Kirk Dillard campaign losing major fundraiser

Oak Park Republicans

She is shifting to volunteer status. Why?

One source indicated there was general frustration by Dillard’s reluctance to make the number of fund-raising calls needed to survive in a four-way gubernatorial primary.

It’s a weakness for him:

At the close of the last quarter, Dillard reported $313,372 in overall contributions between his two political funds. He spent a combined $251,415 and had the least amount of any of the major candidates for governor left in the bank: $205,722.

Meanwhile, he came across confident in Bradley Saturday morning telling the Kankakee County Republican Women

that former governors Jim Edgar and Jim Thompson both identify him as the one candidate who will win for the Republicans. Dillard was Edgar’s Chief of Staff. He also worked as a legislative aide for Thompson.

“if you want to win,” Dillard said, “you need a suburbanite who has strong ties to downstate.” Dillard’s runningmate for lieutenant…

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Rauner vs. public unions, for school reform

Oak Park Chronicles

Much more is available from Bruce Rauner than what he said in River Forest last Thursday, among which is a long Chicago Magazine interview from last June, in which he tells what he’s heard on a listening tour:

There’s a business owner who has operations around the Midwest, and he said… “workers comp costs five times as much in Illinois as it does in Indiana and we’ve been quietly shifting our jobs out of Illinois… and hiring in Indiana and reducing our job base in Illinois….” . . . .

. . . . I met with a young man who works in the [Illinois] Department of Transportation…. He told me a few years ago when Blagojevich through executive order forced in card-check unionizing, some of the union members came to him, basically threatened him, and said you have to sign this card or else…. He felt pressured… and…

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Let no man call it p-ism

Oak Park Republicans

Find the p-word in this paragraph that WashPost chose to delete:

For all his news conference gyrations about not deliberately deceiving people with his “if you like it” promise, the law Obama so triumphantly gave us allows you to keep your plan only if he likes it. That’s the very definition of paternalism. [hint
here]

Yes, Virginia, there are words that liberal publications cannot stomach.

(Only WashPost? Well look here for a dozen newspapers who found K-hammer’s word palatable, including Chi Trib.)

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Chris Christie as lovable loser

Oak Park Republicans

Like Tom Dewey, loved by mediums in primary, mocked and scorned in general, twice defeated:

When Christie makes the rounds of the Sunday talk shows and looks the NBC audience in the eye on Meet the Press and when asked if he was a moderate or a conservative replies: “I don’t get into these labels — that’s the Washington, D.C. game and what all those men and women down there play… The people of America aren’t interested in that game” — Christie is foolishly playing a game. And in fact he’s terrible at it.

Contrast Christie’s game playing — the reluctance to choose one side or the other — with the stark contrast of Ronald Reagan in a 1981 speech in which Reagan proudly referred to himself and his audience as “those of us who call ourselves conservatives,” “we conservatives,” and “fellow conservatives.”

Amusingly, neither Christie nor his advisers seem…

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Learn economics or die!

Oak Park Republicans

Or at least get chewed up by People Who Know Better Than Anyone Else.

Near the end of Human ActionLudwig von Mises declared that it was the “primary civic duty” to learn the teachings of economics.

For instance,

The public’s growing furor over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — popularly known as “ObamaCare” — beautifully illustrates Mises’s point. No one has any business being shocked — shocked! — that millions of Americans will lose their current health insurance (including the present, irritated, writer), because such an outcome was obvious all along.

Furthermore, the hilarious snags with healthcare.gov are merely a sideshow; the true problems with ObamaCare run much deeper than a malfunctioning website.

If smart, educated people had only known . . .

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Pope Francis: Poster Boy for Gay Marriage | The American Spectator

Paul Kengor, of Grove City (Pa.) College, delivers quite a case of pope portrayed as Nancy Pelosi Catholic and being taken as poster boy for gay marriage and the like (including the Mike Madigan debacle on the floor of the Illinois house!) and concludes with advice for Francis:

Thus, I say with all due respect, deference, and sincerity that this pope needs to be really careful about what he’s saying. If he doesn’t, this boil will continue to fester. Unless he clarifies things better, and more strongly affirms and articulates Church teachings, this situation will get worse, spreading major errors throughout the Church, the country, the culture, and the world.

A case of withstanding Peter to his face, if mildly compared to Paul’s action.

Not for attribution

Nicely said by bishops and opportunely reaffirmed:

At the conclusion of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ fall meeting, the bishops of the United States issued a special message strongly confirming their opposition to the HHS mandate.

“With its coercive HHS mandate, the government is refusing to uphold its obligation to respect the rights of religious believers,” the US bishops stated.

“Beginning in March 2012, in ‘United for Religious Freedom’ we identified three basic problems with the HHS mandate: it establishes a false architecture of religious liberty that excludes our ministries and so reduces freedom of religion to freedom of worship; it compels our ministries to participate in providing employees with abortifacient drugs and devices, sterilization, and contraception, which violates our deeply-held beliefs; and it compels our faithful people in business to act against our teachings, failing to provide them any exemption at all.” [boldface…

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