-By Warner Todd Huston
The 22nd State Senate District is being badly served by its incumbent Democrat Mike Noland. Several of the campaign fliers that Noland has sent out to his constituents are filled with half truths and untruths and one of his emailed campaign solicitations was listed as being sent from his taxpayer-funded offices in Springfield and Elgin, a violation of campaign finance laws.
In one flier, Noland claimed he “affected change” in three major areas – creating jobs, achieving ethics reform and fighting for tax relief.
Noland claimed he created jobs by being the chief sponsor of a microloan program for small businesses. But that fact is the bill he sponsored, while it did pass, had all the microloan language stripped from it before passage. As it happens Noland didn’t create a single opportunity as he claimed. His bill was materially altered making his flier claim an outright lie.
The same flier also claims that Noland got “$40 million and 500 jobs for Harper College.” But this is a half truth. While the state did include the $40 million in its future projects, the fact is no $40 has been allocated and the “future projects” plans are not assured to ever be funded. This project may never be funded at all so Noland’s claims are premature at the very least.
Noland made the same misleading claim with the “$18 million and 300 jobs for lifesaving access to St. Alexis Hospital at the I-90 interchange and Barrington Road.” Again, these projects may never be funded at all and have been merely placed on a list of future projects.
Noland’s opponent, Republican Steve Rauschenberger, is criticizing Noland for his misleading claims.
“Historically, the governor and legislators wait until they actually have money to release before they ‘claim’ projects. Given the current state budget situation, … there is significant risk that these projects may never be funded,” he said.
Noland’s latest flier claims that he “helped our local schools get $22 million dollars in additional funding,” but the fact is Governor Quinn vetoed this bill so Noland’s funding has been eliminated. Once again we see a Noland campaign flier full of lies and half truths.
Noland looks like a complete amateur here. Let’s hope that voters replace him with the more experienced Rauschenberger in November.
www.steverauschenberger.com
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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