Illinois Review

Illinois Democrats to require highest minimum wage in Midwest

Gov Pritzker on IL House floor after minimum wage hike vote | Chicago Tribune photo

SPRINGFIELD— As soon as Tuesday, Gov. JB Pritzker will sign a bill that passed the Illinois General Assembly with backing of Illinois Democrats that will have businesses pay their employees the highest minimum wage in the nation in 2025. 

Thursday, the Illinois House passed SB 1, sending to the new governor a bill he is eagerly anticipating which forces businesses from one end of the Illinois to the other to pay a $15 per hour for entry-level jobs. 

Governor Pritzker was delighted to hear the news, and joined the House members on the floor during the discussion. 

"Today is resounding victory for the 1.4 million Illinoisans who will soon get a hard-earned and well-deserved raise," said Gov. JB Pritzker. "After nearly a decade of delay, I applaud the House and Senate for passing a living wage with the fierce urgency this moment requires.

Di Leo: Not Your Father’s Environment – Changes and Truisms in America Today

By John F. Di Leo -

You may remember the tag line of a popular ad campaign:  “This is NOT your father’s Oldsmobile.”

The company was trying to reinvent its image, to shake the automaker’s reputation as a stodgy businessman’s car company, and recast it as a home of sleek design for hip young people.  

Whether it was successful or not, it was useful as a reminder that nothing is static anymore; some aspects of an issue remain the same, while others are constantly changing.   A famous 1970s book and film, Alvin Toffler’s “Future Shock,” hammered this home for my generation, stressing not only that some things change, but also that the rate of change is now so fast, it’s become difficult to keep one’s bearings.

Thorner/Ingold: The Wilting Green New Deal

By Nancy Thorner & Ed Ingold - 

The Left is proposing ever increasingly ridiculous plans to “save the planet.”  Democrat new Congresswoman from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [aka AOC], the 29-year-old ditz apparently has become the face and voice of the Democrat Party.  In her Green New Deal AOC even wants to eliminate air travel, replacing it with a high-speed light rail network.   How fun it would be to be there to see AOC off on a train to Puerto Rico which would cross the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean (27,000 feet).

The climate may be changing (it’s too early to tell, since the data is continually “adjusted” to meet the predictions, not the facts). There have been wide swings in global temperature and local precipitation every 200 years or so since antiquity. Egypt was green in the time of the pyramids, and so was the Sahara 5000 years ago. Temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were up to 10 degrees below “normal” from the mid-16th century until the Civil War in the "Little Ice Age.

Nevins to IL GOP Leadership: Embrace party platform or step down

By Jennifer Nevins = 

On February 9^th, the Illinois Republican Central Committee held an open-to the public meeting. If you are not aware of this, cut yourself some slack: most of the precinct committeemen I know were also unaware of it-which logically means that their committees weren’t aware of it either. Nevertheless, approximately sixty concerned observers attended the meeting; the public portion lasted three hours after which the committee adjourned to do their sausage making in private.

After a bit of jocular banter by Chairman Tim Schneider, a discussion ensued over precisely how much time to allot to non-member statements. In a move that illustrates the leadership’s reluctance to actually listen to its base, the committee members voted to allow sixty seconds per speaker and the microphone was passed around to those interested. Twelve individuals took the opportunity to speak their minds. I was one of them-and - owing to a kind soul who donated his moment in the sun- I took a little more than my allotment.

Rossi: China Loves Democrats' "Green New Deal"

By Randy Rossi -

Anybody living in the “Real World” knows that China has a formal plan to dominate the global economy by knocking the US off the top by 2030. In order to accomplish this, our own government reports that China steals $500 billion a year in US commercial and defense technology to defeat us. In addition, they have stolen millions of US jobs by putting US companies out of business by selling below cost using Chinese government subsidies.

Now Democrats are rushing to China’s side by launching their “Green New Deal” which will totally bankrupt the US by 2030 if they get to implement it. That “Green New Deal” will crush the American economy in every way. In fact, I would propose that China actually wrote this Democrat “Green New Deal” and they are thrilled at how vigorously the liberal Democrats have embraced it!

Walled Separation: The Secular State Must Be a House Divided

By James M. Kushiner, The Fellowship of St. James -  

Confronting the soul is an intellectual exposure that tears open the mind to incalculable questions, the answers to which are not easily earned. Modern man, therefore, believes that his security lies in refraining to raise such issues. Ultimate questions have become the object of his favorite unawareness. Since the dedication to tangible matters is highly rewarded, he does not care to pay attention to imponderable issues and prefers to erect a tower of Babel on the narrow basis of deeper unawareness. (Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion, Abraham Joshua Heschel, p. 191)

Into the Athenian marketplace stepped Paul of Tarsus, Roman citizen, Jewish rabbi. Hearing him preach, the philosophers conveyed him to the Areopagus and bid him speak. He told them,

How to get your child to just say no to socialism

Despite mountains of historical evidence revealing the dangers associated with socialism, support for Karl Marx’s collectivist ideas is steadily increasing.

In an August 2018 Gallup Poll, 51 percent of young people aged 18-29 said they have a favorable opinion of socialism, compared to just 45 percent who said they view capitalism positively. Compare that to 2010, when 68 percent of young people said they view capitalism favorably. That’s a remarkable 33 percent decline in just eight years.

Many parents who support the traditional American values of self-responsibility, individual liberty and free markets, have been left to wonder how they can teach their children the truth about collectivism and resist the rise of socialism.

More HERE

New Mexico House passes ‘most extreme’ pro-abortion bill in America

Last week the New Mexico House of Representatives joined a wave of states passing measures meant to insulate abortion-on-demand from future Supreme Court rulings, with a bill critics are calling the most radical of its kind to date.

By a 40-29 vote, the Democrat-controlled House passed House Bill 51 which would repeal multiple unenforced, pre-Roe sections of the law that criminalized abortion, the Albuquerque Journal reports. Six Democrats crossed the aisle to vote against it; every Republican voted against it except state Rep. Paul Bandy, who was absent.

“It simply removes an antiquated law that criminalizes health care,” Democrat state Rep. Joanne Ferrary, a cosponsor of the bill, claimed. But New Mexico Alliance for Life argues it would not only effectively permit abortions up until birth and eliminate restrictions such as parental involvement, it would also erase “the only explicit conscience protection for doctors and other medical professionals that protect them from being forced to participate in abortions.”

“HB-51 is the most extreme bill in the nation because it keeps elective abortion-up-to-birth, and also seeks to force medical professionals to participate in this practice by stripping away explicit conscience protections from the current statute," the group’s executive director Elisa Martinez told Fox News.

More HERE

No Surprise: Durbin to oppose Trump AG nominee

WASHINGTON - No surprise to Illinoisans, but US Senate Dick Durbin is telling anyone asking that he opposes President Trump's nominee for Attorney General, Bill Barr. 

Durbin writes: 

This week , the Senate will vote on President Trump’s nominee to be the next Attorney General, William Barr. During my meeting with Mr. Barr, and when he testified last month before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I told him I was very concerned about his views regarding transparency for Special Counsel Mueller’s findings and executive power. Before he was nominated by the President,

Mr. Barr volunteered a 19-page memo to the Trump Administration that outlined his beliefs on executive authority, almost foreshadowing how he would approach the Special Counsel’s investigation if he were overseeing it. 

IL GOP 14th CD Committeeman Stan Bond dies of cancer

MONTGOMERY - After being diagnosed with cancer as recently as November 2018, IL GOP 14th CD Committeeman Stan Bond passed away Wednesday morning. 

Bond, who also served as a Montgomery Village Trustee, was honored by Village President Matt Broiley. "I am deeply saddened today by the passing of our friend, Stan Bond,"  he said in a statement. "As anyone who knew Stan can attest, he fully embodied the qualities of a public servant. His deliberate, thoughtful and responsible leadership was matched only by his joyful sense of humor."

El Paso widow recalls husband's 2015 disappearance, pleads for Border Wall

EL PASO - "Moms for America" visited with a woman in El Paso that lost her husband to violent drug cartels that invaded their ranch on the Mexican border. 

On behalf of Moms for America, Will County's Debbie Kraulidis interviewed Liz Uribe-Sinclair, whose husband disappeared in 2015 after Mexican gang members threatened him for testifying against them in a crime case.

Newspapers drop cartoon over Trump insult

CHICAGO - At least a dozen of the 700 newspapers that carry the "Non Sequitur" cartoon strip have cut ties with the distributor and cartoonist over a vulgar comment referring to the president last Sunday, the Hill reports. 

"We fondly say 'Go F### yourself to Trump" the comic says - so discreetly that the distributor says they missed it. The overlooked comment outraged Trump supporters who pressured the newspapers to discontinue.

Thorner: Ploy of "Blackface" Detracts Outrage Over VA Gov Northam's Infanticide Law

By Nancy Thorner - 

By extension, the Democratic party (at least the Southern branch) was the advocate for slavery through the Civil War, and constituted the bulk of the sheet-and-pointy hat brigade through the 1930’s. The Civil Rights Act of 1965 was actively opposed by Democrats, and only signed by Lyndon Johnson through the efforts of Congressional Republicans. Where is the shame? Should not all Democrats in public office resign and retreat to isolated mountaintops for perpetual penance? We can only hope.

UPDATE: Illinois poised to repeal parental notification, partial birth abortion laws

UPDATE: Legislation filed Wednesday.See below the fold.

SPRINGFIELD - Requiring parents to be notified before their minor daughter can undergo an abortion and protecting 20 plus week preborn babies from having their lives ended by partial birth abortions are two "really bad stuff" laws abortion supporters are pushing to repeal in Illinois. 

“House Bill 40 was a very courageous and important first step, and now we’re actually moving down the path of making the vision and the values of House Bill 40 a reality,” ACLU Illinois Executive Director Colleen Connell told reporters Tuesday. “We’re getting rid of all the really bad stuff.”

The ACLU and Planned Parenthood are flexing their powerful muscles in a sympathetic Democrat-controlled Illinois General Assembly with a governor that fully supports their efforts to roll back even the weakest restrictions on abortion in Illinois. Abortion supporters are emboldened and jumping on the timing.

Conservative group urges "no" to Vote-by-Mail bill

SPRINGFIELD - Despite the fact Illinois Democrats hold super majority control of both the Illinois Senate and House as well as the Governor's Mansion, they're pushing to solidify their control in the future by employing the U.S. Post Office as their ballot handler. 

Indeed, in 2018, California - using a vote-by-mail system of harvesting votes - lost a vast majority of their Republican Congress members.

The Green New Deal is Massive New Tax

The Green New Deal is really a plan for a massive tax increase. Jason Isaac writes:

[W]e are not going to figure out how to generate all the power we need and use in America from wind and solar in the next decade. We’re not even going to get close. We do not possess the technology to do this, and current advancements in technology are not remotely on pace to accomplish this in 10 years. The Left dismisses these inconvenient truths by calling the GND their “moonshot.” But the actual Moonshot took tremendous planning, time, money, and technological advances, none of which are present in this absurd proposal.

So if the Green New Deal won’t prevent the end of the world, what is the point of the plan? Simply put, it’s a massive tax on every American, now and in the future, to pay for the Left’s wish list of enormous government programs.

Democrats omit 'so help you God' from oath

A Democratic congresswoman from Colorado chose to omit “God” when administering the oath to witnesses during a hearing on the Trump administration’s family separation policy.

There are better choices than government schools

The American people, and parents in particular, are now faced with two stark choices: Withdraw from the public education system in massive numbers, or prepare for a future of planetary serfdom. It is really that simple. If Americans continue to allow their children to be educated by the government in cooperation with the United Nations, freedom will inevitably be lost, even if it takes another generation or two.

Chicago business leaders join call to protect Dreamers

CHICAGO - More than 100 business leaders - including mega-company heads such as Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, and Apple's Tim Cook - signed onto a letter Monday, appealing to Congress to protect Dreamers - those that entered the U.S. illegally years ago with their parents. 

The letter was published in daily news sources throughout the nation. 

Chicago leaders such as ABIC/IBIC members Chris Crane (Exelon Corporation), Penny Pritzker (PSP Partners), Mike Fernandez (MBF Partners), John Rowe (Exelon Chairman Emeritus and ABIC), Bill Kunkler (CC Industries), Carole Segal (Crate and Barrel), David MacNeil (WeatherTech), Martin Slark (Molex and Koch Industries), Craig Duchossois (Duchossois Group), and many more.

The letter says:

IR Readers disapprove of minimum wage hike

Illinois Review readers that chose to participate in a weekend Facebook poll overwhelmingly chose to reject the proposal to hike the state's minimum wage from its current $8.25 to $15 per hour.

While five percent voted "yes," 95% voted "no."