WINTER HAVEN, Fla. – Deric Feacher had a very worthwhile dream.

He wanted to establish a charter school in his hometown that specialized in helping disadvantaged and at-risk students earn their high school diplomas.

So he did what Florida law required. He took his proposal for the new charter school to the Polk County School Board’s Charter Review Committee, two different times. And twice he came away without permission to open his school, according to the Sunshine State News.

What was the committee’s hang-up? Were members afraid that Feacher would establish a bad school? Do they have a problem with the idea of creating a special school for children who are struggling in traditional schools?

It was nothing like that. The board members were just worried about losing money.

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U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk underwent surgery today at Northwestern Memorial Hospital after suffering a stroke, his office said.

“On Saturday, Senator Kirk checked himself into Lake Forest Hospital, where doctors discovered a carotid artery dissection in the right side of his neck,” his office said in a statement.

“He was transferred to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, where further tests revealed that he had suffered an ischemic stroke,” it said. “Early this morning, the senator underwent surgery to relieve swelling around his brain stemming from the stroke. The surgery was successful.

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I don’t blame the Democrats for wanting to seduce Republicans into a tax-increase trap. Indeed, I completely understand why some Democrats said their top political goal was getting the GOP to surrender the no-tax-hike position.

I’m mystified, though, why some Republicans are willing to walk into such a trap. If you were playing chess against someone, and that person kept pleading with you to make a certain move, wouldn’t you be a tad bit suspicious that they weren’t trying to help you win?

When I talk to the Republicans who are open to tax hikes, they sometimes admit that their party will suffer at the polls, but they say it’s the right thing to do because of red ink.

I suppose that’s a noble sentiment, though I find that most GOPers who are open to tax hikes also tend to be big spenders, so I question their sincerity (with Senator Coburn being an obvious exception).

But even if we assume that all of them are genuinely motivated by a desire to control deficits and debt, shouldn’t they be asked to provide some evidence that higher taxes are an effective way of fixing the fiscal policy mess?

I’m not trying to score debating points. This is a serious question.

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In the land where the dead rise to vote, it is long known that the election code the state operates under is absurd. Illinois has taken ballot engineering to an art form to ensure the election results are known before the first vote is cast. Like all complex systems, however, they are bound to fail in spectacular ways.

Illinois has a long process to challenge the petitions of anyone who files for office. It is often used to keep “outsiders” off the ballot either by ensnaring them in hypertechnical offenses or simply bog a candidate down in thousands of dollars in legal fees and bury their campaign by attrition. Vote fraud is difficult to undertake on a large scale and requires many people and resources to accomplish quietly. Why resort to fraud when you can simply ensure the voters don’t have a choice to begin with?

As an example, if you file your petition paperwork with a paperclip instead of a staple, that is cause to remove you from the ballot. As a historical note, President Obama won his first election to the Illinois State Senate by removing every opponent, including the incumbent, from the ballot–thereby running unopposed. This process has been used to dramatic effect to settle elections long before voters have a say. What good is the right to vote if you don’t have any choices?

However, this system has now broken down with every candidate for president in Illinois having their paperwork challenged and all the flaws for each candidate are apparently fatal. Several candidates didn’t use their home addresses on their petitions, one didn’t use an Illinois notary to notarize their paperwork and another put in “statewide” for the district they were running in instead of “Illinois”. Even Obama was challenged, but I assume those are birther challenges and we’ll just move past those.

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SPRINGFIELD — Illinois, unable to solve its long-running financial problems, was given the lowest credit rating of any state in the country by Moody’s Investors Service on Friday, a move that will increase costs to taxpayers.

A second agency, Standard & Poor’s, left its Illinois rating unchanged but warned of a negative outlook that could lead to a downgrade in the future. A day earlier, Fitch Ratings also left the rating unchanged and declared a stable outlook.

Lower credit ratings generally mean the state winds up paying more interest when it borrows money by selling bonds.

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CHICAGO (CBS) — Eighty-five Illinois Lottery winners last week probably thought they were lucky — until they tried to cash in their winnings, that is.

Their checks, totaling $159,000 in lottery winnings, were no good.

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Attorney General Eric Holder delivered a speech in Austin, Texas Tuesday in which he invoked the history of the civil rights movement in targeting state voter identification laws. His approach mirrors that of the NAACP, which considers such laws racist, and echoes Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who recently claimed that Republicans want to “literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws.”

Holder claimed that the Department of Justice would be “fair” in reviewing such laws, but also quoted a misleading charge made by Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), who claimed there was a “systematic attempt” to prevent minority voters from exercising their rights. Holder specifically singled out “new photo identification requirements” in Texas and South Carolina, and applauded Maine’s voters for preserving same-day registration.

The fact is that requiring voters to provide photo identification is standard practice in much of the democratic world–even, and especially, in poor countries with a history of struggle against racism and colonialism.

In South Africa, for example, where black people were denied the vote until 1994, the new democratic government requires every registered voter–black or white, rich or poor–to bring official photo ID to the polls.

Indians show photo ID to vote (Photo credit: AP/Biswaranjan Rout)

India’s election commission issues a special photo identification card to voters when they register, which they must present at the polls:

The Election Commission of India has made voter identification mandatory at the time of poll. The electors have to identify themselves with either Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) issued by the Commission or any other documentary proof as prescribed by the Commission.

In Europe, the official EU Handbook for Election Observation acknowledges that voters are required to show identification in many countries, and suggests that observers verify that all voters are subject to the same ID check (166). Even the Carter Center for Human Rights, which monitors democratic elections all over the world, identifies “a requirement for identification” as a “reasonable limitation” on universal suffrage.

(Update: That’s not to say international practice should govern American practice at the federal, state, or local level, but it certainly undermines the notion that photo identification is somehow motivated by a desire to keep people from exercising their rights. The opposite is true: voter ID laws are intended to protect voters’ rights against fraud and manipulation by those who would subvert their will.)

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CARY, Ill. – For the past several years, Illinois’ Cary District 26 was a prime example of the damage a demanding teachers union and a weak school board can inflict on a public school system.

District 26 was in such bad financial shape that it started cutting student programs and borrowing against future tax revenues just to pay its bills, including the irresponsible and unsustainable retirement benefits it was paying out to teachers.

As required by the teachers’ union contract, retiring Cary teachers were given 6 percent annual pay raises during the last four years of employment, in order to drive up their pension benefits from the state. This practice gained notoriety as the “6-6-6” format, which is an accurate description of the plan and its effect on the budgets of schools and the state of Illinois.

Retirees were also given $20,000 cash bonuses, as stipulated by the contract.

It was no surprise that Cary’s labor costs kept going up, even as student programs and services went down. Seventy-five of the district’s 225 teachers were laid off. Class sizes skyrocketed, and any academics not required by the state – such as music and art – were cut.

Turned off by the district’s big-spending, self-destructive ways, taxpayers refused to increase the property tax limiting rate, a form of permanent taxation used to fund Illinois schools. Things looked so bleak that a state takeover seemed imminent.

But no longer.

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Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was sentenced this week to 14 years in prison, but the real sentence is the one taxpayers will serve many years after. He mastered the art of pairing populist rhetoric with expensive new programs directed toward his core constituencies.

To pursue his highly visible programs and agendas, Blagojevich needed money. He found it by diverting billions from the state’s pension system. By taking “holidays” from required pension system contributions and by nearly doubling Illinois’s debt, he burdened future generations to support favored groups in the present.

Perhaps worst of all, as CEO of Illinois, Blagojevich institutionalized a culture of deficit spending. He accomplished this so effectively that Blagojevich’s successor, Gov. Pat Quinn, and today’s lawmakers feel comfortable perpetuating the ruinous habits of spending and borrowing more than the state can afford. Fiscal ineptitude is the new norm.

The Illinois Policy Institute has a new report out that details Blagojevich’s lasting effect on Illinois’ fiscal condition. Read it at www.illinoispolicy.org/blago. Here’s the “top ten” list:

No. 1: Disregarded obligations to state pensioners

Policy: Blagojevich diverted billions of dollars from the pension funds of future government retirees to pay for his own spending priorities.
Problem: Blagojevich ballooned existing spending programs, ignoring his responsibility to ensure the health of the state’s pension systems. Retirees and taxpayers are on the hook for his political expediency.
Program cost: Excess of $3 billion for future taxpayers

No. 2: A culture of deficits

Policy: Grow spending to appease Blagojevich’s core constituencies.
Problem: While Blagojevich was creating and expanding unaffordable programs, the state’s financial position deteriorated year after year.
Program cost: Worst rating of net assets in the nation.

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CHICAGO (AP) – Rod Blagojevich, the ousted Illinois governor whose three-year battle against criminal charges became a national spectacle, was sentenced to 14 years in prison Wednesday, one of the stiffest penalties imposed for corruption in a state with a history of crooked politics.

Blagojevich’s 18 convictions included allegations of trying to leverage his power to appoint someone to President Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat to raise campaign cash or land a high-paying job.

“When it is the governor who goes bad the fabric of Illinois is torn and disfigured and not easily repaired,” Judge James Zagel said.

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In 2010, Governor Quinn signed into law a landmark budget reform law called “Budgeting for Results”.  The goal was quite simple, that spending should be tied to measurable goals of the state and that funding should change according to what best achieves those goals.  It was designed to promote transparency and accountability in the many agencies and programs of the state forcing them to measure the effectiveness of their programs with an eye of weeding out those programs that achieve little to nothing for the taxpayer.

That was the stated goal at least.  Now that the first report has been issued by the Budget for Results Commission, we see that it wasn’t about spending reform at all.  It’s about yet another attempt to justify increased mandated and structural spending at a time when Illinois has already passed a 67% income tax hike and is still operating a deficit.

Here is what the commission says about their goal:

Budgeting for Results changes the way the State allocates resources across government agencies. Rather than setting budgets agency by agency based on historic funding levels, BFR allocates resources based on state-wide goals.

…

Measurement is crucial to accountability and transparency. Reliable data and analysis are essential to inform funding decisions and make sure taxpayers see the impact of their tax dollars.

It all sounds good, so far.  In fact, it sounds downright reasonable.  Government has to do things and spending should be calibrated to do those things as efficiently as possible.

So what was the very first recommendation of this august panel to deal with a state that has a chronic and uncontrolled spending problem?

Recommendation 1:

Establish a seventh Result to acknowledge the importance of ensuring that all Illinois residents have access to quality, affordable health care, and to recognize medical assistance distinct from the human service goals. Separating costs will provide greater transparency to spending on Medicaid and spending on other human service activities. The newest Result area recommended is:

All Illinois residents have access to quality affordable health care.

You read that right.

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Five years after Cook County, Illinois, last hiked cigarette taxes, it has emerged that revenues from cigarette taxes have substantially declined, contributing to the county’s budget challenges.

In 2006, the county collected about $200 million in cigarette tax revenue, but that dropped to about $126 million last year.

The County reportedly faces about a $300 million budget gap heading into next year. Locals say the decline in cigarette tax revenue is not the result of smokers quitting using tobacco products.  According to Sheriff Tom Dart, “There’s probably some people who have given up smoking, but I don’t think that accounts for $74 million [less].”  Rather, it seems to be the result of smokers looking to save money on tobacco however they can — including buying from sellers who offer cigarettes without relevant tax stamps, buying cigarettes in neighboring Indiana, and even rolling their own or switching to non-cigarette types of tobacco.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is now looking to raise taxes on tobacco users who take the latter routes in an effort to keep their costs down, as well as purchasers of alcohol:

Like it or not, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle says her cash-strapped county needs higher taxes on alcohol and tobacco to solve a deep deficit.

[...]
Preckwinkle also wants to close the loophole on the current cigarette tax to include loose tobacco, rolling papers and snuff.

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We’ve always assumed that public schools exist, first and foremost, to benefit the students of a community. But that’s clearly not the case in Chicago. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been pushing the idea of adding 90 minutes to the school day to improve learning for children in the city’s deeply troubled school district. He has managed to convince teachers in 13 schools to accept the longer day in exchange for cash bonuses, but the radical Chicago Teachers Union doesn’t like this idea. Union President Karen Lewis and her comrades have been going around trying to convince teachers to reject the proposal, according to a story in the Chicago Tribune.

When that strategy didn’t work, the union complained to its friends at the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board. In a quick decision, the board ruled 5-0 that the city was violating labor law by “luring teachers with inducements and hampering the efforts of union representatives… Because of this irreparable harm, it is necessary to immediately restore the status quo,” the board wrote in its ruling. The board will not seek to have the longer days cancelled in the 13 schools, but it has asked the Illinois attorney general to go to court to seek an injunction to prevent more schools from extending the school day.

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Earlier this year, the state of Illinois moved to force religious-based children’s services to break their religious principles and give children in their charge to homosexual couples. Organizations such as Catholic Charities have been told by the state that they either break their religious principles or face being shut down by the state. So, pursuant to that agenda, the state has determined that all children currently in the hands of religious adoption agencies need to be removed immediately.

Representing Catholic Charities of three Illinois Roman Catholic Dioceses, the Thomas Moore Society filed an emergency motion to prevent the state from removing all the children in its care. Unfortunately, an Illinois appellate court refused to overturn the trial court’s decision to remove the children during the appeal process in which lawyers are now engaged (filings here and here).

Still, other motions made in the emergency motion were granted. Thomas Moore informs that the matter “is now on an expedited schedule for briefing in the Appellate Court.” The fate of the children remains unknown at this point.

So what was so bad that the State of Illinois felt it necessary to take all children away from religious-based organizations? Have there been cases of abuse? Perhaps children’s services from religious-based groups have been rated lowly? Have adopting parents complained?

None of the above. In fact, there is no substantive reason at all for this attack on religious-based children’s services in the Land of Lincoln. Well, no reason except for a left-wing, pro-homosexual political agenda, that is. (more…)

Last week, the Chicago Tribune published a commentary piece I wrote about the Occupy Wall Street protesters in Chicago. They’ve been camped out near my office for the past few weeks, and I decided to engage them in conversation on my way home one night.

The media has likened the Occupy Wall Street protesters to the Tea Party, making the case that these protesters are the left’s version of the small government movement that has swept the nation.

Let me be clear: The Occupy Wall Street protesters and the folks who hold tea party rallies are not the same, and I do not believe there is any real opportunity for a union between the two groups. But what I learned that night is that these movements both are rooted in the idea that this country is moving in the wrong direction.

If we look back to the 2008 presidential election, I’d argue that part of the reason President Obama won is because he strategically listened to disaffected economic conservatives, independents and Republicans. He took what he heard and then crafted a message for them, ultimately winning over some who normally vote for Republican nominees. Though we knew then and know now that he was being disingenuous, the lesson should not be lost on us; we cannot ignore the value of listening. (more…)

Shocked? We are….

Is this the sort of thing you would expect to hear from John Tillman, the chairman of the Illinois Policy Institute, a “conservative” think tank, after walking through #OccupyChicago?

“It was delightful.”

Delightful? When I think of delight, I think of lying on a sunny beach with an ice-cold tropical fruit drink; I think of laying in a hammock on a breezy day reading a mind-stimulating book or sinking my teeth into a delicious cheesecake. But when I am at an Occupy protest, the last thing that comes to mind is anything remotely delightful.

In fact, I find the whole experience miserable and terrifying: the constant banging of over-turned garbage cans, the blowing of bull horns, and the repetitive hypnotic chanting of brainwashed flea-infested loons. When I head down to an Occupy protest, it is certainly not with any intent to have a delightful experience. It is with the intent to expose what is really driving these radical left-wing nut-jobs. It’s a responsibility I feel that is necessary to preserve whatever freedom and liberty we still have, and quite frankly to help do whatever is in my power to save our great country.

Here is some footage you may have already seen about who is behind this movement, from EAG Foundation:

I certainly understand that there are some halfway “sane” individuals down there. And I can also agree there are a couple of similarities in the displeasure with our economy between the “Tea Party” and Occupy protesters. Namely, the opposition to bank bailouts, for which we on the “right” have been ridiculed and deemed racist, for the last two and a half years.

But I can hardly see how it is effective for the tea partiers to join forces with these well-documented card-carrying members of the Communist Party U.S.A., Party for Socialism and Liberation, anti-Semites, American Nazi Party, 9/11 truthers, and the rest of the dirty hippies that are now receiving training from domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.

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From The Chicago Tribune:

At least eight Chicago labor leaders who are eligible for inflated city pensions also stand to receive union pensions covering the same work period, thanks to a charitable interpretation of state law by officials representing two city pension funds, a Tribune/WGN-TV investigation has found.

By double and even triple dipping on pensions, these union officials stand to reap millions more in retirement while thousands of rank-and-file union members face hard times and city pension funds stagger toward insolvency.

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#OccupyChicago: thousands of anarchists, union members, and Democrats–and not one American flag.

Just like the Tea Party!

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) was on hand. She addressed a mob outside the Hyatt Regency Chicago, where some activists apparently attempted to disrupt a meeting of the Mortgage Bankers Association. She then led them in one of five feeder marchers that combined into a sea of pot-smoking, bongo-drumming, flea-infested dreadlock lunacy outside the Art Institute of Chicago.

We caught up with Jan, and asked for her thoughts on the patriotism of the protest, since we could not find one American flag in her parade of nearly 1000 liberal loons.

Cross-posted at RebelPundit. Follow @RebelPundit on Twitter.

On October 1st, 2011 tea party groups from around the Midwest gathered at the TEACON convention in Schaumburg, Illinois. Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi stated that he became outraged when he heard this event was taking place in his own backyard in the Illinois 8th congressional district. Raja told the Huffington Post that he planned to lead a protest against the event, which featured the likes of Glenn Beck, Andrew Breitbart and presidential candidate Herman Cain.

Once Raja made his appearance at the protest, he denied having planned the protest and claimed that he was deferring to, and joining, the protesters who already showed up outside the convention center. There were approximately eight protesters in total, one of whom we can confirm, in the following video, is a communist. To be fair, when asked if he supported the Communist party, Raja replied that he did not; however, when asked how he felt about joining communists and how his potential constituents might feel about him protesting other Americans alongside communists, he said “I’m okay with protesting the TEACON convention,” and “I think the constituents want us to stand up to the Tea Party.”

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One week after the 10th anniversary of the September 11th World Trade Center attacks, carried out by Islamist terrorists, the American Islamic College and the Organization for Islamic Cooperation convened students, academics, and “intellectuals” in Chicago, Illinois, for its 2nd annual conference on “Islam and Muslims in America.” Rather than accepting the underlying facts that lead reasonable Americans to express concern about the spread of Islam in America, the conference chose to focus on Americans’ “racism and bigotry,” negativity, and the so-called “Islamophobia,” inherent in their opinions about the Muslim faith.

This perverse twisting of the post-9/11 environment in America, as well as the institution’s shady past associations with noted Islamist agitators, provides the context for an event of which all Americans should be aware.

The stated purpose of the conference was to promote awareness of the school, discuss the current affairs of Islam and Muslims in America, and confront ”Islamophobia.” However, events that unfolded reveal that the narrative put forth throughout the conference veered sharply from these goals, the careful review of which invites legitimate concern and even alarm*.

(*Notably, it was within this context that U.S. Congressman Mike Quigley found it appropriate in his official capacity, to apologize on behalf of America, seen here in our previously released footage from the event.)

The following video shows an opening statement from the event emcee, a Muslim/pro-Palestinian activist and host of the Rise Up Radio Show Rashid Darwish. While Darwishundoubtably came across as one of the more measured speakers at the event, and gave no reason for observers to conclude that he was of an unpeaceful character, he makes an alarming claim in his opening remarks:

“…This last week, we look back at 10 years of the 9/11 tragedy….I will tell you this, it gave us all a wonderful opportunity to now educate people about Islam….and really help define what Islam is all about.”

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