The Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois.
John Spataro | Illinois News Network
Two recent studies of public sector pay and retirement benefits show tens of thousands of retired Illinois public employees making six-figures or more in all levels of government, dwarfing figures from states with more people.
Two organizations that reviewed and released the information hope it encourages taxpayers to seek change.
Illinois has more than $130 billion in unfunded pension debt for its five state-run pension systems. Adding in other post employment benefits, that number climbs to more than $200 billion. Municipal governments in Illinois also are struggling with unfunded pension liability. Some report using most, if not all, of their share of property taxes to pay pension costs.
Taxpayers United of America said Illinois’ public sector pension plans are too expensive. To highlight the problem, its annual pension report of all public employees in Illinois shows nearly 19,500 government retirees getting a pension of $100,000 or more. That’s 2,500 more retirees than last year.
The group's founder, Jim Tobin, said that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
“The pensions are just out of line,” he said. “We’ve got one guy here who’s getting an annual pension of almost $600,000 a year and he’ll get $22 million if he lives to be 85. It’s ridiculous.”
OpenTheBooks.com founder Adam Andrzejewski said Illinois has more educators in the so-called $100,000 Club than more populous Texas, which has 7,300 educators making that much or more.
“Just on salaries, Illinois has nearly 20,000, so it’s three times worse, yet Texas has twice the population,” Andrzejewski said.
Andrzejewski’s research shows overall, 23,000 retirees got $100,000 or more in annual pension payments. Adding in the 71,000 employees at every level of government making at least that much in pay, and the number is 94,000 current public employees or pensioners making $100,000 or more a year. That costs taxpayers $12 billion a year.
There were also private associations Andrzejewski’s research highlights where it’s employees are getting big payouts.
“Two of the highest earners within the municipal pension system work for private associations – not government,” the report said, showing two park district association officials making more than $320,000 a year. “These private nonprofits muscled their way into the government system, and their huge salaries will guarantee lavish taxpayer-funded pensions.”
Then there are double dippers, including a former governor.
“Former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar double dipped the Illinois General Assembly pension ($166,000 per year), the State University Retirement System pension ($83,000 per year), and was hired back ‘part time’ by the University of Illinois for another $62,769,” Andrzejewski’s report said. “In total, Edgar pulled down more than $311,000 last year – in addition to the $2.4 million in compensation from the University of Illinois (2000-2013) and another $2 million in pension payments already paid-out from his 20-year career as legislator, secretary of state and governor.”
The Taxpayers United of America report found there are two pensioners making $500,000 or more a year. Nine retirees are getting in excess of $400,000 a year in pensions, 42 make $300,000 or more a year. From there, the numbers climb. More than 440 government retirees make $200,000 or more a year. More than 19,480 government retirees make $100,000 a year while the bulk, 107,092, make more than $50,000 in annual pensions.
The average total public sector pension payout for a lifetime, according to Taxpayers United of America, is $1.45 million in Illinois while the average retirement age almost 61 years old.
“We have to work into our 60s and 70s so these people can retire in their 50s and 60s on these ridiculous exorbitant pensions which is nothing short of legalized theft,” Tobin said.
Even more stark is what Taxpayers United of America reports employee withholdings deposited into the various funds, or $1.9 billion, compared with the $8.7 billion taxpayers pay into the funds.
“Nowhere is that available in the private sector,” Tobin said. “It’s just something that doesn’t happen, but it happens here in Illinois every time people get into these government pensions wherever they are in the state of Illinois.”
Tobin said all government new hires must be put in self-managed plans and the state constitution should be changed to allow diminishment of benefits.
Andrzejewski said “it’s time to slap a pay cap on the highly compensated public employees at every level of Illinois government.”
“People need to raise their voice, they need to give public comment, they need to start holding their elected officials accountable for tax and spend decisions,” Andrzejewski said.
The exorbitant pay and benefits is unsustainable, he said, and it takes resources away from other government services.
(Natural News) What follows in this article is a thought experiment. Many believe the phenomena described here to be real. What do you believe?
—- Begin thought experiment —-
Markus Persson, the creator of Minecraft, just pointed out that the political Left has “literally been taken over by evil.” (Source) It turns out he’s more correct than even he might realize. Over the last several years, Leftists have morphed into an irrational, hate-filled violent mob of “Demoncrats” that don’t even resemble conscious human beings.
Operating like a zombie swarm of mindless lunatics, they are now taking over entire cities like Portland, Oregon, where even the local police now stand down and allow deranged Left-wing mobs to run the city. Watch this astonishing video where an elderly white man is being harassed, racially verbally assaulted and then has his vehicle windows smashed by deranged left-wing lunatics who have taken over the city of Portland, apparently with the full permission of the snowflake mayor and the pathetic, spineless Portland Police:
Note that this incident took place just one block from a Portland Police station, where there wasn’t a single police officer who took action against these Democrat thugs who are now taking over city streets and screaming racial slurs at white people. (All in the name of “social justice,” of course.)
This isn’t the first case of a major U.S. city falling to the anarchy of left-wing lunatics. As the Wall Street Journal reports about another Portland incident from June:
A mob surrounded ICE’s office in Southwest Portland June 19. They barricaded the exits and blocked the driveway. They sent “guards” to patrol the doors, trapping workers inside. At night they laid on the street, stopping traffic at a critical junction near a hospital. Police stayed away. “At this time I am denying your request for additional resources,” the Portland Police Bureau’s deputy chief, Robert Day, wrote to federal officers pleading for help. Hours later, the remaining ICE workers were finally evacuated by a small federal police team. The facility shut down for more than a week.
An epidemic of hatred, mindlessness and anarchy is sweeping across Leftist populations
A reasonable person might describe this sweeping expansion of hatred and anarchy as an “epidemic.” But there’s no virus that can explain the phenomenon. The cause isn’t viral or bacterial, it turns it: It’s spiritual.
Many people believe that Leftists are literally being possessed by demonic forcesthat they’ve invited into their lives through the mechanisms described below.
This could explain the hatred, the mindlessness, the desire for killing their opponents and their complete lack of anything resembling rationality or logic. Today’s typical left-wing lunatic cannot explain anything they believe. Instead, they resort to screaming, accusing, kicking and crying. These are all expressions of lunacy, not rationality or reason. Take a look at some of the lunacy of Leftists in this astonishing video:
Importantly, recognize that these are not the actions of conscious human beings. That’s because these Leftists are no longer human, the theory goes.
Demonic possession is real… and it’s spreading
Demonic possession is a real phenomenon. Catholic priests are being recruited in record numbers to battle actual demons who are seizing control of human minds and bodies. “The diocese of Milan recently nominated seven new exorcists, the bishop of Naples appointed three new ones a couple of years ago and the Catholic Church in Sardinia sent three priests for exorcism training in Rome,” reports The Telegraph (UK). “In Spain, Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, the archbishop of Madrid, chose eight priests to undergo special training in May to confront what he described as ‘an unprecedented rise’ in cases of ‘demonic possession’. The Church in Spain was coming across many cases that ‘go beyond the competence of psychologists’ and they were occurring with ‘a striking frequency’, the archbishop said.”
The Catholic Church’s top exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth, says he has personally “sent 160,000 demons back to hell,” reports the Christian Post. As the story reports:
An 84-page update of exorcism rites compiled in 1614 and drawn up in 1998 stipulates how Catholic priests trained as exorcists should operate. According to the guidelines established by the church, they have to follow a ritual known as “De exorcismis et supplicationibus quibusdam,” or “Of exorcisms and certain supplications.”
All across the planet, priests are being tasked with an increasing number of demonic possessions, which they describe as a demon entity entering the body of a human being through a spiritual portal or opening. But what’s causing these openings that demonic entities can use to possess human beings?
Abortion is a child sacrifice ritual that opens the spirit to demonic possession
Catholic priests have all sorts of theories about how demon spirits possess human beings. Amorth, for example, believes that reading Harry Potter books opens young minds to demonic possession. Some priests believe that practicing yoga causes a person to turn to Satan, but they’ve all somehow missed the obvious: Pope Francis himself has been possessed by demonic forces and is working on Earth as an “ambassador” to Satan. The Catholic Church, it turns out, is run by Satan from the very top.
Throughout the history of human civilizations, the phenomenon of opening the human spirit to demonic possession — a kind of spiritual portal — has been “powered” by child sacrifice. In ancient Aztec and Mayan civilizations, human children were routinely murdered to appease what local priests believed to be spiritual gods. The act of murdering children en masse — some ancient rituals involving the marathon murder of as many as 80,000 children and adults in a single setting — serves as a powerful “magnet” to attract evil. When people murder children to invoke power, they invite evil, demonic forces to possess their minds and bodies.
This is the abortion industry in America: A child sacrifice factory that mirrors the mass murder rituals of ancient human civilizations. Today, Leftists worship the murder of children and celebrate abortions as a sign of being “progressive.” Disguised as “reproductive health,” the abortion industry in America today is actually a child sacrifice factory that serves to keep open the portals of spiritual possession, allowing demonic forces to seize control of human minds. Those who worship abortion also worship Satan and death.
The recent fight over Brett Kavanaugh was, to many Leftists, a fight to maintain their child sacrifice abortion factories, because without all the negative energy of fear and terror generated by abortion factories, the political Left would not have sufficient dark spiritual energy to power its demons that feed on such negative emotions.
Once controlled by demonic possession, once-human individuals are no longer humans. They are demon-possessed activists for evil who pretend to be human. They still inhabit human bodies and have access to all the memories and knowledge of the original host they have now possessed, the thinking goes. This is why they can be easily mistaken for human beings when they’re actually demons in human form.
If you follow this line of thinking, it’s not difficult to conclude that nearly all the top Leftists are actually former humans who have become possessed by demon spirits. Many of these people are then elevated to top positions in comedy, culture, music and especially Hollywood, where overt worship of Satan has become a routine ritual among the rich and famous. Some of the most powerful demons-in-human-form are promoted to become U.S. Senators. Over time, the inner demon begins to overtake the human form, leading to aged humans who literally resemble demonic creatures. For example, take a look at this actual photo of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein:
Or look at the hollow, dark, soulless eyes of George Soros, who funds the operations of left-wing evil all across our planet. It’s like peering into the empty soul of Satan himself:
Demon possession now defines Democrats and the DNC, whose members engage in “spirit cooking” rituals to strengthen their demonic power
According to emails released by Wikileaks, many of the top people at the DNC are followers of “spirit cooking,” a bizarre, demon-worshiping ritual in which participants consume human menstrual blood, semen and breast milk. As InfoWars reported in 2016:
In what is undoubtedly the most bizarre Wikileaks revelation to date, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta was invited to a “spirit cooking dinner” by performance artist Marina Abramovic, to take part in an occult ritual founded by Satanist Aleister Crowley.
Spirit cooking refers to “a sacrament in the religion of Thelema which was founded by Aleister Crowley” and involves an occult performance during which menstrual blood, breast milk, urine and sperm are used to create a “painting”.
See this “spirit cooking” video posted on REAL.video: (WARNING: Graphic images)
Similarly, many people have observed that Hillary Clinton appears to be either suffering from a bizarre neurological disorder or something resembling demonic possession. Watch this remix video of Hillary Clinton laughing hysterically about murdering her political enemies, braking like a dog and behaving like a complete lunatic, and then demanding that Americans vote for her merely because she has a vagina:
Hillary Clinton, of course, is also a “serial murderer,” explains this REAL.video episode from Truth Matters:
The LGBT movement is a demonic war on the continuation of the human species
One of the most sinister expressions of demonic influence and demon possession of former human beings is the rise of the LGBT agenda which seeks the destruction of male-female families and human reproduction. The LGBT movement has now descended into absolute lunacy, claiming that men and women are exactly the same, meaning that reproductive organs do not exist and that biological reproduction therefore isn’t real.
They quite literally insist that children are “born genderless” (without reproductive organs) and are spontaneously “assigned a gender” at birth, which causes genitals to magically appear. But those genitals are meaningless, according to LGBT demons, because they claim that men can get pregnant, women can become men and that men can become women through magical invocations.
This utterly insane narrative — which contradicts biological reality — is now being embraced by children’s hospitals, where gender designations are being removed from medical bracelets in the name of LGBT progressivism. This medical insanity, of course, will negatively impact the efforts of doctors to treat the health conditions of those children, given that male and female humans are obviously different in their medical challenges and needs. But the LGBT community wants doctors to pretend that there’s no such thing as a male or female child, and that all children are “created equal.” Thus, LGBT lunatics want doctors to treat male babies and female babies as being exactly the same, even if the medical concerns involve hormones or reproductive organs.
Some men who are part of the insane LGBT movement actually visit OB/GYN doctors and demand pap smears. This is the lunacy that has now taken over the deranged Left.
LGBT agendas are an assault on the reproductive continuity of the human race
Ultimately, this is all an assault on the continuity of the human race which can only be maintained through sexual reproduction involving a male and a female. The demonic Left is attempting to obliterate all normal sexual reproduction by painting homosexual partnership as the new normal, which just happens to coincide with a complete inability to reproduce the human species. (Two men cannot make a baby. Nor can two women, no matter what the deranged, lunatic libtards claim.)
Across all popular culture, including Netflix movies, Amazon Prime programming, Hollywood films, TV shows and music, heterosexual relationships are being demonized and marginalized, while homosexual pairing — and “gender-fluidity” — are celebrated and promoted. This goes way beyond merely respecting the personal choice and individual liberty of people who choose to live with same-sex partners. The promotion of all this is now targeting children as a form of cultural indoctrination.
The upshot is that if an entire generation of children can be brainwashed into choosing same-sex partners, the human race will cease to reproduce after just one generation. Since one of the key goals of Satan is the complete destruction of humanity, this outcome would neatly achieve precisely that goal. Transgenderism and the denial of biological gender is also an assault on the very definition of men and women being “made in God’s image,” as the Christian faith explains.
Make no mistake: The LGBT indoctrination of children — and the celebration of transgender children — is pure evil. It is not merely a crime against those children; it is part of a spiritual assault on humanity and the attempted extermination of the human race which can only be sustained through sexual reproduction between a man and a woman. (By the way, merely stating this obvious point is now considered “hate speech” by the demonic Left, which censors every thought or element of speech that does not further their agenda of the complete destruction of all human life.)
“Climate change” narrative is a war on LIFE on Earth
The demonic, destructive, anti-life forces of the Left have also declared war on all life on Earth through the advancement of their “climate change” narrative. This dangerous, anti-science narrative demands the complete elimination of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — an act that would collapse all plant and animal life on the planet, given that virtually all plants need CO2 to survive.
The global warming narrative calls for a cold, dead ice planet where no liquid water flows because it’s all locked up in frozen ice caps. That’s what the Demoncrats demand: A frozen ice planet, devoid of life, with no CO2 available for plants to use for photosynthesis.
They actually describe their efforts as a “war on carbon,” apparently oblivious to the reality that humans are carbon-based lifeforms. Any war on carbon is a war on humanity, which is exactly what the Demoncrats are carrying out.
CO2 levels are already dangerously low across our planet. A world with higher CO2 would support more life, not less. Higher CO2 levels would unleash more diverse rainforests, lush plant life and abundant animal life across the planet, transforming deserts into forests thanks to the unlocking of frozen water and higher levels of rainfall for inland regions. But this “greening” of the planet is precisely what Demoncrats are hoping to halt… because they are enemies of life and enemies of ecological sustainability. They seek the absolute destruction of all life on planet Earth, almost as if they were trying to pull off some sort of terraforming agenda to kill off humans and render the planet dead.
The entirety of mainstream “science” — if you can even call it that — is now dedicated to this mission of destroying the Earth’s atmospheric chemistry by eliminating all CO2 and driving both plants and animals to extinction. It’s all being carried out, of course, in the name of “sustainability.”
The Devil can’t stop laughing at how easily left-wing humans are brainwashed into believing their their own global suicide us part of “sustainability.”
We are not in a political war; we are in a spiritual war
The mistake people make today is thinking that Democrats are merely human beings with different political views. In truth, they no longer possess human consciousness at all. They are possessed by demonic forces that seek the total destruction of life, liberty and humanity. This is why they are obsessed with abortion murder, economic destruction, media lies and the complete obliteration of the family consisting of a man and a woman who can reproduce to perpetuate the human species.
Leftists seek the complete annihilation of sustainable life on Earth. They are actively working to eliminate CO2 from the atmosphere and collapse the entire global food web, and they’re deliberately spreading mass infertility through WHO-demanded vaccine interventions that have been repeatedly proven to administer infertility chemicals to vaccine recipients.
As I explain in detail in this eye-opening video, if the Left wins, humanity DIES.
How to defeat the demonic forces of Leftism and literally save humanity from annihilation
Step 1: Wake up and realize they are not human. They are demon spirits which have possessed human minds and bodies, rendering them into demonic entities rather than conscious human beings. This is why they behave as evil, deranged, violent lunatics complete devoid of logic, reason or human decency.
Step 2: Realize this is not a political war but a spiritual war. The demon-possessed Leftists don’t merely want to achieve political victory and rule society with “progressive” ideas; they seek to destroy humanity, obliterate human life, mass murder babies, outlaw Christianity, demonize people based on the color of their skin, and even decimate all crops, forests and food sources on the planet by eliminating CO2 from the atmosphere. They are at war with humanity, and they merely pretend to be interested in politics as a means to accomplish their complete destruction of life on Earth.
Step 3: Defeat the demons. Humanity must come to its senses and use every available means to rid the world of demonic entities. Defeating Demoncrats at the ballot box isn’t nearly enough (although it’s a start). In many films and books, “demon hunters” are dispatched to drive evil from this Earth. In the film “Constantine,” starring Keanu Reeves, protectors of humanity use exotic weapons to drive demons out of human bodies, sending them back to hell. Countless other films depict similar defenses of Earth against demonic forces, including the Avengers, which depicts a large portal opening in the sky, through which evil demons rush in from another dimension to annihilate humanity.
Although such films are dramatizations, they are not pure fiction. They depict phenomena that many people believe to be entirely real and happening right now. For example, many people believe that CERN, the Large Hadron Collider, is a high-energy portal to another dimension from which demonic forces are summoned into our plane of existence.
Both the CERN logo and the logo for Google Chrome — built by one of the most demonic, evil tech companies in existence — overlay “666” in concentric circles, indicating their worship of Satan and the destruction of humanity:
Further supporting the theory, the CERN facility features a statue of Shiva, the Hindu Goddess known as “the Destroyer” of worlds.
CERN’s connections to the occult are widely discussed across the internet, with some people believing that the bizarre occult rituals that are routinely performed in front of CERN involve “mock human sacrifice” and other forms of Satan worship which scientists describe as a “prank” in order to distract from the fact that they are nonetheless carrying out the ritual:
An epic battle of good vs. evil
Look at Google today, which best represents the Democrats and their cheating, lying, censoring and oppression of truth. Google is run by Democrats who absolutely despise America, hate Christian white men and who literally seek the destruction of all knowledge they cannot control. (This all came out in a bombshell internal Google report that was recently leaked to Breitbart News.)
After banning Natural News, InfoWars and thousands of other liberty-oriented websites and video channels, Google now claims it’s a “conspiracy theory” to believe they exert any bias at all. Google is saturated with evil, which is exactly what enables the discredited technology company to build suppression and surveillance systems for evil communist regimes like Red China, where religion is criminalized by the evil government regime that Google serves. These actions on the part of Google have recently led to Google engineers to flee the company to escape the intense evil that’s present there.
To save humanity, we must defeat not merely Google but all forms of evil that now dominate our society. In addition to Google, we must also defeat and dismantle the DNC, the CDC, the FDA and the entire left-wing media complex that brainwashes humanity into a suicide cult (through planned disinformation, the embracing of suicidal technologies like 5G, the promotion of life-damaging herbicides, and so on).
Recognize that the Left is not a political movement but an eradication army that is systematically working to destroy humanity and transform the planet into a cold, lifeless dead zone. They cannot be reasoned with or educated with rational ideas. They are immune to reason because they aren’t humans on the inside. They must be defeated at every level of society in order to rid our world of demonic evil.
—- End thought experiment —-
Or maybe they’re all just really stupid morons who aren’t possessed by demons but are somehow incredibly stupid humans, in which case we need to defeat them anyway.
Listening to the extraordinary speech by Senator Susan Collins I was struck by the resemblance to the senators described in President John F. Kennedy’s book Profiles in Courage.
While he was still a senator, Kennedy took advantage of a period when he was recovering from back surgery to write a study of eight senators who he felt had been courageous in doing what they thought was right, even if it cost them re-election.
Profiles in Courage was received with rave reviews and won the Pulitzer Prize.
If Kennedy were writing the book today, he would have to add a chapter for Senator Collins.
Senator Collins has consistently done what she thought was right. I am much more conservative, and I have often disagreed with her. Nonetheless I have worked on health projects and other issues with her, and she has always been thoughtful, serious, and dedicated.
When we have disagreed, it has been within a tone of friendship and mutual admiration that we are both serious people trying to help America navigate through some very difficult and complex challenges.
When I watched her speech Friday I had great admiration for her words – even more than for her final decision.
If you have not read or watched her nearly hour-long speech, I encourage you take the time to do so.
It epitomized the Senate at its best (I write this as a former Speaker of the House for whom praising the Senate under any circumstance is a painful prospect).
The Founding Fathers wanted senators to be more aloof than representatives. They designed it so only one third would be up for election in any given year. Initially, they had senators elected by the state legislatures to protect them from direct pressure from the public. In its earliest years, the Senate took this concept of aloofness so seriously that they met in secret and refused to tell people how they had individually voted. In fact, they met in secret until 1794.
The Senate has a tradition of much longer speeches than the House (if you don’t believe me watch C-SPAN coverage of the two bodies for a few days). The goal was to have a solemn deliberative body that would be slower than the House in following public opinion.
All too often the age of televised sessions, the power of social media, the impact of organized, passionate interest groups, and the ambition of individual senators who grandstand to attract attention so they can later run for president (such as Senator Cory Booker absurdly declaring he was having a “Spartacus moment”) combine to break down the deliberative nature of the Senate and the ability of its best members to think seriously and speak wisely.
For one hour last week, Senator Collins took us back to an age when calm, reasoned logic, powerful imagery, and deep thought controlled the Senate floor.
While most people will focus on her vote, I think for historic purposes it is even more important to watch her reason methodically and then take the case for approval or rejection of Judge Kavanaugh step-by-step and item-by-item.
Senator Collins explored the background of the judicial decisions Judge Kavanaugh has made in his years on the bench. She reported on the hours she had spent interviewing him and many other people. She outlined the case for and against Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s charges.
Again and again, Senator Collins shed light and logic where others had engaged in emotional diatribes, character assassination, and smears. The contrast could not have been more vivid.
At the end of her speech, I was impressed with how thoughtful and methodical she had been in laying out the case and announcing she would vote “yes.”
Maine is a moderate state with a big activist left-wing element.
Left-wing, anti-Kavanaugh activists had already organized a web page that had gathered more than $2 million in pledges to fund an anti-Collins candidate in 2020 if she voted for Kavanaugh. Left-wing activists sent more than 3,000 coat hangers to her staff symbolizing back alley abortions in an effort to emotionally pressure her into rejecting Kavanaugh.
Collins seems impervious to pressure from both the right and the left. That is a profile in courage worthy of note.
Now, in response to her vote to confirm Justice Kavanaugh, former Obama official Susan Rice is saying she might run against Collins in 2020.
I think that would be the perfect match. Susan Rice was the designated liar sent out by the Obama team to lie to the American people about the Benghazi attack and the death of four Americans including our ambassador to Libya.
I can’t imagine a clearer contrast between a profile in courage and a profile in dishonesty.
"But it is requisite that members of the common herd be imprisoned in abject ignorance, never doubting that they are 'free and self-sovereign individuals' who are in full control of their lives and families, and who can speak freely on any subject they choose, and worship whatever God their consciences dictate." — Unknown
There is such an avalanche of information bombarding the American people that it all has a mind-numbing effect. That information is peppered with code words and control phrases that are designed to dictate thought patterns, modify behavior and create predictable responses.
Most people are unaware that code words and control phrases exist, and that the aim of the unseen powers is to ensure the masses of people believe essentially the same things. That's because governments thrive on control, conformity and manipulation.
Governments insist on conformity because governments want to control the people. Where there is conformity, there is control.
Edward L. Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, knew a thing or two about mass persuasion. He is the father of manipulative propaganda in America. In his book "Propaganda," Bernays writes:
Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of.
In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business or in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.
I call these people Bernays talks about "change agents." Change agents operate in the back rooms or inner sanctums of power, and their job is to create control words or phrases that are repeated over and over to dumb us down and dictate conditioned responses.
So the words and phrases the establishment creates and uses against us can rightly be called control words or control phrases.
Words and phrases are created that are used to drive the debate and create a ready acceptance of laws and policies that reduce liberty and debase society. Once these words and phrases become part of conventional wisdom through continued use, challenges to the newly accepted definitions are ridiculed and dismissed.
For instance, the substitution of the word "gender" — a grammatical term — for the word "sex" — a biological term — as a distinguishing descriptor for male or female is the work of these change agents.
The effect is to program the mind. It removes the biological component that distinguishes male from female and inserts an esoteric component that allows for the denial of reality and creation of an alternate reality.
I have written about code words before. See, "Code words," and "More code words." Common ones are terms like "public policy," which really means government policy; "conspiracy theory," which means any challenge to conventional wisdom; "extremist," which means anyone who advocates for small government and a return to the constitution; and "terrorist," which means anyone the government decides, including Americans who advocate for liberty.
But new ones are constantly entering the lexicon, and old ones are given new life. Here are some coming into regular use of late:
White privilege — This phrase implies that all successful white people obtained their status simply because of their skin color and because the system is tilted in their favor. It dismisses and diminishes hard work and seeks to establish the notion that anything a white person has or does is illegitimate. It's being used to great effect by the social Marxists to keep racial and sexual animosity at a fever pitch and to silence those who support traditional conservative and Judeo-Christian values.
Bad optics — This one reared its head in the Brett Kavanaugh hearing. It is code for "everything is unfair if it is being conducted by white conservative male," and "old white Republican men should not make decisions on women's issues." Only liberals can participate in the process (and sex, age and race does not matter). It is designed to delegitimize any process in which a white conservative male is involved.
Trade bullyism — China's response to President Trump's trade war. What China calls America's trade protectionism while ignoring its own protectionism. Another version of this is political bullying. Hillary used this very tactic when she told CNN, "You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about … if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that's when civility can start again." Classic example of projecting, i.e., accusing the other side of doing exactly what members of your side are guilty of.
National security — That is now a new code word for "we can do whatever we want." The "we" can be the any government agency. Claiming "national security" automatically puts any inquiry off limits and legitimizes any government action, no matter how nefarious.
Diversity — Means anti-white male and anti-Judeo-Christian values.
Capitalism — The American system is not capitalism and has not been for more than 100 years. What is called capitalism today is actually corporatism — few corporations controlling everything — example, what we have in the media, big tech and pharmaceuticals. It results in authoritarianism and a kind of fascism. However, socialists — who are becoming more ascendant in American politics of late, especially among the younger crowd — are blaming this on capitalism, which is a lie. If we had real capitalism and a real free market, this wouldn't happen.
Objective media — This means the agenda of the state. It is a control phrase used to bolster the concept that the only "real" news comes from the mainstream media. Today, all national mainstream media are controlled by six mega-corporations. Any media that does not toe the official line of the government is considered "biased" media, especially when it publishes the truth.
Cooling, exonerating, slowing down, recanting and forswearing the most warmist, blaming, blowhardest, assaultive and attention-seeking fakeries in the week's fake news.
Global warmists predict disaster in 10 years… again
The world stands on the brink of failure when it comes to holding global warming to moderate levels, and nations will need to take "unprecedented" actions to cut their carbon emissions over the next decade, according to a landmark report by the top scientific body studying climate change.
With global emissions showing few signs of slowing and the United States — the world's second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide — rolling back a suite of Obama-era climate measures, the prospects for meeting the most ambitious goals of the 2015 Paris agreement look increasingly slim. To avoid racing past warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over preindustrial levels would require a "rapid and far-reaching" transformation of human civilization at a magnitude that has never happened before, the group found.
"There is no documented historic precedent" for the sweeping change to energy, transportation and other systems required to reach 1.5 degrees Celsius, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrote in a report requested as part of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
The article went on to tell us that we had no more than 10-14 years to do something — but left unsaid was that that something meant stripping America of its wealth and making it a Third World backwater. Otherwise, global temperatures will rise 1.5-2 degrees, which will make parts of southwest Asia "literally uninhabitable," decrease the availability of food crops by half, bleach coral reefs, melt the Arctic, destroy the Amazon rain forest, melt the Siberian tundra which would release planet-warming methane from its depths, melt Greenland and Antarctic glaciers and, of course, flood the coastal regions.
That would be horrible news if true. Unfortunately for the U.N., this is simply a repeat of a U.N. prediction from almost 30 years ago. One, we note, that shows no signs of being remotely true.
Back then, a senior U.N. official said entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if "the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000."
Noel brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environmental Program (UNEP), said coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ?eco- refugees," threatening political chaos.
Brown predicted melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels, flooded coastal regions, ecological refugees and 1930s Dust Bowl-like conditions.
The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth's temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown.
Yet here we are, 29 years later, and none of Brown's predictions have come to fruition. And, as we told you before, global average temperatures are the same today as they were in 1988. And temperatures in 1988 were the same as they were in the early 1800s. We said it then. We'll say it today. There. Is. No. Global. Warming.
That temperatures are rising and man is the cause is fake news. Anyone telling you any different is either an ignoramus or is scamming you.
But it's Trump's fault
The Los Angeles Times couldn't resist taking the afore-mentioned U.N. report on global warming to take a potshot at President Donald Trump. In its reporting on the U.N. global warming scaremonging, The Times zinged Trumpas a "global outlier in terms of climate change" because he "rejected the 2015 Paris agreement signed by 195 nations to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, expressed skepticism about human-caused climate change and vowed to increase coal-burning."
But as the New York Post notes, the U.S. is the country that has reduced carbon emissions the most since 2015. U.S. carbon emissions are down by 0.5 percent, even though the American economy grew by 3 percent over that time.
Of the 25 nations that signed onto the treaty, only five have managed to reach even 50 percent of their pollution-reduction promise.
After seeing the report, French President Emmanuel Macron — a major champion of the Paris accord — sent out an interesting tweet.
It said, "The report is #GEIC scientifically proven: we have all the cards in hand to fight global warming. But everyone has to act now!"
By "everyone," Macron apparently means everyone but France, which hasn't come close to meeting it's climate promises under the accord. In fact, all the European Union countries are failing to meet their promises under the accord. Funny that the Times didn't mention that.
But that's precisely why Trump declined to participate. He accurately predicted that all the other countries would cheat, leaving Americans saddled with higher taxes and higher energy bills and an uneven playing field in the global economy.
Hurricane Michael was fake news
No, not the hurricane itself, which was very real. Especially if you were in its path. But claims that it was the third most powerful hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast are turning out to be fake news.
As it approached landfall we were told repeatedly that its winds were sustained 150-155 mph, ranking it near the top for fiercest storm to hit the U.S. But recorded wind gusts in the storm's path don't bear that out.
The top wind gust reported at Tyndall Air Force Base was 129 mph (or 119 mph, depending on whether you're using the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) chart or The Weather Channel's graphic. Panama City's top wind gust was 116 mph. At Mexico Beach, said to be in the storm's bullseye at landfall, the top recorded gust was 104 mph. Other stations in Panama City recorded top gusts of 94 and 78 mph. And NOAA reported these gusts while simultaneously stating sustained winds were 150 mph. That's impossible.
In saying this we're not trying to diminish the hurricane's impact — which is incredible — but to point out that what you're being told is not and cannot be true.
Our hearts and prayers go out to those whose property was damaged or destroyed and those who were injured, and especially to the family members of those who lost their lives.
What we learned from the Kavanaugh hearing
If there's one thing we learned from the Brett Kavanaugh hearing, it's that girls don't lie about sexual assault and should be believed whenever they make accusations against a man. After Christine Blasey Ford "credibly accused" Kavanaugh of attempting to rape her, the FBI couldn't find a single solitary bit of corroborating evidence for her story. On top of that, she contradicted herself — and her legal team and her therapist — during her testimony. Still, the MSM — and most politicians — determined her story was "credible."
So given that we know that girls don't lie, we find the story about the Seneca Valley "mean girls" who were named in a lawsuit for falsely accusing a boy of multiple rapes to be fake news and proof that the patriarchal American society exists and all women are victims and boys don't have to be from wealthy families to be exonerated of rape.
If you missed the story, last week the parents of a teenage boy in Pennsylvania filed suit against five "mean girls," alleging they "conspired in person and via electronic communication devices to falsely accuse T.F. of sexual assault on two occasions."
According to the lawsuit, one girl accused the boy, identified in the lawsuit only as T.F., of sexually assaulting her at a pool in July 2017 where T.F. worked as a lifeguard. The girl's story was corroborated by another girl who also worked as a lifeguard and who claimed she was present when the assault occurred. After the charges were made, T.F. was fired from his lifeguard job. The next March, T.F. was charged with sexually assaulting a girl that he had walked home from school. Three girls corroborated that girl's story.
T.F. was subsequently charged with multiple crimes, spent time in juvenile detention and later confined to his home.
But this summer the girls' stories began to unwind. They finally recanted. All of them confessed to making up the story because they didn't like T.F. and "would do anything" to get him fired from his job and "expelled from school."
In other words, the one thing we learned from the Kavanaugh hearing turned out to be fake news.
But they said girls don't lie…
Not only do straight girls sometimes lie, but so do lesbians.
Ohio University student Anna Ayers, who is also a member of the OU Student Senate, was arrested this week and charged with three counts of "making false alarms" after she told campus police that she had received three threatening messages because she was a lesbo and member of the LGBTQ community. The messages she received were said to have included death threats and "expressed extreme hatred… because of who I am." They came to her at the Student Senate office and her residence.
The OU campus newspaper played up the story, and the school of journalism expressed support for her in her time of distress.
But it only took the campus police a few days to determine the story was fake. Ayers had sent the notes to herself prior to making the report to police.
According to a news release from the OU police department, making false claims is a first degree misdemeanor carrying a maximum penalty of six months in jail and $1,000 fine.
Hot topics in Will County District 7 race include opioids and taxes
Steve Balich (from left), Kyle Killacky and Mike Fricilone. (Steve Balich/Kyle Killacky/Mike Fricilone)
Susan DeMar LaffertyDaily Southtown
Battling the opioid epidemic, high taxes, and spending are at the forefront of Will County’s District 7 board race, where a 23-year-old student, Kyle Killacky, is challenging the two Republican incumbents, Steve Balich and Mike Fricilone in the Nov. 6 election.
District 7, which includes most of Homer Township, parts of Lockport Township and one precinct in New Lenox Township, has two open seats for four-year terms.
Killacky, a Homer Glen Democrat, said he would bring a youthful perspective to the board and “fresh, new, and exciting ideas” that are “very vital in leading the county into the future.”
Balich and Fricilone have both served on the county board since 2012, and said they are seeking re-election to keep property taxes down.
Killacky’s biggest priority is the opioid crisis which is “getting worse,” he said.
The county needs to invest more in its health department to address the issue, he said. “Our health department is underfunded at a time when we have a health epidemic raging in the county. It was insane to think that in 2016 there were people on the board who wanted to defund the health department.”
Killacky also wants to make sure the sheriff's department has enough resources to continue its efforts in fighting this problem.
Balich, of Orland Park, said the heroin problem can be addressed with education and “creating a positive environment where addicts can get a good job.”
Putting people in jail is “very costly” and the county is trying to find innovative ways to reduce the jail population, he said.
Fricilone, of Homer Glen, said “the earlier children are educated on the dangers of drug use the better prepared they will be to fight this battle.”
The county has received state and federal grant funding to help fight this epidemic and will continue to seek those grants, he said.
Fricilone, who chairs the board’s Finance Committee, said the board has increased funding for the Health Department, provided more drug awareness programs, built a new Public Safety Complex, started to build a new county courthouse while reducing the county’s tax rate for the past three years.
He said he wants to continue to reduce the tax burden, provide oversight on spending, and make sure taxpayers are “getting the best services.” This can be done through “efficient government and wise spending,” he said.
Balich said he will “continue to spend taxpayer money like it was my own.”
”Seniors and others on a fixed income see so much of their disposable income taken away by excessive taxes, they are forced to move or struggle to make ends meet,” he said.
Killacky said as the county grows, more jobs are needed but not necessarily more warehouse jobs.
He said he will work to bring jobs that “treat workers like human beings” and “pay a living wage.” To attract such jobs, the county must continue to “invest in its infrastructure.” While the county is doing a “good job,” he said he will do “more to fix our crumbling roads.”
Fricilone, a businessman and chairman of the Lockport Township High School Foundation, also wants to increase economic development and jobs, improve local roads and cut wasteful spending, according to his website, www.mikefricilone.tumblr.com. During his tenure on the county board, he has not supported pay raises for elected officials and voted to eliminate pensions for county board members.
Balich previously served as Homer Township trustee and clerk, and is co-founder of the Will County Tea Party Alliance. He is concerned about expanding government and wants to eliminate laws and regulations that are “not enforced, make little sense, or just a way for government to make money.” For example, he has pushed to exempt routine repair and maintenance work from requiring a building permit.
”We need to support our police who must deal with media driven disdain for police.I will stand for issues that benefit people,” Balich said.
Killacky said he wants a Will County that works for everyone, regardless of political party, religion, race, or gender.
“A county board member should represent everyone,” he said. “I believe that everyone my age should contribute to their community in some way.”
