With 200 attendees of the DuPage Women Liberty luncheon held Jan. 27th at Carriage Greens Country Club in Darien, Michale Callahan, author of Too Politically Sensitive repeatedly brought them to their feet.

Callahan, a retired Illinois State Police (ISP) lieutenant, kept the packed room spellbound as explained the 1986 brutal murders of the Dyke and Karen Rhoads of Paris, Ill., the wrongful convictions of Randy Steidl and Herb Whitlock, and his years of attempting to reopen the investigation. “Five times I tried to reopen the murder case of this young, newlywed couple, and each time my superiors told me the case was ‘too politically sensitive’.”

To a packed room, Jen Babbington, Executive Director of Liberty Lunch at For The Good of Illinois kicked off the lunch with a welcome, “Today, you will leave energized.  One person can make a difference.  The good guys do win.”  Hank Kruse, Chairman of For The Good of Illinois wecomed the over 40 elected officials and candidates for office, including the Elizabeth Roskam, wife of Congressman Peter Roskam.

The ISP retaliated against the determined lieutenant by transferring him to a desk job. Callahan didn’t give up.  He filed a First Amendment federal civil lawsuit against three ISP officers in his chain of command, eventually winning $700,000 in damages. The case was appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court which decided that public employees should not have protection of speaking out against their employers — another chilling blow in this never-ending tragedy.

Undeterred, Callahan penned Too Politically Sensitive. The book accounts a horrific unsolved double homicide with tentacles to the Five Families of New York and Sicily, a compromised investigation — involving the local state’s attorney, a small town police officer and an ISP investigator — and layers of atrocity topped with two governors eventually convicted on federal corruption charges.

Adam Andrzejewski, founder of For the Good of Illinois, introduced Callahan saying, “I’ve made a decision to issue the clarion call to educate the people of Illinois on exactly what it will take to bring our state back. But, Michale Callahan tells it better than I do. Callahan is a modern-day hero.”

Callahan’s life-changing pursuit of justice with the Rhoads murders has consumed one-fifth of his life. He received the 2011 “Defender of the Innocent” award from the Illinois Innocence Project. He has been featured on CBS 48 Hours and On the Case with Paula Zahn, in addition to numerous public appearances.

For more information on Callahan’s story, visit: http://www.toopoliticallysensitive.com/

Also speaking at the Liberty Lunch was Sarah Gough, Illinois State Executive Director for American Majority. American Majority is a non-profit, non-partisan organization and the leading developer of the nation’s new 21st century grassroots political infrastructure. The organization uses its cutting edge training curriculum to empower individuals and organizations with the most effective tools to promote liberty through limited government. American Majority trains thousands of activists and candidates each year in communities across the country to be catalysts for authentic change in government.

If you’re going to live in Illinois… if you’re going to participate in Illinois politics- you must hear Michale Callahan tell his narrative.

Join us at our Liberty Lunch on Friday, January 27.  Here’s why…

Against overwhelming forces of institutional corruption, Callahan lived, battled and won for the good. Hollywood has yet to write a movie script so riveting. You must hear him tell it.

Michale Callahan is a modern day hero… with a true and compelling story of Illinois government Deceit, Hypocrisy and Misconduct- and one cop’s fight against it.

You will question your own resolve. You will question whether our fight is worth it.

But, you need to hear the truth…

A bungled double murder investigation is deemed “too politically sensitive” to reopen. Two innocent men are railroaded into prison; one sits on death row. The Governor, Illinois State Police Top Command, Attorney General, the Five Families of New York, and the United State Supreme Court are all intimately involved protecting or mollycoddling the Illinois corruption.

Michale Callahan will inspire you.

In the end, the good guys win. After seventeen years, a federal judge tosses out the wrongful convictions. Last month, the Illinois State Police settled one case for $2.5 million.

“This fall, I read 300 pages of Callahan’s book in four days. Does Illinois have a future? It’s a question that you’ll have to answer.”  Adam Andrzejewski 

Reserve your lunch seat today as seating is limited to the first 200 patrons. All attendees receive a complimentary book, “Too Politically Sensitive”.

Book Signing & Gather: 10:30AM- 12PM
Lunch: 12:00 PM – 1:45 PM
Date: Friday, January 27, 2012

Reserve Seats Online: $35

Location:
Carriage Greens Country Club, 8700 Carriage Green Drive, Darien, IL 60561

Sincerely,
Hank Kruse
Chairman | For The Good of Illinois

PS It’s ready… Our updated “For The Record” Legislative Scorecard ranks the entire General Assembly on 18 key votes over the past year. Did your statehouse member maximize transparency, accountability and limited government?

Illinois is Broke is leading on the pension reform issue. Please visit their website: www.illinoisisbroke.com.

Everyone in Illinois is talking about their commercials, click here. The knock at the door, the mother with child, and the voice that wants a check for $30,000. “I wasn’t talking to you (mother).” The voice is talking to the child.

The taxpayers and public employees in Illinois are finally waking up to the fact that Illinois leads the nation in unfunded pension liability. Estimates of this liability range from $140 billion to $215 billion.

Get the facts! Click here for the FACT SHEETS.

The Illinois Is Broke Campaign is made up of concerned organizations and citizens from across the state – including business executives, civic organizations and social service agencies, small business owners and employees, parents and students. This effort was initiated by the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago.

We are unified by a common concern for the future of Illinois – its economy, the public services it provides, its business climate and its quality of life. The state is on the brink of insolvency – the consequences of which would impact every person in Illinois.

We have joined together to say: Enough is enough!

it’s certainly one hell of a competitor.”

Robert Gates, Special Agent in Charge, Chicago FBI Officer

How deep does Illinois corruption go?

At our Liberty Lunch- DuPage on Friday, January 27, Michale Callahan lays it out. A true and riveting story of Illinois government Deceit, Hypocrisy and Misconduct- and one cop’s fight against it.

If you’re going to live in Illinois… if you’re going to participate in Illinois politics- you must hear Michale Callahan’s documented account.

You will question your own resolve. You will question whether our fight is worth it.

But, you need to hear the truth… 

A bungled double murder investigation is deemed “too politically sensitive” to reopen. Two innocent men are railroaded into prison; one sits on death row. The Governor, Illinois State Police Top Command, Attorney General, the Five Families of New York, and the United State Supreme Court are all intimately involved protecting or mollycoddling the Illinois corruption. 

But, in the end, the good guys win. After seventeen years, a federal judge tosses out the wrongful convictions. Last month, the Illinois State Police settled one case for $2.5 million.

“I’ve made a decision to issue the clarion call- to educate the people of Illinois on exactly what it will take to bring our state back. But, Michale Callahan tells it better than I do. Callahan is a modern-day hero.”  Adam Andrzejewski

Reserve your lunch seat today as seating is limited to the first 200 patrons.

Book Signing & Gather: 10:30AM- 12PM
Lunch: 12:00 PM – 1:45 PM
Date: Friday, January 27, 2012

Reserve Seats Online: $35
All attendees receive a complimentary book, “Too Politically Sensitive”

Location:
Carriage Greens Country Club, 8700 Carriage Green Drive, Darien, IL 60561

Sincerely,
Hank Kruse
Chairman | For The Good of Illinois

PS  Don’t forget to download your “Open The Books” iPhone App. “They make… what?” In a radius of your choosing, see all the salaries of your local bureaucrats.

January 5, 2012
Editorial | Champaign News-Gazette

The prospects for improvement in Illinois’ dismal budget picture are nowhere to be seen.

Those optimistic souls hoping the new year would bring brighter financial prospects for Illinois state government got a heaping helping of bad news when Gov. Pat Quinn released horrific budget estimates for the next three years.

But the real shocker surrounding the sorry budget forecast is that the state’s finances probably are in even worse shape than Quinn admitted.

All of which demonstrates the foolishness of a decision by Quinn and state legislators to approve a package of tax cuts totaling more than $250 million a year just a couple of weeks ago.

The tax cuts, of course, were mostly about politics. The numbers Quinn released earlier this week involve policy. They forecast a future that threatens to leave the state’s operating budget deeply in deficit and the state’s multibillion-dollar debt largely unchanged. That means unending financial chaos for state-related programs and institutions.

Given that 2012 is an election year, nervous legislators can be expected to do their best to paper over the problems and push tough decisions past the November election. But here’s something to chew on — last’s year 66 percent state income tax increase (from 3 percent to 5 percent) included a provision to reduce the rate to 3.25 percent in 2015.

Taxpayers can forget that. Indeed, Adam Andrzejewski of For the Good of Illinois has been predicting for months that legislative leaders are cooking up another post-election tax increase for the 2012 lame-duck session of the General Assembly.

Here’s the bottom line — new revenues are pouring into state coffers because of the January 2011 tax increases. But they have not kept up with skyrocketing spending increases, particularly those supporting public employee pensions and health services for the poor (Medicaid).

Legislators have made a serious attempt to control Medicaid costs, reforms blocked by the Obama administration. But they’ve done little but talk about the pension problem.

Quinn’s budget projections indicate that the current state budget will end June 30 with a deficit in excess of $500 million unless cuts are made. It forecasts balanced budgets for Fiscal Year 2013 and 2014 but a massive $800 million deficit for FY 2015.

State budget director David Vaught said increased costs for pensions and Medicaid will require substantial spending cuts in other programs like public safety and education.

As bad as the Medicaid spending projections are, Illinois Senate Republicans argue that Quinn is down-playing the problem by dismissing the possibility of increasing health care costs that could add $2 billion to $3 billion to state obligations.

The public will know more specifics when Quinn delivers his annual budget address in March. But it’s pretty clear circumstances are not good.

That presents both an opportunity and a challenge for our risk-averse elected officials.

The opportunity was outlined by state Sen. Dan Kotowski, a suburban Chicago Democrat.

“Fund what works, get rid of what doesn’t. This is our way to end the reckless spending policies of the past,” he said.

Unfortunately, legislators can’t bear the thought of rethinking and restructuring the broad expanse of government entities and programs.

So that leaves the challenge of building a budget with chewing gun and bailing wire and hoping it doesn’t collapse until after members of the House and Senate are safely re-elected.

As 2011 draws to a close, let’s share a few reflections on what we’ve achieved together during the past year.

In 2011, we fulfilled our promises.

We promised to open the books- and the books are open.  In September, we posted the pay and pensions for virtually every public employee at every level of Illinois government.  In addition to the website, you can download the iPhone app.  Nearly 50,000 users have rendered approximately 750,000 inquires since the launch.

We promised more forensic auditing in Illinois.  Co-drafting HR52 with State Rep Dwight Kay (R-Glen Carbon) in February, a forensic audit of state employee workers compensation claims passed the House 111-00.  As the audit wraps up in early 2012, we anticipate that the Auditor General will unveil the largest fraud and corruption scandal since the indictments of both governors.

We promised to hold our elected representatives accountable.  Scoring eleven key votes, our legislative summary “The Last Six Months in Springfield” and our “For The Record” Scorecard” Scorecard codified the carnage: higher taxes, more spending and constricted citizen access to government information.  Only eleven Republicans and zero Democrats out of 177 members of the General Assembly had perfect voting records.

Cleaning up legal and illegal corruptions, our legislative work is not finished.  After pension “corruptions” of Blagojevich, Cellini, Levine and the subsequent federal SEC investigation, taxpayers must demand a forensic audit of the pensions (HR31).  Furthermore, public pensions should be for government work, period (SB2499).  Hard working public employees need protection from clouted non-government interests who have “muscled” their way into our government pension systems and are draining tens of millions.

Our vision is a proud Illinois with reputation of integrity and opportunity where citizens and institutions can flourish.

Illinois’ transformation won’t happen overnight and it won’t happen by the hand of just one of us. But instead by the united actions of all of us, we will spur one another on to return Illinois to the Land of Lincoln.

The thousands of Illinoisans working to save our state are not only altering its course, but also changing it forever. 

Will you join us, for the good of Illinois? 

Consider contributing $25, $50 or $100 online today to ensure we have the resources needed to continue to work toward a new day. 

Sincerely,
Hank Kruse
Chairman & President | For the Good of Illinois

Past President
Adam Andrzejewski

PS – Please consider a gift of $25, $50 or $100 to promote limited, accountable and transparent government in Illinois.  For more information or to contribute online, visit forthegoodofillinois.org.

Anywhere in Illinois, within a radius of your choosing, our App delivers the top government salaries to your IPhone or IPad.  Use the search geographically or look up public employees by last name or search anywhere in Illinois by zip code. Graph a ten year salary history. 

The results are stunning.  Over the last decade according to the National Average Wage Index, wages in the United States have increased by a total of 26.6%.  Using OpenTheBooks App to search from bureaucrat to bureaucrat, a frequent ten year income spike is 75-100%, or more.  Please see it for yourself…

Download OpenTheBooks App here.

Since the September launch of our main website at OpenTheBooks.com, we’ve been saying that the trajectory of public employee pay is unsustainable.  Now, you can see this for yourself in a very personal way.  OpenTheBooks App uses GPS coordinates and aggregates across all units of Illinois government the top salaries.

It’s your neighborhood. It’s your tax dollar.  It’s their pay.  It’s the taxpayers treat on the taxpayer.

The IPhone App takes all the data from our OpenTheBooks.com project and gives you instant access to the pay of virtually every employee at every level of government. From local government to the state, we have posted 7 million lines of payroll and pensions. This represents the grand sum of a quarter trillion dollars.

Download OpenTheBooks App here.

Here’s why it’s also important…
By proactively posting public payroll and pensions, citizen and media- don’t have to go through the wait and intimidating process of filing FOIA request. In large part, as it relates to public employment- we’ve made that request obsolete. And that brings Illinois government into the 21st century.

We believe that the people of Illinois have a right to know just how much their government costs. I suspect that as people use this database they will show emotion… a common response is “I’m in the wrong business.” But, we believe the people of Illinois are ready to hear the truth.

We believe the people of Illinois are ready for reform.

For The Good of Illinois.

“There’s an App for that…”

$154,000 for a library media specialist? Paying $221,000 for a special education director? A village manager taking $260,000? A double dipper state rep and school superintendent?

You guessed it. There’s a bureaucrat for that.  And, it’s your bureaucrat, in your neighborhood, funded with your tax dollar.

It’s time to see them all…

We’ve got the hottest App in Illinois.  It’s the killer app for the continuing debate on Illinois pay and pensions. Download the OpenTheBooks App.

For maximum impact, we made it free!

Anywhere in Illinois, within a radius of your choosing, our App delivers the top government salaries to your IPhone or IPad.  Use the search geographically or look up public employees by last name. Graph a ten year salary history.  You will not believe it.

You’re going to want this for Holiday and Christmas conversations… From the local to the statehouse, our OpenTheBooks App makes the pay of virtually all Illinois government employees instantly accessible to you. Read a full description here.

This is real time transparency- of their pay, on our dime.

Since the successful September launch of OpenTheBooks.com, nearly 50,000 people have searched 750,000 public officials pay and pensions.  With the launch of our OpenTheBooks App, instant access to our payroll database moves onto your mobile device.

Ten days ago, the St. Louis Post Dispatch recognized OpenTheBooks.com as a national leader in transparency, read the story.  Founder of For The Good of Illinois, Adam Andrzejewski is quoted, “I realized that transparency would be the silver bullet of reining in corruption.”

Download our OpenTheBooks App today.  Forward this email and together we’ll reign in the corruptions.

The bureaucrats are having a very Merry Christmas.  Are you?

Sincerely,
Hank Kruse
Chairman | For The Good of Illinois

By Kevin McDermott
December 10, 2011
St. Louis Post Dispatch

Springfield to Jefferson City to Washington, government today has more electronic windows into its soul than ever before.

Consider the hypothetical state legislative candidate in Illinois. When he accepts campaign donations, they are posted online in a searchable database with the names and occupations of the donors. Once elected, his paycheck can be found, to the dollar, with the push of a few buttons on a laptop or smartphone.

He has to file a statement of economic interest, showing his stocks and other holdings, easily perused by anyone with a computer. Any state contractors who show up at his fundraising events will have their names posted online on both the state campaign and contract databases.

His legislative bills and floor votes are posted immediately, waiting there like a ghost to haunt him in the next election. When the legislator retires, his pension benefits, too, are accessible on your screen.

But there are still some persistent shadows within this seemingly bright-lit world of public information. For example, Illinois statements of economic interest aren’t in database form but rather are PDF files — online photocopies, essentially — and so aren’t searchable.

That’s where people like Adam Andrzejewski come in.

A former candidate for Illinois governor, Andrzejewski is part of an industry sprouting around the digital government information boom: nongovernmental entities that collect and augment government data for online readers, often putting it in a more user-friendly form than the agencies that created it.

“I realized that transparency would be the silver bullet of reining in corruption,” said Andrzejewski, who has spearheaded and funded an independent website called OpenTheBooks.com.

The site offers access to a searchable database of state pension benefits for Illinois government retirees. It’s something you can get yourself through the state pension systems, but only after filing a legal request and enduring a wait — steps Andrzejewski has already taken to gather the information and put it out there.

Why would a private citizen go to that trouble to grease the skids of public information? Andrzejewski says it’s so “they don’t have to rely on a bureaucrat to fulfill a request. This information is vitally important.”

But he’s also considering another run at the Illinois governor’s office, after running as a Republican in 2010. His online database positions him as a voice in the public-pension debate, which many Republicans believe will be a key issue in future Illinois elections.

“Like anything else, you have to practice due diligence” when parsing the growing blizzard of data from both public and private sources, says Illinois political scientist Kent Redfield. Still, like other open-government advocates, Redfield sees the explosion of online information as an overwhelmingly good thing.

In Missouri, Internet users who don’t find what they’re looking for on the official state government sites — or perhaps don’t know what’s available — can turn to openmissouri.gov. A project of the University of Missouri-Columbia’s journalism school, the site’s mission is to provide information about hundreds of little-known databases that are available through government but haven’t been posted online.

For example, you won’t find online records about state amusement park safety inspections, or public drinking water systems that chronically fail bacteria tests. For those lists, you need to make a formal request to the state — something that openmissouri.org can set in motion for its users.

“The government decides what information is placed out there, and it’s not necessarily what people want or need to know,” says David Herzog, the Mizzou journalism professor who spearheaded openmissouri.org. “We’re filling in some of those gaps.”

News organizations, too, are on the government database bandwagon. STLtoday.com, the Post-Dispatch’s website, for example, offers readers a list of searchable public payroll databases for state employees in Missouri and Illinois, as well as many local governments.

This new availability of information is being driven in part by old supply-and-demand principles. There was a time when the media outlets were the only ones trying to wrest data from the government. Today, average citizens have developed information addictions of their own. Andrzejewski reports 40,000 visitors to his site in its first month.

And political leaders are tripping over one another to be viewed as friends of public information.

Missouri has drawn national praise for its Missouri Accountability Portal, an online clearinghouse of government information where people can find state government salaries, agency spending, contracts and even a “Who is not paying?” section that highlights businesses cited for failure to remit sales or income taxes.

In Illinois, Gov. Pat Quinn and all the other statewide constitutional officers have put forward their own online information portals, often beyond what’s required by law.

The federal government, too, has gradually moved from reluctance to enthusiasm on the concept of information access. President Barack Obama’s administration pre-emptively stressed openness and access for its controversial stimulus spending program, setting up a website — recovery.gov — that allows anyone to track every dollar of stimulus money state by state.

“In terms of access and attitudes among government officials, things have changed,” said Redfield, a professor at the University of Illinois at Springfield who works with the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. ICPR runs a website called The Sunshine Project, which collects, reworks, analyzes and posts various kinds of public information from Illinois government.

Redfield noted that, in the post-Watergate era, Illinois politicians grudgingly implemented campaign disclosure laws they had been forced to pass, lacing them with daunting paper forms and other requirements that were “designed to make it difficult” to get the information.

With the Internet age and its new attitudes about open data, he said, “the revolution that’s taken place is just amazing.”

Still, even today’s open-government portals have some problems. Among the goals of the ICPR site is to rework the state’s campaign finance data so that when, for example, you search for “Ameren” or “ComEd,” you get all the donations from those entities. The state Board of Elections site allows campaigns to list numerous permutations of each name, and a standard search won’t recognize those that are even one letter or period off.

“The state is sitting on a huge file cabinet of information. There’s a lot of stuff there, and what’s needed is to make sense of it,” says David Morrison of ICPR. “I think people outside of government are best equipped to do that.”

Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/local-state-national-governments-are-more-open-than-ever/article_8b020faf-84fb-5577-92e2-9011639a9f52.html#ixzz1gwsu6haL

Click here to read this post at www.forthegoodofillinoispac.com.

“THE FACE OF REPUBLICAN FAILURE”
Wall Street Journal May 11, 2010