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  • IL Legislators Should Give-up Pensions

    Illinois lawmakers ought to give up their state pensions.

    Legislators are part-time employees, but they make nearly $70,000 a year and in some cases can qualify for a pension after as little as four years in office at age 62. If they were elected before 2011, they can retire at 55 and collect a pension after eight years of service.

    Those pensions (like all pensions in Illinois) are not subject to the state income tax, and lawmakers also get health insurance benefits after they retire.

    With the state facing roughly $80 billion in unpaid pension liabilities and on the verge of financial collapse, the elected officials who created this crisis ought to be ashamed to accept such largesse from taxpayers.

    via Southtown Star.

    Agreed.

    I can’t remember where exactly but I once wrote about this at length.  Elected folks should earn a salary based on their more recent private sector salary.  And when they’re done with their “service” they should not receive a nickel from the taxpayer.

    This change alone would solve many many of our problems.

  • Teaching (Indoctrinating) Chicago Students to Protest

    Jones College Prep, a Chicago Public Schools “selective enrollment” school, held “Social Justice Week” in March, a collection of events geared towards turning students into activists. See the schedule of events here.

    According to a flyer on the school’s website:

    Social Justice Week was created to promote community advancement through dialogue and community service based activism. Moreover, we hope to unify the voice of various JCP and community organizations in which to facilitate collaboration for the betterment of the community at large and promote a unified human rights advancement initiative.

    The school is, according to U.S. News & World Report, a Top 100 high school in the country. It’s one of the best of the best–the cream of the crop.

    …On Wednesday of Social Justice Week, Black Star Project, a Chicago-based community organizing group, was brought into the school after school hours to teach students about “non-violent” protesting. Led by Phillip Jackson, former “Chief of Education” under former Mayor Richard Daley, the optional discussion was focused on students fighting back against gun crime.

    Black Star Project, according to its website, is funded by Open Society Foundations (i.e. George Soros), Best Buy, ING and Toyota Motor Sales, among others.

    Jackson’s co-presenter, Camille Williams of the Peace in the Hood movement, made several inflammatory statements about gun ownership and the National Rifle Association. She claimed the NRA is indifferent to gun violence. She also asserted she has received emails from the NRA and/or its members claiming she is “going to hell” for her advocacy and “these porch monkeys deserved to die,” referring to black children killed by guns.

    EAGnews.org contacted Jackson regarding these emails, wishing to make them public. We received no response.

    When one student stated that she believed everyone should be able to own guns, her opinion was dismissed.

    Williams: Right now in Springfield, they are moving to pass conceal and carry so that everybody can carry guns. Are you all in agreement with that?

    Student: Um…I am because I think if you take away guns from regular citizens, the criminals and the police are the only ones who have them, so…

    Williams: did you look at this?

    [At that point, she held up a list to young people who have been killed with guns.]

    Student: Yes, ma’am, I did.

    Williams: How many of these kids on here are able to carry a gun?

    Student: None of them.

    Williams: And they are the leading targets.

    At this particular session of Social Justice Week, no opposing views were offered.  It appeared only certain outcomes were being sought.  Jackson strongly encouraged the students to develop forms of non-violent protest. “I’m not telling you to do it, but if you were going to,” he said, leading the proverbial horse to the water.

    “I’m just saying,” he said on several occasions.

    via Breitbart.

    Incredible that taxpayers are forced to pay for this nonsense.

  • lllinois Moves Toward Insolvency

    We’re now making national news:

    After trying to tax Illinois to governmental solvency and economic dynamism, Pat Quinn, a Democrat who has been governor since 2009, now says “our rendezvous with reality has arrived.”  …

    Illinois was more heavily taxed than the five contiguous states (Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin) even before January 2011, when Quinn got a lame duck Legislature (its successor has fewer Democrats) to raise corporate taxes 30 percent (from 7.3 percent to 9.5 percent), giving Illinois one of the highest state corporate taxes, and the fourth highest combination of national and local corporate taxation in the industrialized world. Since 2009, Quinn has spent more than $500 million in corporate welfare to bribe companies not to flee the tax environment he has created.

    Quinn raised personal income taxes 67 percent (from 3 percent to 5 percent), adding about $1,040 to the tax burden of a family of four earning $60,000. Illinois’ unemployment rate increased faster than any other state’s in 2011. Its pension system is the nation’s most underfunded, and the state has floated bond issues to finance pension contributions. Quinn’s recent flirtation with realism — a plan to raise the retirement age to 67 and cap pension cost-of-living adjustments — is less significant than the continuing unrealistic expectation that some Illinois’ pension investments will grow 8.5 percent annually. Although the state Constitution mandates balancing the budget, this is almost meaningless while the state sells bonds to pay for operating expenses (in just 10 years the state’s bonded debt has increased from $9.4 billion to $30 billion), underfunds pensions and other liabilities, and makes vendors wait (they are owed $5.6 billion).

    …

    Peterson, a professor of government at Harvard, and Nadler, a doctoral candidate also at Harvard, say collective bargaining rights for government employees pose “a dramatically new challenge to the viability” of American federalism. They cite studies demonstrating that investors’ perceptions of risk of default are correlated with the rate of unionization among government employees. Higher percentages of government employees who are unionized, and larger Democratic shares of state legislative seats, correlate with increases in state borrowing costs.At least 12 percent of Americans change their residences each year, often moving to more hospitable economic environments. In a system of competitive federalism, Peterson and Nadler write, “If states and localities attempt in a serious way to tax the rich and give to the poor, the rich will depart while the poor will be attracted.” And government revenues and expenditures vary inversely.

    via Boston Herald.

    Illinois may fail before California.  Businesses are fleeing.  Residents are fleeing.  Illinois is shrinking, dying.

    For all of the Democrats efforts to “help” the poor, how will the poor be helped when Illinois becomes nothing more than one big Detroit?  The rich will all leave — they have the means to do so.  Those left I guess will feed on each other.

    I need to make sure history get written correctly.  The suffering of the poor that is coming is blood on the hands of Richie Daley, Michael Madigan, Lisa Madigan, Rod Blagojevich, George Ryan, Pat Quinn, Rahm Emanual, Jesse White, Danny Davis, Jesse Jackson, Todd Stroger, John Daley, and the rest of the Illinois combine… the Machine.

  • How America Will Fail

    [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ-4gnNz0vc?rel=0]

  • DHS/TSA & 450 Million Hollow Point Bullets

    1 + 1 = Concern.

    Start with this:

    The DHS has signed off on an “indefinite delivery” from defense contractors ATK that will include, for some reason, nearly 500 million high-power ammunition for .40 caliber firearms. The department has yet to discuss why they are ordering such a massive bevy of bullets for an agency that has limited need domestically for doing harm, but they say they expect to continue receiving shipments from the manufacturer for the next five years, during which they plan to blow through enough ammunition to execute more people than there are in the entire United States.  …

    While ammunition itself seems not too unreasonable of a request by a major federal entity that emphasizes domestic durability and safeguarding the country from coast to coast, the choice — and quantity — of its hollow pointorder raises a lot of questions about future plans for the DHS. ATK says they won their contract with the US government by being able to provide them with 450 million HST bullets, which it describes as “the next generation in high performance duty ammunition.”What does that mean, exactly? On their website, the contractor claims that the ammunition is specifically designed so that it can pass through a variety of obstructions and offers “optimum penetration for terminal performance.”

    via RT.

    Now, DHS is the “Department” a/k/a a cabinet level position within the government.  Under DHS is a whole slew of sub-department(s), administration(s) and bureau(s).  One such administration is the TSA.  We deal with these chuckle-heads each time we fly.  These are people generally unemployable in the private sector who are given the job of making sure that airline travel in this country is safe.

    It’s common to find out that a TSA agent has been arrested for possession of child porn, running a prostitution ring, assaulting a pilot, stealing money from passengers, selling property stolen from luggage, and stealing iPads.  And that’s just in 2012.  Going back further it only gets worse.

    So it should come as no surprise to anyone when:

    Four current and former Transportation Security Administration screeners have been arrested and face charges of taking bribes and looking the other way while suitcases filled with cocaine, methamphetamine or marijuana passed through X-ray machines at Los Angeles International Airport, federal authorities announced Wednesday.

    The TSA screeners, who were arrested Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, allegedly received up to $2,400 in cash bribes in exchange for allowing large drug shipments to pass through checkpoints in what the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles called a “significant breakdown” of security.

    In addition to the two current and two former screeners, prosecutors also indicted two alleged drug couriers and a third who allegedly tried to smuggle 11 pounds of cocaine but was nabbed when he went through the wrong security checkpoint.

    via DSL News.

    So when these people start buying 1.5 bullets for every man, woman, and child in the country I start to get concerned.  Just who exactly are they planning on shooting at?  And if that’s number is small, then why do they need so many rounds?

  • I truly believe that what the poor people in our community need is not more handouts from the government — which only makes them more enslaved to the government — but real freedom. Dr. Paul is a huge supporter of freedom. This is good news.

  • New Zealand Mulls $100 for Pack of Cigarettes

    New Zealand’s Health Ministry has reportedly considered boosting the price of a pack of cigarettes as high as $100 ($81 U.S.) in a bid to make the country smoke free by 2025.

    An internal government working paper raised the possibility of upping the cost of a 20-cigarette pack by 30 to 60 percent and tacking on yearly increases of 30 percent, Sky News reported.

    With cigarettes now priced at about $16 to $17, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said the $100 suggestion seemed like “an awful lot” and could encourage a black market, Fairfax NZ News reported.

    via NBC New York.

    Yikes!

    Can you say Black Market?

  • Bank of America Hates the Second Amendment

    McMillan Fiberglass Stocks, McMillan Firearms Manufacturing and McMillan Group International have been collectively banking with Bank of America for 12 years. But no more: In a recent meeting, the mega-bank told the firearms company that its business is no longer welcome.

    Operations director Kelly McMillan told the Daily Caller that his company has never been late on a payment and has never bounced a check. …

    Writing Thursday on Facebook, McMillan described a meeting at his office with Ray Fox, a business banking Senior Vice President with the giant bank. What was originally scheduled as an “account analysis” meeting, however, quickly became a political smackdown.

    The Bank of America emissary, he said, “spent 5 minutes talking about how McMillan has changed in the last 5 years and have become more of a firearms manufacturer than a supplier of accessories.”

    “At this point I interrupted him,” McMillan said, and asked, ‘Can I possibly save you some time so that you don’t waste your breath? What you are going to tell me is that because we are in the firearms manufacturing business you no longer what my business.’”

    Fox’s reply, according to McMillan? “That is correct.”

    via The Daily Caller.

    Well that pretty much says it all (more details to the story at the link.)

    I hate it when people say this but…  please pass this story along.  It is just so wrong that BofA would stop doing business with a successful company solely based on their manufacture of a legal and non-prurient product.

    I, thankfully, don’t do any business with BofA.  Can say that I certainly don’t intent to do so now.

    UPDATE:  Title changed to more accurately reflect the story.

  • Trayvon Martin Case Causing More Beatings?

    Mobile police need your help to catch a mob that beat Matthew Owens so badly that he’s in critical condition.

    According to police, Owens fussed at some kids playing basketball in the middle of Delmar Drive about 8:30 Saturday night. They say the kids left and a group of adults returned, armed with everything but the kitchen sink.

    Police tell News 5 the suspects used chairs, pipes and paint cans to beat Owens.

    Owens’ sister, Ashley Parker, saw the attack. “It was the scariest thing I have ever witnessed.” Parker says 20 people, all African American, attacked her brother on the front porch of his home, using “brass buckles, paint cans and anything they could get their hands on.”

    Police will only say “multiple people” are involved.

    What Parker says happened next could make the fallout from the brutal beating even worse. As the attackers walked away, leaving Owen bleeding on the ground, Parker says one of them said “Now that’s justice for Trayvon.”

    via The Daily Caller.

    NOTE:  Photo of Mr. Owens in the hospital at link.

    Violence begets violence until someone stands up and shouts STOP!!

    But that hasn’t happened.

    What has happened is the MSM, black “leaders”, the new black panthers, and Left leaning talking heads of all sorts have been yelling form the mountaintops “No Justice No Peace.”  Matthew Owens is the result.

    Our society is so screwed.

  • » Spike in Autism Linked to High-Fructose Corn Syrup

    A new study published in the journal Clinical Epigenetics reveals that both the Standard American Diet (SAD) and various toxic environmental factors play a definitive and synergistic role in the development of autism.  According to the study, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), mercury in vaccines, and agricultural pesticides are among the many cofactors that contribute to the onset of autism spectrum disorders, all of which deserve more attention from health authorities than they are currently getting.

    Renee Dufault from the Food Ingredient and Health Research Institute (FIHRI) and her colleagues examined how various foods and environmental factors affect the neurodevelopment of children….

    What the team discovered is that HFCS, for instance, which is a highly-processed chemical sweetener used in many processed foods and beverages, depletes the body of the natural mineral zinc.  And zinc, of course, is responsible for cleansing the body of heavy metals like mercury, arsenic, and cadmium, as well as aluminum and other toxins that are known to disrupt proper brain development.  …

    You can view the complete study at the following link:http://www.clinicalepigeneticsjournal.com

    HFCS laden with brain-destroying chemicals, mercury

    Back in 2009, it was revealed that HFCS is actually a source of heavy metal poisoning as well. The heavy processing required to produce HFCS involves the use of caustic soda chemicals and mercury, two brain-destroying chemicals that end up in the final product fed to millions of American children (http://www.naturalnews.com/025442_HFCS_Corn_Refiners_Association.html).

    Ketchup, sodas, juice drinks, breads, crackers, cookies, and many other processed food items are loaded with HFCS, and these items are a staple in many children’s diets, including in the meals fed to them at school. So it is no wonder that children’s bodies are being overwhelmed by mercury and other autism-related toxins, which is only worsened by the onslaught of neurologically damaging vaccines, some of which still contain mercury, most of them received throughout their early childhood developmental years.

    via InfoWars.

    I’m not sure the folks are “Natural News” are the most reliable… however, it appears save to say that eating less HFCS is a good idea.