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</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>**DPDC Blog has moved**</title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/08/dpdc-blog-has-moved.html</link><pubDate>Sat, 16 Aug 2014 16:53:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-8768249215982473676</guid><description>&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;
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</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>F*R*E*E* Visibility Picnic This Saturday. RSVP today, please.</title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/08/free-visibility-picnic-this-saturday.html</link><pubDate>Thu, 14 Aug 2014 11:55:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-3279118875075632786</guid><description>&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;PLEASE bring a side dish to feed 8-10, also. See you Saturday!&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG9ZFjjqquw6VqpPSoAE2TDtbxQsqBc-Y1CgerXLCMj9sU3oiC6t9GojwsAeN2ifFIFsFBT3HJ_RmTPxYB1tugMt07eZwpItlQnmIbbhL1BeMjxq21Hu1fO5vfYLqDAbL5kSEdT5y5p90/s1600/picnic-+2014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG9ZFjjqquw6VqpPSoAE2TDtbxQsqBc-Y1CgerXLCMj9sU3oiC6t9GojwsAeN2ifFIFsFBT3HJ_RmTPxYB1tugMt07eZwpItlQnmIbbhL1BeMjxq21Hu1fO5vfYLqDAbL5kSEdT5y5p90/s1600/picnic-+2014.jpg" height="640" width="283" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Plea&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;</description><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG9ZFjjqquw6VqpPSoAE2TDtbxQsqBc-Y1CgerXLCMj9sU3oiC6t9GojwsAeN2ifFIFsFBT3HJ_RmTPxYB1tugMt07eZwpItlQnmIbbhL1BeMjxq21Hu1fO5vfYLqDAbL5kSEdT5y5p90/s72-c/picnic-+2014.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>There’s Now A Book To Teach Your Kids About Why They Should Pack Heat While Shopping </title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/08/theres-now-book-to-teach-your-kids.html</link><pubDate>Wed, 13 Aug 2014 12:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-8108761822718312438</guid><description>&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_38524" style="background-color: white; color: #2672ec; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16pt;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_38528" style="background-color: white; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 13px;"&gt;by&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://thinkprogress.org/?person=ian-m" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_38527" rel="nofollow" shape="rect" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;Ian Millhiser&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;span class="yiv5825024100ecxposted-on"&gt;Posted on August 4, 2014 at 10:16 am&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div align="center" class="yiv5825024100ecxwide-photo-box" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_38530" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;"&gt;
&lt;img alt="open carry coloring book" height="249" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_38529" src="http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/open-carry-coloring-book-638x250.jpg" style="border: 0px; min-height: 196px; width: 360px;" width="636" /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div align="center" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_38531" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;
&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style="font-size: 10pt;"&gt;CREDIT: myparentsopencarry.com&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;Do you wander around with a Glock on your hip, so you are prepared for the day when you’ll open fire on an armed assailant? Do you worry about how you will explain to your kids why you wander around with a Glock on your hip, so you are prepared for the day when you’ll open fire on an armed assailant? Well, Brian Jeffs and Nathan Nephew, two advocates for openly carrying firearms from Michigan, have a solution for you! The two men have authored “&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.myparentsopencarry.com/" rel="nofollow" shape="rect" style="background-color: white; color: #196ad4; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;My Parents Open Carry&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;,” a book for children that tells the tale of a young girl and her family as they “turn an otherwise ordinary day into an open carry adventure!”&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;The book teaches children such lessons as&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: 700;"&gt;...&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: 700;"&gt;To Read More:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/08/04/3467130/theres-now-a-book-to-teach-your-kids-about-why-they-should-pack-heat-while-shopping/" rel="nofollow" shape="rect" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/08/04/3467130/theres-now-a-book-to-teach-your-kids-about-why-they-should-pack-heat-while-shopping/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>Grassroots and gerrymandering: IL GOP have "no troops to speak of".</title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/08/grassroots-and-gerrymandering-il-gop.html</link><pubDate>Tue, 12 Aug 2014 10:30:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-8483043664811896547</guid><description>&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;Posted by&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;Rich Miller&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="body undoreset" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_18148" role="gridcell" style="background-color: white; display: table; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding-left: 0px; padding-top: 12px; width: auto; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;" tabindex="0"&gt;
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&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_18144" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;Out of power for a dozen years and hobbled even before that by anti-patronage court rulings, the state’s Republican Party infrastructure has all but collapsed.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_18157" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;So, part of GOP gubernatorial nominee Bruce Rauner’s task he’s set for himself from here on out is to try and somehow rebuild a grassroots infrastructure.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_18158" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;It won’t be an easy job. Republicans have never, in the modern age, been able to match the Democrats’ ability to dispatch patronage armies to the state’s distant corners because of the Democrats’ Chicago and Cook County patronage bases The Republicans’ local organizations are essentially hollow these days, and they have no troops to speak of.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;To Read More:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;a href="http://capitolfax.com/2014/04/28/grassroots-and-gerrymandering/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #2672ec;"&gt;http://capitolfax.com/2014/04/28/grassroots-and-gerrymandering/&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>Report: Rauner Funneled Money Into Caribbean. Surprised?</title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/08/report-rauner-funneled-money-into.html</link><pubDate>Mon, 11 Aug 2014 15:30:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-6061100962070784492</guid><description>&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.53em;"&gt;CHICAGO (AP) — Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner funneled part of his wealth to a Caribbean territory long considered a tax haven, a business practice the venture capitalist defended on Sunday, stressing there was no impact on his personal tax rate.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_12584" style="background-color: white; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_12583" style="line-height: 1.53em;"&gt;Rauner spoke with reporters the same day a published report detailed how three of five of Rauner's Cayman Island holdings are tied to GTCR, a Chicago-based private equity firm Rauner helped found&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_12579" style="background-color: white; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_12578" style="line-height: 1.53em;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_12577" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;To Read More:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://progressillinois.com/news/content/2014/08/04/report-rauner-funneled-money-caribbean" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #2672ec;"&gt;http://progressillinois.com/news/content/2014/08/04/report-rauner-funneled-money-caribbean&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>State Policy Network Ties to ALEC.  </title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/08/state-policy-network-ties-to-alec.html</link><pubDate>Sun, 10 Aug 2014 16:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-7483082957104387488</guid><description>&lt;div class="body undoreset" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_7111" role="gridcell" style="background-color: white; display: table; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding-left: 0px; padding-top: 12px; width: auto; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;" tabindex="0"&gt;
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&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_7108" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_7107" style="font-size: 16pt;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_7106" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_7105" style="color: #2672ec;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_7112"&gt;State Policy Network&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;(SPN was formerly known as the Madison Group -&amp;nbsp;&lt;span class="yiv7590947522mw-headline" id="yiv7590947522SPN_Ties_to_ALEC"&gt;SPN Ties to ALEC)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;State Policy Network&lt;/b&gt;&amp;nbsp;(SPN) has franchised, funded, and fostered a growing number of “mini&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Heritage_Foundation" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank" title="Heritage Foundation"&gt;Heritage Foundations&lt;/a&gt;” at the state level since the early 1990s.&lt;sup class="yiv7590947522reference" id="yiv7590947522cite_ref-NR_1-0"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/sup&gt;SPN is a web of right-wing “think tanks” in every state across the country. It is an $83 million right-wing empire as of the 2011 funding documents from SPN itself and each of its state "think tank" members. Although SPN's member organizations claim to be nonpartisan and independent, the Center for Media and Democracy's in-depth investigation, "&lt;a class="yiv7590947522external yiv7590947522text" href="http://www.alecexposed.org/w/images/2/25/SPN_National_Report_FINAL.pdf" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_7164" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;EXPOSED: The State Policy Network -- The Powerful Right-Wing Network Helping to Hijack State Politics and Government&lt;/a&gt;," reveals that SPN and its member think tanks are major drivers of the right-wing,&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/SPN_Ties_to_ALEC" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank" title="SPN Ties to ALEC"&gt;American Legislative Exchange Council&lt;/a&gt;(ALEC)-backed corporate agenda in state houses nationwide, with deep ties to the&amp;nbsp;&lt;a class="yiv7590947522mw-redirect" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Koch_brothers" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_7165" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank" title="Koch brothers"&gt;Koch brothers&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;and the national right-wing network of&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/SPN_Funding" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank" title="SPN Funding"&gt;funders&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;SPN describes itself as a network and service organization for the "state-based free market think tank movement," and its stated mission is "to provide strategic assistance to independent research organizations devoted to discovering and developing market-oriented solutions to state and local public policy issues." It was founded in November 1991 and incorporated in March of 1992.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;To Read More:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=State_Policy_Network" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #2672ec;"&gt;http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=State_Policy_Network&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author><enclosure length="1960963" type="application/pdf" url="http://www.alecexposed.org/w/images/2/25/SPN_National_Report_FINAL.pdf"/><itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit><itunes:subtitle>State Policy Network&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;(SPN was formerly known as the Madison Group -&amp;nbsp;SPN Ties to ALEC) The&amp;nbsp;State Policy Network&amp;nbsp;(SPN) has franchised, funded, and fostered a growing number of “mini&amp;nbsp;Heritage Foundations” at the state level since the early 1990s.&amp;nbsp;SPN is a web of right-wing “think tanks” in every state across the country. It is an $83 million right-wing empire as of the 2011 funding documents from SPN itself and each of its state "think tank" members. Although SPN's member organizations claim to be nonpartisan and independent, the Center for Media and Democracy's in-depth investigation, "EXPOSED: The State Policy Network -- The Powerful Right-Wing Network Helping to Hijack State Politics and Government," reveals that SPN and its member think tanks are major drivers of the right-wing,&amp;nbsp;American Legislative Exchange Council(ALEC)-backed corporate agenda in state houses nationwide, with deep ties to the&amp;nbsp;Koch brothers&amp;nbsp;and the national right-wing network of&amp;nbsp;funders. SPN describes itself as a network and service organization for the "state-based free market think tank movement," and its stated mission is "to provide strategic assistance to independent research organizations devoted to discovering and developing market-oriented solutions to state and local public policy issues." It was founded in November 1991 and incorporated in March of 1992. To Read More:&amp;nbsp;http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=State_Policy_Network</itunes:subtitle><itunes:author>Dan Stafford</itunes:author><itunes:summary>State Policy Network&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;(SPN was formerly known as the Madison Group -&amp;nbsp;SPN Ties to ALEC) The&amp;nbsp;State Policy Network&amp;nbsp;(SPN) has franchised, funded, and fostered a growing number of “mini&amp;nbsp;Heritage Foundations” at the state level since the early 1990s.&amp;nbsp;SPN is a web of right-wing “think tanks” in every state across the country. It is an $83 million right-wing empire as of the 2011 funding documents from SPN itself and each of its state "think tank" members. Although SPN's member organizations claim to be nonpartisan and independent, the Center for Media and Democracy's in-depth investigation, "EXPOSED: The State Policy Network -- The Powerful Right-Wing Network Helping to Hijack State Politics and Government," reveals that SPN and its member think tanks are major drivers of the right-wing,&amp;nbsp;American Legislative Exchange Council(ALEC)-backed corporate agenda in state houses nationwide, with deep ties to the&amp;nbsp;Koch brothers&amp;nbsp;and the national right-wing network of&amp;nbsp;funders. SPN describes itself as a network and service organization for the "state-based free market think tank movement," and its stated mission is "to provide strategic assistance to independent research organizations devoted to discovering and developing market-oriented solutions to state and local public policy issues." It was founded in November 1991 and incorporated in March of 1992. To Read More:&amp;nbsp;http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=State_Policy_Network</itunes:summary><itunes:keywords>DuPage,County,illinois,democratic,party,news,events,candidates,office,policy,races,campaign,election,law,view,progressive,politics,political,government</itunes:keywords></item><item><title>A New Arm of ALEC. Really?</title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/08/a-new-arm-of-alec-really.html</link><pubDate>Sat, 9 Aug 2014 09:30:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-2619724005557958704</guid><description>&lt;div class="body undoreset" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_1811" role="gridcell" style="background-color: white; display: table; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding-left: 0px; padding-top: 12px; width: auto; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;" tabindex="0"&gt;
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&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_2131" style="color: #2672ec; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_2130" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Protests Greet Lawmakers, Corporate Officials Gathering in Dallas as New Arm of ALEC Is Announced&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_2129" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;By&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://truth-out.org/author/itemlist/user/47429" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;Candice Bernd&lt;/a&gt;,&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://truth-out.org/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;Truthout&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;|&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div align="center" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_1808" style="padding: 0px;"&gt;
&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_1807" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;img alt="2014 802 alec 3" height="425" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_1806" src="http://www.truth-out.org/images/images_2014_07/2014_802_alec_3.jpg" style="border: 0px; min-height: 179px; width: 279px;" width="637" /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407185649824_2276" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;Two grassroots activists from North Texas locked themselves inside the lobby of the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, Thursday morning, as another two dropped a banner from the upper stories of the hotel to greet lawmakers and corporate officials gathered for the 41st annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;To Read More On:&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style="color: black;"&gt;ALEC Could Be Coming to Your City Soon; The American City County Exchange;&amp;nbsp; ALEC's Climate Agenda;&amp;nbsp;Protesters Greet ALEC in Dallas; A Progressive ALEC?; ALEC's Extended Family: The State Policy Network;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #2672ec;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: black;"&gt;ALEC's Agenda in Texas&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: black;"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #2672ec;"&gt;http://truth-out.org/news/item/25321-protests-greet-lawmakers-corporate-officials-gathering-in-dallas-as-new-arm-of-alec-is-announced&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
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</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>Durbin wants feds to check out Canadian National delays on EJ&amp;E </title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/08/durbin-wants-feds-to-check-out-canadian.html</link><pubDate>Fri, 8 Aug 2014 15:52:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-7030372244952936545</guid><description>&lt;div class="thread-body" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_60997" role="presentation" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px 27px; word-wrap: break-word;"&gt;
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&lt;b id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_61015"&gt;&lt;em id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_61022"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_61021" style="color: black;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_61020"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_61019" style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_61018" style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_61017" style="font-style: normal;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_61016" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"&gt;Sen. Dick Durbin continued pressure on the Canadian National Railway Thursday, asking federal regulators to visit Illinois and witness delays on CN-operated tracks.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;"These large-unit trains and other freight trains are blocking crossings and increasing delays," Durbin wrote U.S. Surface Transportation Board Chairman Daniel Elliott. However, CN officials disagreed, explaining that delays at crossings earlier in the year were weather-related and are improving. In 2008, the transportation board approved CN's purchase of the EJ&amp;amp;E Railroad, a small freight line with tracks that run from Waukegan to Joliet through the north, northwest and southwest suburbs. Board members agreed with CN that using the EJ&amp;amp;E tracks would ease freight traffic in Chicago and on other railroad lines so trains could move quicker through the region. It imposed numerous conditions on the railroad, including a six-year monitoring period. Communities including Barrington and Aurora fought the plan, noting it would put more freight trains in their towns, resulting in more traffic, noise, delays and environmental problems. There were 5,267 cases of blocked crossings lasting 10 minutes or more between January and March, Durbin told Elliott, adding it was "the highest number since CN took ownership of the rail line.&amp;nbsp;&lt;em&gt;&lt;span style="color: black;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-style: normal;"&gt;&lt;span style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"&gt;…&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;b&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;span style="color: black;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-style: normal;"&gt;&lt;span style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"&gt;To Read More:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20140731/news/140739717/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="font-style: normal;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0072c6;"&gt;http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20140731/news/140739717/&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;span style="color: black;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-style: normal;"&gt;&lt;span style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>Good Riddance Eric Cantor!</title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/08/good-riddance-eric-cantor.html</link><pubDate>Thu, 7 Aug 2014 10:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-4993896782102019837</guid><description>&lt;div class="body undoreset" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_51197" role="gridcell" style="background-color: white; display: table; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding-left: 0px; padding-top: 12px; width: auto; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;" tabindex="0"&gt;
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&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_51201" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_51200" style="color: #2672ec; font-size: 20pt;"&gt;Eric Cantor to leave Congress altogether on Aug. 18&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span class="yiv0744468947pb-byline" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_51203"&gt;By&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/paul-kane/2011/02/22/ABezuTI_page.html" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;Paul Kane&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;and&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/people/sebastian-payne" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_51202" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;Sebastian Payne&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_51198" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;Rep. Eric Cantor, the just-departed House majority leader, announced Friday morning that he would also resign altogether from Congress, effective Aug.&amp;nbsp;18.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_51204" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;The seven-term congressman, stunned by a June&amp;nbsp;10 upset in Virginia’s primary, stepped down&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;...&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_51207" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_51206" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;To Read More:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2014/07/31/41de2ff8-18fa-11e4-9349-84d4a85be981_story.html?wpisrc=nl_pulse" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_51205" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2014/07/31/41de2ff8-18fa-11e4-9349-84d4a85be981_story.html?wpisrc=nl_pulse&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>Voting Just got easier in Illinois </title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/08/voting-just-got-easier-in-illinois.html</link><pubDate>Thu, 7 Aug 2014 09:01:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-464982232199213039</guid><description>&lt;div align="center" style="padding: 0px; text-align: start;"&gt;
&lt;span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;nbsp;Voting in Illinois just got easier&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div align="center"&gt;
&lt;div style="height: 568.400024px !important;"&gt;
&lt;table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" style="-webkit-transform-origin: 0px 0px !important; -webkit-transform: scale(0.58) !important; height: 980px !important; margin: 0px -210px -411px 0px !important; width: 500px !important;"&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;div align="left"&gt;
&lt;span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"&gt;While some states are making it harder to vote, under Governor Quinn's leadership, Illinois is making it easier than ever.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;b&gt;Here's one big change you should know about: Illinois now has no-excuse absentee voting, so anyone can request a ballot and cast their vote by mail.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That means no more lines, and no more worrying about taking off work to get to the polls on Election Day.&lt;br /&gt;If you want to vote by mail this year, you can request a ballot -- starting today. Just fill out an application here:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a data-form-type="PetitionForm" href="https://act.myngp.com/el/-2903160002708175104/2920312070047336192" saprocessedanchor="true" target="_blank"&gt;https://www.quinnforillinois.com/vote-by-mail-illinois&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A few more things have changed for the better:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"&gt;Early Vote hours and days have been extended, to give you more options to vote in person.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"&gt;You will no longer be required to provide a photo ID in order to vote early.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"&gt;And, for the first time ever, you can now&amp;nbsp;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a data-form-type="PetitionForm" href="https://act.myngp.com/el/-2903160002708175104/2992369664085264128" saprocessedanchor="true" target="_blank"&gt;register to vote or update your registration online.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"&gt;Democracy works best when everyone takes part.&lt;br /&gt;Be sure to let your friends and family know: This year, voting will be easier than ever.&lt;br /&gt;It's also more important than ever.&lt;br /&gt;Thanks.&lt;br /&gt;Sabey&lt;br /&gt;Sabey Abraham&lt;br /&gt;Deputy Field Director&lt;br /&gt;Quinn for Illinois&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div align="justify"&gt;
&lt;span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"&gt;Contributions are not tax deductible. State law requires that the occupation and name of the employer be reported for any individual who contributes over $500. Taxpayers for Quinn does not accept contributions from State employees. In addition, the Illinois Procurement Code prohibits certain businesses and their affiliates that have contracts, bids, and proposals with state agencies from making political contributions to state office holders responsible for awarding the contract. For more information about this campaign contribution limitation, please consult the&amp;nbsp;&lt;a data-form-type="" href="https://act.myngp.com/el/-2903160002708175104/3064427258123192064" saprocessedanchor="true" target="_blank"&gt;State Board of Elections website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="ecxdisclaimer-info" style="text-align: center;"&gt;
&lt;table style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);"&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style="padding: 8px; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"&gt;Paid for by Taxpayers for Quinn. A copy of our report, filed with the IL State Board of Elections is (or will be) available on the board's website (&lt;a href="http://elections.il.gov/" x-apple-data-detectors-result="2" x-apple-data-detectors-type="link" x-apple-data-detectors="true"&gt;elections.il.gov&lt;/a&gt;) or for purchase from the State Board of Elections in Springfield, IL. Taxpayers for Quinn&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;
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&lt;div align="center" class="ecxorginfo" style="padding: 0px; text-align: center;"&gt;
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&lt;div class="ecxorg-address-info" style="text-align: center;"&gt;
&lt;span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"&gt;Quinn for Illinois&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="x-apple-data-detectors://3" x-apple-data-detectors-result="3" x-apple-data-detectors-type="address" x-apple-data-detectors="true"&gt;676 N LaSalle Street&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="x-apple-data-detectors://3" x-apple-data-detectors-result="3" x-apple-data-detectors-type="address" x-apple-data-detectors="true"&gt;Ste. 340&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="x-apple-data-detectors://3" x-apple-data-detectors-result="3" x-apple-data-detectors-type="address" x-apple-data-detectors="true"&gt;Chicago IL 60654 United States&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"&gt;&lt;img alt="" height="1" src="https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/viewthroughconversion/971260754/?value=0&amp;amp;guid=ON&amp;amp;script=0" width="1" /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"&gt;&lt;img src="https://act.myngp.com/el/-2903160002708175104/1551217783326705408" /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>Bill Foster in Your Corner</title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/08/bill-foster-in-your-corner.html</link><pubDate>Wed, 6 Aug 2014 19:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-7926388351090062035</guid><description>&lt;div class="body undoreset" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_49966" role="gridcell" style="background-color: white; display: table; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding-left: 0px; padding-top: 12px; width: auto; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;" tabindex="0"&gt;
&lt;div id="yiv9970722937"&gt;
&lt;div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_49965"&gt;
&lt;div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_49964"&gt;
&lt;div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_49963"&gt;
&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_49971" style="color: #2672ec; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_49970" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Rep. Bill Foster votes against tax giveaways&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_49962" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;"H&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_49969" style="font-size: 16px;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_49968" style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"&gt;ard-working Illinoisans pay their fair share of taxes, and I believe corporations should do the same. That’s why I recently voted to end tax giveaways for companies that ship jobs overseas.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_49961" style="font-size: 16px;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_49960" style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_49967"&gt;Current tax loopholes are costing taxpayers billions of dollars, and creating an unfair disadvantage for businesses large and small that remain in this country.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;By utilizing a process known as&amp;nbsp;“corporate inversions,” companies are able to avoid paying U.S. taxes by&amp;nbsp;renouncing their United States citizenship and reincorporating by acquiring a foreign company and transferring more than 20 percent of shares to foreign owners..."&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;To read more and take the survey:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://2013-il11.congressnewsletter.net/mail/util.cfm?gpiv=2100118191.23382.159&amp;amp;gen=1" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;http://2013-il11.congressnewsletter.net/mail/util.cfm?gpiv=2100118191.23382.159&amp;amp;gen=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>Join the DPDC Women's caucus for a Women Voter Mobilization Celebration at  La Tosca Tomorrow night </title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/08/join-dpdc-womens-caucus-for-women-voter.html</link><pubDate>Wed, 6 Aug 2014 14:46:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-6250428065380818656</guid><description>&lt;div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9502"&gt;
&lt;div align="center" dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9505" style="padding: 0px;"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div align="center" dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9505" style="padding: 0px;"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9505" style="padding: 0px; text-align: left;"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"&gt;The DPDC is starting their chapter of&amp;nbsp;The Women's caucus. right here in Dupage County.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9503"&gt;
&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9504" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;It is time for the women of DuPage County to become even more involved for the rights we fight for on a daily basis.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9503"&gt;
If you would like to attend tomorrow evening's event, at&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9537" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;La Tosca Restaurant - 123 E. St Charles Rd. Villa Park,&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;please RSVP to&lt;a href="mailto:info@dupagedemocrats.com" rel="nofollow" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank" ymailto="mailto:info@dupagedemocrats.com"&gt;info@dupagedemocrats.com&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;or call for your tickets - cost&amp;nbsp;$20.00 at 630-629-1125. Seating is limited.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9501"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9386"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;Here are some facts on the Women's caucus.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9385" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The House&amp;nbsp;is at it's highest point at 18 percent (including the (Delegates)&lt;br /&gt;The influence of the Caucus has far exceeded its representation in Congress.&lt;br /&gt;They have achieved a list of accomplishments that include:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9386"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;T&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"&gt;he Pregnancy Discrimination Act&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9516"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;The Child Support Enforcement Act&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9517" style="padding: 0px;"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;The Retirement Equity Act&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9518" style="padding: 0px;"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;The Civil Rights Restoration Act&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9519" style="padding: 0px;"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;The Women’s Business Ownership Act&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9520" style="padding: 0px;"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;The Breast and Cervical Cancer Mortality Prevention Act&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;The Mammography Quality Standards Act&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;The Family and Medical Leave Act&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;The Violence Against Women Act&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;The Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering, and Technology Development Act&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div dir="ltr"&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;The Caucus&amp;nbsp;is an inspiration and a model&amp;nbsp;for women everywhere.&amp;nbsp; This is a brief list of organized Women's Caucuses:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div dir="ltr"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div dir="ltr"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;u&gt;W&lt;/u&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.seiu521.org/about/caucuses-committees/womens-caucus/" rel="nofollow" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #196ad4; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: black;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Segoe UI Semibold;"&gt;omen’s&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Segoe UI Semibold;"&gt;Caucus&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;- SEIU 521&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div style="cursor: pointer; display: inline; float: none; margin-left: 2px; min-height: 16px; padding: 0px; width: 16px;"&gt;
&lt;span style="color: black;"&gt;We are working&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;union&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;women&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;empowering our&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; community&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div dir="ltr"&gt;
&lt;u style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"&gt;W&lt;/u&gt;&lt;span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #196ad4; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: black;"&gt;&lt;a href="http://ohiodems.org/networks/womens-caucus/" rel="nofollow" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #196ad4; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Segoe UI Semibold;"&gt;omen’s&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Segoe UI Semibold;"&gt;Caucus&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;- Ohio&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Segoe UI Semibold;"&gt;Democratic&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;Party&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9531" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;u&gt;W&lt;/u&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.monmouthdems.org/women_s_caucus" rel="nofollow" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #196ad4; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: black;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Segoe UI Semibold;"&gt;omen's&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Segoe UI Semibold;"&gt;Caucus&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;-&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Segoe UI Semibold;"&gt;Monmouth County&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;Democrats&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9530" style="cursor: pointer; display: inline; float: none; margin-left: 2px; min-height: 16px; padding: 0px; width: 16px;"&gt;
&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9529" style="color: black;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;-&amp;nbsp; LGBT Pride&amp;nbsp;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9528" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Caucus&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407182365511_9533" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;a href="http://collegedems.com/about/caucuses/womens-caucus/" rel="nofollow" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #196ad4; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: black;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;u style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"&gt;Women's&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Segoe UI Semibold;"&gt;Caucus&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;«&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style="font-family: Segoe UI Semibold;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;College Democrats of&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;America&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"&gt;Illinois Women's Caucus&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;We look forward to you joining us to achieve increased movement and satisfaction in women's issues and political policies.&lt;br /&gt;
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</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>Hoping History will repeat itself: think 1998</title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/08/hoping-history-will-repeat-itself-think.html</link><pubDate>Tue, 5 Aug 2014 14:52:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-4373100729870118669</guid><description>&lt;div class="body undoreset" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_17045" role="gridcell" style="background-color: white; display: table; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding-left: 0px; padding-top: 12px; width: auto; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;" tabindex="0"&gt;
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&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_17054" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_17053"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_17052" style="font-size: 16pt;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_17051" style="font-size: 12pt;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_17050" style="color: #2672ec; font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_17049" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;2.1 million reasons why Dems love the GOP’s anti-Obama push&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_17048" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_17047"&gt;By&amp;nbsp;&lt;span class="yiv5533399182author" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_17046"&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.msnbc.com/byline/steve-benen" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;Steve Benen&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;span class="yiv5533399182author"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_17056" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_17055"&gt;In 1998, congressional Republicans, filled with irrational rage towards a Democratic president in his sixth year, launched an impeachment crusade the American mainstream saw as wildly unnecessary. The electoral results were striking: Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party had&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-exception-the-six-year-itch" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;the best sixth-year midterms&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;of any administration in a century.&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_17058"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_17057" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;The history is not lost on contemporary Democrats. If GOP overreach 16 years ago alienated Republicans from the public at large and encouraged Democratic voters to show up for the elections, maybe history can repeat itself now that the GOP is once again launching...&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;To Read More:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/21-million-reasons-why-dems-love-the-gops-anti-obama-push" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/21-million-reasons-why-dems-love-the-gops-anti-obama-push&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
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</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>Opposition to Rauner Seems to be Everywhere</title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/08/opposition-to-rauner-seems-to-be.html</link><pubDate>Tue, 5 Aug 2014 08:30:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-8704314829925473548</guid><description>&lt;span style="background-color: white; color: #2672ec; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: large; font-weight: 700;"&gt;Please feel free to post to our comments any other pertinent info regarding how unfit Rauner is be Governor. Also, many good talking points are posted at our &lt;a href="https://www.facebook.com/dupage.dems" target="_blank"&gt;DuPageDems FaceBook&lt;/a&gt; site as well.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="body undoreset" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_12151" role="gridcell" style="background-color: white; display: table; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding-left: 0px; padding-top: 12px; width: auto; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;" tabindex="0"&gt;
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&lt;span style="color: #2672ec; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;span style="color: #2672ec; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: large; font-weight: 700;"&gt;Illinois Activist Groups Protest Rauner Fundraiser&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_12156" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;span class="yiv2151083030author"&gt;Ashlee Rezin&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_12152" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;While New Jersey Governor Chris Christie headlined a fundraiser for Republican Illinois gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner Friday evening in the Loop (Friday the 7/25), more than 100 protesters gathered outside the event to decry the pair's conservative stance on a myriad of social issues.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_12157" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;“Both of these politicians pose as moderates, but we’re here to call attention to the fact that both Bruce Rauner and Chris Christie have extreme positions on both the social, as well as the economic pocket book issues,” said William McNary, co-director of&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.citizenaction-il.org/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;Citizen Action/Illinois&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;The closed-door fundraiser....&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_12159" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;To Read More:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://progressillinois.com/quick-hits/content/2014/07/26/activists-protest-outside-republican-gubernatorial-candidate-bruce-rau" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407181387878_12158" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;http://progressillinois.com/quick-hits/content/2014/07/26/activists-protest-outside-republican-gubernatorial-candidate-bruce-rau&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;span class="yiv2151083030date"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>Unusual New SuperPAC</title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/08/unusual-new-superpac.html</link><pubDate>Mon, 4 Aug 2014 14:40:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-8092932002804112517</guid><description>&lt;div class="body undoreset" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407165280026_26416" role="gridcell" style="display: table; padding-left: 0px; padding-top: 12px; width: auto; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;" tabindex="0"&gt;
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&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407165280026_26419" style="color: #2672ec; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407165280026_26418" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Spending Big to Fight Big Donors in Campaigns&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407165280026_26417" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;span class="yiv4368779937byline"&gt;By&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/nicholas_confessore/index.html" rel="nofollow" style="color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank" title="More Articles by NICHOLAS CONFESSORE"&gt;&lt;span class="yiv4368779937byline-author"&gt;NICHOLAS CONFESSORE&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407165280026_26421" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;" /&gt;&lt;div class="yiv4368779937story-body-text yiv4368779937story-content" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407165280026_26420" style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;"&gt;
An unlikely alliance of liberal intellectuals, big donors and Republican strategists has hit on a solution to the influence of big money in politics: even more money.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div class="yiv4368779937story-body-text yiv4368779937story-content" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1407165280026_26422" style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;"&gt;
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Starting July 28th, the recently formed&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="https://mayday.us/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank" title="The super PAC’s website"&gt;Mayday&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;“super PAC” began a $12 million advertising campaign to help elect lawmakers of both parties who support proposals to diminish the influence of big donors. The PAC is the most ambitious effort yet to turn dismay over supersize contributions&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;...&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px; font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;" /&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px; font-weight: 700;"&gt;To Read More...&lt;a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/us/spending-big-to-fight-big-donors.html?_r=1"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/us/spending-big-to-fight-big-donors.html?_r=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>More Health Care Sleight of Hand by GOP</title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/08/more-health-care-sleight-of-hand-by-gop.html</link><pubDate>Fri, 1 Aug 2014 15:30:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-3090491470904647073</guid><description>&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_308360" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_308359" style="color: #2672ec; font-size: 16pt;"&gt;Conservatives Want You to Pay More for the Health Plan You Like&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;By&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.americanprogressaction.org/about/staff/carrk-tony/bio/" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_308373" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #196ad4; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;Tony Carrk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;|&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /&gt;&lt;span class="yiv9143930394timestamp" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;The Affordable Care Act, or ACA, is working: The&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/172403/uninsured-rate-sinks-second-quarter.aspx" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #196ad4; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;uninsured rate has fallen dramatically&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;since the law went into effect. Newly released data published in&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsr1406753" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_308375" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #196ad4; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;i id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_308374"&gt;The New England Journal of Medicine&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;show that 10.3 million adults gained coverage during the first open enrollment period. According to a recent&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2014/jul/Health-Coverage-Access-ACA" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_308376" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #196ad4; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;Commonwealth Fund survey&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;, 60 percent of those with new coverage said they used their coverage to go to the doctor or hospital or to fill a prescription; 62 percent of those people said they would not have been able to do so without their new coverage. Moreover, of those who were looking for a doctor, two-thirds said they were able to get an appointment within two weeks.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;People are happy with their coverage. Overall, 78 percent of those surveyed said they were either somewhat satisfied or very satisfied with their new coverage. This is about the same rate as those reported by both people who were previously insured and by those who newly gained coverage.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: #ffff99; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;Even&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: #ffff99; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2014/jul/Health-Coverage-Access-ACA" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_308379" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #196ad4; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_308378" style="background-color: #ffff99;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_308377" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;74 percent of self-identified&amp;nbsp;Republicans&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: #ffff99; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;reported being satisfied with their coverage.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: #ffff99; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: #ffff99; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /&gt;&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_308382" style="background-color: white; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 13px;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_308381" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;To read more and review the state statistics:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/healthcare/news/2014/07/25/94510/conservatives-want-you-to-pay-more-for-the-health-plan-you-like" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_308380" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/healthcare/news/2014/07/25/94510/conservatives-want-you-to-pay-more-for-the-health-plan-you-like&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>Sandy G Private Investigator Hunts down the Real Rauners</title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/07/sandy-g-private-investigator-hunts-down.html</link><pubDate>Thu, 31 Jul 2014 19:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-3267511872053543768</guid><description>&lt;div class="body undoreset" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_307800" role="gridcell" style="display: table; padding-left: 0px; padding-top: 12px; width: auto; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;" tabindex="0"&gt;
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&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_307807" style="color: #2672ec; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_307806" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;It can't be both ways - which is it?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;span style="color: #2672ec; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;researched by Sandy Gresak&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_307804" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;I wanted to learn more about Bruce Rauner's wife, Dr. Diana Mendley Rauner. Through my research I came across this website:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_307802" style="background-color: #ffff99;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_307801" style="font-size: 20pt;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_307810" style="font-size: 16pt;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_307814" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_307813" style="font-size: 12pt;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_307812" style="font-size: 16pt;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #1020d0;"&gt;The&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #1020d0;"&gt;Rauners&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_307811" style="color: #1020d0;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;Love Funding Democrats and the Pro-Abortion&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;cite&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 12pt;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #009030;"&gt;no&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #009030;"&gt;rauner&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #009030;"&gt;.com/2013/07/25/the-&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #009030;"&gt;rauners&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #009030;"&gt;-love-funding-democrats-and-the...&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/cite&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;div class="yiv8832732796b_attribution" dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_307796" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;
&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_307795" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;You can learn a lot about the values and passion of individuals by&amp;nbsp;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_307794"&gt;where they place their donations.&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Bruce Rauner&lt;/span&gt;, and his&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;wife&lt;/span&gt;, Diana Mendley&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Rauner&lt;/span&gt;, have given ...&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Although it was posted in 7/25/2013&amp;nbsp;I thought it was worth reading and this is what I saw when I tried to open the site:&lt;span style="background-color: #ffff99;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;"IT IS A PROTECTED BLOG SITE"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_307816" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;http://norauner.com/&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;is marked private by its owner. If you were invited to view this site, please&amp;nbsp;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_307815" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;log in&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;below. Read more about&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/privacy-settings/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;privacy settings&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;And then I found this article:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_307821" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_307820" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_307819" style="background-color: #ffff99; color: #2672ec; font-size: medium;"&gt;Bruce Rauner's Wife Says She Is a Democrat&amp;nbsp;, But Mostly Gives To GOP Candidates&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #2672ec; font-size: small;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;|&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #666666;"&gt;The Huffington Post | By Samantha Lachman&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #666666;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #666666;"&gt;To Read More:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;http://www.huffingtonpost.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>IFT Endorses Governor Quinn and More in his Monthly Newsletter</title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/07/ift-endorses-governor-quinn-and-more-in.html</link><pubDate>Thu, 31 Jul 2014 12:05:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-4734871447855581609</guid><description>&lt;div class="body undoreset" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406826209693_1815" role="gridcell" style="background-color: white; display: table; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding-left: 0px; padding-top: 12px; width: auto; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;" tabindex="0"&gt;
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&lt;span style="color: #0d4173;"&gt;Governor's Monthly Newsletter&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;
&lt;div style="padding: 0px;"&gt;
This electronic newsletter is an opportunity for you to learn more about what we’ve accomplished in Illinois government, and how you can get involved. Whether it’s volunteering in a Serve Illinois volunteer project, receiving state services, or learning about new laws and programs, I want to ensure that you know what’s happening in your government.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style="padding: 0px;"&gt;
If you have ideas for improving any State service, program, or this very newsletter, please&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://lists.illinois.gov/t/673192/3955882/20/6/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;and let us know.&lt;/div&gt;
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Sincerely,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img alt="" src="http://www2.illinois.gov/gov/PublishingImages/gov_signature.gif" style="border: 0px;" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Pat Quinn&lt;br /&gt;Governor&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;h2 style="margin: 0.83em 0px; padding: 0px;"&gt;
&lt;span style="color: #0d4173;"&gt;Featured Articles&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;h3 style="margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px;"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://lists.illinois.gov/t/673192/3955882/494/7/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"&gt;Unemployment Rate Drops&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
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Preliminary data released on July 17 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Illinois Department of Employment Security shows Illinois’ unemployment rate has dropped to 7.1 percent, the lowest since October 2008 – months before Governor Quinn took office. The drop in the unemployment rate from March to June is the sharpest three-month decline ever recorded in Illinois.&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;a href="http://lists.illinois.gov/t/673192/3955882/495/8/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"&gt;$1.1 Billion Capital Construction&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;table style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-break: break-word;"&gt;&lt;tbody style="width: 724px;"&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style="border-spacing: 2px;"&gt;&lt;img align="left" height="200" hspace="10" src="http://www2.illinois.gov/gov/PublishingImages/Newsletter/July-2014/capital-072214.jpg" style="border: 0px;" vspace="5" width="300" /&gt;&lt;div style="padding: 0px;"&gt;
Governor Quinn on July 22 signed a new state capital construction bill that invests $1.1 billion in road and bridge projects to improve transportation and create jobs and boost economic development across Illinois. The bill, which builds on his successful six-year, $31 billion&amp;nbsp;&lt;em&gt;Illinois Jobs Now!&lt;/em&gt;&amp;nbsp;capital construction program, will create an estimated 14,300 jobs. In addition to funding $1 billion in projects in the Illinois Department of Transportation’s (IDOT) FY2015-2020 Multi-Year Program, the new capital construction program includes $100 million for municipal and township governments to improve infrastructure at the local level. The funding will help communities throughout Illinois combat potholes and make other critical infrastructure repairs.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style="padding: 0px;"&gt;
For a complete list of projects in the capital program, visit&lt;a href="http://lists.illinois.gov/t/673192/3955882/496/9/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;http://www.dot.il.gov/opp/planning.html&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;h3 style="margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px;"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://lists.illinois.gov/t/673192/3955882/497/10/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"&gt;Governor Quinn Fights for Stronger Gun Laws Across Illinois&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;table id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406826209693_1926" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-break: break-word;"&gt;&lt;tbody id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406826209693_1925" style="width: 724px;"&gt;
&lt;tr id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406826209693_1924"&gt;&lt;td id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406826209693_1923" style="border-spacing: 2px;"&gt;&lt;div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406826209693_1922" style="padding: 0px;"&gt;
Governor Pat Quinn, joined by Congresswoman Robin Kelly, on July 13 visited the site of a recent fatal shooting in Chicago’s Morgan Park neighborhood to urge legislators to stand with families and communities and take action against gun violence. The Governor pushed passage of &lt;a href="http://www2.illinois.gov/gov/Pages/newsletter-July2014.aspx" target="_blank"&gt;READ MORE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>Join us on August 7th and a little history of the National Women's Political Caucus.</title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/07/join-us-on-august-7th-and-little.html</link><pubDate>Wed, 30 Jul 2014 14:30:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-7923762626929171078</guid><description>&lt;div align="center" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306727" style="background-color: white; padding: 0px;"&gt;
&lt;span style="color: #2672ec;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Segoe UI, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 20pt; font-weight: 700;"&gt;Join the DPDC Women's caucus for a Women Voter Mobilization Celebration at&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div align="center" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306727" style="background-color: white; padding: 0px;"&gt;
&lt;span style="color: #2672ec;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Segoe UI, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 20pt; font-weight: 700;"&gt;La&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 27px;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Tosca&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 20pt; font-weight: 700;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;on August 7th&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div align="center" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306727" style="background-color: white; padding: 0px;"&gt;
&lt;span style="color: #2672ec; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Segoe UI, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 27px;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;
&lt;span style="color: #2672ec; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Segoe UI, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWxqepYcOj6ckqPaEDDnZHPYLw4zG8Fxp_r722n6hCSE2ded26rJF0xQUYn2unntZhDH4y632-rzd0V7YlpE0yIk8qSq9-MHQqg4ZGLil4C9G0C7MUg1btKndv7qZj9H06NVNBXeTji9E/s1600/WomanVoters-Flyer_draft.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWxqepYcOj6ckqPaEDDnZHPYLw4zG8Fxp_r722n6hCSE2ded26rJF0xQUYn2unntZhDH4y632-rzd0V7YlpE0yIk8qSq9-MHQqg4ZGLil4C9G0C7MUg1btKndv7qZj9H06NVNBXeTji9E/s1600/WomanVoters-Flyer_draft.jpg" height="320" width="247" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;span style="color: #2672ec; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Segoe UI, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;here&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div align="center" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306727" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #2672ec; font-size: 20pt;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div align="center" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306727" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #2672ec; font-size: 20pt;"&gt;History of the Women's Caucus&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div align="center" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306717" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;"&gt;
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&lt;img alt="earlynwpc_0.jpg" height="259" src="http://www.nwpc.org/nwpc/earlynwpc_0.jpg" style="border: 0px; min-height: 256px; width: 488px;" width="600" /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10pt;"&gt;This early document from the Caucus archives (circa 1979), has been re-typed from original hard copy. It provides important historical information about the founding of the organization:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306571" style="background-color: white; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 13px;"&gt;Founded in 1971, the National Women's Political Caucus is the only national organization dedicated exclusively to increasing women's participation in all areas of political and public life -- as elected and appointed officials, as delegates to national party conventions, as judges in the state and federal courts, and as lobbyists, voters and campaign organizers. With state and local affiliates, our membership today spans across the nation.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Our founders include such prominent women as Gloria Steinem, author, lecturer and founding editor of&amp;nbsp;&lt;em&gt;Ms.&lt;/em&gt;&amp;nbsp;magazine; former Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm; former Congresswoman and current president of Women USA Bella Abzug; Dorothy Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women; Jill Ruckelshaus, U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner; Ann Lewis, Political Director of the Democratic National Committee; Elly Peterson, former vice-chair of the Republican National Committee; LaDonna Harris, Indian rights leader; Liz Carpenter, author, lecturer and former press secretary to Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson; and Eleanor Holmes Norton, former chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Spurred by Congress' failure to pass the Equal Rights Amendment in 1970, these women believed&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;...&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306714" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;To Read More:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://www.nwpc.org/history" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306713" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306712" style="color: #2672ec;"&gt;http://www.nwpc.org/history&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWxqepYcOj6ckqPaEDDnZHPYLw4zG8Fxp_r722n6hCSE2ded26rJF0xQUYn2unntZhDH4y632-rzd0V7YlpE0yIk8qSq9-MHQqg4ZGLil4C9G0C7MUg1btKndv7qZj9H06NVNBXeTji9E/s72-c/WomanVoters-Flyer_draft.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>How Koch is affecting the minds of our teen agers</title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/07/how-koch-is-affecting-minds-of-our-teen.html</link><pubDate>Tue, 29 Jul 2014 09:30:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-3631165171706598655</guid><description>&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="body undoreset" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306032" role="gridcell" style="background-color: white; display: table; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding-left: 0px; padding-top: 12px; width: auto; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;" tabindex="0"&gt;
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&lt;div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306031"&gt;
&lt;div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306030"&gt;
&lt;div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306029"&gt;
&lt;div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306028"&gt;
&lt;div class="yiv0948900084headline yiv0948900084group" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306027"&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306026" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;span class="yiv0948900084feature-dropcap"&gt;I&lt;/span&gt;n the spring of 2012, Spenser Johnson, a junior at Highland Park High School in Topeka, Kansas, was unpacking his acoustic bass before orchestra practice when a sign caught his eye. "Do you want to make money?" it asked.&lt;br /&gt;The poster encouraged the&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://www.city-data.com/school/highland-park-high-school-ks.html" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306037" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;predominantly poor students&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;(&lt;a href="http://www.city-data.com/school/highland-park-high-school-ks.html" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;http://www.city-data.com/school/highland-park-high-school-ks.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;) at Highland Park to enroll in a new, yearlong course that would provide lessons in basic economic principles and practical instruction on starting a business. Students would receive generous financial incentives including&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="https://www.youthentrepreneurs.org/ye-academy/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;startup capital&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;(&lt;a href="https://www.youthentrepreneurs.org/ye-academy/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;https://www.youthentrepreneurs.org/ye-academy/&lt;/a&gt;)&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;and scholarships after graduation. The course would begin that fall. Johnson eagerly signed up.&lt;br /&gt;In some ways, the class looked like a typical high school business course, taught in a Highland Park classroom by a Highland Park teacher. But it was actually run by Youth Entrepreneurs, a nonprofit group created and funded primarily by Charles G. Koch, the billionaire chairman of Koch Industries.&lt;br /&gt;The&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="https://youthentrepreneurs.org/about/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;official mission&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="https://youthentrepreneurs.org/about/" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306039" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306038" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;https://youthentrepreneurs.org/about/&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;of Youth Entrepreneurs is to provide kids with "business and entrepreneurial education and experiences that help them prosper and become contributing members of society." The underlying goal of the program, however, is to impart Koch's radical free-market ideology to teenagers&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;...&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div class="yiv0948900084headline yiv0948900084group" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306040"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div class="yiv0948900084headline yiv0948900084group" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_306041"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Read More:&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/16/koch-brothers-ducation_n_5587577.html" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/16/koch-brothers-ducation_n_5587577.html&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>No Surprise here: Big Business Loves Desperate Workers</title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/07/no-surprise-here-big-business-loves.html</link><pubDate>Mon, 28 Jul 2014 11:42:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-5408906546525937144</guid><description>&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: large;"&gt;We don’t think enough about the economic functions of social welfare policy, or about the relationship between the safety net and labor markets, and this hinders our ability to make sense of why some people fight so hard against programs that aid poor and low-income people: We mistake them for anti-welfare ideologues, and dismiss them as cruel or ignorant, but there’s an economic logic to their activism, one that’s revealed if we look at the relationship between welfare and work from both the employee’s and the employer’s perspective. Let me explain.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div class="body undoreset" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_305384" role="gridcell" style="display: table; padding-left: 0px; padding-top: 12px; width: auto; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;" tabindex="0"&gt;
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&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_305381" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;
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&lt;div class="yiv5145222647entry-meta" style="background-color: white;"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;Imagine that we have two workers, worker K and worker O, each with two young children.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;div class="yiv5145222647entry-meta" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_305393" style="background-color: white;"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;Worker K is laid off when the company “downsizes.” K is nervous, but has some savings, is eligible for Unemployment Insurance benefits, Medicaid, food stamps (SNAP) and TANF, has access to free local day care and lives in a Section 8 apartment, with their monthly rent tied to their income.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;div class="yiv5145222647entry-meta" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_305395" style="background-color: white;"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;While K is not living as well as when working, if K were eligible for all of these programs, which would be highly unusual, K will&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;...&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;div class="yiv5145222647entry-meta" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_305398" style="background-color: white;"&gt;
&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;To Read More:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://billmoyers.com/2014/07/23/why-big-business-loves-desperate-workers/" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_305397" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;http://billmoyers.com/2014/07/23/why-big-business-loves-desperate-workers/?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title> Have You Heard This Word Before?</title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/07/have-you-heard-this-word-before.html</link><pubDate>Mon, 28 Jul 2014 11:40:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-1142092079222198522</guid><description>&lt;div align="center" dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_304740" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"&gt;
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You might be seeing the word "inversions" in the news headlines a lot lately. It's a specific kind of corporate merger deal -- but it's not exactly the most intuitive name for a corporate tax loophole.&lt;br /&gt;So we're going to break it down for you -- because these loopholes could cost taxpayers nearly $20 billion over the next 10 years. And we could instead use this money to rebuild America, by investing in our roads and bridges, equipping our schools with the resources they need, and defending our country at home.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_304729" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;a href="http://click.mail.whitehouse.gov/?qs=a37d39d3fda8de1ebb32f412228698ef70c25650dd3fbc276dd0a9062e89b426f3370a185f55e5b3" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_304728" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #336699; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;Learn more about "inversions" and how we can do away with them.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a class="yiv9273950527c_nobdr yiv9273950527t_prs" href="http://click.mail.whitehouse.gov/?qs=a37d39d3fda8de1e87b34afe56deea04a6ecc4ee0f428e45a44ca18b3b53557ce18b311c8f1e7f76" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_304726" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img alt="What are inversions?" border="0" height="500" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_304725" src="http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/image/dictionaryinversions.jpg" style="border: 0px currentcolor; min-height: 341px; width: 414px;" width="520" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;br id="yiv9273950527FontBreak" /&gt;&lt;strong id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_304766" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;To read more:&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_304765" style="color: #2672ec;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/07/24/what-are-inversions-and-why-should-you-care" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406124692780_304767" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/07/24/what-are-inversions-and-why-should-you-care&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>Org that is Pressing Need for Corporate Tax Dodgers to come clean</title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/07/org-that-is-pressing-need-for-corporate.html</link><pubDate>Sat, 26 Jul 2014 11:30:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-7416472075413265481</guid><description>&lt;div class="body undoreset" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_114892" role="gridcell" style="background-color: white; display: table; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; outline: none 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-top: 12px; width: auto; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;" tabindex="0"&gt;
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&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #2672ec; font-size: 20pt;"&gt;Make Corporate Tax Dodgers Pay Their Fair Share&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;a class="yiv8409193486lightbox-processed" href="http://npa-us.org/files/ceo_summerge3.jpg" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_114881" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank" title=""&gt;&lt;img alt="" height="300" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_114880" src="http://npa-us.org/files/styles/large_retina/public/ceo_summerge3.jpg?itok=ulq_l7fp" style="border: 0px;" width="300" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #2672ec;"&gt;NPA is a Grassroots Organization that fights for financial reform, accountable government, and economic and racial justice.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It's time for corporations to pay their fair share. Every day, corporate CEOs are cooking up schemes to lobby our elected officials for giant tax cuts. At the same time, they're planning to balance the federal budget on our backs, trying to cut food programs for hungry kids, gutting support programs for our seniors, and defunding other services our communities need.&lt;br /&gt;That's not right. At NPA, we're fighting back against tax dodging. In the streets, at corporate headquarters, and on Capitol Hill, we're saying it's time for our elected officials to listen to us and make corporations pay their fair share!&lt;br /&gt;Call the National Hotline&amp;nbsp;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_114903" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;888-531-3993&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;to tell Congress to shut down corporate tax dodging, not the government.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_114902" style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_114901" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"&gt;To Read More:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://npa-us.org/make-corporate-tax-dodgers-pay-their-fair-share" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_114900" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_114899" style="color: #2672ec;"&gt;http://npa-us.org/make-corporate-tax-dodgers-pay-their-fair-share&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item><item><title>A Chance to Turn over Citizens United</title><link>http://dupagedems.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-chance-to-turn-over-citizens-united.html</link><pubDate>Fri, 25 Jul 2014 15:30:00 -0500</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035586388102977005.post-6841897974655255866</guid><description>&lt;div class="body undoreset" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_62441" role="gridcell" style="display: table; padding-left: 0px; padding-top: 12px; width: auto; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;" tabindex="0"&gt;
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&lt;tr id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_62438"&gt;&lt;td align="center" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_62437" style="border-spacing: 2px;" valign="top"&gt;&lt;table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_62447" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; width: 725px; word-break: break-word;"&gt;&lt;tbody id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_62446" style="width: 725px;"&gt;
&lt;tr id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_62445"&gt;&lt;td align="center" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_62444" style="background-color: #ffcc66; border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-spacing: 2px; border-top-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_62449" style="font-family: verdana; line-height: 20px;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you are interested in getting involved with overturning Citizens United locally (aka Move to Amend), please contact Virginia Wisdom at &lt;br /&gt;Virginia.wisdom@gmail.com or 815-260-7189&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/4082562604659113984/-1130952162772254720" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_62448" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #996600; font-size: 10px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"&gt;Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_62453"&gt;&lt;td align="left" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_62452" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 10px; border-spacing: 2px; border-top-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px;" valign="middle"&gt;&lt;center id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_62451"&gt;
&lt;a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/4082562604659113984/-1130952162772254720" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_62450" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img align="middle" alt="Your Company" border="0" src="http://www.adaction.org/media/emailbanner.jpg" id="yiv8147320538editableImg1" style="border: 0px;" title="Your Company" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/center&gt;
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&lt;span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1406064634987_62431" style="font-size: 12px;"&gt;Remember the Citizens United ruling that corporations are people and have the free speech rights of people? &amp;nbsp;Remember the days when Congress used to regulate corporate money spent in elections? &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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Since the erroneous&amp;nbsp;&lt;em&gt;Citizens United&lt;/em&gt;&amp;nbsp;ruling, we have witnessed corporate interest money flooding into our elections. &amp;nbsp;Now a new constitutional amendment is before the&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/4082562604659113984/-986836974696398848" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;House&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;and the&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/4082562604659113984/-914779380658470912" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;Senate&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;that would restore Congress’s and the states’ authority to regulate campaign money, overturning&amp;nbsp;&lt;em&gt;Citizens United&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/div&gt;
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Whose vote should count more? &amp;nbsp;The American voters or corporations? &amp;nbsp;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Please sign this petition now to show that you want Congress to pass the amendment to&amp;nbsp;&lt;u&gt;reverse Citizens United!&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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Petition Text: &amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: mediumblue;"&gt;&lt;a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/4082562604659113984/-842721786620542976" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;We support the constitutional amendment that would give Congress and the states the authority to reverse the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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The petition signatures will be sent to both chambers of the U.S. Congress to show your Representative and Senators that the people disagree with the Court: corporations are not people! &amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/4082562604659113984/-842721786620542976" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;Sign the petition now!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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Wednesday Campaign Wrap-Up&lt;/h3&gt;
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&lt;a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/4082562604659113984/-770664192582615040" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img alt="" src="http://www2.myngp.com/Uploads/358/images/WCW%20Sharable%207-16.jpg" height="257" style="border: 0px; float: right; margin: 7px;" width="214" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Did you miss last week’s campaign wrap-up? &amp;nbsp;Catch up&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/4082562604659113984/-770664192582615040" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;and learn about the&lt;a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/4082562604659113984/-770664192582615040" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;Iowa U.S. Senate race&lt;/a&gt;, which has recently changed from a likely Democratic win to a toss-up. Luckily for progressives, ADA has one of its strongest local operations in that state and it has made electing Democrat and long-time ally Bruce Braley a top priority. &amp;nbsp;And there’s more: Iowa ADA has just announced an unprecedented partnership with two other local progressive organizations, not only to boost Braley’s chances but to help worker-friendly candidates up and down the ballot. Read all about Iowa’s new liberal alliance in&lt;a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/4082562604659113984/-770664192582615040" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;ADA’s Campaign Central&lt;/a&gt;. &amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
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Noteworthy:&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;ul style="list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px;"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Did you know that Walgreens, Pfizer Mylan, Abbvie and other U.S. companies are pretending to move their companies offshore to avoid paying U.S. taxes? Corporate "inversion" is a growing problem. &amp;nbsp;Learn more about the&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/4082562604659113984/-698606598544687104" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;em&gt;Stop Corporate Inversions Act of 2014&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;in Bob Lucore’s latest blog post.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;While Republicans are trying to sue President Obama for the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans are benefiting from the new healthcare law. &amp;nbsp;Check out the&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/4082562604659113984/-626549004506759168" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;latest reports and stats&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
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&lt;span style="color: #999999; font-family: arial; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: red; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px;"&gt;Donate to ADA&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;ADA: Proudly. Staunchly. Liberal&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/4082562604659113984/-554491410468831232" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"&gt;Click here to donate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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</description><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><author>dstafford@dupagedemocrats.com (Dan Stafford)</author></item></channel></rss>