Free Republic

Money may not really buy love or make the world go round, but it certainly does help society to function efficiently. Money, which is assigned a value, is the item of exchange we use if we want to purchase something. The work we do to earn money is also assigned a value and the amount something costs reflects the value in producing or developing it. Most people would agree that the reward of money is the incentive they need to invest their time and labor into many of the tasks that demand their attention. While there may be additional reasons...

There has been no lack of writing about the influence of Marxist Saul Alinsky on Barack Obama's political ideology. But what appears to have escaped notice is the influence of the political culture of Chicago on Barack Obama. These influences, of course, are not the same. Alinsky was a formidable opponent of the Chicago Democratic Machine. Obama was, when necessary, a consummate machine insider. Alinsky for all his flaws would never have gotten into bed with the likes of Tony Rezko or joined a law firm that represented slum lords. If you want to understand the political agenda of Barack...

A “What If”.. Currently, our Elected Elite get to set the salaries and benefit packages of “office holders”. Those that get elected MUST draw all that salary, get all those benefits, and full pensions. What would our Elected Governments {local, State & Federal} look like IF the candidates were required to state their “salary, benefit & pension requirements” on the Ballots? It could be Expressed as percentages of the Legislated maximum packages. In Every Other non-union shop, the Salary and Benefit Demands of the qualified applicants are considered , before selecting the next New Hire. Each Candidate's demands could be...

Dan Zanoza, Executive Director of RFFM.org, interviews Carl Segvich, a Republican Committeeman in the 11th Ward--the ancestral home base of Mayor Richard M. Daley. Segvich discusses what it's like to be a member of the GOP in the city of Chicago, Chicago-style politics, the Chicago way and "pay to play". It is an insightful look into one-party, big city liberal politics which sould be an eye-opener for those wanting to learn more about President Barack Obama's political roots. Q. During the last election, it was reported there were some election irregularities in your Ward. Can you elaborate about this for...

So the Chicago Way hauled off and slapped the U.S. Senate in the face—one of those backhands with the knuckles to unsuspecting lips—and guess who blinked? It wasn't Chicago. It was the Senate. Get used to it, America. And it won't be the last time either. Roland "Tombstone" Burris, the amiable Illinois Democratic political hack who is being called eminently qualified by the national Democrats—perhaps because he's from Illinois and he hasn't been indicted—has almost reached his goal of being addressed as "Yes, sir, Senator." Now Tombstone has President-elect Barack Obama behind him, muscling Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid in...

Chicago public school bureaucrats skirted public competitive bidding rules to buy 30 cappuccino/espresso machines for $67,000, with most of the machines going unused because the schools they were ordered for had not asked for them, according to a report by the CPS Office of Inspector General. That was just one example of questionable CPS actions detailed in the inspector general's 2008 annual report. Others included high school staffers changing grades to pump up transcripts of student athletes and workers at a restricted-enrollment grade school falsifying addresses to get relatives admitted. In the case of the cappuccino machines, central office administrators...

Congressman Rahm Emanuel will resign his congressional seat on Friday in anticipation of joining President-elect Barack Obama's administration. Emanuel delivered the news in an automated call to constituents on Monday. "This is Congressman Rahm Emanuel. As you may have heard, President-elect Obama has asked me to be his new chief of staff and I have accepted this offer. Therefore, in the near future, I will be resigning from Congress. ... I also want you to know, it has been a privilege and an honor to serve as your representative for the last six years," he says in the taped call.

CHICAGO – Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich says he is not guilty of any criminal wrongdoing and plans to stay on the job. In his first official statement since his arrest on corruption charges last week, Blagojevich (blah-GOY'-Uh-vich) says he will fight until he takes his "last breath." ... The Democratic governor says he intends to "answer every allegation in a court of law."

Will the Blagojevich scandal damage the incoming Obama administration? Given Rod Blagojevich’s profane railings against Barack Obama, revealed on federal wiretaps, few observers believe — although none know for sure — that the Obama camp engaged in any pay-for-play dealings with the governor, and therefore few see any legal problems for Team Obama resulting from the criminal investigation. But that’s not the only way the incoming administration might be caught up in the Blagojevich affair. The probe is being conducted, after all, by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the man who prosecuted one of the most intensely investigated and politically-charged perjury-and-false-statements...

Blagojevich refuses to budge NBC Nightly News VIDEO: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/vp/28200681#28200681&gt1=43001

Extorting Children's Hospital is a new political low. Chicagoans and Illinoisans love political scandal the way that Milanese love opera. We trade recollections, like baseball cards, about the secretary of state (Paul Powell) who stashed money in shoeboxes, and the Chicago mayor (Harold Washington) whose birthday was April 15 but never filed his income tax return. Rod Blagojevich stands a chance to be the fourth Illinois governor in recent history, and the second in a row, to wind up in prison. This run suggests that Illinoisans are indifferent to political corruption, and it's hard to argue with such an impressive...

CHICAGO: For Jeff Makowski, a 47-year-old house painter, it had been fun lately to boast to out-of-town friends about Chicago as the home of President-elect Barack Obama. Now the phone calls are coming the other way, and they are often sarcastic. "We're a national laughingstock," said Makowski, who was drinking a beer with a work pal on Wednesday afternoon after finishing work on a North Side condominium. "They call up and say, 'What's going on in Illinois? How can you elect these people?"' Last month, Chicago erected huge banners along Michigan Avenue bearing the image of its hometown hero, Obama,...

America wanted change and we sure got it. We elected a politician who looked and sounded fresh and new and different (and don't forget "clean" as Senator Biden once remarked), and promised that magic word "change." Aren't we lucky? It appears that the change we got is that we've moved Chicago machine-style politics into the White House. We found out on Tuesday what that business model consists of- the good Governor of Illinois was arrested for allegedly trying to sell Barack Obama's United States Senate seat. Yes, I said sell Obama's seat to the highest bidder. It's nice to know...

<p>President-elect Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, refused to take questions from reporters this morning about whether he was the Obama “advisor” named in the criminal complaint against Gov. Rod Blagojevich.</p> <p>The complaint states Blagojevich wanted a promise of a high-level appointment or some other reward for Blagojevich in exchange for Blagojevich naming Obama’s friend Valerie Jarrett to replace him in the U.S. Senate.</p>

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich wanted President-elect Barack Obama "to put something together&something big" in exchange for going along with Obama's choice to fill his vacant U.S. Senate seat, according to a FBI affidavit unsealed following the governor's stunning arrest. "I've got this thing and it's f***ing golden, and, uh, uh, I'm just not giving it up for f***in' nothing. I'm not gonna do it. And I can always use it. I can parachute me there," Blagojevich said in a phone call secretly recorded by the FBI on Nov. 5, the day after the election, according to the affidavit. Click here...

<p>A source said today that Gov. Rod Blagojevich was taken into federal custody at his North Side home this morning. The U.S. attorney's office would not confirm the information, and a spokesman for the governor did not immediately return a phone call for comment.</p>

Federal investigators recently made covert tape recordings of Gov. Rod Blagojevich in the most dramatic step yet in their corruption investigation of him and his administration, the Tribune has learned. As part of this undercover effort, one of the governor's closest confidants and former aides cooperated with investigators, and that assistance helped lead to recordings of the governor and others, sources said. The cooperation of John Wyma, 42, one of the state's most influential lobbyists, is the most stunning evidence yet that Blagojevich's once-tight inner circle appears to be collapsing under the pressure of myriad pay-to-play inquiries. Wyma, Blagojevich's chief...

Since the Supreme Court upheld the individual right to own guns last summer, one municipality with handgun bans after another has faced reality. Washington, which lost the case, changed its law. Morton Grove repealed its ban. So did Wilmette. Likewise for Evanston. Last week, Winnetka followed suit. Then there is Chicago, which is being sued for violating the 2nd Amendment but refuses to confront the possibility that what the Supreme Court said may apply to this side of the Appalachians. When it comes to firearms, Mayor Richard Daley is no slave to rationality. "Does this lead to everyone having a...

Do you wonder why 2008 election data shows that the majority of Catholics voted for Barack Obama even though his record as Illinois state senator proves him the most pro-abortion candidate who ever ran for president? Perhaps one answer is that on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, millions of Catholics will again be putting in their church's collection plate their annual donation to what the pre-printed envelope calls "Campaign for Human Development: The Catholic Church working to end poverty and injustice in America; We'll turn your dollars into hope for the poor of our nation." The generous Catholics who respond to...

Dazed and confused. A week after the election of Barack Obama, millions of American news junkies are in serious cold turkey, the big bump of withdrawal from two years of addiction to the dizzying ups and downs of a campaign that threatened never to end. Eat dirt, you sour Clintons, who said Obama was "unelectable." Obama's 8 million vote margin over his Republican opponent -- miraculously sparing us endless litigation and chad counting -- was an exhilarating testimony to his personal gifts and power of persuasion. And the formidable Michelle Obama, with her electric combo of brains and style, is...

President Bush is unhappy the conversation between him and President-elect Barack Obama has been cast as a trade-off between Bush signing a second stimulus package in exchange for congressional passage of the Colombia Free Trade Deal, administration officials told FOX News on Tuesday.

The nation's first serious black candidate for president should be outraged that al-Qaida would try to exploit African-Americans for the terror cause. Oddly, he's not. Osama bin Laden's deputy last week made a sinister pitch to blacks in the U.S., and Barack Obama shrugged.Al-Qaida's Ayman al-Zawahri earlier this month courted blacks by frequently invoking Malcolm X, aka Al-Hajj Malik al-Shabazz, a past leader of the Nation of Islam.Shamelessly, al-Zawahri encouraged blacks to join al-Qaida's holy war against the American "oppressor," and sacrifice their blood against "injustice" like the "struggler and martyr" Malcolm X.He noted that the Muslim civil-rights leader condoned...

CHICAGO (CBS) ― Chicago is the Second City in nickname and the third in population, but when it comes to murder, the city has the dubious distinction of being second to no city in America. As CBS 2's Mike Puccinelli reports, the Chicago Sun-Times pointed out on Friday that Chicago has seen 426 homicides this year through Tuesday, compared with 417 in New York and 302 in Los Angeles. At the end of 1998, Chicago made international headlines as the U.S. "murder capital" after surpassing New York's homicide totals for the first time ever. Chicago shed that dubious distinction when...

On December 21, 1997, Barack Obama wrote a short review of William Ayers’ book A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court, which had recently been published by Beacon Press. Here’s a photo of how the review appeared in the Chicago Tribune: Obama’s review of Ayers’ book says, “A searing and timely account of the juvenile court system, and the courageous individuals who rescue hope from despair.” (snip) Just a few weeks before this review was published in the Chicago Tribune, Obama and Ayers appeared together on a panel about juvenile justice organized by Michelle Obama on November...

Election '08: One of the "lies" Barack Obama says are being told about him is quite true. It involves a staunch admirer of the Soviet Union and its communist society who helped launch Obama's political career.Among the alleged lies mentioned in the Obama campaign's 40-page response to author Jerome Corsi's book "Obama Nation" is the claim that when Obama ran for state senator, "instead of stepping aside in deference to (state Sen. Alice) Palmer, Obama decided to fight her for the nomination." The Obama campaign quotes a state representative who said Palmer "pulled her own plug." But as ABC News...

Pundits glued to their Potomac seats, applying their usual Beltway explanations for everything that happens in America, would have it that House Speaker Dennis Hastert bollixed up the House page scandal because he is an unredeemed Republican partisan. Or that he doesn't care enough about congressmen hounding boys. Or that his conservatism made him do it.Blind partisanship, moral failings, hypocrisy, gay bashing or any of those other explanations that don't come close to the reality that Hastert was simply doing politics as it is practiced here, in Illinois.Hastert knows no other way, having been bred, born and raised in the...

Dumbest poll question ever.... Go to: http://www.nbc5.com Scroll down to lower right. Do you think corruption is a big problem in Cook County politics? Yes No

I came home from work yesterday and there was a Harold Ford for U.S. Senate sign in my yard. Checked with the wife and she had not given anyone permission, nor had the sprogs. What would you do? Other than ripping out the sign which I did pronto. I find this to be just unbelieveably sleazy, but I guess that should be no surprise from this dirty family and their dirty dirty campaign staff.

During the absolute sham that happened on the floor of the United States House of Representatives on Thursday afternoon, Rep. Maxine Waters of California finally admitted for the official record what many of us have known for a long time - Michael Moore runs the Democratic Party. Waters took to the well of the House near the end of what can very loosely be called a debate on the question of objecting to the certification of the Ohio electoral votes of the 2004 presidential election. In a quivering voice that betrayed either an oncoming eruption of tears or outright fury,...

Some thoughts on the Kerry Candidacy ... If your name is TED KENNEDY and you know-because of your conduct at Chappaquiddick-the American people would never accept you as a presidential candidate; but you feel entitled to control of the nation,because it's your "family legacy"...watcha gonna do,Bad Boy ?? What you do is pick out a surrogate: someone you can run for office; someone who will be your puppet; someone whose strings you can pull,and pull,and pull.... It helps that your surrogate is already a Wannabee; that his parents came as close to naming him "JFK" as they dared;that he...