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What’s behind the war on Christianity?

What’s behind the war on Christianity?

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Cross on hill at SunsetThe Christian faith in its true New Testament form is the only religion that cannot be manipulated in favor of One Worldism or universalism, sometimes called the New World Order. This is precisely why the world system and its political leaders hate, despise and persecute Christians and Christianity.
I hasten to explain that all the phony Christian fronts, televangelists and world evangelists are not Christianity but very much a part of the worldly system and an antichrist. They, almost without exception, teach a watered-down, universalist form of Christianity that preaches love and acceptance and tolerance of sinful behavior above all else, especially repentance, baptism and obedience – or dumbed-down Christianity. They want to mold God into man’s image rather than man into God’s.
I hasten to add that no American evangelist did more to promote the dumbed-down universalist form of Christianity than Billy Graham, and no world religious leaders did more to promote universalism than recent and current popes.
All religions are collectivist religions except Christianity which is an individual and individualist faith. Governments want and must have collectivism under some name whether it be democracy, socialism or communism, and the only god acceptable to government and its agents is the god of government.
Collectivism is a certain means of social, economic and religious control. Collectivist politicians regularly espouse individualism, human liberty and democracy at the same time. This is an impossibility. Individualism and human liberty are the opposites of democracy and any other forms of collectivism.
The collectivist mentality or the mass collective mind is the spirit of the New World Order. The collectivist man cannot oppose tyranny because he is himself tyranny. He is the reality of the supreme welfare state in its conspiracy of the ages to manipulate humanity against itself. Collectivism is the foundation of the New World Order. It is supreme and total deception.
The global elite are on a path toward the final and total annihilation of Western civilization. The plan is ancient; to absorb the West into the East with no remnants of racial or religious identity remaining.
The so-called War on Terror is part and parcel of the elite’s plan and is designed as a war on the American people, Western civilization and the Christian faith. The sooner we recognize this terrorist façade as a spiritual war on Christianity and the faithful, the sooner we can begin to throw off the gross deception and see it  for what it is.
Abroad, the U.S. and its proxies are destabilizing regimes and creating breeding grounds for Islamists who are then employed for many purposes, including further destabilization, as controlled opposition and to carry out terror attacks which naturally lead to calls for more government controls to “keep us safe” and to “fight terror.”
The destabilization naturally created a swarm of refugees who sought to flee the violence and destruction being meted out by the U.S., NATO and the Islamists. The European globalists – and to some extent the U.S. – opened its doors to a mass migration of immigrants bringing their anti-Christian religion. In Europe, however, this was merely overkill. For all intents and purposes, true Christianity has long since been eradicated in most of Europe.
The Mohammedans are also the global elite’s tools for ripping Christianity out by its roots. ISIS – created, funded and enabled by the West – is slaughtering Middle Eastern Christians and destroying historically significant Christian buildings, artifacts and symbols. The goal is the destruction of the roots, history and birthplace of the Bible in order to erase Christianity from the face of the Earth, allowing the elites to write a pseudo-religious history in their own interests.
Mohammedans are the perfect tools for the elites’ objectives as the founder of the Islamic cult was a pedophilic camel and jewel thief who hijacked caravans and sacked villages to build his empire. Mohammed was the perfect communist, for he destroyed entire cities, slaughtering everyone including women and children who did not bow to Allah’s Kabah, the magic cube of stone which became the primary icon of Freemasonry’s compass-and-square, the design inspiration for Moscow’s Red Square, and the basis of mind-altering modern art.
Mohammed was also the perfect fascist, as Hitler imitated him, consolidating political power by incorporating the most popular tenets of world religions into his own universalism.
The American system is fascism labeled as democracy. So if we really see the emperor with no clothes, we see the political fronts thusly: Communism = Socialism = Fascism = Democracy. And we see the spiritual fronts as Judaism = Islam = Freemasonry. The deception prevails when we see these as separate and not as the same.
Here at home both the state and local governments are equally engaged in a war on Christianity. It began in earnest in the first half of the 20th Century when the Supreme Court turned the Bill of Rights on its ear and created from whole cloth – and against more than 150 years of historical precedent – that the 1st Amendment erected a “wall of separation” between church and state. Prior to that from the founding of America, the Bible had been  used as a textbook and school books regularly referenced and/or quoted Holy Scripture. In 1781, Congress even approved the purchase of Bibles to be used in schools.
From there we have come to the point that the mention of the Christian God and his Son or referencing the Bible in schools is prohibited and Christian prayer and religious symbols are banned while whole courses are devoted to pushing the Muslim religion on students and they are made to recite Islamic tenets or wear Islamic dress as a form of classroom study.
The First Liberty Institute has documented 1,200 instances of government-on-Christian persecution, according to its Senior Counsel Ken Klukowski. Many of them can be read about here. These range from bans on the wearing of crucifixes in schools to attempts to prohibit children from carrying Bibles to assaults on those who would pray in public meetings to forcing business owners to cater to the sodomites to the Obamacare assault on businesses and institutions (Hobby Lobby, Little Sisters of the Poor, etc.) who oppose abortion and don’t want to provide for it in mandated health insurance plans.
And as in Europe, politicians in the U.S. have opened the doors to a mass migration of anti-Christian immigrants, with special accommodations being made for so-called “refugees” from the regimes the U.S. has helped to destabilize. Note, however, that any Christian refugees from those countries are excluded except in rare instances.
The influx of immigrants brings with them a collectivist mentality along with their anti-Christian values.
The collectivist mentality lures mankind into guidance from “higher authorities” (government). The crowd wants prepackaged truth and human “freedom” as granted by government authority instead of using their own consciousness for making decisions and determining their own actions. Hence, they are easily deceived and manipulated under some altruistic nonsense.
Collective man wants the external authority of government instead of the spirit and mind of Christ. The animal farm is that world arena wherein man collectively surrenders himself, his personal being and his ego to the collective and obedient faith in government authority.
It’s all very simple. A crowd can be manipulated into an altered state of consciousness (Hitler’s torchlight parades) finally evolving into a growing attitude of docility, whereas an individualistic person cannot be so easily manipulated.
The state always considers that a self-sufficient and independent thinker is a threat to collectivism and its efforts to deceive the masses. Since the Christian takes on the being and Spirit of Christ, his total allegiance is or should be to the Living God. He will not sacrifice himself for “the common good” or “higher causes.” He cannot be manipulated by the State.
The welfare state must absolutely keep the people from the individualistic tendency of thinking for themselves.
Government parasites extract their wealth, power and pomp from mass deception based upon altruistic sacrifices of the workers and producers of wealth. Their greatest fear is that this will be revealed.
Human liberty is of God, not a privilege of the state, hence the ongoing war to eradicate Christianity.

Government’s surveillance and its stifling of his speech should terrify us.

Now that the government’s made toast of the others, it sticks a fork in the 1st Amendment, too

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billofrights0624_imageA filmmaker recently revealed why he shot his movie abroad rather than at home: he fears his government. Can you identify the regime he escaped?
We moved to Germany, because we did not feel comfortable in _____. We felt like we were at risk [in ____]. We didn’t know what [____‘s agents] might do, so we ended up in Munich…”
Was the producer referring to North Korea? China? Russia, perhaps?
Nope. Oliver Stone was speaking about the good ol’ USSA. He “didn’t know what the NSA might do,” given that his upcoming movie, “Snowden,” presents Heroic Ed as “a historical figure of great consequence.” So he moved production overseas. Even there, the feds’ long arm shook its fist at him: “Problems arose with companiesthat had connections to the U.S., he said: ‘… BMW couldn’t even help us in any way in Germany.’”
Funding also posed problems. “’No studio would support [the film,’ Stone] said. ‘It was extremely difficult to finance…’ Eventually, financing came through from France and Germany. … ‘It’s a very strange thing to do (a story about) an American man, and not be able to finance this movie in America. And that’s very disturbing, if you think about its implications on any subject that is not overtly pro-American. They say we have freedom of expression, but thought is financed, and thought is controlled, and the media is controlled. This country is very tight on that, and there’s no criticism allowed at a certain level.’”
Perhaps Stone’s feigning. After all, pretending paranoia over the NSA is brilliant publicity for a picture about the agency’s arch-enemy, Ed Snowden.
But what if he isn’t? How far we’ve fallen, that two-bit politicians and bureaucrats tyrannize powerful producers into seeking asylum!

Regardless of your opinion of Stone and Snowden, a government so hostile to dissidents, to freedom of thought and of expression, should not only shame but very much worry us. If the feds can intimidate a Hollywood honcho as influential as Stone, what chance do the rest of us stand against them?
Nor is Stone the only casualty of this war on the 1st Amendment. “Conservative radio host Glenn Beck is under investigation after a comment he made on his radio show when talking about GOP front-runner Donald Trump…” It seems that Beck and his producer, Stu Burguiere, were joking on-air; the latter mocked Beck’s comment about Trump, to which Beck replied, “‘If I was close enough and I had a knife. Really. I mean the stabbing just wouldn’t stop.” Both men insist that Beck was responding to Burguiere and in no way threatening to stab Trump. But that doesn’t matter to the Secret Service. It “will conduct an appropriate follow-up investigation.”
Seriously? Have these bullies nothing better to do on our taxes? Again, regardless of our opinion of Glenn Beck, the government’s surveillance and its stifling of his speech should terrify us.
And especially so because such censorship is moving from entertainment’s moguls to us: “Attorney General Loretta Lynch acknowledged … that there have been discussions within the Department of Justice about possibly pursuing civil action against so-called climate change deniers.”
Yep, our rulers aim to punish those who reject a discredited myth. Ergo, they are investigating “legal” theories that justify such abhorrent totalitarianism — and there is one, believe it or not, which may be even more tragic than this ham-fisted censorship: “Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) … [drew] a comparison between possible civil action against climate change deniers and civil action that the Clinton administration…”
The Clinton administration? This despotism is 25 years old?
“… pursued against the tobacco industry for claiming that the science behind the dangers of tobacco was unsettled.”
Actually, such despotism is far older than a quarter-century: it dates back a full one, to 1919 and the Supreme Court’s wickedness inSchenck v. United States.
When President Woodrow Wilson dragged reluctant Americans into World War I, he had to draft men for his army: sensible citizens refused to die in European trenches. Dissidents published pamphlets against such legalized kidnapping, urging its victims to resist. The government arrested two Socialists for distributing this literature; they protested that the 1st Amendment protected such speech.
Naturally, the judiciary defended the Feds’ warmongering: “…in many places and in ordinary times, the defendants, in saying all that was said in the circular, would have been within their constitutional rights. But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.”
What a false analogy! Shouting “Fire!” in a theater is an issue of property rights, not of speech; it pertains to the 1st Amendment as much as robbing a gun shop does the 2nd Amendment (and in a free country, the theater’s owner, not rulers, would decide his response to the jerk threatening his business). Yet the modern state bases much of its infringing of the 1st Amendment on this deranged decision. No wonder we endure such travesties as prosecuting trespassers on trumped-up “civil-rights charges.”
Against all evidence, Americans insist that their country is “free.” We cannot build a shed on our property without buying a bureaucrat’s permission; ditto to owning guns and certain drugs. We board planes only after submitting to official sexual assault. We light our homes with the bulbs our rulers prefer, and we fill our cars with gas whose formula the EPA dictates at prices it artificially inflates. If a cop’s so inclined, he can murder us with impunity. Bureaucrats and politicians have invalidated de facto most of the Bill of Rights; they’ve curtailed and encroached on the few freedoms left until our liberties are too weak to do us any good or our rulers any harm.
But because we can still mildly criticize those who lord it over us, Americans cooperate with our masters in calling ourselves free.
–Becky Akers

Illinois Lawmakers Seek to Make Falsified Birth Certificates Easier to Obtain

Illinois Lawmakers Seek to Make Falsified Birth Certificates Easier to Obtain
Illinois Lawmakers Seek to Make Falsified Birth Certificates Easier to Obtain

Written By Laurie Higgins   |   03.30.16

Easy Score
State Representative Greg Harris (D-Chicago) and his leftist accomplices, endlessly involved in trying to subvert truth and reality, have introduced the Birth Certificate Sex Designation bill (HB 6073) to make it easier for men and women who wish they were the opposite sex to obtain falsified birth certificates. Harris’ first chief co-sponsor was Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago), both of whom are at the forefront of every legislative effort that serves the homosexual community of which they are part.
The absurdity and unscientific nature of the content of HB 6073 reveals the absurdity of the law it seeks to amend. This bill proposes to change a reference in the law from “sex change” to “change of sex designation.”
First, this change implicitly acknowledges the true fact that no one’s sex can change. Second, it demonstrates that birth certificates are being rendered meaningless. Birth certificates were intended as legal documents identifying objective birth facts. Gender-dysphoric men who were male at birth remain male. Gender-dysphoric women who were female at birth remain in perpetuity female. Gender-dysphoric men who were “designated” male at birth remain designated at birth male. Gender-dysphoric women who were “designated” female at birth remaindesignated at birth female. No amount or degree of legal or rhetorical chicanery can change what they were designated at birth. When liberals in Springfield figure out how to manipulate time, maybe this bill will make sense. Now it’s merely an exercise in nonsensical legislative legerdemain.
This bill changes the requirements for acquiring a new (and falsified) birth certificate. Currently, gender-dysphoric persons must present an “affidavit” from a “physician” confirming that the gender-dysphoric person has had “an operation” to try to conceal their actual sex. The proposed changes would nix the whole “affidavit” requirement, changing it to a bar far easier to climb over. If this bill passes, all that gender-dysphoric persons will need is a “declaration” from any “licensed medical or mental health professional who has treated or evaluated a person stating that the person has undergone treatment that is clinically appropriate for that individual for the purpose of gender transition, based on contemporary medical standards.”
And what kinds of treatments, inquiring minds might be asking, are included in the “clinically appropriate” toolbox for gender-dysphoric individuals? Will a gender-dysphoric person be required to have had surgery to tamper with their private parts? Nope. Will he (I am using the moribund universal “he”) be required to have received or currently be receiving cross-sex hormone treatments? Nope. Will he be required to be receiving psychological counseling for his gender-dysphoria? Nope. All that will be legally required in order to receive a de facto falsified birth certificate is a “declaration” from a licensed mental health professional who states that this person has received some treatment deemed appropriate by contemporary standards established by the dominant mental health organizations that are drenched in “progressive” socio-political dogma. That’s a bar so low and bendy that even a toddler could scramble over it.
Of course, not even surgical mutilation, hormone-blockers, cross-sex hormones, and cross-dressing can change a person’s sex at birth or in adulthood. And none of these anti-treatments (Treatments imply a disorder, and one’s sex is not a disorder) can change what these persons were designated at birth.
This is what our elected representatives waste their time and our taxes on: making it ever easier for gender-dysphoric persons to pretend they are the opposite sex.
Take ACTION:  Click HERE to contact your state representative to ask him/her to uphold births as accurate legal documents.
Ask them to vote NO to HB 6073.

In Illinois, 72 small-town city and village managers out-earn every governor of the 50 states

 
THE ‘BIG DOGS’ OF ILLINOIS MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT

At a time when many are complaining about Washington, D.C., our data shows that states and local units of government need a lot more scrutiny. That’s especially true in Illinois where corruption is our number one manufactured product.
See the highest to lowest 2015 municipal salaries here. See the top all-time municipal pensions here.
In Illinois, 72 small-town city and village managers out-earn every governor of the 50 states. Another 111 local employees of water districts, airport districts, park districts, counties, forest preserves, mass transit districts, health clinics and planning districts also earn more than the 50 governors ($180,000).
Let’s look at a few areas in more detail:
1. Village and city managers out-earn every governor of the 50 states

In Illinois, the top honors go to the administrators of comparatively small governments. The top five highest pensionable salaries are Lawrence Hileman ($303,076) – Village of Glenview (pop. 45,417); Richard Nahrstadt ($263,392) – Village of Northbrook (pop. 33,170); Michael Ellis ($263,269) – Village of Grayslake (pop. 21,101); Reid Ottesen ($260,296) – Village of Palatine (pop. 69,350); Robert Kiely ($256,196) – City of Lake Forest (pop. 19,375).
Rounding out the top ten are Michael Janonis ($250,544) – Village of Mount Prospect (pop. 54,505); Kevin Bowens ($242,397) – Village of Libertyville (pop. 20,431); Christopher Stephens ($240,000) – Village of Rosemont (pop. 4,236); Walter Bobkiewicz ($232,671) – City of Evanston (pop. 75,570); and Sean Stegall (229,917) – City of Elgin (pop. 110,145).
Last year, the Palatine Village Manager Reid Ottesen received a $29,000 pensionable salary hike from $231,347 to $260,296. In 2011, the board cut Ottesen’s salary to $200,379 after we highlighted his $255,283 salary and 25 other ‘benefit buckets.’ But, just four years later, it’s back to $260,296.
At the local level, it’s not just the municipal managers getting in on the action. Park District bosses are raking in huge salaries: Dominic Egizio ($270,713) – Joliet Park District; Timothy Dimke ($246,447) – Rockford Park District; Stephen Scholten ($224,107) – Arlington Heights Park District.
Water, airport, mass transit and forest preserve district chiefs are also making big money. Here’s a sample: Brian Dorn ($228,726) – North Shore Water Reclamation; Michael Palazzetti ($228,677) – DuPage County Forest Preserve; Jeffrey Nelson ($226,075) – Rock Island County MET; Bruce Carter ($199,477) – Metropolitan Airport Authority.
2. Legal corruption – top three Illinois ‘municipal salaried’ employees don’t even work for government
Unbelievably, politically connected private non-profit associations are clouted into the public retirement system with taxpayer-backed lifetime pensions. Taxpayers have no control over the amount of annual salary awarded at these private organizations, but it’s the salaries that drive the lifetime retirement payouts. Salary spiking – when salaries are jacked up for a short period to increase pensions or to just milk the system – is common.

 
In 2015, the top two rank and file ‘municipal’ salaries are Peter Murphy ($352,382 – Illinois Association of Park Districts) and Brett Davis ($309,791 – Park District Risk Management Agency). Murphy has ‘earned’ $2.723 million since 2005 with a 140-percent salary spike. Davis is on-pace to earn $1 million in just under three years – up from ‘only’ $155,324 in 2005.
In 2015, former Executive Director of the Illinois Municipal League (IML) Larry Frang retired on a $169,900 annual pension. In Frang’s final ten years of employment, he received a triple in wages, from $130,812 to $392,423. His employer, IML, is so unaccountable that they haven’t filed an IRS income tax return since 1979. Read my Forbes piece, ‘Instrumentality of the State.’


GOP Senators Move to Block Obama’s Gun Ban for Veterans

GOP Senators Move to Block Obama’s Gun Ban for Veterans

Republican Senators are moving to block an Obama gun ban that will otherwise prevent over a quater of a million military veterans from owning guns.

The gun ban for veterans is being handled the same way as Obama’s gun ban for Social Security beneficiaries. Those who cannot manage their own finances are being labeled with a mental health moniker and added to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) as being prohibited from purchasing firearms.
In July 2015 Breitbart News reported that Obama’s gun ban against Veterans had already been administered behind the scenes for an unknown amount of time. The Los Angeles Times pointed to the example of 30-year-old U.S. Marine Steve Overman. He required help with his finances because of “weakened..memory and cognitive ability” resulting from a roadside bomb in Iraq. The “VA eventually deemed him 100% disabled and after reviewing his case in 2012 declared him incompetent, making his wife his fiduciary.” Because of this, he had to get his guns out of his house–taking them a relative’s home–in order to avoid losing them.
The Hill now reports that “more than 257,000 former members of the military” are facing a similar plight as Overman. Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman

(R-GA) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) are demanding the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) halt the practice. Isakson and Grassley sent a letter to VA Secretary Robert McDonald, pointing to the way veterans are being added to the NICS prohibited purchasers list, and observing, “The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is effectively a national gun ban list and placement on the list precludes the ownership and possession of firearms.”Both Senators pointed out that requiring help with one’s finances has nothing to with the Second Amendment and is “totally unrelated” to whether someone should be prohibited from owning a gun.
Grassley sent a separate letter asking Senate appropriators to “block the VA from continuing this practice in the upcoming budget negotiations.”
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.

Illinois lawmakers have one of the sweetest retirement deals on planet earth

MAR 31, 2016 @ 11:37 PM 26,288 VIEWS
The ‘Pension Palace’ For Illinois Lawmakers 2016
Adam Andrzejewski
CONTRIBUTOR
I cover the “daily greed” of national, state, and local politics.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Nobody knows how to game the system for personal gain like an Illinois lawmaker. The political class voted themselves tens of millions of dollars in lifetime pension payouts. It’s time end their ‘pension palace.’
Illinois lawmakers have one of the sweetest retirement deals on planet earth. It’s supposed to be a ‘part-time’ job in the general assembly, but now taxpayer funded legislator pension costs exceed most base salaries. Last year, taxpayers paid a whopping $71,818 per legislator ($15.8 million in FY2015) to fund their ‘golden parachute’ retirement plans. See the top all-time General Assembly Retirement System pensions here.

President Obama addressed the Illinois General Assembly at the Illinois State Capitol on February 10, 2016.  Most of the IL  lawmakers have designed their very own ‘pension palaces.’ Credit:  MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images
 
At OpenTheBooks.com, we looked at who’s receiving what, when and for how long. The results would make Public Enemy #1, the 1930s bank robber John Dillinger, blush. For example, the #1 all-time pension goes to a 31-year long-forgotten state senator. Retiring from Springfield in 2000, with a pension spiking stop at the Chicago schools, Arthur Berman (D) now takes $19,652 a month ($235,824) in annual pension – nearly four times more than he ever made as a Springfield lawmaker.

Here are just some of the Illinois lawmaker ‘big-dogs’ from both parties:

  • Retired Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley (D) makes $132,384 a year in state lawmaker pension – from a short eight-year ‘career’ as a state senator (plus some pension spiking tricks).
  • Former Governor Jim Edgar (R) costs taxpayers $337,816 per year: a $156,324 pension, plus an $181,492 salary (FY2013) at our flagship University of Illinois at Champaign.
  • In 2010, former Governor George Ryan (R) had a $197,028 annual pension ($16,419/month), but it was stripped away by the successful public corruption prosecution conviction.
  • Even former Speaker of the House Denny Hastert (R) cashed in for a $28,020 ($2,335/month) legislative state pension before heading off to his congressional career.
  • Both Democrats and Republicans have engineered a system of compliance and largesse – give no pain to party leadership and the lawmaker gets all the gain. As soon as lawmakers ‘retire,’ they move into a pension palace.
    Of course, even the losers get into pension palace. Consider the ‘casualties’ of the 2014 elections:

    • Governor Pat Quinn (D) lost re-election and immediately started collecting $133,164 ($11,097/month). Quinn was also a previous treasurer and lieutenant governor.
    • State Treasurer Dan Rutherford (R) lost in the republican primary for governor and immediately started collecting $132,624 ($11,052/month). Rutherford was a previous state representative and senator since 1993.
    • House Minority Leader Tom Cross (R) lost the race for state treasurer and immediately filed for his $81,012/year ($6,751/month) pension. Cross was a state representative since 1993.
    • State Senator Kirk Dillard lost two republican primary gubernatorial elections, served in the state senate from 1994-2014, and filed for his state pension: $6,831 per month ($81,972/year).

    Widely reported in 2011, former State Treasurer and State Representative Dawn Clark-Netsch (D) paid back $10,000 from her pension to the state. She thought the benefits were too lucrative and inappropriate.
    Yet, Illinois politicians who feel such remorse are rare. For example, former State Representative Judy Erwin (D–Chicago) spent ten years in the house and then was able to spike her pension with an appointment to the Board of Higher Education with a salary of over $191,000 annually. Edwin’s pension is now #3 on our list in FY2015: $164,004 per year ($13,667/month).

    Another example is the former State Representative Gary Hannig (D) who served ten years through 2009. In the same year, Hannig took the top job at Illinois Department of Transportation paying $150,228 per year. He stayed only 27 months, just enough time to pump his pension to $150,960 annually ($12,580/month). Then-Governor Pat Quinn rehired Hannig at nearly $150,000 in a new position – as his Director of Legislative Affairs. All told, Hannig was making $300,000. Not bad for a ‘public servant.’
    New Governor Bruce Rauner (R) and 37 legislators – first led by State Representative Tom Morrison (R) in 2011 – refused to participate in the lawmaker pension plan. That’s a full one-fifth of the Illinois General Assembly – from both parties. These declinations saved Illinois taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in future payouts.
    Incredibly, the General Assembly Retirement System is only 16.8% funded (FY2015). So despite hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollar funding over the years for a very small number of participants, it just wasn’t even to satisfy lawmaker greed. Taxpayers are on the hook for an even bigger future bill.
    In Illinois, the pension palace is one part of the housing bubble that never burst. But, when it does, everyone in the state but the beneficiaries will pay.
    Update:  In 1995, State Rep. Dave Leuchtefeld (R) was the first to opt out of the General Assembly Retirement System. In 2010, two months before Tom Morrison, State Rep. Ron Sandack (R) opted out of the pension and healthcare benefit. Sandack has since advocated for his HB138 legislation that would kill pensions for lawmakers.
    Who are ‘The Big Dogs of Illinois Municipal Government 2016?’ Read our recent Forbes editorial.
    Adam Andrzejewski is the founder and CEO of OpenTheBooks.com – the world’s largest private repository of public spending. This article is based mostly on our FOIA requests.

THOUSANDS EXPECTED TO DEMONSTRATE AGAINST GUN CONTROL

Letterhead
THOUSANDS EXPECTED TO DEMONSTRATE AGAINST GUN CONTROL
THOUSANDS EXPECTED TO DEMONSTRATE AGAINST GUN CONTROL
CONTACT:  Richard Pearson, Illinois State Rifle Association, (815) 635-3198
SPRINGFIELD, IL – – The following was released today by the Illinois State Rifle Association (ISRA):
Thousands of law-abiding Illinois firearm owners will converge on the state capitol on Wednesday, April 6th to remind the General Assembly that concern for gun rights remains high across the state.
Wednesday’s event, widely known as the Illinois Gun Owner Lobby Day (iGOLD), will kick off with a rally at the Prairie Capitol Convention Center at 10:30 followed by a march to the Lincoln Steps where the group will be addressed by legislative leaders.  From there, gun owners will enter the Capitol building to meet with their respective State Senators and State Representatives.  The topic of the discussion will be, of course, gun rights.
“These are interesting times for the United States, and Illinois,” commented ISRA Executive Director Richard Pearson.  “Nationwide, interest in firearms is skyrocketing – primarily out of the public’s fear about crime and terrorism.  Here in Illinois, first time FOID card applications are being filed at a record pace and the monthly tallies of firearm purchase background checks are setting records of their own.”
“Firearm instructors are swamped with requests for training.  Shooting ranges are packed not only on weekends, but during lunch hour and after work as well,” continued Pearson. “We’ve had a number of new shooting ranges open up in the Chicago area yet the lines of people waiting to shoot continue to grow.  Let’s face it – firearms and the shooting sports become more and more popular as the months go by.  Nevertheless, extremists in the General Assembly continue to call for unacceptable gun control measures designed to hobble the free exercise of our Second Amendment rights.”
“Since 1990, law-abiding gun owners have come to Springfield each spring to advise their Senators and Representatives to stay true to the Constitution and to turn back pointless efforts at gun control, continued Pearson.  “That is why gun owners are coming to Springfield on April 6th and that’s why they’ll be back next spring and many springs after that.  The General Assembly needs to come to grips with the fact that gun ownership is here to stay and that we’re here to protect that right no matter how long it takes.”
– – –
The ISRA is the state’s leading advocate of safe, lawful and responsible firearms ownership.  For more than a century, the ISRA has represented the interests of millions of law-abiding firearm owners.
# # #
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Why do School Boards spend like it's not costing anything/ Lincoln-way Taxpayers wake up

Lincoln-Way taxpayers paid $368,000 into annuity account for ex-superintendent

Taxpayers in Lincoln-Way High School District 210 paid $368,148 into an annuity account for ex-Superintendent Lawrence Wyllie, newly released records and interviews show.
The annuity is a second publicly funded retirement benefit for Wyllie, who is currently collecting a $312,000 pension — the largest in the state’s teachers fund. The school board voted on April 7, 2004, to approve Wyllie’s annuity, as part of a broader vote on 2004-05 administration and support staff salaries, Vice President Christine Glatz said. The April 7, 2004, meeting minutes do not mention the annuity.
The district first bought the annuity in June 2004 and the agent on the policy was Wyllie’s son, Christopher Wyllie, account statements released by the district and interviews show.
When Wyllie retired in the summer of 2013, Lincoln-Way High School District 210 transferred ownership of the annuity to him, records show. A March 2013 policy statement released by the district shows the annuity was worth $515,685 at the time.

To some, Wyllie’s annuity represents a broader trend of questionable spending by district officials that has drained Lincoln-Way’s finances. The district landed on the state’s financial watch list in 2015 after years of deficit spending, where the district remains.
Told of the annuity account by the Daily Southtown, government experts and school district residents criticized the expense. Sarah Brune, executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, called Wyllie’s retirement package “exorbitant.”
“It seems inappropriate for the taxpayers to be paying into two separate (retirement) accounts for one public figure,” Brune said.
Steve Eberhardt, an attorney who represents Lincoln-Way Area Taxpayers Unite in a lawsuit aimed at preventing the cash-strapped district from shuttering Lincoln-Way North high school, questioned the annuity’s purpose and said it’s wasteful.
“What’s the justification for giving him this extra third of a million (tax) dollars?” Eberhardt said.
Asked about criticism of the annuity, Glatz released a statement.
“The annuity awarded to (Wyllie) by the Board of Education was based on performance and retention during a time of transition within the District,” Glatz said. “The additional compensation did not add to his base salary nor his pensionable earnings.”
Lawrence Wyllie, who led the district from 1989 to 2013, did not return messages seeking comment. Christopher Wyllie, who works for AXA Advisors as a vice president according to the company’s website, declined to discuss what he called “private information.”
A spokesman for AXA later said Christopher Wyllie “was not involved in any way in the financial negotiations between his father and the school district.”

In recent months, the Daily Southtown has reported extensively on questionable financial practices, private uses of public resources and questionable deals benefiting insiders at the district.
Months before retiring, Wyllie signed a no-bid 10-year contract extension with Frankfort-based Aunt Nancy’s day care, which uses spaces at each of the district’s four schools rent-free.
The school board never formally approved the deal, Superintendent Scott Tingley previously said.
Lincoln-Way also bought at least $90,000 worth of playground equipment for Aunt Nancy’s, drawing criticism from government experts and parents who said the district should not subsidize a private business.
Oak Lawn-based Community High School District 218 has a similar deal with a private day care provider at one of its buildings but unlike Lincoln-Way charges its contractor $76,250 a year in “cost-recovery” fees.
In 2007, Lincoln-Way bought $5 million worth of farmland in Manhattan Township, apparently without an appraisal, in a deal that benefited the Lincoln-Way Foundation president’s firm.
Lincoln-Way’s former grounds director, Paul Gonzalez, in 2013 ordered “a few school district employees” to do private work in Wyllie’s Frankfort subdivision, records show.

He also ordered an employee to create a memorial plaque for Wyllie’s father, records show.
In 2010 and 2011, Wyllie spent nearly $45,000 in public funds to build Superdog, a dog training school that Tingley said had “no student benefit.” That school is run by a trainer who has worked with Wyllie and his dogs.
From 2013 to 2015, a time when the district’s financial situation was rapidly deteriorating, the district paid out $272,000 in retirement bonuses for 18 employees, including $16,000 for Wyllie, records show.
The district has also paid $199,113 in penalties to the state pension system.
During his last three years as superintendent, while the district’s finances tumbled, records show Wyllie also used his district-issued credit card to pay for meals, dog training books, hundreds of leadership texts, dozens of sweaters and a $106 teddy bear for his office.
More recently, Lincoln-Way emailed parents last month to say it is issuing refunds to driver’s ed students who were improperly charged $350 for classes, a mistake the district estimated would cost about $400,000.
The district was given more than a year’s notice that it had to renew its permission from the state to charge $350 but the district won’t explain how it failed to get state approval to charge $350.
Days after news of the $400,000 mistake broke, the board accepted Assistant Superintendent for Business Ron Sawin’s early retirement and released a copy of his retirement agreement, showing there is “currently a dispute” between Lincoln-Way and Sawin over his job performance.
Wyllie’s annuity is particularly controversial because he is already collecting a $312,000 pension from the state. That figure has drawn criticism not only because of its size but because it was derived using an obscure, now-abolished actuarial calculation that boosted Wyllie’s payout higher than any salary he’d ever received from the district.
Brian Murray, a Frankfort resident, said he was upset by the annuity approval process, which he said wasn’t transparent. Murray also said that the annuity is excessive because the school district already knew Wyllie had a taxpayer-funded pension coming.
“It seems wrong to me,” Murray said.
gpratt@tribpub.com

Message from the Inninois State Rifle Association

Letterhead
On Monday, March 21, 2016, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Second Amendment applies to all instruments that constitute bearable arms.  The decision of the court was unanimous.  The case, known as Caetano v Massachusetts, dealt with a Massachusetts law that prohibited stun guns.  The law was upheld by the Massachusetts Supreme Court, but was overturned by the United States Supreme Court.  In the decision ordering the law to be vacated, the court stated that the Second Amendment applied to arms that were not in existence at the time of the founding.  In short, that means that the AR15 and a variety of other arms are now protected.  Before we all begin dancing in the streets, remember we will be forced to slog through the courts, case by case.  Remember that the next President will replace as many as four or five Supreme Court Justices, so that may change.
Talk about a long reach!  Congratulations to David Sigale, who represents the ISRA and Second Amendment Foundation in several cases, for winning a case in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI).  CNMI is part of the United States that many people do not even know about. Saipan is part of the island group that was acquired during the island hopping campaign against the Japanese, during WWII.  CNMI passed a law that made it Illegal to own a handgun or import ammunition, rendering people unable to defend themselves.  In 2008, David Radich, a U.S. Navy Veteran, and his wife, Li-Rong moved to Saipan.  In 2010, Li-Rong was home alone when invaders broke in and savagely beat her. Because of the CNMI law, they were defenseless against such attacks.  Radich and the Second Amendment Foundation filed suit against the CNMI law and won.  Judge Ramona V. Manglona struck down the law as unconstitutional – another nail in the coffin of the anti-gun movement.  Thank you David Sigale.
I have a few points on the IGOLD front.  As you know, IGOLD is Wednesday April 6th.  We have just confirmed our last two guest speakers.  They are Chip Eberhart, from Chicago, who does one of the NRA’s “I am the NRA and I am Freedoms safest place” ads and another is an old friend of mine, the famous self-defense instructor, Mr. Massad Ayoob.  I couldn’t be more pleased.  We have a couple of the great ones for you to hear and meet. The final point is that the cut-off for making bus reservations is noon on Monday April 4.  I would “Git-R-Done!”  The ISRA office will open on Saturday, April 2, 2016, from 8:00am – 12 noon so you can call in your IGOLD bus reservations.  See you at IGOLD!

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