Illinois Review

Illinois Conservatives to meet next Saturday in Bolingbrook

For more information, go HERE 

Chicago Mayor calls for $1B more from Springfield; fuels call for "New Illinois"

CHICAGO - Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot's staff has been digging through the financial mess left behind by Democrat former Mayor Rahm Emanuel - and it's becoming more and more evident why he didn't seek re-election in 2019. The city's finances are a mess - despite the help state lawmakers gave the Chicago Public School system this past spring. 

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Thursday she needs help from Springfield to erase a $1 billion-plus shortfall, but she shed no new light on the kind of help she’ll seek, except to promise a heavy dose of budget cuts to make the tax increases go down easier, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Friday. 

Last month, Lightfoot asked the state to take over the city's $28B debt and Governor Pritzker said it wouldn't happen. 

However, all this demand for the whole state to bail the city of Chicago out of its financial pit is fueling calls from those downstate that have worked hard to pay taxes as required, while Chicagoans overspent for decades with the expectation that someday they would be relieved.

Two Republicans announce intentions to challenge Durbin in 2020

State Fair photos by Liz Eilers Bron

SPRINGFIELD - At the State Fair Thursday, two Republicans announced their intentions to unseat incumbent Democrat US Senate Dick Durbin in 2020 - Downstate conservative Peggy Hubbard and former Lake County Sheriff Mark Curran. Both Hubbard and Curran addressed IL GOP officials Thursday morning.

Effort to stop Pritzker's tax rate change turns partisan at State Fair

SPRINGFIELD - An effort to slow down, if not stop, Gov Pritzker's #1 priority - to amend the State's Constitution to allow different levels of taxation based on income - took a partisan turn at the State Fair Thursday.

The "Vote No for Blank Check" PAC headed by former Illinois Manufacturing Association's Greg Baise appeared at the Illinois Republican Party's fair gathering Thursday - and has taken over a growing non-partisan movement with its anti-Democrat logo featuring Speaker Madigan: 

IL Sen. Durbin Threatens the U.S. Supreme Court

The Patriot Post's Jordan Candler writes:

The judicial system is obviously profoundly important — and also extremely susceptible. It’s under constant siege by those who abhor the Rule of Law, which is why Thomas Jefferson in 1819 wrote, “The Constitution … is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.”

Rossi: The High Price of Being Raised Without Your Father

By Randy Rossi - 

One of the critical foundations of civilization for thousands of years was the intact family unit with a mother and father raising their children. Both were needed to serve as role models for children and society reinforced and supported the intact family unit putting pressure on men and women to be married when they had children and to dedicate their lives to raising their children to insure that they became good citizens. Sadly today, many children are being raised without their fathers which is causing horrific pain to those children and society.

The Net Worth Of Every 2020 Democrat Presidential Candidate

Forbes dug into the details—examining financial disclosure statements, scouring local real estate records and calculating pension benefits—to figure out the finances of the 2020 candidates.

There were some surprises. Bernie is a millionaire. So is “middle-class Joe” Biden. Elizabeth Warren is richer than both of them, worth an estimated $12 million. But she’s a long way from John Delaney, whose $200 million fortune makes him twice as wealthy as every other Democratic candidate not named Tom Steyer. The hedge fund tycoon, who announced his candidacy in July 2019, is worth an estimated $1.6 billion.

The average net worth of the Democrat candidates is $12.9 million. The median net worth is $2 million.

More HERE

Big Government, Shrinking Economy

From 1960 to 1973, the U.S. economy grew by an average of 4.3 percent per year with a government share of 30 percent of GDP.

Long after today’s hot-button political controversies fade into obscurity, our country will face the consequences of how we answer a major question that divides the political parties: Are we to have a larger government providing more services from higher taxes, or a smaller government providing less services with fewer taxes?

Currently, the movement to expand government, inaccurately self-described as socialism, promotes a platform of government medicine, free college, generous welfare, strict regulation, and high taxes readily recognizable in Europe as social democratic policies.

More HERE

The Trump Deregulation Dividend: $3,100

The goal of the Trump regulatory agenda is “to reduce costly regulation, while protecting workers, public health, safety, and the environment,” the report states.

The Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the burden on the U.S. economy from unnecessary federal regulations have met with success, the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) reports.

The report analyzes 20 major deregulatory actions it says will save U.S. consumers and businesses about $220 billion per year after they go into full effect. These reforms will raise real incomes by $3,100 per household per year and increase U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) by 1.0 to 2.2 percent in the next decade, the CEA estimates.

The CEA issued an interim report on “The Economic Effects of Federal Deregulation since January 2017” on June 28.

More HERE

Is Capitalism Bad For The Environment?

For decades now, Green Parties in Scandinavia and Western Europe have argued that, although capitalism lifts people out of poverty, it should be replaced with socialism, which they claim is more likely to protect the environment.

Convincing evidence that this is a huge mistake is provided by Dr. Calvin Beisner, Founder and National Spokesman of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, in his book Is Capitalism Bad For The Environment? He gives irrefutable examples:

To the Left, Dodgeball a ‘Tool of Oppression’

Wouldn’t you think if someone had a problem with dodgeball being too rough for some kids, they would just say so? Talk it out. Let students have a say. Maybe offer alternative activities. Or maybe save dodgeball for young adults who want to show off their athletic prowess and let the little kids try, say, kickball.

Unfortunately, as happens all too often in academe, a team of cosmic thinkers in British Columbia reached far into the ether of political correctness to slam dodgeball as a “tool of oppression.” More than that, they wailed that the playground game activates not just one but the “five faces of oppression” (conjured by an icon of feminist political theory, the late Iris Marion Young): exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence.

Does a game that entails throwing, dodging, or catching soft rubber balls deserve this much PC vitriol? Granted, if you are agility-challenged (as was I), you might have difficulty dodging a swift throw. However, if you are smarter than the average bear, you could stand your ground and learn how to catch the ball and thus put the smarty-pants flamethrower out of the game.

More HERE

Convicted felon arrested carrying rifle into Chicago VA center

CHICAGO — A convicted felon has been charged with a federal firearm violation for allegedly illegally possessing a semi-automatic rifle at the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center in Chicago, the Northern Illinois FBI reports.

BERNARD HARVEY, JR., 40, of Indianapolis, Ind., is charged with one count of illegal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.  Harvey illegally possessed the rifle on Aug. 12, 2019, at the medical center, 820 S. Damen Ave. in Chicago, according to a criminal complaint and affidavit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Chicago.  Harvey is scheduled to make an initial court appearance at 2:00 p.m. before U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan E. Cox.

Thorner/Boese: Pursuing gun violence solutions demands rational, realistic solutions

El Paso WalMart killer 

By Nancy Thorner and Al Boese - 

Liberals could hardly contain their glee where there were two massacres over the first weekend of August, 2019, the first in El Paso, Texas, the second in Dayton, Ohio.  For those vying for the presidential nomination, it was as if Christmas had arrived twice in August.

If you were watching cable news, you would have thought that nothing else had occurred anywhere else in the world for 48 hours.  But unlike the shootings in Texas and Ohio, this was just a typical weekend in our Inner-cities, where in Chicago 53 people were shot over that same weekend, and 10 of them were killed.  But, of course, all those people were only murdered with handguns, not with an AK-47, the favorite scapegoat of Leftists.

Americans skeptical about Jeffrey Epstein's reported suicide

Posted on AFGE union's website

NEW YORK - There are just too many unanswered questions, bizarre coincidences and uncomfortable connections for Americans to swallow the story that convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein killed himself in Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), polls say.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that only 29% of American Adults believe Epstein actually committed suicide while in jail. Forty-two percent (42%) think Epstein was murdered to prevent him from testifying against powerful people with whom he associated. A sizable 29% are undecided.

Wednesday, another question popped up as webbers found that the union representing the correctional officers at New York's MCC endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016. Documents reportedly show that Bill Clinton was acquainted with Epstein, and some say he visited Epstein's so-called "Orgy Island" on several occasions.

Engineer steps out of shadows to reveal Google's conservative animosity

WASHINGTON DC - The news site Project Veritas released an explosive video Wednesday morning featuring the Google employee that revealed how Google had been manipulating its worldwide platform against conservatives.

The eight-year Google senior software engineer, Zachary Vorhies, stepped out of the shadows because his lawyers suggested Google's reaction would be serious. "This is your first step to having your life ruined ..." Vorhies' lawyers told him.

Justin Haskins: Socialism Is Inherently Evil

Socialism is inseparable from tyranny, and even if it were to work economically it would still be evil by nature, according to Justin Haskins with the Stopping Socialism Project at the Heartland Institute.

Haskins is the author of “Socialism Is Evil,” and as the book’s name suggests, he explains the moral problems that socialism unavoidably brings to a society. By its nature, he explained, socialism tramples on individual beliefs and values.

True for You but Not for Me

Can something be true for you and not true for me? In other words, is the truth relative or is the truth fixed? How you answer this question shapes the way you look at the world. Renowned philosophy professor Paul Copan provides an excellent road map through this tricky and vitally important issue.

Do the Math: Vaping < Harmful Than Smoking

It should come as no big surprise that Americans are not the world’s best mathematicians. After all, our federal government has accumulated a mindboggling $22 trillion debt and American students have borrowed more than $1.6 trillion just to attend college. In 2017, only 34 percent of eighth-grade students scored “proficient” in mathematics, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress. Even worse, the average American adult scored an abysmal 253 points out of a possible 500 on the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s 2012 Survey of Adult Skills.

How Some Taxpayer-funded Unionistas Spent Their Summer

At a time when most U.S. citizens have benefited from the Trump tax cuts, the American Federation of Teachers joined up with a motley assemblage of leftwing organizations over the summer on what was billed as the “Tax the Rich Bus Tour.” The road show, which lasted 35 days and ended just last week, was replete with the usual tropes – including demands that “the rich and corporations pay their fair share” and other socialist-inspired class warfare twaddle.

What the unionistas don’t get or refuse to acknowledge is that the rich already pay their “fair share” and then some. According to the Tax Foundation, while the top 1 percent of taxpayers earned 19.7 percent of the income in 2016, they paid 37.3 percent of federal income taxes. Also, the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid a 26.9 percent individual income tax rate, which is more than seven times higher than taxpayers in the bottom 50 percent (3.7 percent).

More HERE

UPDATE x1: URL Dispute in 6th CD GOP primary heats up

WHEATON - A dispute arose last week over website URL's in the 6th CD GOP primary, and Monday the plot thickened. First, Republican candidate Jeanne Ives posted accusations on her Facebook page that her primary opponent Evelyn Sanguinetti's campaign had pulled a URL switch.

Evelyn Sanguinetti told Illinois Review her campaign wasn't guilty of Ives' accusation: