OH, SO YOU’RE IN FAVOR OF JUVENILE DIABETES, EH?

10/28/09

Mike Sneed of the Chicago Sun-Times (Sneed’s column, by the way, is indispensable for those who want to keep abreast of the various shenanigans that surround the politics of the Windy City.) reports today that Governor Pat Quinn is pushing for “the creation of a public health advocate to centralize the efforts of the state’s major medical institutions in battling chronic illnesses like juvenile diabetes, asthma, and autism.”

Hmm…

To hear Governor Quinn, and just about everyone else in Springfield tell it, the state is broke, busted, bankrupt. Things are so bad that the governor and his accomplices in the state legislator have no other choice but to raise taxes. The governor assures us that he is squeezing every dime he can out of state spending, but that will not be enough to obviate raising taxes and impose, for the first time since the inception of the state income tax in 1969, an effectively progressive income tax.

So if the governor is squeezing every dime out of the budget, where will the money come from to create this position, or perhaps office, of “public health advocate”?

One is sure that Governor Quinn, always effusive about his concern for the downtrodden, will accuse anyone who opposes this latest scheme to spend more of your money of lacking “compassion,” and probably of being in favor of the spread of juvenile diabetes, asthma, and autism. Those who will benefit, one way or the other, from this new arm of the state bureaucracy will scream that we “need” such an advocate. We need such an advocate? The state has done well for the last 191 years without such an advocate, so the term “need” is in this case, as it always is in public discourse, a term generally used by those with a huge vested interest in finding unmet needs, needs that can only be met by the direction of generous amounts of other people’s money toward the “only” people who can solve those “needs.”

One does not know whether creating the office of the public health advocate would be a good use of state money. It might just be another layer of bureaucracy that serves to inhibit the worthy missions it is ostensibly designed to facilitate. Even worse, it might be just another means of rewarding an assortment of lackeys, toadies, and hangers-on, along with any other jackanapes willing to kick back a portion of his taxpayer financed earnings to the coffers of the Demipublicans who run this state. But let’s assume for a moment that creating such an advocate is a worthy public expenditure that will actually make a positive difference in the battle against assorted debilitating, potentially fatal diseases. Even if this is the case, is this a time, when the state coffers are running on less than empty, to be embarking on this crusade?

The politicians keep telling us we’re broke, that they need more of our money because there is simply “no place to cut.” Yet, even in what they tell us are the worst of times, they still can come up with new ways to spend our money. In better times, they consistently managed to find a “need” that became “pressing” when it looked like tax revenues were in danger of going unspent. Now, those needs become “pressing” even when the pols are crying for more tax revenues to stave off bankruptcy.

Have these people no sense of what the typical person is going through? Does the word “economize” have any meaning to our public servants? Don’t they have any sense that, when the people who pay the bills have to find ways to cut spending, the government just might have to tighten its belt just a tiny notch? Do the people who make a living spending your money to advance their careers have any sense of responsibility…or even shame?