Illinois Politics, the Stimulus Plan, and the War on Drugs

Two political stories are turning up no matter where I look: the bizarre circus that Illinois politicians are putting on for the whole country, and the massive stimulus plan our children and grandchildren will be paying for all their lives. Here are my reflections on both stories, plus an expression of hope that one good thing might come out of the current financial crisis.

Are Voters in Illinois Insane?

Over the years, I’ve often had to explain to people why The Heartland Institute devotes so little of its time and resources to policy debates taking place in Chicago and Illinois, even though it is located Chicago. My answer has been that since around 1990, corruption and the flat-out indifference to ideas by the state’s political class have made it impossible for a think tank to have any influence in the state. Recent events have validated that judgment.

We’ve had the spectacle of our governor being caught on tape trying to sell to the highest bidder the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama, then refusing to resign, then going around the country appearing on television talk shows comparing himself to Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and finally being impeached and removed from office by a unanimous vote of the state Senate.

All while our previous governor, sitting in a prison camp in Terre Haute, Indiana serving six years and six months for selling his own office to the highest bidder, seeks a pardon or commutation of his sentence to time served from outgoing President George W. Bush and incoming President Obama.

Before the door could hit him on his way out of the governor’s mansion, disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich gave the Senate seat to a long-time figure in state Democratic politics, former state attorney general Roland Burris, who swore (literally, under oath) that he had not been contacted by Blagojevich’s staff about having to “earn” the Senate seat before it was offered to him. It turns out Mr. Burris lied about that, and he now is embarking on the same path blazed by Blagojevich, refusing to resign, facing official procedures to remove him from office, and defending himself on television.

Pundits in Illinois think the real political game taking place behind the scenes is even worse than it appears, if you can believe that.

Blagojevich, Burris, and temporary Gov. Patrick Quinn aren’t part of what Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass has dubbed the “Combine,” the nonpartisan political machine that rules every level of politics in the state. This makes them all expendable, sort of like the people the Soviet Union’s KGB used to call “useful idiots,” liberals recruited as spies during the Cold War.

Quinn is expected to back an increase in the state income tax, for many years the brass ring eagerly sought by the Combine’s leaders. Signing such a bill into law would make Quinn unelectable in 2010, though being a “useful idiot” he seems not to realize that. Current attorney general Lisa Madigan will run against and beat Quinn in the Democratic primary, and go on to beat a hapless Republican contender to occupy the soiled seat.

Lisa Madigan is the daughter of Mike Madigan, speaker-for-life of the Illinois House of Representatives, chairman-for-life of the Democratic Party of Illinois, and one of the heads of the Combine. Check and checkmate for the Combine.

Which means Illinois politics has to descend a few more rings into hell before ideas matter here.

Stimulus Package

On February 17, President Obama signed into law the $790 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus plan. This massive expansion of the national debt will do little to stimulate the economy but much to permanently expand the size, cost, and power of government. Since some of the loot is going to state and local governments for roads, public transit, schools, and Medicaid, we can be sure these grateful beneficiaries will be back at the trough in two years when the money runs out.

Much to their credit, some governors have had the courage to just say no. “We don’t have a giant piggy bank that we can raid now that times are tough,” South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford told Fox News Sunday on February 22. Sanford, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (all Republicans, all possible candidates for president in 2012) have said they plan to refuse at least some of the stimulus money that would require their states to expand programs to be eligible for aid. Bravo!

Polls show the public opposes the stimulus plan, just as it opposed the bailout plan that preceded it. Funny how that doesn’t get mentioned much by the mainstream media, still very preoccupied with cheering on the new president and his promised “change.”

When CNBC business reporter Rick Santelli, broadcasting from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade just two blocks from Heartland’s office, denounced the stimulus plan amid cheers and jeers from the traders who surrounded him, he touched a powerful current of grassroots resentment and anxiety. He might have launched a national movement. “Rick’s Revolt,” as it’s being called, may yet help the country recover from the excesses of its out-of-touch leaders in Washington, DC.

(I should say, for the record, that not all that is in the stimulus plan is bad news. The Wall Street Journal estimates 38 percent of it is tax cuts, which we should always embrace. Some of the spending is on long-lived infrastructure that may increase productivity and future economic growth. It’s appropriate to ask the next generation to help pay for that. But it’s difficult to see this bone and muscle beneath the thick layers of fat.)

Remember the War on Drugs?

In times of economic and political unrest, reforms that stood little chance of passage sometimes get a second look. The left certainly recognizes this: witness remarks by Rahm Emanuel and Tom Daschle on the need to move quickly to implement major parts of their agenda before the economic crisis passes.

One idea that deserves careful consideration is ending the war on drugs. Even a prosperous nation cannot afford the hundreds of billions of dollars a year in law enforcement expenditures and losses to drug-related crime that our fruitless quest to ban recreational drugs costs. It’s an especially foolish waste of resources in times of economic distress and high national security anxiety.

On February 11, the former presidents of Brazil, Columbia, and Mexico and a dozen other prominent individuals issued a statement condemning the war on drugs in no uncertain terms and calling for “a new paradigm,” starting with the decriminalization of marijuana. This is something President Obama and the new leadership in Congress should get behind. The political risk of appearing to be “soft on drugs” will never go away entirely, but it’s difficult to imagine the Democrats suffering any fall-out on this issue in 2010 if they were to act on it now.

According to the former presidents’ statement, “Over the past decades we have witnessed (1) a rise in organized crime caused both by the international narcotics trade and by the growing control exercised by criminal groups over domestic markets and territories; (2) a growth in unacceptable levels of drug-related violence affecting the whole of society and, in particular, the poor and the young; (3) the criminalization of politics and the politicization of crime, as well as the proliferation of the linkages between them, as reflected in the infiltration of democratic institutions by organized crime; and (4) the corruption of public servants, the judicial system, governments, the political system and, especially, the police forces in charge of enforcing law and order.”

The former presidents may have been talking about what is taking place in their own countries, but anyone paying attention will notice those same disturbing trends have taken place in the U.S. The solution, again quoting from the statement, is “treating drug users as a matter of public health, reducing drug consumption through information, education and prevention, and focusing repression on organized crime.”

Back in 1933, during another hard time economically for the U.S., the nation gave up trying to ban the consumption of alcohol. Very few people today believe that was a mistake. Maybe history will repeat itself.

Joseph Bast (jbast@heartland.org) is president of The Heartland Institute.