Former state Sen. Martin Sandoval has pleaded guilty to bribery which, besides cash payments, allegedly included $20,000 annually in campaign contributions from a red-light company.
The campaign contributions would have been perfectly legal as long as neither party explicitly stated what was wanted or would be done in return.
Politicians and big donors at all levels of government have mastered the art of avoiding explicit quid pro quos while being fully aware that big donations will be rewarded, and when they are, more will follow.
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In a perverse alignment of incentives, politicians often calculate that they will gain more from big contributions, which they can turn into advertising, than they lose from whatever public awareness there is of where the contributions came from. Candidates who do not take big contributions can be hard-pressed to get their message out.
If we want government to work in a straight-forward way for all people, it is essential to get big money out of politics and have public funding of election campaigns.
We have seemingly become inured to institutionalized corruption. Gun, pharmaceutical, insurance and financial interests continue to get their way thanks to big donations. But towering above this business-as-usual corruption is the harm from fossil fuel companies whose contributions are blocking federal action and world leadership against global warming.
Richard Barsanti, Western Springs
Lots of news, but little knowledge
I’m showing my age, but growing up in suburban Chicago, almost everyone I knew had and used at least two news sources: The daily paper and the evening broadcast news. Many families also subscribed to local newspapers.
Even if you disagreed with the inherent bias in the newspaper, the news it delivered was generally factual. The same for the evening news.
In short; most adults had at least a basic knowledge of what was going on in their world, locally and beyond.
Now we have the internet and cable, much of which doesn’t just skew left or right, but anchors itself solidly to the left or right fringes and consider facts subjective and opinions as facts.
Even worse, it seems that many people now tie themselves to a single source for their news, ignoring or not caring if there are other sides to important issues.
It bears repeating that “The internet is the greatest source of Information in the history of mankind while also being the greatest source of misinformation in the history of mankind!”.
We live in a world of willful ignorance, where too many have abdicated their responsibility (let alone their right) to think for themselves. We even elect willfully ignorant leaders.
Maybe global warming is not just affecting weather patterns, but also thought patterns.
Jef Block, Buffalo Grove
