Deer culling debated by Will County forest preserve

By

Steve Balich

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September 4, 2016

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Editors note: Steve Balich and Mike Fricilone will not vote to kill the deer. They believe the Referendum that passed in Homer Glen, was very explicit as to the will of the people.

Deer population control debated again by Will County forest preserve committee

Howard wants to see moratorium on deer removal

Published: Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2016 10:48 p.m. CDT

By MIKE MALLORY – mmallory@shawmedia.com

JOLIET – The issue of deer population control on Forest Preserve District of Will County land returned Wednesday to the committee discussion level.

The district’s Board of Commissioners’ Operations Committee positively recommended, with a 7-4 vote, the 2016-17 deer management recommendations to the full board, to be carried out in the winter months. The district is proposing that 200 total deer be removed from nine preserves.
Committee members Robert Howard, D-Beecher; Judy Ogalla, R-Monee; Mike Fricilone, R-Homer Glen; and Steve Balich, R-Homer Glen, voted against the recommendations.
In 2010, the board approved a 2010-11 plan for the district’s deer management program. The plan established that sharpshooting was to be used to manage the deer population to achieve an initial target density of 20 to 30 deer per square mile. Although the overall deer management program was approved, each year staff provide specific recommendations on the number of deer to be removed from select forest preserves.
The Illinois Department of Natural Resources has various requirements of counties before it gives the green light for removal. The district comes to its recommendations through aerial and ground-level assessments. The forest preserve police perform the sharpshooting, and deer meat that passes health inspection is brought to food pantries.
Howard said he’d like to see a moratorium on deer culling until more information is collected. Hunters in District 1, which covers five townships in eastern Will County, have commented to him they are seeing fewer deer and have asked why hunters aren’t allowed to perform the removal.

Another element to population control, Howard said, is that the eastern end of the county borders Indiana and there’s no way to tell whether deer are moving back and forth across the state line.
Howard said the district assessments don’t reflect a true number and they should look at the entire county, not just preserves, because deer are an edge-of-the-woods animal that also spends time in cornfields and creek bottoms. He said he’d like to see the IDNR do a count.
Committee member Chuck Maher, R-Naperville, said at some point the board will have to make an unpopular vote on the matter as the issue continues to come up each year.
Ogalla said the need for the program came from various types of development throughout the county. Because of it, deer have fewer places to run and pose more of a safety threat in certain areas to motorists. She noted that preserves in areas such as Naperville are more surrounded by residential communities.

School and Authorities try to arrest 13 yr. old passing a real $2 bill

By

Steve Balich

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September 3, 2016

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Fort_Bend_ISD_c16-0-624-355_s885x516-728x424

School Calls Police on Girl Using 2 Dollar Bill to Buy Her Chicken Nuggets! It Gets Worse!

Arrested, Prison, School

by Rahiem Shabazz

When 13-year-old eighth grader, Danesiah Neal, tried to spend a 2 Dollar Bill at lunch at Christa McAuliffe Middle School, she was detained and threatened with a felony!

It gets worse! The 2 Dollar Bill investigation had to go all the way to the bank to get solved!
I am beyond disbelief at the STUPIDITY at this Texas school, and with the Fort Bend police who carried on with the blatant ignorance that had to be involved! (Besides the fact that it was only $2).
“I went to the lunch line and they said my 2 Dollar Bill was fake,” Danesiah told Ted Oberg Investigates. “They gave it to the police. Then they sent me to the police office. A police officer said I could be in big trouble.”
Not just big trouble. Third-degree felony trouble.
School officials called Daneisha’s grandmother, Sharon Kay Joseph.
“She’s never in trouble, so I was nervous going in there,” she recalled to ABC13.
The officials asked, “‘Did you give Danesiah a 2 Dollar Bill for lunch?’ He told me it was fake,” she said.
Then the Fort Bend ISD police investigated the 2 Dollar Bill with the vigor of an episode of Dragnet, even though at that school 82-percent of kids are poor enough to get free or reduced price lunch.
The alleged theft of $2 worth of chicken tenders led a campus officer — average salary $45,000 a year — to the convenience store that gave grandma the 2 Dollar Bill.
Next stop — and these are just the facts — the cop went to a bank to examine the 2 Dollar Bill.
The bill went from the lunch lady, to the school officials, (Obviously the principals Mary Brewster and James Wade Kirkpatrick HAD to know the cops were involved), to the cop…who took the $2 Bill to the convenience store..and then to the bank.
The long line of IGNORANT people that this CRAZINESS had to go through before the bank explained that there is such thing as a 2 Dollar Bill is unfathomable! They should all be fired for sheer stupidity!
From all the idiots that had to be involved at Fort Bend ISD’s Christa McAuliffe Middle School, to the Keystone Cops involved, you would think SOMEONE would have recognized the real currency!
Instead, they threaten a poor little girl with a felony and made her miss lunch!
Explain to me how NO ONE said the words, “There is such a thing as a 2 Dollar Bill”?
Explain to me how NO ONE has YET said the words, “I am sorry”.
THIS is just one of eight counterfeiting charges investigated in Fort Bend ISD since 2013 mind you.
You know the routine!
There has yet to be an apology from the school!
I would demand some resignations just for the sheer stupidity of those involved, but that is the way I am! These are our EDUCATORS and Law Enforcement!!!
These people put a black mark on some of our finest! Call/Email the school and share your outrage!
McAuliffe Middle School Phone: (281) 634-3360
Principal Mary Brewster
Mary.Brewster@fortbendisd.com
8th Grade Principal James Kirkpatrick
James.Kirkpatrick@fortbendisd.com
Superintendent of FBISD Schools
Charles E. Dupre, Ed.D.
charles.dupre@fortbendisd.com

Overtime rule raises the salary threshold for exempt employees getting overtime on work over 40 hrs.

By

Steve Balich

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September 3, 2016

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It is not only politicians who hate working people, but statist government bureaucrats and their labor union co-horts (co-whores?) also hate working people.

The Democrat party’s push for an increase in the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 has overshadowed another employment law that will cost many workers their jobs – or at the very least, cause their salaries and/or hours to be reduced — and drive many companies into insolvency. It’s a change in the overtime rule mandated by the Department of Labor (DoL) that will raise the salary threshold for exempt employees to receive overtime pay for work beyond 40 hours.
Currently, salaried employees earning $455 per week ($23,660/yr) or less must be paid overtime for any hours they work beyond 40 per week. But beginning in December, the threshold will jumps to $913 per week ($47,476/yr).
DoL predicts that 4.2 million workers will be directly affected and another 8.9 million will be indirectly affected by the change. It estimates that after the change approximately 35 percent of all full-time, salaried workers would be eligible for overtime based on their salaries alone. To comply with the change employers have three options, according to Entrepreneur:

Raise non-exempt employee salaries so those people maintain their exempt status.
Reclassify hourly employees as salaried employees
Reclassify salaried employees as hourly, adjusting their base pay in order to account for overtime.

But there is another likely scenario, one that has already come into play as a result of Obamacare. That is, make employees part time and eliminate their benefits. Employees who have met that fate are now called the “Twenty-niners.” It’s an option many businesses will adopt.
What the DoL is doing, just like with minimum wage laws, is preventing people from entering into mutually beneficial relationships to exchange labor for wages at a rate they on which they agree. It also creates disincentives to work and harms the young and industrious. In short, just like minimum wage laws, the exempt rule is a form of collectivism: the idea that all workers are equal and should be paid the same, regardless of the task they perform.
Many a successful career was built by a young worker willing to work long hours in a salaried position in an effort to catch the eye of upper management and gain needed experience in order to land a better-paying job in a company. Many businesses will prevent workers under the threshold from working overtime at all, which will hinder their career path.
P.S. – It’s the worst-kept secret in Washington. Our national debt is a whopping $18 trillion (and counting). A collapse of the dollar could be imminent. The powers-that-be are well aware of the danger. So politicians from both sides of the aisle and the three biggest banks in the country have come up with a plan … to steal your retirement. The signs are appearing already, so I urge you to read my exclusive report. To claim a free copy now, follow this link! This could have dramatic implications for your wealth.

A Russian warning

By

Steve Balich

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September 3, 2016

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Russian airbase

A Russian warning

Posted on September 2, 2016 by Special To Personal Liberty

This originally appeared at the Cluborlov blog on May 31, 2015 and is republished with permission.
We, the undersigned, are Russians living and working in the U.S. We have been watching with increasing anxiety as the current U.S. and NATO policies have set us on an extremely dangerous collision course with the Russian Federation, as well as with China. Many respected, patriotic Americans, such as Paul Craig Roberts, Stephen Cohen, Philip Giraldi, Ray McGovern and many others have been issuing warnings of a looming a Third World War. But their voices have been all but lost among the din of a mass media that is full of deceptive and inaccurate stories that characterize the Russian economy as being in shambles and the Russian military as weak — all based on no evidence. But we — knowing both Russian history and the current state of Russian society and the Russian military, cannot swallow these lies. We now feel that it is our duty, as Russians living in the U.S., to warn the American people that they are being lied to, and to tell them the truth. And the truth is simply this:
If there is going to be a war with Russia, then the United States will most certainly be destroyed, and most of us will end up dead.
Let us take a step back and put what is happening in a historical context. Russia has suffered a great deal at the hands of foreign invaders, losing 22 million people in World War II. Most of the dead were civilians, because the country was invaded, and the Russians have vowed to never let such a disaster happen again. Each time Russia had been invaded, she emerged victorious. In 1812 Nepoleon invaded Russia; in 1814 Russian cavalry rode into Paris. On June 22, 1941, Hitler’s Luftwaffe bombed Kiev; On May 8, 1945, Soviet troops rolled into Berlin.
But times have changed since then. If Hitler were to attack Russia today, he would be dead 20 to 30 minutes later, his bunker reduced to glowing rubble by a strike from a Kalibr supersonic cruise missile launched from a small Russian navy ship somewhere in the Baltic Sea. The operational abilities of the new Russian military have been most persuasively demonstrated during the recent action against ISIS, Al Nusra and other foreign-funded terrorist groups operating in Syria. A long time ago Russia had to respond to provocations by fighting land battles on her own territory, then launching a counter-invasion; but this is no longer necessary. Russia’s new weapons make retaliation instant, undetectable, unstoppable and perfectly lethal.
Thus, if tomorrow a war were to break out between the U.S. and Russia, it is guaranteed that the U.S. would be obliterated. At a minimum, there would no longer be an electric grid, no internet, no oil and gas pipelines, no interstate highway system, no air transportation or GPS-based navigation. Financial centers would lie in ruins. Government at every level would cease to function. U.S. armed forces, stationed all around the globe, would no longer be resupplied. At a maximum, the entire landmass of the U.S. would be covered by a layer of radioactive ash. We tell you this not to be alarmist, but because, based on everything we know, we are ourselves alarmed. If attacked, Russia will not back down; she will retaliate, and she will utterly annihilate the United States.
The U.S. leadership has done everything it could to push the situation to the brink of disaster. First, its anti-Russian policies have convinced the Russian leadership that making concessions or negotiating with the West is futile. It has become apparent that the West will always support any individual, movement or government that is anti-Russian, be it tax-cheating Russian oligarchs, convicted Ukrainian war criminals, Saudi-supported Wahhabi terrorists in Chechnya or cathedral-desecrating punks in Moscow. Now that NATO, in violation of its previous promises, has expanded right up to the Russian border, with U.S. forces deployed in the Baltic states, within artillery range of St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, the Russians have nowhere left to retreat. They will not attack; nor will they back down or surrender. The Russian leadership enjoys over 80 percent of popular support; the remaining 20 percent seems to feel that it is being too soft in opposing Western encroachment. But Russia will retaliate, and a provocation or a simple mistake could trigger a sequence of events that will end with millions of Americans dead and the U.S. in ruins.
Unlike many Americans, who see war as an exciting, victorious foreign adventure, the Russians hate and fear war. But they are also ready for it, and they have been preparing for war for several years now. Their preparations have been most effective. Unlike the U.S., which squanders untold billions on dubious overpriced arms programs such as the F-35 joint task fighter, the Russians are extremely stingy with their defense rubles, getting as much as 10 times the bang for the buck compared to the bloated U.S. defense industry. While it is true that the Russian economy has suffered from low energy prices, it is far from being in shambles, and a return to growth is expected as early as next year. Senator John McCain once called Russia “A gas station masquerading as a country.” Well, he lied. Yes, Russia is the world’s largest oil producer and second-largest oil exporter, but it is also world’s largest exporter of grain and nuclear power technology. It is as advanced and sophisticated a society as the United States. Russia’s armed forces, both conventional and nuclear, are now ready to fight, and they are more than a match for the U.S. and NATO, especially if a war erupts anywhere near the Russian border.
But such a fight would be suicidal for all sides. We strongly believe that a conventional war in Europe runs a strong chance of turning nuclear very rapidly, and that any U.S./NATO nuclear strike on Russian forces or territory will automatically trigger a retaliatory Russian nuclear strike on the continental U.S. Contrary to irresponsible statements made by some American propagandists, American anti-ballistic missile systems are incapable of shielding the American people from a Russian nuclear strike. Russia has the means to strike at targets in the U.S. with long-range nuclear as well as conventional weapons.
The sole reason why the U.S. and Russia have found themselves on a collision course, instead of defusing tensions and cooperating on a wide range of international problems, is the stubborn refusal by the U.S. leadership to accept Russia as an equal partner: Washington is dead set on being the “world leader” and the “indispensable nation,” even as its influence steadily dwindles in the wake of a string of foreign policy and military disasters such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and the Ukraine. Continued American global leadership is something that neither Russia, nor China, nor most of the other countries are willing to accept. This gradual but apparent loss of power and influence has caused the U.S. leadership to become hysterical; and it is but a small step from hysterical to suicidal. America’s political leaders need to be placed under suicide watch.
First and foremost, we are appealing to the commanders of the U.S. Armed Forces to follow the example of Admiral William Fallon, who, when asked about a war with Iran, reportedly replied “not on my watch.” We know that you are not suicidal, and that you do not wish to die for the sake of out-of-touch imperial hubris. If possible, please tell your staff, colleagues and, especially, your civilian superiors that a war with Russia will not happen on your watch. At the very least, take that pledge yourselves, and, should the day ever come when the suicidal order is issued, refuse to execute it on the grounds that it is criminal. Remember that according to the Nuremberg Tribunal “To initiate a war of aggression… is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Since Nuremberg, “I was just following orders” is no longer a valid defense; please don’t be war criminals.
We also appeal to the American people to take peaceful but forceful action to oppose any politician or party that engages in irresponsible, provocative Russia-baiting and that condones and supports a policy of needless confrontation with a nuclear superpower that is capable of destroying America in about an hour. Speak up, break through the barrier of mass media propaganda and make your fellow Americans aware of the immense danger of a confrontation between Russia and the U.S.
There is no objective reason why the U.S. and Russia should consider each other adversaries. The current confrontation is entirely the result of the extremist views of the neoconservative cult, whose members were allowed to infiltrate the U.S. federal government under President Bill Clinton, and who consider any country that refuses to obey their dictates as an enemy to be crushed. Thanks to their tireless efforts, over a million innocent people have already died in the former Yugoslavia, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, the Ukraine, Yemen, Somalia and in many other countries — all because of their maniacal insistence that the U.S. must be a world empire, not a just a regular, normal country, and that every national leader must either bow down before them or be overthrown. In Russia, this irresistible force has finally encountered an immovable object. They must be forced to back down before they destroy us all.
We are absolutely and categorically certain that Russia will never attack the U.S., nor any EU member state, that Russia is not at all interested in recreating the USSR, and that there is no “Russian threat” or “Russian aggression.” Much of Russia’s recent economic success has a lot to do with the shedding of former Soviet dependencies, allowing her to pursue a “Russia first” policy. But we are just as certain that if Russia is attacked, or even threatened with attack, she will not back down and that the Russian leadership will not “blink.” With great sadness and a heavy heart they will do their sworn duty and unleash a nuclear barrage from which the United States will never recover. Even if the entire Russian leadership is killed in a first strike, the so-called “Dead Hand” (the “Perimetr” system) will automatically launch enough nukes to wipe the U.S. off the political map. We feel that it is our duty to do all we can to prevent such a catastrophe.
Evgenia Gurevich, Ph.D.
http://thesaker.ru
Victor Katsap, PhD, Sr. Scientist
NuFlare Technology America, Inc.
Andrei Kozhev
Serge Lubomudrov
Natalya Minkovskaya
Dmitry Orlov
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com
Irina Petrova, RP
The Saker (A. Raevsky)
http://thesaker.is

The $50 Billion Illinois Favor Factory Hums Along

By

Steve Balich

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September 2, 2016

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Adam Andrzejewski , CONTRIBUTOR to Forbes 9/2/2016
I cover the “daily greed” of national, state, and local politics.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
It’s been two years since Illinois state government had a full-year budget. Now, more than 70,000 vendors are owed $8.2 billion. Yet, despite the legislative deadlock and seemingly fiscal insolvency, more than $50 billion in state payments flowed to providers and other entities in FY2016.

So, who actually got paid and for how much while others waited in the long line of unpaid bills?
Recently, our organization at American Transparency (website: OpenTheBooks.com) filed our annual Freedom of Information Act request with Illinois Comptroller Leslie Munger (R) for the state’s checkbook payments. Here’s what we found: 56,738 recipients received fast-tracked payments of $50,125,427,171.
We plotted the recipients by ZIP code – review your neighborhood or look across the entire country. Just zoom-in, click a ZIP code pin, and scroll down to see the results rendered in the chart below the map.
http://www.openthebooks.com/map/?Map=1855&MapType=Pin
The top 25 accounts paid by the Comptroller received $21.8 billion. The vast majority of the payments were for social safety-net healthcare providers ($5.9 billion); the Teachers Retirement System pension payment ($3.224 billion); Cook County ($2.7 billion); Chicago Board of Education ($2.1 billion); Regional Transportation Authority ($1.7 billion); and transfer payments to the state treasurer or banks.

Here are some of the entities receiving the large state payments in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2016:

Road contractors and construction companies ($1.4 billion) – 45 companies received more than $1 million. Here’s the top five: Plote Construction Inc. ($300.4 million); Lorig Construction Company ($225.4 million); Walsh Construction Co. ($151.9 million); D Construction Inc. ($147.5 million); and E T Simonds Construction Co. ($61.98 million).
Cities and Villages ($6 billion) – Chicago received $1.7 billion. But even the uber-wealthy North Shore communities received tens of millions of dollars: Highland Park ($20.4 million); Wilmette ($9.3 million); Glencoe ($3.4 million); Lake Forest ($7.2 million); and Kenilworth ($421,200). My hometown of Hinsdale in DuPage County received $7.5 million.
Counties ($4.3 billion) – Here are the top five: Cook County ($2.7 billion); DuPage County ($183.9 million); Lake County ($132.4 million); Will County ($98.5 million); and Kane County ($70.6 million).

Over the past two years, we’ve seen a patchwork of state budget stop-gap spending measures, federal and state court ordered disbursements, and the prioritization of state payments from the growing list of unpaid vendors.

Yet, even in a fiscal crisis, the state isn’t embracing basic spending reforms.
For example, in 2016, Comptroller Leslie Munger continued to pay a lobbyist $50,000 out of her own budget. More than $370,000 in payments flowed to lobbyist Shea, Paige and Rogal since 2009 (a key executive is the chairman emeritus of the IL Republican Party) even though state agencies are barred by law from contracting with lobbyists. So, how is this legal?
Since 2005, $178.1 million in taxpayer funds flowed through J. Walter Thompson (JWT), one of the world’s largest advertising agencies. Last year, JWT got $1.049 million from the Illinois Tourism Board. Why is the state wasting any money on Public Relations?
While unpaid social service providers sue the state, what is the compelling public purpose to pay paving contractors to spread a little more asphalt on the roads that may not be in need of vital repairs? Vendors with the word “paving” or “asphalt” in their names received payments of $260 million in FY2016.
Last summer, at Forbes, I wrote about Comptroller Munger’s refusal to pay vendors serving our most vulnerable citizens – the developmentally disabled. She wrongly claimed a lack of constitutional authority until a federal judge threatened her with contempt-of-court. Now we find Munger paid $9.4 million to Planned Parenthood over two years – including payments for abortions.
Over the past two years, Munger also fast-tracked $1.7 million in payments to refugee relocation firms. While Governor Bruce Rauner stopped additional refugees from Syria, World Relief Refugee Services – one of 10 organizations contracted with the U.S. Department of State to resettle refugees into Illinois – helped relocate approximately 1,200 refugees from countries like Iraq, Sudan, Congo and Myanmar (Burma).

Despite a two-year budget stand-off, taxpayer dollars to insiders continue to flow

Despite a two-year budget stand-off, taxpayer dollars continue to flow to insiders…

The Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) already employs 1,133 civil engineers and 1,155 engineering techs. So why did Illinois pay millions of dollars over the last two-years to civil engineering firms like ESI Consultants ($3.7 million) and other firms at huge hourly rates?
The Illinois credit ranking is the lowest of all 50 states. But, the public patronage machine rolls on.
IDOT is the historic haven of Illinois political patronage. Today, August 31st, Munger cut $4.1 million of “performance bonus” checks to 1,320 IDOT employees – members of the Teamsters. That’s a handout, not a performance bonus, when one of every two eligible IDOT employees qualifies for a first time ever pay enhancement. To see the list, clickhere.
Last spring, I documented 50,000 state and local public employees making $100,000+ costing taxpayers $8 billion annually. Currently, there are 7,500 school administrators and teachers with $100,000+ pensions – a number we forecast to increase to 20,000 by 2022.
At the Illinois State Fair on Republican Day 2016, Comptroller Leslie Munger flunked an impromptu math quiz by the Chicago Tribune. She wrongly answered two of three problems – missing 9×3 and 8×7 – then blamed the “hot weather.”
But, excuses are not going to cut it. Transparency and regular reporting will hold their feet to the fire. In Illinois politics, for the new governor and comptroller, the honeymoon with voters is over. The People want real results and are sick and tired of paying the “corruption tax.”
The Chicago machine had 12 years of iron-clad control and succeeded in making Illinois a net-outward migration state, but for the good of Illinois, this crew – from the opposite party – must quickly do much better.
Adam Andrzejewski is CEO of OpenTheBooks.com – the world’s largest private database of government spending with 3 billion captured public expenditures at the Federal, State and local levels across America.

Olympian Haley Augello visits Young School

Uncategorized

By

Steve Balich

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September 2, 2016

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News Release
Homer CCSD 33C
Goodings Grove Luther J. Schilling William E. Young William J. Butler
Hadley Middle Homer Jr. High

Contact: Charla Brautigam, Communications/Public Relations Manager
cbrautigam@homerschools.org | 708-226-7628

For Immediate Release:
Sept. 1, 2016

Olympian Haley Augello visits Young School

Wrestling wasn’t Olympian Haley Augello’s first pick when trying to find a sport to participate in as a child.

First there was soccer; then it was softball. But nothing stuck until she tried wrestling.

“It kept my attention,” she said. “I got bored with the others.”

The Olympian, a Lockport native who competed in Rio, visited Cynthia Bickelman’s second-grade class on Thursday (Sept. 1).

There, she patiently answered questions about her trip and encouraged students (including her younger brother who is a student in Bickelman’s class) to keep trying different hobbies and activities until they find something they love.

“It’s important to have something you enjoy doing,” she said. “And it doesn’t have to be a sport. It can be art, music, food…. If you love what you’re doing, it will be fun.”

Like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/homer33c?fref=ts&ref=br_tf

Mexican Pres. Concedes Trump Has WON

By

Steve Balich

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September 2, 2016

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Mexican Pres. Makes Shock Announcement, Concedes Trump Has WON

Based on what happened Wednesday, when GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump traveled to Mexico and held a joint news briefing with the nation’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, one could argue that the billionaire candidate has won.

During the briefing, Peña Nieto lauded Trump for his “genuine interest” in “build(ing) a relationship that might lead us to prove both our societies better conditions,” according to The Washington Times.

He also admitted that the North American Free Trade Agreement needs to be improved, the porous border must be secured and, more importantly, criminals have indeed been taking advantage of the weak border to transport guns, drugs, slaves and money between Mexico and the United States, as Trump has long argued.
So despite President Barack Obama, Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton and the liberal media claiming nonstop how Trump’s candid rhetoric about illegal immigration would irrevocably harm our relationship with Mexico, it appeared that the relationship was just fine and dandy.
Moreover, the fact that Nieto conceded nearly every one of Trump’s points demonstrated that his tough-talking method of international diplomacy possessed more merit and future potential than Obama’s deliriously pitiful “do with me as you like” strategy of appeasement.
The Mexican president also reportedly took direct shots at Obama by complaining about the guns that were smuggled into his country during Operation Fast and Furious — and also scolding him for having ostensibly erected a “welcome” sign over the border that, incidentally enough, has spurred problems in Mexico as well as the U.S.

Chicagoans are battered by tax hikes as city worker pensions increase

By

Steve Balich

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September 2, 2016

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More government workers are taking home massive yearly pension payments as Chicagoans are battered by tax hikes.

9/2/2016 Illinois Policy

As Chicagoans face a hefty hike in their water and sewer bills to pay for city-worker pensions, the number of retired workers receiving lucrative payouts is booming.
More than 220 retirees collect pensions of at least $100,000 a year from the city’s largest pension fund: the Chicago Municipal Employees Annuity and Benefit Fund. That’s triple the 2012 number, according to a report from the Better Government Association, or BGA. Chicago’s water-sewer-tax hike will dump $239 million into this flailing pension system.
Former labor leader and Streets and Sanitation Department employee Dennis Gannon takes home the largest pension in the group at nearly $190,000 year.
Gannon retired from the city in 2004 at age 50. While the city credited him with 33 years of service, Gannon spent more than a third of that time working for private labor unions, not city government, according to a 2011 Chicago Tribune investigation.
Part of Gannon’s lucrative arrangement is due to the fact that city government rehired him for a single day in 1994. And his pension payout is based on his salary as a union official, not as a city worker.
Like virtually all government-worker pensions in Illinois, Gannon’s has grown by 3 percent each year. His first-year payout came in at roughly $130,000, which he received while also earning a union salary, according to the Tribune.
The BGA’s pension findings follow the group’s recent research showing the number of Chicago city workers earning a base salary of $100,000 or more has nearly doubled since 2013.
Despite preparing to pay hundreds of dollars more per year on their water bills, and far more in property-tax increases, Chicagoans have seen no meaningful spending reform from City Hall.
While the Illinois Supreme Court has ruled any changes to unaffordable promised pension benefits unconstitutional, the city has refused to control skyrocketing pension payments with the tools at its disposal: pay freezes to rein in the salary levels that determine pension payouts, rightsizing payrolls, and moving new city workers to defined-contribution retirement plans.
Furthermore, city leaders have responded with deafening silence to calls for a state constitutional amendment that would allow them to bring government-worker pensions in line with what residents can afford.
As the data demonstrate, politicians at City Hall have no interest in acting on behalf of taxpayers. They’d prefer to hit up their constituents’ pocketbooks again and again.

TAGS: Chicago, municipal pensions, pensions

GOP Fall Rally September 17th in Geneva, IL.

By

Steve Balich

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September 1, 2016

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GOP Fall Rally September 17, 2016, 4 to 7 pm Fifth Third Bank Ballpark, Geneva, IL

Come meet the Game Changers who are working to turn around Illinois. Meet your elected officials and promising candidates in an informal venue. Enjoy a good ol’ fashioned ballpark cookout. And fireworks at the end! • Guest Speakers • Candidates • Exhibits • Keepsake Autographed Baseballs • Ballpark Cookout • Fireworks!

Save Illinois!
Learn about Governor Rauner’s Turnaround Agenda: • Worker’s Compensation/Unemployment Reform • Property Tax Freeze • Tort Reform • Term Limits • Fair Political District Maps If we are to Save Illinois, the voting public must understand the importance of the Turnaround Agenda and what they can do to support it. Subject matter experts and information displays will be featured for these five key pillars of the effort to make 2016 the year we truly begin to Turnaround Illinois. A learning opportunity for all.

Sponsorship Opportunities Tickets $35 in Advance or $50 at the Door Buy tickets and more online at www.fallrally.gop

Paris at war

By

Steve Balich

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September 1, 2016

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As part of Operation Sentinelle, 10,000 French troops are deployed to patrol the streets—including 6,500 in Paris alone. (Photo: Nolan Peterson/The Daily Signal)

The Growing List Of Anti-Islam Incidents Since Paris

KYIV, Ukraine—At 3:45 a.m. Friday, just hours after a man drove a large truck through a crowd in the French seaside town of Nice, killing at least 84, French President François Hollande made a televised address to the nation.
He began by making it clear the attack at the close of Bastille Day, France’s Independence Day, was an act of Islamist terrorism.
“All of France is under threat from Islamist terrorism,” Hollande said from the Elysée Palace in Paris. “This attack, of which the terrorist nature cannot be denied, is once again of an absolute violence, and it is clear that we must do everything to fight the scourge of terrorism.”
In a separate address Friday afternoon from Nice, Hollande said about 50 other victims were “critically injured between life and death.”

Two Americans, a man and his 11-year-old son from Texas, were among the dead, according to news reports. At least 10 children were killed.
Police shot and killed the driver of the truck more than a mile after he began the carnage.
France’s justice minister, Jean-Jacques Urvoas, and other authorities identified the driver as 31-year-old Mohamed Bouhlel, a French-Tunisian who was a resident of Nice. Urvoas described Bouhlel as having been a petty criminal up until the attack, Associated Press reported.
This was the third major terrorist attack in France in 18 months, and a devastating blow to a country looking to move on from November’s attacks in Paris, in which Islamic State terrorists killed 130 in a coordinated series of bombings and shootings.
Other French officials were quick to join Hollande in declaring France was at war with Islamist terrorism.
Nicolas Sarkozy, a former French president and candidate for president in 2017 said, “We are in a war that will last, with a threat that will constantly renew itself, until it’s completed.”
He added: “Adaptation and the permanent strengthening of our will to fight against Islamist terrorism remains an absolute priority. Nothing can be as it was.”

Paris fell under the watchful eyes of security forces months before the attack in the seaside city of Nice. (Photo: Nolan Peterson/The Daily Signal)

No Reprieve
As France celebrated Bastille Day earlier Thursday, Hollande had announced that Operation Sentinelle—an emergency security crackdown put in place across France after the November Paris attacks—would officially end July 26. The attack in Nice late Thursday night quickly laid that plan to rest, however, only hours after it was announced.
Hollande said in his predawn speech Friday that he would extend France’s national state of emergency by three months. France also would escalate its military campaign against the Islamic State, or ISIS, in Syria and Iraq, the visibly mournful French president added.
“We will continue striking those who attack us on our own soil,” Hollande said.
Operation Sentinelle includes deployment of 10,000 troops across France to establish de facto martial law, including 6,500 troops deployed in the Paris area alone.
Since November, the throngs of tourists at classic Parisian tourist landmarks such as the Notre Dame Cathedral, the Champs-Elysée boulevard, and the Louvre art museum have weaved around French commandos walking in combat formations with weapons drawn.
The soldiers stoically scan tourists’ faces, looking for tells that might give away a potential terrorist.
There was a quiet, somber pall in Paris in the weeks following the November attacks.
Yet, despite the overt presence of French troops on patrol across the French capital since November, the city’s summer pace of life appears to be unaffected. Crowds fill cafés, children float model sailboats in the Jardin de Luxembourg, fanny-packed tourists line up at the entrance to the Louvre and other attractions.
Amid the terrorist threat and state of emergency, the Euro 2016 soccer championships went off without major incident and the Tour de France is underway. Friday’s stage of the annual bike race went ahead with heightened security.
In many ways, the greatest strain of the 8-month-old security crackdown has been on the military.
Reservists have been called up to meet manpower needs, and many soldiers deployed to patrol the streets of major cities are living away from their families in bare-bones, temporary housing.
Operation Sentinelle also comprises aggressive law enforcement and intelligence gathering protocols, including house raids and searches without a warrant or judicial oversight. The state of emergency grants officials extra powers to place people under house arrest and shut down mosques with suspected ties to radical Islamists.
Battlefront
Some French commentators have claimed that France is in the midst of an “internal war,” in which the country’s disaffected Muslim minority, many of whom were born in France, is increasingly susceptible to recruitment by radical Islamist groups such as ISIS or al Qaeda.
Those who see terrorism as the byproduct of a cultural schism lean toward law enforcement action and intelligence gathering as the best recourse, as well as the need for a hard reckoning within French society to better integrate its ostracized Muslim minority.
Mohammed Moussaoui, president of France’s Union of Mosques, said In an interview with French media that the fight against terrorism should prioritize the “education and the prevention” of Muslim youth.
An estimated 70 percent of the French prison population is Muslim, while Muslims comprise only about 8 percent of the overall French population.
Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, a politician for France’s National Front political party, said the French penal system needs to do more to prevent Islamist radicalization within prisons.
“There is a radicalization ongoing on prisons due to a lack of space,” Maréchal-Le Pen said Friday, according to the French newspaper Le Monde. “There needs to be buildings specifically for Islamist terrorists so they are not mixed with others.”
Others, however, say France is at war against an external enemy, and military action abroad is the best way to diminish the terrorist threat to the homeland.
Some experts also partially attribute a recent worldwide uptick in Islamic State terrorist attacks, from Baghdad to Bangladesh, to the terrorist army’s losses on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria.
In May, the U.S.-led coalition combatting ISIS in Iraq and Syria estimated the terrorist group had lost 45 percent of the territory it once held in Iraq and 20 percent of its territory in Syria.
Veryan Khan, editorial director of the Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium, said terrorist attacks like the one in Nice are a way for ISIS to divert attention from losses in Iraq and Syria.
“The more we see the caliphate shrink, the more often we will see foreign attacks,” Khan told The Daily Signal.
This report has been updated to include the name of the suspected terrorist, and to add other details.

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