This will be a long eleven months until the general election of November 2012. It’s a ten year remap year so many more seats are at stake than usual. Due to population changes many elected persons, who are incumbents, are challenging a completely new territory. My representative district, the 89^th, has very minimal change. The one half of Byron that I did represent becomes part of the 90^th and I pick up Mount Carroll, an area I know well and look forward to running there. Many others, including Congressman Don Manzullo, have very significant changes.

The importance of all of this is as politicians run for office the rhetoric can truly ramp up. The Presidential ads are already becoming ugly and I am personally angry at my own party. I despise negative advertising and this political season, so early on, is already being bombarded with some of the worst I’ve seen. We need good folks to run at all levels and more and more people say to me “why should I expose myself to that”. My answer of course is rise above it, we need good people.

To my great good fortune, I’ve gotten to know many highly respected persons in Northwest Illinois. I enjoy their company and value their mentorship. Perhaps some don’t know that they are my mentors but I cling to their sage advice.

One such mentor is my good friend Gary Quinn, Market President at U.S. Bank and former newspaper publisher. Here is a man who enjoys reading economic textbooks in his leisure time. I’m thinking “you’ve got to be kidding me”, no, he’s not and over breakfast recently he gave me a book “Economic Facts and Fallacies” by Thomas Sowell. He assured me “it’s like eating peanuts, you can’t stop reading it”. Well, he’s right and one of the first quotes that jumps out at you, credited to Henry Rosovsky, is “never underestimate the difficulty of changing false belief by facts”. Well, this might be an economics book but that sure is the seed for negative campaigning. Once it’s out there it’s hard to reverse.

I’ve yet to make up my mind on which presidential candidate to get behind and filtering factual information from misinformation and out of context information is unbelievably difficult.

I’ve watched closely the increase in attack ads on the perceived front runner, (the attacks by my own party mind you) and I won’t say I’m appalled but I am deeply disappointed. Sadly they work. Yes, changing false beliefs with facts is unbelievably difficult. We are a better people than this and it’s time that we pulled ourselves out of the gutter.

Those of us lucky enough to have animals in our lives are truly blessed. Their complete forgiving nature often outdoes our closest friends.

The country singer Tom T. Hall recorded a top ten hit about thirty years ago – “Old Dogs and Children and Watermelon Wine”. A line in the song – “old dogs care about you even when you make mistakes”, also a favorite wall plaque of Jenny’s in our home reads – “I wish I was half the person my dog thinks I am”, says a lot of our love for animals.

Our farm home in Pecatonica still has nine horses (seven too many) and five dogs (four too many) but we love them all and they will live out their years here. I often think of lonely old folks who live alone, if only they had a pet.

The point of course, is our animals are completely non judgmental and love us in spite of our failings.

On the world scene is an outcry against four young marines in Afghanistan urinating on the bodies of deceased Taliban fighters. The outcry is horrific – “It will lower our standing on the world stage”. “It will be a Taliban recruiting tool.”  Are you kidding me? Let’s not be so quick to judge. No, I don’t condone it but war is hell. It’s not about sportsmanship. It’s kill or be killed. Our finest young men and women are trained to kill, sent half way around the world placed in life and death situations, watch their best friends horribly wounded or worse by some of the most evil people on the planet (the Taliban). Ya, it’s going to happen.

If you believe the Taliban won’t desecrate our remains, rethink it. Once again, I agree that doesn’t make it right. Those of you believing we can negotiate with the Taliban, good luck with that thought. It does make good press though.

We, the American people grew up believing that all people are inherently good. Thirty years in law enforcement took away any possible belief in the “all people” away from me. I do believe most people are. I don’t include the Taliban among them.

My prayer will be that four young marines will not have their lives ruined because of an outcry of the self righteous.

The old American Indian adage applies here – “don’t judge another brave until you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins”.

Spanky (one of our five dogs) is sitting on my lap in front of the fire looking at me as if I can do no wrong. It’s a good feeling.

I so admire individualism and ingenuity. They are two traits that make this country so great. I write of it often, I think of it more often. Our great country came into being because of the desire for individual freedom which came about because of ingenuity.

My thoughts often go to our young citizens and what they are being taught. Of course their classroom training prepares them in many ways, but every bit as important is their training in “the school of hard knocks”, at the dinner table, from social media, from television, from group activity, from jobs, in other words the sum total of their impressionable young lives.

There is such a comfort level in government dependency. It so destroys ambition, individualism and ingenuity. It is unquestionably becoming more and more prevalent in our country.

Congressman Paul Ryan is credited with the phrase “the right to rise”. The right to rise should not be challenged at any level and it should push government dependency off the track. “We have to make it easier for people to do the things that allow them to rise. We have to let them compete. We need to let people fight for business. We need to let people take risks. We need to let people fail. We need to let people enjoy the fruits of good decisions, even good luck”, I took that quote from an article in the Wall Street Journal contributed by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. I could not have said it better.

I personally believe entrepreneurship should be taught in high school at least as an elective. Many will never start or run a business but kids must be taught the importance of the paycheck not the welfare check.

A program catching fire in northwest Illinois, which is sponsored by the Workforce Development Coalition (WDC) of Stephenson County and yes, it is bleeding over to joining counties, is the Certificate of Employability. It’s a great program for young people and it’s a product of a partnership between employers, Northern Illinois Development Alliance (NIDA), the Chamber of Commerce, and Highland Community College.

The Certificate verifies that the young person is not only meeting academic criteria, the COE recipient has also met attendance and personal attitude criteria. In other words they want to earn their own way and not be dependent on the government.

My greatest hope is many will challenge themselves for the “right to rise” and realize that it is not government given but rather individually achieved.

The Illinois General Assembly will reconvene in late January and remain seated until the end of May 2012. This is the second and final year of the 97^th General Assembly and with the challenges facing our state it’s safe to say our work is cut out for us.

Many new bills will be introduced that have nothing to do with an underfunded pension system and the huge deficits resulting in the state’s embarrassing slowness in paying its obligations.

Throughout the year many of you come to me with ideas about bills that should become law. I always listen carefully, share my opinion, and then send the idea on to house staff to see if such an idea has previously been submitted. Some of the time it’s you as an individual with an idea and often it’s on behalf of a community, municipality, or other government entity. So, just how does a bill become a law? Here’s some information for political science 101. Let’s create an example.

A community would like to extend its TIF District into a rural area. They bring the idea to their legislator who submits it to staff. Other communities chime in, what a good idea it will help them as well. The bill is drafted by staff and submitted by the legislator for assignment and all bills start out in the rules committee made up of three members of the majority party and two from the minority. Thereafter, if at least three members agree, it is assigned to the appropriate committee where it is thoroughly scrutinized, massaged, testified to and against by those with concerns. This is the time that you as a concerned citizen have the opportunity to express your views about the legislation be it pro or con. Often times a citizen’s concern causes the bill to be amended, changed completely, or convinces the committee to defeat the whole idea right there.

If the bill passes committee, the sponsoring legislator introduces it on the floor where it has three readings. The first reading is done by the house clerk to enter the bill into the official record. It’s done for recording purposes only and the members are not present. The second reading is before a full chamber and the third reading is where it is debated as to the pros and cons by members of the chamber only. If it reaches sixty votes of the one hundred eighteen in the house or thirty members of the fifty nine in the senate it moves to the other chamber where the process is totally repeated.

If the bill passes the second chamber, where it can still be amended, it then goes on to the governor, who can sign it into law, amendatorily veto it or do a total veto.  If the veto occurs it must pass both chambers with a super majority of seventy one house members and thirty six senate members to become law without the governor’s signature.

What is more important to an elected person than the public trust? More than a few of you have sent me angry emails about the abuses of the Illinois Public Pensions System.

Several years ago an Illinois state senator retired, was hired by then Governor Blagojevich for about a month as a deputy governor resulting in her pension nearly doubling. There was a huge outcry. It went away. Several weeks ago two union officials substitute taught for a half day each leading to their pensions growing to obscene amounts. This time we fixed the problem with legislation so it could never happen again.

Not so fast! As we returned to Springfield two weeks ago to fix the CME and Sears debacle, we learned of a last minute Sunday afternoon committee meeting that just may have had an ulterior motive of some highly placed members of the house of representatives attempting to create special funding for a couple of union officials. The media called them out on it and it was stopped in its tracks.

Here are the cold hard facts! There will always be those who attempt to abuse the system. I, like you, find it repulsive. It really hits home when you find out you’ve been duped.

The Chicago Tribune and several area newspapers carried an article about now retired State Representative Bob Molaro working for powerful Chicago Alderman Ed Burke for one month following his retirement. He was hired solely to research the abuses of public pension systems, specifically Chicago’s. That one month translates to Bob’s pension going from $64 thousand per year to $120 thousand per year.  If we believe the mortality tables, with normal life expectancy, he’ll collect about $3 million in retirement. Remember, his job was to research pension abuses.

I worked with Bob for five years. I thought a lot of him as he chaired the Judiciary II Criminal Law Committee of which I am proud to be a member. We didn’t always agree but I admired his legal mind. He effectively ran a committee that is very time consuming and mentally intensive. When he retired I wished him well and he is now at the capital lobbying for the Chicago Pension System.

Here is a solemn promise. He will never lobby me again. No big loss to him I’m sure but I’m sickened by it. Yes, I was duped.

I’ve seen too many come to Springfield and become impressed with their importance.

Bilking you, the taxpayer, is absolutely unacceptable but, as you know, it’s not something new. We owe you a debt of gratitude for allowing us to serve. I for one, cherish the privilege.

My staff and I would like to wish each of you a Blessed New Year.

I will be in the district until mid January if any of your groups would like to meet with me please call.