Robert Creamer–Democrat strategist, Obama 2008 campaign aide, and political architect of ObamaCare–argues that the new contraceptive mandate for Catholic institutions isn’t really about equality for women, or religious liberty.

Rather, it is about population control.

Creamer–like his wife, the pro-abortion Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)–embraces the left-wing fallacy that children are a burden on the planet, which the state should encourage the church–and everyone else–to limit.

At 6:16-7:03 in the video below, by CNS News, Schakowsky describes abortion as “most often” a “responsible decision” to control the size of their families:

Writing in the Huffington Post yesterday, Creamer declared:

…[T]here is a worldwide consensus that the use of birth control is one of society’s most important moral priorities. Far from being something that should be discouraged, or is controversial, the use of birth control is critical to the survival and success of humanity….It is simply not possible for this small planet to sustain that kind of exponential human population growth. If we do, the result will be poverty, war, the depletion of our natural resources and famine. Fundamentally, the Reverend [Thomas] Malthus was right–except that the result is not inevitable….That’s why it is our moral imperative to act responsibly and encourage each other to use birth control.

Malthus’s late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century views, which still inspire much of today’s environmental movement, have been repeatedly disproved over the course of two centuries. Economic freedom, growth and innovation have made human society vastly more productive and efficient. (more…)

This morning, Rep. Jan Schakowsky appeared on the Don Wade and Roma show on WLS-AM Chicago to comment on President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. Schakowsky praised the president’s green energy initiatives, claiming that the (recalled) Chevy Volt “is doing pretty well” and defending Obama’s failed investment in Solyndra.

When the hosts asked her to defend President Obama’s decision to block the development of the Keystone pipeline, Schakowsky did not dispute that the project would create jobs, but denied that these jobs were significant:

Twenty thousand jobs is really not that many jobs and investing in green technologies will produce that and more. But I’ll tell you what, you know it seems to me that the Republicans would rather have an issue than a pipeline.

When the hosts pointed out that Schakowsky’s union allies support the pipeline, she was speechless. (The full audio from the interview is available here.) (more…)

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), who infamously argued for the death of the private insurance industry, and whose husband drafted the political blueprint for Obamacare from federal prison, told Democrats at a rally today that they had to re-elect President Barack Obama in order to achieve single-payer health care.

The Hill reports (emphasis added):

Schakowsky, a vocal supporter of healthcare reform, warned liberals not to turn away from Obama because they didn’t get all they wanted in the new law.

“Losing in November is not an option,” she said. “It doesn’t make it easier to get single-payer or even a public option. It makes it impossible.”

Schakowsky’s remarks in 2009, together with those of Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), among others, created suspicion at the time that Obamacare was a “Trojan Horse” for a single-payer system of socialized medicine:

Her remarks today would seem to confirm that suspicion.

While Republicans intend to vote to repeal Obamacare, Democrats are being urged to vote not just to defend Obamacare, but to expand it into a full system of socialized medicine at the federal level. (more…)

Crain’s Chicago Business reports that Alvin Boutte, Jr., the adviser who encouraged the state to invest in Democrats’ beloved ShoreBank as it was failing, has agreed to pay a fine, to have his securities license suspended, and to work under “heightened supervision” in the securities industry for the next year.

The ShoreBank scandal erupted in 2010 as Chicago Democrats, particularly Rep. Jan Schakowsky, tried to bail out the bank using any means necessary–whether federal, state, or private money. The bank’s closure was delayed several times–evidence, critics charged, of preferential treatment from the Obama administration.

Eventually, under pressure from the Tea Party and the media, a bailout was averted and federal regulators moved in.

Curiously, the bank’s management was permitted to buy ShoreBank’s serviceable assets and reconstitute the failed institution as Urban Partnership Bank, while taxpayers were obliged to carry the cost of dispensing with the rest.

Boutte’s involvement occurred during the tenure of former Illinois state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, the Chicago Democrat and alleged “mob banker” who lost to Mark Kirk in the race for U.S. Senate in 2010, who was also blamed for losing hundreds of millions of dollars in parents’ tuition savings in a fund that invested in sub-prime mortgages. Boutte had donated to Giannoulias’s Senate campaign.

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In their attempt to spin the debate over a deeply problematic two-month payroll tax holiday against Republicans, Democrats have resorted to the sort of religious demagoguery that they routinely accuse conservatives of using.

Democrat strategist (and convicted felon) Robert Creamer recently invoked the New Testament in a tirade against Republicans, and accused the GOP of “an attack on the spirit of Christmas.”

His spouse, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), who often borrows from Creamer’s talking points (as do other Democrats), took that attack to the floor of the House of Representatives:

And so, Happy Chanukah to middle class Americans lighting the first candle tonight who won’t get their $1000 tax break.  Happy New Year to our seniors and persons with disabilities who may lose their doctors.

Merry Christmas to the jobless Americans, desperate for work, looking for work, who barely survive on unemployment checks.  The House Republicans are the Grinches who stole your Christmas.

That is nothing new–Democrats frequently (mis)invoke religion when it suits their purposes, eagerly discarding concerns about church-state separation. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is a repeat offender, as is Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), who in 2008 compared Barack Obama to Jesus and John McCain to Pontius Pilate:

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Last month, Big Government reported that Occupy Wall Street activists were using “human shields”–veterans, women, the young, the old, and the disabled–in the hope of provoking police to use force against them and winning the “battle over images.”

That initial report focused on the use of veterans and disabled protestors. This week’s Occupy protests provided more evidence–specifically involving the use of the young and the elderly.

In Portland yesterday, this Occupy activist put an infant between himself and police on the front lines as he shouted at officers:

In Seattle on Nov. 15, an elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in clashes between Occupy activists and police. Whether provoked or accidental, the incident created the hoped-for sensational image:

And in New York yesterday, activists from Occupy Wall Street taunted children walking to school, prompting one observer to call the Occupy activists “terrorists“:

Photo: CBS New York

The “terrorist” label was driven home on Nov. 14 when three men claiming to be Occupy Portland protestors were arrested carrying glass-shrapnel bombs. (more…)

The Columbus Day protests in Chicago had anarchists, socialists, communists…and a Marching Band! Chicago’s public Morgan Park High School turned out its marching band to entertain and rally the #OccupyChicago protesters.

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Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D, Illinois 9th District), whose husband has been convicted of bank fraud and tax evasion, was recently interviewed by the far-left website “truthout” and served up some rather unsettling thoughts on economics and the role of government.

You’ll remember truthout for its scoop back in 2009; it was the first site to report the big news that Karl Rove had been indicted. Unfortunately for this “news” site, Karl Rove was never indicted. That was a spot of bother, indeed, impugning the site’s veracity just a bit. You may also know that original editor, Marc Ash, was ousted from the site by a coup from within when it was discovered he was making $140,000 a year off the donors and left-wing foundations supporting the site. But he’s all for the downtrodden masses, ya know?

Now that we have established the forum upon which Schakowsky appeared, let’s look at some of the extreme things she said.

The interview began with the most likely of subjects given the national debate: as Joe Biden said, that three letter word–jobs, jobs, jobs. Schakowsky, of course, stuck to that debunked idea that government “creates jobs” and indulged her inner Keynes in every answer.

Saying she just couldn’t understand how people could say government doesn’t create jobs, Schakowsky indulged in the typically Keynesian fantasy that all left-wingers wallow in. She imagines that jobs created by the government are economic boosters because the money such people are paid will be spent in the general economy. This, she absurdly says, means that everyone is a “job creator” because they spend money. (more…)

Big Government has learned that anarchist groups, led by Lisa Fithian and working with Democrats and unions on the ground in Chicago, intend forcibly to disrupt the Mortgage Bankers’ Association meeting at the Hyatt Regency Chicago and other locations this afternoon.

Violence is possible, as local police and security officers seem unprepared for a confrontation with thousands of activists converging on the Hyatt from multiple other staged demonstrations in Chicago.

Fithian, a veteran anarchist organizer who is widely credited with shutting down the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999, has apparently arrived in Chicago after participating in the #OccupyWallStreet demonstration in New York.

According to Big Government sources, Fithian is currently training union leaders from the Service Employees’ International Union and the Teamsters Union in preparation for today’s demonstration. Her strategy may be to draw law enforcement officers to multiple protest sites, then to shift demonstrations suddenly to one central site.

Democratic activists and leaders, including Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), are expected to address the demonstrators today as part of “Stand Up Chicago,” a broad coalition of community organizing groups coordinated by the SEIU and promoted by left-wing bloggers in the area. (more…)

Convicted bank fraudster Robert Creamer, who recently set up a nationwide political consultancy to boost Democrats’ 2012 campaigns, and who wrote the Democrats’ political strategy on health care from federal prison, is promoting efforts by Democrats and the #OccuptWallStreet protestors to single out Bank of America.

Bank of America has been a focus of the #Occupy demonstrations across the country. Last Thursday, in downtown Los Angeles, eleven #OccupyLA protestors were arrested after illegally occupying a Bank of America branch.

(The demonstration was filmed by Andrew Breitbart and myself; footage of the bank occupation appears at the beginning of the video below.)

Creamer, who is married to Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), went to prison in 2006 for bank fraud and tax evasion. That has not stopped him from demanding that Americans pay higher taxes and attacking Bank of America for introducing–as other banks have done–a monthy fee for debit card usage.

It is unknown how closely Creamer is involved in the #OccupyWallStreet movement, but he has visited lower Manhattan as the protests have unfolded, and has been promoting the demonstrations at his Huffington Post blog. (Schakowsky has described visiting the #OccupyWallStreet protest at the same time that Creamer was in Manhattan, and has claimed ignorance about “who’s organizing it or how.”)

Indeed, Creamer may be an important link between the fringe “community organizing” and anarchist groups behind the #Occupy protests, the unions that have joined the demonstrations, and the Democrats’ campaign to re-elect President Barack Obama. (more…)

During a radio interview Wednesday morning, Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) made a startlingly candid statement about taxpayers and the wealth they earn and produce. It was her Joe the Plumber moment in that it broke the Democratic playbook rule about revealing the left’s true intentions.

She was interviewed on Chicago radio station WLS 890 AM by hosts Don Wade and Roma. You can listen to the entire interview here, but the part about taxes comes in around the 13:50 point.

Don Wade played a question that was posed to the GOP candidates at the recent Tea Party Debate in Florida. A young man at the debate asked a simple enough question: “Out of every dollar that I earn, how much do you think that I deserve to keep?”

Her response?

“I’ll put it this way. You don’t deserve to keep all of it and it’s not a question of deserving because what government is, is those things that we decide to do together. And there are many things that we decide to do together like have our national security. Like have police and fire. What about the people that work at the National Institutes of Health who are looking for a cure for cancer?”

No one disputes that government needs some level of taxpayer revenue to function. The problem is with Schakowsky’s response and what it reveals about the left.

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From WLS in Chicago:

Schakowsky said that Americans don’t deserve to keep all of their money because we need taxes to support our society.

“I’ll put it this way. You don’t deserve to keep all of it and it’s not a question of deserving because what government is, is those things that we decide to do together. And there are many things that we decide to do together like have our national security. Like have police and fire. What about the people that work at the National Institute of Health who are looking for a cure for cancer,” Schakowsky said.

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Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) unwittingly highlighted the corruption inherent in congressional earmarks today, in an op-ed published in the Chicago Tribune.

Calling for Congress to “raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires,” Schakowsky quoted a constituent who supports her:

“Our country is not really broke,” said Cynthia Carranza, who directs a food pantry in Niles. Carranza has watched the increase in hungry people at her food pantry door even as government support for her program is slashed. “We’re an incredibly rich and prosperous nation. But our wealth is skewed to a very few fortunate at the top. We’re not broken, just twisted.”

Carranza’s support for government redistribution of wealth is no surprise. She may complain about the rich, but she has benefited richly from federal largesse: Carranza’s food pantry was the recipient of a $250,000 earmark requested by Schakowsky for FY 2011 in the run-up to last year’s congressional election.

Schakowsky laments that “government support” for the Niles Township Food Pantry has been “slashed,” but she certainly knows that is not the whole truth.

Schakowsky slipped the earmark request into a transportation, housing and urban development appropriations bill loaded with earmarks by other representatives. (The same bill was used by Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) to direct $1 million to the National Council of La Raza for “Capitalization of a Revolving Loan Fund to be Used for Nationwide Community Development Activities.”)

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We received an email invitation to the “We Are One” labor union solidarity protest from Alex Armour, Political Director, for Illinois 9th District Congress Woman, Democrat Jan Schakowsky and decided to attend. Alex was on hand and “one” with the protesters, as you can see from our footage.

We have noticed an alarming message, prevalent at every single left wing protest we have attended this year in Chicago and the Midwest. While each protest has an official message of a seemingly less alarming cause, such as; Anti-War, Anti-Deportation or “We Are One” with “Union Solidarity”, there is also an extremely disturbing trend of blatant and obvious promotion of a revolutionary transformation of America into a new socialist or communist type of economic system.

While Tea Parties have received massive amounts of ridicule for being so called “Astro-Turf” (corporate funded) from the institutional left and mainstream media, left wing protesters claim the moral high ground of being a “true” grassroots movement. However once again, our footage reveals an extremely elaborate and costly production put on by these so called “true” grassroots activists. This particular protest had at least hundreds of protesters bussed in on at least 12 school busses we counted taking up two city blocks in downtown Chicago, and an audio/video system that could outdo many local rock concerts at Chicago’s infamous summer street fairs. It seems unlikely that there is no “Astro-Turf” funding for these nationwide protests that occurred this past Saturday.

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My campaign for U.S. Congress ended with a smile–not because of the results, which were disappointing, but because of what it achieved. We ran a tough, issue-oriented, well-organized campaign. We out-raised incumbent Democrat Jan Schakowsky 2-to-1 in the third quarter. We raised the Republican vote by nearly 40 percent over 2006, and helped Republicans nearby and statewide by forcing our opponent to defend her seat.

We also sent a powerful message to the Obama administration about the need for stronger U.S. support for Israel. While Israel was never the focus of the campaign, it was an important priority. We led a nationwide push-back against the far-left J Street organization, which supported Schakowsky lavishly. In so doing, we helped Republicans defeat J Street Democrats in races across the country, further marginalizing the group.

Still, losing by a 66-31 margin is tough. Part of the reason we lost was that our opponent ran a relentlessly negative campaign, spending massive amounts of money on mailings falsely accusing me of wanting to “dismantle” Medicare and the like. She also made full use of the advantages of incumbency–dominating media coverage, promising federal dollars to key voting areas, and (corruptly, I believe) intervening in local foreclosures.

Yet even those deplorable tactics cannot, by themselves, explain the result. The reason 9th district voters chose to retain the biggest spender in the U.S. House, in a year when much of the rest of the country rose up in revolt against excessive spending, was that Chicago and its immediate surrounding areas are heavily dependent on that spending. Cities like Chicago are no longer engines of industry, but wards of the government.

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This video, from a Rep. Jan Schakowsky ‘get out the vote’ rally in Chicago, got some attention for the interviewers questioning of Schakowsky on the constitutional basis for ObamaCare and the Democratic Socialists. Overlooked was a far more interesting, and very serious, segment of the video.

Monday was the first day of ‘early voting’ in Illinois. Between now and November 2nd, any Illinois voter can cast their ballot in certain designated polling place. The prohibition on electioneering, i.e. campaigning inside a polling place, still apply, even if the voting isn’t on election day.

At about the one minute mark, Schakowsky joins a group of people walking into an early voting precinct. She is asked if she is excited about voting that day:

Actually I’m gonna walk in with these folks but I’m gonna vote on Election Day

You can’t do that.

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On Monday night, my opponent Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) delivered this speech to Democrats at a restaurant in Chicago–with U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias and Governor Pat Quinn in attendance:

All around the country, people are trying to replicate what we do in Chicago. They–we have a tradition of knockin’ on doors, of pulling people out–you know, people, they talk about “message” and “persuasion.” Here’s our message: “I don’t get off your doorstep until you get out to the polls and vote.” That’s our message! That’s our message!

There’s nothing wrong with going door-to-door and urging people to vote. There is something wrong–and illegal–with “pulling” people out of their homes, or threatening that you won’t leave until they do what you tell them.

It’s called intimidation, and it is a felony under Illinois law–even if it is, in Jan Schakowsky’s experience, a “tradition” in Chicago politics.

There are two reasons to be concerned about Schakowsky’s exhortation. One is that it may be part of a national strategy for desperate Democrats in this election cycle. Indeed, her husband, Washington insider and convicted felon Robert Creamer, gave the same advice (almost word-for-word) in a recent Huffington Post column. (And repeated it. And repeated it again. And again.)

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On October 17, 2010, Democrat Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky and her Republican challenger, Joel Pollak, faced off before a largely Jewish audience in Chicago to address Israel-specific foreign policy issues.  After the forum was over, we attempted to ask both candidates a number of questions unrelated to, and indirectly raised during the Candidates’ Forum.  While Mr. Pollak was more than willing to answer our questions, Representative Schakowsky refused to comment.

I’ve obtained an advance copy of Radical-In-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, Stanley Kurtz’s meticulously researched new book on our president’s socialist roots. It’s no hatchet job. It doesn’t appeal to the prejudices of the reader, or spin facts to excite suspicion. Rather, Kurtz has done serious research to document the incestuous world of far-left politics in Chicago, where Obama got his political start.

Kurtz’s goal is to answer the question–considered inflammatory by some–of whether Obama is a socialist. At the outset, he writes, “I thought the socialism issue was an unprovable and unnecessary distraction from the broader question of Obama’s ultra-liberal inclinations. I was wrong.” Kurtz concludes that Obama is indeed a socialist, quietly determined to transform America by expanding government power over our lives.

One of the fascinating links Kurtz draws–particularly to me, since I’m running against Democrat Jan Schakowsky for Congress in Illinois’s 9th district–is the connection between Obama, Schakowsky, and her husband Robert Creamer. Kurtz shows that Schakowsky is, or was, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America; her career, Kurtz writes, “illuminate[s] the larger political intentions and strategies of community organizing in America.”

Schakowsky is rated by nonpartisan sources like GovTrack.us and National Journal as the most left-wing member of Congress. Her extremism is no accident, but the result of deeply held convictions.

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Yesterday, at a candidate forum in Chicago held by the American Muslim Task Force, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) was asked point-blank about H.R. 3808 (the Interstate Recognition of Notarizatons Act).

Her answer reveals exactly why Americans are frustrated with Congress, and why incumbents like her are in trouble:

“I don’t know what it is.”

There’s really no excuse!

H.R. 3808 would make states recognize documents notarized in other states. It has drawn wide criticism, since many banks have recently admitted that they have been using people called “robo-signers” to sign hundreds of documents without reading them. That is partly why Bank of America and other banks have halted foreclosures in the past few days.

H.R. 3808 could theoretically allow abuses of the foreclosure process to happen more easily. Yet it passed unanimously and without debate in both the House and the Senate, because nobody bothered to read it or object to it.

Unlike the ObamaCare legislation, H.R. 3808 is not thousands of pages long. In fact, it is less than one page long.

Yet almost nobody, Republican or Democrat, bothered to examine it or to think about its possible effects.

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