[Peace-discuss] State of the State - reply

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Rich Whitney, Green party candidate for governor,
	gives response to State of the State Address
	January 13th, 2010

Carbondale, IL--Green Party candidate for Governor Rich Whitney issued the 
following statement today in response to Governor Quinn’s State of the State 
Address:

     I must confess that I wrote most of this statement before listening to 
Governor Quinn’s State of the State address today. That’s because we don’t need 
the incumbent Governor to tell us what the State of the State is. We all know 
what it is. We’re living in it. In a word, it’s dismal.

     Just yesterday, the Illinois Manufacturers Directory announced that the 
state’s manufacturing industry suffered one of its worst declines in nearly a 
century between November 2008 and November 2009, with 51,925 industrial jobs 
lost and 709 manufacturing companies shut down in Illinois during that period. 
The biggest surprise there is that we still had that many manufacturing jobs to 
lose. Official unemployment is now at 11 percent and we all know that the real 
unemployment rate is far higher.

     Our State government is almost completely dysfunctional. Our college and 
university system is in dire straits and struggling students and parents are 
going to end up paying more, or taking on even more debt, to receive a lower 
quality of education. State workers are facing layoffs, furloughs or other 
cutbacks, or higher workloads. Social service agencies, hospitals and health 
care clinics are in critical condition, and the agencies and facilities needed 
to serve the elderly, veterans, children, the physically and mentally 
challenged, are being gutted or forced to close. Our school districts, county 
and local governments are all struggling from the loss of State money and their 
own shrinking tax base, forcing a choice between loss of jobs and services or 
higher property or sales taxes. And this is happening in a State that provides 
the lowest percentage of its school funding from State sources in the United 
States, has the most unequal schools in the United States and the most 
underfunded pension system in the United States.

     Yet our incumbent legislators won’t fix the problem, even though it is well 
known that the State cannot continue to function without some type of major tax 
reform. We know what the main cause of the budget crisis is: We have one of the 
most regressive tax systems in the United States, placing most of the burden on 
those least able to pay. We know what the answers are: We need a major tax 
reform that will reduce our reliance on property and sales taxes, shift the 
burden to the income tax, lower the burden on low and middle-income wage 
earners, guarantee adequate State funding for our schools and raise enough 
revenue to provide the services the people need.

     Yet instead of recognizing what most of the people realize needs to be 
done, and fixing the problem, most of them lack the political will to do what is 
right and instead do what is expedient; what their paymasters want. The only 
things that they agree are politically “safe” to do – even though they are wrong 
– are the very things that ensure that the crisis will be even harder to solve 
in the future: More borrowing, more delayed payments, more fund sweeps and 
one-time gimmicks, more reliance on alcohol, tobacco and gambling taxes, and 
more deterioration of education and services.

     The recently enacted campaign finance reform, while better than nothing, 
doesn’t go nearly far enough to put an end to legalized corruption or illegal 
patronage, and will mainly keep in place a system that ensures that the big 
corporate and bank donors, and the big party bosses, will continue to control 
these legislators and executive officers – at least, as long as these 
legislators and officers continue to come from the two corporate-sponsored parties.

     And that’s the other aspect of the real “State of the State” that we, the 
people, must come to grips with: It is a product of the stranglehold on 
government by the Democratic and Republican parties, the parties that brought us 
the last two elected governors – one a felon; the other removed from office in 
disgrace, and who, even now, can’t keep his foot out of his mouth. But those are 
just two symptoms of a much deeper disease. The State of the State that I’ve 
just described is the product of seven years of nearly total control of the 
State of Illinois, both legislative and executive branches, by the Democratic 
Party. It’s not about personalities. I believe that Pat Quinn and Dan Hynes are 
both personally good people. They probably mean well. They may be the very best 
that the Democratic Party has to offer – but that only further illustrates the 
problem. Because good intentions or not, they are still prisoners of the same 
corrupt institution, and we cannot expect any real change from them. Not change 
you can believe in.

     Quinn spoke today about a “Green way of thinking,” and a future Green 
economy, and I applaud him for that. That’s probably no accident. Yet in the 
same breath he lauded the capital bill that he signed, that focused far more on 
the old, greenhouse gas-promoting technologies of highway expansion and air 
travel than it did on sustainable transportation: $14.3 billion for roads and 
bridges, including $4 billion for new roadways, vs. less than $7 billion for all 
rail, and only $400 million for high-speed rail – even though every billion 
dollars spent on rail creates over 7,000 more jobs than a billion dollars spent 
on roads. And it includes $110 million for a Peotone Airport that is not needed 
and that is intended to benefit developers at the expense of rural property 
owners and the environment. I would suggest to you that if you want to build a 
genuine Green economy, you need to get genuine Greens in government.

     Yet what is the Republican Party offering? Every single one of their 
candidates for Governor and most, if not all, of their legislative candidates, 
believes that the main way to solve the State’s budget crisis is to cut spending 
and hold the line on taxes – which, of course, always sounds good on the 
surface, until you realize that if we literally did that, it would be a 
catastrophe for education, a catastrophe for social services, a catastrophe for 
local governments, and would cause the loss of over 128,000 jobs during an 
economic depression. So when they talk about doing this, it’s either a delusion, 
a recipe for disaster, or both.

     The central problem in Illinoisan and American politics today is that we 
have a government run by the same giant corporate and banking interests that 
have brought us to ruin. These interests use the Democratic and Republican 
parties to get the exact same results by slightly different means. And as long 
as we have that, as long as we have government by the highest bidders, 
government of, by and for the wealthy and powerful, the problems we face will 
not be solved.

     What the current State of the State should tell us is that there is an 
overwhelming need for new political leadership, leadership that comes from the 
people and the progressive movements that already have most of the policy 
answers to the problems facing us today. We need leadership that comes from the 
movements for peace, social justice, civil rights, the environment, labor, 
women’s rights, real health care reform, education reform, and grassroots 
democracy, including economic democracy. We need leadership that comes from a 
real people’s political party, a party based on these movements and their core 
principles; a party that does not accept corporate money and its corrupting 
influence. That’s where I come from, that’s what my campaign is about, that’s 
what the Green Party is about.

     I am fighting for the sound policy solutions that most Illinoisans already 
support, but which can’t get past the roadblocks erected by the Democratic and 
Republican parties and the corporate interests that bankroll and lobby them.

     That’s why I am the only candidate in this race who stands for a 
comprehensive tax reform – not just raising the income tax, with no conditions – 
but a whole package to guarantee funding for education, provide real property 
tax relief, lower the burden on lower and middle-income working people, erase 
the structural deficit, pay health-care providers and schools on time, and meet 
– rather than cheat – our pension obligations.

     That’s why I am the only candidate in this race who proposes to fund public 
improvements, and promote economic health, without any further tax increases, 
through the establishment of a state bank, a progressive idea that North Dakota 
adopted years ago, and that has helped keep that state debt-free even in these 
troubled economic times. Instead of going into more and more debt, to further 
enrich private banks, we should be using our tax revenue to further invest in 
our own State and its people, for the enrichment of our own economy.

     I am the only candidate in the race who recognizes the obligation of 
government to treat the twin threats of global climate change, and the end of 
the era of cheap oil, as the 911 emergency that it is, with a 21st-Century 
capital bill to build renewable energy generation and energy-efficient housing, 
buildings and appliances here in Illinois, build sustainable transportation with 
an emphasis on efficient mass transit, promote local agriculture for local 
consumption, promote smart urban planning and renewal and otherwise transition 
to a new, healthier, more affordable Green economy.

     I am the only candidate in the race who will fight for a real living wage 
law, and who will use the power of eminent domain to reclaim abandoned factories 
and facilities for the people, and provide communities with the means to re-tool 
them and reopen them, as worker-owned enterprises.

     I am the only candidate in the race who understands the need to make 
education a top priority, who dares to say we can and must make higher education 
free to all Illinois residents who qualify academically, as an economic and 
social imperative — instead of making it increasingly out of reach for all but 
the rich, and miring the next generation with absurd levels of debt.

     I am the only candidate in the race who will put an end to the wasteful war 
on drugs and focus our criminal justice resources where truly needed, with a new 
emphasis on rehabilitation and providing real assistance to felons after they 
are released from prison, to help them succeed.

     I am the only candidate in the race who will wage an uncompromising fight 
for a single-payer, improved Medicare-for-all health care system, here in 
Illinois — since our federal government has seen fit to reject the needs and 
express will of the people.

     And I am the only candidate in the race who is making an issue of the 
illegal, immoral and obscenely costly occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan — by 
promising to resist these illegal wars as Governor, by vetoing any further 
overseas deployment of our National Guard.

     In 2010, voters will have a choice to make, and it’s a simple one. You all 
know the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again but 
expecting a different result. You can continue to vote in the same Democratic or 
Republican candidates yet again, and just hope that somehow things will get 
better. Or you can vote for the candidates that are serious about establishing 
government of, by and for the people: myself, Rich Whitney, for Governor, Don 
Crawford for Lieutenant Governor, LeAlan Jones for U.S. Senate, people like 
Charlie Howe for State Rep here in the 115th and the dozens of other Green Party 
candidates running for offices at all levels of government throughout Illinois.

     The choice is yours. But if you vote in the same people who put us in this 
predicament, you cannot expect a different result.


David Green wrote:
> The "State of the State" speech this afternoon by Pat Quinn was long on 
> maudlin pro-war sentimentality and short on details about his proposal 
> for progressive taxation. Our state leaders (of all states) should make 
> it clear that state budget deficits are the fault of the recession, and 
> the recession is the fault of the housing bubble (and consequent stock 
> market crash), which as Dean Baker repeatedly says could have been burst 
> by the Federal Reserve long before it got big enough to do this much 
> damage. We need to stop identifying penny ante corruption and 
> "irresponsibility" of state officials with the budget crisis. They (all 
> state governors) do need to be held accountable for demanding a major 
> bailout of all states to the tune of $400 to $500 billion, as Bob 
> Herbert argued  in a recent NYT column (and calling the Wall Street 
> bailout for what it was--robbery of the working class by the rich). 
> While they're at it, they also should oppose our wars--the exact 
> opposite of Quinn's teary-eyed and  long-winded conclusion  in today's 
> speech. What the hell was he doing in Afghanistan? Does he really think 
> our army in Iraq is environmentally responsible? Unbelievable. 
> Meanwhile, he seems to have no interest in a state-level single-payer 
> plan (in spite of his relationship with Dr. Quentin Young), and says 
> nothing about how he plans to address the constitutional and legislative 
> obstacles to a progressive state tax system. I think there was some 
> reason to be mildly optimistic (or at least not completely 
> cynical) about Quinn's reform rhetoric--at least more so than in 
> relation to Phonybama. But what we get during a time of severe crisis is 
> a self-congratulatory laundry list of piecemeal reforms and prowar 
> patriotic rhetoric about "the best of the best." And of course, lazy 
> rhetoric about the value of education and brain power and our great 
> supercomputing University, which obviously has have nothing to do with 
> the creation (or disappearance) of "good jobs." Nauseating, insulting, 
> irresponsible, stupid, criminal.
> 
> 
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