“OKLAHOMA VS. ILLINOIS”: COMMENTS FROM SOMEONE WHO KNOWS SOMETHING ABOUT ILLINOIS POLITICS

11/26/13

A good friend forwarded a message to me that seems to be making its way around the internet.  The message, entitled “Illinois vs. Oklahoma,” by a Harlan Twible blames the Democrats for Illinois’ financial problems and draws an unfavorable comparison to Oklahoma, but the author’s comments on the latter center around illegal immigration rather than finances.

The piece contained one of my favorite quotes, which the author quoted but did not attribute to its source, which reportedly was Henry Ford…

"Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the Government take care of him; better take a closer look at the American Indian."

Yes, Ford was both an industrial genius and a political kook.   But this is one of those instances when his political/social views were absolutely correct, if it is indeed his quote.   Including this quote was not the only area in which Mr. Twible made convincing points.  Nonetheless, those points need refinement.

I was asked by my buddy to comment on the author’s observations on Illinois’ political/financial situation.   I thought my readers might be interested in my observations.  I limited those comments to Illinois; I didn’t touch the author’s views on Oklahoma’s approach to illegal immigration:

Illinois is a mess; for all intents and purposes it is bankrupt, and if we followed the same GAAP conventions for pensions that corporations do, that would be even more obvious.  Chicago's situation is at least as perilous.  Our situation is yet another case of pols buying people's votes with other people's money; ironically, often with the people's own money, which is what Tocqueville warned us about nearly 200 years ago now.

The Detroit analogy is more on target than most people think.  We continually play a game of denial in Chicago.  We thump our chests and say, while giggling at those who make the Motown analogy, "Chicago isn't Detroit" and then go on to cite our more diversified economy while avoiding the obvious political analogy of reckless spending by pols who remain reassured by the assumption that we will always find a way to pay for their excesses...somewhere down the road.   And in the post-industrial age, the raison d' etres for places like Detroit and Chicago are similarly slim, so the diversified economy argument will weaken, and do so quickly.   Mayor Emanuel and his obsequiants in the media and in favored quarters of the “business community” seem to think that businesses are lining up to live here because they want to bask in the glow of the Mayor’s greatness.  Such is the through process of those who believe that government is everything.

Chicago is a great place.  Illinois is a great place.  I love them both.  But they are not as great as those of us who love them seem to think they are.   There are plenty of objectively nice(r) places to live and to do business in this country.   We are soon approaching a point at which people will not put up with the shenanigans of the pols just to be able to live here.

I'd take issue with just a couple things regarding Illinois in the Twible piece....

First, his chain of command in Illinois is wrong.  The real chain of command would have Mike Madigan at the top and Rahm Emanuel near the top.   The governor has nowhere near the power his office would indicate; this has been the case for a long time in Illinois.   In fact, the governor of this state, whomever he may be, only has power to the extent he can work with, and accommodate, the Democratic power base, which is located in Chicago and manifests itself in control of the legislature and the huge concentration of statewide votes in and around Chicago.  

This leads to my next point.   We have a strange breed of GOPer here in Illinois who, since s/he craves power above all else like all pols, plays a game of get-along, go-along.  (Come to think of it, perhaps our GOPers are not all that strange; most Republicans everywhere crave power above all else and hence continually play a game of get-along, go-along, but I digress.)  This has been the case since at least the '50s, when Governor Stratton played footsie with the first and real Mayor Daley.  So the Republicans in this state are far from blameless for our pension mess.  In fact, the mess had at least some  roots in the Thompson and Edgar administrations, who went along with juicy pension deals with the teachers and other public employee unions so that Messrs. Thompson and Edgar could bask in the glow of teachers' unions endorsements, or at least pats on the head.

But Twible’s major point is certainly correct; the Democratic establishment has controlled things in this state forever.  Mike Madigan has been Speaker of the House for the last thirty or so years, with a brief (I think four year) interregnum in the '90s.   Clearly, the Dems wear the jacket.  But to assume that things would get, or be, much better if the GOP took power is delusional and naive.  Even if they had the guts to attack this problem, rather than attempt to curry the favor of the public employees' unions in order to secure their newfound positions of power, we are probably too far gone to fix this mess.

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics.