The news may be chilling, but to people who know fish, it’s not surprising.

It’s chilling because the location is well beyond a multimillion-dollar “electric barrier” the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers installed in the Chicago Sanitary & Ship Canal several years ago. The barrier is supposed to block the fish from swimming up the canal and into Lake Michigan, where they could devastate the ecosystem.

It’s not surprising, however, because there is no way to keep Asian carp out of the lake, no matter how many millions of dollars governments spend trying.

The canal was completed in 1900 to reverse the flow of the Chicago River to carry Chicago’s wastewater away from the lake and eventually into the Illinois River. Until then, there was a natural barrier between the lake and river systems. The canal cut through that barrier to create a manmade link between Lake Michigan and the Illinois and Mississippi River systems. Shipping soon followed.

Asian carp were brought to this country about 40 years ago because they are voracious bottom feeders. Commercial catfish farmers in Mississippi used them to clean up their ponds.

Streams and rivers flooded into the ponds in the 1990s, and some fish escaped. Their offspring have spread hundreds of miles upriver. They multiply in huge numbers and bottom-feed on life forms near the bottom of the food chain—foods that small and young fish need to survive. The loss of those smaller fish means fish higher up the food chain have little to eat.

Even if the canal locks were closed, as environmentalists and officials in other Great Lakes states are demanding, it won’t matter. There are other ways for Asian carp to get into Lake Michigan.

You can bet some people would like to catch huge carp in Lake Michigan. They will be tempted to catch carp in a nearby river or canal and put them in the lake. They won’t care that it’s against the law.

In 2004 a fisherman caught a 45-pound Asian carp in the McKinley Park lagoon, some 30 miles from the canal. It was probably dumped there after having been caught somewhere else.

Waterfowl also play a part by flying from carp-infested waters, where sticky carp eggs can attach themselves to the birds, and then to Lake Michigan. There the eggs will fall into the lake to hatch. There’s no way to stop this.

Once the fish are established, there’s probably no way to control them.
They grow bigger than the salmon that have been put in Lake Michigan, so there’s no way the salmon can eat them.

Even if we could dump shiploads of the fish-killing chemical rotenone in the lake, it kills all fish, and Lake Michigan has many species that cannot be restocked. If by some miracle we could restock every native species of fish and other aquatic animal, the carp still would be lurking in nearby rivers and canals, ready to return to the lake.

Commercial fishermen could catch them, but how many fried carp dinners can restaurants sell? The fish could be used for fertilizer, animal feed, etc., but there are already other sources for these.

We could subsidize the catching and processing of Asian carp, but we’d probably end up with more dead fish than can be used, as tends to happen with subsidized products. And before long we’d have businesses defending the carp because the subsidies would create a carp constituency.

We are right to feel that chill up our spines. We should have felt it 40 years ago.

**

Steve Stanek (sstanek@heartland.org) is a research fellow at The Heartland Institute in Chicago who has been catching and studying fish as an avocation for nearly 50 years.

image Hiroshima Toyo Carp baseball logo

In addition to the restricted vouchers proposed by Sen. Meeks, other vouchers could target the needs of special education students. A tax credit for donations to scholarship organizations would encourage the development of privately funded school choice programs. A wider choice of public schools could be made available by allowing more charter schools and by permitting open enrollment across school district boundaries. Individual tax credits and property tax rebates would support choice and mitigate the double payment burden of parents who choose a non-public education for their child.

Sen. Meeks’ voucher proposal is not a panacea. But just as one size does not fit all in public schooling, one size does not fit all in school choice, either. Parents need a variety of options to choose from, and a single school choice bill cannot possibly address all those needs. But different programs could be designed to serve different purposes, namely:

Open enrollment would provide more choices for parents who want their children to remain in public schools. In Minnesota and Wisconsin, families can choose public schools across district boundaries without financial penalty.

Charter schools also would provide more choices within the public school system. Families in Arizona, California, and Michigan have many more charter schools available to them than families in Illinois.

An individual income tax credit for educational expenses already is available in Illinois, but it covers only 25 percent of expenses and is capped at $500 in total. By comparison, Minnesota’s education tax credit allows up to $1,000 per child and Louisiana’s educational tax deduction allows up to $5,000 per child.

Scholarship tax credits allow corporations and families to support private educational efforts by directing part of their tax liability to organizations that provide scholarships to private schools. Arizona, Florida, and Pennsylvania have well-established programs of this kind. Both scholarship and individual tax credits help support homeschoolers and private schools who are concerned about additional regulations that may accompany vouchers.

An individual property tax rebate for the amount paid in local education-related property taxes should be available to parents who send their children to a private school. This rebate would address the troubling issue of government suppression of First Amendment “Free Exercise” rights for parents who currently have to pay twice for education when they choose a religious school for their child. The rebate would include renters, who pay property taxes via their rent.

Special education vouchers are available for special needs students in Florida and allow parents to place their child in an alternative educational setting, using the full amount of funding the child would have received in the public schools. More than 20,000 students in Florida participate in this program.

School vouchers should be available to all children, not just those in failing schools. The voucher should be worth at least 75 percent of per-pupil public school spending, have an add-on option, and be phased in by local public school performance – worst first, as in Sen. Meeks’ plan.

Expanding school choice has many benefits: Devolving decision-making authority from school officials to parents gives citizens better control over the government of their schools. Having a variety of different schools strengthens communities by attracting a diverse resident population. Best of all, school choice increases freedom.

**

George A. Clowes is a Senior Fellow for Education Policy at The Heartland Institute, a 25-year-old public policy organization based in Chicago

image Manchester (UK) Reform Club

Damages fall into two categories: economic and noneconomic.  Economic damages involve lost funds. Predicting future losses can be difficult. How many years will the plaintiff live? How much money would he have earned? What medical care would she have needed? Expert witnesses are required, and they are expensive. But it can be done, and it should be done.

No one should go uncompensated for economic losses caused by malpractice. But there is no need for expert witnesses, just a flair for the dramatic, when it comes to noneconomic damages. Take now-disgraced 2004 Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards. According to The New York Times, here is what he said during his closing argument in one baby case: “She said at 3, ‘I’m fine.’ She said at 4, ‘I’m having a little trouble, but I’m doing OK.’ Five, she said, ‘I’m having problems.’ At 5:30, she said, ‘I need out.’” The obstetrician, Edwards argued, should have immediately performed a Caesarean section, but did not. As a result, the baby’s brain was damaged, Edwards said. “She speaks to you through me,” Edwards went on. “And I have to tell you right now—I didn’t plan to talk about this—right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She’s inside me, and she’s talking to you.” The jury returned a verdict of $6.5 million. No sweat.

That’s the tactic the Illinois Supreme Court endorsed last Thursday. It’s important to note the law involved no cap on actual damages, only noneconomic damages such as pain and suffering. There is no established method, either in the law or in reality, to calculate such damages. How does one calculate the monetary amount attributable to pain? Or suffering?

In cases brought to trial, emotion prevails. Plaintiffs’ lawyers say noneconomic damages are needed to compensate victims fully in case future medical expenses and other economic damages exceed projections at trial. That’s why some states, such as Wisconsin, pay all actual such future expenses if plaintiffs turn over to the state the funds they win in litigation, even if this money is insufficient to cover actual future costs. This was done in return for caps.

It’s a sensible system because victims are fully compensated. But huge payoffs of millions of dollars to a few victims is not money well spent, despite the court’s ruling. The birthing process is medically difficult. Bad things can happen because of the mother’s behavior, her genetics, mere happenstance, or medical mistakes. The right thing to do is to compensate actual malpractice victims. Make them whole. Pay their actual medical losses. Keep them as healthy as modern medicine can. But the wrong thing to do is to compensate a few of these victims with windfall verdicts. The latter is what the Illinois Supreme Court endorsed last week.

**

Maureen Martin (mmartin@heartland.org) is an attorney and senior fellow for legal affairs at The Heartland Institute. image Reform Club London, Pall Mall

Thirty-five years ago, former Illinois Gov. James R. Thompson (R) was U.S. Attorney in Chicago, and his wife-to-be, Jayne Carr, was one of his top aides. They were married shortly before he was elected to the first of his four terms as Illinois governor in 1976. She then left the federal prosecutor’s office and went into private practice with a Chicago law firm.

She soon left that job as well, citing potential conflicts of interest. Any firm employing her was ineligible for legal work awarded by the state. And while she was bringing substantial business to the firm she joined, she said at the time she never knew if clients sought her services based on her legal skills or as a way to make backdoor (though perfectly legal) donations to her husband to indirectly influence his official actions. So she quit.

In 1983, then-U.S. Sen. Charles Percy (R-IL) offered to nominate her for a federal judgeship. “The ensuing furor was not only publicly embarrassing, it killed one of Jayne Thompson’s professional dreams,” that of becoming a judge, the Chicago Tribune reported at the time.

With conflicts of interest tainting private practice and public office, she stopped working at all for many years.

Hillary Clinton had the exact same conflicts as Jayne Thompson, but she handled them quite differently. For many years, while she was First Lady of Arkansas, she was employed by the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock and became that firm’s first female partner. The firm was known as a state lobbying powerhouse at the time, and Hillary Clinton routinely represented clients before state officials under the supervision of her husband, the governor. She also served on the boards of Wal-Mart and other Arkansas corporations.

Famously, James McDougall of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan hired Mrs. Clinton in 1983 at the urging of her husband, Gov. Clinton, and she represented the S&L in proceedings before state regulators, as well as other issues. Later, Madison Guaranty became embroiled in much regulatory and legal controversy involving the Clintons and state and federal bank regulators, while Bill Clinton was governor and later President.

From many accounts, Hillary was an accomplished lawyer, but we’ll never know for sure how many clients hired her because of her legal skills and how many hoped to influence her husband—or had a mixture of both motives. And we’ll never know whether and how much special interest money was funneled into the Clinton’s joint coffers.

That’s the problem. It’s a problem for professional people in romantic relationships with politicians, and it’s a problem for the public because of conflicts of interest, perceived and actual.

All told, however, I’d rather that Max’s girlfriend get the public job, because the conflict is out there for all to see. Better the devil you can see than the devil you can’t.

**

Maureen Martin (mmartin@heartland.org), an attorney, is senior fellow for legal affairs at The Heartland Institute.

image Slavic Crone Baba Yaga rides a pig and fights the infernal crocodile

About the Scandal

Warmist Conspiracy Exposed?
Andrew Bolt * Herald Sun (Australia) * November 20, 2009
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/
comments/hadley_hacked#63657

Climategate: The Final Nail in the Coffin of ‘Anthropohenic Global Warming’?
James Delingpole * London Telegraph * November 21, 2009
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/ 100017393/
climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/

The Death Blow to Climate Science
Dr. Tim Ball * November 21, 2009
http://www.heartland.org/full/26409/The_Death_Blow_to_Climate_Science.html

Presto! Alarmist Emails Not Such a Big Deal
Paul Chesser * American Spectator * November 21, 2009
http://spectator.org/blog/2009/11/21/presto-alarmist-emails-not-suc

The Evidence of Climate Fraud
Marc Sheppard * American Thinker * November 21, 2009
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/the_evidence_of_climate_fraud.html

Continuously Updated ‘ClimateGate’ News Round Up
Marc Morano * Climate Depot * November 21, 2009
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/3943/Read-All-About-it-Climate-Depot-Exclusive–Continuously-Updated-ClimateGate-News-Round-Up

Elsewhere in the Enviro-Activist Mediasphere
Paul Chesser * American Spectator * November 21, 2009
http://spectator.org/blog/2009/11/21/elsewhere-in-the-enviro-activi

Hackers Leak E-mails, Stoke Climate Debate
David Stringer * The Associated Press * November 22, 2009
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/
ALeqM5ikaqlFpp9jCRHWN0zNuamKXfyeMgD9C441LG0

Climategate: An Opportunity to Stop and Think
Joseph Bast * The Heartland Institute * November 23, 2009
http://www.heartland.org/full/26407/
ClimateGate_An_Opportunity_to_Stop_and_Think.html

Three Things You Absolutely Must Know About Climategate
Iain Murray * Pajamas Media * November 24, 2009
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/three-things-you-absolutely-must-know-about-climategate/

But a more obvious activist effort is circulating in high schools of five of the nation’s major metropolitan areas, including Chicago—and it’s all in favor of a particular political interest. Students are hearing that we face a “planetary emergency” due to global warming. Despite copious evidence to the contrary—dropping temperatures, record Antarctic ice extent, cooling oceans, a heat bias in measuring instruments—the Alliance for Climate Education wants teens to help fight the allegedly devastating effects of climate change.

The group advances its cause one high school assembly at a time. A recent email from Annie Laurie Cadmus, an ACE educator, to the Rockford Board of Education offered schools “at no cost … exciting science-based multimedia presentations on climate education.” ACE’s propaganda reportedly has been welcomed in Naperville schools also.

Why is this free? Because ACE is the brainchild of its wealthy creator and president, Michael Haas, who owned a wind energy firm that was bought out in 2006 by petroleum giant BP. He’s still in charge of the firm, apparently with a healthy salary. Records show he gave $4,600 to President Obama’s campaign in March 2008 and $20,000 to the Obama Victory Fund last October. It shouldn’t surprise us that Haas supports individuals who propose initiatives that help his bottom line.

With ACE he’s targeting the next generation. Young eco-activists with performing arts skills make the presentations, which are fine-tuned with spiffy animation and a hip monologue. But their tales are spun with falsehoods such as “we’ve lived through the ten hottest years on record” (actually, 1934 was the hottest) and that greenhouse gas emissions are jacking up the global thermostat “way too high.” It’s one-sided hyperbole intended to shape impressionable minds.

ACE, which also has targeted the San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, and Boston areas, aims to reach 140,000 students by the end of this year. Its goal is to get students active in dubious (at best) global warming alarmism, demonize fossil fuels, and push alternative energy sources—such as wind, Haas’s moneymaker.

Unfortunately, many teachers and administrators are all too willing to let this biased bunch extract students from classes and force-feed their pap. If parents want their kids to know the truth about global warming, they should visit the Web site of the Chicago-based Heartland Institute for the rest of the scientific and economic story behind the issue.

**

Paul Chesser is a special correspondent from the Heartland Institute

Image Hyde Park High School

For a sneak peak at what lies ahead, look at the city where Barack Obama cut his teeth first as a community organizer then as a state legislator, then as U.S. Senator: Chicago. Extortion, bribery, back scratching, and nepotism are all coins of the realm in Chicago. It’s how business gets done.

It’s been going on since the days of Al Capone and isn’t much better today. Except today it isn’t confined to bootleg whiskey, prostitution and the numbers racket. No, today it involves hospital construction, the state Medicaid program, and other areas that have yet to be exposed.

Take Medicaid, the federal/state program to provide health care coverage to the poor. In 2005, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich decided to take personal credit for the program as his re-election campaign was gearing up. So he used state funds to send a letter to each of 236,000 recipients explaining how glad he was that he was able to help them in their time of need.

The gambit worked so well that two years later he decided to expand Medicaid to an additional 717,000 people at a cost of $463 million.  The state legislature decided the state couldn’t afford it and voted it down, so he used his “executive authority” to do it anyway.

Medicaid is a good way to garner votes, but what good are votes if you can’t get any money out of it? People on Medicaid don’t have the money to enrich a politician. That kind of dough has to come from people with business interests before the state. Not to worry. As governor, Mr. Blagojevich had the power to appoint all the members of the state’s Health Facilities Planning Board, which must authorize any new services a hospital or nursing home would like to provide to the community.

In 2004, Edward Hospital in Naperville wanted to build another facility in Plainfield, but it was required to get approval from the state planning board. A member of the board told hospital CEO Pam Davis that the request would be denied unless she agreed to hire a specific company for the construction work. She alerted federal authorities and ended up wearing a wire for the FBI to gain evidence of the extortion.

The man she taped, Stuart Levine, was convicted and imprisoned as a result of the shake-down, but in 2008 the planning board rejected the application anyway, this time ostensibly because rival hospitals objected to have a competitor on their turf.

But also in 2008 Provena Health was approved for a new heart program by the board after it donated $25,000 to the governor’s campaign fund, and Children’s Memorial Hospital was threatened with the withholding of state funds unless the CEO ponied up $50,000 for the campaign fund.

The planning board also approved an application for a new proton-therapy cancer treatment center for Northern Illinois University, but denied one for Central DuPage Hospital. Who knows why? The Chicago Tribune editorialized that the whole process is “a vestige of a command-and control era of health care.”

The planning board was set to expire this year, but the politicians just can’t let go of something that delivers such power to them. So the legislature has not only extended it but expanded it – from five members to nine, all appointed by whoever happens to be governor. The abuses are not confined to the discredited governor Blagojevich, but will continue many years into the future.

It isn’t just Medicaid and health planning that are subject to this kind of corruption in health care. There is state insurance regulation. Which insurance companies get approved and which are denied? There are mandated benefits requiring coverage of certain services. How many campaign donations are required to get a particular service mandated on insurance customers? There is the state employee benefits program. How much money is paid out in bribes to get those contracts?

We are already seeing Chicago-style shenanigans in Washington as deals are cut with special interests to buy their support. What kind of deal did Obama make with PhRMA to secure its promise of a $150 million advertising campaign in support of ObamaCare? What threats were made to the AMA to get them on board?

If a bill passes that will just be the beginning of the corruption. There will be hundreds of commissions, panels, advisors, and thousands of bureaucrats, all with life or death power over private businesses. How well a business pleases its customers will take a back seat to how well it pleases the politicians.

Even beyond outright corruption, the whole premise of controlling the entire health care system from an office in Washington is, as the Chicago Tribune writes, “a vestige of a command-and control era of health care” that fails every time it is tried.

All of the rest of the world and all of the rest of the economy has entered an era of individual empowerment, choice and competition. This is not the time for “standardized” treatment, but customized care, where we each get the treatment that is precisely tailored to our individual needs.

The world of health care is bursting with innovation, both in treatment and in service delivery. This is not the time to slam the breaks on new ideas by imposing old-style bureaucratic influence peddling.

**

Greg Scandlen is director of Consumers for Health Care Choices (CHCC), national nonprofit organization devoted to empowering health care consumers to preserve individual freedom and the quality of care in America’s health care system. CHCC is a  project of the Chicago-based Heartland Institute. This article will be posted on Scandlen’s Web site, http://www.chcchoices.org/ Aug. 26, 2009.

image St. Anthony Hospital Chicago, 19th and Marshall, Architect Henry J. Schlacks