"There was no money allocated at all before the election of 2010," Governor Pat Quinn told Chicago TV reporter Charles Thomas about allegations that the governor had spent millions in state anti-violence grants to boost his flagging election campaign. Quinn used this to defend himself against growing criticism about a devastating state audit of the anti-violence grants.

But what the governor said was not true.

According to Illinois Auditor General Bill Holland, Quinn's administration signed contracts with 23 local groups on October 15, 2010 - about three weeks before Election Day. Each of the groups, hand-picked by Chicago aldermen, was promised about $300,000 for a total of about $7 million.

"That is allocating money," Holland emphatically said last week about the awarding of those state contracts.

Try something novel and experiment with your news diet. Stop consuming CNN, MSNBC, Fox, ABC, NBC, or CBS news broadcasts - as well as the equally redundant counterparts in talk radio (Rush Limbaugh, Ed Schultz, Thom Hartmann, Glenn Beck, Alan Colmes, Sean Hannity) - all of which strategically perpetuate political divisiveness. Instead, turn your dial to C-SPAN (channel 96 on Mediacom cable), C-SPAN 2 (channel 87), C-SPAN3 (channel 88), or C-SPAN.org. Be warned, however, that watching C-SPAN with any regularity will expose the mainstream media's woeful neglect of the relevant news of the day. Prepare to be shocked at the amount of information that goes under-reported, or not reported at all. As America's watchdog, C-SPAN is the most compelling indictment of the mainstream media's systematic failure.

Sure, a lot of the legislators' speechifying during C-SPAN coverage is vacuous and mugging for the camera. While Congress feigns oversight, especially during congressional hearings, panel members and/or legislators leak need-to-know information.

At a minimum, names and organizations are given, allowing anyone to do an Internet search to glean insightful information about these so-called experts and their connections and associations. DC begins to shrink with our expanding knowledge of its inhabitants and their activities, providing for better perspective, understanding, and manageability of relevant data moving forward. Information is empowering, and hopefully for some provides inspiration to get engaged more meaningfully and effectively.

Some Illinois Legislative Black Caucus members are saying "I told you so" in the wake of a stunning state Auditor General investigation into misspending, waste, and possibly even fraud in an anti-violence initiative hastily created by Governor Pat Quinn.

Quinn created the program in August of 2010, a few days after meeting with ministers from Chicago's Roseland neighborhood about rising violence. In early September, several Chicago aldermen gave their lists of preferred local groups that could administer the state program. Quinn's administration sent requests for proposal only to those alderman-recommended groups.

By October, just weeks before the November 2010 election, the program had mushroomed to $50 million.

Despite initial claims that a specific formula was used to choose the targeted neighborhoods for violence-reduction programs, no actual documentation exists for how those decisions were made.

"We live in a small, rural town. Moved here in 1961. I don't remember what year the State Troopers moved a headquarters into our town. Our young people were plagued with tickets for even the smallest offense. Troopers had to get their limits for the month. People make jokes about that, but it has been true. Every kid I knew was getting ticketed for something. But now it is so much worse. I raised my kids to respect police. If they did something wrong and got caught, they deserved it and should take their punishment. But now I have no respect for the police. I feel threatened and fearful of them. They are aggressive and intimidating. They lie and are abusive, and we do not know how to fight them. I am not a minority here, but people are afraid if they speak out they will be targeted. We are just a small town. I just don't care anymore if they do target me. I am afraid they are going to kill someone." - letter from a 60-year-old grandmother

The following incidents are cautionary tales for anyone who still thinks that they can defy police officers without deadly repercussions, even if it's simply to disagree about a speeding ticket, challenge a search warrant, or defend oneself against an unreasonable or unjust charge. The message they send is that "we the people" have very little protection from the standing army that is law enforcement.

For example, Seattle police repeatedly Tasered seven-months-pregnant Malaika Brooks for refusing to sign a speeding ticket. While Brooks bears permanent burn scars on her body from the encounter, police were cleared of any wrongdoing on the grounds that they didn't know that Tasering a pregnant woman was wrong.

Illinois state Senator Kirk Dillard told Chicago radio station WLS last week that Republican county chairs ought to try to get Bill Brady and/or Dan Rutherford out of the governor's race so he could have a clear shot at wealthy front-runner Bruce Rauner. Dillard claims he is building strong momentum with recent endorsements, including the powerful Illinois Education Association (IEA).

But two polls taken last week showed that Dillard isn't even winning the DuPage County state Senate district that he has represented for more than 20 years.

A Capitol Fax/We Ask America poll taken February 20 had Rauner leading in the district with 36 percent; Dillard had 30 percent. Brady polled 10 percent, and Rutherford was at 2 percent. Another 22 percent were undecided. The poll of 614 likely Republican voters had a margin of error of 3.95 percent. Twelve percent of the calling universe was cell phones.

I didn't commission the poll to be a jerk, but because somebody slipped me results of a Strive Strategies tracking poll taken February 18, which had Rauner at 33 percent and Dillard at 26 percent in Dillard's own district. The margins between the two men are almost exactly the same in both polls, so this is pretty solid evidence that Dillard is, indeed, losing his own Senate district, which he has represented since 1993.

What the heck is going on? Well, millions of dollars in campaign ads on Chicago TV by Rauner and pretty much nothing by Dillard is the simplest answer.

Treasurer Dan Rutherford delivered a forceful, even believable defense of himself last week during a suburban press conference hours after he was hit with a federal lawsuit alleging sexual harassment and coerced campaign work.

Gubernatorial candidate Rutherford made a strong case that at least some of the accusations are untrue. There were some holes in his argument - some bigger than others - but it seems obvious that some of the charges are overblown.

For instance, accuser Ed Michalowski claims in his lawsuit that all the campaign and sexual pressure from Rutherford directly resulted in "leakage of cerebral spinal fluid in the brain," which seems more than a bit of a stretch. Michalowski also takes a joking text message between himself and Rutherford's campaign manager completely out of context. And Rutherford laid out Michalowski's numerous financial troubles in an attempt to demonstrate that the plaintiff's need for money was driving much of the lawsuit.

That said, I've had some real worries about Rutherford's so-called "independent" internal investigation of these allegations. Rutherford announced the investigation weeks ago when he let the media know about the potential lawsuit.

"It's a future where you don't forget anything. ... In this new future, you're never lost. ... We will know your position down to the foot and down to the inch over time. ... Your car will drive itself; it's a bug that cars were invented before computers. ... You're never lonely. ... You're never bored. ... You're never out of ideas. ... We can suggest where you go next, who to meet, what to read. ... What's interesting about this future is that it's for the average person, not just the elites." - Google CEO Eric Schmidt on his vision of the future

Time to buckle up your seatbelts, folks. You're in for a bumpy ride.

We're hurtling down a one-way road toward the Police State at mind-boggling speeds, the terrain is getting more treacherous by the minute, and we've passed all the exit ramps. From this point forward, there is no turning back, and the signpost ahead reads "Danger."

Indeed, as I document in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we're about to enter a Twilight Zone of sorts, one marked by drones, smart phones, GPS devices, smart TVs, social media, smart meters, surveillance cameras, facial-recognition software, online banking, license-plate readers, and driver-less cars - all part of the interconnected technological spider web that is life in the American police state, and every new gadget pulls us that much deeper into the sticky snare.

In this Brave New World awaiting us, there will be no communication not spied upon, no movement untracked, no thought unheard. In other words, there will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

We're on the losing end of a technological revolution that has already taken hostage our computers, our phones, our finances, our entertainment, our shopping, and our appliances, and now it's focused its sights on our cars. As if the government wasn't already able to track our movements on the nation's highways and byways by way of satellites, GPS devices, and real-time traffic cameras, government officials are now pushing to require that all new vehicles come installed with black-box recorders and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications, ostensibly to help prevent crashes.

One of the reasons people near Treasurer Dan Rutherford are so nervous these days is because of the possibility that other employees might come out of the woodwork with even more allegations.

As I write this, the publicly revealed facts are still quite thin.

Late last year, I published a commentary on the questionable policy implementation by the Scott County Board of Supervisors, at the request of staff, to indiscriminately destroy e-mails more than three years old, beginning January 2, 2014 (RCReader.com/y/email1).This new policy was implemented in the wake of Assistant County Administrator Mary Thee issuing a memo to county employees about the increase of public inquiries and litigation requesting e-mail messages.

In the spirit of practicing what I was preaching, namely getting one's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in before the January 2 date (despite the county administrator extolling that her staff has been practicing said deleting for some time), I submitted a FOIA request about a topic this paper has covered more extensively than any local news outlet: the Scott County Emergency Communications Center, a.k.a. SECC911. (See RCReader.com/y/foia1 and RCReader.com/y/foia2.)

Keep in mind that the SECC911 project is important because it was sold to the taxpayers as a cost-saver, only to have its costs more than quadruple the original estimates, ballooning to more than $20 million. And the entity that was created under a 28E, or "emergency services" statute, is made up of un-elected appointees, who possess unlimited, or un-capped, taxing authority. I am still amazed at how few people are familiar, let alone concerned, with this black hole that flies completely under the radar. And, lest we forget, years later we still don't have a consolidated 911 dispatch service.

This request was e-mailed to the Scott County Board of Supervisors as well as Administrator Dee Bruemmer. Below is the text of that request, and the response from Assistant County Attorney Robert Cusack. For those paying close attention, yes, Cusack is the son of William Cusack, one of the supervisors this FOIA request was directed to.

Without a doubt, the most overlooked aspect of Bruce Rauner's multi-million-dollar TV-ad buy has been his advertising campaign's repeated attacks on Governor Pat Quinn.

"Career politicians are running our state into the ground, and Pat Quinn, he's at the top of the heap," Rauner says in one of his ads that have permeated the airwaves since November. "Pat Quinn, a career politician who failed to deliver term limits," a Rauner TV announcer declares in another spot.

The millions of dollars worth of ads are supposedly aimed at Republican-primary voters, but obviously everybody else in the state is seeing them, as well. And Quinn, who doesn't have a well-funded primary opponent, hasn't bothered to rebut any of Rauner's multiple attacks. Considering Illinois' persistently high unemployment rates, the hostile national climate, the never-ending negative stories about the state's finances, and Quinn's four-year history of low job-performance scores, the governor's silence seems like a big mistake.

And if a new Capitol Fax/We Ask America poll is accurate, Rauner's months-long, unrebutted attacks have indeed helped knock Quinn into a shockingly deep hole.

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