policy in the Prairie State” (University of Illinois Press, May 2014).
Guest Column: Dr. E. Kirsten Peters
L
Wake up and smell the genes
ike millions of Americans, my day starts by plugging in the coffeepot. In my case, it’s an old fashion percolator. It clears its throat and brews my coffee while I rub sleep out of my eyes and brush my teeth. My habit of starting my day with coffee -- and following that initial cup with doses of java in the mid-morning, the late morning and the early-afternoon -- may be at least partially grounded in my genes. Researchers have long believed that genetics influences a person’s daily coffee consumption. Early this fall, a new study fleshed out just how many variations in genes may be involved in determining who drinks a lot of java. Marilyn Cornelis of the Harvard School of Public Health helped orchestrate the research published in a journal called Molecular Psychiatry. The work
rested on about two dozen previous research projects that had a total of about 120,000 subjects. That’s a big group, made up of people who answered questions about how much coffee they consumed and then donated a sample of their DNA to researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. In the past, scientists had identified two genetic variants that “code” for coffee consumption. Now six new gene variations have been found to be common in people who drink a lot of coffee and other caffeinated beverages. Four of the newly discovered variants are linked either to the stimulating impact of caffeine on the body or to how we break down caffeine -- two loci (POR and ABCG2) change the metabolism of caffeine; two other loci (BDNF and SLC6A4) appear to relate to
how rewarding is the experience of caffeine. The last two loci (GCKR and MLXIPL) found in the study were not expected: they are not clearly associated with caffeine but rather act to control blood sugar and cholesterol levels. It’s not known how they relate to the propensity to quaff coffee and other caffeinated beverages. Cornelis told the New York Daily News that the genetic variants don’t correspond to how strong coffee tastes to an individual. That result surprised her, as it does me. The Harvard Gazette also wrote a piece on the findings. It mentioned the fact that some studies have shown benefits from drinking coffee each day. Cornelis has not been a coffee drinker, but because of some of the information coming out in recent years, she is giving java a go.
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I wish Cornelis well in her personal experiment. I can admit I didn’t like the strength and taste of coffee when I first tried it in college. But now I think coffee tastes good and, to me, the taste of good coffee seems quite mild. I also think coffee-flavored ice cream is grand - in particular when it comes with a cup of hot coffee on the side. Maybe my love of coffee was determined when my genes first formed in utero. It’s an interesting thought. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– ■ Dr. E. Kirsten Peters, a native of the rural Northwest, was trained as a geologist at Princeton and Harvard. This column is a service of the College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences at Washington State University.
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2014