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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Chicago</title>
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	<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Chicago Black Pastor Endorses Republican, Gets Death Threats, has Church Vandalized</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/chicago-black-pastor-endorses-republican-gets-death-threats-has-church-vandalized/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=chicago-black-pastor-endorses-republican-gets-death-threats-has-church-vandalized</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/chicago-black-pastor-endorses-republican-gets-death-threats-has-church-vandalized/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 28 Oct 2014 14:34:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243936</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It's the Chicago Way]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/corey_brooks_02.jpg"><img class="alignnone wp-image-243937 size-medium" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/corey_brooks_02-294x350.jpg" alt="corey_brooks_02" width="294" height="350" /></a></p>
<p>It&#8217;s the Chicago Way. “If <a href="http://breakingnews.suntimes.com/chicago/south-side-pastor-who-backs-bruce-rauner-has-church-broken-into/">they bring a knife to the fight</a>, we bring a gun.” If he endorses a Republican,<a href="http://therightscoop.com/death-threats-chicago-black-pastor-forced-to-hide-family-after-supporting-republican-for-governor/"> we smash up his church</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Corey Brooks, who is pastor of a church on Chicago’s South Side, has been beset with hundreds of death threats after endorsing a Republican for Illinois Governor in the upcoming election. His church has also been vandalized by the more adult, more caring, more tolerant Democrats in the Windy City.</p>
<p>Pastor Brooks has endorsed first-time politician, businessman and Republican Bruce Rauner for governor instead of life-long political insider and incumbent Democrat Governor Pat Quinn. But since he went very public with his endorsement–including appearing in TV ads for Rauner–Brooks has been under siege by those “tolerant” Democrats who wish death upon him.</p>
<p>His church was also vandalized this weekend and large amount of money earmarked for charities was stolen.</p></blockquote>
<p>Well I&#8217;m sure the money will be redistributed appropriately between ACORN, SEIU and a few of the right aldermen.</p>
<blockquote><p>Brooks said he received the five phone calls on Friday. He recorded one of them, and provided it to police. In that call, which was played for the Sun-Times, a man’s voice is disguised via a high-pitched filter. He is heard calling Brooks a “token n—–.”</p>
<p>“We on you boy, we on you. And you ain’t got nobody that can stop us, nobody. Who you go [to] the deacons? They can’t stop us. We going to beat your fat a– in front of your mama congregation Sunday. Yeah we going to steal the sheep of the hypocrite. You’s a hypocrite we going to beat your fat a– in front of your own congregation. Who you got that…f— we going to beat their a– too. They can’t protect you. You sell out you Uncle Tom a– n—–. You token. You a puppet for Bruce Rauner you puppet n—– a–. P—- a– n—–,” the voice says on the recording.</p>
<p>A group of Chicago area black ministers, including Brooks, announced last month they’d support Rauner in the campaign. Brooks is featured in a Rauner ad which began airing two weeks ago on some channels, including BET. It began airing on network channels on Friday: “I believe it’s really time to change things up in the state of Illinois, especially on the South Side,” Brooks says in the commercial. He says he supports Rauner because he believes the Democratic party has taken advantage of African-Americans and hasn’t provided enough help for impoverished communities.</p></blockquote>
<p>They sure are providing help now.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<slash:comments>112</slash:comments>
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		<title>Muslim Waves ISIS Flag, Makes Bomb Threats, in Chicago</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/muslim-waves-isis-flag-makes-bomb-threats-in-chicago/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=muslim-waves-isis-flag-makes-bomb-threats-in-chicago</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/muslim-waves-isis-flag-makes-bomb-threats-in-chicago/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Aug 2014 14:27:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239835</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Maybe he can declare his own Caliphate in his cell.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/chi-southwest-side-man-charged-with-making-fal-001.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-239837" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/chi-southwest-side-man-charged-with-making-fal-001-350x350.jpg" alt="chi-southwest-side-man-charged-with-making-fal-001" width="350" height="350" /></a></p>
<p>ISIS&#8217; Twitter mob did boast that its members were walking the streets of Chicago. On<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/chicago-man-isis-flag-claims-car-rigged-bomb-cops-article-1.1920606">e of them was driving down them</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p> A Chicago man trailing an ISIS flag outside his car window is behind bars after leading cops on a chase and then telling officers the vehicle was rigged with explosives and would detonate if searched, police said.</p>
<p>Cops tried to pull over Emad Karakrah, 49, Wednesday morning after a caller noticed a suspicious vehicle around 9:15 a.m. on the city’s south side, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.</p>
<p>Karakrah apparently was proudly waving the black and white flag favored by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria terrorists.</p>
<p>The man took off, leading officers through several red lights before a second patrol car corralled the fleeing flag-bearer.</p>
<p>As he was taken into custody, Karakrah warned officers the car contained a bomb and would explode if search by police, the paper reported.</p>
<p>The threat prompted cops to bring in a bomb squad, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to search the supposedly rigged silver Pontiac, but nothing was found.</p></blockquote>
<p>Clearly a genius. When you&#8217;re in a traffic stop, the thing you most wanted to do is get DHS involved. This guy is almost smart enough to be ISIS. Maybe he can declare his own Caliphate in his cell.</p>
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		<title>Super-Amnesty Will Turn Every City into Detroit</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/super-amnesty-will-turn-every-city-into-detroit/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=super-amnesty-will-turn-every-city-into-detroit</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/super-amnesty-will-turn-every-city-into-detroit/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 09 Jul 2014 04:58:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[alien amnesty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Detroit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Guns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[illegals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[murder rates]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=235851</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Imagine Chicago and Detroit’s murder rates in every American city.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/chicago.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235853" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/chicago-450x347.jpg" alt="chicago" width="301" height="232" /></a>After another bloody weekend in Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel branded the shootings unacceptable and the city’s top cop demanded more gun control laws. Chicago’s murder rate has actually dropped since concealed carry became legal. Emanuel’s lawsuits over his illegal gun control laws have left the already struggling city deep in the hole and forced to cover the NRA’s million dollars in legal bills.</p>
<p>Concealed carry paid off over the bloody weekend when a vet carrying a gun returned fire stopping a massacre before it happened. The original shooter ended up in the hospital, but nobody ended up in the morgue, which kept the death toll for the weekend down to fourteen.</p>
<p>Fourteen isn’t pretty, but it’s better than twenty or thirty.</p>
<p>Chicago’s murder rate in 1992 was double what it is today. The death rate was at 33.7 out of 100,000 which meant that you had a pretty good chance of being shot in Chicago. Today it’s down to 15 out of 100,000, which is small comfort to those ending up in the morgue, but it gives everyone else much better odds of surviving to see what ingenious ways the next corrupt mayoral administration will use to rip off the city.</p>
<p>Back in 1992, the cops also blamed guns for the murder rate. But it wasn’t the guns that were killing people. It was the gangs.</p>
<p>Now the murder rate is down, but the number of shootings is up. To Chicago’s police boss, that’s a problem, as if it makes a difference to the deceased whether he’s shot, stabbed or dropped in the water wearing cement overshoes. But fighting guns is easier than fighting crime.</p>
<p>The gun obsession is one of the few things that cops and leftists have in common. It’s the last politically acceptable form of prohibitionism in a society that enthusiastically legalizes drugs, even if possessing crack cocaine is statistically much more likely to lead you to kill a man, than possessing a gun will.</p>
<p>Every shooting spree bypasses the obvious problem with calls for more gun laws and something for the youth to do over the weekend that doesn’t involve shooting up the local housing project. This weekend, Rahm Emanuel took on the problem of funding more teen centers while Chicago’s top cop blustered about more gun laws. And then having successfully talked around the issue, they all went home.</p>
<p>The left loves root causes more than it loves red shirts and black bandanas, a fashion choice that it shares with some of the gangs responsible for most of the shootings.</p>
<p>America’s gun violence problem is urban. It’s localized in Democratic enclaves. And it overlaps neatly with its corrupt political machines. It has nothing to do with the NRA and a great deal to do with the party of social engineering, the welfare state and gun bans.</p>
<p>And illegal immigration.</p>
<p>Homicide rates overlap with unemployment rates, especially when accounting for the demographic populations of young minority men who are statistically more likely to kill or be killed.</p>
<p>92% of black male teens in Chicago don’t have a job. In Detroit, 50% of black men are unemployed. It’s not that there aren’t any jobs, but the entry level jobs have been mostly going to immigrants.</p>
<p>The Center for Immigration Studies <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/31/two-thirds-of-jobs-go-to-immigrants/?page=all">found that under Obama</a> two-thirds of jobs went to immigrants, both legal and illegal. Throw in a massive illegal alien amnesty and the rush of illegal aliens into the country will turn the employment figures of every city into Detroit and Chicago.</p>
<p>The black male unemployment rate in New York was at 33%. And the murder rate in New York is significantly lower than in Detroit or Chicago. But how long will that last if the unemployment rate in New York rises above 50%? Before long the marginal gangs will swell to monstrous sizes controlling entire neighborhoods. Anyone who can will flee and the city will once again become what it was.</p>
<p>The same process will take place in most major American cities.</p>
<p>The United States of America does not have a shortage of workers. It has a shortage of jobs. The irresponsible immigration policy has created a surplus of workers. Illegal alien amnesty will make that surplus much worse. Legalize twelve million illegal aliens and another twelve million will come. Those who can’t find jobs, will find gangs. Those who lose jobs to them will also find gangs.</p>
<p>The gangs will fight each other for control of entire neighborhoods and the crime wave will set America back decades.</p>
<p>After the 1986 amnesty, the number of murders, which had begun to fall in the early eighties, rose again. They did not return to a pre-amnesty level until 1997. Rapes have only recently returned to a pre-amnesty level. Now the progress we’ve made is about to be undone all over again.</p>
<p>In 1986, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/15/us/urban-homicide-rates-in-us-up-sharply-in-1986.html">murder rates suddenly</a> rose mysteriously in major cities. The <em>New York Times</em> described the crime rates as being the highest since the 1970s.</p>
<p>In Chicago, murders increased by 20%. In New York they increased by 20%. The cities rushed to crack down on guns while insisting that they were mystified by the drastic increase.</p>
<p>The guns weren’t the problem. The illegal alien amnesty which had created a magnet was. Illegal aliens with fake documents headed in hoping to take advantage of amnesty. Later newly legalized immigrants invited their family members to join them. Even before the amnesty took effect, crime rates spiked.</p>
<p>Amnesty advocates claim that immigrants aren’t taking jobs from Americans because they are more likely to be employed at the lower and higher ends of the marketplace. And that’s half true. What it really means is that they displace trained technical workers at the high end of the marketplace. That leads to a further erosion of the native middle class, but it doesn’t directly lead to gang violence.</p>
<p>At the lower end of the marketplace, they not only displace workers, but they displace the workers that might have been. Teenagers who would have started working regular jobs instead roam around aimlessly. The lost entry level jobs are substituted with crime. Neighborhoods fall apart and gang violence increases as gang members compete for turf in the new drug marketplace.</p>
<p>And the rest is crime statistics and children taken to morgues in cities that can barely keep the lights on.</p>
<p>If we want to repeat the same cycle again, Super-Amnesty, an amnesty several times bigger than the one in 1986, will make it happen. Entire cities will fall into gang violence. Their economies will collapse and that will have a ripple effect on their suburbs and on entire states.</p>
<p>America will be a more dangerous and poorer place. And the politicians will talk some more about banning guns and about building more teen centers for the youth to hang out in between shootings.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>Only 29% of Chicagoans Would Vote for Rahm Emanuel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/only-29-of-chicagoans-would-vote-for-rahm-emanuel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=only-29-of-chicagoans-would-vote-for-rahm-emanuel</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/only-29-of-chicagoans-would-vote-for-rahm-emanuel/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 12 May 2014 13:25:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rahm emanuel]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=225285</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[But that 29% will vote as many times as it takes ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/110223_rahm_thumbsup_reuters_328.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-225286" alt="110223_rahm_thumbsup_reuters_328" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/110223_rahm_thumbsup_reuters_328-450x243.jpg" width="450" height="243" /></a></p>
<p>Fortunately that 29% <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/poll-rahm-re-election-ropes-only-29-percent-would-vote-him-today_791258.html">will vote as many times as it takes </a>to get him reelected.</p>
<blockquote><p>Only one in five Chicago voters credit Mayor Rahm Emanuel with doing a better job of running the city than Richard M. Daley did, and only 29 percent would support him if the mayoral election were held today.</p>
<p>Those are the results of a new poll conducted for Early &amp; Often, the Chicago Sun-Times’ political portal. The telephone survey of 511 registered Chicago voters who said they were “very likely” to go to the polls on Feb. 24 was conducted Wednesday by the firm of McKeon &amp; Associates.</p>
<p>“Right now, Rahm is not connecting. If he doesn’t do that, he’s gonna lose,” McKeon said.</p>
<p>Emanuel is raising campaign cash at a frenzied pace — with more than $7 million in the bank already and former President Bill Clinton headlining a mega-fundraiser next month — in hopes of scaring off serious challengers.</p>
<p>The mayor would get 29 percent of the vote to Preckwinkle’s 26 percent. The poll shows Lewis finishing third with 10 percent, followed by Fioretti at 5 percent and Shaw with 3 percent. An estimated 27 percent of voters interviewed were undecided.</p></blockquote>
<p>Karen Lewis&#8217; candidacy alone tells you somehow about how screwed up Chicago politics are, but I wouldn&#8217;t write off Rahm yet.</p>
<p>In the &#8217;11 election went, Rahm won <a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?id=7972562">with something like 42 percent turnout</a> and one of the lowest victory margins in Chicago. But it didn&#8217;t matter, he won because the fix was in, despite being removed from the ballot at one point.</p>
<p>If Hillary is in the driver&#8217;s seat for the Democratic nomination, the rest will fall into line and Rahm will win.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>Chicago’s Muslim Comptroller Flees to Pakistan</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/chicagos-muslim-comptroller-flees-to-pakistan/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=chicagos-muslim-comptroller-flees-to-pakistan</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/chicagos-muslim-comptroller-flees-to-pakistan/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 02 May 2014 15:20:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rahm emanuel]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=224628</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Mayor Rahm Emanuel said he has been too busy with other issues]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_224630" style="width: 354px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/chi-rahm-emanuel-amer-ahmad-20130904.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-224630" alt="That awkward moment when the guy you put in a key position flees to Pakistan" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/chi-rahm-emanuel-amer-ahmad-20130904-344x350.jpg" width="344" height="350" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">That awkward moment when the guy you put in a key position flees to Pakistan</p></div>
<p><a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/chicagos-muslim-comptroller-pleads-guilty-to-fraud-bribery-and-money-laundering/">The Point has covered the</a> <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/muslim-brotherhood-chicago-comptroller-hired-by-rahm-emanuel-charged-with-money-laundering/">tale of Amer Ahmad before</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Ahmad was the Ohio Deputy State Treasurer who, among other crimes, helped out Mohammed Noure Alo, a lobbyist and immigration attorney with six figures in legal fees and helped his wife get a job announced only at the mosque.</p>
<p>Ahmad, who served as Ohio’s deputy treasurer and chief investment official, pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit bribery, wire fraud and money laundering. He was hired in Chicago by Mayor Rahm Emanuel after the crimes in Ohio were committed. Mayor Emanuel has said that he knew nothing about the infractions and that nothing criminal was done in Chicago.</p>
<p>Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration on Monday produced a letter showing it knew about questions surrounding Amer Ahmad and a controversial government contract in Ohio before the mayor hired him as Chicago’s comptroller in April 2011.</p></blockquote>
<p>So Rahm hired a guy who was set to be charged for bribery and fraud&#8230; as comptroller. Claimed not to know anything and then presented a letter showing that the issue was well known.</p>
<p>Chicago.</p>
<p>Then <a href="http://weaselzippers.us/184580-former-chicago-comptroller-ahmad-arrested-in-pakistan/">Amer Ahmad pleaded guilty and made a run for Pakistan</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Former Chicago Comptroller Amer Ahmad has been taken into custody in Pakistan, where he apparently fled ahead of his sentencing in a federal fraud case in Ohio.</p>
<p>Dr. Usman Anwar, director of Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency in Punjab province said today that Ahmad was arrested at Lahore airport when he was trying to enter the country using a forged Mexican passport with a forged Pakistani visa.</p>
<p>Asked about his former aide’s arrest Wednesday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said he has been too busy with other issues to spend much time thinking about it.</p>
<p>“I’ve got to be honest, sorry about this, but let me give you this sense of reaction: I was thinking about plastic bags before Amer. I was thinking about petcoke regulations before Amer. I was thinking about how proud we all are of the Whitney Young basketball team, of their accomplishments on the court and in the classroom,” Emanuel said. “That all came before that, so, gives you some sense of perspective on it.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Rahm was just too busy thinking about basketball and plastic bags to remember his criminal comptroller. And who can blame him.</p>
<p>If I hired a criminal to be Chicago&#8217;s comptroller, I would spend a lot of time thinking about other things too.</p>
<blockquote><p>Ahmad also was a favored speaker at the 2010 meeting of Council for the Advancement of Muslim Professionals. CAMP as it is called is one of those other organizations funded by the mostly peaceful and secular Muslim Brotherhood.</p></blockquote>
<p>He would have run for Egypt&#8230; if only Morsi were still in power.</p>
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		<title>Rahm Emanuel Lowers Murder Rate in Chicago&#8230; by Lying About It</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/rahm-emanuel-lowers-murder-rate-in-chicago-by-lying-about-it/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=rahm-emanuel-lowers-murder-rate-in-chicago-by-lying-about-it</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/rahm-emanuel-lowers-murder-rate-in-chicago-by-lying-about-it/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Apr 2014 13:13:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=223794</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[10 people were beaten, burned, suffocated, or shot to death]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/rahm_emanuel_107770805.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-223795" alt="rahm_emanuel_107770805" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/rahm_emanuel_107770805-450x337.jpg" width="450" height="337" /></a></p>
<p>Good news. <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-01-01/news/chi-chicago-police-crime-down-16-percent-homicides-down-18-percent-20140101_1_chicago-police-16-percent-22-percent">Crime is down in Chicago</a>. Walk the streets late at night. Carry your wallet in your back pocket. It&#8217;s safe.</p>
<blockquote><p>Homicides dropped 18 percent in Chicago last year and crime overall was down 16 percent, according to statistics released by the police department this morning.</p>
<p>Shootings across the city dropped by 24 percent from 2012 and 16 percent from 2011, according to the department&#8217;s numbers. Sexual assaults were down 6 percent from last year, robberies down 12 percent, serious battery down 16 percent, burglaries down 22 percent, motor vehicle thefts down 23 percent, thefts down 3 percent.</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.ihatethemedia.com/rahm-emanuel-lying-about-crime-statistics-in-chicago">How was this accomplished</a>? It&#8217;s Chicago run by a former member of Obama Inc. <a href="http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2014/Chicago-crime-rates/">How do you think they did it</a>?</p>
<blockquote><p>At the woman’s feet, detectives found a curled strand of telephone wire. Draped over her right hand was a different kind of wire: thin and brown. The same brown wire was wrapped around each armrest of a wooden chair next to her.</p>
<p>The following day, July 24, a pathologist in the Cook County medical examiner’s office noticed something else that had been obscured by rotting skin: a thin gag tied around the corpse’s mouth.</p>
<p>Thanks to some still-visible tattoos, detectives soon identified this unfortunate woman: Tiara Groves, a 20-year-old from Austin. She was last seen walking alone in the wee hours of Sunday, July 14, near a liquor store two miles from the warehouse. At least eight witnesses who saw her that night told police a similar story: She appeared drunk and was upset—one man said that she was crying so hard she couldn’t catch her breath—but refused offers of help. A man who talked to her outside the liquor store said that Groves warned him, excitedly and incoherently, that he should stay away from her or else somebody (she didn’t say who) would kill him too.</p></blockquote>
<p>So&#8230; obviously not a murder.</p>
<blockquote><p>Given the finding of homicide—and the corroborating evidence at the crime scene—the Chicago Police Department should have counted Groves’s death as a murder. And it did. Until December 18. On that day, the police report indicates, a lieutenant overseeing the Groves case reclassified the homicide investigation as a noncriminal death investigation. In his writeup, he cited the medical examiner’s “inability to determine a cause of death.”</p>
<p>That lieutenant was Denis Walsh—the same cop who had played a crucial role in the alleged cover-up in the 2004 killing of David Koschman, the 21-year-old who died after being punched by a nephew of former mayor Richard M. Daley.</p></blockquote>
<p>And this wasn&#8217;t a unique event.</p>
<blockquote><p>Was it just a coincidence, some wondered, that the reclassification occurred less than two weeks before the end of the year, when the city of Chicago’s final homicide numbers for 2013 would be tallied?</p>
<p>Chicago conducted a 12-month examination of the Chicago Police Department’s crime statistics going back several years, poring through public and internal police records and interviewing crime victims, criminologists, and police sources of various ranks. We identified 10 people, including Groves, who were beaten, burned, suffocated, or shot to death in 2013 and whose cases were reclassified as death investigations, downgraded to more minor crimes, or even closed as noncriminal incidents—all for illogical or, at best, unclear reasons.</p>
<p>This troubling practice goes far beyond murders, documents and interviews reveal. Chicago found dozens of other crimes, including serious felonies such as robberies, burglaries, and assaults, that were misclassified, downgraded to wrist-slap offenses, or made to vanish altogether.</p></blockquote>
<p>Welcome to 21st century crime fighting. This is why it&#8217;s a good idea to study monthly crime numbers and compare them to the annual numbers to check for major discrepancies. There&#8217;s less time to reclassify them, though the reclassification still goes on.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s a familiar phenomenon in Socialist systems. The planners create a target that relies on statistics. Then everyone in the system is pressured to meet that target&#8230; which they do by faking the statistics.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s how the USSR brought in 97 percent of the crop without there being any food and why High School graduation rates suddenly increased in the US even though the graduates were more ignorant than ever.</p>
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		<title>Chicago Murder Rate at Lowest Level in 50 Years after Concealed Carry</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/chicago-murder-rate-at-lowest-level-in-50-years-after-concealed-carry/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=chicago-murder-rate-at-lowest-level-in-50-years-after-concealed-carry</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/chicago-murder-rate-at-lowest-level-in-50-years-after-concealed-carry/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 06 Apr 2014 14:21:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gun Control]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=222818</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Chicago gun violence is gang driven.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/gun-rights-topper.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-222820" alt="gun-rights-topper" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/gun-rights-topper-450x257.jpg" width="450" height="257" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://weaselzippers.us/181810-concealed-carry-enacted-in-illinois-guess-what-happened-to-chicago-murder-rate-in-this-first-quarter/">Even Chicago isn&#8217;t hopeless</a>. Just its politicians.</p>
<blockquote><p>In July of 2013, Illinois became the last state in the union to enact a concealed carry law. In January of this year, the state began accepting applications for permits. This week, Chicago police announced that the city’s first quarter murder rate was the lowest since 1958.</p>
<p>The first three months of the year saw 6 fewer murders than the same time frame in 2013–a 9 percent drop–and 55 fewer murders than 2012, according to a statement from Chicago Police.</p>
<p>There were 90 fewer shootings and 119 fewer shooting victims, drops of 26 and 29 percent respectively, according to police statistics.</p>
<p>Compared to the first quarter of 2012, there have been 222 fewer shootings and 292 fewer shooting victims. Overall crime is down 25 percent from last year, and police said more than 1,300 illegal guns were recovered in the last three months.</p></blockquote>
<p>There&#8217;s no obvious explanation for the decline. Much of Chicago gun violence is gang driven. There&#8217;s no new administration or policy in place. And the economy isn&#8217;t exactly in great shape.</p>
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		<title>Valerie Jarrett&#8217;s Influence on Obama</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jamie-glazov/valerie-jarretts-influence-on-obama/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=valerie-jarretts-influence-on-obama</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jamie-glazov/valerie-jarretts-influence-on-obama/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 26 Mar 2014 04:55:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[influence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jarrett]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Radical]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=221855</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Dr. Paul Kengor exposes the Radical-in-Chief’s single most important adviser -- and her sinister agenda.   ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/vjarrett.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-221866" alt="vjarrett" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/vjarrett-450x337.jpg" width="315" height="236" /></a>Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dr. Paul Kengor, a professor of political science at Grove City College. His books include <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Communist-Paul-Kengor/dp/B00C01DYBY/ref=pd_sim_b_1">The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dupes-Americas-Adversaries-Manipulated-Progressives/dp/1935191756/">Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.</a> His latest book is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Reagan-Conservative-Paul-Kengor/dp/082530699X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1389391842&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=11+principles+of+a+reagan+conservative">11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative</a>.<em> </em></p>
<p><b>FP:</b> Dr. Paul Kengor, welcome to Frontpage Interview.</p>
<p>I would like to talk to you today about Valerie Jarrett, her background, her relationship with Barack Obama, and her influence in the Obama White House.</p>
<p>Let’s begin first with who Valerie Jarrett is &#8212; and her relationship with Barack Obama.</p>
<p><b>Kengor:</b> Thanks Jamie.</p>
<p>Valerie Jarrett is President Obama’s single most important and influential adviser. No one else in the White or the entire administration is as close to Obama. She has been described as everything from his “right-hand woman” to like a sister and even a mother to Obama. To cite some mainstream/leftist sources: The New York Times says she’s Obama’s “closest friend in the White House,” his “envoy,” his “emissary,” and his “all-purpose ambassador.” The Times calls her the “ultimate Obama insider.” Dana Milbank says her connection to Obama is “deep and personal” and that she’s “the real center of Obama’s inner circle.”</p>
<p>Obama himself calls her one of his “oldest friends” and says “I trust her completely.”</p>
<p>As for Jarrett, she says that she and Obama have a “shared view of where the United States fits in the world.” She says they “have kind of a mind meld.” She’s says that “chances are, what he wants to do is what I’d want to do.”</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> Ok, so that begs the next question: What is it exactly that they want to do?</p>
<p><b>Kengor: </b>That’s a very good question. I think the best I can say, which is admittedly at times vague from a policy standpoint, is that both favor some form of leftist “fundamental transformation.”</p>
<p>In domestic policy, we can expect them to desire and pursue the kinds of policies that Obama was able to implement in 2009-10 when he had a leftist Pelosi-Reid Congress. The current Republican majority in Congress gets a lot of heat from conservatives, but at least it has slowed the radical push to the left that occurred under Obama, Pelosi, and Reid during those first two years of the Obama presidency. Those first two years were an Obama-Jarrett policy fest. That what an Obama-Jarrett agenda looks like.</p>
<p>In terms of foreign policy, here again it’s difficult to track down precise ideological statements and actions from Jarrett, though she has said unequivocally that her worldview fully reflects Barack Obama’s. It may even be worse than Obama’s, if the reports of her intervention on Osama Bin Laden are correct.</p>
<p>My sense is that both Obama and Valerie Jarrett prefer a weaker America on the world stage. The pandering to Putin in the first term was probably a reflection of Obama-Jarrett thinking, and thus so is the humiliation at the hands of Putin in the second term.</p>
<p>I’m also suspicious of Valerie Jarrett’s possibly having provided negative input into Obama’s statements on Iran, including his terrible Carter-like reaction to the initial uprising in the Iranian “street” in June 2009. Did Obama’s behavior in that period, which was initially so weak that even Democrats were aghast, reflect Valerie Jarrett’s input? I can’t say, but I wouldn’t be surprised.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> How much influence does she actually have on policy?</p>
<p><b>Kengor:</b> Her influence is highly significant. She has her hands in every major decision, if not every small one. She’s constantly monitoring things, inserting her input and protecting her Barack. I could give a bunch of examples, but here are two.</p>
<p>Valerie Jarrett pushed for the HHS mandate requiring all religious believers and groups, including institutional churches such as the Roman Catholic Church, to fund abortion drugs and contraception. According to the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/us/politics/valerie-jarrett-is-the-other-power-in-the-west-wing.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0">New York Times</a> and <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/72612.html">Politico</a>, she did so even as the likes of Joe Biden and Obama Chief of Staff Bill Daley urged the White House to carefully consider the backlash from the Catholic Church. Biden and Daley lost out to Valerie Jarrett and Kathleen Sebelius. No surprise. Obama usually sides with Jarrett.</p>
<p>Especially interesting to readers here, it was reported some time ago that Jarrett repeatedly urged Obama not to take out Osama Bin Laden, prompting Obama to cancel the mission as many as three times. That has been reported by a number of sources, most notably in a book by Richard Miniter. About a year before Miniter’s book, <a href="http://spectator.org/archives/2011/07/05/letting-obama-be-obama">I had written a lengthy feature article for <i>American Spectator</i></a> on Valerie Jarrett. One piece of information that was out there, but I couldn’t confirm, was this Obama-Osama report.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> Jarrett is clearly a leftist, but you have stated that some of the mainstream media sources have tried to suggest otherwise.</p>
<p><b>Kengor:</b> Yes. When I first researched her, trying to pin down her politics was very difficult. The liberal media’s job is to first and foremost protect Barack Obama. They are reporters second and partisan Democrats first. And so, reporters portrayed Valerie Jarrett in soaring, gushing, hagiographic tones, exalting her as Solomon-like in her almost-unearthly wisdom. Her reasoning skills and mind were the world’s finest ever assembled in a woman (other than, perhaps, in the person of Hillary Clinton). When she and Obama sit together in the Oval Office, it’s like having all the accumulated knowledge in human history right there at once. Naturally, too, of course, the same media portrayed her as a centrist, a moderate. Here’s one of my favorite examples, from a February 2011 Chicago Tribune profile: “She is a consensus builder who reinforces Obama’s tendency toward centrism.”</p>
<p>Yes, of course!</p>
<p>I had to really dig to find examples of her early policy influence. Since then, I’ve found more. She’s precisely what we’d expect of someone who is an Obama kindred soul: a leftist.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> Speaking of being a leftist, what are her roots?</p>
<p><b>Kengor:</b> She was born in Shiraz, Iran in November 1956, the time of the Suez crisis. She was born Valerie Bowman to American parents—Dr. James E. Bowman and Barbara Taylor Bowman. Her father was a pathologist and geneticist at a children’s hospital in Shiraz as part of a U.S. aid program to assist developing countries. The family eventually returned to America, specifically Chicago, in 1963. Her mother was a child psychologist who helped establish the Erikson Institute, which (Hillary Clinton-like) specialized in “child advocacy.” The Erikson Institute got funding from the Woods Charitable Fund. If that sounds familiar to readers here, it’s because Barack Obama and Bill Ayers eventually served together as board members at Woods.</p>
<p>Now her Chicago roots are more disturbing &#8212; and indicative of her ideology. They also connect her to Obama and his ideological roots.</p>
<p>Valerie’s maternal grandparents were Robert Rochon Taylor and Dorothy Taylor. Robert was the first African-American head of the Chicago Housing Authority. Dorothy, a native of Berkeley, was active in early Planned Parenthood. That’s ironic, given Margaret Sanger’s “Negro Project,” her 1926 speech to a KKK rally in Silverlake, New Jersey, and her championing of racial-eugenics. Then again, Sanger’s penchant for “race improvement” has never halted liberals’ veneration of her.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> There is a fascinating connection that you’ve detailed between Jarrett’s grandfather and Frank Marshall Davis, Obama’s mentor, who you’ve written a book about.</p>
<p><b>Kengor:</b> That’s correct.</p>
<p>The book is titled, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Communist-Paul-Kengor/dp/B00C01DYBY/ref=pd_sim_b_1"><i>The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor</i></a>. Frank Marshall Davis was an African-American born in Kansas in 1905 who eventually moved to Chicago and joined Communist Party USA. Notably, he joined the party after the signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, a time when many American communists, particularly Jewish-American communists, left the party. They left because Stalin’s signing of the pact facilitated and enabled Hitler’s invasion of Poland and start of World War II. Frank Marshall Davis, however, was undeterred. He joined after the pact.</p>
<p>Worse, Davis, in Chicago, worked for one of the most egregious communist fronts in the history of this country: the American Peace Mobilization. Congress called the American Peace Mobilization “one of the most notorious and blatantly communist fronts ever organized in this country” and “one of the most seditious organizations which ever operated in the United States.” The group’s objective was to stop the United States from entering the war against Hitler—again, because Hitler and Stalin were allies. American communists were allows loyal Soviet patriots. They literally swore allegiance to the USSR and its line.</p>
<p>In my book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dupes-Americas-Adversaries-Manipulated-Progressives/dp/1935191756/"><i>Dupes</i></a>, I publish the original Soviet Comintern document acknowledging that the American Peace Mobilization was founded on the Comintern’s initiative in Chicago in September 1940. There, the Comintern and Communist Party USA attempted to organize a coalition of leftists and “progressives” who would keep America out of the war and out of any support for Britain or anyone opposing Hitler and Stalin—who, again, were allies.</p>
<p>Okay, how does this involve Valerie Jarrett? Jarrett’s grandfather, Robert Taylor, was involved with the American Peace Mobilization, as was Frank Marshall Davis.</p>
<p>Taylor also served with Davis on another communist front, the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee, whose members masqueraded as civil-rights crusading “progressives.” The two served on the board together.</p>
<p>And there’s more. Valerie Jarrett has additional family roots in these things. Both Taylor (Jarrett’s grandfather) and Frank Marshall Davis—who would one day meet and become a mentor to a young Barack Obama in Hawaii in the 1970s—would have often encountered another politically active Chicagoan, Vernon Jarrett. In fact, Vernon Jarrett and Frank Marshall Davis worked together on the very small publicity team (a handful of people) of the communist-controlled Packinghouse Workers Union.</p>
<p>Who was Vernon Jarrett? He would one day become Valerie Jarrett’s father-in-law.</p>
<p>So, to sum up, Obama’s mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, worked with the literal relatives of Valerie Jarrett—her grandfather and future father-in-law—in Chicago’s Communist Party circles in the 1940s.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> Amazing. And it was in Chicago, of course, that Valerie Jarrett and Obama eventually met?</p>
<p><b>Kengor:</b> They first met in Chicago in the early 1990s. During her stint as deputy chief of staff to Mayor Daley (the second Mayor Daley), Jarrett met a young lawyer named Michelle Robinson, who worked for the firm Sidley Austin. They hit it off. Michelle told Jarrett she should meet another young lawyer named Barack Obama, her fiancé. They agreed, and the rest is history.</p>
<p>By the way, David Remnick, a top Obama biographer, reported that Valerie said of that meeting: “Barack felt extraordinarily familiar.” How so? She said that she and Barack “shared a view of where the United States fit in the world.” As David Remnick translates, this was a more “objective” view of an America that was not “the center of all wisdom and experience.” This was not an exceptional America. Of course it wasn’t.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> One final question on the Chicago roots. This gets even crazier. Tell us how David Axelrod’s roots tie into this.</p>
<p><b>Kengor:</b> David Axelrod is the political consultant who made Barack Obama president. He coined the very terms “hope and change.” He is a native New Yorker who ended up attending college and then working in Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s and on. Like Obama, and like Valerie Jarrett, he found his political calling in Chicago.</p>
<p>In Chicago, Axelrod was mentored by the Canter family, namely David Canter. The Canter family has not only deep communist roots in Chicago but also in Stalin’s Soviet Union. David and his family had lived in Moscow just before coming to Chicago. His father, Harry Canter, had literally worked for Stalin’s government as an official translator of Lenin’s writings. He was a hardcore American Bolshevik. Before going to Moscow, Harry had been secretary of the Boston Communist Party and ran for governor of Massachusetts on the Communist Party ticket.</p>
<p>When this duty to Stalin was finished, the Canter family moved on to Chicago, which was (second only to New York) a hotbed for communism. The American Communist Party was founded in Chicago in September 1919, six months after the Comintern was founded in Moscow.</p>
<p>The Canters got involved in all sorts of Chicago-based communist activities and fronts: big May Day parades, the Packinghouse Workers Union, the communist Abraham Lincoln School, and in the pages of the <i>Chicago Star</i>, the communist newspaper founded and edited by Obama’s mentor, Frank Marshall Davis. In fact, Harry Canter was one of the small group of board members that bought the <i>Chicago Star</i> from Davis in September 1948 as Davis bolted to Hawaii to do communist work there (and eventually meet Obama). Canter’s group of purchasers was called the Progressive Publishing Company.</p>
<p>Eventually, Harry’s son David Canter, who himself was involved in all kinds of wild far-left activities, met and mentored David Axelrod.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> So, all of these folks knew each other in Chicago?</p>
<p><b>Kengor:</b> Obama and David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett all have common political ancestors who knew and worked with each other in communist activities and fronts in Chicago in the 1940s. The ancestors are, respectively, Frank Marshall Davis, the Canters, and Vernon Jarrett and Robert Taylor. We are today being governed by ghosts from Chicago’s Communist Party haunts of the 1940s. It’s scary.</p>
<p>By the way, then and still today, they call themselves “<i>progressives</i>.”</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> This information is remarkable. Tell our readers where you have documented all of this.</p>
<p><b>Kengor:</b> I’m meticulous in tying all these things together. In my books, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Communist-Paul-Kengor/dp/B00C01DYBY/ref=pd_sim_b_1"><i>The Communist</i></a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dupes-Americas-Adversaries-Manipulated-Progressives/dp/1935191756/"><i>Dupes</i></a>, especially the former, I provide copies of original materials and documentation. Nothing that I said is exaggerated. Besides, who could make this up?</p>
<p>The American public voted for “change.” This is a change alright.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> Ok so crystallize us what the “change” is exactly that Obama and Jarrett have ushered in and are ushering in. And summarize for us: Who is Valerie Jarrett and what is the meaning and significance of her close friendship with, and enormous influence, on the president?</p>
<p><b>Kengor: </b>I think the “change” is this thrusting of America to the left, this “fundamental transformation.”</p>
<p>Here’s a crucial added insight into Valerie Jarrett’s thinking: There’s a video clip of her on You Tube, from early in the first Obama term, where she’s gushing about Van Jones. She lights up, aglow, as she mentions him—and as the lefties in the crowd howl in approval. She speaks of being “so delighted” with Jones’ “creative ideas” and talks of how her and Obama’s White House hopes to “capture” those ideas. She has a giant smile. That 30 seconds or so of uncensored, unfiltered Valerie Jarrett speaks volumes. At long last, there’s the real Valerie Jarrett, without the doting protection of the mainstream media that coddles her and Barack Obama.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Ud_yNFnfrSI" height="400" width="500" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>So, in short, the meaning and significance of Valerie Jarrett’s close friendship and enormous influence on the president is an America that increasingly moves left domestically and, I suspect, becomes weaker in the world internationally.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> Professor Kengor, thanks for your time.</p>
<p><b>Kengor:</b> Anytime, Jamie. I thank you, FrontPage, and David Horowitz for your time and courage.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>Valerie Jarrett, the CEO of Obama Inc.</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/valerie-jarrett-the-ceo-of-obama-inc/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=valerie-jarrett-the-ceo-of-obama-inc</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/valerie-jarrett-the-ceo-of-obama-inc/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Mar 2014 04:50:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democrat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hillary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Valerie Jarrett]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[White House]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=221293</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The woman behind the curtain.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/jarrett_ny_092210.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-221349 alignleft" alt="jarrett_ny_092210" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/jarrett_ny_092210-450x350.jpg" width="315" height="245" /></a>For eight years, the media envisioned Dick Cheney as the ‘evil genius’ behind the Bush White House, but few in the media have wanted to take a long look at the ‘evil genius’ behind the Obama White House.</p>
<p>The populist grass roots myth died shortly after Obama was elected and while plenty of books have been written about the internal workings of the Obama campaign and administration, unlike the books written about Bush, they rarely inform mainstream media news coverage. When these books and articles come from within the media, the authors are not attacked and their work isn’t discredited, it simply gets compartmentalized into the wonksphere and away from daily news coverage.</p>
<p>This compartmentalization is the reason why media coverage of Obama remains largely unchanged and very little attention is paid to the non-cabinet level personalities who actually make policy. Colin Powell’s dissatisfaction with his lack of influence under Bush was widely covered, while <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/clinton-insider-reveals-obamas-foreign-policy-blunders/">Hillary Clinton’s was not</a>. The Powell implosion led the media to exaggerate the role of Dick Cheney, but no one asks who really had the final say on foreign policy under Obama if Hillary Clinton didn’t.</p>
<p>The Obama White House is a radical departure from previous administrations. It’s a permanent campaign, not just for the obvious reason that it is constantly using the tactics of the campaign, fundraising, attacking and performing, but also because it operates like a campaign reducing the traditional forms of an administration to formalities.</p>
<p>Cabinet members <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/11/locked-in-the-cabinet-99374.html#.Uydo9_lr7J8">have little influence</a>. Decisions are made by White House staffers, many from the Center for American Progress, who are the ones running the unaccountable permanent campaign.</p>
<p>There is no Obama administration. There is an Obama campaign. And that campaign is part of an organization built around a single figure; Obama Inc.</p>
<p>Obama Inc. has more in common with the type of organization built around a celebrity like Beyonce than a conventional political organization. It can handle everything from fundraising, branding to viral marketing, but like the inner circles of top celebrities, the most influential person in the organization is the one who can soothe, pamper and cater to the celebrity’s mercurial personality.</p>
<p>Valerie Jarrett’s role as CEO of Obama Inc. confuses those who expect a more conventional arrangement. Jarrett is less Dick Cheney and more Colonel Parker or Helen Kushnick; a powerful enigmatic figure ruthlessly dedicated to her star whose power comes from his dependency.</p>
<p>Obama is the star of Obama Inc., the grinning figure who goes out on stage and cracks jokes while selling overpriced health insurance to the country. Valerie Jarrett is his manager, confidante and gatekeeper. Officially Jarrett is a senior adviser with a defined title and function, but Obama Inc. does few things officially and unofficially, Jarrett has the last word on everything.</p>
<p>Jarrett merges the personal and the political. Obama may chat with numerous advisers, but it’s Valerie who goes back to eat with Michelle and the family. A cabinet member is lucky to catch Obama’s attention once. Valerie Jarrett has it full time, day or night, leading to her nickname of “Night Stalker.”</p>
<p>If Obama skips security briefings, it’s because they, like so much of the formal infrastructure of government, are there just for show. The real briefing will come from or through Jarrett and it will be massaged into the talking points that communicate only what she wants them to.</p>
<p>The aggressive approach that Obama Inc. has come to be known for is all Valerie. Bill Clinton’s sharp edge was Hillary. It was Hillary who kept the grudges of Clintonworld burning while Bill tried to work with his rivals and enemies. In Obama Inc, Valerie Jarrett occupies Hillary’s role, urging greater ideological fealty to the left and uncompromising attacks on the right, while dominating Obama in a way that Hillary never dominated Bill.</p>
<p>Valerie Jarrett got away with too much during her time in Chicago politics to have learned caution. Where more conventional Democrats would slow down, Valerie Jarrett speeds up; a successful career of corruption and leftist politics has given her a sense of political and moral invulnerability. But that doesn’t mean that Jarrett lacks skill; like her boss, what she lacks is a sense of responsibility.</p>
<p>Obama is a political dilettante whose skills are entirely people skills. Valerie Jarrett’s people skills are negligible and concentrated on only one person, but unlike her boss, protégé and adopted son, she has the endurance and drive to pursue an issue indefinitely.</p>
<p>Barack Obama isn’t driven. Throughout his entire adult life there have been people there to open doors for him. It seemed natural for him to let Valerie Jarrett drive his political career and his administration to do the things that he lacks the attention span or the focus to do.</p>
<p>In exchange, his administration represents Jarrett’s ideological vision of a hard left turn for the country.</p>
<p>Valerie Jarrett doesn’t always get her way. She managed to talk Obama out of going after Osama three times, <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/08/obamas_strange_dependence_on_valerie_jarrett.html">but eventually lost the argument</a>. But Jarrett has made her mark on the country and the world by winning more arguments than she loses by leveraging her unprecedented level of access to chip away at him with her personal knowledge of his weaknesses; what Michelle Obama described as his “soft spots”.</p>
<p>Valerie Jarrett’s strength is framing political arguments in personal terms. Through her that has also become Obama’s strength. For Obama, Jarrett and the rest of the left, the political is personal. And their bond is also political and personal.</p>
<p>Jarrett and Obama are both Third Culture activists with a background in the Muslim world and left-wing politics, who came up the ladder through their involvement with corrupt political non-profits and equally corrupt Chicago politics. Both have dipped their toes in the narrow interests of the urban black community while having political agendas that transcended theirs on a global scale. And both have deep wells of resentment.</p>
<p>Obama may be married to Michelle, but he is closer to Valerie. Jarrett protects him from his job by controlling access to him. As his gatekeeper, Jarrett controls everything from dinner invites to the czars who have more power than many cabinet members. And when each meeting ends, it’s Valerie Jarrett who privately provides the final summary and makes the concluding argument to Barack Obama.</p>
<p>By becoming the gatekeeper to the Oval Office, Valerie Jarrett has more control over domestic and foreign policy than anyone else making her the closest thing to the president. Obama may be the public face of Obama Inc., but when the cameras dim and the teleprompters are turned off, it’s Valerie Jarrett who calls the shots.</p>
<p>Obama may be reading a teleprompter on stage, but Valerie Jarrett is the woman behind the curtain.</p>
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		<title>Green Energy Causes 18% Rise in Chicago Energy Bills</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/green-energy-causes-18-rise-in-chicago-energy-bills/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=green-energy-causes-18-rise-in-chicago-energy-bills</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/green-energy-causes-18-rise-in-chicago-energy-bills/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 11 Mar 2014 15:24:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rahm emanuel]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=220710</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[5 percent of the power will come from Illinois wind farms.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/rahm_emanuel_at_obama_inauguration.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-220711" alt="rahm_emanuel_at_obama_inauguration" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/rahm_emanuel_at_obama_inauguration-450x265.jpg" width="450" height="265" /></a></p>
<p>Chicago, the inspiration for the current management team running America into the ground, has done it again as residential <a href="http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-wages-of-stupidity-chicagoans-face.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&amp;utm_medium=twitter">energy bills are set to rise sky high</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Residential electric bills in Chicago will increase roughly 14 to 18 percent in June under a new deal the city has struck with its power supplier, Integrys Energy Services.</p>
<p>That follows an increase in January thanks to higher delivery charges by Commonwealth Edison Co.</p>
<p>&#8230;Like the previous deal, the new contract won&#8217;t include power from coal-fired sources. In addition, 5 percent of the power will come from Illinois wind farms.</p></blockquote>
<p>That sounds bad, but wait&#8230; it gets worse.</p>
<blockquote><p>Under the new deal, Integrys will impose a fixed monthly charge on customers regardless of how much electricity they consume. Single-family households will pay $22.36 per month while units in multifamily buildings will pay $9.06.</p></blockquote>
<p>What&#8217;s so special about Integrys? Like a lot of modern energy companies, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisbarth/2011/12/14/29-companies-that-paid-millions-for-lobbying-and-didnt-pay-taxes/">it has a very specific skill set</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>In December 2011, the non-partisan organization Public Campaign criticized Integrys Energy Group for spending $710,000 on lobbying and not paying any taxes during 2008-2010, instead receiving $92 million in tax rebates, despite making a profit of $818 million and increasing executive pay by 109% to $14.8 million in 2010 for its top 5 executives</p></blockquote>
<p>&#8230;and oh yes&#8230;</p>
<blockquote><p>Integrys Energy Group&#8217;s board includes William Brodsky, head of the Chicago Board Options Exchange and a member of World Business Chicago, which Emanuel chairs.</p></blockquote>
<p>And the <a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local/chicago_news&amp;id=9460528">claims of big savings</a> are dribbling away&#8230;</p>
<blockquote><p> Under new electricity rates announced Sunday by Mayor Rahm Emanuel&#8217;s administration, utility customers will still save about $34 a year when compared with what they would pay to ComEd, according to city officials.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s a far cry from the $130 a year savings Emanuel initially touted when the city started doing business with Chicago-based electricity supplier Integrys Energy Services at the beginning of 2012.</p></blockquote>
<p>The people behind all this are now also running the whole country.</p>
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		<title>Chicago Credit Rating Now Lower Than Any Major City Except Detroit</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/chicago-credit-rating-now-lower-than-any-major-city-except-detroit/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=chicago-credit-rating-now-lower-than-any-major-city-except-detroit</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/chicago-credit-rating-now-lower-than-any-major-city-except-detroit/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 05 Mar 2014 16:39:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Moody's]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rahm emmanuel]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=220348</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[America is now run by the best and brightest of Chicago.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/emanuel_obama.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-220349" alt="emanuel_obama" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/emanuel_obama-450x300.jpg" width="450" height="300" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/clout/chi-chicago-credit-rating-takes-major-hit-20140304,0,4878096.story">America is now run by</a> the <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/04/news/chicago-credit-rating/">best and brightest of Chicago</a>. <a href="http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2014/03/04/moodys-downgrades-chicagos-credit-rating-lowest-of-any-major-city-except-detroit/#.Uxc_keqc4o8.email">What they did to Chicago</a>, <a href="http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/25360629-418/city-to-borrow-19-billion-in-first-test-since-rating-downgrade.html">they&#8217;re doing to America</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded Chicago’s credit rating, citing the city’s unfunded pension liabilities.</p>
<p>The agency announced Tuesday it’s lowering the rating on $8.3 billion in debt from A3 to Baa1, putting it only three notches above junk-bond status.</p>
<p>Moody’s Investor Service rated the city’s upcoming $388 million bond issuance at Baa1, down from A3, a level set last year after an unusual triple downgrade.</p>
<p>Chicago will test the bond market for the first time since its bond rating dropped three notches, thanks to $1.9 billion in borrowings added Monday to the mountain of debt piled on Chicago taxpayers.</p>
<p>The lower rating means the city will have to pay high interest rates.</p>
<p>Moody’s concluded Chicago has the highest level of unfunded pension debt “of any rated U.S. local government.”</p>
<p>Chicago is home to one of the most troubled pension systems in the country. In total, the city&#8217;s four pension funds &#8212; for firefighters, police officers, and two for other city workers &#8212; face funding holes of nearly $20 billion.</p>
<p>uesday&#8217;s downgrades affect $8.3 billion in city debt, including $7.8 billion in general obligation bonds and $556 million in sales tax bonds. It follows previous downgrades by Moody&#8217;s and other ratings agencies.<br />
It also comes as the city prepares to issue hundreds of millions in new bonds, according to Moody&#8217;s.</p>
<p>The latest hit to the city&#8217;s general obligation and sales tax ratings puts that debt only a few notches away from junk status. Moody&#8217;s said its outlook remains negative, which means additional downgrades could come.</p>
<p>Chief Financial Officer Lois Scott was asked Monday how much the downgrade would add to the city’s borrowing costs.</p>
<p>“We haven’t issued debt since then. So, we have no way of knowing,” Scott said before hustling out of the City Council chambers.</p>
<p>Chicago now has the worst credit rating of any major city except Detroit.</p></blockquote>
<p>Don&#8217;t worry, Detroit, Chicago will get there soon. So will large chunks of California and New York City. And then they&#8217;ll have to annex the suburbs, seize 401Ks and start selling office furniture on eBay.</p>
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		<title>Chicago Joins Bill de Blasio&#8217;s War on Horses</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/chicago-joins-bill-de-blasios-war-on-horses/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=chicago-joins-bill-de-blasios-war-on-horses</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/chicago-joins-bill-de-blasios-war-on-horses/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 01 Mar 2014 15:22:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bill de Blasio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[war on horses]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=220011</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The left has opened yet another front in its endless War on Everything]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/emanuel_de_blasio_img.jpg"><img class="alignnone  wp-image-220012" alt="emanuel_de_blasio_img" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/emanuel_de_blasio_img.jpg" width="432" height="230" /></a></p>
<p>If you told me this time last year, that New York and Chicago would be consumed by some sort of bizarre left-wing War on Horses, I wouldn&#8217;t have believed you.</p>
<p><a href="http://savechicagocarriages.com/2014/02/09/to-save-a-chicago-icon/">But here we are</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>On February 5, 2014, Alderman Ed Burke stated his intention to ban horse drawn carriages in the city of Chicago: “They’re a nuisance, they’re a traffic hazard, it’s cruel to the animals, and we should be able to beat New York City to the punch,” said Burke, 14th.</p></blockquote>
<p>Burke is <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2010/04/08/Alderman-Edward-Burke--Top-Machine-Boss-of-Obama---s-Chicago-Part-1">Chicago&#8217;s longest serving Alderman and its political boss </a>and what he says, goes. So if Burke wants to ban horses, the horses are likely to be banned, since Chicago&#8217;s government is even more broken than New York&#8217;s.</p>
<p>Chicago drivers are <a href="http://savechicagocarriages.com/">fighting back with a website </a>a<a href="http://www.change.org/petitions/mayor-rahm-emanuel-chicago-city-council-keep-horse-carriages-in-chicago?share_id=IOkFixiheA&amp;utm_campaign=friend_inviter_chat&amp;utm_medium=facebook&amp;utm_source=share_petition&amp;utm_term=permissions_dialog_false">nd a petition</a> and it feels like the left has opened yet another front in its endless War on Everything.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s a tiresome war. One day it&#8217;s plastic bags, another day it&#8217;s pronouns and a third day, it&#8217;s horses. The left behaves like a malignant child constantly trying to crush everything underfoot.</p>
<p>Back in New York, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/liam-neeson-blasts-bill-de-blasios-horse-carriage-ban-2014-2">Liam Neeson once again told off Bill de Blasio</a> for his war on horses and beat down De Blasio fanboy, Jon Stewart.</p>
<blockquote><p>As a candidate last year, de Blasio told an animal-rights group he would end the practice &#8220;within the first week on the job.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2014/02/8539784/de-blasios-horse-carriage-ban-stalls">So far no, because William Wilhelm jr </a>aka Bill de Blasio is a liar and incompetent. That&#8217;s a typical combination for the left which would kill everyone if they could only find the bullets.</p>
<p>The<a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/02/24/horse-carriages-new-york-blasio-equine-employment/hBJeP6v472OEYyfhg59tVO/story.html"> Boston Globe, of all places</a>, had a more realistic take on the War on Horses.</p>
<blockquote><p>Horses are controlled not by people, but by their ancient brains, which constantly scan the landscape for danger — be it a wolf, a plastic bag borne by a breeze, or a New York mayor threatening their jobs in a perilous economy.</p>
<p>There are millions of people out of work in this country. By comparison, the fate of 200 carriage horses in Manhattan is like a fly on a mare’s withers, an insignificance flicked away with a shrug. Horses, once the nation’s over-the-road truckers, are a shrinking demographic. There are 9.2 million horses in the nation, of which about 2.5 million are gainfully employed in jobs such as racing, farming, rodeos, and law enforcement. Most are pleasure horses. Yet even as such, only 1 in 63 Americans has regular contact with horses, according to Horse Council data.</p>
<p>This is why to encounter a horse-drawn carriage on a city street is a visceral delight, a sight (and smell) uncommon to urban senses. This is why, to many of us, it’s still a thrill to see them. When anti-carriage lobbyists show pictures of horses lying dead or injured on city streets, they necessarily omit the snapshots of delighted children nuzzling the big beasts — sometimes the only horses an urban child will encounter.</p>
<p>In this capacity, the carriage horses are as useful as they are in ferrying brides and tourists. The child who strokes a draft horse in harness becomes a child who wants riding lessons, and who watches “The Black Stallion” and reads “Black Beauty,” and grows up to lobby with PETA against carriages — or, just as likely, to drive a carriage horse herself. Never do abusers outnumber the caring, and it’s not wise to govern at the whip of extremes.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/bill-de-blasio-horses3.jpg"><img class="alignnone  wp-image-219874" alt="bill de blasio horses3" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/bill-de-blasio-horses3.jpg" width="463" height="350" /></a></p></blockquote>
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		<title>SEIU and Chicago Dems Stole Millions from Family Members of the Disabled</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/seiu-and-chicago-dems-stole-millions-from-family-members-of-the-disabled/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=seiu-and-chicago-dems-stole-millions-from-family-members-of-the-disabled</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Jan 2014 16:17:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Governor Pat Quinn]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEIU]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=217027</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[SEIU will do things that Al Capone would have the drawn the line at.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/PamHarris.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-217053" alt="PamHarris" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/PamHarris-450x210.jpg" width="450" height="210" /></a></p>
<p>Elections aren&#8217;t cheap. Neither are bribes. The money has to come from somewhere. And &#8220;somewhere&#8221; is often places that even the politicians of the old gangland Chicago wouldn&#8217;t have touched.</p>
<p>But SEIU and its Democratic allies will do things <a href="http://freebeacon.com/seiu-racks-up-big-bucks-on-forced-unionization-in-illinois-study-finds/">that Al Capone would have the drawn the line</a> at. And it&#8217;s up to the Supreme Court to stand up for the family members of the disabled that they are robbing with their &#8220;fair share&#8221; demands.</p>
<blockquote><p>The politically powerful Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has pocketed more than $50 million from home healthcare workers forced to pay union dues by two Democratic governors in Illinois, according to new study.</p>
<p>Documents obtained by the Illinois Policy Institute (IPI) revealed that the union received $52 million from home healthcare workers, including many people caring for physically disabled relatives, between 2008 and 2013.</p>
<p>“The SEIU has been taking in the neighborhood of $10 million per year off of the rehab unit,” said IPI labor expert Paul Kersey. “These are 20,000 people who take care of disabled relatives and patients and they weren’t able to prevent themselves from being unionized.”</p>
<p>These workers are known as personal assistants or rehab workers. They care for physically disabled patients who receive Medicaid money to pay for at-home care. While many of the homecare workers are related to their patients, Democratic Governors Rod Blagojevich and Pat Quinn declared them state employees beginning in 2003.</p>
<p>A separate group of home healthcare workers, who provide care for patients and relatives with mental disabilities, are now challenging that policy before the Supreme Court after multiple unionization attempts by SEIU. Kersey said the latter group is trying to avoid the same fate as the personal assistants.</p>
<p>“The dues are a guaranteed benefit for the union, rather than a benefit to the homecare worker,” he said.</p>
<p>The SEIU received exclusive representation rights over the state’s 20,475 personal assistants in 2003 without holding a union election.</p>
<p>The union launched an aggressive card check election and presented the state with 10,627 cards authorizing union representation. Nearly 90 percent of those signatures came from existing union members, while only 10 percent of the at-home caregivers assented to SEIU organization attempts.</p>
<p>That means that 90 percent of the previously non-union caregivers either voted no or abstained from signing a card, according to Kersey.</p></blockquote>
<p>Mainstream media coverage on the issue is carefully avoiding the &#8220;family member&#8221; part of the story because it makes it impossible to deny what Quinn and the SEIU have done here. The <a href="http://voices.suntimes.com/early-and-often/backtalk/supreme-court-ruling-could-reshape-home-health-care-in-illinois/">Chicago Sun Times did </a>an entire article on the case without ever mentioning the word &#8220;family&#8221;, but while throwing in every single possible pro-SEIU argument it could find.</p>
<blockquote><p>Susie Watts, a Chicago-area mother who cares for a disabled 27-year-old daughter at home, is glad to have the support but sees no need for a union.</p>
<p>&#8220;Nothing could be more meaningful for me than caring for her at home,&#8221; she said. &#8220;But I didn&#8217;t have any choice about this union. I don&#8217;t need it, and there is no opting out.&#8221;</p>
<p>However, Keith Kelleher, president of the SEIU Healthcare Illinois and Indiana, said the union had helped improve the lives of employees as well as those who are cared for at home. &#8220;This saves the government billions of dollars over institutions,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We don&#8217;t want to go back to the old days.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Yes, the bad old days, <a href="http://watchdog.org/124523/one-brave-mom-pam-harris-fight-il-unions-nears-end/">when Keith couldn&#8217;t steal money</a> from disabled family members to cover his salary and pay forward to political allies.</p>
<blockquote><p>Harris’ son, Josh, has a rare genetic condition, Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome, and spends most of his days in a wheelchair. He lives at home with Harris, who is his primary care giver.</p>
<p>Harris fought hard to stop Service Employees International Union from squeezing some of her son’s Social Security money out of her family.</p>
<p>The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday on whether the forced unionization of families like Harris’ is legal.</p></blockquote>
<p>Even Al Capone would have been sickened by Keith Kelleher.</p>
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		<title>Chicago Politics</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/chicago-politics/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=chicago-politics</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/chicago-politics/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 27 Dec 2013 15:24:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago Politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214000</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Thompson held a debate between himself and two live rats ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/hinky-dink-kenna-left-and-bathouse-john-coughlin-detail.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-214020" alt="hinky-dink-kenna-left-and-bathouse-john-coughlin-detail" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/hinky-dink-kenna-left-and-bathouse-john-coughlin-detail.jpg" width="411" height="234" /></a></p>
<blockquote><p>Politics in my Chicago days was wonderful rampant skullduggery. You could see every crooked bone of it, every rotten piece of its inner working was visible.</p>
<p>I remember the citizens of Chicago surrounding city hall, three thousands of them, with ropes in their hands threatening to lynch the aldermen who had been bribed.</p>
<p>I remember when Mr. William Hale Thompson was running for mayor. His idea of getting votes was not to make speeches or annoy people with ideologies. He used to put on shows all over town and the shows consisted of one naked lady being chased by an imbecile who had been borrowed from the local loony bin. The audience would sit there, applaud and yell and Thompson always got elected.</p>
<p>The two politicians I most remember out of my youth were a couple of aldermen who ran the first ward in Chicago. This was the ward where all the brothels, all the gangsters, all the dives, all the bums were. The aldermen were called Hinky Dink and Bathhouse John. And Hinky Dink was a little, wiry, nervous man and the Bathhouse was a portly fellow given to writing poetry.</p>
<p>They held their grip on the First Ward in a very practical way. About a week before the election, they would import from two to five thousand bums. They would put them up in rooms, twenty to a room. They would feed them a free lunch at the Workingman&#8217;s Exchange which was a saloon they ran. And when election time came these two to four thousand bums would go to the polls and vote. Not once.</p>
<p>Each bum was supposed to vote five to ten times. Bathhouse John and Hinky Dink always came in by a great majority.</p>
<p>There was one election however where something odd happened and the forces of law and order struck. The two aldermen took the count for a while. About two days before the election, the Workingman&#8217;s Exchange opened. No sooner had it opened than somebody noticed there was a head sitting on the bar. It was the head of a decapitated bum. Quite a story ensued. The papers all began to talk about who cut this bum&#8217;s head off.</p>
<p>Around three o&#8217;clock in the afternoon, the door opened, a car passed and another bum&#8217;s head was thrown into the bar. This caused a panic among the bums who started evacuated their crowded rooms and fleeing Chicago like it was a plague spot. As a result of the disappearing, the forces of law and order won. Bathhouse John and Hinky Dink were not aldermen for the next two years.</p>
<p>However, when the next election came around, they prepared for law and order. They engaged the entire police department of the city of Chicago to protect their bums. Outside of every flop house stood five cops watching to see that no heads were cut off.</p></blockquote>
<p>The Ben Hecht Show, Jan 29, 1959</p>
<blockquote><p>William Hale Thompson was mayor of Chicago from 1915 to 1931.  He was mayor during the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 and was said to have control of the 75,000 African-American voters in his day.</p>
<p>Always a flamboyant campaigner, Thompson held a debate between himself and two live rats which he used to portray his opponents. According to Thompson, at this time the biggest enemy the United States had was King George V of the United Kingdom. Thompson promised his supporters that if they ever met, Thompson would punch the king in the nose.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://chicagocrimescenes.blogspot.com/2009/03/mrs-william-hale-thompson-mayors-wife.html">First Ward was run by</a> Michael &#8220;Hinky Dink&#8221; Kenna and John J. &#8220;Bathhouse&#8221; Coughlin, who became rich collecting protection from the brothels and gambling dens in their district.</p></blockquote>
<p>How little things have changed.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/big-bill-thompson_schmidt.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-214021" alt="big bill thompson_schmidt" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/big-bill-thompson_schmidt-450x300.jpg" width="450" height="300" /></a></p>
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		<title>Chicago Pol Suggests Using Drones to Protect Kids on the Way to School</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/chicago-pol-suggests-using-drones-to-protect-kids-on-the-way-to-school/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=chicago-pol-suggests-using-drones-to-protect-kids-on-the-way-to-school</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/chicago-pol-suggests-using-drones-to-protect-kids-on-the-way-to-school/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 31 Aug 2013 18:41:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Drones]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=202573</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There are 35,000 Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and 70,000 gang members in Chicago.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/rajeevbasu_simon1.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-202574" alt="rajeevbasu_simon1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/rajeevbasu_simon1-450x203.jpg" width="450" height="203" /></a></p>
<p>The question of how much difference there is between Chicago and Afghanistan has just been answered. There are 35,000 Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and 70,000 gang members in Chicago, who are responsible for most of the gun violence in the city.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s obvious. Either we pull out of Chicago, like we pulled out of Afghanistan or we start bombing Chicago.</p>
<p>A Chicago politician is helping show us <a href="http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=200713">the way to heal his troubled city. With drones.</a></p>
<blockquote><p>If a Chicago alderman has his way, the city could someday see drones buzzing through the skies as part of an effort to keep students safe as they walk to school.</p>
<p>&#8220;We could use the help.!” Ald. George Cardenas (12th) tweeted, along with an article from The Telegraph outlining ways the remote-controlled, unmanned aerial vehicles — commonly known as drones — have been used outside of military actions.  “Why not use drones in safe passage.??&#8221;</p>
<p>During a follow-up phone interview, Cardenas said &#8220;there is no doubt technology is migrating from military use. &#8230; It&#8217;s going to take time to find those uses in an urban environment. It is, however, the future and I think people will want to take that leap. I think eventually we’re going to have to look at this technology.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Did 12th Ward Alderman @georgeacardenas just advocate that Military Drones be used on CPS safe passage routes?&#8221; tweeted Martin Ritter, a member of the Local School Council at Whitney Young High School and a Chicago Teachers Union organizer. Ritter later tweeted, &#8220;Flying tanks are not the answer.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>We won&#8217;t know until we try. If flying tanks don&#8217;t work, what about flying submarines or flying aircraft carriers. Something out there has to have enough firepower to fix Chicago.</p>
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		<title>Police Called on Man Who Accuses Muslim Panel of Terrorism Complacency</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/police-called-on-man-who-accuses-muslim-panel-of-terrorism-complacency/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=police-called-on-man-who-accuses-muslim-panel-of-terrorism-complacency</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/police-called-on-man-who-accuses-muslim-panel-of-terrorism-complacency/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 27 Aug 2013 14:41:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dhimmism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=202136</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Who would she have called if he had accused them of complicity? The Department of Justice?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/al_capone-300x300.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-199340" alt="Al Capone" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/al_capone-300x300.jpg" width="300" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Chicago. Your co-pilot for this flight will be Rahm Emanuel and a drunken angry Imam. If you look out on the right side of the plane, you&#8217;ll see the United States Constitution burning. If you look out on the <a href="http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/illinois-muslim-dawah-at-library-greeted-with-infidels/">left side of the plane, you&#8217;ll see Chicago</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>What a southwest suburban library had promoted as an educational forum this week on Muslim life in America quickly turned into a contentious debate about Islam.</p></blockquote>
<p>Educational apparently does not mean a discussion. It means &#8220;Shut up and accept what we tell you.&#8221;</p>
<blockquote><p>The tone for the Thursday evening event was set while the three panelists at the Orland Park Library were still introducing themselves. In the first of many interruptions, a half-dozen audience members stood up and demanded that everyone recite the Pledge of Allegiance.</p></blockquote>
<p>Nothing sets an uglier tone than the Pledge of Allegiance.</p>
<blockquote><p>Library Director Mary Weimar denied their request. She explained that it wasn’t standard practice to recite the pledge at library events and requested that the attendees show more respect for the panelists.</p></blockquote>
<p>If only he had suggested singing the Internationale. I bet Mary would have been belting it out. Followed by a dozen Spanish civil war songs.</p>
<blockquote><p>So began a tense and often heated 90-minute debate — punctuated with frequent yelling and finger-pointing from audience members — over the practice of Shariah law, the meaning of jihad and the intersection of Islamic and American culture.</p>
<p>Together they repeatedly asked the audience to maintain an open mind about Islam. In return, they were peppered with questions about Muslim extremists and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.</p>
<p>Joseph Figliulo, a Frankfort resident and member of Act! For America, a national organization of people concerned about “the threat of radical Islam,” called Shariah “a totalitarian ideology along the lines of communism and fascism.”</p>
<p>Nearly a dozen audience members appeared to side with Figliulo. They often clapped and cheered for one another as they took turns explaining their distrust of Muslims.</p>
<p>Others in the 60-person crowd took offense at the frequent outbursts and told those responsible to “shut up or leave.”</p>
<p><strong>Library officials called police after an audience member accused the panelists of being complacent in the face of terrorism overseas.</strong> The remark led to a burst of outrage from audience me</p></blockquote>
<p>The article bends over backward to denounce the American side and yet it doesn&#8217;t say that he shouted or threatened. Instead good old Mary called the Chicago cops because he said the panelists were &#8220;complacent&#8221; when it came to terrorism.</p>
<p>Who would she have called if he had accused them of complicity? The Department of Justice?</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>Chicago Pays 4,000 City Employees Over $100K</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/chicago-pays-4000-city-employees-over-100k/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=chicago-pays-4000-city-employees-over-100k</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/chicago-pays-4000-city-employees-over-100k/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 04 Aug 2013 14:57:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rahm emanuel]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=199339</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[That's double the average city income. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/al_capone-300x300.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-199340" alt="Al Capone" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/al_capone-300x300.jpg" width="300" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>That&#8217;s<a href="http://weaselzippers.us/2013/08/02/as-rahms-chicago-lines-up-to-be-the-next-detroit-2409-employees-making-over-100000year/"> double the average city income</a>. But that&#8217;s <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/01/Rahm-s-Chicago-2-409-City-Employees-Make-Over-100k-Per-Year">what administrator proliferation </a>and union seniority and overtime rules get you.</p>
<blockquote><p>While residents across Chicago continue to struggle facing a 10.3 percent <a href="http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&amp;met_y=unemployment_rate&amp;hl=en&amp;dl=en&amp;idim=city:PS170100&amp;fdim_y=seasonality:U">unemployment</a> rate and a median household income of $47,371, according to the 2010 <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/17/1714000.html">U.S. Census</a> the city of Chicago is paying 2,409 of its employees over $100,000 per year.</p>
<p>The city’s roughly <a href="https://data.cityofchicago.org/Administration-Finance/Current-Employee-Names-Salaries-and-Position-Title/xzkq-xp2w">$2.4 billion payroll</a> includes over 32,000 police, firefighters, emergency responders, city council (aldermen and their staff), mayoral staff, water management staff, transportation, budget management, animal control, crossing guards, librarians, foster grandparents, etc., who are paid an average of $74,698.</p>
<p>The city payroll does not include <a href="http://eagnews.org/1500-chicago-school-employees-make-over-100k-2011s-top-paid-teacher-234k/">school employees</a>, 1,500 of whom also earn more than $100,000 a year.</p></blockquote>
<p>The situation is really severe in the school system where the proliferation of administrators and MA&#8217;s leads to huge payrolls&#8230; for the children.</p>
<blockquote><p>On Wednesday, Emanuel’s office released its <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/157255037/AFA-Budget-2013">Annual Financial Analysis</a> for 2013, forecasting a “budget shortfall” of $330 million for 2014. Despite the “shortfall” and Moody’s recent <a href="http://www.suntimes.com/21552920-761/city-of-chicagos-cash-cushion-plummets-debt-triples-arrests-drop-water-use-rises.html">triple downgrade</a> of the city’s bond rating, the budget forecast estimates the city payroll will increase nearly $100 million for the next year.</p>
<p>Employees making over $100,000 a year account for $276,097,550 of the city’s annual expenses.</p></blockquote>
<p>Welcome to Detroit. Coming to a city near you.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>Hot Summer in Chicago: Only 4 Days Without a Murder</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/hot-summer-in-chicago-only-4-days-without-a-murder/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hot-summer-in-chicago-only-4-days-without-a-murder</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/hot-summer-in-chicago-only-4-days-without-a-murder/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Jul 2013 15:02:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gun violence]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=197760</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In the last thirty days, Chicago has had only four days that were homicide-free.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/625x275xshooting-trend-chitown.png.pagespeed.ic_.wwAtbxMUYy.png"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-197761" alt="625x275xshooting-trend-chitown.png.pagespeed.ic.wwAtbxMUYy" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/625x275xshooting-trend-chitown.png.pagespeed.ic_.wwAtbxMUYy-450x198.png" width="450" height="198" /></a></p>
<p>As I wrote a while back,<a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/gun-violence-is-not-a-republican-problem-its-a-democratic-problem/"> gun violence is a Democratic problem</a> because it&#8217;s not a gun problem, it&#8217;s a social problem. That&#8217;s something liberals in theory agree with, but then refuse to think about.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/07/horror-in-the-last-30-days-chicago-had-4-that-were-homicide-free/">Chicago is a case in point</a>. Its gun violence is really gang violence. Its gang violence is the symptom of a broken society.</p>
<blockquote><p>In June there were 45 homicides in Chicago. So far in July there have been 43 homicides. Chicago weekend shootings left six dead and 17 wounded.</p>
<p>In the last thirty days, Chicago has had only four days that were homicide-free.</p></blockquote>
<p>If this goes on, then Chicago will be America. In many ways that&#8217;s already the case.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>&#8216;Justice for Trayvon&#8217; Chicago: &#8216;Racism Is in DNA of America&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/volpe/justice-for-trayvon-chicago-racism-is-in-dna-of-america/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=justice-for-trayvon-chicago-racism-is-in-dna-of-america</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/volpe/justice-for-trayvon-chicago-racism-is-in-dna-of-america/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Jul 2013 04:11:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Volpe]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al sharpton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[George Zimmerman]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jesse Jackson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Justice for Trayvon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shooting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Trayvon Martin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=197684</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A rally against America's "genocide." ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/1photo.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-197686" alt="1photo" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/1photo.jpg" width="210" height="158" /></a>At the July 20 Chicago &#8220;Justice for Trayvon&#8221; rally, which garnered somewhere between 5-10 thousand people (predominantly African-American), mainstream public figures like Jesse Jackson and celebrities like MC Lyte demonstrated alongside radical groups like the International Socialist Organization (ISO), the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (REVCOM), Occupy Chicago, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). The event was one of hundreds sponsored by the National Action Network (NAN), run by Al Sharpton.</p>
<p>At this particular rally, as was undoubtedly the case at most of the other Justice for Trayvon rallies across the country, the message was clear: the United States is a racist nation, the Zimmerman verdict must be the beginning of a &#8220;social revolution,&#8221; and that social revolution must include the distribution of federal money to the inner cities.</p>
<p>Father Michael Pfleger has gained a reputation both in Chicago and nationally, not only for daring to work in areas almost everyone else has deemed too violent, but for making a number of comments many consider to be racist.</p>
<p>In a fiery speech, Pfleger unequivocally called the USA a racist nation, called for a &#8220;social justice&#8221; revolution, and demanded unspecified funds from the federal government to address poverty. The speech included the line, “racism is in the DNA of America,” which was met with enthusiastic cheers from the crowd.</p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/4KP-j_6Iq3c?list=UUCrDsZAhG5wwebFclVQ2Lcw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p>Exemplifying how farcical this spectacle was in Chicago, the poster child of black homicide, Pfleger shouts at the end of the video, &#8220;We will not tolerate the killing of black and brown children, whether it&#8217;s in Sanford, Florida, the backwoods of Mississippi, Englewood &#8230; the genocide is over starting today!&#8221; The assembled crowed roared with approval.</p>
<p>The city of Chicago itself would, of course, constitute one &#8220;genocide&#8221; hotspot. In 2012, the city had over 500 homicides. It has had over 200 homicides so far this year. Both the victims and perpetrators are <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2013/03/most-murder-victims-in-big-cities-have-criminal-record/">overwhelmingly</a> black and the circumstances of the killings have no resemblance to the Trayvon Martin shooting whatsoever. A better representation is the case of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, who preformed at President Obama&#8217;s inauguration and was shot and killed in the city in January by two black gang members. Yet Pendleton&#8217;s tragic story has received a fraction of the attention the Trayvon Martin case received.</p>
<p>Chicago &#8220;civil rights&#8221; attorney and activist Andre Grant also addressed the crowd and spoke about what plagues the inner city. Grant rattled off statistics demonstrating &#8220;racial disparities&#8221; in the criminal justice system &#8212; such as &#8220;people of color&#8221; consisting of 60% of the prison population &#8212; using them as evidence of American racism. Of course, Grant conveniently omitted the fact that in 93% of the time, according to 1976-2005 study from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, African-Americans are killed by other African-Americans. The Bureau also says that <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/bvvc.pdf">80%</a> of the time, black victims of nonfatal violent crime report that their attacker was <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/bvvc.pdf">black</a>.</p>
<p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/mhRcB6WxSpU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p>The most prevalent sign at the Chicago rally was one sponsored by the National Action Network and WVON, Chicago’s most popular radio station geared toward African-Americans.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/3photo.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-197688" alt="3photo" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/3photo.jpg" width="300" height="225" /></a></p>
<p>There was also a significant presence of signs sponsored by radical groups. As an example, there was an abundance of signs sponsored by a group that advertised the website <a href="http://revcom.us/">revcom.us</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/4photo.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-197689" alt="4photo" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/4photo.jpg" width="300" height="225" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/5photo.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-197690" alt="5photo" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/5photo.jpg" width="300" height="225" /></a></p>
<p>Revcom.us is the website of the <a href="http://revcom.us/">Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.</a> The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA is headed by a man named <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Avakian">Bob Avakian</a>, who has been the subject of a number of reports claiming he maintains a cult of personality and that the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA is nothing but a cult. Revcom was passing out fliers promoting the group&#8217;s planned presence at the Bud Billikin Parade on August 10.</p>
<p>Another radical group present at this rally was Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER Chicago).</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/6photo.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-197694" alt="6photo" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/6photo.jpg" width="300" height="225" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.chicagoanswer.net/">ANSWER Chicago</a> is on the short list for most radical groups in Chicago: they don’t recognize Israel’s right to exist, demand a &#8220;living wage,&#8221; totally open borders, and routinely sponsor socialist conferences in Chicago.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www2.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&amp;id=14047&amp;news_iv_ctrl=1008">Party for Socialism and Liberation</a> was also passing out fliers for a smaller event against &#8220;police brutality&#8221; that they will be having this week:</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/7photo.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-197695" alt="7photo" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/7photo.jpg" width="300" height="225" /></a></p>
<p>Below are two members of <a href="http://occupychi.org/">Occupy Chicago</a> in their typical masks also passing out their own literature.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/8photo.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-197696" alt="8photo" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/8photo.jpg" width="300" height="225" /></a></p>
<p>Members of the <a href="http://www.internationalsocialist.org/">International Socialist Organization</a> were also selling copies of their newspaper, the <a href="http://socialistworker.org/">Socialist Worker.</a></p>
<p>A Chicago-area rapper later took the stage and lamented negative aspects of his childhood and pathologies of the black community, including fatherlessness, single motherhood, teen pregnancy, poor education and drug abuse. At one point (about two minutes in) he adds in a gratuitous and unnecessary dig at former President George Bush. Though Obama is well into his second term as president, he &#8212; along with the Democrats who have controlled Chicago for decades &#8212; apparently warrant no blame for the misery of which this rapper speaks.</p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/_5UJ0IppVuQ?list=UUCrDsZAhG5wwebFclVQ2Lcw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p>Last but not least, Jesse Jackson addressed the crowd. Jackson led chants of &#8220;stop the violence, save the children&#8221; and &#8220;keep hope alive,&#8221; as if the Trayvon Martin shooting is somehow representative of what is killing black children. You won&#8217;t see 8,000 people rally in Chicago over that.</p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/iXEq4xK2HEw?list=UUCrDsZAhG5wwebFclVQ2Lcw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>After 100 Shot in Chicago, Dem Rep Asks for Illinois National Guard</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/after-100-shot-in-chicago-dem-rep-asks-for-illinois-national-guard/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=after-100-shot-in-chicago-dem-rep-asks-for-illinois-national-guard</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/after-100-shot-in-chicago-dem-rep-asks-for-illinois-national-guard/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Jul 2013 22:34:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[national guard]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=196438</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ don't think the Illinois National Guard are going to be enough. Not when it comes to securing Chicago. We're talking about Iraq War II here.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/b6cea938cb08eb14feb2773cc4ed06fb.jpeg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-196440" alt="b6cea938cb08eb14feb2773cc4ed06fb" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/b6cea938cb08eb14feb2773cc4ed06fb-450x337.jpeg" width="450" height="337" /></a></p>
<p>Somehow I<a href="http://weaselzippers.us/2013/07/10/illinois-democrat-requests-national-guard-come-to-chicago-to-help-stop-violence/"> don&#8217;t think the Illinois National Guard</a> are<a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/state-rep-monique-davis-calls-on-quinn-and-emanuel-to-bring-national-guard"> going to be enough</a>. Not when it comes to securing Chicago. We&#8217;re <a href="http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2013/07/10/ill-rep-requests-national-guard-help-stop-chicago-violence/">talking about Iraq War II </a>here.</p>
<blockquote><p>State Representative Monique Davis (D-27) thinks it is time for dramatic action in the streets of Chicago. In view of the street gun violence since July 1, in which over 100 individuals have been shot and 14 dead, Rep. Monique Davis says it is time for dramatic action. Rep. Davis yesterday called on Governor Quinn and Mayor Rahm Emanuel to call out the National Guard to restore safety to the black community.</p>
<p>In a press conference at the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, CBS St. Louis reported that Rep. Davis said, &#8220;I am requesting with this press conference that Gov. Patrick Quinn order the Illinois National Guard (and) the Illinois State Police (to) come to Chicago and work with our mayor Ron (sic) Emanuel to provide safety for the children, especially.&#8221;</p>
<p>However, she said that if these state personnel are called in, a special commission must be set up to make sure they have clear orders on what to do each day.</p>
<p>“We don’t want them to have us fearing them also,” she said.</p></blockquote>
<p>I don&#8217;t think Davis is too clear on what bringing in any military into a city is going to look like. They&#8217;re not the cops. They&#8217;re not going to play games.</p>
<p>But the Illinois Guard only has 13,200 members. That&#8217;s nearly the size of the Chicago police department. You could just expand the Chicago PD ranks. The <a href="http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/chicago-crime-commission-police-officers-171213861.html">Chicago Crime Commission report</a> called for 300 more officers. <a href="http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/chicago-crime-commission-police-officers-171213861.html">Rahm Emanuel wants to hire</a> 1,700 more. But considering Chicago&#8217;s insane police overtime budget, it may just be easier to bite the bullet and hire a lot more cops.</p>
<p>But Chicago already maxes out the cops per citizens ratio. And Chicago&#8217;s budget crisis makes hiring more cops nearly impossible. But trying to pass the buck up to Illinois is hardly an answer.</p>
<p><a href="http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2010/04/daley-cool-to-idea-of-national-guard-troops-on-chicago-streets.html">Deploying the Guard was proposed </a>in earlier summers as well.</p>
<blockquote><p>Gov. Pat Quinn said today that he will not deploy members of the National Guard to help patrol city streets unless requested to do so by Daley. Quinn said it could be counter productive to police efforts, as law enforcement officers and military personnel are trained differently.</p>
<p>The governor suggested the National Guard could be most helpful by providing intelligence assistance and the use of helicopters for aerial surveillance. But even that step would be extraordinary, and Quinn said it would not happen without a request from Daley &#8212; a possibility that seems remote.</p>
<p>Ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich was summarily dismissed by the mayor when he suggested sending in the National Guard two years ago.</p></blockquote>
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