Wisconsin, like my home state of Illinois, is facing a serious budget crisis. Unlike Illinois, Wisconsin has a bold chief executive in Governor Scott Walker willing and able to confront a crisis with straight talk and serious solutions. Meanwhile, 14 Democratic Senators from Wisconsin have been enjoying some of Chicago’s fine dining and playing hide and seek all across our fine state. While most other states in the union are tackling public employee pensions, cutting taxes and razing roadblocks to prosperity, Illinois remains the last bastion of fiscal foolishness as legislators – from not only Wisconsin but Indiana and Ohio – cross our border to avoid responsibility back home.  Interestingly, Illinois has lost taxpayers, employers and jobs to each of these surrounding states for years.  In return, Illinois is gaining big government legislators unwilling or unable to confront reality. This is what is referred to in international policy as a “trade imbalance.”

This week I was a guest on Chicago Tonight to discuss the Wisconsin budget crisis and standoff that has made national headlines over the past month. Bob Edgar, president and CEO of Common Cause joined me on the panel.

The debate in Wisconsin distills and highlights two crucial issues that weren’t fully fleshed out during this segment: the involvement of money in politics and the new class warfare. Common Cause, Mr. Edgar’s organization, is a highly vocal critic of political activists and philanthropists David and Charles Koch. The brothers have invested millions over the years in various charities and public policy organizations. They believe in certain causes (as do most people) and invest in them to educate and empower people in the democratic process. Billionaire George Soros and wealthy liberals fund Common Cause and other like-minded groups and they, too, have the right to do this in our wonderful democracy. There is plenty of money on both sides of the political spectrum. There is an important difference, however, between free market activism and groups like Common Cause: the latter seeks change not by choice, but change by coercion.

The Wisconsin debate also brings into focus the new class warfare, one we’re seeing right here in Illinois. On one side of the issue are the public employee unions that advocate for unaccountable, unsustainable government. On the other, hardworking taxpayers who subsidize these public employees’ lavish compensation and pension packages. Too often what’s lost in these discussions is that for every public employee complaining about having to forgo a raise or pay a little bit more for their health care benefits, there are thousands of private sector workers who haven’t had raises in years, have always paid much more than public sector workers for their health care benefits, and whose hard work and wages pay for government. It is time for someone to advocate for taxpayers at the negotiating table.

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In his Daily Show appearance last night, President Obama made a very revealing—and presumably inadvertent—statement about those in Congress who have supported his radical agenda.

In the context of many congressional seats being up for grabs in what pundits and prognosticators are predicting to be a GOP wave election, Obama stated that many of his allies in Congress voted for politically tough bills because they believed “it was the right thing to so” despite being in conservative-leaning districts.

On the surface, what the President says sounds so noble. These politicians are doing what they think is right. They’re standing up despite outside pressure! Except they aren’t standing up for the right people: their constituents. “Doing what they think is right” is warm and fuzzy code for “what Nancy Pelosi / President Obama tells them is right.”

Elected officials aren’t supposed to vote for what is right in their minds alone. What seems right in the halls of power amidst meetings with tax-eater special interests and arm-twisting White House political hacks is quite likely not what’s right for the people elected officials are supposed to represent. This sort of backwards thinking, internalized even by the President, is exactly why the American electorate is upset with the political status quo. Elected officials are supposed to vote for what is right in the minds of their constituents for whom they work.

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Some call it a homophobic slur; others, an obscure sexual fetish.  For the President of the United States, however, the term “tea bagger” is just another tool to marginalize opponents of his radical agenda.  As John Kartch of Americans for Tax Reform reported today, President Obama is quoted in a new book using this derogatory term to describe concerned citizens that make up the mainstream, nonpartisan tea party movement:

President Barack Obama, known for his lectures to others on civility, saw fit to use the obscene and derogatory term “tea-baggers” in a book interview with author Jonathan Alter.

Below is an excerpt from Alter’s new book The Promise: President Obama, Year One, to be released May 18:

“Obama said that the unanimous House vote against the Recovery Act ‘set the tenor for the whole year’: ‘That helped to create the tea-baggers and empowered that whole wing of the Republican Party to where it now controls the agenda for the Republicans.’  For Obama this was the greatest surprise of 2009.”

This has long been the modus operandi of the far left, from the likes of actress Janeane Garofalo to the commentators on MSNBC and CNN.  Yet for the President of the United States to invoke this term is simply stunning, particularly in light of the recently delivered commencement speech in which he heavily critiqued the tenor of political discourse in our age.

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Many a partisan and pundit-provocateur has spent the last year trying to convince us that the tea parties consist of violent extremists.  The multi-front attack has come from the media, Hollywood, and the current White House.

At the genesis of the movement, David Axelrod couched criticism of the Obama agenda as “unhealthy” on national television.  Last April, the infamous “right-wing extremism” report released the week before the tax day tea parties by the Department of Homeland Security.  The report referenced “disgruntled veterans” and lumped those that believed in states’ rights in with white supremacists and militia members.  It was an embarrassment to the Department of Homeland Security and the administration.  Public apologies to veterans and regrets regarding the extremely broad language were issued.

A while back, “Law and Order” ran a ridiculous episode where a lawyer declared that Rush, Beck, and O’Reilly drive people to commit violent hate crimes.  Before that, there was an episode referencing a tea party in the context of discussing extremists. In February of this year, Marvel Comics issued an apology after a comic implicitly painted tea parties in a racist, violent light.

Countless guests have appeared on Keith Olbermann’s show to dissect the tea party movement psyche.  Most notable was budding amateur psychologist Janeane Garofalo who erroneously dismissed tea partiers as intellectually deficient violent racists.  More recently a guest on The Rachel Maddow Show, talking about the recent Midwest militia arrests, conflated the tea party movement and right-wing militant extremists and implied that the nation is somehow in danger of the tea party splintering into militia terror cells.

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In his State of the Union Address Wednesday night, President Obama called on folks to let him know if there are better health care solutions he and congress should be considering:

As temperatures cool, I want everyone to take another look at the plan we’ve proposed…

…But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.

He echoed this sentiment at today’s House GOP retreat.  Some might say he was being sarcastic, reminding us of how hard it is to govern (especially in light of all he has inherited from you-know-who.)  But that would be cynical, particularly in this post-partisan era.

Just before Christmas my colleague Peter Fotos and I penned a “wish list” of simple policy proposals that constitute substantive health care reform – and it didn’t even take 1,000 pages! The health care snitch line was disabled, so we’ll give the President the benefit of the doubt that it ended up in his spam folder.

President Obama and his Congressional allies talk a lot about the need to control health care costs and avoid pressure from special interests.  Unfortunately, neither the House nor the Senate versions of “ObamaCare” that he called upon congress to reconsider withstand either litmus test.

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We live in seriously challenging times – times that warrant serious conversations on the state and direction of our nation.  From the fiscal crash course our nation is on to the ever-present threat we face from Islamic terrorism, there’s plenty of fodder for constructive political discourse.  Many on the Left, however, are bent on marginalizing opposing views by any means necessary.  The censorship and number fudging exposed in ClimateGate is one recent example.

The tea party movement seems to perpetually be in the crosshairs of the Left’s most insidious propaganda artists.  A post on taxpayer subsidized NPR’s blog that’s getting some attention this week features a video by Mark Fiore entitled “Learn to Speak Tea Bag.”  The cartoon gives mock step-by-step instructions on what Fiore believes is the modus operandi of tea party activists.  Fiore unintentionally serves up a nearly all-inclusive package on all that is dishonest and malicious about the Left’s continued campaign to discredit this wildly popular grassroots force.

Fiore’s isn’t the first and likely won’t be the last tea party hit job.  Everyone from the President to “mainstream” media commentators have joined in since the movement’s inception in February 2009.  This multifaceted attack on the tea party movement has revealed an interesting trend that mirrors the evolving tactics of a maladjusted, intellectual deficient schoolboy bully.

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Politicians, pundits, and citizens have long bemoaned the power that “special interests” wield in Washington, D.C. and state capitals across the nation. The pharmaceutical, energy, and defense industries and everyone in between employ armies of lobbyists to educate elected officials on their respective industry interests and to persuade them to protect said interests.  Other groups represent the concerns of a body of constituents, such as general taxpayer, second amendment, or pro-life groups.

Despite the soiling of the term “lobbyist,” particularly following the fall of Jack Abramoff, these activities are protected under the First Amendment – and rightfully so.  If it weren’t for second amendment groups, Chicago, where I currently dwell, would not have a powerful coalition challenging the city’s irrational, unconstitutional handgun ban in the Supreme Court. The majority of Americans own stock – stock in corporations.  In today’s legislative environment, corporations would do a disservice to their shareholders not to go to bat for their interests in the Beltway ball game.

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It is a Friday and President Obama is abroad.  What better time for the President and the Department of Justice to announce that 9/11 coordinator Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and some of his fellow terrorists will be tried in a civilian court in New York City?

Yesterday, I wrote about the curious connection that major Obama and ACORN supporter Bruce Ratner has to the Department of Justice – the very department that refuses to initiate a criminal trial of ACORN. It just so happens that Bruce Ratner’s brother, Michael Ratner, shares the terrorist coddling sympathies of Attorney General Eric Holder.  As Michelle Malkin documents, Holder not only pushed for the pardoning of actual terrorists in his last stint at DOJ, but he was also a senior partner at a law firm representing detainees at Guantanamo. While Michael Ratner has not represented Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he did represent a handful of terrorists and won them the right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts under habeas corpus. This is just one of many legal “victories” that have paved the way for folks like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to be tried in civilian court on our soil.

This particular example highlights the underlying notion that terrorists should be privy to the same rights as United States citizens. In this instance, President Obama did in fact exercise his discretion (if you can call it that) by allowing the trial to take place in civilian court.  Attorney Brian Levi serves as the Director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University.  As Levi noted today, “As a legal matter President Obama could very well also have tried these five detainees before military tribunals, as five others are…”

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Following the courageous expose by two young investigative journalists released on the pages of this very blog, there were widespread calls for a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the criminal enterprise that is ACORN. One would think there would be swift, decisive action from the administration that promised to be the most transparent in history. Despite the urging of some in congress and action on the regional level, and an internal investigation into funding, terrorist sympathizer U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder refuses to appoint a special prosecutor to oversee a criminal investigation of ACORN. There’s no evidence that any internal investigation is ongoing or making any progress since a 2008 request from Indiana’s Secretary of State. Instead, President Obama’s political arm is attempting to dismiss it as a “fear campaign” while ACORN insinuates that it is racist. Yes, they are still playing that card.

What’s Holder’s hold-up?  One major factor of course is that ACORN serves as a taxpayer-funded Democrat army.  As with unions, it behooves Democrats to ignore corruption amongst the ranks of the powerful forces that elect them. What appears on the surface to be mere political payback for a job well done is in fact much more insidious.  One family’s involvement with ACORN and the Obama administration is of particular interest and elucidates the complicated web of connections and cash behind ACORN and this President.

Meet the Ratners.

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