The Cost of Corruption – This is not something you will read for fun. But it’s something you must read, as a parent or taxpaying citizen. It’s a sordid story about crime and corruption where anyone would least expect to find it: In a suburban elementary school district.

In response to Freedom of Information Act requests, activists of the Lake County Tea Party organization have received over 300 pages of emails. The tale they tell is grim.

“Don’t Let Them Turn Us In” – The April 5th election was a hard-fought race in which five candidates (two incumbents and three challengers) were vying to fill three seats. The two incumbent candidates were strongly pro-union: Noting that the three challengers had been linked on the Lake County Tea Party website, incumbent candidate Mary Garcia wrote, “I think that all members of both Unions should be apprised of this information… There will be no collective bargaining with those 3 on the board. I am very afraid that Sue and I will not have the funds necessary to fight a ‘party’.” This email, sent to D46 Superintendent Ellen Correll, Assistant Superintendent Lynn Barkley, union leaders Christine Wilson and Diane Elfering, and fellow incumbent candidate Sue Facklam, was sent, like virtually all of the information we have, from Garcia’s email account in District 30 (Wed., Feb. 23rd, 11:34 AM), where Garcia works as a teacher and is president of the teachers’ union. Campaign fundraising activity like this, using D30 public resources have already landed Garcia in front of a review board scheduled to meet Monday, May 2nd.

In another telling email, Facklam, a voter registrar, writes about registering high school students to vote, and giving them gift cards: “Don’t let them turn us in; gifts to register to vote is probably illegal! I did offer Erika [Garcia’s 18-year-old daughter] more gift cards if she can gather up more friends!” (Wed., March 2nd, 10:14 AM to Mary Garcia at her D30 account.) It is a felony to offer remuneration to anyone for voting or registering to vote.

“Lie and pay me cash” – The emails reveal evidence of extensive contributions, expenditures, and in-kind contributions that, by law, ought to have triggered formation of a campaign committee, and been reported to the State Board of Elections. Garcia and Facklam’s campaign manager, Alex Finke, in one of the more egregious examples of their efforts cloak their campaign in secrecy, wrote, “Anything you spend counts towards the 1999.99 that you and Mary would be allowed to spend. The only way around it, would be to lie and pay me cash. Then I could claim that I am volunteering for you.” (Mon., March 7th, 3:55 PM, to Sue Facklam.)

The Superintendents Get Involved – D46 Superintendent Ellen Correll, who receives a compensation package worth over $200,000 per year to educate students, evidently spent quite a bit of her compensated time on election activities: “Mary Garcia is wondering how many signs or flyers you would take?” (Ellen Correll, on her D46 email account, to North Chicago D187 Superintendent Douglas Parks and to Mary Garcia on her D30 email account, Thurs., Mar. 10th, 3:24 PM.) As a custodian of federal and state education funds, Correll is prohibited by law from participating in political activity of any kind.

It’s important to recognize that this is not an article about politics. And it barely scratches the surface. This is not about whose policies are best and whose are wrongheaded. It’s about how elected officials and employees of School District #46, the elementary school district in Grayslake, Illinois, have abused their positions and their access to benefit themselves at taxpayers’ expense, and at the expense of the children entrusted to them.

Click to download all of District 30 FOIA 1
Click to download all of District 30 FOIA 2

Emails by hour of day.  Notice that many emails are sent during work hours, but none during lunch hour.

(Cross-posted from Lake County Tea Party.)

Every politician makes political appearances with their kids. Every candidate makes campaign appearances and produces campaign materials that include their kids. The Clintons did it with Chelsea, the Obamas do it with their daughters, I did it with my kids.

But one politician — just one — has taken flack for appearing with one — just one! — of her kids. That politician is former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. And the child they hate to see her with is her youngest, Trig, who has Down Syndrome.

Make no mistake. The left hates Trig Palin:

Now Wonkette is at it again, in an even more crude manner, this time authored by 2010 Georgetown grad  Jack Stuef, Greatest Living American: A Children’s Treasury of Trig Crap On His Birthday.

Replete with PhotoShops of Trig next to a pulsating pole dancer (image right), and links to videos in which various Democrats mock Trig in profanity-laced tirades, Stuef has a good laugh with text such as this:

Today is the day we come together to celebrate the snowbilly grifter’s magical journey from Texas to Alaska to deliver to the America the great gentleman scholar Trig Palin. Is Palin his true mother? Or was Bristol? (And why is it that nobody questions who the father is? Because, either way, Todd definitely did it.) It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are privileged to live in a time when we can witness the greatest prop in world political history…

What’s he dreaming about? Nothing. He’s retarded.

Wonkette is no fly-by-night outfit.  Here is how it describes itself on its Advertising page:

Wonkette.com is a top 5,000 site and No. 63 Technorati blog that reaches over 1 million monthly unique visitors, 88% of which are in the U.S. The site is wildly popular among a mostly male, very affluent and well educated adult crowd. The typical visitor reads Gawker and subscribes to the Economist and Vanity Fair.

Winner of three consecutive Bloggies and a regular source of outrageous quotes and jokes for the political class, Wonkette is Washington’s non-stop campaign cocktail party.

Wonkette is a sick publication.  But it sure is popular with the liberal D.C. crowd.

Outrageous. Some some folks complained to the advertisers on that site, and three of them pulled their ads. Papa John’s, Huggies and Vanguard. The editors at Wonkette defend the post:

“We beat up on Sarah Palin’s craven use of her son as a political prop. Child protective services should take Trig away.”

“On whose account are you requesting that Jack Stuef remove a post mocking Sarah Palin’s well-documented use of her special needs child as a political prop?…”

It’s easy to see that the left hates Sarah Palin with the hot, hot fire of a thousand suns. And the real reason for this hatred is Trig. They hate Trig with every fiber of their being. They hate him with a passion beyond description. Murder would not satisfy their hatred of Trig, because they hate most of all the fact that this baby was ever born.

If Sarah Palin had aborted Trig, she would be a hero to the left. But she kept him, she loves him, Down Syndrome and all. And they hate that.

The abortion ethic holds that only the perfect baby is worthy to be born. The abortion ethic holds that only the wealthy baby is worthy to be born. Trig stands as a living rebuke to the pro-aborts, who, in him, are revealed not to be pro-choice at all, but only pro-abortion. Trig Palin, by simply living, is a testament to the dignity and sanctity of all human life. The pro-abort left cannot abide, and cannot tolerate, his witness.

And so they make up lies and excuses for their hatred about Sarah Palin’s “exploitation” of her son. Of course, if Trig was never seen in her materials and appearances, they would claim that she was ashamed of him, that she was hiding him. It’s not that they see Trig that enrages them; it is that Trig lives at all. Modern liberalism is a philosophy of hatred, of jealousy, of death. The left’s reaction to Trig Palin is the logical expression of that philosophy.

(Cross-posted from Thoughts of a Regular Guy.)

I always know, when I read the reviews panning a movie I’ve been looking forward to, that I’m going to enjoy it. This rule proved true for me again in seeing Atlas Shrugged Part I.

Taylor Schilling as Dagny Taggart

Directed by Paul Johanssonn (who also plays the mysterious John Galt), working from a screenplay by John Aglialoro and Brian Patrick O’Toole, faithfully based on the 1957 novel by Ayn Rand, the film follows the efforts of the beautiful Dagny Taggart (wonderfully played by Taylor Schilling), the youngest, and most competent, scion of the ancient Taggart dynasty of railroad barons. Dagny must fight lobbyists, the legislature, her older brother James’s (Matthew Marsden) managerial incompetence, and the mysterious disappearances of the best thinkers and producers in the country to save her family’s railroad.

Joining her in her efforts is steel magnate Henry Rearden (Grant Bowler), the target of the lobbyists and his competitors due to his innovative development of a new, lighter, stronger and cheaper steel that he calls “Rearden Metal”. Faced with steel suppliers who don’t make timely delivery on orders, Dagny engages the controversial Rearden to manufacture new rails using his much-criticized new metal.

Grant Bowler as Henry Rearden

The setting is a dystopic 2016 (which might actually look this bad, if President Obama is re-elected) in which skyrocketing gas prices due to the complete political collapse of the Middle East has rendered both commercial aviation, much of trucking and even private automobiles unfeasibly expensive; railroads have re-emerged as the primary form of transportation of both freight and passengers. It is against this backdrop, in which the only remaining nationwide railroad — the final wavering prop of the country’s internal transportation network — must be preserved. If only the short-sighted lobbyists and bureaucrats of Washington can be persuaded not to tax and regulate every remaining successful business into bankruptcy in an effort to feed the poor and unproductive who have been thrown out of work because of prior rounds of taxation and regulation.

Rebecca Wisocky does an outstanding turn as Rearden’s loathsome wife, Lillian. Rounding out the cast are excellent performances by Grant Beckel as Ellis Wyatt, Jsu Garcia as the enigmatic playboy Fransisco D’Anconia, Edi Gathegi as Eddie Willers, Michael Lerner as Wesley Mouch, Patrick Fischler as Paul Larkin, and Armin Shimmerman as Dr. Potter.

Even in 1957, Rand foresaw much of today’s liberal trends in which no enterprise is too small or too local for the federal government to get involved in, no tax is too high, no regulation too intrusive, and no bureaucrat spouting pieties about the good of “the people” and trying to legislate “equality” is above lining his own pockets and serving his own interests at the public expense.

This is not an action movie. It is long on dialog, features virtually no nudity, only one momentary and discreet sex scene, and no violence at all, and very little suspense. It is a movie about thinking men and women, for thinking men and women. It is therefore sure to tank at the box office.

And yet, there is a very urgent sense of suspense attached to this movie. It’s not about how the movie ends. This film is the first of a planned trilogy to adapt Rand’s 1100 page novel. But even those who haven’t read the book will not find the conclusion too surprising, if those movies ever get made.

No, the real suspense generated by the story of Atlas Shrugged is not how the characters will get out of their crisis. Instead, the nail-biting question is how the real America of today might hope to get out of the crisis we now face. Atlas Shrugged offers an important suggestion: stop discouraging and penalizing those who make money, create jobs, produce goods, and drive the economy. We must stop discouraging and penalizing these people before we succeed completely and drive them all out of business. And then, with no businesses left to provide us with jobs or goods, where will we be?

And so it’s in the entrepreneurial spirit of John Galt that I’ve decided to pay homage to this story in the most practical fashion: I’ve opened a new Cafe Press shop! Order your t-shirt today!

I had an idea about burning the Koran.

It is, of course a highly disrespectful act. It is discourteous. It is even a hostile act. But hey, so are murder and war.

But as the Bible tells us (in Ecc 3:1), “All things have their season, and in their times all things pass under heaven.”

It really seems to have a big effect on some Muslims, when one guy on the far side of the world burns a Koran. How many people have they killed? 20?

What if we turn the tables? Instead of them killing people in reaction to a Koran being burned, what if we were to tell them that we will burn Korans until the killing stops?

What if we were to say, the American people will burn one Koran every day until the killing stops in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya?

When they kill people, somehow it gets blamed on a guy in Florida who wasn’t anywhere near the killing. It’s a childish sort of “see what you made me do?” defense. Well, if those are the rules of the game, let’s play by them. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

We could put a weregild on every American killed by a Muslim. We’ll burn three Korans for every enlisted man they kill, five for every officer, and ten for every civilian. And until they stop killing each other, we’ll burn one every day.

They claim to care about the burning of a Koran. They claim it’s important to them. They’re willing to kill to avenge the burning of a Koran. But what will those people do to prevent Korans from being burned? Could it be possible that they might be constrained to stop killing out of respect for their holy book, which they believe was written by Allah?

Or is it possible that they’ll use any excuse to kill, and any little thing at all will do as provocation, so that they can shift the blame for their wanton killing onto someone else?

To ask the question is to answer it.

(Cross-posted from Thoughts of a Regular Guy.)

Caterpillar may leave Illinois

I’m currently reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged for the first time, in which the producers in an unspecified future America go “on strike”, disappear, and refuse to produce because of government over-regulation making it impossible to run their businesses efficiently or effectively. Written over 50 years ago, Atlas Shrugged seems remarkably prescient in many respects. So I couldn’t help thinking of it when I heard that Caterpillar may leave Illinois (H/T: Illinois Review):

The chief executive of Caterpillar wrote a letter to Illinois Gov. Patrick Quinn raising the possibility the heavy equipment company could move out of Illinois because of concerns that the direction the state is heading isn’t favorable to business.

In a letter to Gov. Pat Quinn obtained Friday by The Pantagraph of Bloomington, Doug Oberhelman said officials in at least four states have approached Peoria-based Caterpillar about relocating since Illinois raised its income tax in January.

“I want to stay here. But as the leader of this business, I have to do what’s right for Caterpillar when making decisions about where to invest,” Oberhelman wrote. “The direction that this state is headed in is not favorable to business, and I’d like to work with you to change that.”

Oberhelman wrote he has been called, cornered in meetings and wined and dined. He said he had never considered living anywhere else or the possibility of Caterpillar relocating.

“But I have to admit, the policymakers in Springfield seem to make it harder by the day,” he wrote.

Quinn spokeswoman Brie Callahan said Friday the governor plans to discuss the letter with Oberhelman on April 5 when the two meet at a conference in Peoria.

“The governor welcomes frank and open exchanges between the business community and government, and we are always open to new ideas that can help our businesses grow, innovate and create jobs,” Callahan told the Pantagraph.

Along with the letter to Quinn, Oberhelman sent correspondence the company has received from leaders of South Dakota and Nebraska.

“I stand ready to help convince you to relocate or expand in the fiscally conservative, low-tax Lone Star State,” wrote Texas Gov. Rick Perry in a Jan. 24 letter.

Caterpillar spokesman Jim Dugan tells The Pantagraph the letter shows Quinn that Oberhelman wants to be involved in finding solutions that benefit the company, which employs 23,000 people in Illinois.

“I view it as an olive branch to offer our help,” Dugan said.

While Oberhelman didn’t single out a specific problem with Illinois’ policies, Dugan said the recent income tax increase was major factor triggering the note. [Emphasis added.]

Illinois taxpayers, both individuals and corporations, are viewed in Springfield as milch cows, serfs tied to the land who must work and give as much of what they produce to the state as the legislature may demand. But people are streaming out of Illinois in droves. Former State Senator Roger Keats, recently a candidate for Cook County Board president, recently announced that he and his wife were moving to Dripping Springs, Texas (a lovely place near Austin, I can assure you). It takes longer for a major corporation like Caterpillar to pull up stakes and go, but they can and will go eventually.

The Democrats running Springfield — and yes, a few Republicans, too — are really a piece of work. They lie to get into office, they raise taxes, they over-regulate, they are looters and pirates who are not above any scam to rake off the productivity of Illinoisans and pocket the proceeds.

What can be done to stop the flow of red ink? Who is John Galt?

(Cross-posted from Thoughts of a Regular Guy.)

Follow the money.

Michael Carbone

When my friend, fellow parishioner and fellow Knight of Columbus Michael Carbone, a member of the Grayslake School District #46 School Board was censured by the unanimous vote of his fellow board members this past Wednesday, what was the real reason?

Follow the money.

D46 board president, Mary Garcia, who is also the president of the local teachers’ union in another district, together with her cronies on the board, doesn’t like it when Michael Carbone, who has made it his practice over the past two years to uncover poor spending practices, and worked to bring accountability and transparency to board operations, sheds light on her shenanigans.

Follow the money.

When Michael Linder resigned from his unpaid position as a board member to take a job as a part-time consultant at $75,000 per year, Michael Carbone led the objections.

Follow the money.

When the board spent thousands to send staffers to Disney World for a conference, Michael Carbone was asking why.

Follow the money.

And when Mary Garcia hired her husband to work for the district as a janitor on the public payroll, Carbone was the first to question the process.

After all, with the economy as it is, with over 10% unemployment in Lake County and fifty applicants for every advertised job, just what was it, other than his relationship to the school board president, that made Robert Garcia stand out? Was he so highly recommended by his previous employers? In fact, if he was such a very good employee in his prior jobs, just why was it he was unemployed? Don’t get me wrong, many good people are un- or under-employed these days, for completely honest reasons. I’d just like to know how we came to the coincidence that Mary Garcia’s husband just happened to be the very best candidate for the job with the organization of which his wife is the head, but not for any of the other jobs he’d doubtless applied for.

There’s a word for this.

The word is nepotism. And in this instance, it means using taxpayer money to do favors for your friends and family. Or yourself.

Mary Garcia and her union cronies don’t understand that taxpayer money isn’t theirs to dole out as largesse to their favored recipients.

Michael Carbone does understand this, and that’s why they made up a series of lies about him, and publicly defamed him with a censure resolution that’s made national news.

Mary Garcia and one of her cronies are up for re-election in less than three weeks. Linder’s appointed replacement will likewise be leaving the board. I have to second the endorsement of the local paper for all three challengers to these seats to be elected, and I hope that with Michael Carbone, they will form a new majority who will bring some fiscal accountability to this school board.

So, as I told the board on Wednesday, I’m glad they chose this week to make such a statement of contempt for the taxpayers, and the one man on that board who represents our interests.

I was at that meeting, and was first in the public comments:

Some of those comments were attributed to me in this report as well.

It’s appropriate for a president to veto a law on the grounds that it is unconstitutional in his opinion. Many have done so.

But imagine if, as Attorney General Eric Holder has announced regarding the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) the executive refused to defend the constitutionality of settled laws (DOMA, signed by Clinton, has been on the books since 1998) based on whether the current president agreed with them?

When a plaintiff (recruited by the president’s party) filed suit and the AG refused to defend it, lacking a defense, the court would enter a default judgment for the plaintiff. Without an appeal, the issue would never even get to the Supreme Court; individual federal judges might throw out major pieces of legislation without appellate review.

A president would suddenly gain, in effect, the power to overturn laws he didn’t like without Congress having to repeal them.

Liberals should be careful how they applaud this choice by the Obama administration. What if a future Republican president were to refuse to defend the constitutionality of the Social Security Act? Or the Income Tax Code?

Presidents shouldn’t have this sort of power by themselves.

OTOH, perhaps Republican presidential candidates should be rushing to microphones to be the first to announce that, if elected, they will appoint an Attorney General who will not defend the constitutionality of Obamacare.

I was there, I saw it. Watch this short video, then scroll down for my impressions.

It was a League of Women Voters candidate forum featuring three sets of candidates. Illinois 8th District Congressional candidates Melissa Bean (D, incumbent), Joe Walsh (R), and Bill Scheurer (G) were up first.

They were followed by 31st State Senate District candidates Michael Bond (D, incumbent) and Suzie Schmidt (R), and then by 62nd State Representative District candidates Sandy Cole (R, incumbent) and Rich Voltair (D). But I was one of the few who stayed for those, and almost no one remembers or cares what was said by those candidates.

Joe Walsh’s supporters packed the hall. Frankly, we expected that liberals would be bussed in to the area to support Bean, as they were bussed in to protest Right Nation 2010 a few weeks ago, so we were out in force and ready for anything.

But there was no conspiracy or plan to disrupt the proceedings that I heard of, whether by reciting the pledge of allegiance or any other way, and as a local Tea Party leader with connections to Joe and his campaign staff, I think I would have known.

As you can see in the video above, the moderator, Mrs. Kathy Tate-Bradish, was trying to introduce the rules of the event when she recognized someone on a point of order, which led the to the pledge being recited. Then everyone sat back down.

Mrs. Tate-Bradish seemed very offended, because as a retired schoolteacher, she is accustomed to people sitting down and shutting up when she is speaking, and if they don’t then it is solely a question of their disrespect to her, and she expressed her hope that this wouldn’t be repeated.

Frankly, I deplore the criticisms of Mrs. Tate-Bradish’s appearance that I’ve heard that some bloggers have made, and, as a fellow Air Force veteran, I have no doubt of her patriotism. I think it’s obvious that her complaint is that she expected to be in control of the room, and for a moment, she wasn’t.

What I find disappointing is the line taken by Mrs. Tate-Bradish and her superiors at the League:

Executive Director Jan Czarnik said what happened at Wednesday’s debate and subsequent criticism directed at moderator Kathy Tate-Bradish was an attempt by supporters of Republican candidate Joe Walsh of McHenry and tea party members to bully the organization.

Czarnik said someone is not a better American just by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

“It’s a phony patriotism issue is what it is,” she said. “They must think it helps their campaign.”

Meanwhile, the Northwest Herald editorialized, noting that Green Party candidate Bill Scheurer didn’t stand or recite the pledge:

Is Scheurer somehow unpatriotic?

Hardly.

He, like Tate-Bradish, just recognizes that incivility masked as patriotism is, in fact, not patriotic at all.

Never was. Never will be.

What we have on display here, for all to see, is an acute case of liberal contempt.

Perhaps Northwest Herald editor Dan McCaleb never heard of a small affair that happened in 1773 that’s come down to us as the “Boston Tea Party.” Complaining of “incivility” was the least of the British reaction. But the colonists had concluded that civility was getting them nowhere, and so they chose a different tack.

Likewise the contemporary Tea Party has figured out that civility, when used as an instrument to silence the people, is not civility at all. Never was. Never will be. And that’s why we see the videos on YouTube of gaffs by Congresscritters. That’s why we saw disruptions in town hall meetings across the country in 2009. That’s why we’re fast approaching the second anniversary of the Tea Party demonstrations, with no end to them in sight.

As I’ve said, the liberal mindset is that it’s the job of the working class, the productive class, the taxpaying class, to sit down, shut up, and pay more taxes.

They’re not going to stop trying to get us to do that. This week, the meme is that their refusal to express their patriotism is, in fact, patriotic; while our insistence on expressing our patriotism proves that we’re not patriots at all.

That’s a debate I’m happy to have any day. Because it means that the old liberal meme of “you can’t question our patriotism” is over. Liberal patriotism is now fair game as a topic of debate. I’m delighted to have the discussion of which party is proud of America, and which is ashamed of it, which apologizes for America, which opposes American interests at home and abroad.

Meanwhile, it’s quite comical to me that anyone thinks this thirty-second interruption in a little LWV forum is worth the national coverage it’s getting.

But there we are. Some people are outraged that a retired school teacher was unable to prevent 300 patriots from reciting the pledge of allegiance when they wanted to. And some people are outraged that the teacher tried.

I have to sympathize more with the latter group, for the sole reason that their outrage is vindicated by the outrage of the former group.

So if you’re in the first group, figure this out: We’re not going to sit down and shut up anymore. When you tell your lies, we’ll be making sure you know we noticed. When you vote against our wishes and our welfare, we’ll make sure you hear about our dissatisfaction. And when you want us to sit down and shut up when we think an expression of patriotism is called for, don’t hold your breath.

In fact, I’m feeling like an expression of patriotism right now:

(Cross-posted from Thoughts of a Regular Guy.)

My good friend Dan Sugrue explains what is at stake in the 2010 elections in Illinois:

Contribute to Dan Sugrue here!

What other districts’ legislators do affects all of us. What other states’ legislatures do affects all of us. Dan is a good conservative family man with a real chance to unseat a liberal Democrat. Please help him out with your contribution today!

At a meeting she was hosting last week at Round Lake library, Democrat U.S.Rep. Melissa Bean demonstrates a typically Democrat way of discouraging unfavorable questions (H/T: Gateway Pundit via Steve Stevelic):

I’m alarmed that this happened in the library that my wife and kids go to. That guy is in charge of security for the library. Maybe we’ll have to go to Grayslake instead.

This is Chicago-style thuggery come to Lake County. See how Bean, and the fellow from the Treasury Dept., stand and smile as that goon towers over that woman. These people are not threatening, they are remaining in their seats, and they are exercising their right to seek answers from their representative. And what’s the response? Threats of physical violence.

This is what the left does when it’s in power.