Yes, he seriously said that it was not in the best interest of Illinois citizens to be paid a decent wage above poverty level…

That includes an executive order that called for Rauner to release all of his tax information as well as one that increased the minimum wage for state contracts from $8.25 an hour to $10 an hour. Both of the issues were sticking points in a bruising campaign between the two men in 2014.
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…and it’s none of your damn bidness about his income and if he has any accounts in the Cayman Islands…meanwhile, *everything* you do will be under the watchful eye…what with your bank accounts and tax returns, etc., being open to being scrutinized. Hmmmm….

Jessica Ciencin Henriquez has written a story on her stolen bike…and the unexpected turn of events when she caught up with the persons whom had stolen it.

The policeman’s attitude was the same that I experienced when my stuff was stolen out of the storage unit.  I asked the same question of whether it would be found.  He had the same dismissive attitude that it was unlikely that it would be found,I even gave him the names of two high school students whom helped me move everything to the unit.    My sister and my son were the only ones outside of the h.s. students who knew the unit number.  The way that I was cleaned out HAD to have been by someone who knew what was there and what they were looking for– my $1200 Gateway computer and $800 Pioneer stereo, plus other stuff they thought they could sell, apparently.

Like Jessica, I went around trying to get the word out — pawn shops within a 40-mile radius.  I even put an ad in the local newspaper asking for information and naming a few of the items taken.  I didn’t have the good luck she did in finding my stuff.  I’m a little naive in that Craig’s list didn’t even cross my mind.  I’m not sure that it was even in existence at that time.

When I called the police officer and asked if he had followed up on my lead with the h.s. students, he said that he had called one of the boys’ fathers and asked if “any of this stuff turned up at your place.”  He couldn’t even be bothered to go check it out himself…he just called and asked politely.  Unbelievable.   And I strongly suspect that my Gateway ended up in a computer resell place…located a block away from the police station.  Pfft.

I’m glad things worked out for Jessica and that she heard the other side of the story.  For me, however, I suspect that drugs were the reason my stuff was stolen and probably re-sold.  Meth is a huge problem here.

What an unnecessary tragedy.  My first question is…why was the father walking around free?  The next question is…in the comments, a mother of a daughter that was also violently shaken by her father commented that her daughter was able to recover somewhat, by surgery.  Is this surgery not available to all shaken babies?  Is it a matter of who has money or insurance?

And while reading the comments, there was this poignant one:

• Juliana 

  I worked at a state facility for over six years one of the teenage boys I took care of was there due to being shaken when he was three months old. I took care of him daily understanding we would never know what if anything he was able to understand. His beautiful blue eyes held so much promise; his smiles would light up a room. When he turned 16 a man showed up on our dorm and requested to see him; in all the years working with this child no one had ever so much as called to inquire as to his well being. This man was let on the dorm after identifying himself as a family member I found it odd that he would only say he was family and since they had the same last name I think it was assumed he was an uncle or cousin. He sat next to this gorgeous young man and stared at him with a lost look in his eye and eventually we witnessed him crying. I finally got up the courage to inquire as to how he was related and why he had never been to see him before. This man admitted to having just got out of prison after serving 13 years; it did not take long to figure out that this was the same man who put this child here. He quietly got up and decided to leave before he left he told us he would not be returning as he felt once law enforcement found out he had visited this child he may be in trouble. My sweet young man did not recognize him or seem too interested in this person; I have always wondered what happened to this man I know he realized the extent of his crime when he saw what his shaking this child had done. I like to think that this man straightened his life out and perhaps is helping others somewhere. As for this gorgeous young man we lost him at the age of 18 due to health complications; he left me with a sense of meaning and I was proud to have been one of the people in his short life who got to see the beauty of this child. I have three boys of my own and could not imagine hurting them. Prayers for this family and the journey they will take now to heal.

The Pope has spoken out on Charlie Hebdo.  And don’t be talkin’ smack about his Mom, either….there are limits. 😛

Yep.  And, of course, Indiana is among the top ten of charging the poor more in taxes than the rich.  Well, let’s see now, we are No. 4 in ranking of toxic states, and we are in the top ten states that pay the lowest wages.

In the institute’s “Terrible 10” states, the bottom 20 percent of earners pay up to seven times as much of their income in taxes as the top 1 percenters, the report says. These include Washington, where the poorest residents pay 16.8 percent of their income in taxes while the wealthiest sliver pays just 2.4 percent, followed by Florida, Texas, South Dakota, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Arizona, Kansas and Indiana.

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Conservatives, since Ronald Reagan, have spouted the “trickle-down economics” schtick for decades…while the economy continues to get worse.  It doesn’t work.  In addition to that, during the 60s, when nearly everyone had a job that paid decent wages, the corporations were being taxed at about 60-70%.  Imagine that.

raginghorseblog has this up on Campbell Brown’s continued assault on public education, via false accusations against public school teachers.  Note the connection to the Koch brothers.

Campbell, we are meant to believe, is motivated by love. Love of children. Love of justice. Love of all things excepting due process which, once removed, somehow will place a great teacher in every classroom in the land. Campbell is moved to action by the “extreme inequality” she perceives in New York public schools — but not at all at the ever more extreme inequality of wealth and income — even as her own children attend private schools. Somehow Campbell sees no link between a “failing school “ and a third world economy worsened by insane rents, non-existing jobs and an average wage that has been frozen for 30 some years. And you can rest assured no employee of the Koch brothers is going to remind her of any of that.

Campbell lies as sweetly and sincerely about teachers and is as selective with her anecdotes as she did when she was fronting the Parent Transparency Group.

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I seriously don’t know how she sleeps at night.  Only a sociopath would be able to lie through the teeth to destroy teachers and public education…for money.