McHenry County Blog

Earlier this fall, State Rep. Jack Franks took a self-financed trip to Cuba. He called it a “trade mission.”

Looking through old Google alerts for the Marengo Democrat, I found the most extensive description of the Caribbean adventure on the web site of the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago.

It not only identified some others who went with Franks (Reps. Karen May and Sara Feigenholtz), but revealed details of contacts with the 500-person Jewish community in Cuba.

Franks focused on the trade aspects of the trip, while May and Feigenholtz “slipped away for a visit with Adela Dworin, president of Temple Beth Shalom of Havana, Cuba, and David Prinstein, vice president of the temple.”

The story told of the two’s taking hard-to-obtain worship items, plus “medical and health care supplies,” reported to be scare in Cuba.

Human rights were also a topic of interest. An American Jewish contractor has been sentenced to 15 years in prison “for distributing satellite telephone equipment to Jewish groups in Havana.”

The article described the offense and “a crime against the Cuban State.”

“When asked if he had the opportunity to express the concerns of the Jewish community in Illinois about Gross to government leaders, Franks responded that as, co-chair of the mission, he wanted to stay focused on the core goal of increasing trade.”

He added that such diplomatic work should be left to the professionals.

The story ended with news that Franks and his family are going to Cuba this month on a humanitarian mission.

Herb Franks

Jack Franks

“In November, Franks will return to Cuba with his extended family on a humanitarian, rather than trade, mission. They will bring medicine, health care products, and supplies for the Jewish Youth Center in Havana.

“Herb Franks, Rep. Franks’ father, traveled to Cuba seven years ago on a mission which included stops with the Jewish community in Cuba and began to think then of a return trip as a family mission.”

The State Representative’s staffer thought the trip was scheduled for Thanksgiving week.

Jack Franks

WBBM’s John Cody interviewedState Rep. Jack Franks after his return from his trip to Cuba.

Franks estimated that within two years there could be over $1 billion in sales to the Communist regime within two years if the current trade embargo were lifted.

That embargo, he adds forbids the extension of credit to the Cuban government.

The rules now require cash on the barrel head.

And ships that dock in Cuba can’t come to a United States port within six months of doing so.

Cold War relics, Franks thinks.

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With the Jackie Kennedy tapes having been released this week I was thinking about hearing about the missile crisis while I was at Oberlin College near Cleveland in Ohio.

I was at Pyle Co-op next to Dascomb Hall. We were gathered around the black and white TV near dinner time as the crisis unfolded.

Despite having hidden under school desks at Middletown (New York) High School during 1956-58, this was the time in my life when I felt closest to war.

Jack Franks at reapportionment hearing that ended up fracturing McHenry County.

Paying his own way, McHenry County State Rep. Jack Franks is off to Cuba on a mission to boost Illinois exports, the Chicago Tribune is reporting.

He’ll be gone for almost a week, traveling with State Rep. Dan Burke.

Last September Franks accompanied  Burke on a trip to Ireland along with Sen. Pam Althoff, House Speaker Mike Madigan, Senate President John Cullerton (and maybe others).

Franks Chairs the Illinois House International Trade & Commerce Committee.

Governor George Ryan’s trip in 1999 to Cuba boosted exports to $650 million, the Tribune report.

Franks says it’s 1/10 that amount now.

The following is not McHenry County specific, but since we’ll be paying more per capita for Obama Care than your average United States taxpayer I thought it might interest you.

It’s a press release from Texas 8th District Congressman Kevin Brady and U.S Senator Sam Brownback.

Obama Care bureaucracy

Don’t you love the next Federal bureaucracies that will be created?

Meanwhile, moving in the opposite direction,

“Cuban President Raúl Castro announced a series of measures to gradually reduce the “considerably bulky” payrolls in the government sector, with excess estimated at around one-fifth of the economically active population.”

AMERICA’S NEW HEALTH CARE SYSTEM REVEALED

UPDATED CHART SHOWS OBAMACARE’S BEWILDERING COMPLEXITY

Washington, D.C. - Four months after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously declared

“We have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it,”

a congressional panel has released the first chart illustrating the 2,801 page health care law President Obama signed into law in March.

Developed by the Joint Economic Committee minority, led by U.S Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the detailed organization chart displays a bewildering array of new government agencies, regulations and mandates.

“For Americans, as well as Congressional Democrats who didn’t bother to read the bill, this first look at the final health care law confirms what many fear, that reform morphed into a monstrosity of new bureaucracies, mandates, taxes and rationing that will drive up health care costs, hurt seniors and force our most intimate health care choices into the hands of Washington bureaucrats,”said Brady, the committee’s senior House Republican.

“If this is what passes for health care reform in America, then God help us all.”

Brownback, the committee’s ranking member, added,

“This updated chart illustrates the overwhelming expansion of government control over health choices and the bewildering complexity facing everyone affected by this law.  It doesn’t take long to see how the recently signed health care bill causes a hugely expensive and explosive expansion of federal control over health care. Personal choices that should be between a doctor and a patient will quickly be strangled in a never ending web of bureaucracy.”

Senate Steering Committee Chairman Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) called Obamacare

“a bureaucratic nightmare. The Democrats’ takeover of health care creates a byzantine network of 159 new federal programs and bureaucracies to make decisions that should be between just the patient and their doctor. It should concern everyone that at the center of this regulatory web is the new CMS chief, Donald Berwick, who has championed rationing and European socialized medicine. Americans were rightly outraged that this big government bill was rushed through Congress before anyone read or fully understood the bill’s consequences. Republicans will fight to repeal this reckless takeover and to ensure health care freedom to American families.”

In addition to capturing the massive expansion of government and the overwhelming complexity of new regulations and taxes, the chart portrays:

• $569 billion in higher taxes;
• $529 billion in cuts to Medicare;
• swelling of the ranks of Medicaid by 16 million;
• 17 major insurance mandates; and
• the creation of two new bureaucracies with powers to impose future rationing:the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute and the Independent Payments Advisory Board.

Brady admits committee analysts could not fit the entire health care bill on one chart.

“This portrays only about one-third of the complexity of the final bill. It’s actually worse than this.”