Showing posts with label @sbalich @danproft @willcountynews1 #tcot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label @sbalich @danproft @willcountynews1 #tcot. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Inside Judicial Watch: THE LATEST REVELATION on Bruce Ohr & the Clinton-DNC Dossier



Inside Judicial Watch: THE LATEST REVELATION on
Bruce Ohr & the Clinton-DNC Dossier



In this edition of “Inside Judicial Watch,” JW Senior Attorney Ramona Cotca joins host Jerry Dunleavy to discuss the latest developments in our battle to get to the truth about the Department of Justice’s relationship with Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that produced the Clinton-DNC dossier on Trump.
 

Friday, September 28, 2018

Benford urges fellow candidates to earn, not buy votes



Thursday, September 6, 2018

Kid Was Kicked Out Of Class For Teacher’s Personal Views



Kid Was Kicked Out Of Class For Teacher’s Personal Views


Conservatives are being targeted by left-wing giants for opposing their destructive agenda.
The first amendment is under attack. Social media platforms have indiscreetly created means to weed out opinions from Republican voices.

This is only the beginning. Search engines, news outlets, companies, and even schools are becoming increasingly biased toward liberal ideas.
We continue to see an appalling number of incidents in the public school system where students and faculty are getting away with grossly inappropriate behavior.
On the other hand, conservative students and teachers who stand up for their views and opinions in an acceptable way are being punished relentlessly.
An excellent example of this is in a high school where administrators were trying to force teachers to call students by their name that they identified with, rather than their legal name.
For reasons of principle, one teacher refused to comply with this outrageous request, and his teaching career ended, as Mommy Underground previously reported.
In another high school, as Mommy Underground has reported, the entire student body was forced to watch videos that educated them on the homosexual lifestyle, without their parents’ consent.
Could you imagine the backlash if conservative views were being openly endorsed by a teacher or school?
The media would have a field day with the hypocritical lectures on what is and is not appropriate.
Well, we don’t have to imagine too hard, because it has just occurred in a California high school.
A child was sent to the principle’s office after being lectured on why guns were bad because they were wearing a NRA shirt.
Fox News Insider reported:
A teacher in California reportedly kicked a student out of his history class for wearing a T-shirt advertising the National Rifle Association.”
Two students were wearing NRA t-shirts in a history class at Lodi High School in California Friday when their teacher felt the need to address them for their “offense.”
The seemingly liberal teacher began lecturing the students on why “guns are bad”, reports CBS Sacramento.
Being that the incident occurred in California, you can’t be surprised by the opposition to a NRA shirt or guns in general.

Friday, August 24, 2018

Chicago officials looking at universal basic income program


Steve Balich Editors note: Where is the money to pay coming from. That's the main reason socialism does not work! $500m monthly checks sound nice.

Another Reason to vote Republican

As of 2017, the city had more than 2.1 million residents older than 18. Giving each a $500 check every month would cost about $12.6 billion annually. Chicago's annual budget for fiscal 2018 was $8.6 billion.
FILE - Chicago, Skyline


Chicago officials looking at universal basic income program

By Cole Lauterbach | Illinois News Network  


Officials in Chicago want to test the waters of offering a universal basic income.



A majority of city council members are telling Mayor Rahm Emanuel to form a task force to look into Universal Basic Income programs, which is essentially a periodic check from the government with no strings attached.

The City Council wants to explore a program that would send at least $500 a month to 1,000 Chicago families. The same families also would get Earned Income Tax Credit money on a monthly basis rather than once a year.


47th Ward Ald. Ameya Pawar’s resolution said the money would “help working people and families become more resilient to day-to-day financial emergencies, are able to make rent, cover childcare, and put food on the table.”

At his speech for the annual Nelson Mandela lecture in Johannesburg last month, former President Barack Obama endorsed the idea of a UBI as more jobs are automated.

“We’re going to have to be more imaginative,” he said. "We’re going to have to consider new ways of thinking about these problems like a universal income, a review of our work week and how we train our young people.”

Other U.S. cities are looking at the idea as well. Stockton, Cal., is set to be the first to actually implement a UBI pilot program in 2019. This comes as Ontario's leadership announced that the province will do away with a program that gives a UBI to people with low-paying jobs.

The issue that Manhattan Institute senior fellow Oren Cass and others have with the idea is that a pilot program won’t give any indication of how a large-scale hand-out would work.

“Choosing a random group of people and telling them they get a bunch of money, we call that a lottery,” he said.

Cass said the fear that robots will take everyone's job is an unrealized fear.


“Robots are not taking jobs,” he said. “All of the economic data suggests that jobs are being destroyed by automation slower than ever.”

Chicago is not flush with cash. As of 2016, the city had $40 billion in bills, according to Truth in Accounting.

“It’s obviously bizarre that a city that’s already essentially bankrupt to be piloting a program that mails a bunch of money to everybody,” Cass said.

As of 2017, the city had more than 2.1 million residents older than 18. Giving each a $500 check every month would cost about $12.6 billion annually. Chicago's annual budget for fiscal 2018 was $8.6 billion.

The strengths and weaknesses of leftists vs. conservatives



By Brandon Smith

Before I jump into this subject matter, I should probably address a common misconception among people who are new to liberty movement activism. The first time people hear about the concept of the "false left/right paradigm," they wrongly assume that there is "no left or right ideology," that it is all made up to divide the masses. This is false.
The false left/right paradigm pertains to the elitists at the top of the political and financial pyramid. These people do not have any loyalty to any one political party or to the beliefs of one side or the other. They are happy to exploit leftists or conservatives in order to create a social outcome that elevates the elitist's own goals, but that is all. Meaning, these people are globalists and have their own agenda separate from the political left or right, but will pretend to stand on one side or the other in order to control the narrative. Hence, the "falseness" of their particular left/right theater.
The common citizen, however, does indeed legitimately rest his or her ideals on a spectrum from left to right, from progressive to conservative. And lately, the separation between these two sides has been growing ever wider.
So, it is not playing into the hands of the globalists to point out the differences in the two sides. The two sides are concrete, they are a natural extension of human though processes, and they would exist even if the globalists did not exist.
Where things go horribly wrong is when one side or the other is pushed artificially towards zealotry. This is where the globalists create chaos, by influencing the left or the right into subverting their own principles and abandoning diplomacy in the name of destroying the other side.  This is when disagreements become war and the political process becomes a blood feud.
Globalists sometimes attempt to conjure such violent conditions when they want to wipe the slate clean and introduce a new social system. Generally, their goal is even more centralization and control. In some cases, being avid eugenicists, their goal is to aggressively reduce the population.
In the past few years I have been critical of both sides of the political spectrum, and sometimes even more critical of liberty activists when I see the movement being led astray by disinformation. The reality is that both leftists and conservatives sense severe imbalances in the way our society and our government functions. Where we differ greatly is in how each side places blame for our problems and how they plan to solve those imbalances.
In order to understand why the left and the right are so close to outright war, we have to step outside the political bubble and look at our differences in a more objective way. First, let's start with an examination of the leftist mindset.

How leftists view the world

The key to understanding leftists resides in their inclination toward collectivism as a means of protection and power. To put it more bluntly, leftists love and embrace the mob mentality.
This is why the political left seems to organize so much more effectively than conservatives in most cases. While conservatives engage in internal debates with each other over principles and practical solutions, leftists are far more single-minded in their pursuit of social influence. They seem to gravitate to each other like ants around a sugar cube, and in this they can be effective in removing obstacles. This could be considered a strength and a weakness, though.
The leftists ideal is one in which all people are in general agreement — they think all people are tied together in a great social chain, that every individual action has consequences for everyone else in that chain and, therefore, all individual actions no matter how small should be regulated in order to avoid one person adding to a potential disaster for the rest of humanity.
Thus, the notion of "society" becomes a control mechanism for leftists. "We are all part of this society, whether we like it or not." They often say, "People have to accept the rules for the greater good of the greater number."
Obviously, this is a brand of totalitarianism posing as humanitarian rationality. Who decides what is the "greater good?" Well, our inherent conscience does that, but conscience is an individual trait. When mobs get together and engage in mob thinking, conscience tends to go out the window.
This is why it is impossible to institute such a thing as "social justice;" arbitrarily homogenizing an entire group based on their skin color, sexual orientation, financial status, etc. and then deciding how they should be rewarded (or punished) erases the individual accomplishments and crimes of the people within that group you just created.
It is true that some behaviors tend to be cultural, and in that case, the most we can do morally is point out those behaviors and applaud or criticize. In the case of globalists, you have an actual example of organized criminality within a definable group of people. This can indeed be judged on a broad scale but still must be punished based on individual actions.
We can judge an individual for his behavior, but no one on Earth is devoid of bias, and no one on Earth has the omnipotent wisdom required to dole out punishment or prizes to an entire subculture of people en masse.
Leftists with good intentions desire a world without suffering. This is perhaps a noble thing. Unfortunately, that world does not exist and never will. There will always be inequality of outcome, because not all people are equal in ability or willpower. I realize that leftists have been brainwashed into thinking that all people are equally capable, if not completely the same in every imaginable way. But believing this does not make it fact.
The best we can hope for is the freedom to pursue prosperity as individuals, but in their pursuit of total equality, leftists are encouraging the erasure of individual freedom and opportunity. They believe that what is best for the individual is for him to sacrifice his individualism for the sake of the mob. When one understands that the mob is morally relative, that it has no soul or conscience, this suggestion sounds like madness. And frankly, it is madness.
Needless to say, the collectivist thinking of leftists makes them easy prey for sociopathic global elites. That said, conservatives are also targeted for manipulation exactly because they present the most viable threat to the success of globalism as construct.

How conservatives view the world

While the political left is essentially going off the deep end into the errors of zealotry, conservatives are also not immune to ideological blindness. It is no secret that I view the conservative position as far superior to that of the left — I will summarize the strengths of this position as briefly as possible so that we can get to the more important issue of weaknesses.
The left sees the world as a Gordian Knot that must be chopped in half to be untangled. Conservatives see society's problems as much simpler. Each individual's problems are his own. Each individual must work hard to elevate himself and to solve his problems without taking from other people in the process. Each person is an island, and while we might ally with each other at times, we are not permanently tied to each other in some kind of endless symbiotic relationship. As the Non-Aggression Principle outlines, you leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone, and as long as no one is attempting to steal from me or murder me I will remain quiet and peaceful.
The conservative dynamic goes wrong, though, when conservatives abandon their own principles for the sake of winning a fight against an imminent threat.
As leftists worship the mob and government power, conservatives tend to worship heroes, some of them false prophets. Conservatives are always desperately searching for the man on the white horse to lead them to the promise land. They are always looking for another messiah.  And in this they make themselves weak.
What they should be emulating are their principles and heritage alone. Only ideals and truths matter, because they are eternal, and they do not lie. But let the right showman or mascot come along reciting the correct rhetoric in a rousing way, and many conservatives become putty in the hands of the political elites.
I believe this is owed to the problem of organization that conservatives suffer from. Individualists do not always agree on everything and normally abhor group think. The political right grows frustrated at how easy it is for leftists to congeal into an effective mob, and the tyranny of the majority is horrifying to the average conservative. So, in response conservatives seek out unifying leaders, people that appear to hold the same values and who conservatives can pour all their hopes and dreams for the future into. When this happens, group think can and does spread like a cancer through the political right.
When conservatives hyper-focus on leadership, they unwittingly centralize and become easily controlled. Globalists can either co-opt the leader or they can destroy the leader and thus the hopes of all the people that were invested in him. They can use the leader as a placebo, making conservatives sit idle waiting around for things to change when they should be taking action themselves.
Globalists can also tie all the perceived or real blunders of that leader around the necks of his political base; meaning, conservatives can be conned into rallying around a false prophet and then when he falls from grace, all conservative thought falls from grace as well.
When conservatives bottleneck all their efforts and energy into a single leader, they set themselves up for failure. Organization does not need to be pursued from the top down. It can be built from the ground up in a decentralized way. When conservatives ignore their own principles and start centralizing, some very ugly things can happen. Zealotry is not only a vice of leftists. I remember the insanity of the Iraq War, for example, and in that event I saw self-proclaimed conservatives acting like the very mob they used to despise. This happened because they were frightened by an imminent threat and sought out leadership in all the wrong places instead of thinking critically.
The two sides of the political spectrum are a fact of life, unless of course the globalists get their way and erase everything. One side is often used against the other to illicit a self-destructive response. Understanding where each side is coming from helps us to remain vigilant and to avoid exploitation by the powers that be.

Friday, August 17, 2018

Communism makes a comeback


Communism makes a comeback 

Of all the unhinged reactions I expected from the left in response to conservatism's new American ascendancy, going full communist wasn't necessarily one of them. It's not that I put turning to an ideology that killed more people in the 20th century than the Spanish Flu, polio and AIDS combined past the children who thought Hillary Clinton was the answer. It's just that wrapping themselves in the red and yellow just because the flyover rubes are wearing "MAGA" hats seems extreme. Granted, they don't call it "communism," anymore. Now, it's "Democratic Socialism." They can call it "Unicorn Poo" for all I care; the goal is the same: a world in which everyone, except them, lives equally... miserably. (See also: every place communism has been imposed, e.g., Venezuela).



And yet, witness the shooting star that is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. After winning the Democrat primary for New York's 14th Congressional District, the dimpled darling is knocking down the kind of PR for which Hillary Clinton paid Uranium One-level money to shady, Russia-connected, consulting firms. And the Democrats are trotting her out like Led Zeppelin on a reunion tour with a reanimated John Bonham. She's making the rounds, from Midwest campaign stops for third place candidates, to fawning Hollywood interviews with amateurish comedians, to wine-and-cheese gabfests with the political dilettantes who have grabbed liberalism's wheel and yanked to port. Judging by the meteoric rise of the 28-year old "democratic socialist," the outside observer might think she's the next Barack Obama. And, in a way, she is. A virtual unknown before now; she's TV-palatable, socially conscious and has absolutely no idea what the hell she's talking about, most of the time.Ocasio-Cortez's script since taking her show on the road contains all the usual far left bons mots; promises of "free" health care, college tuition and whatever else can be charged to John Q. Public's American Express card. Her brilliantine offerings have included a pronouncement that unemployment is low because "everyone is working two jobs." She even hinted at "solving" the problem of homelessness by appropriating empty, privately owned apartments to house the homeless population. With the Democrats now standing against both the 1st and 2nd Amendments, I suppose I shouldn't be stunned that a Democratic Socialist communist would find a way to oppose the 3rd. As per usual, nothing in her act contains an explanation of how John Q. Public will pay the bill, nor even a mention of the existence of the bill.
But Ocasio-Cortez didn't win a close race in a swing district. She beat one of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's top goons; and she did it in a district which is only slightly to starboard of Brezhnev's dacha. Her leap into the limelight is due in no small part to the fact that her predecessor, Rep Joe Crowley, has all the charm of unflavored oatmeal. Given Crowley's formulaic liberalism — he holds a 100 percent rating from the anti-life group NARAL, supported the Obamacare fraud, opposes border security, and favors punitive tax increases on working Americans — it doesn't take a Nobel to see that Miss Ocasio-Cortez got lucky because the Democrats got lazy; not because her message is one which will reshape America. At least she's perky and adorable. The comely Ocasio-Cortez represents a marked improvement over the hammer-and-sickle's previous standard bearer. Big brown eyes — even crazy ones — are damned sight better than "Doc Brown from Back to the Future."

Socialism is political cancer. It literally ruins every place in which it's tried; routinely with attendant casualties in the millions. But its message of "free stuff, and the rich guys pay for it" sells to millennials, their burnt-out hippie parents, and their college philosophy professors; none of whom realize that once they've gotten rid of the rich guys, there's no one left to pay for anything. Nonetheless, the Democrats are bringing it back. It's the perfect complement to their "pussy" hats and Che' t-shirts — and losing.

— Ben Crystal 

Tuesday, August 14, 2018

Trade Tariff Winners



Steve Balich Editors Note: I don't consider leveling the field concerning a country charging us 25% tariff and us not charging them anything as protectionist. Lets get real, we are loosing jobs and money to foreign countries taking advantage of previous administrations lake of desire to even the playing field. 
 
Trade Tariff Winners
By Briton Ryle
Reuters had this sentence in one of its articles from a day or two ago: “But as Trump has sought to pull his party toward more protectionist trade positions...”
I underlined the word “protectionist” for emphasis because I've been seeing the phrase more and more lately. And there's an important distinction here. 

You'll find a few subtle variations in the definitions for “protectionist” if you Google the term. (Not sure why we can't just decide on one definition and go with that. I guess this way we get to have more things to argue about, which is important because we don't have enough things to disagree about now.)
Anyway. I like this one: “A policy of shielding a country's domestic industries from foreign competition by taxing imports.”
Because adding the word “competition” brings a lot to the conversation. We now have a reason for the protectionism. And we must ask if competition is really at the heart of what Trump is doing...
There are areas within the global economy where the U.S. is absolutely not competitive. Like clothes. You can buy pretty decent "Not Made in the USA" t-shirts at Target for like $10.
And if you find yourself suddenly separated from your wife and she won't let you take any of the kitchen stuff with you even though some of it was yours to begin with and other stuff was actually a wedding gift for both of you so you have to go out and buy a bunch of stuff, needlessly spending money that you also need to rent an apartment so your kids can come visit like I had to 10 years ago... you'll find some pretty cheap spatulas and spoons at Walmart.
And I'll tell you, there is absolutely no way the U.S. should even try to compete on cheap spatulas. We have no edge in spatulas. There's no value add. No one wants a smart spatula that will ping your iPhone when it's time to flip the eggs.
I'm no expert, but I don't think America makes better plastic than China does. (Though, now that I think about it, I bet you could actually get a couple bucks more for a spatula made of “Freedom Plastic.” Consider that phrase trademarked — Shark Tank, here I come.)
Now, to go off on another completely sideways tangent because I'm on vacation next week and my brain is already on the beach (and probably isn't wearing sunscreen because, well, you know, it's my brain), so I have nothing at all write about, here's the exchange I had with my copy editor this morning:
copy editor [9:42 AM]
haha nice
spatulas
brit [9:42 AM]
totes
freedom plastic
copy editor [9:43 AM]
i like it
you know people would buy it
brit [9:43 AM]
right?
copy editor [9:43 AM]
you may want to take that out of your article and save that million-dollar idea
brit [9:43 AM]
I am in the wrong job
actually I think once it's in print it's mine
copy editor [9:44 AM]
oh true
well
“print”
brit [9:44 AM]
now others can pursue the idea, do the actual work, and I can swoop in later for free money
copy editor [9:45 AM]
brilliant
Who says you can't have entertaining economic commentary?
Is There a Point to All This?
Yes. There is a point here. And that point is...
With some products, the single most important factor is labor costs. So, sorry to be the bearer of bad news here, but you're not going to buy a home complete with a smart spatula from the wages you make at my Freedom Plastic factory. (Look, I got a Maserati to pay for...)
So let the Chinese make all that stuff. In fact, if you wanna open a factory in China to take advantage of the cheap labor and use the profits to pay for a nice corporate HQ in Florida, I am completely fine with that. 
There's just no reason for the U.S. to try to compete with China and other countries on labor costs. And at the end of the day, I believe the president knows this. At least I hope he does. Because there are other areas where the U.S. has competitive advantages that should be strengthened and protected. 
Like semiconductor architecture, artificial intelligence, pharmaceutical drugs, financial services, airplanes, and more things my brain can't think of right now.
So I don't think the current trade wars are about protecting every single domestic industry. The ultimate goal has to be to get China to open up its markets more and stop stealing American intellectual property. 
It looks like we may even have the EU on board. And if the two biggest economic zones team up to put the squeeze on China, well, there's gonna be so much winning.

So Much Winning Stocks
It's August. Everybody's on vacation. Volume on the NYSE will be hitting its lows for the year. It's a great time to go shopping for stocks that have been knocked down by tariff concerns. 
Caterpillar’s down $30 from its highs. Boeing’s off $20. First Solar is down 50% from its 52-week highs. 
Those are decent ideas. I’ve got a better one for you: NXP Semiconductors (NASDAQ: NXPI). 
No one has talked much about NXP over the last year or so because the company was getting acquired by Qualcomm for $44 billion. But China nixed the deal in retaliation to the tariffs. And NXP is currently valued at about $33 billion. 
Now, among other things, NXP makes near-field communication chips. These chips talk to each other when they are in close proximity. This is important for, say, letting autonomous cars know when they are close to each other so they don't crash. And how else will your smart spatula know when your eggs are a perfect over-medium?
It seems to me we are still in the early stages of a massive bullish cycle for chips. In the next few years, an absolutely ridiculous amount of data is going to be flying around. Data centers, servers, cloud providers, storage — these stocks are going to boom for the next five years. 
Still, not many people are talking about NXP Semiconductors. At least not in public. But I bet you dollars to spatulas that every major chip company is working out a bid for NXP. And the minute this trade war with China gets resolved (and I firmly believe it will), NXP is gonna jump from $95, where it is now, to at least $125.

Monday, August 13, 2018

Congress is Working to Save Lives and Money



Congress is Working to Save Lives and Money

Congress is Working to Save Lives and Money
If you only watch, read, and listen to the mainstream media, it is reasonable to believe that members of Congress do nothing but bicker. The only stories that earn air time, ink, or tweets are those which the elite media deem the most important (read most entertaining) and focus only on the partisan fights of the day.
According to the elite media’s narrative, Republicans and Democrats never work together, Congress never solves any problems, and legislating has essentially ended on Capitol Hill.
However, this isn’t reality. In fact, members of Congress regularly work on reasonable, bipartisan legislation to make life better for Americans. One recent example which the media has ignored is the Organ Donor Clarification Act (ODCA). It was introduced in the House on July 19 and is supported by a 15-member group of Republicans and Democrats – as well as more than a dozen medical, political, and philanthropic organizations, including The Gingrich Foundation.

The central aim of the bill is to end the nationwide organ shortage and help get new organs to people who need them more quickly. It would achieve this by making it easier for healthy people to defray the costs of donation and by trying new ways to improve the donor system to incentivize healthy organ donation.
For many Americans, this is a matter of life and death. Every day, 20 people die while waiting for lifesaving organ transplants. The need for kidneys drives this problem. More than 80 percent of the 115,000 people awaiting organ transplants as of June needed kidneys. At the same time, healthy, transplantable organ donations have been in decline since 2006. It’s become so bad that the rate of need has now doubled the rate of transplant.
This organ shortage is also a matter of dollars and cents. People who need new kidneys require dialysis, which can be incredibly expensive. Medicare spending on patients on dialysis, for example, averages $87,000 per person annually. Dialysis is also taxing on the body and takes time – sometimes people require dialysis for up to a decade before receiving a transplant. So, people who are dependent on dialysis are necessarily less productive – and less fulfilled – than they could be otherwise. According to Congressmen Jason Lewis (R-MN) and Matt Cartwright (D-PA) – the bipartisan team leading the bill through the House – a successful kidney transplant pays for itself in less than two years – just by avoiding future medical costs, which can be as much as $745,000 over 10 years.
The ODCA also seeks to improve the rate of healthy organ donations by clarifying the law. Imprecise terms in current law that don’t clearly define what reimbursements donors can legally receive to lessen the costs of organ donation (coupled with serious criminal penalties for inappropriate reimbursements) have led to a chilling effect on willing, healthy donations. Clarifying this language will help donors get reimbursed quickly for things such as medical expenses and lost wages, hopefully increasing the number of donors.
The bill will also amend well-intentioned but outdated laws that prohibit government-run pilot programs from exploring how non-cash incentives could improve the rate of organ donation. Once this law is passed, federal health agencies could try offering health insurance, scholarships, or other non-fungible incentives to promote healthy organ donation.
In 2003, I wrote a book with Anne Woodbury and Dana Pavey called Saving Lives & Saving Money, which explored ways of transforming our health system so that it focused on (and fixed) the most deadly and costly issues facing Americans. The Organ Donor Clarification Act fits that model perfectly.
It is also evidence that real, important, effective lawmaking is still happening in the House and Senate – we just rarely hear about it.

Saturday, August 11, 2018

WILL COUNTY SHOPPERS WOULD PAY AMONG NATION’S HIGHEST SALES TAXES UNDER REFERENDUM PROPOSAL


from Illinois Policy

A new sales tax proposed by Will County school districts would put some residents’ sales tax burden in a league with Chicago, which is home to the highest combined sales tax rate of any major city in the U.S.
Illinois is home to the highest sales tax rates in the Midwest and one of the highest overall tax burdens in the nation. But that hasn’t stopped some local officials in Will County from entertaining additional taxes.
Will County voters could be seeing a referendum on their November ballots that would bring a new 1 percent sales tax to county school districts. Indian Prairie District 204, the latest Will County school to push the referendum forward, passed a resolution July 23 in support of the proposed sales tax. More than a dozen school districts across Will County have also signed onto the referendum, according to the Naperville Sun. The proposed 1 percent tax would fall under a relatively new category of sales tax called a County School Facility Occupation Tax, or CSFT.
An additional 1 percent sales tax might seem insignificant. But on top of state and local sales taxes – as well as sales taxes tacked on by special business districts – the region’s combined sales tax burden would rival that of Chicago in some areas.

Take either of the special business districts in Joliet, the county’s seat. For residents shopping at Route 66 Food N Fuel or Mickey’s One Stop, located in Route 53/Laraway Road Business District and 1415 Plainfield Road Business District, respectively, the sales tax rate would jump to 10.75 percent from 9.75 percent, provided the CSFT went into effect. This would outpace Chicago’s combined sales tax rate of 10.25 percent, which is the highest overall sales tax rate in the nation.
But the tax wouldn’t be restricted to shoppers visiting special business districts. Joliet would see a combined sales tax rate of 9.75 percent under the additional sales tax, up from 8.75 percent. Not far behind would be residents of the villages of Bolingbrook and Plainfield, both of which currently impose an 8.5 percent combined sales tax. The proposed CSFT would push this rate up to 9.5 percent, which, while slightly behind Chicago’s high sales tax rate, would nonetheless render the villages’ combined sales tax rate among the highest in the nation. (The portion of Bolingbrook located in DuPage County would not be affected by the new tax.)
In 2007, state lawmakers passed a law authorizing elected school boards to introduce a CSFT via referendum. The tax would be placed on retail items and gasoline, the revenue from which would be earmarked for facilities maintenance, upgrades and debt repayments.
In order for a CSFT referendum to appear on voters’ ballots in a given county, school districts representing at least 50 percent of that county’s student population must pass resolutions approving the proposed CSFT.
Around 70 counties have put CSFT referendum questions to voters, but none in Cook or the collar counties, according to the Naperville Sun. But that could change come November. Jay Strang, District 204’s chief school business official, told the Naperville Sun that Will County school districts were “very close” to surpassing the 50 percent requirement.
While CSFTs come with the promise of investment in local schools – a promise local taxpayers are justified in favoring – the unintended consequences of CSFTs can worsen the problems they’re designed to solve. In fact, CSFTs end up masking accountabilityfor district officials’ spending decisions. Despite reporting “much-needed deferred maintenance,” District 204 officials have suggested the tax could be used to pay down debts, only appropriating remaining funds toward maintenance and safety-improvement projects.
A 2014 Illinois Policy Institute investigation found Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. – a Missouri-based company – is often behind persuading local officials to pursue CSFTs. The company benefits from CSFTs by offering free consultation to school boards seeking more money for their districts. Then they make a pitch to handle the lucrative bond business for the ensuing projects funded by the sales tax hike.
School districts are the largest recipients of local property tax revenue. The owners of a home located in Joliet priced around the city’s median value of $180,600 paid $4,545 in property taxes in 2017. Combined, the homeowner’s two local school districts took in $3,071 of that ­– more than 67 percent of the property taxes billed.
Implementing a CSFT would only worsen Will County’s already-high overall tax burden. Unfortunately, costly mandates imposed by Springfield and the Illinois Constitution too often put local school districts in a bind, which feeds their reliance on tax hikes. Lawmakers must introduce real fiscal reforms – including constitutional changes to laws governing pensions and collective bargaining power – that would empower school districts to control their finances, rather than continuing to lean on overtaxed residents.

Thursday, August 9, 2018

“inadequate supervision” allegations can be extremely vague / children alone



When do you leave your children alone?
It’s a deeply personal decision that reflects family values, circumstance and a child’s unique personality. But if state government gets involved in the wrong place at the wrong time, that decision can ruin parents’ lives. And potentially their child’s, too.
Thankfully, a recent class-action lawsuit resulted in a settlement agreement that could bring some solace to Illinois parents.

One Chicago mom, Natasha Felix, made the decision in July 2013 to let her three sons, ages 11, 9 and 5, along with their 9-year-old cousin, play at a local park next door to their apartment.
The eldest was responsible. And all the children were perfectly fine. Felix even checked on them every 10 minutes from her kitchen window. But a passerby called the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
DCFS has a book of rules that sorts different types of child abuse or neglect by the type of allegation. Allegation No. 74 is called “inadequate supervision.” Although Felix’s children were not taken from her, she became a neglectful parent in the eyes of the state due to the department’s finding of her “inadequate supervision” that day. This scarlet letter prevented her from volunteering at her children’s school and blocked needed job opportunities.
Short of harm to her children, can you imagine a worse fate for a mother than being wrongfully pegged as a child abuser?
For more than two years, thanks to the help of the nonprofit Family Defense Center, Felix fought the finding. And in 2015, she rightfully had her name removed from the state’s registry.
But Felix was not alone. As it turns out, the department’s “inadequate supervision” allegations can be extremely vague. A parent could have been flagged as a neglector under Allegation No. 74 if “a child is placed in a situation or circumstances that are likely to require judgment or actions greater than the child’s level of maturity…”
But who should decide what situations are within the child’s maturity level – the state or the parent? Plenty of parents think challenging their kids in situations slightly outside their comfort zone is the best way for them to learn.
Also important to note: Rules with plenty of wiggle room tend to work against the least powerful among us.
That’s why in 2016, the Family Defense Center filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of thousands of parents whacked with child neglect under that rule. And in May 2017, the department changed it. Investigators now must find that a child was placed “at a real, significant and imminent risk of likely harm” because of a parent’s “blatant disregard of … responsibilities of care and support.”
And this summer, the Family Defense Center and DCFS finally reached a settlement.
The department will allow thousands of moms and dads who were flagged because of “inadequate supervision” to request a special review of their case. If the charge wouldn’t pass muster under the new, better standards for what constitutes neglect, their name will be removed from the list.
“This settlement brings relief to thousands of families who were unfairly labeled neglectful,” Family Defense Center Executive Director Rachel O’Konis Ruttenberg said. “Hopefully this will help DCFS focus on the families who truly need help.”


There is still much more work to be done.
For example, any parents who leave their children age 13 or younger home alone might be guilty of neglect under Illinois state law – the strictest law of its kind in the nation. Only a handful of other states have a minimum age for leaving children home alone. Three states set the minimum age at 12 for leaving children home alone, another three states set the minimum age at 8 and Kansas lists the minimum age at 6. At least 30 states have no minimum age for when a child can be left home alone.
Illinois lawmakers may have passed this measure and others like it with the best of intentions. Unfortunately, they result in far more stories like Felix’s.
It’s in the best interest of all Illinois children that likelihood of real harm – not just investigators’ personal parenting preferences – drives decision-making from lawmakers and DCFS.
Vague, arbitrary and overly protective rules, like we see often in Illinois, don’t do anyone any favors.