Jesse Jackson Jr.’s Loss of Innocence

December 12th, 2008 by julianajohnson

Is there nothing sadder than the loss of innocence?

Some of us lose it upon learning there is no Santa Claus. For others it accompanies the death of a close friend or forlorn love.

For 43-year-old Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., aka “Senate Candidate 5″, loss of innocence came earlier this week when he discovered that there is something called “pay-to-play” politics going on in Illinois.

Watching his press conference on Wednesday was difficult. Something in me died that day as I watched a plucky, young, silly heart thrust in front of the callous media glare that had served him so well up until that point.

In his closing on Wednesday, Jesse Jr. recounted a poignant story. It was a story of a Cocker Spaniel named “Checkers”. No, wait, that was Nixon. Jesse Jr.’s story was about his “little sister” who had texted him that very morning, and that text read, “Jesse Jr., I’m proud of you.” That came from his baby sister. She is only 33-years old. How do you begin to explain something like this to a frightened 33-year-old. I only hope Jesse Jr. can find the words when she asks him if there is still going to be a Christmas this year.

For what does Jesse Jr. know of the evil that lies in the heart of men like Rod Blagojevich?

It is not as if, I don’t know, Jackson’s father had spent a lifetime accruing personal wealth running shakedown rackets like those the governor is alleged to have run.

Just as his brothers acquired Chicago’s River North Budweiser distributorship based on merit, Jesse Jr. thought he might become a U.S. Senator because of his credentials.

Jesse Jr. is about public service. How do I know this? Because he said so. How was he to know his “hard work” meant nothing to this governor?

After 13 years as a congressman from Illinois, how could he be unaware of this state’s political culture, some might ask.

To those who would ask such questions, I say simply, Jesse Jr. is not taking questions at this time so please refer your inquiries to his criminal defense attorney.

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Blagojevich: Getting Things Done for People

December 10th, 2008 by julianajohnson

Getting Things Done for People.

That was the slogan of Rod Blagojevich’s 2006 re-election campaign. Who would have thought a phrase so utterly devoid of meaning would foretell such truth?

Governor Blagojevich was certainly getting things done for people–for himself, for his wife, for his campaign contributors, and for just about anyone who was willing to pay sticker price for government spoils.

Given the starkness of the schemes as recorded in Blagojevich’s own words, flabbergasted Illinoisans are wondering how a Governor could be so brazen. After all, in what undiscovered dimension lives a man who conceptualizes a run for the Presidency in 2016 while strategizing about an indictment he seemed to fully anticipate?

The French philosopher Baudelaire once wrote, “True genius is the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts simultaneously without losing your mind.” Blagojevich’s contradictions proved instead that the simultaneous exercise of stupidity and arrogance loses one his freedom.

And so over the next several months Blagojevich’s fate will wind to its inexorable end, beginning next week when the Illinois General Assembly moves to impeach him.

As this occurs, I have a humble request of my fellow Illinoisans.

Don’t get fooled again. Don’t get suckered by the contrived and self-righteous hand-wringing by the very people who twice shepherded Blagojevich to the Governor’s mansion.

Those Chicago Democrats that are lining up to spit on his political grave because they covet his office are the same Chicago Democrats who brought you the last six sordid years of Blagojevich rule.

Those Chicago Democrats didn’t walk away from Blagojevich (for those that ever did) over policy concerns or ethical pangs of conscience; they walked away because Blagojevich didn’t do what they wanted him to do when they wanted him to do it.

He committed the mortal sin of cooking up his own illicit schemes instead of executing theirs–and he turned out to not be nearly as adept at it as they are.

Who are the “they”? They are the eight members of the “Chicago 9″ (the 9 Chicago Democrats who control $70B worth of government and 125,000 public sector jobs in Illinois) not arrested yesterday. Their names are Rich Daley, Mike Madigan, Lisa Madigan, Jesse White, Dan Hynes, Alexi Giannoulias, Todd Stroger, and Emil Jones.

Remember those names. Write them down. And remember the outrage you feel now when the next opportunity you have to vote against them presents itself.

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Everything You Need to Know About Illinois Politics

December 1st, 2008 by julianajohnson

“Durbin may ask Bush to commute Ryan sentence”

In eight words this Chicago Tribune headline (Nov. 26) summed up everything you need to know about Illinois politics.

Yes, that is “Durbin” as in Dick Durbin, Illinois’ senior U.S. Senator, a 25-year Democrat member of Congress, and the national co-chairman of the Obama presidential campaign. And the Ryan is none other than George Ryan, the disgraced former Republican governor sentenced to 6.5 years of breaking big rocks into little ones for operating a taxpayer-funded den of thieves as Secretary of State and then as Governor.

Durbin has all but said that Ryan’s remaining prison sentence of more than five years should be commuted; now it is simply a matter of whether Durbin is willing to endure the political heat for taking action.

He certainly need not worry about heat from Republicans. Former Republican Governor Jim Thompson, Ryan’s defense attorney (pro bono, because, hey, we’re all friends here), was quick to lavish praise on Durbin. Former Republican Governor Jim Edgar also leaned that way saying, “George Ryan’s paid a pretty big price…I’m not sure that a few more years (in prison) is all that much more punishment to him.”

Gee, Governor Edgar, you know who else paid a “pretty big price”? The nine people, including six children, killed by drivers who obtained their licenses illegally from George Ryan’s office. I would love to get their input on those “few more years” but, well, they are dead.

For it is the views of the victims–not those of George Ryan and his apologists–that are relevant here. Those victims include the taxpayers of Illinois, all of whom were defrauded.

What statement of contrition do these men of letters from Illinois’ ruling party present to the victims for consideration? “His conscience is as clear as his mind,” Ryan’s wife told the Chicago Sun-Times. “If he had it to do over–and I’ve heard him say this–he would govern the same way as he did before.”

If George Ryan’s conscience is clear, than he is not asking himself the right questions. I for one think his current residence is the ideal place for further introspection. He can take all the time he needs.

The federal government’s Operation Safe Road investigation in which Ryan was ultimately snared also produced corruption convictions against some 75 other individuals.

75 federal felony convictions of associates and subordinates. Nine individuals in the ground, an unintended but very real consequence of the corruption that took place on his watch. And George Ryan is a man with no regrets. Not a single lesson learned. Yet, Durbin, Thompson, and Edgar are all ready to sign Ryan’s walking papers.

In Illinois, it’s not that establishment Republicans and Democrats are too cozy; it’s that they are indistinguishable–and unrepentant.

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Obama’s Most Telling Appointment

November 20th, 2008 by julianajohnson

The most telling appointment Barack Obama has made since becoming President-elect has nothing to do with his Cabinet or senior advisors.

It was the family appointment last week with Georgetown Day School, a private grammar school in Washington D.C. to which the Obamas are apparently considering sending their two daughters.

I applaud Obama’s commitment to the education of his daughters, choosing to send them to the best schools.

It is just too bad that Obama opposes extending that choice to families whose children are relegated by geography and by income to schools he knows and everyone knows will fail them.

And Obama does indeed know something of this problem. While an Illinois State Senator, Obama represented a district with more than 12,000 students in failing elementary schools (according to NCLB standards, 2004).

During that time, while Obama’s daughters matriculated at the prestigious–and private–University of Chicago Lab School, thousands of other children Obama was elected to represent were inventoried at Chicago Public School (CPS) warehouses where most are stored for 8-12 years until they are mature enough to either enter the penal system or go off into the real world having mastered the phrase, “Would you like to try one of our combo meals today?”

What did Obama do then? The same thing he does now, backslap the teachers unions for their good intentions while generations of children from low-income families are ushered into society’s underclass, the direct result of not being taught to read or do simple math.

Obama is not the only one whose private action is disconnected from his public posturing. A 2004 study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute found that 39% of Chicago public school teachers send their children to private schools (compared with only 23% for non-Chicago Public School teacher families citywide). One wonders what teachers on the inside of CPS know that the rest of us do not.

If CPS was not good enough for the Obama children and CPS is not good enough for the children of 4 in 10 CPS teachers, then for which children exactly is CPS good enough?

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On Tuesday, Change Wins 275 – 263

November 3rd, 2008 by julianajohnson

On Tuesday, I predict that the nation, suffering from George W. Bush fatigue, will reject a third Bush term and vote for a change.

Yes, that’s right, Americans will renounce the “failed economic philosophy of the Bush administration” and seize upon the opportunity to reform our government.

Dispatched to that of a footnote in history will be the career politician who spent his time in public office supporting Bush’s demand-side, domestic gambits.

Gone will be the candidate who reviewed Bush’s half-baked 2002 intervention into public education with his No Child Left Behind federal cookie-cutter and saw only the need for more money to sweeten the federal force-feeding.

Gone will be the candidate who argued that the problem with Bush’s 2003 Medicare Part-D prescription drug benefit disaster is that it didn’t have enough federal entanglements and that federal price controls were needed to compliment the new entitlement.

Rejected will be the candidate who talks about green energy, but who voted for Bush’s pork-laden energy bill that did nothing to move the needle towards energy independence, the one with all those tax breaks for Big Oil.

Cast aside will be the candidate who speaks of the “middle class” but is so tethered to Bush that he voted for the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street vultures and federal dimwits advanced by Bush’s economic overlord.

Forget the rhetoric of both Bush and his corporate welfare-big government apostle; neither is who they say they are or who they have been portrayed to be.

Voters have figured out that Bush is no free market conservative and that there is a candidate in this race for President who is not who he claims to be either.

That is why I boldly predict that my fellow Americans in Ohio, Virginia, Colorado and Nevada will vote for change, they will vote for reform and they will make John McCain the 44th President of the United States.

Obama is no agent of change from the last 8 years. Like Bush, Obama is a political alchemist who views the federal government as the sovereign remedy for anything and everything that ails the world.

When it comes to matters economic, Barack Obama is to George W. Bush what V.I. Lenin was to John Maynard Keynes. In other words, Obama is a socialist in a hurry. Same failed philosophy, different pace.

While John McCain has not distinguished himself as a visionary on these matters, his more modest plans are likely to mean less social engineering from the Presidency. That alone would be welcome change.

I think a lot of common-sense, play-by-the-rules Americans have begun to sense this difference as the Presidential campaign drama has moved towards its resolution in the last few weeks. And I believe those Americans will deliver an electoral victory of 275-263 for John McCain.

If I’m wrong, I don’t want to be right.

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The People Who Play By The Rules Party

October 27th, 2008 by julianajohnson

During this Presidential cycle, America has truly become the land of short term memory.

Both political parties embrace socialism as if the ravages of that failed ideology were never visited upon the 20th Century.

On the campus of the University of Chicago, the legacy of Milton Friedman is protested while the presence of Bill Ayers across town at the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) is heralded.

Against this backdrop, I am proposing the creation of a new party. Not a party for “working families” or the “middle class”, two categories stretched beyond recognition and rendered meaningless by overuse.

I want to be explicit. All successful political parties define their constituencies and defend them. So today I am launching the People Who Play By The Rules Party.

In this country, one has to accomplish three things to virtually guarantee never living in poverty: get a high school diploma; get married after the age of 20; and get married before having a child. The People Who Play the Rules Party is their party.

When you hear that 1 in 9 home mortgages are in foreclosure, the political-media establishment complex pay attention to the 1 in foreclosure and treat the other 8 as if they exist only as a source of spare parts to salvage the 1. The People Who Play By The Rules Party is for the 88% of American homeowners who, without fanfare, budgeted for the home they bought.

The People Who Play By The Rules Party is for the top 40% of income earners in this country–which gets all the way down to $55,000 per year–who pay 99.4% of all federal incomes taxes in the name of “fairness”.

The People Who Play By The Rules Party is for the 99.7% of U.S. employers with fewer than 500 employees, the small businesses that don’t have lobbyists and that don’t get bailed out by their Wall Street friends in government when they make bad strategic decisions. All that these employers do, the true entrepreneurial sector, is create jobs and create wealth.

The People Who Play By The Rules Party is also a compassionate party, a party that recognizes America to be a place of second chances and that desires to help those who veered off course get back on track. What we are not, however, is Party that believes in the woozy, bipartisan la-la land of socializing the consequences of individual, private choices.

If you fit this description, please stand up and be counted. For if the People Who Play By The Rules that made this country great do not, there are those who seek to institute new rules to re-make this country into something it is not and should never be.

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Joe Plumbers of the World Unite

October 16th, 2008 by julianajohnson

It wasn’t exactly a Red Dawn moment but it is as close as John McCain has come to date.

McCain finally put the face paint on and sounded the alarm for America’s productive, play-by-the-rules class that Barack Obama and his spread-the-wealth, leftist guerillas are advancing.

McCain’s Manifesto in Wednesday night’s final Presidential debate: Joe the Plumbers of the World Unite!

McCain capitalized on Comrade Obama’s unintentional moment of candor earlier in the week wherein he told Joe the Plumber from Holland, Ohio, an aspiring small business owner, that the Obama plan is to “spread the wealth”. In so doing, McCain for the first time framed the choice Americans have in this race between his pro-growth tax policies and Obama’s virulent brand of wealth redistribution for its own sake.

Watching Obama sell the need for so-called fairness in our tax system, I was reminded of the infomercial hucksters hawking no money down real estate schemes.

Fairness is the problem when the top 5% of income earners in America pay 60% of the total federal incomes taxes collected and the bottom 35% pay no federal incomes tax at all?

In the name of fairness we should inhibit capital formation by increasing the capital gains tax; we should close markets to American goods by discarding free trade agreements; and we should prevent would-be small business owners like Joe the Plumber from ever getting there by imposing additional tax burdens on businesses that already pay the second highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world.

McCain effectively stripped away Obama’s flowery, Platonic rhetoric and exposed the component parts of the grand Fairness Regime that Senator Government (a well-timed Freudian slip by McCain) seeks to inflict upon our nation.

If McCain ruthlessly prosecutes the fault lines he exposed last evening and defiantly stands up for job-creators and risk-takers, then McCain, and America for that matter, will indeed have been mistakenly written off once again.

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McCain’s Hurdle for Debate #2

October 6th, 2008 by julianajohnson

On Thursday night, Governor Sarah Palin cleared the credibility hurdle she faced in the estimation of swing voters, even earning some begrudging kudos from Democrats.

On Tuesday night, it’s John McCain’s turn to do the same.

The Teddy Roosevelt-style populist rhetoric about earmarks and Wall Street greed is an okay warm-up act, but McCain needs a show-stopper.

McCain should speak to Obama in that same father-to-son fashion as to how the world works when it comes to pocketbook issues like he did as to foreign policy in the first debate.

Here’s what McCain should say:

Barack Obama wants to make this campaign about Wall Street versus Main Street.

Senator Obama clearly needs directions.

Because this campaign is about K Street versus Pennsylvania Avenue. It’s about the lobbyists who’ve corrupted politicians and compromised our politics. And it’s about the need for a President to stand up to those who seek to game the system for personal gain.

Senator Obama says our current financial difficulties result from the failed Bush-McCain economic philosophy. First, Senator Obama, I take great umbrage at the insinuation that I am not my own person. If you think I take my cues from George W. Bush or anyone else, then you are neither familiar with my public record nor my personal sacrifice. And if you care to make such an assertion, Senator, then please be man enough to do it straight away and to my face.

Second, what Senator Obama terms a failed philosophy is nothing more than a common-sense belief that Americans should keep more of what they earn because families make better decisions on how best to spend their earnings than does the political class in Washington.

And what of Senator Obama’s economic philosophy?

It is Senator Obama who initially proposed doubling the capital gains tax and has now scaled that back to a 33% increase in that tax. That would be devastating to our economy. At the core of our financial problems is the credit crunch. Senator Obama’s tax hike would further restrict credit and inhibit capital formation. This is precisely the opposite of what we should be doing. Senator Obama clearly realizes this since he diminished the magnitude of his own tax increase proposal but still insists upon a massive hike. So who is the ideologue?

Senator Obama decries deregulation but it is Obama’s team of economic advisors formerly at the helm of Fannie Mae–Franklin Raines, Tim Howard, and Jim Johnson–who engaged in the reckless lending policies, encouraged by President Clinton at the time, that extended loans to subprime borrowers. (Here McCain could hold up the Sept. 20, 1999 New York Times article entitled, “Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending” that outlines this policy change in detail).

And since Senator Obama has such newfound concern for windfall profits, perhaps he can start with his campaign’s economic advisors, the three of whom parachuted out of the Fannie Mae death spiral with close to $300 million before the corporate jet crashed on the roofs of Main Street homeowners.

Senator Obama carries on about job creation but advocates job-killing protectionism and an antagonistic posture towards our trading partners. He wants to renegotiate trade agreements that will inevitably close markets to American goods.

Senator Obama is selling you a bill of goods, America.

He casts himself as a reformer and yet springs from the bosom of political corruption and machine politics, against which he did nothing.

Senator Obama speaks of his fondness for the middle class and yet cannot contain his contempt for middle America when he is at a San Francisco fundraiser or when he is confronted by the strong, conservative female Governor running with me.

I know there is anxiety. I know there is fear because I understand that things are difficult financially for millions of American families. But don’t let yourself be ruled by that fear or by the contrived class envy rhetoric that the radical left wing has been trying to sell you since the 1960s. For all his talk of change, Senator Obama is intent on pursuing the very same policies with the very same people that got us into this mess.

We will turn our economy around by pursuing common-sense policies that ease our tax burdens, restrain government spending, incentivize savings and investment, and encourage small business growth.

These will be the first principles of a McCain presidency. This is the way back for America.

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The Palin Paradigm Shift

September 10th, 2008 by julianajohnson

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Nothing is more indicative of the brilliance of John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate than watching stunned Democrats vomit all over themselves, unable to digest her candidacy.

Confronted by a strong, independent, bright and articulate woman, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and their coterie of Leftist surrogates have offered nothing but catty remarks in response, consigning themselves to the role of the jealous bridesmaid.

They just can’t stop talking about Sarah Palin. And the more they talk about her, the more apparent becomes their hypocrisy.

The party that champions itself as the “equal pay for equal work” group now questions whether Palin should be working at all.

The party that paid lip service to Hillary Clinton’s historic candidacy in the primary now dismisses Sarah Palin as the mayor of a town of 9,000 people even though her current job is actually entitled “Governor”.

The party that alleges its concern for single moms now sneers about Palin’s pregnant 17-year old daughter who is both having her child and marrying the father. Perhaps if Palin’s daughter had chosen to have an abortion, they would be more supportive.

As an aside, Obama supporters who hold Palin’s pregnant daughter up as evidence that Palin cannot even manage her household expose themselves as blissfully unaware (as they are similarly disposed on a full range of matters in the adult world) of the circumstances of both their candidate’s birth and the births of nearly 4 in 10 persons in America today.

Palin’s candidacy is paradigm-shifting in part for the public brain scrambling it has inflicted upon counterfeit progressives.

To complete the shift, however, Palin’s candidacy must signal an end to the “wait your turn” culture in the Republican Party. Standing in line, waiting for one’s number to be called, gave the GOP a Bush or a Dole on the national ticket for the 32 years preceding this Presidential election. Outside of the Reagan years, the GOP’s performance during those three decades has been decidedly uneven.

The combination of the hollow ideology of the Left now painfully evident and McCain’s game-changing selection for the future have the GOP poised to be the majority party in this country for generations to come. It starts November 4.

More Proft on Palin, the RNC, and the Presidential campaign:

Proft on Good Day Chicago (Fox News Chicago) with Mike Barz and Jan Jeffcoat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PirHBVwNnJI

Proft on “Upfront with the Rev. Jesse Jackson”
(Guest-hosted by Rainbow/PUSH National Spokesman Jonathan Jackson)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXeT84hS3G8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcGbbmsBVLQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnRQPe-f6Qg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePzwCpAAQ-k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKfTQW8UYCs

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Proft on Palin

September 1st, 2008 by julianajohnson

John McCain’s selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate is not being universally well-received (particularly among Democrats nervous about the attributes she brings to the GOP ticket) but I think it is the best choice McCain could have made and that Palin is likely to be the rare “game-changing” Vice Presidential candidate. I had the opportunity to discuss the reasons for my enthusiasm with the good folks at Fox News Chicago on Sunday and Monday mornings.

Take a look.

–DP

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PirHBVwNnJI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UoRkZjIoOA

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