“THERE HE GOES AGAIN…”

11/1/09

A story in today’s (i.e., Sunday, 11/1’s) Chicago Tribune reports that Carol Adams, a former Secretary of the Illinois Department of Human Services, has decided to decline a job offer from Governor, Pat “I know you’re a man of honor and a different kind of public servant” Quinn. Ms. Adams was offered a newly created $110,000 per year post as “Illinois representative to Africa.” After the fiscally prudent governor’s decision to create this new position out of whole cloth, doubtless due to the brobdingnagian surplus of cash causing the state’s coffers to burst, drew criticism, Ms. Adams decided that “pressing family medical issues,” which doubtless came up only after Quinn’s decision was ripped for once again laying bare the showboating and pandering that characterizes the man who made it, “made my relocation to South Africa prohibitive,” despite Ms. Brown’s contention that “The opportunity to work in Africa has been a career long desire of mine.” Isn’t it fortuitous that politicians’ “family and medical issues” always seem to coincide with times in which political pressure seems to intensify?

One could not be accused of being overly cynical if one were to conclude that Ms. Adams’ decision to give up her “career long desire” was not entirely voluntary. Mr. Quinn (no relation, by the way) simply cannot withstand the fully justifiable criticism that came in the wake of his creating this position. Some of the criticism arose because Ms. Adams is perceived by some as being in the Blagojevich camp. This may not be fair; while Ms. Adams was appointed to her DHS job by Governor Blagojevich, this does not necessarily make her one of Blago’s people. But even if she is complete Blago lackey, and I suspect she’s not, the more justifiable criticism should arise from Governor Quinn’s cavalier attitude toward the state budget. He tells us we are in a time of deep fiscal distress, caused by the recession and, to a greater extent, by a combination of years of fiscal mismanagement by financial dunces and/or a willingness of people who ought to know better to put short term political expediency ahead of fiscal prudence. He tells us that the people who make Illinois work have to sacrifice by paying higher taxes so the people who make their livings sucking the public teat can continue business as usual. The governor tells us that we can’t possibly have wholesale layoffs in the sacrosanct public sector despite such layoffs, and worse, taking place in the private sector, no sir. In times of distress, we have to continue “vital services,” as defined by the people who dispense, not the people who provide, the funds for those services.

Mr. Quinn’s insouciant attitude toward the working people of the state, the people about whom he claims to be so concerned, is illustrated by his creation of something called a “public health advocate” (See my already seminal 10/28/09 post, “OH, SO YOU’RE IN FAVOR OF JUVENILE DIABETES, EH?”) and now something called an “Illinois representative to Africa” when we have less than no money in the state’s coffers and we have to demand (not “ask,” as the politicians like to say. There is nothing voluntary about the taxing power of the state.) that the “working people” cough up more money so the pols can send their friends off to exotic locales to collect high salaries and fend off the (Horrors!) dreaded day when such luminaries might have to get real jobs.

Some might argue that trade missions, such as the proposed Africa post, are especially necessary in these times of economic distress. We need such outposts, we are told, to bring business to Illinois. Think about it, though; in a time of worldwide economic distress, which is hitting the developing world at least as hard as the developed world, just how much business are we going to get out of Africa, or any place, for that matter? And how can a government office help in such an effort? You guessed it…by handing out tax breaks or subsidies of one kind or another to attract what the pols and hangers-on, with their vast experience in financial matters, decide is “business.” So the governor proposes, in a time of fiscal deprivation, to spend money to create a post to hand out more of the money we don’t have.

But it gets better. Governor Quinn, a man of vast foresight that transcends the tawdry world of business and finance, envisions the South African outpost as transcending the role of a traditional trade outpost to focus on building relationships with universities and the South African academic community. Establishing relationships with universities and the academic community? That’s a burning priority in a time of fiscal dystopia if I ever saw one!

The question that arises from Governor Quinn’s oh so typical of political types latest plan to spend money we don’t have transcends our poltroonish governor to encompass just about every politician who currently represents us: Just what planet do these popinjays inhabit? I used to think that term limits would be a solution to our problems, and I still do. But we need more. After all, term limits would not save us from the likes of Pat Quinn, who has never held a particular public office long enough to have any kind of proposed term limit kick in; the Pat Quinns of the world, with the full acquiescence of the brain-dead voters, just leap from sinecure to sinecure. What we need is a requirement that, before an individual can hold public office, s/he has to have held some kind of non-political job. I don’t necessarily mean a private sector job, though that, of course, would be nice. How about a public sector job in which one does actual work, like the legions of honest, hardworking government workers who have actual responsibilities, whose jobs don’t consist of bloviating in front of TV cameras as part of an endless campaign to hornswoggle voters who are too consumed with situation comedies and late night talk shows to pay attention to their responsibilities as citizens?

How about some politicians with some kind of experience in the real world of work, be it in the public or private sector, rather than a career that never transcends the narcissistic world of the public officeholder?