The Polish champion of freedom and liberty, founder of Solidarity, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, and first President of modern Poland Lech Walesa had been rumored to possibly be traveling to New York to stand with Occupy Wall Street protesters.  Press accounts reporting this “breathless” news had given all of us pause.

We suspected that the European news media had filtered out accurate information about the genesis of Occupy Wall Street (OWS).

When Walesa’s comments hit the AP wire last week, my team immediately reached out to our Polish contacts.  We made the point that the political themes of Occupy Wall Street may have started out with some of the principles that we share, but OWS themes were rapidly being morphed into anti-freedom and anti-liberty messages.  At the core is the want for a big, powerful central government to dominate the lives of individual citizens.

Using biggovernment.com plus other news sources, rapidly we painted an accurate picture of the groups training, leading, and organizing the “movement.” The movement is organized by anarchists, Code Pink, the American Communist movement, jihadists, anti-Israel, socialist, and anti- free enterprise interests. OWS folks are politically to the left of President Barack Obama.

At the Lech Walesa Institute Foundation in Warsaw, they were thankful to receive this information.

Based on our discussion and intervention, President Walesa is not going to get involved with the OWS.  He is not comfortable with the “organizations” behind the movement.  It was not a difficult discussion. (more…)

Last month, the Chicago Tribune broke the story of a union leader who was re-hired for one day at the City of Chicago and then retired with a $158,000 city pension. Yesterday, the Tribune broke the story of the union leader accruing three pensions off of the same work credit: a city pension, a local union pension and a national union pension.  Combined, his annual pension income exceeds $400,000-  with anticipated lifetime benefit of $9 million.

There is debate as to whether these rotten scams could even be legal in Illinois!  But, we’ve discovered that sweetheart union leader access into our Illinois state pension system is an even larger scam.

On September 29^th, we broke this story nationally on the third largest conservative talk radio program: 34 union leaders who are not government employees are draining nearly $340 thousand per month from the state teachers’ pension system.

Last Sunday, the Illinois Statehouse News was the first Illinois newspaper to investigate.  No other newspaper has covered the statewide angle.

Former employees of the National Education Association (NEA), Illinois Education Association (IEA), Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT), and Illinois Association of School Boards (IASB), drawing pensions have collected more than $47 million from the Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS), to date.

It’s an on-going $47 million pension scam.  Union leaders who are not government employees are draining millions in teacher retirement pensions.

How did we unearth this pension abuse?

(more…)

Click here for the updated Palatine Village Manager Compensation Analysis.

As additional Freedom of Information Requests (FOIA) are fulfilled, here is the updated analysis of the Palatine Village Manager Compensation as compiled by a local Palatine resident. The estimated total annual compensation has increased to $355,514 (see link above).

The Palatine village manager out-earns every Governor from any of the 50 states!
Source: The Book of States 2010.

Because local governments are not proactively forthcoming regarding payroll, benefits and perks, this analysis is a good-faith estimate. For instance, the FOIA request regarding the managers current employment contract for 2011 was rejected- although contracts from 2006-2010 were fulfilled. FOIA requests regarding gross pay and accumulated sick days were rejected. Although taxpayers have a significant liability into the tens of thousands for both items, we are being told that this is “private information”.

This egregious salary and benefit package is a disgrace and symptomatic of much greater problems in the state of Illinois. At a time municipalities are asking Springfield for more taxpayer dollars saying they are broke, these types of bloated spending has become more and more common throughout the suburbs.

(more…)

Transparency, accountability and limited government are the cornerstone principles of For The Good of Illinois. We encourage citizens to ask their local school districts, municipalities, counties, and other units of local government to show taxpayers exactly where government spends every dime.

Recently, a citizen brought transparency to his hometown of Palatine.

As a private sector executive compensation expert, he did a very professional one-page overview of the village manager’s compensation plan. He discovered that the village manager in Palatine has an unbelievably lucrative employment contract.

PalatineVillageManager

Base salary = $183,700. Total estimated annual compensation = $350,000.

Then, there is the…perquisites. I wasn’t familiar with that word. Here’s what it means: country club membership, health club membership, and luxury car. This contract has $23,000 of perquisites. Sickening.

(more…)

Our mantra, “We all go forward together, or it all ends right here!” For the past 18 months, I’ve been saying that Republicans in Illinois could start winning elections if the establishment/patronage wing married the reform wing of the party. Since the Illinois “gravy train” was being derailed by its functional bankruptcy, establishment Republicans finally got the message. And, today, we see the culmination of this unfolding at the ballot box and in the volunteer centers.

Government reform in Illinois has a fighting chance. Here’s the bell-weather state house races on reform…

In a central Illinois state senate district, 9-12 groups formed over the past year boast 3,000 members and have lifted Sam McCann to a slim pre-election lead vs. Sen. Deanna Demuzio. The Demuzio family held this state senate seat for over 35 years. In desperation, Sen. Demuzio spent over $2.4 million and set the record for the most money ever spent by a candidate in a statehouse race. McCann spent $1 million and has the energy of the movement plus the “wave”. Prediction: Sam McCann by 3 percentage points.

In a state representative district outside of St. Louis, businessman Dwight Kay is running with a fierce ground game of seasoned volunteers. The Kay volunteer armies go all the way back to 1998 when the last “reformer” was elected statewide, U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald. Kay’s opponent is Jay Hoffman, an 18 year incumbent and best known to be corrupt Governor Rod Blagojevich’s “floor leader”. Hoffman started the election season with $1 million in the bank and he has had to spend it all. Prediction: Dwight Kay wins by 2 percentage points.

In the 43rd state senate district, the now nationally recognized “One Mom” vs. the Machine, Cedra Crenshaw spent $200,000 vs. Sen. AJ Wilhelmi reportedly spending $1 million.

(more…)

In October, 2009, at an Illinois GOP Governor Candidate Debate, moderator Chris Robling opened the debate with the line, “The on-going concern of the State of Illinois is in question!”  He was right, and the primary reasons Illinois is such a mess is the Chicago Democratic Machine.  This engine of self-dealing, corruption, and greed was powerful enough to put forth one of its own get him elected president.

It’s ironic then, that this powerful machine is trembling in fear of Cedra Crenshaw, a conservative, middle class, African-American mother in Will County, Illinois!

Why is the machine afraid?  Because a new class of leadership is starting to develop.  These new leaders threaten to end the shell game of taxes, politics, and patronage. Cedra Crenshaw is one of those new leaders, and she’s is running for state senate against one of the Chicago Machine’s rubber-stamp apparatchiks.

She’s  an accountant who wants to spearhead a forensic audit of Illinois state government.  A former auditor at Deloitte and Touche, Cedra supports an audit of the half a trillion dollars of Democrat controlled state spending during the blow-off historic corruption of Blagojevich/Quinn.  The Democrat Machine- contractors, politicians, and patronage army- stand in naked fear of the result that such an audit would bring.

Such an audit would fumigate thousands of campaign cash-for-patronage hires in agencies, boards and commissions; rescind bloated, rigged bid or mis-awarded contracts; stop the stealing, waste, and legalized graft that do-nothing, ribbon-cutting pork hounds like Cedra’s opponent  -  Sen. A.J. Wilhelmi -  thrive on…at your expense.

(more…)

In 1831, a French aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville’s recognized how different America’s infant democracy was from other democratic republics. He issued warnings to our young republic, “One also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom”. De Tocqueville continued, “…when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power”.

The agenda driven by President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Leader Reid is aggressively targeted toward our becoming an all powerful central government. Since the 2008 election we have seen unprecedented expansion of government. History has shown us that as government expands individual liberty contracts.

In January of 2010, during the waning days of my primary campaign for Illinois Governor, former Polish President Lech Walesa came to Chicago to endorsed my effort. Known as the great anti-communist, founder of Solidarity, best-friend of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II, Walesa continues to inspire and encourage strong leadership. During the luncheon, Walesa issued an ominous warning for America, “America is sliding toward socialism; America is no longer the shining city on the hill.” In the videotaped interview, Walesa saw a hint of socialism creeping into America’s domestic policies. He spoke of “the issue with the banks” and how “the government wastes all the money … building a bureaucracy — just for itself.”

Walesa said that the strongest candidates are committed to principles. The framers of our Constitution based out government on strong principles, sometimes referred to as the first principles. The “first principles” that will Ensure Liberty and the American Promise for future generations are:

1. Smaller Government,
2. Fiscal Responsibility,
3. Lower Taxes,
4. National Security,
5. Federalism.

(more…)

“As Speaker, I want every citizen of Illinois to know this is a people’s Legislature — we are here to serve the public, openly, honestly and with the highest standards. I am accountable only to you”, says Speaker Madigan’s own website.

Chicago Democrats have run Illinois into the ground. Since Rod Blagojevich became governor in 2003, Illinois state government has spent roughly $500 billion dollars (yes nearly half a trillion).  Yet, we are:

1. 48^th in job growth
2. 36^th in education
3. Leading the nation in youth violent crime
4. 3^rd in the nation in gambling revenue.

Last year, over 700 manufacturing companies left Illinois.  Over the last ten years, 750,000 people left the state, many of them high income earners.

Illinois does not quantify even basic financial information- such as the number of state programs.  In October, 2007, the Illinois Auditor General issued a report saying that, “Illinois does not have a comprehensive, consistent list of state programs”. Lacking basic data has led to a lack of legal spending control.  For example, the Illinois constitution requires a balanced budget, yet we face a $13 billion budget deficit.  For all we know, much of the money could have been stolen, as we are deficient in even fundamental fraud controls.  Last summer, the Auditor reported that “the state has a material deficiency” of fraud control on “all federal awards”.  The scope of this statement covered $17 billion in spending! Where did the money go?

(more…)

On Saturday morning, I was stopped short by a text message-  a plane crash had killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 96 others.  Immediately, I called and asked the location… Russia.

With tragic irony, the Polish Presidential delegation was wiped out while enroute to memorialize the 1940 Katyn Forest Massacre.  During World War II (April 1940), the Russians murdered 22,000 members of the captured Polish Officer Corps. On Stalin’s orders, the Russians killed captured Polish military officers, civil servants, and intellectuals, including lawyers, physicians, teachers, professors, engineers, priests, rabbis and other professionals.  By “liquidating” the Polish Officer Corps and much of the professional class, the Russians eased future “communization” of Poland.

The Russians had never apologized for the Katyn Massacre and for 50 years had denied culpability.  Scheduled for last weekend, the memorial event was meant to extend a hand and unclench a fist.  Instead, the Polish State aircraft crashed nearly at the same site.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski was hated by the Russians;  he was blunt, and a tough negotiator.  As a friend of Lech Walesa, member of Solidarity, and former mayor of Warsaw, President Kaczynski had been jailed while resisting communism.

The historic Polish motto, “Our Freedom is Yours”, is deeply ingrained in the national political culture.

(more…)

As the clock winds down on the Illinois Governor’s race, the question on everyone’s mind is whether a newcomer like me, running on robust policy and an American success story, can beat a gaggle of Country Club Republicans and also-rans.

I’m Adam Andrzejewski, the entrepreneur who grew up in central Illinois, worked hard, and ended up successful enough to retire at age 37. Instead of hanging out the beach while managing my portfolio, I started up a non-profit focusing on transparency, and quickly got over $1 billion of public spending placed on-line.  That kind of ‘Every Dime on Line, in Real Time” transparency, coupled with my aggressive ethics reform modeled after those passed in Louisiana by Bobby Jindal, are the foundation of my policy agenda to reform Illinois.

The question is, can I  pull this off?  I was written off early by the cynical and jaundiced political press, but I perservered through months of Lincoln Day Dinners, radio interviews, and candidate forums, all of which were fantastic opportunities to meet the people of Illinois.  I noticed something interesting every time I was out on the campaign trail.  When people saw me and heard my message they liked what they heard – a lot.  No matter how much money was dumped into the campaign by the connected donors financing the other 5 establishment candidates, I was always within striking distance.

Then, just in the last 2 weeks, our campaign started to capture the imagination.  With just over one week to go, it was announced that Lech Walesa was coming to Chicago to endorse me.  That set off a firestorm of press coverage and interest in the blogosphere.  Now, the level of national interest has brought in a flood of small donations and volunteers from around the country.  As you read this, people from across the country have offered to log in to call centers and send e-mails, all to assist the my Campaign.

(more…)

It all started in Chicago. Rick Santelli’s call to arms was broadcast from Chicago. The first Tea Party was last year on a cold day in February.  I heard you.  We need a new generation of leaders that will serve the people, not the political class.  My campaign for Governor started because I heard you and I still hear you.

The Tea Party movement is now a year old and what better place to celebrate the movement than in Chicago. We will be at the Dierksen Federal Building plaza at 2:30pm having a rally in honor of the movement and to celebrate all that we’ve accomplished.

I’m also bringing in someone who knows a little something about freedom and just a few decades ago he was fighting in Eastern Europe and Ronald Reagan stood at his side. Lech Walesa will be addressing the gathering to tell us about his struggles.

(more…)