She is somebody somebody sent.
In the best—or maybe it’s the worst—tradition of local politics. And she was pressured into voting for a multi-billion dollar hike in the state income tax in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. By her Democratic Party allies in Springfield.
Some of her friends and neighbors may be unhappy with the tax vote but she won’t be facing any political consequences or voter backlash. And here’s why: She stepped down as an Illinois State Representative at noon on Wednesday. After one week on the job. That’s right—one week. She was, in simple terms, the lamest lame duck in a feckless Springfield flock. A billion-dollar baby.
“She” is Kathy Moore, a Lincoln Park friend and former public school teacher who was put in that unenviable position by the stark reality of political hide-and-seek. Or, in this case, seek-and-hide. Her reliably Democratic 11th District, which includes Lincoln Park and Lakeview, elected a brand new state representative, Ann Williams, in November, to replace John Fritchey, a popular long-time rep who won election to a seat on the Cook County Board. Fritchey began his new job in December, so Williams could have been sworn in as a state rep a month ago to represent the district in the lame-duck session going on in Springfield this past week. That was her initial plan.
But there were questions about how she would vote if a tax plan was on the lame-duck agenda. Williams claims that local Democratic leaders, including Fritchey and Senate President John Cullerton, wanted her commitment to support the tax hike before arranging for her to be sworn in. They say she got cold feet and decided not to start early—choosing instead to wait until Wednesday, when the rest of the freshman legislative class was sworn in.
(That, parenthetically, will save the taxpayers a few bucks because Williams won’t qualify for a more generous legislative pension than the one awaiting the new class in Springfield, thanks to a modest pension reform bill that took effect on Jan. 1. But her decision will cost the 11th District politically because, instead of moving to the top of the seniority list of new legislators by starting in December, she will be near the bottom since she’s entering with all of the other newbies, and her last name begins with “W,” a letter near the end of the alphabet. Oh well.)
Meanwhile, back at the raunch—yes, I said raunch and not ranch—Williams’s decision not to be seated early meant the political bosses in the district—Fritchey, Cullerton and the other ward committeemen—had to find someone else to fill the seat for the one-week lame-duck session. So they recruited Kathy Moore, the wife of Tom Moore, a well-known Lincoln Park zoning lawyer—because Kathy had the time and the willingness to “serve.” And down I-55 she went. Admitting sheepishly at a party last week that “they tell me what (voting) button to push and I push it.” Democracy in action.
So when the tax bill passed, without a single vote to spare, our lawmaker-for-a-week was a major reason. She says she’s not happy about voting for a gargantuan tax increase but she doesn’t think that she, or the state, had any other choice. Even though, as of Sunday, she hadn’t seen a bill. Or a press release. Or a fact sheet. Or a list of cuts, accountability measures and streamlining to go along with the increase.
“I hope it works,” she said wistfully in a text message on Wednesday morning. Williams says, for the record, that she would’ve had a hard time supporting the tax bill in its present form.
In any event, Kathy Moore was back home in Chicago by Wednesday night after morphing into a regular resident following her week as a political pumpkin. Kind of like “Cinderella” in reverse. And she may not be the life of the cocktail parties in the neighborhood for awhile, at least among the well-healed wine-and-cheese folks who will have several-thousand fewer dollars in their pockets for each of the next four years.
As for Ann Williams, the newly elected House member, she assumed her duties as the new representative of the 11th district at noon on Wednesday. And my spies at her Springfield welcoming parties report there was no evidence of any dust, dirt or snow from the rock she’s been hiding under.
Don’t you just love the Illinois Way? And can’t you see why we love being civic watchdogs?
Friday, January 14, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Quinn-Says not dishonest with taxpayers for campaigning during the 2010 election on a 1 percentage point increase
Posted by Ray Long at 12:01 p.m.
Gov. Pat Quinn said today he will sign a major income tax increase as soon as it hits his desk and rejected criticism that he had misled taxpayers by saying during his campaign that he would only sign a smaller increase.
With no votes to spare and no Republican support in either the House or Senate, the Democratic-controlled General Assembly sent the measure to the Democratic governor early this morning after hours of bombastic debate. The action came in the waning moments of the lame-duck session just before a new General Assembly is sworn in.
The measure would raise the personal income tax-rate by 67 percent and the business income tax rate by 46 percent.
"We had an emergency, a fiscal emergency," Quinn said during a statehouse news conference this morning, just hours after the state Senate voted to send him the tax legislation.
Quinn said "no" when asked if he had been dishonest with taxpayers for campaigning during the 2010 election on a 1 percentage point increase in the income tax rate but now agreeing to sign the 2 percentage point hike.
The governor sought to justify the larger increase in part by saying fiscal experts had told leaders the state's financial problems were escalating in the last two months.
"Our house was burning," Quinn said. "Our fiscal house was burning."
Quinn negotiated the tax plan with fellow Democrats who control the legislature and had to wade into the details just before midnight Tuesday to get the measure over a final hurdle when African-American senators balked at revisions to the deal.
The House passed the bill hours earlier Tuesday night -- likewise without a vote to spare and with nary a Republican in support.
The plan nearly faltered in the Senate when black lawmakers balked at the House’s decision to remove a property-tax relief component from the plan and failure to approve a cigarette tax hike for schools. But Quinn met privately with members of the Senate black caucus, who said he pledged to pump $250 million from the income tax increase into schools for each of the next four years.
"A lot of them are my friends and we worked together in campaigns and we believe in working together in important things that help children," Quinn said when reporters caught up to him after the Senate vote.
Asked if there was a lot of horse trading to win support, Quinn said "not really. Everybody voted their conscience."
Quinn deferred most questions until a news conference scheduled for 10:30 a.m., just hours before lawmakers elected in November were to be sworn in as the General Assembly starts a new session. Democrats relied on the votes of some lame-duck lawmakers to push through the tax increase.
"We were happy that the Senate voted that way and the House did too, and we'll talk about it tomorrow," Quinn said, forgetting that he meant a little later today.
Democrats argued the tax increase was needed to rehabilitate the state’s deadbeat image, but Republicans predicted it would drive businesses out of state.
“We have just come through the worst economic crisis in our lifetime…and we have not paid our bills,” Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, told lawmakers shortly before the vote. “We are going to have to cut…even with this tax. We’re going to have to spend less money then we have in the last two years. And it’s going to be tough. But we are going to have our bills paid.”
Republicans, powerless to stop the Democratic agreement, were left to blame the majority party for lacking the guts to make tough budget choices.
“So here we are in the very end of this lame duck session on a late night putting more burden on the hardworking people of this state,” said Sen. Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon. “Here’s an investment tip, put a lot of money into moving vans.”
“You may think you're stabilizing this budget but you’re not,” said Sen. Matt Murphy, R-Palatine. “You’re bankrupting our state with this bill.”
The Senate debate was interrupted shortly before 1 a.m. when a state lawmaker collapsed on the floor of the chamber. State Rep. David Miller, D-Lynwood, was watching the debate near state Sen. James Meeks, D-Chicago, when he collapsed as Republican leader Christine Radogno was making what was expected to be one of the final speeches of the night.
Medical personnel and concerned lawmakers clustered around Miller and then took him out on a stretcher. He appeared to be conscious when he was wheeled out to a waiting ambulance, and the debate resumed. Earlier in the night Miller had voted in favor of the tax plan--because of his unsuccessful bid for state comptroller, Tuesday was his last day in the Legislature.
"I’m a little bit off my game here," said Sen. Christine Radogno, R-Lemont, the Republican leader. "We certainly all hope Rep. Miller is ok."
Radogno went on to say she was glad Democrats were "owning" the blame for the state's dismal budget situation, but she said the spending restrictions in the bill were not good enough.
Earlier in the night the House, expected to be the more difficult place to gain traction, approved the tax measure 60-57.
Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan chided Republicans for their refusal to support the proposal, after he and Democratic leaders who control the Senate spent days negotiating the size and scope of the tax plans behind closed doors with Quinn.
“They're on the sidelines,” Madigan said of Republicans. “They don't want to get on the field of play.”
The Senate, which approved a similar-size tax hike in May 2009 with more of the proceeds going to education, was temporarily hung up over the concerns of the black caucus. But after a meeting with Quinn, Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood, said education funding had been “worked on” with Quinn.
Sen. Emil Jones III, D-Chicago, said black senators received a promise from Quinn that he would designate $250 million more to education over each of the next four years. The money would be generated by the increased income tax and had originally been designated for property tax relief. The final bill eliminated the property tax relief, freeing up those funds, Jones said.
Senators also gave final approval to a House passed plan that would allow the state to borrow nearly $4 billion to make its annual payment for public employee pensions. The House approved the plan last year.
The tax votes were the latest demonstration of a Legislature that has turned increasingly liberal since the November election, coming in the wake of a death penalty ban approved Tuesday and civil unions for gay and straight couples approved last month.
Quinn and Democratic legislative leaders raced to move the tax plan, which would raise the personal tax rate from 3 percent to 5 percent, before a new Legislature with fewer Democrats is seated. At least seven lame-duck Democrats, who will be out of office Wednesday, voted for it.
“Illinois is in crisis, absolute financial crisis, and there is no way we can dig ourselves out of the crisis without increased revenues,” said House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago. “There is no way, no way, we can cut our way out of the deficit we face.”
But Republicans argued that Democrats who have controlled state government since 2003 should make stringent budget cuts before seeking a massive income tax hike during a struggling economy.
“I can’t figure out how this plan does anything for our real problems. Our real problem is spending, the increased spending, the mentality that we have,” said Rep. Roger Eddy, R-Hutsonville. “We’ll continue to throw money into a hole that has no bottom.”
House Democrats twice failed to get the required support from Republicans to approve a massive $8.75 billion borrowing plan aimed at using a portion of new income tax revenue to pay billions of dollars in overdue bills. The measure needed 71 votes because it added to the state’s debt, but it got only 65 votes on a first ballot and 68 on a second.
Sponsoring Rep. Frank Mautino, D-Spring Valley, said failure to pass the borrowing plan would mean it would take up to eight years to pay off providers of state services who have waited months for their money.
Prospects for the tax hike had been questionable throughout the Legislature’s final day as Quinn held a number of one-on-one meetings with rank-and-file lawmakers, seeking votes needed to pass the tax package. Quinn entered the House chamber shortly after the vote to thank representatives who voted for the plan.
House passage of the income tax hike came after representatives voted 66-51 against a plan to boost the state’s 98-cent-per-pack cigarette tax by $1.01. The cigarette tax hike would have been earmarked to provide more than $300 million in new spending for schools, a provision sought by African-American lawmakers in exchange for their backing of a higher income tax.
In trying to sell the tax package, supporters sought to portray a sense of urgency, saying the failure to act to fill a $15 billion budget deficit, including a looming $8 billion in overdue bills, would lead to the state teetering into insolvency, its bond rating reduced to junk status.
“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die,” said Miller, D-Lynwood, just hours before his collapse.
Under the bill that went to Quinn, the current 3 percent personal income tax rate would go to 5 percent until 2015, when it would drop to 3.75 percent. To gain more support among lawmakers, the plan would further lower the tax rate in 2025 to 3.25 percent.
For businesses, the current 4.8 percent corporate rate would go to 7 percent until 2015, when it would drop to 5.25 percent.
The plan calls for the corporate rate to fall in 2025 to the current 4.8 percent.
The tax increases, which would take effect retroactively to Jan. 1, would raise an estimated $6.5 billion over a full-year period.
In addition, the measure would attempt to limit spending in each of the next four budget years — $36.8 billion in the 2012 budget year, $37.5 billion in 2013, $38.3 billion in 2014 and $39 billion in 2015. The state’s auditor general would determine if lawmakers and the governor exceed those spending limits. If the limits are exceeded, the higher income tax rates would revert to current levels.
“This is not a game, not a trick. It’s a real spending cap,” Cullerton said. “We’re really trying to handcuff ourselves and the governor in our spending.”
But Republicans contended the limits would still allow growth in spending at a rate of 2 percent a year over the next four years, rather than require specific cuts to programs in the state budget.
Rep. David Reis, R-Willow Hill, said voters across the country spoke in November, voting for lower taxes and less government. Reis held up a map of Illinois that he said represents how many counties Quinn won in November to show that most of Illinois is against a tax hike, except the three counties Quinn won. "Three-county Quinn," Reis called the governor.
Quinn, who campaigned on a smaller income-tax increase, won Cook County, the state's most populous region, and that propelled him to 47 percent of the vote and victory over Republican Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington. State Board of Elections totals show Quinn winning four counties: Cook, Alexander, Jackson and St. Clair.
Posted at 12:03:10 PM in Governor, Legislature
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2011/01/quinn-on-tax-hike-our-fiscal-house-was-burning.html
Gov. Pat Quinn said today he will sign a major income tax increase as soon as it hits his desk and rejected criticism that he had misled taxpayers by saying during his campaign that he would only sign a smaller increase.
With no votes to spare and no Republican support in either the House or Senate, the Democratic-controlled General Assembly sent the measure to the Democratic governor early this morning after hours of bombastic debate. The action came in the waning moments of the lame-duck session just before a new General Assembly is sworn in.
The measure would raise the personal income tax-rate by 67 percent and the business income tax rate by 46 percent.
"We had an emergency, a fiscal emergency," Quinn said during a statehouse news conference this morning, just hours after the state Senate voted to send him the tax legislation.
Quinn said "no" when asked if he had been dishonest with taxpayers for campaigning during the 2010 election on a 1 percentage point increase in the income tax rate but now agreeing to sign the 2 percentage point hike.
The governor sought to justify the larger increase in part by saying fiscal experts had told leaders the state's financial problems were escalating in the last two months.
"Our house was burning," Quinn said. "Our fiscal house was burning."
Quinn negotiated the tax plan with fellow Democrats who control the legislature and had to wade into the details just before midnight Tuesday to get the measure over a final hurdle when African-American senators balked at revisions to the deal.
The House passed the bill hours earlier Tuesday night -- likewise without a vote to spare and with nary a Republican in support.
The plan nearly faltered in the Senate when black lawmakers balked at the House’s decision to remove a property-tax relief component from the plan and failure to approve a cigarette tax hike for schools. But Quinn met privately with members of the Senate black caucus, who said he pledged to pump $250 million from the income tax increase into schools for each of the next four years.
"A lot of them are my friends and we worked together in campaigns and we believe in working together in important things that help children," Quinn said when reporters caught up to him after the Senate vote.
Asked if there was a lot of horse trading to win support, Quinn said "not really. Everybody voted their conscience."
Quinn deferred most questions until a news conference scheduled for 10:30 a.m., just hours before lawmakers elected in November were to be sworn in as the General Assembly starts a new session. Democrats relied on the votes of some lame-duck lawmakers to push through the tax increase.
"We were happy that the Senate voted that way and the House did too, and we'll talk about it tomorrow," Quinn said, forgetting that he meant a little later today.
Democrats argued the tax increase was needed to rehabilitate the state’s deadbeat image, but Republicans predicted it would drive businesses out of state.
“We have just come through the worst economic crisis in our lifetime…and we have not paid our bills,” Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, told lawmakers shortly before the vote. “We are going to have to cut…even with this tax. We’re going to have to spend less money then we have in the last two years. And it’s going to be tough. But we are going to have our bills paid.”
Republicans, powerless to stop the Democratic agreement, were left to blame the majority party for lacking the guts to make tough budget choices.
“So here we are in the very end of this lame duck session on a late night putting more burden on the hardworking people of this state,” said Sen. Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon. “Here’s an investment tip, put a lot of money into moving vans.”
“You may think you're stabilizing this budget but you’re not,” said Sen. Matt Murphy, R-Palatine. “You’re bankrupting our state with this bill.”
The Senate debate was interrupted shortly before 1 a.m. when a state lawmaker collapsed on the floor of the chamber. State Rep. David Miller, D-Lynwood, was watching the debate near state Sen. James Meeks, D-Chicago, when he collapsed as Republican leader Christine Radogno was making what was expected to be one of the final speeches of the night.
Medical personnel and concerned lawmakers clustered around Miller and then took him out on a stretcher. He appeared to be conscious when he was wheeled out to a waiting ambulance, and the debate resumed. Earlier in the night Miller had voted in favor of the tax plan--because of his unsuccessful bid for state comptroller, Tuesday was his last day in the Legislature.
"I’m a little bit off my game here," said Sen. Christine Radogno, R-Lemont, the Republican leader. "We certainly all hope Rep. Miller is ok."
Radogno went on to say she was glad Democrats were "owning" the blame for the state's dismal budget situation, but she said the spending restrictions in the bill were not good enough.
Earlier in the night the House, expected to be the more difficult place to gain traction, approved the tax measure 60-57.
Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan chided Republicans for their refusal to support the proposal, after he and Democratic leaders who control the Senate spent days negotiating the size and scope of the tax plans behind closed doors with Quinn.
“They're on the sidelines,” Madigan said of Republicans. “They don't want to get on the field of play.”
The Senate, which approved a similar-size tax hike in May 2009 with more of the proceeds going to education, was temporarily hung up over the concerns of the black caucus. But after a meeting with Quinn, Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood, said education funding had been “worked on” with Quinn.
Sen. Emil Jones III, D-Chicago, said black senators received a promise from Quinn that he would designate $250 million more to education over each of the next four years. The money would be generated by the increased income tax and had originally been designated for property tax relief. The final bill eliminated the property tax relief, freeing up those funds, Jones said.
Senators also gave final approval to a House passed plan that would allow the state to borrow nearly $4 billion to make its annual payment for public employee pensions. The House approved the plan last year.
The tax votes were the latest demonstration of a Legislature that has turned increasingly liberal since the November election, coming in the wake of a death penalty ban approved Tuesday and civil unions for gay and straight couples approved last month.
Quinn and Democratic legislative leaders raced to move the tax plan, which would raise the personal tax rate from 3 percent to 5 percent, before a new Legislature with fewer Democrats is seated. At least seven lame-duck Democrats, who will be out of office Wednesday, voted for it.
“Illinois is in crisis, absolute financial crisis, and there is no way we can dig ourselves out of the crisis without increased revenues,” said House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago. “There is no way, no way, we can cut our way out of the deficit we face.”
But Republicans argued that Democrats who have controlled state government since 2003 should make stringent budget cuts before seeking a massive income tax hike during a struggling economy.
“I can’t figure out how this plan does anything for our real problems. Our real problem is spending, the increased spending, the mentality that we have,” said Rep. Roger Eddy, R-Hutsonville. “We’ll continue to throw money into a hole that has no bottom.”
House Democrats twice failed to get the required support from Republicans to approve a massive $8.75 billion borrowing plan aimed at using a portion of new income tax revenue to pay billions of dollars in overdue bills. The measure needed 71 votes because it added to the state’s debt, but it got only 65 votes on a first ballot and 68 on a second.
Sponsoring Rep. Frank Mautino, D-Spring Valley, said failure to pass the borrowing plan would mean it would take up to eight years to pay off providers of state services who have waited months for their money.
Prospects for the tax hike had been questionable throughout the Legislature’s final day as Quinn held a number of one-on-one meetings with rank-and-file lawmakers, seeking votes needed to pass the tax package. Quinn entered the House chamber shortly after the vote to thank representatives who voted for the plan.
House passage of the income tax hike came after representatives voted 66-51 against a plan to boost the state’s 98-cent-per-pack cigarette tax by $1.01. The cigarette tax hike would have been earmarked to provide more than $300 million in new spending for schools, a provision sought by African-American lawmakers in exchange for their backing of a higher income tax.
In trying to sell the tax package, supporters sought to portray a sense of urgency, saying the failure to act to fill a $15 billion budget deficit, including a looming $8 billion in overdue bills, would lead to the state teetering into insolvency, its bond rating reduced to junk status.
“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die,” said Miller, D-Lynwood, just hours before his collapse.
Under the bill that went to Quinn, the current 3 percent personal income tax rate would go to 5 percent until 2015, when it would drop to 3.75 percent. To gain more support among lawmakers, the plan would further lower the tax rate in 2025 to 3.25 percent.
For businesses, the current 4.8 percent corporate rate would go to 7 percent until 2015, when it would drop to 5.25 percent.
The plan calls for the corporate rate to fall in 2025 to the current 4.8 percent.
The tax increases, which would take effect retroactively to Jan. 1, would raise an estimated $6.5 billion over a full-year period.
In addition, the measure would attempt to limit spending in each of the next four budget years — $36.8 billion in the 2012 budget year, $37.5 billion in 2013, $38.3 billion in 2014 and $39 billion in 2015. The state’s auditor general would determine if lawmakers and the governor exceed those spending limits. If the limits are exceeded, the higher income tax rates would revert to current levels.
“This is not a game, not a trick. It’s a real spending cap,” Cullerton said. “We’re really trying to handcuff ourselves and the governor in our spending.”
But Republicans contended the limits would still allow growth in spending at a rate of 2 percent a year over the next four years, rather than require specific cuts to programs in the state budget.
Rep. David Reis, R-Willow Hill, said voters across the country spoke in November, voting for lower taxes and less government. Reis held up a map of Illinois that he said represents how many counties Quinn won in November to show that most of Illinois is against a tax hike, except the three counties Quinn won. "Three-county Quinn," Reis called the governor.
Quinn, who campaigned on a smaller income-tax increase, won Cook County, the state's most populous region, and that propelled him to 47 percent of the vote and victory over Republican Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington. State Board of Elections totals show Quinn winning four counties: Cook, Alexander, Jackson and St. Clair.
Posted at 12:03:10 PM in Governor, Legislature
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2011/01/quinn-on-tax-hike-our-fiscal-house-was-burning.html
But Do Please, Brer Madigan, Don’t Fling Me in Dat Springfield Brier-Patch
Jim Leahy 11 January 2011
You have to hand it to Speaker Madigan, knowing the political landscape and the way the last election went he is going to pass a tax increase and still let some Democrats look like fiscal conservatives. Yes he and the Governor float a huge 75% and of course the voters hit the roof. But for the last few days Madigan has allowed some of suburban and downstate members come out aggressively against big spending and government expansion.
So now when the tax increase comes out as a paltry 40% or so every one of these Democrats in the next election can use the footage of them demanding that the “Needed increase” be reduced and spending caps be put into place. How much better can things get for a Democrat? They get more money to pay for their huge spending over the last decade with huge tax increases and still will be able to claim fiscal conservatism! Wow! And the media is doing it’s job by providing the camera time for the members from red areas. Providing cover for past spending with questions like “is this something like a trigger being put into place that if you over spend the tax increase is nullified?” Or “Does this mean you can stomach a tax increase if they put a hold on spending?”
My own Representative Karen May (D-58) has been every where in the media going so far as to put out an email with the following paragraph:
“.Thanks for the encouragement many of you gave to me for the media coverage of my leadership in the House for fiscal sanity as we contemplate revenues to return to us to strong financial health. I will fight down to the final minutes of the 96th General Assembly on Wednesday.” She went on to claim “I also want you to know that on Thursday, the House passed HB 5420, which I co-sponsored, which will implement significant reforms to our Medicaid system, in order to both rein in costs and improve care. The bill will tighten eligibility standards for the Medicaid program, increase the use of managed care, provide payment for performance and increase the use of electronic records. The bill will also increase penalties for Medicaid fraud, and provide for greater responsibility in the payment of claims. The bill is estimated to save the state $774 million over five years, money which can help us pay down our deficit.”
Imagine that, a member of the party that has been in control for over 8 years, and has spent the state into oblivion with huge expansions of government, can say with a straight face she is providing leadership for fiscal sanity! By the time this is over, these Democratic legislators will get awards from tax payer groups for being so fiscally conservative. They saved us from a 75% increase and a increase in the corporate tax rate that would make it the highest in the industrialized world.
The Republican leadership had better get in front of this now by reminding the voters how we got into this mess. Remind voters that the Democrats “significant reforms” were requiring people to prove they lived in Illinois!. My God how fiscally conservative can you get? Maybe next, Republicans and these newly conservative Democrats could demand a list of people enrolled in All Kids or even to get a list of all of the services the state provides? No that’s asking to much don’t you think? One step at a time.
http://www.cdobs.com/archive/featured/but-do-please-brer-madigan-dont-fling-me-in-dat-springfield-brier-patch/
You have to hand it to Speaker Madigan, knowing the political landscape and the way the last election went he is going to pass a tax increase and still let some Democrats look like fiscal conservatives. Yes he and the Governor float a huge 75% and of course the voters hit the roof. But for the last few days Madigan has allowed some of suburban and downstate members come out aggressively against big spending and government expansion.
So now when the tax increase comes out as a paltry 40% or so every one of these Democrats in the next election can use the footage of them demanding that the “Needed increase” be reduced and spending caps be put into place. How much better can things get for a Democrat? They get more money to pay for their huge spending over the last decade with huge tax increases and still will be able to claim fiscal conservatism! Wow! And the media is doing it’s job by providing the camera time for the members from red areas. Providing cover for past spending with questions like “is this something like a trigger being put into place that if you over spend the tax increase is nullified?” Or “Does this mean you can stomach a tax increase if they put a hold on spending?”
My own Representative Karen May (D-58) has been every where in the media going so far as to put out an email with the following paragraph:
“.Thanks for the encouragement many of you gave to me for the media coverage of my leadership in the House for fiscal sanity as we contemplate revenues to return to us to strong financial health. I will fight down to the final minutes of the 96th General Assembly on Wednesday.” She went on to claim “I also want you to know that on Thursday, the House passed HB 5420, which I co-sponsored, which will implement significant reforms to our Medicaid system, in order to both rein in costs and improve care. The bill will tighten eligibility standards for the Medicaid program, increase the use of managed care, provide payment for performance and increase the use of electronic records. The bill will also increase penalties for Medicaid fraud, and provide for greater responsibility in the payment of claims. The bill is estimated to save the state $774 million over five years, money which can help us pay down our deficit.”
Imagine that, a member of the party that has been in control for over 8 years, and has spent the state into oblivion with huge expansions of government, can say with a straight face she is providing leadership for fiscal sanity! By the time this is over, these Democratic legislators will get awards from tax payer groups for being so fiscally conservative. They saved us from a 75% increase and a increase in the corporate tax rate that would make it the highest in the industrialized world.
The Republican leadership had better get in front of this now by reminding the voters how we got into this mess. Remind voters that the Democrats “significant reforms” were requiring people to prove they lived in Illinois!. My God how fiscally conservative can you get? Maybe next, Republicans and these newly conservative Democrats could demand a list of people enrolled in All Kids or even to get a list of all of the services the state provides? No that’s asking to much don’t you think? One step at a time.
http://www.cdobs.com/archive/featured/but-do-please-brer-madigan-dont-fling-me-in-dat-springfield-brier-patch/
Quinn congratulates Democrats on income tax increase
Posted by Ray Long and Monique Garcia at 2:15 a.m.
A triumphant Gov. Pat Quinn congratulated fellow Democrats early today after the Illinois Senate and House sent him a major income tax increase without a single Republican vote in favor.
Quinn smiled and shook hands on the floor of the Senate around 1:30 a.m. after the Senate voted 30-29 for the bill, which would raise the personal income tax-rate by 67 percent and the business income tax rate by 46 percent.
The House passed the bill hours earlier Tuesday night -- likewise without a vote to spare and with nary a Republican in support.
The plan nearly faltered in the Senate when black lawmakers balked at the House’s decision to remove a property-tax relief component from the plan and failure to approve a cigarette tax hike for schools. But Quinn met privately with members of the Senate black caucus, who said he pledged to pump $250 million from the income tax increase into schools for each of the next four years.
"A lot of them are my friends and we worked together in campaigns and we believe in working together in important things that help children," Quinn said when reporters caught up to him after the Senate vote.
Asked if there was a lot of horse trading to win support, Quinn said "not really. Everybody voted their conscience."
Quinn deferred most questions until a news conference scheduled for 10:30 a.m., just hours before lawmakers elected in November were to be sworn in as the General Assembly starts a new session. Democrats relied on the votes of some lame-duck lawmakers to push through the tax increase.
"We were happy that the Senate voted that way and the House did too, and we'll talk about it tomorrow," Quinn said, forgetting that he meant a little later today.
Democrats argued the tax increase was needed to rehabilitate the state’s deadbeat image, but Republicans predicted it would drive businesses out of state.
“We have just come through the worst economic crisis in our lifetime…and we have not paid our bills,” Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, told lawmakers shortly before the vote. “We are going to have to cut…even with this tax. We’re going to have to spend less money then we have in the last two years. And it’s going to be tough. But we are going to have our bills paid.”
Republicans, powerless to stop the Democratic agreement, were left to blame the majority party for lacking the guts to make tough budget choices.
“So here we are in the very end of this lame duck session on a late night putting more burden on the hardworking people of this state,” said Sen. Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon. “Here’s an investment tip, put a lot of money into moving vans.”
“You may think your stabilizing this budget but you’re not,” said Sen. Matt Murphy, R-Palatine. “You’re bankrupting our state with this bill.”
The Senate debate was interrupted shortly before 1 a.m. when a state lawmaker collapsed on the floor of the chamber. State Rep. David Miller, D-Lynwood, was watching the debate near state Sen. James Meeks, D-Chicago, when he collapsed as Republican leader Christine Radogno was making what was expected to be one of the final speeches of the night.
Medical personnel and concerned lawmakers clustered around Miller and then took him out on a stretcher. He appeared to be conscious when he was wheeled out to a waiting ambulance, and the debate resumed. Earlier in the night Miller had voted in favor of the tax plan--because of his unsuccessful bid for state comptroller, Tuesday was his last day in the Legislature.
"I’m a little bit off my game here," said Sen. Christine Radogno, R-Lemont, the Republican leader. "We certainly all hope Rep. Miller is ok."
Radogno went on to say she was glad Democrats were "owning" the blame for the state's dismal budget situation, but she said the spending restrictions in the bill were not good enough.
Earlier in the night the House, expected to be the more difficult place to gain traction, approved the tax measure 60-57.
Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan chided Republicans for their refusal to support the proposal, after he and Democratic leaders who control the Senate spent days negotiating the size and scope of the tax plans behind closed doors with Quinn.
“They're on the sidelines,” Madigan said of Republicans. “They don't want to get on the field of play.”
The Senate, which approved a similar-size tax hike in May 2009 with more of the proceeds going to education, was temporarily hung up over the concerns of the black caucus. But after a meeting with Quinn, Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood, said education funding had been “worked on” with Quinn.
Sen. Emil Jones III, D-Chicago, said black senators received a promise from Quinn that he would designate $250 million more to education over each of the next four years. The money would be generated by the increased income tax and had originally been designated for property tax relief. The final bill eliminated the property tax relief, freeing up those funds, Jones said.
Senators also gave final approval to a House passed plan that would allow the state to borrow nearly $4 billion to make its annual payment for public employee pensions. The House approved the plan last year.
The tax votes were the latest demonstration of a Legislature that has turned increasingly liberal since the November election, coming in the wake of a death penalty ban approved Tuesday and civil unions for gay and straight couples approved last month.
Quinn and Democratic legislative leaders raced to move the tax plan, which would raise the personal tax rate from 3 percent to 5 percent, before a new Legislature with fewer Democrats is seated. At least seven lame-duck Democrats, who will be out of office Wednesday, voted for it.
“Illinois is in crisis, absolute financial crisis, and there is no way we can dig ourselves out of the crisis without increased revenues,” said House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago. “There is no way, no way, we can cut our way out of the deficit we face.”
But Republicans argued that Democrats who have controlled state government since 2003 should make stringent budget cuts before seeking a massive income tax hike during a struggling economy.
“I can’t figure out how this plan does anything for our real problems. Our real problem is spending, the increased spending, the mentality that we have,” said Rep. Roger Eddy, R-Hutsonville. “We’ll continue to throw money into a hole that has no bottom.”
House Democrats twice failed to get the required support from Republicans to approve a massive $8.75 billion borrowing plan aimed at using a portion of new income tax revenue to pay billions of dollars in overdue bills. The measure needed 71 votes because it added to the state’s debt, but it got only 65 votes on a first ballot and 68 on a second.
Sponsoring Rep. Frank Mautino, D-Spring Valley, said failure to pass the borrowing plan would mean it would take up to eight years to pay off providers of state services who have waited months for their money.
Prospects for the tax hike had been questionable throughout the Legislature’s final day as Quinn held a number of one-on-one meetings with rank-and-file lawmakers, seeking votes needed to pass the tax package. Quinn entered the House chamber shortly after the vote to thank representatives who voted for the plan.
House passage of the income tax hike came after representatives voted 66-51 against a plan to boost the state’s 98-cent-per-pack cigarette tax by $1.01. The cigarette tax hike would have been earmarked to provide more than $300 million in new spending for schools, a provision sought by African-American lawmakers in exchange for their backing of a higher income tax.
In trying to sell the tax package, supporters sought to portray a sense of urgency, saying the failure to act to fill a $15 billion budget deficit, including a looming $8 billion in overdue bills, would lead to the state teetering into insolvency, its bond rating reduced to junk status.
“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die,” said Miller, D-Lynwood, just hours before his collapse.
Under the bill that went to Quinn, the current 3 percent personal income tax rate would go to 5 percent until 2015, when it would drop to 3.75 percent. To gain more support among lawmakers, the plan would further lower the tax rate in 2025 to 3.25 percent.
For businesses, the current 4.8 percent corporate rate would go to 7 percent until 2015, when it would drop to 5.25 percent.
The plan calls for the corporate rate to fall in 2025 to the current 4.8 percent.
The tax increases, which would take effect retroactively to Jan. 1, would raise an estimated $6.5 billion over a full-year period.
In addition, the measure would attempt to limit spending in each of the next four budget years — $36.8 billion in the 2012 budget year, $37.5 billion in 2013, $38.3 billion in 2014 and $39 billion in 2015. The state’s auditor general would determine if lawmakers and the governor exceed those spending limits. If the limits are exceeded, the higher income tax rates would revert to current levels.
“This is not a game, not a trick. It’s a real spending cap,” Cullerton said. “We’re really trying to handcuff ourselves and the governor in our spending.”
But Republicans contended the limits would still allow growth in spending at a rate of 2 percent a year over the next four years, rather than require specific cuts to programs in the state budget.
Rep. David Reis, R-Willow Hill, said voters across the country spoke in November, voting for lower taxes and less government. Reis held up a map of Illinois that he said represents how many counties Quinn won in November to show that most of Illinois is against a tax hike, except the three counties Quinn won. "Three-county Quinn," Reis called the governor.
Quinn, who campaigned on a smaller income-tax increase, won Cook County, the state's most populous region, and that propelled him to 47 percent of the vote and victory over Republican Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington. State Board of Elections totals show Quinn winning four counties: Cook, Alexander, Jackson and St. Clair.
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2011/01/quinn-congratulates-democrats-on-income-tax-increase.html
A triumphant Gov. Pat Quinn congratulated fellow Democrats early today after the Illinois Senate and House sent him a major income tax increase without a single Republican vote in favor.
Quinn smiled and shook hands on the floor of the Senate around 1:30 a.m. after the Senate voted 30-29 for the bill, which would raise the personal income tax-rate by 67 percent and the business income tax rate by 46 percent.
The House passed the bill hours earlier Tuesday night -- likewise without a vote to spare and with nary a Republican in support.
The plan nearly faltered in the Senate when black lawmakers balked at the House’s decision to remove a property-tax relief component from the plan and failure to approve a cigarette tax hike for schools. But Quinn met privately with members of the Senate black caucus, who said he pledged to pump $250 million from the income tax increase into schools for each of the next four years.
"A lot of them are my friends and we worked together in campaigns and we believe in working together in important things that help children," Quinn said when reporters caught up to him after the Senate vote.
Asked if there was a lot of horse trading to win support, Quinn said "not really. Everybody voted their conscience."
Quinn deferred most questions until a news conference scheduled for 10:30 a.m., just hours before lawmakers elected in November were to be sworn in as the General Assembly starts a new session. Democrats relied on the votes of some lame-duck lawmakers to push through the tax increase.
"We were happy that the Senate voted that way and the House did too, and we'll talk about it tomorrow," Quinn said, forgetting that he meant a little later today.
Democrats argued the tax increase was needed to rehabilitate the state’s deadbeat image, but Republicans predicted it would drive businesses out of state.
“We have just come through the worst economic crisis in our lifetime…and we have not paid our bills,” Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, told lawmakers shortly before the vote. “We are going to have to cut…even with this tax. We’re going to have to spend less money then we have in the last two years. And it’s going to be tough. But we are going to have our bills paid.”
Republicans, powerless to stop the Democratic agreement, were left to blame the majority party for lacking the guts to make tough budget choices.
“So here we are in the very end of this lame duck session on a late night putting more burden on the hardworking people of this state,” said Sen. Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon. “Here’s an investment tip, put a lot of money into moving vans.”
“You may think your stabilizing this budget but you’re not,” said Sen. Matt Murphy, R-Palatine. “You’re bankrupting our state with this bill.”
The Senate debate was interrupted shortly before 1 a.m. when a state lawmaker collapsed on the floor of the chamber. State Rep. David Miller, D-Lynwood, was watching the debate near state Sen. James Meeks, D-Chicago, when he collapsed as Republican leader Christine Radogno was making what was expected to be one of the final speeches of the night.
Medical personnel and concerned lawmakers clustered around Miller and then took him out on a stretcher. He appeared to be conscious when he was wheeled out to a waiting ambulance, and the debate resumed. Earlier in the night Miller had voted in favor of the tax plan--because of his unsuccessful bid for state comptroller, Tuesday was his last day in the Legislature.
"I’m a little bit off my game here," said Sen. Christine Radogno, R-Lemont, the Republican leader. "We certainly all hope Rep. Miller is ok."
Radogno went on to say she was glad Democrats were "owning" the blame for the state's dismal budget situation, but she said the spending restrictions in the bill were not good enough.
Earlier in the night the House, expected to be the more difficult place to gain traction, approved the tax measure 60-57.
Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan chided Republicans for their refusal to support the proposal, after he and Democratic leaders who control the Senate spent days negotiating the size and scope of the tax plans behind closed doors with Quinn.
“They're on the sidelines,” Madigan said of Republicans. “They don't want to get on the field of play.”
The Senate, which approved a similar-size tax hike in May 2009 with more of the proceeds going to education, was temporarily hung up over the concerns of the black caucus. But after a meeting with Quinn, Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood, said education funding had been “worked on” with Quinn.
Sen. Emil Jones III, D-Chicago, said black senators received a promise from Quinn that he would designate $250 million more to education over each of the next four years. The money would be generated by the increased income tax and had originally been designated for property tax relief. The final bill eliminated the property tax relief, freeing up those funds, Jones said.
Senators also gave final approval to a House passed plan that would allow the state to borrow nearly $4 billion to make its annual payment for public employee pensions. The House approved the plan last year.
The tax votes were the latest demonstration of a Legislature that has turned increasingly liberal since the November election, coming in the wake of a death penalty ban approved Tuesday and civil unions for gay and straight couples approved last month.
Quinn and Democratic legislative leaders raced to move the tax plan, which would raise the personal tax rate from 3 percent to 5 percent, before a new Legislature with fewer Democrats is seated. At least seven lame-duck Democrats, who will be out of office Wednesday, voted for it.
“Illinois is in crisis, absolute financial crisis, and there is no way we can dig ourselves out of the crisis without increased revenues,” said House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago. “There is no way, no way, we can cut our way out of the deficit we face.”
But Republicans argued that Democrats who have controlled state government since 2003 should make stringent budget cuts before seeking a massive income tax hike during a struggling economy.
“I can’t figure out how this plan does anything for our real problems. Our real problem is spending, the increased spending, the mentality that we have,” said Rep. Roger Eddy, R-Hutsonville. “We’ll continue to throw money into a hole that has no bottom.”
House Democrats twice failed to get the required support from Republicans to approve a massive $8.75 billion borrowing plan aimed at using a portion of new income tax revenue to pay billions of dollars in overdue bills. The measure needed 71 votes because it added to the state’s debt, but it got only 65 votes on a first ballot and 68 on a second.
Sponsoring Rep. Frank Mautino, D-Spring Valley, said failure to pass the borrowing plan would mean it would take up to eight years to pay off providers of state services who have waited months for their money.
Prospects for the tax hike had been questionable throughout the Legislature’s final day as Quinn held a number of one-on-one meetings with rank-and-file lawmakers, seeking votes needed to pass the tax package. Quinn entered the House chamber shortly after the vote to thank representatives who voted for the plan.
House passage of the income tax hike came after representatives voted 66-51 against a plan to boost the state’s 98-cent-per-pack cigarette tax by $1.01. The cigarette tax hike would have been earmarked to provide more than $300 million in new spending for schools, a provision sought by African-American lawmakers in exchange for their backing of a higher income tax.
In trying to sell the tax package, supporters sought to portray a sense of urgency, saying the failure to act to fill a $15 billion budget deficit, including a looming $8 billion in overdue bills, would lead to the state teetering into insolvency, its bond rating reduced to junk status.
“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die,” said Miller, D-Lynwood, just hours before his collapse.
Under the bill that went to Quinn, the current 3 percent personal income tax rate would go to 5 percent until 2015, when it would drop to 3.75 percent. To gain more support among lawmakers, the plan would further lower the tax rate in 2025 to 3.25 percent.
For businesses, the current 4.8 percent corporate rate would go to 7 percent until 2015, when it would drop to 5.25 percent.
The plan calls for the corporate rate to fall in 2025 to the current 4.8 percent.
The tax increases, which would take effect retroactively to Jan. 1, would raise an estimated $6.5 billion over a full-year period.
In addition, the measure would attempt to limit spending in each of the next four budget years — $36.8 billion in the 2012 budget year, $37.5 billion in 2013, $38.3 billion in 2014 and $39 billion in 2015. The state’s auditor general would determine if lawmakers and the governor exceed those spending limits. If the limits are exceeded, the higher income tax rates would revert to current levels.
“This is not a game, not a trick. It’s a real spending cap,” Cullerton said. “We’re really trying to handcuff ourselves and the governor in our spending.”
But Republicans contended the limits would still allow growth in spending at a rate of 2 percent a year over the next four years, rather than require specific cuts to programs in the state budget.
Rep. David Reis, R-Willow Hill, said voters across the country spoke in November, voting for lower taxes and less government. Reis held up a map of Illinois that he said represents how many counties Quinn won in November to show that most of Illinois is against a tax hike, except the three counties Quinn won. "Three-county Quinn," Reis called the governor.
Quinn, who campaigned on a smaller income-tax increase, won Cook County, the state's most populous region, and that propelled him to 47 percent of the vote and victory over Republican Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington. State Board of Elections totals show Quinn winning four counties: Cook, Alexander, Jackson and St. Clair.
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2011/01/quinn-congratulates-democrats-on-income-tax-increase.html
Tribune Editorial-Goodbye, jobs
At least 1/11/11 will be easy to remember. On that day, with the state of Illinois mired at 48th place nationwide in job creation, Democratic leaders dragged through the lame-duck House a tax plan sure to make many employers do their hiring somewhere else.
We'll leave to the Tax Foundation and other data outfits the task of calibrating precisely how much more uncompetitive Illinois becomes if the Senate passes and Gov. Pat Quinn signs this fiasco into law. Quinn and the rank-and-file Democrats who launched the enormous tax grab will own what happens next. So will House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton. Governors such as Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Scott Walker of Wisconsin, their treasuries already enriched by refugee employers who've fled Illinois, should send the Springfield Democrats orchids and champagne.
Those Illinois Democrats have, for two do-little years, dodged a choice: Reduce spending, raise taxes, or enact some mix of the two. Cutting overhead would offend their friends in the public employee unions and other pet constituencies. Ask retired state workers to pay something for their health care? Cap employee pensions? Perish the thought.
So — get this — not only are they raising taxes to avoid budget cuts, they're including a provision to let their spending continue to rise — year after year.
We hoped for smarter legislating Tuesday night as we watched debate unfold in the House. One after another, representatives rose to expose that central flaw — among many strong contenders — in the Democratic tax plan. The bill, falsely advertised as fiscal discipline, is "designed to increase spending," thundered Rep. Jack Franks of Woodstock, one of a few outlier Democrats to vote against the bill. "This legislation will merely continue to feed the beast."
Find us an employer, or a potential employer, who doesn't awaken Wednesday thinking, "They spent and borrowed Illinois into penury, they refused to cut spending as I have, and now my workers and I are supposed to pay for all that?"
Some will, of course. Not every company can leave. But many big employers can see where they're welcome and where they're tax fodder for arrogant pols.
Remember that Illinois needs 600,000 more people working to restore employment to the level it was a decade ago. Then burn 1/11/11 into your brain — along with the phrase "Goodbye, jobs."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-legislature-0112-bd-20110111,0,4534433.story
We'll leave to the Tax Foundation and other data outfits the task of calibrating precisely how much more uncompetitive Illinois becomes if the Senate passes and Gov. Pat Quinn signs this fiasco into law. Quinn and the rank-and-file Democrats who launched the enormous tax grab will own what happens next. So will House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton. Governors such as Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Scott Walker of Wisconsin, their treasuries already enriched by refugee employers who've fled Illinois, should send the Springfield Democrats orchids and champagne.
Those Illinois Democrats have, for two do-little years, dodged a choice: Reduce spending, raise taxes, or enact some mix of the two. Cutting overhead would offend their friends in the public employee unions and other pet constituencies. Ask retired state workers to pay something for their health care? Cap employee pensions? Perish the thought.
So — get this — not only are they raising taxes to avoid budget cuts, they're including a provision to let their spending continue to rise — year after year.
We hoped for smarter legislating Tuesday night as we watched debate unfold in the House. One after another, representatives rose to expose that central flaw — among many strong contenders — in the Democratic tax plan. The bill, falsely advertised as fiscal discipline, is "designed to increase spending," thundered Rep. Jack Franks of Woodstock, one of a few outlier Democrats to vote against the bill. "This legislation will merely continue to feed the beast."
Find us an employer, or a potential employer, who doesn't awaken Wednesday thinking, "They spent and borrowed Illinois into penury, they refused to cut spending as I have, and now my workers and I are supposed to pay for all that?"
Some will, of course. Not every company can leave. But many big employers can see where they're welcome and where they're tax fodder for arrogant pols.
Remember that Illinois needs 600,000 more people working to restore employment to the level it was a decade ago. Then burn 1/11/11 into your brain — along with the phrase "Goodbye, jobs."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-legislature-0112-bd-20110111,0,4534433.story
Monday, January 10, 2011
Daniels: Illinois tax hikes good for Indiana
By Dan Carden
INDIANAPOLIS | Gov. Mitch Daniels thinks Illinois' proposed 75 percent hike in its corporate and personal income tax rates will be great -- for Indiana.
In an exclusive interview Friday with The Times, the Republican governor said he looks forward to welcoming to the Hoosier State any Illinois business or resident that wants to pay less in taxes.
"We already had an edge on Illinois in terms of the cost of doing business, and this is going to make it significantly wider," Daniels said.
Illinois lawmakers are poised to vote next week on a plan that will raise the state's personal income tax rate to 5.25 percent from 3 percent, hike the corporate income and personal property replacement tax rates to a combined 10.9 percent and add an extra tax of $1 per pack of cigarettes. The income tax hikes would be retroactive to Jan. 1 and be reduced after four years.
Hoosiers pay a 3.4 personal income tax rate, while Indiana's corporate income tax rate is 8.5 percent.
The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group in Washington, noted if the proposed corporate tax hike becomes law, Illinois businesses will pay the highest combined national-local corporate tax rate in the industrialized world.
That is the wrong course for Illinois to take, Daniels said.
"Folks in Illinois will eventually have to decide: Is this working well enough for us or do we want something different?" he said. "Point one of our anti-recession strategy here is to avoid doing what they've now decided to do."
Daniels has enacted deep budget cuts and eliminated many government programs to keep Indiana's budget balanced without a tax hike during his six years in office.
The money raised by the Illinois tax increases will help the state pay some $8.5 billion in overdue bills and make a $3.7 billion payment owed to government worker pension funds. Schools also would receive additional funding while property taxpayers would get a small annual rebate.
Despite the tax increase, Daniels said he's pleased to see Illinois finally may start paying its bills.
"That's just borrowing by a different name. They've been borrowing from the poor businesses that are suckers enough to do business with the state," he said.
Daniels also said he's surprised that two states as geographically and historically similar as Indiana and Illinois could be in such dissimilar financial shape.
"It does show that you can make very different choices, and the contrast between the choice we've made and the one they have is stark," he said. "Obviously I think ours is wiser, but self-governance means people get what they vote for."
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/state-and-regional/illinois/article_27130bf0-6ebf-529f-9e40-4b8c9f205f93.html#
INDIANAPOLIS | Gov. Mitch Daniels thinks Illinois' proposed 75 percent hike in its corporate and personal income tax rates will be great -- for Indiana.
In an exclusive interview Friday with The Times, the Republican governor said he looks forward to welcoming to the Hoosier State any Illinois business or resident that wants to pay less in taxes.
"We already had an edge on Illinois in terms of the cost of doing business, and this is going to make it significantly wider," Daniels said.
Illinois lawmakers are poised to vote next week on a plan that will raise the state's personal income tax rate to 5.25 percent from 3 percent, hike the corporate income and personal property replacement tax rates to a combined 10.9 percent and add an extra tax of $1 per pack of cigarettes. The income tax hikes would be retroactive to Jan. 1 and be reduced after four years.
Hoosiers pay a 3.4 personal income tax rate, while Indiana's corporate income tax rate is 8.5 percent.
The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group in Washington, noted if the proposed corporate tax hike becomes law, Illinois businesses will pay the highest combined national-local corporate tax rate in the industrialized world.
That is the wrong course for Illinois to take, Daniels said.
"Folks in Illinois will eventually have to decide: Is this working well enough for us or do we want something different?" he said. "Point one of our anti-recession strategy here is to avoid doing what they've now decided to do."
Daniels has enacted deep budget cuts and eliminated many government programs to keep Indiana's budget balanced without a tax hike during his six years in office.
The money raised by the Illinois tax increases will help the state pay some $8.5 billion in overdue bills and make a $3.7 billion payment owed to government worker pension funds. Schools also would receive additional funding while property taxpayers would get a small annual rebate.
Despite the tax increase, Daniels said he's pleased to see Illinois finally may start paying its bills.
"That's just borrowing by a different name. They've been borrowing from the poor businesses that are suckers enough to do business with the state," he said.
Daniels also said he's surprised that two states as geographically and historically similar as Indiana and Illinois could be in such dissimilar financial shape.
"It does show that you can make very different choices, and the contrast between the choice we've made and the one they have is stark," he said. "Obviously I think ours is wiser, but self-governance means people get what they vote for."
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/state-and-regional/illinois/article_27130bf0-6ebf-529f-9e40-4b8c9f205f93.html#
The progressive “climate of hate:” An illustrated primer, 2000-2010
By Michelle Malkin • January 10, 2011 03:19 AM
The Tuscon massacre ghouls who are now trying to criminalize conservatism have forced our hand.
They need to be reminded. You need to be reminded.
Confront them. Don’t be cowed into silence.
And don’t let the media whitewash the sins of the hypocritical Left in their naked attempt to suppress the law-abiding, constitutionally-protected, peaceful, vigorous political speech of the Right.
They want to play tu quo que in the middle of a national tragedy? They asked for it. They got it.
***
The progressive climate of hate: A comprehensive illustrated primer in 8 parts:
I. PALIN HATE
II. BUSH HATE
III. MISC. TEA PARTY/GOP/ANTI-TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE HATE
IV. ANTI-CONSERVATIVE FEMALE HATE
V. LEFT-WING MOB HATE — campus, anti-war radicals, ACORN, eco-extremists, & unions
VI. OPEN-BORDERS HATE
VII. ANTI-MILITARY HATE
VIII. HATE: CRIMES — the ever-growing Unhinged Mugshot Collection
***
I. PALIN HATE
Flashback — pointing a fake gun at the head of a Sarah Palin likeness sitting next to a cardboard cutout of her daughter in a museum display
Getty has since yanked the photo, but as one commenter who saw the photo at Getty’s site before it was yanked noted: “To see that image presented as if it were completely normal and purchasable was shocking.”
Flashback — trendy “ABORT Sarah Palin” stickers:
Flashback — Palin-hating artwork designating her an “M.I.L.P.” (Mother I’d Like to Punch). Hat tip: Edge of Forever:
Flashback — Palin Derangement Syndrome mobsters in Philly: “Let’s stone her, old school”
Flashback — Madonna bashing Sarah Palin and shrieking “I will kick her ass:”
Flashback — Sandra Bernhard bashing Sarah Palin and cursing her head off with hate warping her crazed face:
Flashback — Why Sarah Palin Incites Near-Violent Rage In Normally Reasonable Women.
Flashback — the Democratic Underground indulging in name-calling the MSM ignores:
Reader Monica M. sent me a link to the Democratic Underground’s latest thread for commenters to come up with nicknames and posters to slime GOP Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — and then to “spread [them] all over the ‘net.” There are now nearly 100 filthy, hate-filled responses and counting. Among the “nicer” entries: “Cruella,” “Gidget,” “Governor Jesus Camp,” “VPILF,” “Fertilla the Huntress,” “Iditabroad,” and “KILLER PYSCHO FUNDIE BITCH FROM HELL!!”
…Peer with me further into the liberal sinkhole again and behold P.D.S. in full bloom. Note that this site is raising money for Barack Obama and that an ad for their fundraiser appears at the top of the thread. Is Obama going to accept their cash? Know your enemy:
…The Photoshop entries getting thumbs up from DU commenters:
Flashback — “F**k the rich:” Class-war arsonist on the loose
Flashback — Anti-war, anti-Bush loons attack girl in wheelchair
Flashback — Gems from Journolist…“F—ing Nascar retards…”; “Sarah Spitz, producer of the KCRW public radio program ‘Left, Right and Center,’ which is heard on a number of NPR stations across the country, wrote on JournoList that if she witnessed Limbaugh dying of a heart attack, she would ‘laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out.’”
Flashback — “I hope Glenn Beck kills himself”
Flashback — The Democrat Rep. Pete Stark Raving Mad archive
Flashback — Malik Zulu Shabazz, “Prepare for war”
Flashback — 2007 New Black Panther Party block party rap: “bang for freedom,” “put the bang right into a cracker’s face,” and if you’re going to bang, bang for black power… hang a cracker [unintelligible] . . .if you’re going to bang, bang on the white devil. . . . burying him near the river bank with the right shovel. . . . community revolution in progress…. banging for crackers to go to hell, we don’t need em:”
Flashback — The insane rage of the same-sex marriage mob
Before election day, national media hand-wringers forged a wildly popular narrative: The Right was, in the words of New York Times’ columnist Paul Krugman, gripped by “insane rage.” Outbreaks of incivility (some real, but mostly imagined) were proof positive of the extremist takeover of the Republican Party. The cluck-cluckers and tut-tutters shook in fear.
But when the GOP took a beating on Nov. 4, no mass protests ensued. No nationwide boycotts erupted. Conservatives took their lumps and began the peaceful post-defeat process of self-flagellation, self-analysis, and self-autopsy. In fact, there’s only one angry mob gripped by “insane rage” in the wake of campaign 2008: The mob of left-wing, same-sex marriage activists incensed at their defeat in California. Voters there approved a traditional marriage initiative, Proposition 8, by 52-48.
Instead of introspection and self-criticism, however, the sore losers who opposed Prop. 8 have responded with threats, fists, and blacklists.
That’s right. Activists have published an “Anti-Gay Black List” of Prop. 8 donors on the Internet. If the tables had been turned and Prop. 8 proponents created such an enemies’ list, everyone in Hollywood would be screaming “McCarthyism” faster than you can count to eight. A Los Angeles restaurant whose manager made a small donation to the Prop. 8 campaign has been besieged nightly by hordes of protesters who have disrupted the business, intimidated patrons, and brought employees there to tears. In fear for their jobs and their lives, workers at El Coyote Mexican Café pooled together $500 to pay off the bullies.
Scott Eckern, a beleaguered artistic director at the California Musical Theatre, was forced to resign over his $1,000 donation to the Prop. 8 campaign. The director of the Los Angeles Film Festival, Rich Raddon, is next on the chopping block after the anti-Prop. 8 mob discovered that he had also contributed to the Yes on 8 campaign. Calls have been pouring in for his firing.
Over the past two weeks, anti-Prop. 8 organizers have targeted Mormon, Catholic, and evangelical churches. Sentiments like this one, found on the anti-Prop.8 website “JoeMyGod,” are common across the left-wing blogosphere: “Burn their f—ing churches to the ground, and then tax the charred timbers.” Thousands of gay-rights demonstrators stood in front of the Mormon temple in Los Angeles shouting “Mormon scum.” The Mormon headquarters in Salt Lake City received threatening letters containing an unidentified powder. Religious-bashing protesters filled with hate decried the “hate” at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif. Vandals defaced the Calvary Chapel in Chino Hills, Calif., because church members had collected Prop. 8 petitions. One worshiper’s car was keyed with the slogans “Gay sex is love” and “SEX;” another car’s antenna and windshield wipers were broken.
Anti-Prop. 8 radicals chase Christian evangelists out of San Francisco’s Castro district:
Anti-Prop. 8 radicals stomp on elderly Prop. 8 supporter’s cross:
Flashback — Anti-Prop. 8 mob rings in 2009 with more church vandalism
Flashback — Climate of hate: More threats from the gay marriage mob
Flashback — NYTimes finally acknowledges that anti-Prop. 8 mob is harassing traditional marriage supporters
IV. ANTI-CONSERVATIVE FEMALE HATE
Flashback — The Playboy hatef**k list (screencapped in full here – NSFW)
Flashback — Sex, Violence and Hate: the Top 10 Most Disgusting Attacks on Conservative Women
Flashback — Montel Williams to GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann:
WILLIAMS (1:30:32): Michele, slit your wrist.
Go ahead… or, do us all a better thing [sic].
Move that knife up about two feet.
Start right at the collarbone.
Flashback — The four stages of conservative female abuse
Flashback — The Ladies of the Spew “bitch” and moan
Flashback — Laura Bush hatred at the SFChronicle
Flashback — Another day, another hate wish
Flashback — “The bitch is dead meat.”
V. LEFT-WING MOB HATE — campus, anti-war radicals, ACORN, eco-extremists & unions
Left-wing mob shuts down speech at Columbia University…
Left-wing mob shuts down speech at UNC-Chapel Hill…
Left-wing mob blocks military shipments in Olympia, WA…
Left-wing mob illegally trespasses and breaks into a home in Baltimore in the name of “social justice”…
Left-wing SEIU/NPA mob descends on D.C. bank exec’s home, harasses son
Flashback — March 2009 – The rule of the mob:
Animal rights’ terrorists have firebombed researchers’ homes and Molotov cocktail-bombed their cars and been convicted of inciting threats, harassment, and vandalism against employees of a private company engaged in animal research.
Environmental terrorists have set developments on fire.
Self-proclaimed “bank terrorist” Bruce Marks, who I reported on last March, has been threatening bank employees in their homes and harassing their children for years:
IT MAY SEEM LIKE AN UNUSUAL CHOICE, given that Marks is a controversial character who once infamously called himself a “bank terrorist.” But this is no ordinary time, and it seems uniquely suited to Marks’s curious blend of in-your-face activism, customer-focused service, Machiavellian angling, and social-justice passion.
Over the years, as part of his permanent campaign to browbeat banks into giving fair loans to low- and moderate-income people, Marks and his yellow-T-shirted followers have swarmed shareholders’ meetings with enough force to shut them down. They have picketed outside the schools attended by the children of bank CEOs, pressing the youngsters in signs and chants to answer for the actions of their daddies. And they even once distributed scandal sheets to every house in one CEO’s neighborhood, detailing the affair he was allegedly having with a subordinate. In time, that CEO, like most of the others that NACA targeted, sat down with Marks and signed a deal.
To those who found his tactics an outrageous invasion of bank executives’ personal lives, Marks refused to acknowledge any line between home and work. “What you do is who you are,” he says. “It’s all personal.”
And last weekend, of course, the ACORN mob chartered a bus — with twice as many outrage-stoking MSM photographers in tow — to menace AIG executives in their homes.
Flashback — The Green War on Children
Flashback — Torch-wielding leftists at UC Berkeley attack chancellor’s home
Flashback — Campus chaos: Social justice mobsters attack police, smash windows over tuition hikes; Update: “Who’s (sic) schools?”
Flashback — The left-wing bullies in Robert Reich’s backyard
Flashback — Big Labor’s legacy of violence
VI. OPEN-BORDERS HATE
Flashback — August 2010…An open-borders activist smacks a man with a camera covering the Arizona state capitol protest over SB 1070…
Flashback — November 2009…Far Left’s ANSWER goons attack foes of illegal immigration
The slogan on the back of a protesting Puerto Rican singer from the band Calle 13 says “Luz verde para invadir Arizona.” Translation: “Green light to invade Arizona:”
“Smash the state”…
Flashback — The May Day angry mob you won’t see…
Escalating violence in the name of mass illegal alien amnesty…
They came, they saw, they threatened or committed violence in the name of open borders and workers’ rights. But alas, Frank Rich and Paul Krugman’s columns decrying the insane rage and hate of the May Day angry mob got lost in the mail.
In Santa Cruz, they carried torches and vandalized at least 18 businesses:
Downtown business owners spent Sunday repairing shattered windows and doors after a May Day rally Saturday night turned into a riot with approximately 250 people marching along Pacific Avenue, some carrying makeshift torches, throwing large rocks and paint bombs, and spray-painting walls with graffiti.
At least 18 businesses suffered damage during the rally in honor of international workers that began at 9 p.m. and escalated into mayhem around 10:30 p.m., police said. Investigators estimated damage at $100,000, though some business owners said it could be more. No injuries were reported.
On Sunday, sea green-colored glass littered sidewalks where windows and glass doors had been smashed. Maintenance workers, many getting called in the middle of the night, boarded up windows with plywood until new sheets of glass could be installed.
The vandalized businesses included Urban Outfitters, Peet’s Coffee, Noah’s Bagels, Jamba Juice, Velvet Underground and Dell Williams Jewelers. The unoccupied Rittenhouse building also was damaged. A police car was vandalized with rocks and paint, department spokesman Zach Friend said.
In San Francisco, anti-illegal immigration activists were attacked by the May Day marchers:
LISA AMIN GULEZIAN, REPORTER: Allan, for the most part the event was peaceful, but just about an hour ago, three people were attacked and two others were arrested. The people who were assaulted were part of the Minutemen demonstration in favor of Arizona’s new immigration law.
They said a large group of immigrants’ rights supporters followed them to the BART station on Market Street and started punching and kicking them, and calling them names.
PARKER WILSON, BAY AREA ANARCHIST: They said we were racists, and that we were against them, and against their town, and against San Francisco, and what they were saying. They said we needed to get out and they called us racists, and that we need to go home. And then they just attacked my friends and me.
Flashback — The American flag comes second…
VII. ANTI-MILITARY HATE
January 20, 2005. At Seattle Central Community College, Army recruiter Sgt. Jeff Due and his colleague, Sgt. 1st Class Douglas Washington were surrounded by an angry mob of 500 anti-war students. The recruiters’ table was destroyed; their handouts torn apart. The protesters threw water bottles and newspapers at the soldiers, shouted profanities, and wielded their fists. The far Left Students Against War had been agitating to kick the recruiters off campus. The college administration refused to punish the mobsters.
Jan. 31, 2005. A little more than a week after the Seattle ambush, a shockingly fair and rare report from the NYT disclosed that recruiters in Manhattan reported that a door to their office had been beaten in. Anarchist symbols were scrawled in red paint on the building. On the same day, NY police collared a young Manhattan College junior and charged him with throwing a burning rag into an Army recruiting station and ruining the door locks with super glue. The radical student “was caught carrying a handwritten note declaring that a ‘wave of violence’ would occur throughout the Northeast on January 31, aimed at the ‘military industrial complex’ in response to American military actions.’”
Feb. 1, 2005. At a South Toledo, Ohio recruitment center, unhinged protesters hurled manure all over the building. They broke windows and sprayed vulgar grafitti — “War is Shit” — on office property. An e-mail sent to local TV station WTOL-TV by a group calling itself, yes, “War is Shit,” claimed responsibility for the property destruction. The crapweasels were never caught. WTOL reported:
“If they don’t like this country that much they should do it the right way by changing with votes. Shouldn’t do it with actions like that,” said Steve Klostermeier, a bystander. Mike Gibson agreed, saying, “I think it’s terrible. I think they’re blaming the people who fought to give them the right to do stuff like that. They should have the courage to stand up and say it rather than doing stuff like that.”
Mid-Feb. 2005. 20-year-old anti-war goon Brendan Walsh is sentenced to five years in federal prison for hurling a Molotov cocktail through the window of a Vestal, NY military recruitment office in 2003. Celebrated as a hero to the anti-war/anarchist movement, he pleaded guilty to charges of attempting to damage or destroy a building by arson and was expected to be released to a halfway house last month.
…April 2006. The infamous UC Santa Cruz ambush on military recruiters takes place. The thugs gloated about throwing a rock at the recruiters’ SUV. Recruiters, who had been similarly driven off campus the previous year, reported slashed tires. One employee at the career center was injured in the melee. Photos here. The capitulationist campus administration had known in advance about the ambush plans and did nothing. Instead of condemning the speech-stifling lawlessness of the anti-war mob, unhinged sympathizers attacked me for publishing the public contact information of the thugs’ propaganda officers and also outrageoulsy blamed me for the subsequent suicide of the troubled UC Santa Cruz president, Denice Denton. They continue to lie about what happened.
Just a few weeks later, more anti-recruitment attacks break out. A reader alerted me to this vandalism at UNC Chapel-Hill and sent photos taken by her son, an ROTC cadet on campus:
Then, in Minnesota, via the Minneapolis Star Tribune
S-T caption: Three people were apprehended this afternoon by police after pouring paint on an Army recruiting station near the University of Minnesota during an antiwar demonstration.
…In Maryland, anti-recruiter vandals smashed a Rockville Air Force recruitment center:
…In Maryland, anti-recruiter vandals smashed a Rockville Air Force recruitment center:
In an attempt to discover how a bunch of murdering cowards like the US Air Force enjoy finding themselves on the other end of some flying projectiles for a change, at around 3:00 AM this morning an autonomous cell of the Red & Anarchist Action Network (RAAN) used bricks and other common household items to smash the shit out of the Air Force recruiting center in Rockville, Maryland. Do we even need to explain the motivation for our actions? A shout out to our comrades from the Borf: Revolution or Bust Faction (BORFROBF), who late last year gave a similar treatment to the military recruitment center in Silver Spring. Consider this a modest response to your “dare to those here in the heart of the imperial beast to step it up”. In suburbs so hollow, may the echo of our actions be long and loud! Big ups to all those out there who claim RAAN. Fuck them haters who don’t realize we are but a few of the millions of ant’s bites which can topple this elephant once and for all. No war but class war, communism or bust! IT’S A DO OR DIE SITUATION – WE WILL BE INVINCIBLE!
And in Lufkin, TX, , Army and Navy recruiters were the targets of vandals who keyed their cars, smashed their windows, and shot at their vehicles with “with what appeared to be a high-powered pellet gun.”
Jan. 2007. Anti-war radicals lay siege to the US Capitol and smash windows at the recruitment center on 14th and L.
Pittsburgh anti-recruiter organizers shut down a military recruitment station for a whole day. They brandish hateful signs like this:
August 2007. In New England: Suspect charged with leaving fake bomb at recruitment office.
A city man was arrested Tuesday on charges that he twice left a fake bomb package at a military recruitment office, police said. Francis Monaghan, 68, was charged with two counts of first-degree breach of peace, a felony, and two counts of reckless endangerment, said Lt. Sean Cooney. “He made certain incriminating statements,” Cooney said. “He did express some anti-war feelings. We think that was at least partially his motivation.” Monaghan was being held on $100,000 bond. An envelope slipped into the recruiting station mailbox on Bedford Street Monday morning contained batteries and other “bomb-making components,” Cooney said. The package was nearly identical to an envelope left at the same U.S. Army/U.S. Air Force station last months, police said. Both bore “unusual writing” and were placed in the station’s mailbox, Cooney said.
September 2007. The far Left group, Iraq Veterans Against the War calls on followers to commit fraud to interfere with military recruiters. The sabotage action was part of a larger, coordinated campaign with the International ANSWER racket to obstruct military recruitment centers in Washington and across the country. Other socialist partners in crime:
http://www.notyoursoldier.org/
http://www.warresisters.org/
http://www.afsc.org/youthmil
Anti-war punks shut down the Times Square recruitment station:
The New York chapter of the War Resisters League kicked off a week of actions against military recruitment in New York by shutting down the Times Square Recruiting Station Saturday morning. Three members of the WRL were arrested, but the recruiting station remained closed for the rest of the day as the WRL maintained its presence there, joined in the afternoon by the Rude Mechanical Orchestra. The three arrestees were charged with disorderly conduct and released four hours later.
October 2007. Code Pink defaces the Berkeley recruitment center, branding our troops as assassins:
June 2009: And now this: Shooting at military recruiting center; 1 dead, 1 wounded; suspect is anti-military Muslim convert
VIII. And finally, the ever-growing Unhinged Mugshot Collection
Gainsville, Fla., Democrat David P. McCally was charged with battery after he allegedly barged into a local GOP office, assaulted a cardboard cutout of President Bush, and punched a local Republican chairman in September 2004. (Credit: Alachua County Jail.)
In March 2004, Carol Lang, a campus secretary at City College in New York, reportedly assaulted a police officer trying to arrest unruly anti-war protesters. Police arrested Lang and charged her with second-degree assault, disorderly conduct, and obstructing governmental administration. (Credit: New York Police Department.)
At the same protest at which Carol Lang was arrested, police arrested students Justin Rodriguez, left, and Nicholas Bergreen. They charged Rodriguez with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. They charged Bergreen with assaulting a police officer. (Credit: New York Police Department.)
Police arrested Corey Robert Cooke of Ellicott City, Md., in September 2004 and charged him with malicious destruction of property after he allegedly used a power tool to cut down a Bush-Cheney sign. (Credit: Howard County Police Department.)
Howard County, Md., police arrested Peter Lizon, left, and Stephanie Louise Lizon in October 2004 and charged them with malicious destruction of property. Mr. Lizon allegedly destroyed Bush-Cheney signs with a bayonet. His wife allegedly acted as the lookout. (Credit: Howard County Police.)
Nashville police arrested Andrew Thurman, left, and Frederick Stevenson in Septmeber 2004 and charged them with theft and unlawful weapons possession after they found guns and 71 Bush-Cheney signs in Thurman’s car. Policy say they stole the signs from Nashville, Tenn., yards because Thurman was angry at President Bush for sending his brother to Iraq. (Credit: Nashville Police Department.)
Nathan Winkler of Tampa, Fla., was arrested and charged with aggravated stalking in March 2005 for allegedly terrorizing a mother who had a Bush-Cheney bumper sticker on her car. Click on the video here to listen to an excerpt of the mother’s frantic call to 911. Winkler reportedly had a handmade sign in his window that read, “Never forget Bush’s illegal oil war murdered thousands in Iraq.” (Credit: Tampa Police Department.)
Florida Democrat Barry Seltzer allegedly tried to run down congresswoman Katherine Harris with his Cadillac as she was campaigning in Sarasota, Fla., in October 2004. See the arrest report here. (Credit: Sarasota Police Department via The Smoking Gun.)
In April 2005, Earlham College suspended Josh Medlin after he threw an ice cream pie at Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. Medlin pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor battery charge two weeks ago. (Credit: Indianapolis Police Department.)
In March 2005, Western Michigan University police arrested Samuel Mesick and charged him with a misdemeanor charge of disturbing the peace after Mesick threw a cup of salad dressing on Pat Buchanan. Buchanan chose not to press felony assault charges. Click here to see video footage of the attack. (Credit: Kalamazoo Police Department.)
Police cited Bruce Charles of Portland for disorderly conduct after Charles threw a shoe at former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle in February 2005. (Credit: Portland Police Department.)
In April 2005, Indianapolis police arrested Joshua Miner of Danville, Ind., on charges of criminal mischief, a felony. Miner allegedly smashed glass panels at a monument to Medal of Honor recipients. (Credit: Indianapolis Police Department.)
In May 2005, police arrested Ajai Raj and charged him with disorderly conduct after he asked a vulgar question and made lewd hand gestures after a speech by conservative author Ann Coulter at the University of Texas at Austin. Read the arrest report here. (Credit: The Smoking Gun.)
Sowande Ajumoke Omokunde son of congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee), was one of five paid Kerry campaign workers in Milwaukee who allegedly slashed the tires of 20 vans that had been rented by Wisconsin Republicans as part of their Election Day 2004 get-out-the-vote effort. (Credit: Milwaukee County Police.)
Michael Pratt, son of former Milwaukee mayor Marvin Pratt, is another alleged tire-slasher. (Credit: Milwaukee County Police.)
Three other alleged tire-slashers: Lewis Caldwell (top-left), Justin Howell (top-right), and Lavelle Mohammed (bottom). (Credit: Milwaukee County Police.)
In March 2004, Claremont McKenna College visiting professor of psychology Kerri Dunn falsely claimed she discovered anti-Semitic, anti-black, anti-woman graffiti spray-painted on her 1992 Honda Civic. Dunn was convicted of two felony counts of attemped insurance fraud and one misdemeanor count of filing a false police report. (Credit: Claremont Police Department.)
Phillip Edgar Smith, left, and William Zachary Wolff were arrested after they threw custard cream pies at conservative author Ann Coulter during her speech at the University of Arizona in October 2004. Read the arrest report here. (Credit: Pima County Jail via The Smoking Gun.)
December 2009 – Palin-hater Jeremy Olson arrested for attempted assault and disorderly conduct after hurling two tomatoes at the Alaska governor from a second-floor mall balcony in Minnesota. He missed and hit a cop. Olson was cheered as a “hero” by Palin-haters.
March 2009 — Document drop: FBI charges anti-Semitic nutball with threats against GOP Rep. Cantor & family; “…you receive my bullets in your office, remember they will be placed in your heads.”
August 2010 — Michael Enright, liberal interfaith film company volunteer, stabbed a Muslim NYC cabbie and faces trial this year. Liberals rushed to hang the entire Right for the crime.
As I said last summer: “They cannot help themselves. Wasn’t it just a few hours ago that I blogged about another act of Democrat vandalism falsely blamed on the the Tea Party? Why yes, yes it was. From GOP fake hate crime hoaxer Ashley Todd to suicide census worker Bill Sparkman, there remains an unrestrained impulse among too many to falsely scream political violence when it doesn’t exist — and to ignore it where it does exist…But like I said just a few hours ago and like I’ll certainly have to say again and again and again in the future: Being a Tea Party-bashing liberal means never having to say you’re sorry for smearing conservative dissent.”
Over to you, Krugman and Company.
To see the pictures go to link:
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3078437581805316374
The Tuscon massacre ghouls who are now trying to criminalize conservatism have forced our hand.
They need to be reminded. You need to be reminded.
Confront them. Don’t be cowed into silence.
And don’t let the media whitewash the sins of the hypocritical Left in their naked attempt to suppress the law-abiding, constitutionally-protected, peaceful, vigorous political speech of the Right.
They want to play tu quo que in the middle of a national tragedy? They asked for it. They got it.
***
The progressive climate of hate: A comprehensive illustrated primer in 8 parts:
I. PALIN HATE
II. BUSH HATE
III. MISC. TEA PARTY/GOP/ANTI-TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE HATE
IV. ANTI-CONSERVATIVE FEMALE HATE
V. LEFT-WING MOB HATE — campus, anti-war radicals, ACORN, eco-extremists, & unions
VI. OPEN-BORDERS HATE
VII. ANTI-MILITARY HATE
VIII. HATE: CRIMES — the ever-growing Unhinged Mugshot Collection
***
I. PALIN HATE
Flashback — pointing a fake gun at the head of a Sarah Palin likeness sitting next to a cardboard cutout of her daughter in a museum display
Getty has since yanked the photo, but as one commenter who saw the photo at Getty’s site before it was yanked noted: “To see that image presented as if it were completely normal and purchasable was shocking.”
Flashback — trendy “ABORT Sarah Palin” stickers:
Flashback — Palin-hating artwork designating her an “M.I.L.P.” (Mother I’d Like to Punch). Hat tip: Edge of Forever:
Flashback — Palin Derangement Syndrome mobsters in Philly: “Let’s stone her, old school”
Flashback — Madonna bashing Sarah Palin and shrieking “I will kick her ass:”
Flashback — Sandra Bernhard bashing Sarah Palin and cursing her head off with hate warping her crazed face:
Flashback — Why Sarah Palin Incites Near-Violent Rage In Normally Reasonable Women.
Flashback — the Democratic Underground indulging in name-calling the MSM ignores:
Reader Monica M. sent me a link to the Democratic Underground’s latest thread for commenters to come up with nicknames and posters to slime GOP Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — and then to “spread [them] all over the ‘net.” There are now nearly 100 filthy, hate-filled responses and counting. Among the “nicer” entries: “Cruella,” “Gidget,” “Governor Jesus Camp,” “VPILF,” “Fertilla the Huntress,” “Iditabroad,” and “KILLER PYSCHO FUNDIE BITCH FROM HELL!!”
…Peer with me further into the liberal sinkhole again and behold P.D.S. in full bloom. Note that this site is raising money for Barack Obama and that an ad for their fundraiser appears at the top of the thread. Is Obama going to accept their cash? Know your enemy:
…The Photoshop entries getting thumbs up from DU commenters:
Flashback — “F**k the rich:” Class-war arsonist on the loose
Flashback — Anti-war, anti-Bush loons attack girl in wheelchair
Flashback — Gems from Journolist…“F—ing Nascar retards…”; “Sarah Spitz, producer of the KCRW public radio program ‘Left, Right and Center,’ which is heard on a number of NPR stations across the country, wrote on JournoList that if she witnessed Limbaugh dying of a heart attack, she would ‘laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out.’”
Flashback — “I hope Glenn Beck kills himself”
Flashback — The Democrat Rep. Pete Stark Raving Mad archive
Flashback — Malik Zulu Shabazz, “Prepare for war”
Flashback — 2007 New Black Panther Party block party rap: “bang for freedom,” “put the bang right into a cracker’s face,” and if you’re going to bang, bang for black power… hang a cracker [unintelligible] . . .if you’re going to bang, bang on the white devil. . . . burying him near the river bank with the right shovel. . . . community revolution in progress…. banging for crackers to go to hell, we don’t need em:”
Flashback — The insane rage of the same-sex marriage mob
Before election day, national media hand-wringers forged a wildly popular narrative: The Right was, in the words of New York Times’ columnist Paul Krugman, gripped by “insane rage.” Outbreaks of incivility (some real, but mostly imagined) were proof positive of the extremist takeover of the Republican Party. The cluck-cluckers and tut-tutters shook in fear.
But when the GOP took a beating on Nov. 4, no mass protests ensued. No nationwide boycotts erupted. Conservatives took their lumps and began the peaceful post-defeat process of self-flagellation, self-analysis, and self-autopsy. In fact, there’s only one angry mob gripped by “insane rage” in the wake of campaign 2008: The mob of left-wing, same-sex marriage activists incensed at their defeat in California. Voters there approved a traditional marriage initiative, Proposition 8, by 52-48.
Instead of introspection and self-criticism, however, the sore losers who opposed Prop. 8 have responded with threats, fists, and blacklists.
That’s right. Activists have published an “Anti-Gay Black List” of Prop. 8 donors on the Internet. If the tables had been turned and Prop. 8 proponents created such an enemies’ list, everyone in Hollywood would be screaming “McCarthyism” faster than you can count to eight. A Los Angeles restaurant whose manager made a small donation to the Prop. 8 campaign has been besieged nightly by hordes of protesters who have disrupted the business, intimidated patrons, and brought employees there to tears. In fear for their jobs and their lives, workers at El Coyote Mexican Café pooled together $500 to pay off the bullies.
Scott Eckern, a beleaguered artistic director at the California Musical Theatre, was forced to resign over his $1,000 donation to the Prop. 8 campaign. The director of the Los Angeles Film Festival, Rich Raddon, is next on the chopping block after the anti-Prop. 8 mob discovered that he had also contributed to the Yes on 8 campaign. Calls have been pouring in for his firing.
Over the past two weeks, anti-Prop. 8 organizers have targeted Mormon, Catholic, and evangelical churches. Sentiments like this one, found on the anti-Prop.8 website “JoeMyGod,” are common across the left-wing blogosphere: “Burn their f—ing churches to the ground, and then tax the charred timbers.” Thousands of gay-rights demonstrators stood in front of the Mormon temple in Los Angeles shouting “Mormon scum.” The Mormon headquarters in Salt Lake City received threatening letters containing an unidentified powder. Religious-bashing protesters filled with hate decried the “hate” at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif. Vandals defaced the Calvary Chapel in Chino Hills, Calif., because church members had collected Prop. 8 petitions. One worshiper’s car was keyed with the slogans “Gay sex is love” and “SEX;” another car’s antenna and windshield wipers were broken.
Anti-Prop. 8 radicals chase Christian evangelists out of San Francisco’s Castro district:
Anti-Prop. 8 radicals stomp on elderly Prop. 8 supporter’s cross:
Flashback — Anti-Prop. 8 mob rings in 2009 with more church vandalism
Flashback — Climate of hate: More threats from the gay marriage mob
Flashback — NYTimes finally acknowledges that anti-Prop. 8 mob is harassing traditional marriage supporters
IV. ANTI-CONSERVATIVE FEMALE HATE
Flashback — The Playboy hatef**k list (screencapped in full here – NSFW)
Flashback — Sex, Violence and Hate: the Top 10 Most Disgusting Attacks on Conservative Women
Flashback — Montel Williams to GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann:
WILLIAMS (1:30:32): Michele, slit your wrist.
Go ahead… or, do us all a better thing [sic].
Move that knife up about two feet.
Start right at the collarbone.
Flashback — The four stages of conservative female abuse
Flashback — The Ladies of the Spew “bitch” and moan
Flashback — Laura Bush hatred at the SFChronicle
Flashback — Another day, another hate wish
Flashback — “The bitch is dead meat.”
V. LEFT-WING MOB HATE — campus, anti-war radicals, ACORN, eco-extremists & unions
Left-wing mob shuts down speech at Columbia University…
Left-wing mob shuts down speech at UNC-Chapel Hill…
Left-wing mob blocks military shipments in Olympia, WA…
Left-wing mob illegally trespasses and breaks into a home in Baltimore in the name of “social justice”…
Left-wing SEIU/NPA mob descends on D.C. bank exec’s home, harasses son
Flashback — March 2009 – The rule of the mob:
Animal rights’ terrorists have firebombed researchers’ homes and Molotov cocktail-bombed their cars and been convicted of inciting threats, harassment, and vandalism against employees of a private company engaged in animal research.
Environmental terrorists have set developments on fire.
Self-proclaimed “bank terrorist” Bruce Marks, who I reported on last March, has been threatening bank employees in their homes and harassing their children for years:
IT MAY SEEM LIKE AN UNUSUAL CHOICE, given that Marks is a controversial character who once infamously called himself a “bank terrorist.” But this is no ordinary time, and it seems uniquely suited to Marks’s curious blend of in-your-face activism, customer-focused service, Machiavellian angling, and social-justice passion.
Over the years, as part of his permanent campaign to browbeat banks into giving fair loans to low- and moderate-income people, Marks and his yellow-T-shirted followers have swarmed shareholders’ meetings with enough force to shut them down. They have picketed outside the schools attended by the children of bank CEOs, pressing the youngsters in signs and chants to answer for the actions of their daddies. And they even once distributed scandal sheets to every house in one CEO’s neighborhood, detailing the affair he was allegedly having with a subordinate. In time, that CEO, like most of the others that NACA targeted, sat down with Marks and signed a deal.
To those who found his tactics an outrageous invasion of bank executives’ personal lives, Marks refused to acknowledge any line between home and work. “What you do is who you are,” he says. “It’s all personal.”
And last weekend, of course, the ACORN mob chartered a bus — with twice as many outrage-stoking MSM photographers in tow — to menace AIG executives in their homes.
Flashback — The Green War on Children
Flashback — Torch-wielding leftists at UC Berkeley attack chancellor’s home
Flashback — Campus chaos: Social justice mobsters attack police, smash windows over tuition hikes; Update: “Who’s (sic) schools?”
Flashback — The left-wing bullies in Robert Reich’s backyard
Flashback — Big Labor’s legacy of violence
VI. OPEN-BORDERS HATE
Flashback — August 2010…An open-borders activist smacks a man with a camera covering the Arizona state capitol protest over SB 1070…
Flashback — November 2009…Far Left’s ANSWER goons attack foes of illegal immigration
The slogan on the back of a protesting Puerto Rican singer from the band Calle 13 says “Luz verde para invadir Arizona.” Translation: “Green light to invade Arizona:”
“Smash the state”…
Flashback — The May Day angry mob you won’t see…
Escalating violence in the name of mass illegal alien amnesty…
They came, they saw, they threatened or committed violence in the name of open borders and workers’ rights. But alas, Frank Rich and Paul Krugman’s columns decrying the insane rage and hate of the May Day angry mob got lost in the mail.
In Santa Cruz, they carried torches and vandalized at least 18 businesses:
Downtown business owners spent Sunday repairing shattered windows and doors after a May Day rally Saturday night turned into a riot with approximately 250 people marching along Pacific Avenue, some carrying makeshift torches, throwing large rocks and paint bombs, and spray-painting walls with graffiti.
At least 18 businesses suffered damage during the rally in honor of international workers that began at 9 p.m. and escalated into mayhem around 10:30 p.m., police said. Investigators estimated damage at $100,000, though some business owners said it could be more. No injuries were reported.
On Sunday, sea green-colored glass littered sidewalks where windows and glass doors had been smashed. Maintenance workers, many getting called in the middle of the night, boarded up windows with plywood until new sheets of glass could be installed.
The vandalized businesses included Urban Outfitters, Peet’s Coffee, Noah’s Bagels, Jamba Juice, Velvet Underground and Dell Williams Jewelers. The unoccupied Rittenhouse building also was damaged. A police car was vandalized with rocks and paint, department spokesman Zach Friend said.
In San Francisco, anti-illegal immigration activists were attacked by the May Day marchers:
LISA AMIN GULEZIAN, REPORTER: Allan, for the most part the event was peaceful, but just about an hour ago, three people were attacked and two others were arrested. The people who were assaulted were part of the Minutemen demonstration in favor of Arizona’s new immigration law.
They said a large group of immigrants’ rights supporters followed them to the BART station on Market Street and started punching and kicking them, and calling them names.
PARKER WILSON, BAY AREA ANARCHIST: They said we were racists, and that we were against them, and against their town, and against San Francisco, and what they were saying. They said we needed to get out and they called us racists, and that we need to go home. And then they just attacked my friends and me.
Flashback — The American flag comes second…
VII. ANTI-MILITARY HATE
January 20, 2005. At Seattle Central Community College, Army recruiter Sgt. Jeff Due and his colleague, Sgt. 1st Class Douglas Washington were surrounded by an angry mob of 500 anti-war students. The recruiters’ table was destroyed; their handouts torn apart. The protesters threw water bottles and newspapers at the soldiers, shouted profanities, and wielded their fists. The far Left Students Against War had been agitating to kick the recruiters off campus. The college administration refused to punish the mobsters.
Jan. 31, 2005. A little more than a week after the Seattle ambush, a shockingly fair and rare report from the NYT disclosed that recruiters in Manhattan reported that a door to their office had been beaten in. Anarchist symbols were scrawled in red paint on the building. On the same day, NY police collared a young Manhattan College junior and charged him with throwing a burning rag into an Army recruiting station and ruining the door locks with super glue. The radical student “was caught carrying a handwritten note declaring that a ‘wave of violence’ would occur throughout the Northeast on January 31, aimed at the ‘military industrial complex’ in response to American military actions.’”
Feb. 1, 2005. At a South Toledo, Ohio recruitment center, unhinged protesters hurled manure all over the building. They broke windows and sprayed vulgar grafitti — “War is Shit” — on office property. An e-mail sent to local TV station WTOL-TV by a group calling itself, yes, “War is Shit,” claimed responsibility for the property destruction. The crapweasels were never caught. WTOL reported:
“If they don’t like this country that much they should do it the right way by changing with votes. Shouldn’t do it with actions like that,” said Steve Klostermeier, a bystander. Mike Gibson agreed, saying, “I think it’s terrible. I think they’re blaming the people who fought to give them the right to do stuff like that. They should have the courage to stand up and say it rather than doing stuff like that.”
Mid-Feb. 2005. 20-year-old anti-war goon Brendan Walsh is sentenced to five years in federal prison for hurling a Molotov cocktail through the window of a Vestal, NY military recruitment office in 2003. Celebrated as a hero to the anti-war/anarchist movement, he pleaded guilty to charges of attempting to damage or destroy a building by arson and was expected to be released to a halfway house last month.
…April 2006. The infamous UC Santa Cruz ambush on military recruiters takes place. The thugs gloated about throwing a rock at the recruiters’ SUV. Recruiters, who had been similarly driven off campus the previous year, reported slashed tires. One employee at the career center was injured in the melee. Photos here. The capitulationist campus administration had known in advance about the ambush plans and did nothing. Instead of condemning the speech-stifling lawlessness of the anti-war mob, unhinged sympathizers attacked me for publishing the public contact information of the thugs’ propaganda officers and also outrageoulsy blamed me for the subsequent suicide of the troubled UC Santa Cruz president, Denice Denton. They continue to lie about what happened.
Just a few weeks later, more anti-recruitment attacks break out. A reader alerted me to this vandalism at UNC Chapel-Hill and sent photos taken by her son, an ROTC cadet on campus:
Then, in Minnesota, via the Minneapolis Star Tribune
S-T caption: Three people were apprehended this afternoon by police after pouring paint on an Army recruiting station near the University of Minnesota during an antiwar demonstration.
…In Maryland, anti-recruiter vandals smashed a Rockville Air Force recruitment center:
…In Maryland, anti-recruiter vandals smashed a Rockville Air Force recruitment center:
In an attempt to discover how a bunch of murdering cowards like the US Air Force enjoy finding themselves on the other end of some flying projectiles for a change, at around 3:00 AM this morning an autonomous cell of the Red & Anarchist Action Network (RAAN) used bricks and other common household items to smash the shit out of the Air Force recruiting center in Rockville, Maryland. Do we even need to explain the motivation for our actions? A shout out to our comrades from the Borf: Revolution or Bust Faction (BORFROBF), who late last year gave a similar treatment to the military recruitment center in Silver Spring. Consider this a modest response to your “dare to those here in the heart of the imperial beast to step it up”. In suburbs so hollow, may the echo of our actions be long and loud! Big ups to all those out there who claim RAAN. Fuck them haters who don’t realize we are but a few of the millions of ant’s bites which can topple this elephant once and for all. No war but class war, communism or bust! IT’S A DO OR DIE SITUATION – WE WILL BE INVINCIBLE!
And in Lufkin, TX, , Army and Navy recruiters were the targets of vandals who keyed their cars, smashed their windows, and shot at their vehicles with “with what appeared to be a high-powered pellet gun.”
Jan. 2007. Anti-war radicals lay siege to the US Capitol and smash windows at the recruitment center on 14th and L.
Pittsburgh anti-recruiter organizers shut down a military recruitment station for a whole day. They brandish hateful signs like this:
August 2007. In New England: Suspect charged with leaving fake bomb at recruitment office.
A city man was arrested Tuesday on charges that he twice left a fake bomb package at a military recruitment office, police said. Francis Monaghan, 68, was charged with two counts of first-degree breach of peace, a felony, and two counts of reckless endangerment, said Lt. Sean Cooney. “He made certain incriminating statements,” Cooney said. “He did express some anti-war feelings. We think that was at least partially his motivation.” Monaghan was being held on $100,000 bond. An envelope slipped into the recruiting station mailbox on Bedford Street Monday morning contained batteries and other “bomb-making components,” Cooney said. The package was nearly identical to an envelope left at the same U.S. Army/U.S. Air Force station last months, police said. Both bore “unusual writing” and were placed in the station’s mailbox, Cooney said.
September 2007. The far Left group, Iraq Veterans Against the War calls on followers to commit fraud to interfere with military recruiters. The sabotage action was part of a larger, coordinated campaign with the International ANSWER racket to obstruct military recruitment centers in Washington and across the country. Other socialist partners in crime:
http://www.notyoursoldier.org/
http://www.warresisters.org/
http://www.afsc.org/youthmil
Anti-war punks shut down the Times Square recruitment station:
The New York chapter of the War Resisters League kicked off a week of actions against military recruitment in New York by shutting down the Times Square Recruiting Station Saturday morning. Three members of the WRL were arrested, but the recruiting station remained closed for the rest of the day as the WRL maintained its presence there, joined in the afternoon by the Rude Mechanical Orchestra. The three arrestees were charged with disorderly conduct and released four hours later.
October 2007. Code Pink defaces the Berkeley recruitment center, branding our troops as assassins:
June 2009: And now this: Shooting at military recruiting center; 1 dead, 1 wounded; suspect is anti-military Muslim convert
VIII. And finally, the ever-growing Unhinged Mugshot Collection
Gainsville, Fla., Democrat David P. McCally was charged with battery after he allegedly barged into a local GOP office, assaulted a cardboard cutout of President Bush, and punched a local Republican chairman in September 2004. (Credit: Alachua County Jail.)
In March 2004, Carol Lang, a campus secretary at City College in New York, reportedly assaulted a police officer trying to arrest unruly anti-war protesters. Police arrested Lang and charged her with second-degree assault, disorderly conduct, and obstructing governmental administration. (Credit: New York Police Department.)
At the same protest at which Carol Lang was arrested, police arrested students Justin Rodriguez, left, and Nicholas Bergreen. They charged Rodriguez with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. They charged Bergreen with assaulting a police officer. (Credit: New York Police Department.)
Police arrested Corey Robert Cooke of Ellicott City, Md., in September 2004 and charged him with malicious destruction of property after he allegedly used a power tool to cut down a Bush-Cheney sign. (Credit: Howard County Police Department.)
Howard County, Md., police arrested Peter Lizon, left, and Stephanie Louise Lizon in October 2004 and charged them with malicious destruction of property. Mr. Lizon allegedly destroyed Bush-Cheney signs with a bayonet. His wife allegedly acted as the lookout. (Credit: Howard County Police.)
Nashville police arrested Andrew Thurman, left, and Frederick Stevenson in Septmeber 2004 and charged them with theft and unlawful weapons possession after they found guns and 71 Bush-Cheney signs in Thurman’s car. Policy say they stole the signs from Nashville, Tenn., yards because Thurman was angry at President Bush for sending his brother to Iraq. (Credit: Nashville Police Department.)
Nathan Winkler of Tampa, Fla., was arrested and charged with aggravated stalking in March 2005 for allegedly terrorizing a mother who had a Bush-Cheney bumper sticker on her car. Click on the video here to listen to an excerpt of the mother’s frantic call to 911. Winkler reportedly had a handmade sign in his window that read, “Never forget Bush’s illegal oil war murdered thousands in Iraq.” (Credit: Tampa Police Department.)
Florida Democrat Barry Seltzer allegedly tried to run down congresswoman Katherine Harris with his Cadillac as she was campaigning in Sarasota, Fla., in October 2004. See the arrest report here. (Credit: Sarasota Police Department via The Smoking Gun.)
In April 2005, Earlham College suspended Josh Medlin after he threw an ice cream pie at Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. Medlin pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor battery charge two weeks ago. (Credit: Indianapolis Police Department.)
In March 2005, Western Michigan University police arrested Samuel Mesick and charged him with a misdemeanor charge of disturbing the peace after Mesick threw a cup of salad dressing on Pat Buchanan. Buchanan chose not to press felony assault charges. Click here to see video footage of the attack. (Credit: Kalamazoo Police Department.)
Police cited Bruce Charles of Portland for disorderly conduct after Charles threw a shoe at former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle in February 2005. (Credit: Portland Police Department.)
In April 2005, Indianapolis police arrested Joshua Miner of Danville, Ind., on charges of criminal mischief, a felony. Miner allegedly smashed glass panels at a monument to Medal of Honor recipients. (Credit: Indianapolis Police Department.)
In May 2005, police arrested Ajai Raj and charged him with disorderly conduct after he asked a vulgar question and made lewd hand gestures after a speech by conservative author Ann Coulter at the University of Texas at Austin. Read the arrest report here. (Credit: The Smoking Gun.)
Sowande Ajumoke Omokunde son of congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee), was one of five paid Kerry campaign workers in Milwaukee who allegedly slashed the tires of 20 vans that had been rented by Wisconsin Republicans as part of their Election Day 2004 get-out-the-vote effort. (Credit: Milwaukee County Police.)
Michael Pratt, son of former Milwaukee mayor Marvin Pratt, is another alleged tire-slasher. (Credit: Milwaukee County Police.)
Three other alleged tire-slashers: Lewis Caldwell (top-left), Justin Howell (top-right), and Lavelle Mohammed (bottom). (Credit: Milwaukee County Police.)
In March 2004, Claremont McKenna College visiting professor of psychology Kerri Dunn falsely claimed she discovered anti-Semitic, anti-black, anti-woman graffiti spray-painted on her 1992 Honda Civic. Dunn was convicted of two felony counts of attemped insurance fraud and one misdemeanor count of filing a false police report. (Credit: Claremont Police Department.)
Phillip Edgar Smith, left, and William Zachary Wolff were arrested after they threw custard cream pies at conservative author Ann Coulter during her speech at the University of Arizona in October 2004. Read the arrest report here. (Credit: Pima County Jail via The Smoking Gun.)
December 2009 – Palin-hater Jeremy Olson arrested for attempted assault and disorderly conduct after hurling two tomatoes at the Alaska governor from a second-floor mall balcony in Minnesota. He missed and hit a cop. Olson was cheered as a “hero” by Palin-haters.
March 2009 — Document drop: FBI charges anti-Semitic nutball with threats against GOP Rep. Cantor & family; “…you receive my bullets in your office, remember they will be placed in your heads.”
August 2010 — Michael Enright, liberal interfaith film company volunteer, stabbed a Muslim NYC cabbie and faces trial this year. Liberals rushed to hang the entire Right for the crime.
As I said last summer: “They cannot help themselves. Wasn’t it just a few hours ago that I blogged about another act of Democrat vandalism falsely blamed on the the Tea Party? Why yes, yes it was. From GOP fake hate crime hoaxer Ashley Todd to suicide census worker Bill Sparkman, there remains an unrestrained impulse among too many to falsely scream political violence when it doesn’t exist — and to ignore it where it does exist…But like I said just a few hours ago and like I’ll certainly have to say again and again and again in the future: Being a Tea Party-bashing liberal means never having to say you’re sorry for smearing conservative dissent.”
Over to you, Krugman and Company.
To see the pictures go to link:
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3078437581805316374
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