Will County Republican Central Committee Endorses Steve Balich

A Dark Secret Exposed By One In The Left’s Inner Circle

Every day, we see another shocking new cause supported by the left that takes us further away from being a moral and civilized society.

The traditional values that make up the foundation of our nation are crumbling, and the left keeps pushing the boundaries to impose their views on the world.

Now, one radical leftist – who happens to support most of the abhorrent progressive ideology being spread – is finding herself a target for standing against one radical issue that even she cannot believe is being encouraged.

Natasha Chart is a self-proclaimed radical feminist, but she has uncovered an outrageous plot and is bringing it to conservative news outlets because her stance has been shunned by her colleagues, friends, and employers.

The Christian Post reported:

She opted to speak with The Christian Post, she said, “because I have been hoping that someone could be bothered to care that there is a significant and influential portion of the left-aligned and mainstream human rights activist community that both believes that ‘youth sex work’ should be made legal, and that they have the clout to get people fired from political and media jobs for making concerns about that public.”

“The progressive press won’t touch it, the regular press doesn’t seem to follow these issues, and self-publishing a story like this would likely have been pointless,” Chart said.

Yes, Chart states that many radical leftists – including so-called “esteemed” international organizations – are supportive of the sex trade, including the involvement of minors.

She realizes that while conservative outlets do not sympathize with her political viewpoints, her hope is that someone will listen to what is going on – in her words, “the institutional rot of a political edifice that was so easily taken over by a sex industry advocacy that’s alien to its founding principles.”

As Chart learned about the support for sex trafficking by organizations she was involved in through her work, she became sickened by what she was seeing.

The basis of the argument of these radical organizations is that by imposing restrictions on prostitution, including by minors, it would somehow harm those who depend on sex work to make a living.

Chart tells The Christian Post:

“My friends and colleagues over several years know this happened. Hundreds of… journalists and academics in the United States know this happened. They didn’t all agree, but none of them said one public word in my defense.”

“If they could be intimidated into overlooking this, what’s next?” As the days went by, it would become ever clearer that the promotion of the sex trade was a cause being backed by prominent people, and she could stay quiet no longer.

Chart assumed that her colleagues didn’t really understand what was going on, but as she pressed for answers, she was shocked at the outcome.She was shunned and even severely reprimanded by her employer — being told to cease her research and criticism immediately.

One of the major plots she uncovered was the involvement of Amnesty International.  In 2015, they encouraged legalizing the sex trade and created a memo using “human and labor rights language” outlining that sex workers must have the same rights as those in any other profession.

She began to publicly address that the philosophy of Amnesty International was immoral, and further research showed her that they were hardly the only advocates of keeping the sex trade blossoming, including actual language referring to the “youth” involved.

The Christian Post continued:

When the executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, tweeted an article…in praise of Amnesty’s policy decriminalizing prostitution, Chart voiced her disgust on Twitter, and replied with a link to [an] essay on “Youth in sex work and the sex trade.”

Roth tweeted comments… asking, “All want to end poverty, but in meantime why deny poor women the option of voluntary sex work?”

“Nobody could really support this, right?” a flabbergasted Chart recalled thinking at the time. 

Her boss even told her it was “more of a public health approach.” Much of the current international legislation aims to make the purchase of sex illegal in order to focus on “pimps and johns,” but that criminalizing the selling of sex would send many young women into unemployment and poverty, thus “harming minors.”

Many of these international organizations also receive taxpayer and/or government funding, thus enabling youth prostitution to continue unchecked.

This kind of language and twisted ideology has appeared in many documents of international organizations, including the World Health Organization, according to Chart.

While Natasha Chart is certainly a radical progressive herself, aligned with left-wing advocacy groups on many issues, the fact that she is sickened by what’s going on with the international sex trade speaks volumes.

If even a radical leftist is outraged by what she is seeing, what does that say about the international organizations that promote the idea that criminalizing prostitution will harm minors?

With the help of these organizations, these young women – and children – are being given no choice but to stay in the sex trade industry.  The left – and their money – will continue to advocate it unless others like Chart come forward.

If Pritzker gets title “governor” Madigan will get control of Springfield

The Democratic Machine’s New Monarch

How J.B. Pritzker’s bottomless pockets could spell business as usual in state politics

BY EDWARD MCCLELLAND

In the early 1960s, a businessman named Arnold Maremont decided he wanted to run for U.S. Senate. So he made the pilgrimage all aspiring Democratic politicians were required to make in those days: to meet with Mayor Richard J. Daley. Daley wasn’t sure whether the Baptists of Little Egypt would vote for a Jewish candidate, so he told Maremont to go downstate and find out. Maremont reported they would, and so Daley slated such a candidate: Rep. Sidney Yates, a machine Democrat.

Maremont felt used, but, as Mike Royko points out in his biography of Daley, “he wouldn’t have even tried had he ever heard Daley explain why he is so dedicated a party man: ‘… The rich guys can get elected on their money, but somebody like me, an ordinary person, needs the party. Without the party, only the rich would be elected to office.’ ”

Back then, millionaires needed the party. Today, the party needs millionaires—or even billionaires. In his bid for the governor’s seat, J.B. Pritzker, a Hyatt hotel chain heir born with not just a silver spoon but an entire cutlery set in his mouth, has positioned himself as a political outsider who, because of his money, is immune to the influence of special interests and political bosses. Nonetheless, the Democratic candidate has been embraced by House speaker Michael Madigan, Illinois’s most powerful machine boss, in no small part because a win for Pritzker would allow Madigan to thrive.

Madigan never formally endorsed Pritzker. But as the News-Gazette of Champaign-Urbana wrote in an opinion piece during the primary: “It’s common knowledge—as well as a source of considerable resentment—that Madigan is backing Pritzker. Madigan is depending on the billionaire to use his family fortune to win an overwhelming victory that will return Illinois to one-party rule and ensure that he will again be able to gerrymander state legislative districts after the 2020 Census.” Pritzker, whose political philosophy is, shall we say, not fully developed, is also seen by political professionals as easier to influence than the experienced politicians he defeated in the primary. They saw Pritzker as the best-organized candidate, but his money helped him build that impression by allowing him to devote all his energies to town halls and campaign rallies, while his rivals were dialing for dollars and reporting to their day jobs.

Pritzker spent nearly $70 million of his $3.5 billion fortune just to win the Democratic nomination, and he will pony up even more in an attempt to defeat Madigan’s archnemesis, half-a-billionaire incumbent Bruce Rauner, in what is expected to be the most expensive statewide election in U.S. history. Because it’s self-funded, Pritzker’s candidacy will also allow Madigan’s state Democratic Party to devote more resources to legislative races, which could help the speaker regain his House supermajority.

For regular Democrats, allying with a plutocrat is simply a matter of survival in this era of superwealthy politicians. “The early success of billionaire candidates was on the Republican side,” says Brookings Institution scholar Darrell M. West, author of Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust, citing President Trump and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. “But Democrats have taken notice of the fact that billionaires have been successful, and each party has adopted a policy of adopting a billionaire.”

Now that Madigan’s got his own billionaire, he’s going to ensure the system stays intact, even as people such as state senator Daniel Biss try to make politics in Illinois more equitable. Last year, Biss, who finished second to Pritzker in the Democratic primary, introduced a bill to establish a small-donor matching grant program that would provide public funding for state elections—a candidate for governor could receive up to $5 million. It’s modeled on the system in New York City, where liberal populist Bill de Blasio used matching grants to fund his successful campaign for mayor.

During his campaign, Biss raised $5.5 million, which, combined with what he already had in his campaign fund, brought him to $7 million—only a tenth of what Pritzker invested in his own coffers. Matching grants would have still put Biss’s total at only a fraction of Pritzker’s pool, but proponents of the bill say that could have been enough. “You don’t need tens of millions of dollars; you do need to break through,” says Colin Williams of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, a nonprofit involved in drafting the bill.

Biss’s bill passed the Senate but has little chance in the House because it would weaken Madigan’s iron control over campaign funds for House elections—another point where the machine’s interests align with those of the superwealthy. And the legislation has no hope with the current governor. “[The bill] creates a grant program that could funnel hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars to political campaigns,” says Rauner spokeswoman Rachel Bold. “Most people probably wouldn’t think that was a responsible use of taxpayer dollars.” (Pritzker evaded the question of whether he’d support the bill. According to his communications director, Galia Slayen, “J.B. supports overturning Citizens United and bringing comprehensive campaign finance reform to Illinois, including corporate and PAC contribution limits”—none of which would affect self-financed candidates.)

And so the machine, an organization that once boasted of itself as a vehicle for the humbly born to work their way up, evolves—making it harder for a so-called ordinary guy to take the highest office in the state in order to preserve its status quo. Madigan and the Illinois Democrats needed a champion who could outspend Rauner, and Pritzker is the only politician in Illinois with enough money to do it. If he succeeds, Pritzker will get the title “governor” in front of his name, Madigan will get control of Springfield back, and both money and the machine will be served.

This article appears in the June 2018 issue of Chicago magazine. 

Hope for healthier eyes found in healthy oil

The nutrient 'vaccine' that protects your sight

My friend from church has always had perfect vision... he never even wore glasses. But about three months ago, he noticed the pages in his choir book were starting to look blurry.

He was concerned, so he made an appointment with an optometrist. He found out he was suffering from age-related macular degeneration, or AMD.

If you are like many people, you probably don't know a lot about the condition or understand what is going on inside your eyes.

What is AMD? 

AMD is a leading cause of vision loss in people over the age of 50.

It causes damage to the macula, a small spot near the center of the retina and the part of your eye needed for sharp, central vision.

As AMD progresses, it damages then destroys your central vision. AMD by itself does not lead to complete blindness, with no ability to see. However, the loss of central vision in AMD can interfere with simple everyday activities, like your ability to see faces, drive, read, write or do close work, such as cooking or fixing things around your house. 

Hope for healthier eyes found in healthy oil

A team of LSU Health New Orleans scientists found that a component of fish oil not only protects cells critical to vision from initial damage, but also shores them up to protect them from future assaults that can cause damage, too.

Their study showed that the omega-3 fatty acid, DHA, and its derivatives "precondition" photoreceptor and retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells to survive.

In other words, in their study, the DHA in fish oil can shield cells attacked by AMD in much the same way a vaccine is supposed to work.

This means that taking fish oil regularly could be an important part of eye health. I feel it's such an important part of health in general that I take Peak Super Mega3^™ daily.

Other supplements and vitamins for macular degeneration 

In addition to fish oil, there are a number of other supplements you can take to help stave off macular degeneration.

Researchers at the National Eye Institute tested whether taking nutritional supplements could protect against AMD in the Age-Related Eye Disease Studies (AREDS and AREDS2). Here are the ones that they found worked:

• 500 mg of vitamin C
• 400 IUs of vitamin E
• 10 mg of lutein
• 2 mg of zeaxanthin
• 80 mg of zinc
• 2 mg of copper

Keep Up the Momentum on Welfare Reform

By Newt Gingrich and Mary Mayhew
Originally published at Fox News

Republicans and members of the Trump administration must keep up the pressure and focus on achieving welfare reform.

When President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, many believed that the law would indeed “end welfare as we know it.” It’s what we intended when Congress created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and implemented work requirements to restore welfare to its original intent as a springboard to self-sufficiency.

These policies were intended to be the beginning of welfare reform — the beginning of a nationwide policy focused on ending dependency. Instead, President Obama launched a war on the very thing we know is most successful at achieving this goal: work.

Over the past decade, our fellow citizens have fallen deeper into the welfare trap, ensnared by government policies that pay people to not work. The so-called “War on Poverty” has left our nation with record-high levels of welfare enrollment — despite a 17-year record-lowunemployment rate and more than six million open jobs across the country.

Many of these new enrollees are able-bodied adults with no disabilities keeping them from working. They are not the individuals our welfare system is designed to aid – the disabled, the elderly, and others who are truly in need.

There are now nearly 21 million able-bodied adults dependent on food stamps — three times as many as in 2000. Twenty-eight million able-bodied adults are now dependent on Medicaid, quadrupling the number of those enrolled in 2000.

This is not what we envisioned in Congress — on either side of the political aisle — when we passed welfare reform in 1996 with bipartisan support. We included work requirements in the legislation because we knew the power of work. The reforms were compassionate – they gave people the opportunity to build better lives and create their own American dreams.

We know this not only because the research has proven it, time and time again, but because we’ve seen the transformational power of promoting work firsthand.

When Maine enforced time limits on its TANF program and refocused the program on employment and training programs, it drew ire from those on the Left who called the reforms uncompassionate. But the results spoke for themselves: Over the four-year period after the reforms, enrollees with records of prior earnings saw their wages increase by 237 percent on average. Throughout the duration of the evaluation period, this group of people dramatically increased their total earnings from $2.6 million to $8.6 million.

In October 2014, Maine began requiring able-bodied and childless adults who were receiving food stamps to work, train, or volunteer – at least part-time – in order to receive their benefits. The reform drew criticism from the Obama administration — but once again, the power of work emerged. Those who left the program saw their incomes, on average, more than double within the first year, offsetting any lost welfare benefits. And the number of able-bodied adults receiving food stamp benefits fell from approximately 16,000 to 1,500.

But Maine was unfortunately the exception. Instead of empowering able-bodied adults to work to lift themselves out of dependency, most states implemented work requirement waivers, allowing adults to collect taxpayer-funded benefits without being required to work at all. Loopholes have been exploited by federal and state bureaucrats who have robbed these able-bodied Americans of the opportunity to escape welfare and create better lives for themselves and their families.

Rather than viewing welfare as a temporary safety-net, government leaders have instead implemented policies that have turned welfare into a permanent trap.

But President Trump’s recent executive order, “Reducing Poverty in America by Promoting Opportunity and Economic Mobility” delivers a welcome policy change — one that offers hope to those trapped in welfare. The order lays the groundwork for federal agencies that administer welfare to prioritize work and encourage economic mobility, particularly for able-bodied adults. It reiterates the principle that those of us who have worked within the government know all too well: Government assistance is not the answer to ending poverty and dependency. Work is.

If Congress and agency leaders deliver on President Trump’s initiative, our welfare system can return to the truly compassionate policies of its past. Its success should once again be wholly measured by the number of people moved off the welfare rolls, not the number of people trapped on them. Only then will state successes like Maine’s become the norm rather than the exception.

More than one million children under age 6 are on psychiatric drugs… parents don’t know what they’re getting into

 by: Vicki Batts  Natural News

Tags: adhd, alternative treatments, bad medicine, badhealth, badmedicine, badscience, Big Pharma, children, children's health, Dangerous Medicine, harmful diagnosis, informed parents, lack of parenting, mental health, mind altering drugs, murky science, psychiatric drugs, psychiatry, toxins

5,280VIEWS

(Natural News) Are children in the United States being over-medicated? According to some recent statistics, it surely looks that way. Over a million children six years of age or under are prescribed a psychiatric medication. Overall, more than eight million kids in America are on some sort of psychotropic drug — and the medical establishment is hardly batting an eye.

In fact, now that the mass medication of American children has started to gain traction in the media, so-called researchers from Columbia University Medical Center published a study claiming that not enoughchildren are on drugs. Sure, that’s the problem — not the fact that children are blindly being given a dose of pharmaceuticals, instead of being given other options.

The risk that a three-year-old child will be diagnosed with ADHD, for example, is now over 40 percent. Do nearly half of all children actually suffer with this disorder, or are we over-diagnosing children for problems that aren’t real? Not every disruptive child has ADHD — but medicating them into sedation is an undeniably “easy solution” to what, in many cases, may be a more nuanced problem.

And, as Waking Times, explains, many parents are not being given all the facts about their child’s diagnosis. In many cases, the full range of side effects and health effects that can be caused by any number of psychotropic drugs is never disclosed to parents. Worse still, there are no true medical tests to confirm “mental disorders.” There’s a checklist, and if your child’s symptoms fit the list — the next stop is the pharmacy window.

Dr. Rene Soria-Saucedo recently co-authored a study on the childhood psychiatric medication phenomenon, commenting that this trend is concerning, largely because “usefulness of medication at this early age is poorly understood.” More importantly, however, is Soria-Saucedo’s notation of parental involvement in over-prescription. The pharmaceutical industry is so insidious, particularly with their widespread advertisement of their medications, that parents begin to develop unrealistic expectations. He posits that the desire for  “faster results and remission of symptoms” may be part of what drives doctors to prescribe medication before suggesting less aggressive treatments, like behavioral therapy.

“Parents should be asking for less aggressive treatments,” Soria-Saucedo contended. He continued by suggesting that parents should question medical professionals more often, too — especially regarding medications for conditions like ADHD that are getting prescribed at ever-younger ages. “I’d love to see behavioral techniques used more often,” he added.

Moreover, there are increasing concerns about the risks that come with psychiatric medications. In early 2018, world-famous psychiatrist Peter Breggin — who has also been dubbed “the conscience of his profession”– warned that psych meds are an “obvious prescription for violence.” In an excerpt from one of his columns, Breggin wrote:

Not only do psychiatric drugs add to the risk of violence, but psychiatric treatment lulls the various authorities and the family into believing that the patient is now ‘under control’ and ‘less of a risk.’ Even the patient may think the drugs are helping, and continue to take them right up to the moment of violence.

Even when some of their patients signal with all their might that they are dangerous and need to be stopped, mental health providers are likely to give drugs, adding fuel to the heat of violent impulses, while assuming that their violence-inducing drugs will reduce the risk of serious aggression.

Over 1500 incidents of “psychotropic drug-induced homicidal ideation” have been reported to the FDA’s MedWatch program. According to the FDA, however, only about 10 percent of adverse effects are actually reported to MedWatch — which means a startlingly high number of people are out there suffering in some way or another thanks to Big Pharma, but not enough of these incidents are being reported to make a difference.

How much of this is ever revealed to parents before they start their child on a daily drug regimen?

Learn more about harmful medicine at Medicine.news or MedicalExtremism.com.

Sources for this article include:

WakingTimes.com

Health.USNews.com

Dozens of cities need municipal bankruptcy because of unfunded state mandates

Watchdog group: Dozens of cities need municipal bankruptcy because of unfunded state mandates

• By Greg Bishop | Illinois News Network
 
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Wirepoints Founder Mark Glennon, Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski and state Rep. Jeannie Ives, R-Wheaton, talk about the need for municipal bankruptcy

Harvey was the first Illinois city to have state tax dollars intercepted by the state comptroller's office to pay into pension funds. A financial analysis group says more cities are to follow and that bankruptcy may be the best option for many of them.

A new report from government watchdog website Wirepoints shows 20 different Illinois cities that could have tax dollars withheld from daily operations and put directly into pensions. A future report with nearly 200 cities listed is expected soon.

Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski said most can be saved with appropriate reforms.

“But others like Harvey, like East St. Louis, they need a bankruptcy tool, a bankruptcy option,” Dabrowski said. “Maybe it’s too late for them, but they need one now to be able to work through their problems and become functioning communities again.

“Harvey in effect is going through its own bankruptcy right now,” Dabrowski added. “They’re choosing not to pay bond holders sometimes. They’re choosing when and how much to pay on pensions and usually not much. They’ve been forced to raise taxes by the courts and it has become effectively a chaotic form of bankruptcy.”

Wirepoints founder Mark Glennon said allowing for municipalities to go into bankruptcy will be fair for all and be organized debt restructuring.

As for the state constitution's pension protection clause, which courts have ruled prohibits Illinois governments from rightsizing government pensions, Glennon said federal law allowing states to greenlight municipal bankruptcies trumps that.

“We only have two ways to address pension contributions,” Glennon said, “either bankruptcy or a constitutional amendment. The constitutional amendment might not work for federal constitution reasons, and would take years to do. Bankruptcy works. Michigan has a pension protection clause too but the bankruptcy overrode it.”

As more Illinois cities succumb to their pension costs, under a state law tax dollars through the Local Government Distributive Fund can be intercepted by the state comptroller to pay the pension systems. Harvey laid off 40 police and fire department employees as a result.

Dabrowski said there are dozens of other Illinois cities other than Harvey that are shorting their pension funds, but their pension boards have yet to certify that with the comptroller, which triggers the intercept. He says that’s not the responsible thing to do.

State Rep. Jeanne Ives, R-Wheaton, said the intercept essentially accelerates the the financial stresses for the cities. She has a bill to allow municipalities to evaluate reorganization of debt. She said no one wins in bankruptcy, but things will get worse, especially if lawmakers continue to turn a deaf ear toward the issue.

“They’re not going to wake up until outmigration is double what it is now, apparently,” Ives said, pointing to Illinois' ongoing population loss to other U.S. states. “They’re not going to wake up until property taxes are not just two-and-a-half times the national average, but we have to get to five times the national average everywhere around the state.”

Ives said municipalities from across Illinois are in dire fiscal straits.

“Those top 20 cities [in Wirepoints’ report] aren’t all in one region. They include Oak Lawn, Niles, Dekalb as well as Harvey and Danville,” Ives said. “So they’re all over the entire state of Illinois and they all have different demographics and all have different reasons for why they find themselves in financial stress.”

A subject matter hearing was held Tuesday focused on the issue of bankruptcy, but Ives’ bill allowing municipal bankruptcies remains in committee.

Ives was disheartened by members of the House Cities and Villages Committee who left the room during testimony. She said the issue is too great to ignore.

Dabrowski told the committee that some of the driving factors of uncontrollable debt for cities are unfunded mandates from the state level that don’t allow local officials to run their cities.

“It’s all mandates of collective bargaining, prevailing wage, pensions,” Dabrowski said. “The city councils really don’t have a whole lot of leeway. We like to say we're local control in Illinois, but try asking a mayor if he or she has local control.”

State Rep. Al Riley, D-Olympia Fields, said while some of the cities may have been managed poorly, there are other factors involved that must be evaluated.

“Relocation of a lot of business and industry in urban centers, and especially in the south suburbs, did a tremendous amount to make these towns go into the spirals that they’re in,” Riley said.

Dabrowski said politics aside, the math of unfunded mandates is fewer services, fewer public safety jobs, and higher taxes for those who choose to stick around.

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Exciting Growth for Armed American Radio

Exciting Growth for Armed American Radio  BY TIM SCHMIDT - USCCA FOUNDER

Well, we've hit another exciting milestone here at the USCCA. Armed American Radio is set to kick off its 10th season this coming Sunday. To be honest, it's been quite a journey... It all started back in 2003 when I had to get a little "creative" with my marketing. You see, I had just produced the very first issue of Concealed Carry Magazine that summer, but I wasn't exactly garnering the number of subscribers for which I had hoped. In an attempt to get my new publication into as many hands as possible, I purchased a list of about 30,000 names and then devised a "plan" (in reality, a small "bribe"): I decided that the first 500 individuals who, after receiving a free sample copy of CCM, responded that they'd like to subscribe to upcoming issues would also receive a free .45 ACP bullet keychain. (I guess I've always liked giving away "ammo.") My "bribe" worked: I ended up getting almost 1,000 initial subscribers. And of those people? A guy named Mark Walters. Now, if you've ever heard Mark Walters on-air, you already know that he's passionate and outspoken. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, he contacted me almost right away to let me know he was interested in writing for Concealed Carry Magazine. His Ordinary Guy column debuted in CCM shortly thereafter. Of course, that column evolved into another column — One to the Head — and One to the Head evolved into a little show called Armed American Radio. In 2015, Mark was named the "Gun Rights Defender of the Year" at the annual Gun Rights Policy Conference "in recognition and appreciation for his tireless efforts on behalf of the 2nd Amendment rights of all Americans." And things are still looking up: Today, AAR airs in 28 of the 40 largest radio markets in the United States. The show is available on the USCCA app, iHeartRadio, TuneIn FM, Google Play Music and iTunes. Robb Conlon, national sales representative for Armed American Radio, said that "broadcast media like radio and on-demand audio like our podcast allows us to keep our members and listeners updated on the fight to keep America free. There's no better time to tune in to AAR than right now. We all need to band together, and AAR is a great way to get your daily dose of freedom." Robb has been an integral part of the tremendous growth we've experienced over the last year. And, of course, Mark Walters himself has offered unwavering commitment to making AAR a trusted and beloved program all across the country. To be honest, who would have thought that one "ordinary" guy out of the 30,000 people on that mailing list almost 15 years ago would become such a crucial voice for the USCCA and for responsibly armed Americans everywhere? I'll admit it: Not me. But, wow, I couldn't be more grateful for how it all turned out.