Rob Sherman for State Representative 
Box 7410
Buffalo Grove, IL  60089-7410
(847) 870-0700
Fax (847) 870-1156
rob@robsherman.com

Chicago Tribune Candidate Survey

     The Chicago Tribune submitted a list of eleven questions to me and said that each answer may have a maximum of five thousand characters (by their computer's count).  Below are their questions and my answers.  Each of my answers, to all eleven of their questions, is exactly five thousand characters long.

     If you'd like to discuss my answers or let me know what you think of my answers, please contact me by either e-mailing me at rob@robsherman.com, calling me at (847) 870-0700 or faxing me at (847) 870-1156.  Please call only during reasonable hours.  I don't answer the phone if you block your caller ID information.

Question: Submit a brief essay that explains why you are qualified to hold this office.

I have spent a lifetime fighting injustice, one victory at a time. The way that I achieve these victories is by building relationships with decision makers, and then coming up with reasonable solutions to very controversial issues, solutions that most everyone can live with and which, generally, cost very little to implement. I am an expert at resolving controversial issues, and that’s precisely what we need in order to end the gridlock in Springfield.

Since I am a member of the Green Party, my solutions will be perceived as non-partisan or multi-partisan, and not favoring either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party.

I have testified, frequently, in Springfield, at the Committee Hearings of both the Illinois House and Illinois Senate, on a wide array of issues. While there, I have built relationships with many leaders of and other members of the General Assembly, as well as with all of our State Constitutional officers. They respect my opinions as being thoughtful, fair, practical and well-researched.

In addition, I have, for the twenty-four years that I’ve lived in Buffalo Grove, attended countless meetings, throughout the metropolitan area, of village boards, city councils, county boards, park district boards, library boards, community college boards and transportation boards, as well as meetings of sub-committees such as zoning boards of appeals and plan commissions. When attending those meetings, and at many other community events, I have met with and built strong relationships with numerous local government officials. This has taken a lot of effort, a lot of time and a lot of money, but as a result, I have a thorough knowledge of the needs of my legislative district, of the metropolitan area and the rest of the state.

For decades, I have subscribed to and read on a daily basis, the Tribune and two other area daily newspapers, as well as the weekly community newspaper, various magazines and trade publications. I also read the news online on a daily basis, at both local and national web sites. This, too, takes a lot of effort and a lot of time, but it has enabled me to develop extensive knowledge of the issues that citizens face and want addressed by government.

As a result of spending much time at the Capitol in Springfield, participating in the legislative process, I am thoroughly familiar with how to do the job as a legislator and will be able to step right in on the first day and get the job done.

The first question that any member of the General Assembly asks, when considering a new proposal, is, "Who pays?" I always include in my presentations a plan for covering the fiscal impact of my proposals.

As the former Morning Drive host of a talk show on WJJG Chicago, I always engaged in extensive research on the topic of each show that I did. I would spend approximately eight hours doing research for every one hour of show. Doing the show, itself, was actually the easiest part of the job because it was essentially the presentation of the product of my research. As such, I would be an outstandingly competent legislator because I would extensively research the merits of a Bill before voting on it.

While I have many friends throughout the area and across the country, they all have jobs. They don’t want to work for the government, so you will never have to worry about me trying to steer jobs or contracts to friends and family.

I have been challenged, financially, most of my adult life. I am now a multi-millionaire, thanks to an inheritance from Mom and Dad, but I understand how to say, "No," to expenditures that we can’t afford, and I will be doing that, often, in Springfield. Most importantly, I will persuade my fellow legislators that they must do the same.

That’s how you balance the budget. It’s not by raising the income tax or the sales tax. It’s by substantially reducing spending.

The Number One issue that the General Assembly is going to face in the coming years is insufficient funds to do everything that everyone wants government to pay for. We must stop spending money that we don’t have and financing it with debt dumping, which is my phrase for dumping our debt on future generations. I will stop the debt dumping by, first, limiting state expenditures to state responsibilities and, second, limiting expenditures to available funds. This will be done by saying, "No, no, no!" to state expenditures which we don’t have the money to pay for or which are not the responsibility of State taxpayers.

As a member of a prominent minority group (atheists), I know what it’s like to be the subject of baseless, systematic and regular discrimination, mockery, ridicule, criticism, insults and condescension. I will be the advocate for secular Illinoisans in the Illinois House. I will also advocate for fair treatment of religious Illinoisans, but secular Americans will get equal treatment from me, even if they aren't getting it from the Democrats and the Republicans.

Question: List your three most significant accomplishments:

My three most significant accomplishments are a lifetime of successfully fighting injustice, earning respect for myself and for atheists and creating the perfect family.

I have successfully challenged numerous social injustices throughout my life. Most of these injustices have involved issues that nobody else was willing to take on, either because it wasn’t popular, it was perceived as being too difficult or it didn’t affect one personally so they didn’t care if somebody else was getting victimized. I not only took on the tough issues that nobody else was willing to deal with. I changed the world, with real change, dramatic change.

In most of the injustices that I have dealt with, the problem has been that the effect of a policy had the opposite effect of the intent of a policy. Once I explain they unintended consequences and propose a solution, I usually get quick results, by thoroughly researching the issue, by clearly articulating exactly what the problem is and exactly what solution is needed, and by not being intimidated by threats of retaliation by government officials.

Almost everybody wants to be popular. The quickest way to be popular is to do what everybody else is doing, even if it is wrong or unjust. I’ve never been that way. I don’t stick my finger to the wind to see which way it’s blowing when deciding my values. I decide what’s right, even if nobody else feels that way. Then, I persuade others as to the merits of my position or positions. That’s what leadership is all about. Leadership is not about doing things the way everybody else does it, just because they are doing it that way. Leadership is about earning respect by being the only one who feels a certain way and persuading others that they should do things that way, too. If I have a choice between being popular or being respected, I’ll choose being respected. Then, from respect will come even greater popularity than if I had just done things the wrong way the way everybody had always been doing things.

When I became a prominent social activist twenty-two years ago, I was very unpopular. Besides advocating for unpopular causes, such as challenging special rights for Christians to have the government endorse their religion by doing such things as putting Christian crosses on city seals, I was an atheist. Back then, people thought atheism was synonymous with communism and being unpatriotic. Over the years, I’ve earned respect for atheists by demonstrating that atheists are America’s true patriots and model citizens. We’re the ones who are demanding and ensuring that the government support our Constitution and abide by its provisions. We’re not trying to take your religion away from you. We just want government to leave all citizens alone with respect to our theological opinions.

Through very hard work and persistence, I have succeeded, along with the efforts of Celeste, Rick and Dawn, in creating the perfect family.

Celeste is the perfect wife, perfect in every way. Nobody has ever loved anybody as much as I love Celeste. If everybody had a spouse like Celeste, there would never be another divorce, anywhere. When I asked Celeste to marry me, she said, "Oh, Robbie, I want to make you so happy!" Every day and in every way, that’s exactly what she’s done. Naturally, not to be outdone, I try to do even more to make Celeste happy than she does for me, so it’s constant competition to see who can be nicer, kinder, more helpful, considerate and understanding to the other person than the other person is to the first person. This doesn’t happen by accident. It is a constant, conscious effort to treat the other person like royalty and the best one possibly can do. As a result, we’re still on honeymoon, thirty years later.

Fortunately, our children subscribe to exactly these same values.

Rick is the perfect son. He’s happy, loves his Mom, sister and me, and is able to support himself nicely, financially. He was accepted to four Big Ten universities, and graduated from Wisconsin in Madison. Rick is twenty-six and lives in Kane County. He and I talk on the phone several times per week. We get together at least once a month, and it’s always hugs and kisses when we greet and depart.

Dawn is the perfect daughter. She ranked Number One in the Freshman Class at Buffalo Grove High School last year. Any time I ask her to do anything, she not only does it, she runs to take care of it. Then, she reports back to me that she’s finished the task and asks if there’s anything else that she can do for me. What a great daughter!

It’s about successfully selling members of my family on a certain set of values. We are a team. We not only have an obligation to treat each other the best we possibly can. It’s about reciprocity. If I treat you the best that I possibly can, and you treat me the best that you possibly can, without keeping score, then we are most likely to be very happy and very successful.

Question: List your three most significant post-election goals.

Require lap and should seat belts on all school buses, enact my agenda on tax policy and enact my agenda on transportation issues.

Every time there is a side-impact or roll-over collision of a large school bus, our children get injured, maimed or killed. Usually, everybody on the bus gets hurt badly.

How come seat belts aren’t required on school buses? It’s because kids don’t vote nor make campaign contributions, so they don’t have the clout to get their safety protected.

I will be their clout.

The industry promotes compartmentalization as a cost-saving scam. Have you ever seen clothes tumbling in a clothes dryer? That’s what really happens with compartmentalization. Compartmentalization fails 100% of passengers, 100% of the time.

Apologists for the industry have mastered the art of faking out legislators and school officials into thinking that seat belts are dangerous for passengers and would cut seating capacity. Modern school bus seats with lap and shoulder seat belts have flexible seating properties. The same seat automatically switches from accommodating either two passengers or three passengers, depending on the size of the passengers. Kids wear seat belts every day in cars, so the assertion that kids will injure themselves by wrapping the belts around their necks is preposterous.

If we can afford seven hundred billion dollars to bail out the wealthy, we can afford a few dollars per year to save kids lives by putting seat belts on our school buses.

The Number One way to reduce taxes is by eliminating grants. A grant is where one party gets a benefit and everybody else gets stuck with the bill. A grant is requested when somebody wants the benefit, but doesn’t want it badly enough to pay for it themselves, so they seek to stick everybody else with the cost by getting a grant. I will end grants. If a local party or government wants something, get the money for it from their own taxpayers, rather than sticking everybody else in the state with the cost. By eliminating grants, we will eliminate unnecessary tax expenditures. As a result of my plan, taxes will go down.

We must also eliminate sales tax rebating. That’s a tax scam in which the retailer who collects sales taxes from you uses extortion with the municipality to keep most or all of the municipal portion of the sales tax. The way that the extortion scam works is that the big box retailer tells a municipality that, if they don’t allow the business to keep most of the sales taxes, the business will cut a deal with the next town and move there, and then the first town won’t get any of the sales tax dollars. The municipality usually falls for this scam, and the sales tax that you pay to the big box store ends up going to the store’s corporate profits. This is pure, blatant tax fraud. I’m going to stop it when I get elected.

In addition, I'm going to get legislation enacted that would cap the county's portion of sales tax at 1%. Todd Stroger has made it explicitly clear that he is willing to destroy the business climate in the suburbs, if that's what it takes to generate additional tax revenue from those who live too far from the county border to make it worth the trip to the next county to save on sales taxes. We may not be able to split up Cook County, but we certainly can limit Todd's ability to put suburban stores out of business by making them uncompetitive with similar businesses in neighboring counties.

The incumbent has supported extending Route 53 into Lake County and getting seat belts on school buses, but has failed to get the legislation enacted. I will succeed where he has failed by building a coalition of legislators who will insist that these problem be resolved. Traffic is paralyzed in the region on a daily basis, the same way that it was paralyzed on a temporary basis on the expressways that flooded in September of this year. Every day, we have a flood of excess traffic in Arlington Heights, Palatine, Buffalo Grove and Lake Zurich because Long Grove and Hawthorn Woods want no traffic at all in their towns. I will get that changed.

We can improve safety and actually lower speeds on Interstate Highways by raising the speed limit to 75 mph. Because the speed limit is artificially low and not based on safety, motorists zoom along at 80 to 100 mph. They figure that the posted speed is unreasonably low, and since they are not going to obey the speed limit, anyway, they are going to go as fast as they want. By setting the speed limit at a higher speed that is still safe and reasonable, motorists are much more likely to comply with that speed limit by figuring that it's not worth risking a ticket for just 5 or 10 mph more. Also, with the higher limit, people will get to their destinations sooner, so fewer drivers will be falling asleep at the wheel from the trip taking much longer than it should.

I'll sponsor legislation to widen major roads that are still one lane in each direction.

Do you think Illinois should hold a Constitutional Convention? What would you change in the state constitution?

Yes. The first thing that I'd change is for the new constitution to ban property taxes. Property taxes are not based on your ability to pay, but rather on how much of one particular asset. This tax is particularly unfair to the elderly, who may have no income from which to pay such a tax, and also to taxpayers who are not wealthy. If you are not rich, your home may be 100% of your investment assets. If you are wealthy, with stocks, bonds and other investments, your home may reflect only a very small portion of your assets. It's wrong to assess a tax against 100% of the assets of the poor, while at the same time assessing a tax on a very small percentage of the assets of the wealthy. I propose we either tax all of a person's assets equally, or else we not tax assets at all. I'd even go so far as to reverse the property tax process by exempting your home from asset taxation and taxing all of a person's investment assets except your home. In the alternative, I would propose replacing the property tax with a local income tax. "Local income tax" means that the money would go to the local taxing bodies, just like your property tax money goes there now. That way, we would not be sending that income tax money to Springfield for distribution across the State.

Next, the new constitution should ban waivers by the government. A waiver is where the government, such as a park district or public school, requires you to sign a statement saying that you agree to waive any and all claims, as a condition for participating in a government program. You should have the right to seek redress against the government in court for any wrongs that they inflict upon you, regardless of whether it was done intentionally or not. These waivers are merely lawyer tricks to fake you out of your civil rights. I will ban that lawyer trick.

A defendant in a criminal trial should have the right to a trial by a fair and impartial judge. Our state's attorneys want to win, so they do everything they can to ensure that the judge is not fair nor impartial. How do they do that? What they do is get as many of their own prosecutors as possible appointed as judges so that cases that are being presented by a lawyer from the state's attorney's office is being adjudicated by a lawyer who worked for the very same office. It's a classic conflict-of-interest scam to ensure a conviction, regardless of the facts or the law. I propose that the new constitution prohibit judges who worked as lawyers for the state's attorney's office from hearing cases that are being presented by the state's attorney's office. Similarly, judges who worked as lawyers for the public defender's office should not hear cases that are being defended by the public defender's office.

In addition, the new constitution should ban excessive jury fees. Another one of the scams that lawyers for the government use to defraud citizens out of their right to have a jury decide their case is to establish jury fees that exceed the cost of being falsely convicted. As an example, you are the victim of an unjust parking ticket. The fine for being coerced into a false confession may be one hundred dollars. If you go to trial and lose, because the job of the judge is to raise revenue, not ensure justice, the fine may be two hundred dollars plus forty-four dollars, or a total of two hundred forty-four dollars, but you want a jury trial because you are completely innocent. The county, however, has set the jury fee at two hundred fifty dollars, so the cost of affirming your innocence exceeds the cost of being falsely convicted, and that's no accident. The jury fee is intentionally set higher than the cost of being falsely convicted to ensure that you won't have meaningful access to a jury. This is yet another reason why our court is widely regarded as a house of fraud. I want the new constitution to ban these kinds of scams.

I also want the new constitution to ban elections during winter. There is a reason why primary elections are held during winter, and we all know what that reason is: It's to hold down the turnout by making it as difficult as possible to get to the polling place. The coldest three weeks of the year are the last two weeks in January and the first week in February, so why do we hold our primary elections in the first week of February? We don't have to put up with that. Let's require that the primary take place when the weather is decent, at least in those years in which there is no presidential contest.

As a secular American, I want the new constitution to be a secular document. The new constitution should not have in its preamble a reference to any god. There is no god. God is make-believe. If somebody wants to believe that there is a god, that's their private business, but the new constitution should not be taking sides regarding whether or not there is a god floating around in the sky. Let's keep the new constitution completely secular.

Would you support the appointment of an independent group to set priorities for capital spending projects in the state so spending would not be based on political decisions? Why or why not?

No. Absolutely not. That's why we elect legislators, to make those decisions. Besides, who would appoint the members of this supposedly "independent" group? The persons who would be appointed to the group would be appointed specifically to rig the process in favor of the interests of the person who appoints them. That's how politics are done in this country, so you won't accomplish anything by having a separate group supposedly acting independently.

The quintessential example of that is the United States Supreme Court. They are supposedly an independent group, yet anybody with a brain knows that the justices that are nominated by Republican presidents are the most biased conservatives that the president thinks that he can possibly get away with appointing and still get them confirmed.

Another great example of the flaw of that form of thinking is the Tollway Board. While they certainly are not a bunch of political extremists like the judges that Republican presidents appoint, this group suffers from a different malady: They are afraid to make a decision that isn't popular, so they are bound by paralysis. We all know that there is an urgent need to extend Route 53 through Lake County. It should go all the way to meet up with US 12 at the Wisconsin border, near Richmond, IL, and Genoa City, WI. As a result of refusing to extend the road, expressway traffic from Route 53, on a daily basis, floods the arterial streets of Arlington Heights, Buffalo Grove, Palatine, Lake Zurich and other nearby communities. The traffic that should be on those arterial streets then seeks to escape the traffic paralysis by diverting into neighborhoods, flooding those residential streets with traffic that has no business being there. What residents and motorists in other areas experienced for a few days in mid-September when the Edens, 80/94 and other expressways were completely blocked by flooding, that's what the residents of the 53rd District and elsewhere experience, every day of the year, solely as a result of having all of the lanes of the Route 53 expressway through Lake County being blocked, perpetually, by NIMBYs. When we go to the Tollway Board to urge them to Build 53 now, they duck and dodge by saying that they are waiting for a consensus. While there certainly is consensus amongst every single motorist who crawls along, needlessly, day after day, on Rand Road, Lake-Cook Road, Route 83, Dundee Road and other roads in the area of Route 53, the NIMBYs in Long Grove and Hawthorn Woods are never going to join a concensus that the road should be built through their communities, even though they have no problem driving their SUVs through our communities when it suits them. What we need is somebody who has the guts to take a stand and make the tough decision to build the project, but who also has the skill to successfully build a coalition in the General Assembly to get that decision enacted into law. The person who has both talents, guts and skill, to get the job done, is me, and not some "independent group" who doesn't have to answer to voters.

We also can't seem to get that "independent group" known as the Tollway Board to act, now, to widen to four lanes in each direction the Jane Addams (Northwest) Tollway, despite the fact that traffic there, too, is paralyzed on a daily basis, particularly at its junction with Illinois 53 / Interstate 290. The Tollway Board is asking, in a survey of its customers, which of four other options that motorists are willing to accept: Pay up to $3 per toll in a congestion pricing scam (out of the question!), substantially shift your time of travel to before rush hour or after rush hour (we need to travel when we need to travel), divert to local roads (they are already saturated. We don't need another mess on local roads like we have near Route 53 and Lake-Cook), or take transit (if transit was going where we're going, we'd be taking it, already). None of those options are acceptable. The Tollway is widening every other one of its roads that need widening. We need I-90 widened, too, and I'm the person to sponsor and get enacted legislation that would widen that road. Stop holding hundreds of thousands of motorists hostage for a potential Star Line that isn't likely to be built and shouldn't be built.

Another reason to not annoint an independent group is budgetary considerations. One of the absolutely most important priorities of a legislator is to establish and decide budgetary priorities. That's why we vote for particular candidates -- to decide how much money to spend, where it should be spent and how to raise the revenue to pay for it. I don't want some unelected bureaucrat to make those decisions. That's the responsibility of legislators. When I become the next State Rep for the 53rd District, I will personally take responsibility for tough decisions about which capital spending projects should be built and paying for them by cutting spending elsewhere.

Describe your views on expanded gambling in Illinois. Should a casino be located in Chicago? Should it be owned by the government or a private entity? Should all casino licenses be awarded through competitive bidding?

The casino gambling industry portrays its product as serving dynamic, mostly young, aggressive, smiling, happy couples who just want to have some thrilling fun on an occasional basis. The reality is that the patrons or our riverboat casinos are, for the most part, a bunch of mostly older, dysfunctional cigarette zombies, who surely cannot afford to be throwing away their money like that. These poor people are having their mental illnesses intentionally exploited by casino management, to the maximum possible extent, for maximum profit. Management exploits their sicknesses by intentionally egging them on with tactics such as perpetual progression music. If you've ever wondered what the inside of a mental hospital looks like, this surely must be it. This is a sick, pathetic way for the State to generate revenue, by partnering with private industry to exploit the mentally ill.

Unfortunately, because governments in many states are parasites that suck money off of these kinds of people, these zombies will travel wherever they have to in this country to manifest their illnesses, so it's better for that money to be thrown away into our State treasury, rather than Indiana's or Nevada's or some other state. I would prefer if we didn't have any casinos, anywhere in the country, but as long as casinos surely are here to stay, let the zombies do it here, where we can at least use the money to help them when they decide that they've had enough of their psychoses.

I still oppose exploiting the mentally ill in this way.

Since they are going to throw away their money, anyway, on gambling, I would not oppose a casino in Chicago, where additional tax revenue is desparately needed, even though this revenue is grossly tainted.

However, I would want a Chicago casino to offer something other than just pathetic gambling. I would insist that a Chicago casino offer some real, top-of-the-line entertainment that would supplement the kind of entertainment that already is offered in a number of fine downtown venues. If we are going to have to suffer through yet another casino, let's at least put something in there that is positive and productive.

As such, any Chicago casino should be privately owned, not owned by the City. It's not the job of government to compete with private business. That's not fair to the existing casinos, because government could easily and unfairly undercut existing private business, since government is not in business to make a profit. It is also not government's job to decide what gambling machines to expose citizens to in a casino, and it's not government's job to decide what entertainment acts to offer in a non-family setting such as this. You also would have the problem of government competing against existing theaters and similar venues that offer entertainment, if a new Chicago casino did offer entertaiment.

Casinos always have restaurants, so you would have the additional problem of the government, either directly or indirectly, competing against private restaurants with the restaurants at the casino.

Any new casino license should, of course, be awarded by competitive bidding, but you just can't go out and rebid existing licenses. Once they have their licenses, they should be allowed to keep their licenses unless their license is revoked for misconduct or similar impropriety. The owners of these businesses, just like any other business, have put a lot of money into their businesses and have a lot of employees depending on the businesses for their livelihood. You can't just pull the rug out from under owners and employees on a whim, simply because re-bidding the license might generate more revenue in the short term. You would destroy the business climate by doing that, because business owners, such as myself, would be afraid to invest in their business for fear that the government would just walk up to you and take your business away, to give it to somebody else. You can't do that in America.

I also strongly oppose leasing the Illinois Lottery. The Lottery is a "Golden Goose" endowment to future generations, in that it promises regular, substantial revenue to each generation of Illinoisans. Each generation contributes to the Lottery and each generation benefits from its revenue. The proposal to lease the Lottery is a scam by incumbents to hijack all future revenue and consume it now, but stick it to future generations by creating a situation where they keep on paying, but don't get any of the benefits.

We've got to stop doing that in Illinois to our posterity. We've got to stop the cost shifting and debt dumping practices of spending more than we can afford and financing that spending by sticking future generations with our bills. The famous Wall Street meltdown is exactly what happens when government lives off of a credit card mentality and, all of a sudden, all of the credit cards max out. It's time to pay as we go and stop financing government with debt dumping.

Would you support a constitutional amendment to allow citizens to recall the governor, state lawmakers and other public officials? Why or why not?

I oppose a recall amendment. That's what we have elections, for.

First of all, there is a misconception that Illinois and America operate on a two-party system. There are many political parties in this country and in this state. I, for example, am the candidate of the Green Party in this race, and I expect to win. I'm not just running to be running. I am the best candidate and I should be selected by the voters to represent this district. However, what happens if the split, regardless of who wins, has each of the three candidates who are running getting between thirty and forty percent? Do we get to sabotage the winner and have a recall election, because the person who won got less than half of the votes so we can take away his victory with a recall? As such, I am totally opposed to my Green Party's "Instant Runoff Voting" proposal where, if your candidate came in last, you get to assign your vote to one of the remaining candidates until one person has more than fifty percent. Not me! That's not fair! That's not American! Whoever gets the most votes the first time around, wins, so vote carefully, because there is no second chance voting, as far as I'm concerned.

There is, however, a major flaw in our electoral process which I will fix when I get to Springfield. That flaw has to do with the nominating petition process.

In order to get on the ballot for State Representative in most districts, you need to get five hundred valid signatures if you are member of an "established" party. Green, Democrat and Republican are the three established parties in Illinois. If you are an independent candidate, you need about two thousand five hundred valid signatures. For State Senator, the number is double that. A valid signature is, essentially, a signature by somebody who lives in your district and is registered to vote. In order to make sure that you have enough valid signatures, the actual number of signatures that you need to get is two to three times the required number.

That's nuts! Virtually nobody has the time to do that, even if you would make the best candidate of all time! As a result, in about half of the districts in the State, the incumbent runs unopposed, because he can have his office employees get the signatures for him, knowing that they'll be out of their government jobs if they don't get enough nominating petition signatures.

That also means that the only true skill that one needs to possess, in order to be a legislator, is to master the skill of getting massive numbers of signatures on nominating petitions. That's nuts, too!

I circulated nominating petitions when I ran, two years ago, and let me assure you, even though I'm famous, for the most part, nobody knew who I was, what my name was or cared, when I asked them to sign my petition. Nobody knew what my position was on any issue or cared. When they signed, they still didn't know who I was or what I stood for. They just felt that, if somebody wants to run for public office, they shouldn't be stopped from getting on the ballot because of onerous signature requirements, so they signed.

This year, I didn't have to get any signatures because I was slated by the Green Party to fill their vacancy on the ballot. Currently, slated candidates don't need to file any nominating petitions, but the General Assembly is trying to change that with House Bill 5263. They not only plan to require slated candidates to get nominating petition signatures, they plan to require slated Established Party candidates to get the same number of signatures that an independent candidate would have to get. Why? There's only one reason. It's to keep slated candidates from getting on the ballot by making the task of getting enough nominating petition signatures essentially impossible.

That, too, is nuts.

When I get to Springfield as the next State Representative of the 53rd District, I will sponsor legislation that reduces the number of signatures required to get on the ballot to twenty-five or fifty, and require the candidate to get those signatures him or herself. Those are enough signatures to demonstrate that a candidate is serious, without intentionally running up the total for the sole purpose of making the hurdle to get on the ballot virtually impossible to overcome.

There is an additional reason that I oppose recall elections. That has to do with popular decisions. Sometimes, for the best interest of the constituency, an elected official needs to make a decision that is unpopular. Usually that occurs when the official has extensively studied an issue and considered a wide variety of factors that the general public is not aware of. The public hasn't seen all of the documents nor heard all of the expert testimony that was presented at hearings on the issue. The public, quite frankly, doesn't have the time to investigate all aspects of the issue. An official shouldn't risk being voted out for doing the right thing.

Illinois has lagged in the creation of private-sector jobs in recent years. What specific steps would you recommend to improve the economic climate of the state?

It all comes down to taxes. I would stop killing the job climate with high taxes on business.

Instead of chasing away business by being a state with one of the highest tax rates on business, I'd compete against the other states by making Illinois a place with one of the lowest tax rates on business. Then, instead of fleeing the state whenever possible, business would gravitate to Illinois. More business here would mean more jobs here. More jobs, here, would mean much more tax revenue.

How do we go about balancing the budget with less business taxes? By cutting the spending! Everybody wants a grant. Everybody wants funding, but they want somebody else to pay for it. Everybody wants to receive services from the government for less than it costs to provide it, and have government make up the difference by either debt dumping, which is sticking future generations with the bills for what we are spending now, or by cost shifting, which is sticking somebody else with the bill. That somebody else often is business. Business responds by saying that they don't have to put up with that, and they don't, so they leave. I will end the cost shifting and debt dumping that has destroyed the business climate in Illinois.

Corruption is a huge factor in convincing business that they are better off outside of Illinois. We all pay plenty in taxes, yet we can't get our roads widened, repaved or extended. Why not? Because instead of using the tax revenue to improve our infrastructure, the money is going to high, exorbitant salaries for the friends and families of elected officials, in particular the children of elected officials. Instead of using tax money to improve public buildings, the tax money is being donated to the favorite churches of elected officials. You know that I'll put a stop to that one.

We also have a huge problem with an entitlement mentality in Illinois. Many people could care less about the fiscal impact on the rest of us of their lifestyle choices. They feel that they are entitled to have as many children as they want regardless of how old they are or whether they are married, have a roof over their head, food to eat, medical care and other services, despite never contributing to the tax base and having no intention of ever contributing to the tax base. Business gets stuck with picking up a large part of the cost of providing maintenance to these individuals, and they don't want to be taken as suckers, so they leave.

As the next State Representative of the 53rd District, I'm going to implement real change -- dramatic change. We need to intensify the teaching to our children of exactly what the fiscal impact is of various lifestyle choices and teach them what their fiscal responsibilities are to the community. We won't be able to convince everybody to live a fiscally responsible life, but through fiscal responsibility education, we certainly can substantially reduce the harm done to Illinois' business climate by personal decisions which many people simply may not be unaware is generating massive costs that we can't afford and that our competitors are not incurring.

The Number One way in which we can improve the economic climate in Illinois is to build 53. Traffic throughout northwest Cook County and the southern half of Lake County is absolutely paralyzed during morning and afternoon rush hours by traffic, as a result of not having yet built Route 53 through Lake County. Traffic to and from the South that should be on Route 53 in Lake County instead uses the Tri-State. That overloads the Tri-State, but it also overloads the east-west highways in southern Lake County and Northern Cook County by excess traffic that is trying to cross over from the Tri-State to where Route 53 should be. We need to just say no to the NIMBYs and get the road built. We are choking on traffic up here. It is causing severe damage to the economic climate, here, because business people are sitting in traffic instead of moving quickly to where they need to go.

We also need to get the CN-EJE rail deal approved. The hysteria of the NIMBYs is baseless. It would only take a couple of minutes for a freight train to clear a crossing. That's little more than one red light in street traffic. The anti-EJE NIMBYs claim that it would be the end of the world if they had to deal with a handful of additional freight train traffic, but it's no problem at all if those same trains were to continue traveling through the 53rd District. The NIMBYs feel that they should be able to fully utilize their own property for its intended purpose, but that it is unacceptable for the railroad to utilize, just a little more fully, their property for its intended purpose. I have testified in support of the CN-EJE deal at several of the Surface Transportation Board hearings and will continue to do everything that I can to ensure that this reasonable, common sense solution to our are train transportation situation is implemented.

Should state government provide health care for all citizens? What specific reforms in health care do you recommend?

No. I don't want government to provide me with health care and I'm sure most people in Illinois prefer to make their own arrangements. In addition, the cost for health care for those of us who live our lives responsibly is much lower if those who engage in stupid behavior, such as smoking, pay for their own health care.

Too many people simply wait until they have a medical crisis to get into the health care cost sharing and risk management pool known as insurance. They refuse to pay to be part of the pool when their health is OK, but then want the rest of us to include them in the pool when they do have a big health expense. It's no different than car insurance. Automobile insurance companies would go broke, immediately, if everybody waited until they had an accident, and then wanted to pay five hundred dollars to get fifty thousand dollars in benefits. It doesn't work that way in auto insurance and it shouldn't work that way in health insurance.

If you want health insurance, join a pool, which means buy insurance, when you're healthy. Then, if you do encounter a need for a claim, you are entitled to coverage. This even applies to newborns, because their parents can buy into the pool before they start making the baby.

Otherwise, if you want to wait on getting into an insurance pool until after you have a need for medical services, you can sit around waiting for basic service at a public health clinic.

This, too, is another case of cost shifting and debt dumping. There is ample opportunity in this state and in this country to join an insurance pool before you get sick. You can choose to gamble with your money by waiting on when to get into the pool, but you shouldn't be allowed to gamble with everybody else's money by having everybody else pick up your risk after you have declined to pick up your share of the cost when we were at risk.

We also need to do much more with educating our children about the fiscal impact of their lifestyle choices with regards to their health. Let our children know how much money it costs to remediate preventable problems, such as obesity, smoking, drinking alcohol, engaging in other recreational drug use, having unprotected sex outside of marriage, not using seat belts and flinging their bodies around in a manner that can result in injury.

We don't bother to educate our kids about these things. If we did, some of them would alter their behavior so that society, specifically other members of their health insurance risk pool, would incur less remediation health care costs.

A major health care initiative that I would get implemented is to require lap and shoulder seat belts on school busses. I commented, briefly, on this issue as being one of my three most significant post-election goals. Another one of the scams that apologists for the school bus industry pull is to say that "only" about ten children are killed each year in school bus accidents. That isn't much comfort for the parents of those ten kids, each year, particularly when those deaths, in almost every case, would have been easily prevented had the child been protected by a lap and shoulder seat belt system. They imply that the risk of death is the only risk. What they don't talk about, however, is the huge number of children who are injured, and the cost of medical treatment for the injured. By putting lap and shoulder seat belts on school busses, we would dramatically cut the cost to society of treating very preventable injuries. The apologists counter by saying that people like me are trying to prevent all risks in life, and you can't do that. They are simply trying to deceive you. What I am trying to eliminate are preventable risks, not all risks. Going to school on a school bus is a necessary risk. Traveling on a school bus without wearing a lap and shoulder seat belt is a preventable risk.

Another scam that apologists for the school bus industry use, which runs up our health care costs, is to talk about how many deaths there are per passenger mile traveled. With every other type of motor vehicle, the standard for safety is crash worthiness. That means, how well is a passenger protected when a crash occurs, rather than how many miles is a passenger likely to travel between crashes. The industry is scamming you by talking about mileage between crashes rather than crash worthiness when a crash occurs, and this is driving up our health care costs.

Finally, as a secular Illinoisan, I support stem cell research. We must not allow conservative religious fanaticism to block scientific investigation from taking place. This is a free country. You have a right to your opinion about religion, but with me as a State Representative, I'm not going to allow theology to block scientific research. You don't have to use the information that science discovers, but I'm not going to let you stop science from advancing because it may be incompatible with some radical theological premise.

How would you address the performance of public schools in the state? Do you support performance pay for teachers? A voucher system for school choice? An end to teacher tenure? Preschool for all children?

Teachers are doing an excellent job. I oppose performance pay, vouchers and an end to tenure.

Teachers should be focused on providing the best education possible to students, not competing against other teachers for a shrinking piece of a paycheck pie. The focus should be on what will result in the best educational benefit to one's students, not what will result in the best paycheck for one's self. I don't want teachers making classroom decisions based on the fact that one decision will result in more money for the teacher than another decision. Pay teachers fairly, and then let them teach. Eliminate the budgetary gimmicks and scams that would distract a teacher from where the focus should be: education.

The most important reason for this is that teachers should not be held accountable for what a student does outside the classroom. It's not the teacher's fault if a student doesn't go to bed on time and is too tired to learn when in class. It's not the teacher's fault if a student sits around watching TV or playing video games or basketball instead of hitting the books and getting one's homework done. It's not the teacher's fault if the student has a dysfunctional home life and is too depressed to get involved with one's educational development. That's not the teacher's fault. Don't blame the teacher for that by jerking the teacher around regarding the teacher's salary.

We already have school choice. This is America. If a family chooses to homeschool or send a child to a private school, the family has every right to do that. Go ahead. However, that family has no right to expect the government to pay for that choice, in whole or in part, with a voucher. There are many public services offered within the community. There are public libraries, public transportation, public parks, public schools, public food ("food stamps"), public health care and public housing. Most people choose to use some of those public services, but not all of them. Indeed, your life would be pretty miserable, or certainly not nearly as pleasant, if you chose to use only the freebies and never upgrade any part of your life to better quality private services. That being said, there is no rebate nor voucher for using a private service rather than a particular public service. I, for example, buy my own books and newspapers, have my own private car, motorhome and airplane, am a member of a private health club, which I think about going to, three times a week, buy and eat whatever food that I want (mostly healthy stuff, but some fancy stuff), have private health insurance and go to my own doctor, and live in my own house that I helped to pay for (thanks, mom and dad, for your assistance). However, my family and I do use the public library, transit, parks and schools. There is no rebate due for the public services that I don't use nor any entitlement to a voucher to help pay for the private services that I do use. The argument of many who use parochial schools is that they pay twice, once for the public schools and once for their private schools, and that, supposedly, is unfair. The reality, however, is that nobody gets a refund or subsidy, nor are they entitled to one, for the other public services that they don't fully or even partially use, so you have no right, whatsoever, to a voucher for a public educational service that you choose to not use.

Tenure is an important program to keep administrators from firing great teachers for reasons other than academic performance. Again, teachers should be free to focus on teaching, and not have to worry that they might lose their jobs because of office politics. There is a reasonable balance that allows a teacher to be terminated if the teacher isn't getting the job done, while protecting the teacher from getting dumped because a principal or district administrator doesn't like a teacher's religion, politics, sexual orientation or any of a wide variety of other non-academic excuses. Tenure helps to ensure that teachers are left alone with regards to non-academic, office politics reasons, while leaving open the possibility that if the teacher truly is not getting the job done, a change can be made.

Preschool is something that is very helpful for those who choose to participate, but not everybody wants to be dragged into such a program. The government and their schools will control enough of a child's time while growing up that some parents just want the government to leave them and their kids alone for the first few years of a child's life. There's nothing wrong with that. Preschool is offered in many communities, but no family should be forced to participate. There are enough opportunities for preschool for those that want it that all a family has to do is choose, before settling down and having your children, to live in a community that offers preschool, if that's what you are going to want for your kids. The government should leave the rest of us alone.

Would you support a tax increase to pay for transportation infrastructure? For public education? For expanded health care? For state pension liabilities? If so, what taxes should be raised and by how much?

No, no, no, no and none.

We are paying enough in taxes, already. No, that's not right. We are paying far too much in taxes. I'm going to change that. I'm going to reduce taxes while balancing the budget, not increase taxes. I'm going to do that by cutting spending. Substantially.

We got into this mess of paying far too much in taxes by engaging in debt dumping (not pay our bills but, instead, sticking future generations with the cost of paying the bills of past generations), cost shifting (sticking everybody else with the bill for someone else's benefits) and choosing to pay for things that are not the state's responsibilities. All of that is going to end when I become the next State Rep for the 53rd District, so we'll be able to afford to pay for the things that are the State's responsibilities, while charging lower taxes.

Transit systems have a source of revenue for their infrastructure needs: It's their customers. I don't see transit customers paying a tax on their fares to cover the cost of the roadways that their busses and trains operate on. They certainly aren't paying a tax on their fares to help subsidize the cost of highways for private motorists. Yet, private motorists are paying numerous taxes, including fuel tax, income tax and sales tax, to subsidize the cost of transportation services for transit riders. Private motorists are already paying far more than their fair share. It's time for transit riders to pick up all of any additional revenue that transit needs for its infrastructure upgrades.

Fuel taxes in Illinois are way too high. Anybody who travels interstate would have to be nuts to buy fuel in Illinois if they didn't have to. Our fuel prices are, generally, fifty cents per gallon above the price in surrounding states and elsewhere in the country. I will reverse that system. I will cut fuel taxes so that interstate travelers, and Illinoisans, will make Illinois the first place that they will want to buy fuel rather than the last place that they want to buy fuel. By lowering the gas tax, we will increase revenue by increasing sales in Illinois.

Regarding paying for public education, I (of all people) believe in the Golden Rule: He who has the gold, makes the rules. The General Assembly, with input from both relevant state agencies and from the education industry, should set a salary scale for teachers and administrators. (There's no reason why that scale can't vary for different parts of the state to reflect differing costs of living.) The State should then reimburse school districts for public education costs based on that salary scale. If a school district wants to pay teachers and administrators more, they can, but that cost would be on them, not the State. That's the way to get costs under control. The current system is backwards. Local school boards make unilateral decisions about salaries and benefits, and then expect the State, which has no say in the cost structure, to pay whatever bill the local school district comes up with when dealing with the local unions. That, too, is a big reason why our pension system is all messed up. I will change that. I will implement the Golden Rule in Springfield. Once we get spending under control, we will be on our way to balancing the budget with regards to educational expenses.

Health care is in a similar situation. All medical insurance companies negotiate rates with service providers, such as hospitals and doctors, for how much the insurance company is going to pay for each product or service that the medical service provider offers. The State must do the same thing, not only for the bills that the State is getting stuck with, but also in behalf of the uninsured, who don't have bargaining power with medical providers to get pricing other than full list retail. That's how to fairly control the cost of health care in Illinois, and that's the program that I will enact when I go to Springfield.

We need to cap pensions, plain and simple. We just don't have the money for these exorbitant high five and six figure pensions that many government workers are demanding. Pensioners who used to work for the government should definitely not live in poverty, but there is a big difference between a reasonable, affordable and fair pension and many of these gold plated pensions that some former government employees are squeezing out of taxpayers who make far less, working, than these pensioners are making in retirement. In addition, the pensions of local employees, such as school district employees, must become the burden of the local taxing body that they worked for instead of dumping that cost on state government. We just don't have the money for it at the state level. We must reduce future pension expenses of state government by having the agency that an employee worked for, cover the cost of that employee's pension. By ending cost shifting and debt dumping, we will begin to get our State budget under control.