This morning I heard John Shimkus speak to the Springfield Citizens Club. He usually attends events for the Republican Party or specific organizations in Springfield, so this is the first time I've heard him speak to a general audience.
Many questions I could have asked went through my head but I decided to listen to him respond to others. He started the forum with a seemingly random introduction about John A. Logan and his family vacation. I found nearly everything he said after that to be uninformed and/or offensive.
In response to a question about his infamous comments on global warming he said that he's a Christian and people are attacking him for his beliefs because he quoted the Bible. I expected him to hide behind the cross, but his faith is not the issue. The issue is his complete failure to understand the problem (no one is claiming the world will be destroyed or completely flooded, as mentioned in Genesis) and his slavish devotion to energy industry special interests.
Several times he repeated what must be the fossil fuel industry line of attack, that a cap-and-trade system is a tax designed to put a price on carbon and enlarge government. What he fails to appreciate is that there's already a price for fossil fuel pollution which is being passed on to the public. A cap-and-trade plan would place the burden of paying those costs onto polluters in a market system. Of course, he made no mention of the taxpayer subsidies he supports for the coal and oil industries.
Shimkus has an interesting way of deflecting criticism of the fact that he caters to industry groups who are regulated by the Congressional committees he serves on. He pointed out that most people belong to a "special interest" group such as a union, the Chamber of Commerce or the AARP, so it's not fair to attack him for serving special-interest groups because everyone belongs to one.
It's disappointing that someone who holds public office makes no distinction between an industry special interest group that represents the narrow interests of corporate CEO's, and broad-based citizen groups that represent hundreds or thousands of human beings in his district. A Congressman should know the difference between lobbyists who represent dollar bills and lobbyists who represent actual citizens.
He probably got the most negative audible audience reaction when he repeated the typical talk-radio scare that a single-payer, government funded health insurance system is a bad idea because it will result in rationing and bureaucrats making decisions about health care. I heard several people muttering something about HMO's in response. Apparently, the fact that bureaucrats are currently rationing health care isn't an issue for Shimkus as long as it's being done by the private insurance industry.
Shimkus spoke several times about the need for voters to raise the bar of standards for public officials. I'd like to ask him how one raises the bar in a gerrymandered incumbent-protection district when the incumbent raises millions of dollars from corporate self-interest groups.
Hopefully, the next legislature will end the suffering of district 19 voters when they draw new Congressional maps for 2012. I haven't forgotten that state Democratic leaders agreed to draw Democrat David Phelps out of his district and put Shimkus in a heavily Republican district that he can't lose.
