Mayor’s Row…….by Ned Mitchell
The headline on the computer screen jumped out at me asking “Why is Governor Rod Blagojevich kissing off the coal miners?” Naturally since I come from a coal mining family and live and serve as Mayor in an area where coal was once king, I became very interested in this story. The story was written by a resident of northern Illinois and had some interesting facts concerning the reformer/unreformer’s recent revelation that he was going to cut mercury emissions from Illinois power plants by 90% in the near future. According to a poll released by one of the environmental tree hugging groups 73% of those surveyed thought that power plants in Illinois should reduce the amount of mercury they put off. Sounds reasonable to me, doesn’t it to you? Most of us want to breathe clean air and would like to eat fish minus the mercury. Only problem is scientists are not in agreement on where mercury comes from. The tree hugging variety will swear on the Bible that mercury is being dumped on us from coal fired power plants. Other scientists, in particular two by the name of Derek Winstanley and Edward Krug disagree and think the problem is world wide. One study even says that 53% of the mercury in the atmosphere comes from Asian countries. Both Winstanley and Krug are State of Illinois employees and this puts them in direct contradiction with da boss. Now who are going to believe, two brilliant scientists who have had their work published, or some ward politician from Chicago who by fluke married into a powerful family and ended up being our governor?
The fact is in the last twenty years the coal miner has almost vanished from our midst, especially the union coal miner. While Indiana and Kentucky have a healthy and growing coal industry Illinois is dying on the vine. The reformer/unreformer in a previous political life was all over us down here courting the coal miner vote. He was going to expand this industry, everybody who wanted a job in the coal mines would have one! You will notice he has not been down this way in months talking about coal miners. Why is that you ask? I’ll tell you. In 1978 there were 18,000 active working coal miners in Illinois. In 1996 that dropped to 5,000 and today the UMWA says there are about 2,000 union miners left in the state. Can you begin to see the picture now? The reformer/unreformer or more likely one of his East coast guru’s has figured out there are more environmentally concerned voters up north than there are unemployed coal miners down south. So, we become the latest group to be thrown under the bus by the reformer/unreformer. It is a well planned out scheme I must admit. First the reformer/unreformer and his northern Illinois liberal democrats behind the scenes and under the table where he operates best, silently did away with the sales tax exemption for pollution control equipment. Calling it a “loophole” the reformer/unreformer took away the sales tax exemption that allowed coal fired power plants to purchase equipment to help cut down on emissions in the air. So now it costs coal fired power plants in Illinois more money to cut down on pollution.
It becomes an us against them issue in Illinois. Northern Illinois legislators look upon us down here for the most part as a bunch of in bred rednecks who live in shacks on the side of a hill with outdoor plumbing. They want clean air, not realizing that we do too. They also want to be able to flip the switch on to their heated drive ways and for the snow and ice to melt off. We enjoy flipping a switch on the wall and the ceiling light comes on. They would rather have nuclear power plants who they claim operate so clean and efficient. Never mind the fact that those same legislators don’t want the nuclear waste put in a landfill anywhere near where they live. Why is that? I mean if it is so safe and efficient, why not just sprinkle the stuff on the golf course green and walk all over it with your lobbyist friends. It is the same theory about cellular telephones. Every legislator up north has one or two cell phones, but they don’t want any telephone company building a cellular telephone tower where they can see it. Talk about wanting your cake and being able to eat it too!
We will lose this battle for sure since there are a lot more of them than there are us down here in the south. It is just interesting to me to point out how things change so rapidly in the political world. Not too long ago the reformer/unreformer governor was down here promoting the coal industry and new power plants. Last week he was up there practically accusing the coal industry of poisoning every pregnant woman and unborn child in the Midwest. Which is it governor? I know from a political standpoint 73% of the northern Illinois voters is way more than 100% of the southern Illinois voters. I can’t wait to run this by my southern Illinois democrat friends to see just how they white wash this latest blow to our area.
To round off the week I opened the mail Friday and found a letter from that mainstream guy in Illinois, Senator Durbin. I thought it looked familiar, like I had read it somewhere before so after thinking about it for a while it suddenly dawned on me to pull the letter from Glenn Poshard out of the old political graveyard file that I keep. There it was, a letter that in theory was the same. Both Durbin and Poshard start off by pointing out that Pat Quinn is a great guy. Now that one had me laughing out loud because the powers that be, Madigan, Jones, reformer/unreformer, and every political insider in the state simply cannot stand Pat Quinn. They worked countless days just a few months back trying to figure out a way to dump Quinn off the state ticket this time but wisely backed off when it looked as if he might just decide to take on the reformer/unreformer for governor. Quinn would have cleaned their clocks and they realized it.
Then both writers go on to brag about Lisa Madigan, then Jesse White, then Dan Hynes, saving the reformer/unreformer governor for last. They start off by telling how the governor inherited a 5 billion dollar deficit from those awful republicans and how he has got this debt under control by not raising our income and sales taxes. They failed to mention that a lot of democrats voted for those deficit budgets. Both writers fail to mention how he has raised every fee under the sun and raided every fund in the state with $20.00 in it including my pension fund. They brag about health insurance for kids but fail to tell who and how it is going to get paid for. “We are out of fiscal darkness” Durbin proudly proclaims and here is the clincher “making a difference for our working families” is what we do best. I guess that’s great, but where are the workers down here?
The idea is to brag up the whole democrat ticket, but both Poshard and Durbin are mailing these letters to elected democrat officials only. They surely must know they are preaching to the choir, or are they worried about a little thing called a primary election in March that the reformer/unreformer governor now has an opponent that cannot be bought off with campaign donations and insider deals from pals? Both writers, while telling all the great things the governor has done, and he has done some good, fail to mention all the federal investigations into this administration. They fail to mention that two have already entered guilty pleas and have agreed to testify concerning pension pay offs involving the state teacher’s pension fund. What we need are politicians with the desire to tell both sides of the story, the good and the bad and to let us down here on the farm decide who has done the job and who has not! I’ll try to tell both sides as best I can.
We would like to hear from you in Sesser. Give us a call at 625-3611, 625-5322, or 625-5788 or drop us a line to City Hall, Box 517, Sesser, Illinois 62884 or email nedmitchell@verizon.net or www.sesser.org . We welcome your comments!
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