August 1, 2018 - "Representative Sauer did the right thing by resigning today. Sexual misconduct and abuse has no place in the work place or any place for that matter. Mr. Sauer's resignation is not, however, the ending of this difficult chapter in the Illinois legislature. In October, over 300 women working in Springfield signed a #MeToo letter detailing the toxic culture in the capitol. For three years, leaders left the position of Legislative Inspector General vacant. Today, we only have an interim LIG. This is not how people who are serious about reform and accountability operate. The position of LIG must be kept independent and made permanent. And a transparent process must be put in place for complainants. Whether or not more women come forward, we know that many have been hurt by our elected officials - professionally and otherwise. It is a disgrace. If we are to change that culture, we must change out Illinois' political leadership. As I have stated, we cannot hope to have a good and virtuous government without good and virtuous men and women to lead it."
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For more information, or to book Jeanne Ives, contact Kathleen Murphy at 630-329-4680 or kathleenemurphy26@gmail.com.
If the best gauge of how well you stuck a pig is the volume of its squeal, then President Donald Trump made a gravely damaging strike to the establishment last week during his trip to Europe.
After turning over tables at NATO, essentially declaring the alliance obsolete (it is), and putting those freeloading member nations on notice that America can no longer serve as their nanny and they must provide for more of their own defense, Trump scampered off to Helsinki for a sitdown with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the top oogie boogie man — at the moment — of the military-industrial complex-owned Anti-Trump establishment left and right.
The two men met privately with only translators in the room, so we're told, then stepped out into the media spotlight to field questions. The questioning, predictably, given that the establishment has gone all-in on trying to foment a war with the only nation that has more nuclear weapons than the U.S., went to the subject of whether Russia meddled in the election. Trump responded in classic Trumpian fashion. He dismissed the findings of the "intelligence community" regarding Russian meddling in the election. He also said he and Putin were working on improving relations between the the two countries.
"As president," said Trump, "I cannot make decisions on foreign policy in a futile effort to appease partisan critics or the media or Democrats who want to do nothing but resist and obstruct. Constructive dialogue between the United States and Russia forwards the opportunity to open new pathways toward peace and stability in our world. I would rather take a political risk in pursuit of peace than to risk peace in pursuit of politics."
"I really think the world wants to see us get along," Trump said. "We are the two great nuclear powers. We have 90 percent of the nuclear. And that's not a good thing, it's a bad thing."
Which made the war party's heads explode, because although the world wants to see the U.S. and Russia get along, at least the part of the world that is still sane, clearly the Washington establishment does not.
To wit:
"We are in a 9/11 national emergency because our country is under attack, literally," Senator Richard Blumenthal (Communist – Conn.) said on CNN, even as he demanded a record of Trump's meeting with Putin. "That attack is ongoing and pervasive, verified by objective and verifiable evidence. Those words are, again, from the director of National Security. And this 9/11 moment demands that we do come together."
Frances Townsend, Homeland Security & Counterterrorism Advisor to Bush the Lesser, former national security propagandist for CBS News and current executive VP for an investment firm with ties to the military-industrial complex (MIC), tweeted:
"#Russia Putin's Attack on the U.S. Is Our Pearl Harbor. It was an Act of War and we should recognize it as such," linking her tweet to a Politico articlemaking the same outlandish claim. The unhinged John O. Brennan, Barack Obama's chief spook, admitted communist and enemy of America during the Cold War and likely one of the initial instigators of the phony Trump-Russia dossier, called Trump's performance in Helsinki treasonous and impeachable and claimed he was wholly in Putin's pocket. As Sharyl Attkisson noted in a tweet, if Brennen will openly display this much animus toward Trump now that he's out of office, what might he have done behind the scenes to Trump while he had the power of government at his fingertips? Representative Steve Cohen (Communist – Tenn.), who wanted to give disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok a Purple Heart for his congressional testimony, called Russia's "interference" an act of war.
"It was a foreign interference with our basic Democratic values," Cohen told The Hill. "The underpinnings of Democratic society is elections, and free elections, and they invaded our country. A cyber attack that made Russian society valueless. They could have gone into Russian banks, Russian government. Our cyber abilities are such that we could have attacked them with a cyber attack that would have crippled Russia."
As CNN cut from the Helsinki presser, host Anderson Cooper, a former(?) CIA asset, offered his analysis:
"You have been watching perhaps one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president at a summit in front of a Russian leader, surely, that I've ever seen."
Paid MIC shill David Gergen, as Deep State as they come, having served as he did at the pleasure of presidents from both the "D" and "R" parties with histories of launching attacks on other countries — including Bill Clinton and both Bushes – opined:
I've never heard an American President talk that way buy I think it is especially true that when he's with someone like Putin, who is a thug, a world-class thug, that he sides with him again and again against his own country's interests of his own institutions that he runs, that he's in charge of the federal government, he's in charge of these intelligence agencies, and he basically dismisses them and retreats into this, we've heard it before, but on the international stage to talk about Hillary Clinton's computer server …"
But the outrage wasn't confined to the Leftist hacks. Republicans piled on. The #NeverTrump Weekly Standard — which never saw a war it couldn't wholly endorse – editorialized that Trump's comments were "A Punishable Disgrace" and called for Republicans in Congress to censure him.
Former Bush-Cheney political consult turned #NeverTrumper ABC political analyst Matthew Dowd tweeted that Russia's "meddling or interfering" was an "act of war." A host of the anti-Trump GOP establishment rebuked Trump to the press. The list included House Speaker Paul Ryan, Rep. Liz Cheney, Rep. Peter Roskam, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senator Bob Corker and, of course, insane Senator John McCain — friend of al-Qaida in Syria — and his trained monkey Sen. Lindsey Graham, neocons all who take money from the MIC.
A few people tried to restore some sanity to the debate. Senator Rand Paul rightly called Brennan the "most biased, bigoted, over-the-top, hyperbolic, sort of unhinged director of the CIA we have ever had."
"You know, I think engagement with our adversaries, conversation with our adversaries is a good idea. Even in the height of the cold War, maybe at the lowest ebb when we were in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis, I think it was a good thing that Kennedy had a direct line to Khrushchev. I think it was a good thing that we continued to have ambassadors to Russia even when we really objected greatly to what was going on, even during Stalin's regime. So I think that it is a good idea to have engagement," Paul said.
Republicans have been sticking out their proverbial chins toward Russia since the Cold War ended. America has double-crossed Russia on NATO expansion and worked to destabilized Russia's allies Syria and Iran. And by the way: The U.S. has also interfered with past Russian elections.
But the hostilities ramped up at the beginning of Mitt Romney's failed presidential bid. Recall that Romney called Russia America's No. 1 political foe, which prompted Barack Obama's retort that "the 1980s, they're now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War's been over for 20 years."
Presidents Reagan, Carter and Nixon all communicated with Soviet leaders even though the Cold War was in full swing. Obama tried to tamp down hostilities with Russia, even sending the Witch from Chappaqua to Putin with a "Reset" button (with the wrong Russian word on it.) No one considered them traitors for doing so.
Trump has put Iran on its heels, parked the Little Rocket Man's rockets, has let Russia and Syria clean up ISIS and is now seeking detente with Putin. So the establishment's in a snit that peace is breaking out. As Patrick Buchanan noted, Trump and Putin are working with Israel to end the conflict in Syria (a conflict created by the establishment and the "intelligence community" that the politicians, media and MIC-backed talking heads hold in such high esteem).
[A]nother underlying message here," Buchanan wrote, "America is coming home from foreign wars and will be shedding foreign commitments."
In addition to outrage over the very act of Trump meeting with Putin, the establishment was beside itself over Trump's dissing of the "intelligence community's" findings on Russian meddling. But why shouldn't he dis them? They've been working overtime to dig up some dirt on him in order to first defeat him and then create grounds to impeach him. The record shows it began as soon as he threw his hat in the ring.
This is the same "intelligence community," I remind you, that failed to head off the 9/11 attacks (if you believe the official narrative), fabricated weapons of mass destruction to get us into Iraq, failed to stop the Boston Marathon bombing (if you believe the official narrative), falsely told us (twice) that Bashar Assad had used chemical weapons on rebels, and failed to stop the San Bernardino, Pulse night club and Parkland High School massacres despite having the shooters on their radars.
As Ilana Mercer notes, the latest meme from the propaganda corporate media is:
"#Trump chose to stand with #Putin, instead of the American People."
(But) Since when DOES the Deep State--DOJ, FBI, DNC, RNC, NSA---represent, or stand for, The American People? On the other hand, POTUS represents 60M Americans. The intelligence community and their owned politicians and media have shown time again who they stand for. It ain't the American people.
A
13-year-old boy’s felony charge for recording his middle school principal begs
the question: When is it OK to record someone without breaking Illinois state
law?
Paul
Boron recorded his
principal and another school official when they talked to him about missing
detention. When the school leaders learned Boron was recording, they reported
it. The Kankakee County State's Attorney charged Boron with a Class 4
felony in April. The same as aggravated DUI and first-time weapon offenses.
What
Boron did is legal in most other states. Illinois is what’s known as a two-party
consent state, meaning that recording someone without permission
in even a semi-private area is a Class 4 felony. The key term in the law is a
“reasonable expectation of privacy.” Recording a phone call, for instance,
would likely be a felony.
“The
principal of two-party consent is something that Illinois has that provides
people with a greater degree of privacy than in many other states,” ACLU
Illinois staff attorney Ben Ruddell.
In
Boron’s case, Ruddell said everyone involved went too far.
“It was
entirely inappropriate for this situation to be dealt with in this manner,” he
said. “To criminalize this young man and make a felon out of him is something
we can unequivocally say is the wrong thing to do.”
Opponents
of Illinois’ two-party consent law says it’s too broad, allowing for abuses of
authority in the same manner as the Manteno school officials did against Boron.
Many cases of this law being charged is when a private citizen records public
officials, even law enforcement.
Personal PAC CEO Terry
Cosgrove says Gov. Bruce Rauner can't be trusted to defend abortion protections
Rauner himself signed into law.
Top of Form
Bottom of
Form
Abortion
advocates blasted Gov. Bruce Rauner at a news conference Tuesday morning for
failing to sign a pledge to protect a controversial bill that allows
taxpayer money to be used for abortions.
Personal
PAC President Terry Cosgrove took Rauner to task at the event in Chicago, the
morning after President Donald Trump announced his latest Supreme Court
pick. Personal PAC is a political action committee focused on electing
candidates who support abortion rights.
Cosgrove
said that the governor hasn’t signed a pledge sent to him by Personal PAC
stating that he would protect the law as it is under House Bill 40. Rauner
signed HB40 into law last year, upsetting conservative supporters.
The
bill allows for taxpayer money to pay for abortions through Medicaid and state
employee healthcare plans.
“The
truth is, if re-elected, Gov. Rauner has proven he can’t be trusted to protect
legal abortion in Illinois, unless the voters of Illinois have a written
promise that if re-elected he won’t do anything to repeal, diminish or amend HB
40,” Cosgrove said.
Cosgrove and
others at the news conference said that Rauner’s failure to sign the pledge
they gave him was enough to drop him in favor of Democratic challenger, J.B.
Pritzker, who signed the pledge.
Rauner
faced political backlash for his decision on HB40. Anti-abortion Republicans
across the state lashed out at the governor for signing the bill after
promising not to engage on controversial social issues. Rauner also had
previously said he would veto the measure. Rauner gave similar assurances to
Cardinal Blase Cupich, the cardinal has said.
Rauner
responded to questions about Personal PAC's criticism later that day.
"I
signed legislation here in the state of Illinois so that womens' reproductive
rights are protected regardless of what happens at the federal level," he
said.
The
news conference came the morning after President Donald Trump announced his
nomination to replace Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy with Washington
D.C. federal Judge Brett Kavanaugh, signaling a possible shift to the right in
the political dynamics of the nation’s highest court.
During
the debate on HB40, lawmakers warned that the bill was necessary in the event
that Roe v. Wade was overturned. Trigger language in the law would take effect
should that happen, ensuring access to abortion is still enshrined in Illinois
law.
Back when he was Alan "Goldspan" — in 1962, long before he got on the government's payroll and became Federal Reserve chairman — Alan Greenspan said this:
The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible...to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit. They have created paper reserves in the form of government bonds which — through a complex series of steps — the banks accept in place of tangible assets and treat as if …
What was true in 1962 — that "there are now more claims outstanding than real assets" — is true now on order of magnitude billions of times over. Where the dollar was once backed by gold and redeemable by gold, now the world is drowning in fiat (unbacked) "money." The money creators have unleashed the presses and, as a result, in the progression of time the U.S. currency has depreciated toward zero. The public understands this as rising prices, but it is more specifically depreciating paper money.
Occasionally a politician comes along who understands this cause and effect. Representative Ron Paul was one. His son, Senator Rand Paul is another, though son is not like father in most respects. Rand is more a politician and less a statesman.
Ron Paul regularly championed a gold standard and challenged the banksters about their insidious work to debase the currency and steal the wealth of the American people. Now comes along a new gold standard champion, Republican Representative Alex Moony of West Virginia.
In March Mooney introduced H.R. 5404, a bill that would define the dollar as a fixed weight of gold. In the bill's text, Mooney notes the deleterious effects of fiat currency as found in Congressional research:
The United States dollar has lost 30 percent of its purchasing power since 2000, and 96 percent of its purchasing power since the end of the gold standard in 1913.
Under the Federal Reserve's 2 percent inflation objective, the dollar loses half of its purchasing power every generation, or 35 years.
American families need long-term price stability to meet their household spending needs, save money and plan for retirement.
The Federal Reserve policy of long-term inflation has made American manufacturing uncompetitive, raising the cost of United States manufactured goods by more than 40 percent since 2000, compared to less than 20 percent in Germany and France.
Between 2000 and 2010, United States manufacturing employment shrunk by one-third after holding steady for 30 years at nearly 20,000,000 jobs.
The American economy needs a stable dollar, fixed exchange rates, and money supply controlled by the market not the government.
The gold standard puts control of the money supply with the market instead of the Federal Reserve.
The gold standard means legal tender defined by and convertible into a certain quantity of gold.
Under the gold standard through 1913 the United States economy grew at an annual average of 4 percent, one-third larger than the growth rate since then and twice the level since 2000.
The international gold exchange standard from 1914 to 1971 did not provide for a United States dollar convertible into gold, and therefore helped cause the Great Depression and stagflation.
The Federal Reserve's trickle down policy of expanding the money supply with no demand for it has enriched the owners of financial assets but endangered the jobs, wages, and savings of blue collar workers.
Restoring American middle-class prosperity requires change in monetary policy authorized to Congress in Article I, Section 8, Clause 5 of the Constitution.
During his campaign for president, Donald Trump regularly spoke of the need for the U.S. to return to the gold standard.
"We used to have a very, very solid country because it was based on a gold standard," Trump told WMUR television in New Hampshire during a March 2015 interview. But he said it would be tough to bring it back because "we don't have the gold. Other places have the gold."
In another interview with GQ, Trump said, "Bringing back the gold standard would be very hard to do, but boy, would it be wonderful. We'd have a standard on which to base our money."
Trump may or may not be correct about whether "we don't have the gold." We don't know because the Federal Reserve and bankster-owned politicians have refused to assent to an audit of the Federal Reserve and Fort Knox, the purported location of America's gold.
Why should the U.S. be on a gold standard, as the Founding Fathers intended? Gold is essential to personal liberty. On the other hand, paper money, personal freedom and privacy are incompatible. Paper money centralizes power to the state and diminishes the individual. This is the first cause of all you see happening.
The only way for true economic growth is by the transfer of services, goods or wealth between people (or businesses) who actually produce something. In other words, if someone provides a service and gets gold or silver (actual wealth) or widgets for compensation, both the service provider and widget maker have benefited and each has something that has bettered his standard of living.
If the one who performed the service uses the widgets to acquire trinkets that help him perform his service, then the service performer has benefited. The trinket maker has also benefited, and he can put the widgets to use. This sort of transfer has worked from the beginning of time, when the farmer took his produce to market, where it was sold or bartered in exchange for wealth, tools, supplies and seeds so he could begin producing food for next year.
Gold prices have historically indicated the confidence in or the failure of fiat currencies. An ounce of gold can still be exchanged for the same items an ounce of gold could be exchanged for 100 years ago. That's not the case of a dollar, which now is worth only pennies compared to what it was in 1913, or even 1971 when Richard Nixon completely disconnected the U.S. dollar from gold.
In 1936, you could buy a very nice suit for $34. At the time, gold was $34 per ounce. Today, you can buy an extremely nice suit for $1,000 to $1,500. An ounce of gold can be had for about $1,250.
Suppose someone had put $34 in a shoe box in 1936, set it on the top shelf of the closet and forgotten about it. If you found it today, it would still be $34, albeit $34 that will buy a lot less than $34 did in 1936. But suppose someone had put away for safekeeping an ounce of gold in 1936. If you pulled it out today, it would be worth $1,250 or more.
In 1933, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) — the price of a basket of common goods purchased by the average consumer — was 12.8. The current CPI is 251. In other words, that same basket of goods has increased from just less than $13 to $251.
The rise in gold's price from $34 to $1,250 does not reflect an increase in the value of an ounce of gold. It reflects an increasing loss of confidence in the U.S. dollar and the devaluation of the dollar through money printing. Every dollar printed dilutes the value of those already in circulation.
Unfortunately, Mooney's bill looks like another pie in the sky. Although introduced in March, not one co-sponsor has signed on the bill and it remains in committee. And not a peep about it has been heard from Trump.
If he was a true populist and for the people as he says, Trump would address money printing post haste. But I don't expect it to happen. The banksters wouldn't stand for such a thing.
This summer, he will be headed to California to attend Stanford University on a full-ride engineering scholarship. Like any student getting into a university of that caliber, it was a grind to get to this point.
“I’m lucky that I got in,” Spyres said. “It’s a coin flip, and I happened to land heads 37 times in a row. I did the hard work to give myself the opportunity to be lucky, but I got lucky.”
Stanford was among Spyres’ top choices, but so was the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The difference between Stanford and UIUC, though, was that while the former offered him a full-ride, the latter was hesitant to even welcome him with open arms.
That’s because Illinois’ flagship university, as a policy, was fixated on the past.
Jason Spyres is not a typical incoming college freshman. He is 36 years old. When he was 19 years old, he was arrested for selling cannabis, and until recently, the state of Illinois had kept him out of society for it. He served 15 years of a 30-year prison sentence at the Taylorville Correctional Center. And despite a record of model behavior while incarcerated, UIUC does not recognize his personal change the same way Stanford did.
“I got into U of I with an asterisk,” Spyres said. “They said ‘you’re going to be on academic and disciplinary probation from the first day until you graduate, and it will never come off your record.’”
“I got out of prison and all of my counselors told me, ‘Jason, you get out there and you make the life you told me you were going to make. We’re so proud’ … So I get three years of parole done in seven months, and I can finally say the number K99397 has no tie to me. It’s not on a piece of paper tied to who I am.”
“And U of I wants me to take that back … And remind [me] of it everyday.”
UIUC’s focus on the mistake he made when he was 19 over the person he is at 36 isn’t just a reflection on higher education in Illinois. It’s also emblematic of a misguided state approach toward criminal justice. The state’s criminal justice system has a problem with forgiveness and second chances, and by consequence turns away talent like Spyres.
Spyres saw how broken the system was as he was seeking an education and a personal rebound. After graduation at Stanford, he wants to return to Illinois to work to fix it for those with similar stories – a tall order, given the state’s challenges.
Prison time
“I wish the state of Illinois would just say ‘you know what, you’re doing everything right and we’re not going to stand in your way,’” Spyres said.
Spyres knows he made a mistake. In 2001, his mother sent him 38 pounds of cannabis from Red Bluff, California, to Spyres’ then-home in Decatur. According to court documents, a Staples employee in Red Bluff became suspicious of the package when Spyres’ mother dropped it off in poor condition and had a nervous demeanor. The package was turned over to law enforcement and shipped to the Decatur Police Department. An undercover police officer posing as a UPS deliveryman then brought it to Spyres’ home, began searching his home pursuant to a warrant and found the UPS tracking number matching the package.
Spyres was sentenced to 30 years in prison, and racked up fines that were nearly impossible to pay back.
“I’m $268,000 in debt because I sold pot when I was 19 and 20,” Spyres said. “You can say all day you know what it’s like for somebody when they get out [of prison] and try to do the right thing. Tell me you know what it’s like when you have debt collectors calling you trying to take your paycheck, and it’s going to take 18 years of every penny you earn after taxes to pay off your fine.”
Spyres’ sentence and fine were as harsh as they were due to how Illinois law classifies the crime of possessing large amounts of cannabis. A “Class X” felony classification – which includes possessing more than 5,000 grams of cannabis with intent to deliver – is among the state’s most severe, short of first-degree murder. Class X felonies carry a mandatory minimum sentence of six years and a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.
In 2016, Gov. Bruce Rauner signed into law legislation decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana – up to 10 grams – making it instead punishable by a fine of between $100 and $200. While not addressing more serious offenses, the move was a step forward for the Prairie State.
Second-chance opportunities
Corey Walker, now 48 and a successful Decatur-area business owner, was arrested for selling cannabis at 21. At 22, Walker was sentenced to eight years in prison for possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver. He served just roughly two years of that sentence as he was admitted to boot camp to finish the rest of the time, was able to then get a job and get on an entrepreneurial path.
The pathway to getting a second chance – instead of being written off – was key.
“I was grateful enough to be hired at a nursing facility [after boot camp],” said Walker, who now owns a Decatur-area limousine company. “Finding a job was difficult.”
Among the most important things Spyres did en route to his Stanford admission was finding employment, which he did thanks to his time in the Peoria Adult Transition Center, a work release center facilitating transitions back to society from prison. From there he found employment at Goldie’s Pizza and Slots in Peoria, proving his work ethic while taking classes at Illinois Central College.
In Illinois, nearly half of offenders released from prison each year will return within three years. But for an ex-offender who finds work within a year after release from prison, there is just a 16 percent chance of recidivating, according to a study by the Safer Foundation.
This affects all Illinoisans. Each time an ex-offender reoffends and ends up back behind bars, it costs the state approximately $118,746 on average, according to a 2015 report by the Illinois Sentencing Policy Advisory Council. Those costs add up in arrests, trials, court proceedings, incarceration and supervision; as well as costs for victims who have been deprived of property, incurred medical expenses, lost wages, and endured pain and suffering; and indirect costs in foregone economic activity.
That same report estimated that if Illinois’ recidivism rate stays about the same, taxpayers would pay roughly $5.7 billion over the following five years in the aforementioned costs. On the flip side, with a reduction in recidivism of just 1 percent, Illinois would save $37.4 million in prison, court and policing costs over nine years. If the recidivism rate fell by 5 percent, these savings would jump to nearly $187 million over nine years, along with $93 million in avoided economic losses and $262 million in victimization costs not incurred.
And yet, even with the benefits to ex-offenders and taxpayers alike, lawmakers have put up barriers to successful re-entry.
More than 100 professions require licenses that may be denied to ex-offenders because of their criminal backgrounds. Lawmakers have made some progress: Another piece of legislation Rauner signed into law in 2016 removed barriers for ex-offenders in the fields of barbering, cosmetology, esthetics, hair braiding, nail services, roofing and funeral service, unless the crime is directly related to the occupation.
But as Spyres’ experience showcases, many hurdles still exist, and removing them could pay off for both the lives of ex-offenders and the state as a whole.
“The biggest thing for an ex-offender returning to society is housing and employment,” Walker said. “If a person has a place to lay and has income coming to do things that Americans want to do in America, then I think we have a chance in the first 90 to 120 days in driving the recidivism rate straight to the ground.”
“There are too many examples in today’s time showing that second chance opportunities pay big dividends.”
Fixing the system
As Spyres gets ready to start his first year at Stanford and Walker continues to run his business and raise a family in Decatur, too many individuals still behind bars lack an opportunity for a comeback.
Shane Crutchfield, for example, hasn’t had a success story, or even the prospect of one. Spyres knows Crutchfield, who is serving a 40-year Class X felony sentence for selling cocaine, from their time behind bars together. Crutchfield had been in and out of prison before his cocaine arrest for other offenses – DUI and burglary – and never was able to land on his feet and build a stable life. Stanford or something of the sort might not be in his future, but as he sits in Shawnee Correctional Center for decades, nothing else is either. For countless other inmates Spyres came into contact with, the same is true.
That could change, with a rethinking of the state’s drug laws and barriers preventing ex-offenders from being productive members of society.
Even though the broken elements of the state’s criminal justice system have led Spyres to pursue an education elsewhere, that same fact could bring him back in a few short years after he has his engineering degree in hand.
“Illinois is my home state,” Spyres said. “I have to know that I made this place better. The only thing I have to point to my actions in Illinois is that I went to prison. I kind of wanted to go to U of I to say that I went to Illinois’ flagship campus and I made something of myself.”
“I’m really just trying to fix the system, and that’s why I want to come back.”
Sreve Balich Editors Note: The media is pushing socialism and any issue that helps destroy traditional American Culture, Morality, and Values. They along with their Social Democrat partners only talk about free is good but never say where the money from free is coming from.
We need to all vote and bring a friend in an effort to keep our State, County, and Local Government from the wickedness and snares of the Socialist Democrats.
By Bob Livingston
The latest buzzword from the political left is "Medicare for All." Medicare for All is the new name for single payer health insurance, which was the new name for socialized medicine. It's Obamacare on steroids.
Medicare for All is being championed by socialist/communist politicians like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and the wunderkind from New York, self-avowed democratic socialist nominee for the House of Representatives from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Under the plan proposed by Sanders, Medicare eligibility would expand over four years to transfer everyone slowly over to government-run health insurance. In the first year, people aged 55 and older, as well as those younger than 18 would become eligible for Medicare. The second year, eligibility would extend to people older than 45, and then to people older than 35 in year three. By year four, everyone would be eligible for Medicare.
The idea of something for "free" is always attractive to unthinking people who do not realize there is no free lunch. And politicians love to sell the idea of something for "free" when they're trolling for votes. As such, since Sanders introduced his plan the leading lights in the Democrat Party — and those most suspected of angling for the Democrat nomination in 2020 — have signed on. They include Democrat Senators Elizabeth Warren, Brian Schatz, Kirsten Gillibrand, Corey Booker, Mazie Hirono, Kamala Harris, Edward Markey, Jeff Merkley, Tammy Baldwin, Sheldon Whitehouse and Richard Blumenthal.
A study funded by the quasi-Libertarian Koch brothers and conducted by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University found the plan would increase government spending on healthcare by $32.6 trillion over 10 years. It is therefore unsustainable without massive money printing by the government. This is just another massive scheme to transfer wealth from the producers to government parasites.
Several states have discovered that universal health insurance by government is a fiscal impossibility. Vermont, a wealthy state with the second-lowest uninsured rate in the country found that even with the federal infusion of Obamacare subsidies to the state, payroll taxes would have to be increased by 11.5 percent and individual income tax rates would have to increase by 9 percent. This led Governor Peter Shumlin, who campaigned on the plan and signed it into law, to ultimately scrap it because it was "unwise and untenable."
Voters in Colorado rejected a plan for a statewide single payer government insurance program because the proponents' admittedly low-ball figure would require a tripling — at least -- of the state's income tax rates.
But beyond its cost, Medicare for All is a trap designed to force Americans into a socialized system of "medicine" with limited choices and limited resources that benefits only the medical industrial establishment. And that means getting rid of the elderly and infirmed before they become drains on the system.
In Great Britain, which has had government-run healthcare for years, the Supreme Court just ruled that patients can be starved to death without consent or even without a court order. In other words, when the medical system and the patient's family agree that a person's quality of life has deteriorated and there is little hope for recovery, that person can be euthanized by starvation/dehydration.
This would effectively end prolonged court fights over the state's efforts to murder people, as we saw over two recent cases where the state sought to murder two children, Charlie Guard and Alfie Evans.
In Sweden, Minister of Social Affairs Annika Strandhäll recently told the newspaper Aftonbladet that the country's elderly are overloading the country's healthcare system. Responding to claims that the healthcare system — which is seeing such a backlog that patients are waiting so long for surgeries that they "literally start to rot" — was overwhelmed by unchecked immigration, Strandhäll said, "That's not true, that's not true! We have a rapidly aging population in Sweden. Life expectancy increases by 3.5 hours a day and we have a larger number of chroniclers with life-long relationships with healthcare today than 30 years ago.
According to Strandhäll, "the number of people aged 70 years and older will increase by 300,000 by 2025. That is the big problem."
When the government is in charge of your healthcare, the government decides what treatments you have or can't have. This is the end of medical freedom. If government is controlling the money, government will decide the treatment modalities that are "approved" and, therefore, allowed. And when you become a nonproducing drain on the system you must be removed "in the public interest" and "for the good of society."
Nonproductive consumers are defined as all retired people, all terminally ill, all unborn children — which through "prenatal diagnostic techniques" can be shown to have fatal metabolic disorders — and all who have been in accidents leaving them nonproductive consuming dependents.
Dr. Benjamin Rush was a Founding Father who signed the Declaration of Independence, served as Surgeon General in the Continental Army and attended the Continental Congress. He predicted:
Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship to restrict the art of healing to one class of Men and deny equal privileges to others; the Constitution of the Republic should make a Special privilege for medical fre…
We are almost there now under Obamacare.
But just as the state can deny you certain procedures when it controls healthcare, it can also mandate them.
This week, results of an experiment conducted by scientists at the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health and Security in Baltimore, Maryland, were released. Using computer models, researchers determined that a pandemic from an as-yet discovered flu-like virus could wipe out nearly 1 billion people if it started tomorrow. This is because, researchers said, the vaccine regime could not produce enough vaccines to stem the contagion.
The message behind this bit of Big Pharma propaganda was that more money needed to be spent to increase the capacity of the world health system to formulate, manufacture and distribute vaccines.
There is already a move afoot for the federal government to mandate the vaccine schedule currently approved — and necessary for children to attend government schools and universities — for children. When government controls healthcare then vaccines will be required.
Population control lies at the heart of socialized medicine and forced vaccination is step one in population control. Vaccines introduce foreign agents into the body that gestate for years before their deleterious effects show up, separating cause and effect. The people are none the wiser. Abortion and euthanasia are step two, and they are needed to eliminate the nonproducers from society.
People ask how such a thing can happen. It stems from a death cult that does not value life — or, at least, certain life. The elites believe all people are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Dying under the pretense of sickness care is more benevolent than dying by a firing squad. Sickness care under all pretenses is benevolent. It is not possible for many Americans to identify sickness care with death.
Firing squads and death chambers cost the system money. On the other hand, imagine how much the medical system stands to profit from "sickness care" in America.
