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Pritzker’s 2026 budget proposal is a reflection of why the Chicago Bears may leave Illinois · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

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  My uh guest today is uh Jeannie Ives.
• 1:18
  Uh she's been with me before.
• 1:19
  She's a dear friend here from uh Chicago, Illinois.
• 1:23
  Um Jeannie is the uh bold, uncompromising voice of the Middle America, a West Point graduate.
• 1:29
  Her time in the city and state political office was known for conservative leadership with solid commitment to taxpayers' bottom line.
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  She is in charge of, of course, uh breakthrough ideas, breakthrough ideas is a policy advocacy and education network that advocates the causes of peace, prosperity, and freedom by highlighting the virtue of taxpayer-centric and liberty-focused policies and how they benefit all community members.
• 1:57
  Jeannie is good to have you on the show again.
• 2:00
  Thank you so much for having me.
• 2:02
  Uh Jeannie, I do want to concentrate um on uh basically what came out this week, of course, uh Wednesday of this week.
• 2:10
  And you know, JB Prisker, who's looking at uh uh running for national office, um, basically set out uh his budget uh for um Illinois.
• 2:21
  Uh he proposed a uh record setting of 60 uh 56 billion dollar budget for Illinois, which he also includes tax hikes, uh not surprising, and increased spending on education and health care as he talks about it.
• 2:36
  Um despite the fact that uh it's facing a projected 2.2 billion dollar shortfall.
• 2:42
  Um, some of the key features that uh he had and his discussions were updated revenue assumptions, uh, the budget uh relies on one billion dollars and a revised revenue projections and then tax increases that it would include 589 million and new taxes, but he's primarily trying to target the businesses uh using that tax uh requirement and then uh uh he talked about fund sweeps, uh a one-time transfer of 139 million for specific sales tax receipts to general funds, and of course um he's looking at the pension over 10.7 billion is earmarked for pension contributions reflecting a 192 million dollar increase and so-and-so.
• 3:29
  But uh I wanted to bring you in and uh kind of look at where we are today with uh this individual who's looking at possibly uh running for the presidency in 2028.
• 3:40
  Well, again, thanks for having me on on this important topic.
• 3:42
  And it is important for your listeners because if this guy wants to seek the presidency, then you need to look at what he's done in the past.
• 3:49
  And uh part of your national security would be simply being fiscally conservative and fiscally secure.
• 3:56
  I think Trump's kind of trying to get us on that path.
• 3:59
  I think spending's too high.
• 4:00
  I think Doge effort has sort of stayed a stagman has sort of stagnated a little bit, except for what's happening in Minneapolis.
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  Hopefully they pick that back up.
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  But um, you know, looking at Pritzker's record, this is his eighth budget that he's proposed.
• 4:16
  It's his eighth record budget.
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  Every budget has been higher than the previous budget.
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  We now have well over 40% increase in spending in the eight years that he's been in office, and every single budget has also come with uh nearly a billion dollars in tax increases.
• 4:33
  This one's no different.
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  And um, you know, it didn't take him very long in his 49 minutes speech to literally start to bash Trump.
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  Everybody knew it was going to happen.
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  In fact, his this is this budget address is really a combination address, sort of a state of the state and budget address.
• 4:51
  So it doesn't strictly adhere to just fiscal concerns.
• 4:56
  It also will talk about a lot of other things.
• 4:58
  Last year, he he made national news for essentially calling Trump and Trump supporters Nazis.
• 5:05
  And his comments were so offensive that a number of Jewish leaders uh essentially called him out for that.
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  And Pritzker, he himself is Jewish.
• 5:13
  But these Jewish leaders said, how dare you make that comparison?
• 5:18
  Uh, you know, the Nazi regime was one of the most uh awful, like the terrible regimes ever, and you can't there's no comparison, and people know that.
• 5:27
  But he sure enough made that type of comparison.
• 5:30
  So everybody was expecting to do what he exactly he did, which was he went after Trump.
• 5:35
  He didn't go after him in the same way.
• 5:37
  He didn't make a Nazi comparison, but it took him all of six minutes to start to bash Trump.
• 5:42
  And what is he after about Trump?
• 5:44
  Well, he's going, he's blaming his budget woes and the fact that he can't actually increase the budget more than he wants to, because Trump is reigning in federal spending.
• 5:54
  So the last three months in Illinois, federal federal receipts have gone down.
• 5:59
  And in addition, Trump is threatening massive amounts of other cuts, but it's really Pritzker's own fault.
• 6:06
  So, for example, just yesterday came up with that alarming report from the transportation secretary, uh Duffy saying that you know what?
• 6:15
  We have looked at Illinois uh non-umresident or non-domiciled CDL licenses, and we have discovered that 20% of the CDLs that Illinois has issued are for non-domiciled individuals.
• 6:32
  These are people that are possibly illegal immigrants, migrants, undocumented, who knows what their legal status is.
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  And he wants an investigation.
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  And if he doesn't get it, then he's going to withdraw 128 million dollars in federal transportation funds.
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  On top of that, there's other pressures.
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  He has threatened to take away a billion dollars in child care funds.
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  Now that item alone in Illinois, the federal government supplies about $3 billion in child care assistance.
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  It's an astronomical amount.
• 7:04
  Well, the state only kicks in one billion dollars.
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  But yet Trump is threatening a billion dollars there, 120 million in transportation funds, a hundred million dollar decrease in uh for EV chargers.
• 7:15
  Those are going away from federal government support.
• 7:18
  50 million dollars will go away from the uh Chicago Transit Authority because it's not secure.
• 7:24
  Um, and I forgot how much uh uh hundreds of millions of dollars are going to stop the extension of the red line for the CTA, and then 700 million dollars.
• 7:35
  Is it expected to be the penalty for Illinois not verifying verifying its SNAP recipients uh well enough so that they are they are above the threshold that they need to be.
• 7:48
  So that we're talking about literally a coup few billion dollars that are will go away in federal support, and that is a problem.
• 7:55
  And so, of course, Pritzker went after Trump on that topic.
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  Umside of that, I mean, he had a number of other things that are just such a problem.
• 8:07
  And if you're going to elect him as president, uh then people need to need to be aware of what he's after.
• 8:13
  One of the things that I think is most alarming is he talked about quote unquote affordability and specifically affordability when it comes to housing.
• 8:21
  And his big concept here is to add Section 8 housing to the suburbs wherever he can.
• 8:28
  And he's going to do that by eliminating local zoning laws that deal with single family homes and single family lots and require and uh eliminating those and requiring then or allowing cities or forcing cities rather to put in multifamily dwellings on single family lots.
• 8:50
  Uh, this would be terrible.
• 8:52
  This is what has happened to decimate the south suburbs, by the way, when they brought in a bunch of subsidized housing, and now he wants to do it all across the suburbs and eliminate local control.
• 9:03
  So you have a problem there.
• 9:05
  Um that's I mean, you have other problems as well.
• 9:10
  He bragged about education scores and how he thinks that Illinois is doing so much better than the rest of the states.
• 9:16
  And of course, that's not necessarily true.
• 9:18
  He picked out, I think eighth grade mass scores, saying that you know, we're number two in the nation when it comes to the national assessment on education progress.
• 9:26
  Actually, when you look into the details, and I did look into the details when this when this uh this first came out back in August, he was bragging about how we need to um lower our state standards so that they're in a line aligned with the National Assessment Education Progress Standards, essentially saying that Illinois has too high of standards, and we need to put them in the same realm as nationally where they would be.
• 9:58
  But when you look at it, the argument really.
• 10:00
  Really falls apart.
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  Uh, because unless you thinly slice the data between very small differences in scores, then only can you say that Illinois doing that much better than other states, but averaging the NAPE scores, which are fourth and eighth grade math and reading scores across all four areas.
• 10:20
  Illinois student scores were not significantly different than 28 other states, and they were lower in six states.
• 10:28
  So again, this is another one of those lies that Pritzker has been telling people that he's doing so well when in fact he's not doing well at all.
• 10:38
  Um, he's not doing well.
• 10:40
  And on education, I really want to kind of emphasize this point where uh fourth grade reading proficiency just at the fourth grade levels in 2024, only 30% of the fourth graders in Illinois would meet or exceed reading proficiency standards, and that's why Illinois uh stats that uh his own government provides, and this placed Illinois 29th in the nation, of course, we drop from 17 in 2022.
• 11:04
  And uh, when you're looking at the national context of it, the national average for fourth grader reading proficiency was 31 with 26 performing better than Illinois.
• 11:13
  And then, you know, I love the fact that all these politicians talk about the uh, you know, affordability.
• 11:18
  Well, if you want affordability, uh, why are you raising taxes?
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  And why are you raising especially on the small business?
• 11:26
  Well, and uh that in that regard, I mean, here he is talking about housing and affordability, and his big idea is to put in subsidized housing in leafy suburban neighborhoods and uh, you know, destroy single family lots for that.
• 11:38
  Uh why you know what?
• 11:40
  In his 5,770 word speech, he didn't once mention property taxes.
• 11:47
  And property taxes are what is making it very unaffordable for people to live here.
• 11:51
  You had people on the west side of Chicago literally put a bonfire together and burn their property tax bills.
• 11:58
  You've had a number of residents that had received property tax bills that were thousands more than the previous year.
• 12:06
  And and he's he wants to talk about affordability without talking about property taxes.
• 12:10
  This is insanity, and he shouldn't get away with it.
• 12:13
  Uh he also wanted to talk about affordability in terms of energy production and saying, you know, we need to do something about this.
• 12:19
  But his idea of affordable energy is adding renewables.
• 12:22
  And he trotted out some sort of thing about $803 million worth of credits coming onto people's bills.
• 12:29
  That is just such a canard because the truth is, I don't know a single Illinois that saw their property tax bill go down in the last year when he's put in all this green energy nonsense.
• 12:43
  It's only gone up.
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  And in fact, in uh late October, they passed a bill, another energy bill that is expected to add eight billion dollars in costs over the next 10 years.
• 12:54
  So I he's he's talking out of both sides of his mouth.
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  I will say one thing.
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  He said that he wanted a two-year pause on tax credits to data centers because they are energy sucks.
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  At the same time, this is the man who touted the fact that he was bringing in business, specifically data centers.
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  Only a couple years ago, and now he's finally waking up to the fact that they are a drain on the electrical system.
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  So, you mean he's got a lot of problems.
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  Another thing, though, it's really important to point out is he tried to tell folks that Illinois is in great shape.
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  Our credit rating is improved, 10 scores.
• 13:31
  Well, first of all, we had we were nearly junk status.
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  Nearly junk status.
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  Okay, so the only place to go was really kind of up.
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  Then we got a bunch of COVID money from the federal government, so that improved our bottom line.
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  But we're literally on the brink of going to junk status.
• 13:47
  Um, and then you had a growing economy, honestly, over Trump and Trump's tax credits.
• 13:53
  Uh, and then you had inflation also, which hiked up um income taxes to the to flush out some of the more um increases.
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  And and so he wants to say that this is all an improvement, but Illinois still has the lowest credit rating in the entire country.
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  It's not physically sustainable.
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  And Moody's just said the same thing.
• 14:14
  Uh Moody's projects Illinois will lose roughly 8,000 jobs in 2006, about a 0.1% decline in forecasts that statewide unemployment rate will climb to about 5.2%.
• 14:26
  We're already higher than the national average.
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  This would put us way higher than the national average.
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  He they Moody's analytics expects job growth this year to be minimal.
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  Minimal.
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  And so this does not bode well for our finances in the future.
• 14:41
  So, and they also said towards the end of it, they said, um, well, not a declaration declaration of immediate crisis.
• 14:50
  It does highlight the thin margin that Illinois in.
• 14:53
  A few shifts in policy or a bump in out migration could be enough to push an already delicate balance in the wrong direction.
• 15:01
  So Illinois heading the wrong direction, according to Moody's and anybody else that you talked to other than Governor Pritzker.
• 15:07
  Yeah, I mean, uh just looking at the property tax.
• 15:10
  Um Illinois uh uh has one of the highest average property taxes rates in the country, but only six states living higher property taxes.
• 15:19
  No, actually, we're number one now.
• 15:20
  Oh, we're number one.
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  This year, last year became number one in property taxes.
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  Number one.
• 15:25
  Yeah, you're and that's nearly two times the average.
• 15:28
  This was this was last year.
• 15:29
  So if we actually caught up between 2020, yeah.
• 15:31
  Uh and then uh at that time it was showing that medium income for Illinois 68,575 per year.
• 15:40
  Uh so imagine how much that is per percentage here.
• 15:42
  You get to pay 1.73% of the property assessed fair market value as a property tax per year.
• 15:49
  Uh, but you're looking at medium values of the houses of 200 2,000 and you're paying almost uh $4,000 for property taxes.
• 15:58
  So, you know, you're basically paying everything to property tax and your value of your home, it's not uh sustainable, even if you sell it.
• 16:09
  Um Jeannie, um uh I do want to talk about other things that uh have uh really affected uh uh something that both of us uh kind of uh know uh were uh uh especially the fact that he's willing to give money to certain businesses, but not to other private businesses.
• 16:28
  And when we come back in the uh second portion of segment after the break, uh I do want to look at what just happened this week, especially with the fact that the Chicago Bears uh were looking possibly going to Hammond, Indiana because the Illinois legislator just doesn't want to work with them.
• 16:45
  Um, and uh when we come back, I do want to concentrate on just that specific uh um uh team because of the fact that everybody in the country knows it.
• 16:54
  So maybe that'd be more relevant to them understanding what's happening when it comes to Illinois politicians, especially under Pritzker.
• 17:02
  We'll be back with the second segment of our discussion with uh Jeannie Eisler.
• 17:07
  Jeannie is a bold, uncompromising voice of the middle America.
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• 23:01
  national policy.
• 23:02
  And uh, Eugene, um it's important for us to understand that everything that happens locally has a huge effect on what we're able to do on the on the national stage and globally anyway.
• 23:14
  Uh and I do want to kind of talk about when we're looking at JB Prisker and what is happening with the budget he proposed this uh, of course, uh Wednesday, and the fact that he's looking at running for the uh presidency in 2028.
• 23:29
  Um the reality is that uh, you know, how is it that you could have a state so badly mismanaged uh when it comes to supporting specific businesses?
• 23:41
  And uh the Chicago Bears are a private business.
• 23:45
  Uh, they are one of the 32 teams in the NFL.
• 23:49
  They've been here for hundreds of years, and as uh the fight song and the the Chicago Bear fights on goals are the pride and joy of Illinois.
• 23:58
  And uh the fact that uh, you know, over the past three years, I've been trying to get a stadium deal done, and uh they've been just basically pushed aside by the legislator here, and finally they, you know, state of Indiana steps in, and as the governor of Indiana stated that he move at uh business pace and was able to approve a possibility of a stadium in Indiana right across from uh uh uh uh Chicago.
• 24:27
  Uh and uh um the fact that the uh you know Illinois government has not been able to get anything, you know, proposed for the Chicago Bears.
• 24:39
  And the only thing I've heard on sports radio for the past couple of days has been attacks against the uh Chicago Bears saying, well, you know, this is a these are multimillionaires, uh, you know, they're trying to get the best deal.
• 24:51
  Well, if you look at it, uh, you know, the Chicago Bears had proposed that they would pay two billion dollars to construct their stadium.
• 24:57
  All they wanted was tax guarantees, and they wanted to make sure that there was money given to build infrastructure uh around that stadium that would allow, you know, basically the development of the area where the stadium is gonna be at.
• 25:11
  Um, and they have said the same thing.
• 25:13
  If you go to Indiana, we'll do the same thing.
• 25:14
  We'll take two billion dollars out of our pocket and we'll build a stadium.
• 25:18
  Uh, but uh how is it possible that uh you could get to a point where an individual or Prisker is not even able to um get to a point where they can propose something decent for a NFL team that uh has been around for 100 plus years and was has been the pride and joy of Illinois.
• 25:40
  Well, it's uh here.
• 25:42
  First of all, it's very interesting because a lot of folks just laughed at the fact that possibly the bears would even consider going to Indiana.
• 25:50
  Nobody took that proposal serious when it came up a couple months ago, three months ago, whenever.
• 25:56
  They always figured like the fight will be between do you stay in Chicago or do you go to Arlington Heights where they purchase this massive 326-acre property they tore down the Arlington racetrack, which was a beautiful place, by the way.
• 26:08
  I think that that's a problem with me.
• 26:10
  Um, I loved going there.
• 26:12
  But um, regardless, they built this, they wanted to have a suburban stadium where they could have an enclosed stadium, a place where they could make a bigger stadium for Super Bowls.
• 26:20
  They had their reasons for wanting to do this.
• 26:23
  And things just got stalled and stalled.
• 26:25
  They literally thought that they would be breaking ground last year on the site in Arlington Heights.
• 26:31
  Never happened.
• 26:32
  And part of it's because they never could get agreements on what uh what sort of kick-in would come from the local government.
• 26:39
  One of the biggest concerns, and my uh a colleague of mine, former state representative Mark Batnik, apparently did like an eight-page white paper on this, and he said that uh the bears were facing a 210 million dollar annual property tax bill for an assessed value on that property or a market value on that property of three billion dollars, where other uh NFL teams, the average they only pay is eight million dollars.
• 27:08
  210 million versus eight million.
• 27:11
  So the Bears were asking for a couple things from the state of Illinois.
• 27:14
  One, can you help us with some infrastructure improvements?
• 27:17
  Egress, ingress, a rail line coming into the complex, because it's gonna be much more than a um than a football stadium.
• 27:26
  I don't know if you've been to any of the bigger sites like Foxboro or something like that.
• 27:30
  They're really entertainment and shopping zones as well.
• 27:33
  They attract a lot of different folks for various outings.
• 27:36
  It's not just about football.
• 27:38
  So this is gonna be a massive thing.
• 27:40
  So would you put in a rail line?
• 27:41
  Would you help us with some road improvements that we're going to need for this site?
• 27:45
  And actually, this is stuff that they do for a lot of different businesses all the time.
• 27:50
  And uh that was not an unreasonable ask.
• 27:53
  The other thing that they wanted was they wanted an assurance on property taxes that they were only going to pay a set amount and that they were not going to be forced into this ever-escalating property tax cyclone that we have in the state of Illinois.
• 28:06
  It's just awful.
• 28:07
  Now, property taxes are a hot issue, as we talked about in our my previous segment with you.
• 28:12
  But um, you know what?
• 28:14
  A lot of folks are like, why do they get a special deal?
• 28:17
  These are wealthy individuals.
• 28:18
  This is a wealthy team, they're worth, I don't know, billions of dollars.
• 28:22
  They shouldn't get a property tax break.
• 28:24
  At the same time, Hammond's over there offering them much favor more favorable things.
• 28:30
  And honestly, the fan base is pretty loyal.
• 28:33
  I think the fans would go to Hammond, and I think the Bears are making that calculation all day long.
• 28:39
  So the the big the bigger thing is the reason that this is so important right now, and that this is serious, is because today, the same day that Indiana passes unanimously a bill to support the the stadium project, is the same day that there was supposed to be a hearing on whether or not uh mega projects like the Bears Stadium would receive some sort of property tax uh abatement process.
• 29:08
  And what did the Bears do?
• 29:10
  The Bears literally told JB Pritzker and the Democrat state reps, um, hold off on that meeting, hold off on that bill.
• 29:20
  We don't want to talk to you now.
• 29:23
  So they didn't want to hear what they had to say.
• 29:25
  They cut off the conversation with Illinois, which makes it serious.
• 29:29
  Um, I mean, uh look, they got they I have to they got leverage.
• 29:33
  They got leverage on uh on the politicians.
• 29:35
  Um, you know, I mean, if somebody offers you a better deal, why not look at it?
• 29:39
  And people say, you know, uh the bears are worth into billions.
• 29:42
  Yeah, but that billions is not liquid assets, you know.
• 29:46
  It's not like they could just take that money uh that is liquidated and use it.
• 29:50
  That's what they're assessed to be, but most of that is really basically stuck within the team itself.
• 29:56
  You know, you can't just sell off the parts of the team to be able to create.
• 30:00
  Create liquid uh uh cash in order to be able to put in the hands of Prisker, who's gonna use it for uh stuff that uh really doesn't even benefit the people of Illinois, you know.
• 30:10
  Um and I I gotta tell you, I I know I mean you have talked in the past on the Goshen issue.
• 30:16
  It's amazing how we can find money for Goshen, but he can't find money for the uh Chicago Bears.
• 30:22
  Well, yeah, sure.
• 30:23
  I mean, so he tees up over $136 million for the Goshen CCP backed company to put in uh EV battery manufacturing in Mantino.
• 30:33
  And uh that's not all they got.
• 30:35
  They got millions of dollars in road improvements as well.
• 30:38
  They got new um lines in for electrical, they got new lines in for natural gas into the plant, all guaranteed by our public utilities.
• 30:45
  Oh, by the way, at the grand opening, that was all touted out there.
• 30:49
  And then the thing that they got, which is very interesting in light of the Bears Stadium um discussion, is that Goshen got a 30-year freeze on their property taxes.
• 31:00
  They're only going to pay, I think 2 million a year, period, nothing more than that.
• 31:06
  Even if the property goes up in value, they're not paying any more.
• 31:10
  So they get a freeze, the Chinese back, Communist Party, Goshen, and the Bears get nothing.
• 31:18
  I don't know.
• 31:19
  Yeah, and uh, I mean, you know the numbers better.
• 31:22
  Um, the EV plan hasn't really made any money.
• 31:25
  They've been actually uh in the red.
• 31:27
  Um, and with the new federal mandates uh that are basically uh cutting off everything.
• 31:33
  I really don't know where the future of Goshen is going to be.
• 31:35
  I know there's a lawsuit against them.
• 31:37
  If you want to give us an update on that um and where we are, and do you believe that Goshen will finally leave?
• 31:43
  And if it does, all that money that uh Prisker allocated uh for that plant is basically some costs in a project that never was going to materialize in anything.
• 31:54
  Well, a lot of that money is.
• 31:56
  I don't know what they've received in all, they have not received all the credits.
• 31:59
  Let's be fair here.
• 32:00
  Uh, some of that is meted out over time based on the number of the employees that they have and whatnot, but certainly a lot of the improvements have already been given, and they've been given cash, just cash checks written to them, 125 million.
• 32:13
  We'll never see that back ever.
• 32:15
  Uh, but um where the lawsuit stands right now is that it is in the discovery phase and it will be going to trial.
• 32:22
  Uh Goshen has been slow walking, providing documents that are needed.
• 32:27
  Uh, but that has finally loosened up.
• 32:30
  Um, if people want to help out, they can go to Concerned Citizens of Mantino's website, and they can maybe provide some donation uh help there because this lawsuit is getting expensive.
• 32:41
  But we are hopeful because the same lawyers that kicked Goshen out of Michigan are the same lawyers that we have for the Mantino lawsuit.
• 32:48
  And so we are hopeful that uh, you know, when this does go to trial when people see the facts about how harmful this is and what a you know how it was done behind the backs of taxpayers and in violation of zoning laws, we think that we'll be successful.
• 33:02
  So, you know, Prisker picks up a um company that was kicked out of Michigan, and Michigan is not a conservative state, and picks it up and gives them millions of millions of dollars uh in a taxpayer, you know, um taxpayer money, and then turns around and gives them uh guarantees on property tax freezes.
• 33:22
  Um, but um it doesn't make sense to me.
• 33:25
  Why is he not able to do the same thing for the Chicago Bears?
• 33:30
  Well, that's my thing.
• 33:31
  That's my whole thing, because at first he was doing like, oh, we're not getting he's playing the populist role.
• 33:36
  We're not handing that wealthy corporation any money.
• 33:39
  They can fund this all themselves.
• 33:41
  He was doing all that.
• 33:42
  And nobody, like almost no pundit, no journal uh journalist at the Chicago Tribune.
• 33:49
  Nobody was saying, like you just handed eight Rivian, an EV manufacturer, $827 in credits.
• 33:56
  You gave Goshen $136 million in credits.
• 33:59
  You're spending all this money on other favored industries that you like.
• 34:04
  And you won't the bears, you're you're not gonna offer the bears anything.
• 34:10
  Well, you know, his argument is uh, well, they uh as he was saying, well, I want to make sure that the business that's coming in, that they're gonna be able to provide any type of uh, you know, um positive uh market for the various communities that they're in.
• 34:27
  Listen, yeah, but everything that Goshen does is a subsidized product.
• 34:31
  Everything that they do.
• 34:33
  They would not be making EV batteries if the EVs themselves weren't subsidized.
• 34:38
  They wouldn't be making EV batteries for our grid if the entire renewable energy, these go for solar and wind farms if the entire renewable sector wasn't heavily subsidized.
• 34:49
  They are entirely dependent on taxpayer subsidies to even maintain remain alive.
• 34:55
  I have much more faith that the bears are going to actually turn a real profit based off of their the real products that they sell to consumers that actually want them and without any subsidies.
• 35:08
  Uh, you know, it's not like um, you know, taxpayers from Illinois are going to subsidize a ticket purchase at the Bears game so you can buy beer at a higher cost.
• 35:17
  None of that's happening.
• 35:18
  So the the biggest hypocrite in all this is really JB Pritzker, who is picking and choosing choosing really a communist party company over Da Bears.
• 35:31
  It's insane.
• 35:34
  Unfortunately, I don't know.
• 35:35
  I mean, people are still gonna walk in, maybe vote him in back in November.
• 35:40
  I mean, I don't know what you've seen when it comes to the polls for this year and what the future might be.
• 35:47
  I mean, well, I will tell you this.
• 35:50
  Look, if if JB loses the Bears to Indiana, there's no chance, I think, that he gets elected.
• 35:57
  None.
• 35:58
  You don't you don't think he's gonna blame him being uh rich uh you know owners leaving uh although I will say the unions are pretty strong here.
• 36:06
  Um, but the unions want those jobs, so yeah, yeah, amazing.
• 36:12
  Um Jeannie, I do want to uh when we come back for the third portion of our discussion.
• 36:18
  I do want to take a look at a couple of other news stories that came out.
• 36:22
  Um, especially with what happened with Prince Andrew, uh and uh what is possibly happening.
• 36:29
  It seemed like uh after the Epstein file uh information was released, you know, one of the Democrats was complaining uh, and he said that uh uh more Democrats are getting busted than uh Republicans.
• 36:41
  So what's up with that?
• 36:42
  Uh instead of uh, you know, really focusing on the fact that well, nobody should have been busted for it, right?
• 36:48
  Um they should not have put themselves in those positions, but it is what it is.
• 36:52
  Um, I mean, we got a few minutes here in this segment if you want to kind of cover it a little bit, or we can uh discuss in more details, or if there's anything that needs to be closed out from what we just discussed on the budget.
• 37:03
  Well, I will say this about the whole thing.
• 37:05
  It appears to me, and I and actually I've not really looked into Epstein files so much.
• 37:10
  I don't know.
• 37:12
  Maybe I'm just not that interested in it overall, but the names that keep popping up as having problems uh and with associations to Epstein seem to be on the Democrat side far more than the Republican side at a minimum.
• 37:27
  And this Prince Andrew one, the fact he got arrested apparently today on his 66th birthday of all things.
• 37:34
  I mean, golly, what I mean, I don't think he can fall any lower.
• 37:38
  Uh so yeah, no, I think this it's it is an important topic because it's one that the people have demanded, especially the Democrats.
• 37:46
  Remember, they demanded these files be released, even though Biden was in charge all that time.
• 37:52
  They had all those files.
• 37:53
  There was no demand for them to be released.
• 37:55
  Now all of a sudden they think they're gonna catch President Trump in some sort of you know alarming email and crickets, nothing.
• 38:06
  But who'd they catch?
• 38:07
  JB Pritzker's cousin, Tom Pritzer.
• 38:10
  And he was forced to resign.
• 38:12
  We'll talk about that too.
• 38:14
  No, definitely.
• 38:15
  We'll be back for a discussion again.
• 38:17
  Uh my guess is uh uh Jeannie Ives, um, an American politician, a Republican.
• 38:23
  She is a former member of the Illinois House of Representatives for the 42nd district, and she was a candidate for governor of Illinois and the U.S.
• 38:31
  representative for the Illinois 6th Congressional District.
• 38:34
  Uh, she's served three years, three terms, I should say, I'm sorry, and the Illinois House from 2013 to 2018.
• 38:41
  And then she ran also in the Republican primary in 2018, and then Illinois governor's race.
• 38:47
  Uh never really losing to the incumbent at that time, uh, Bruce Rohner.
• 38:52
  And uh I have no clue where Bruce is DJs, to be honest.
• 38:55
  I think he's in Florida.
• 38:57
  There you go.
• 38:58
  Uh, but with that said, we'll be back for our final discussion with Genie Ives.
• 39:02
  This is your host, Lieutenant Colonel Sargas and Gear, U.S.
• 39:05
  Army retired CEO of the Neary Center for strategic engagement and a board member of the National Security However.
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• 42:40
  Welcome back to the uh final segment on the National Security Hour.
• 42:43
  My guest is uh Jeannie Ives.
• 42:45
  Uh she is an American politician and uh former member of the Lemoy House of Representative.
• 42:50
  Uh and we were looking at uh the discussions we're having today was really with uh JB Prisker.
• 42:56
  He's of course looking at running for 2028 presidential uh race.
• 43:01
  And um, Jeannie, just uh what is your uh uh understanding of where he is today?
• 43:08
  Um is he still serious about it?
• 43:11
  I mean, when I was looking at just the California race for the governor there, um, and uh uh it seems like the Republican is in the lead as it stands now in the state of California.
• 43:22
  So uh I was looking at some of the numbers at looking at Newsom possibly running against Vance.
• 43:28
  Uh there's some areas we're showing that Newsom might win that election.
• 43:32
  But um, do these governors believe that uh regardless uh if they run for the presidency, they have an opportunity and a chance to win.
• 43:41
  Apparently they do because they are still lining up uh for that nomination on the Democrat side.
• 43:47
  I know J.B.
• 43:47
  Pritzker's budget address again, you know, he he talked in lofty terms of what love means and love is a superpower.
• 43:56
  And he did this whole thing about love for the last five minutes.
• 44:01
  I'm like, who wrote this?
• 44:03
  And and what is this about?
• 44:05
  And of course, he had to take his opportunity to bash ice and and and say things about Trump uh as well.
• 44:12
  So it was it was a speech that was he was trying to sound lofty and maybe presidential and maybe a little bit more uh human.
• 44:21
  Uh but I you know, honestly, look, we Republicans have such a deep bench of knowledge and folks that are just getting things done.
• 44:29
  I don't see how the Democrats do it.
• 44:31
  They're just they have given into their progressive wing, and they are nobody's sounding reasonable.
• 44:37
  Well, actually, I take that back, Sargis.
• 44:40
  I gotta say, you've got a couple different people that are making overtures to the centrist position.
• 44:47
  One of those is Rahm Emanuel.
• 44:49
  If you follow him on X at all, he's reaching out about school choice, education standards a lot, uh, even the LGBT stuff, that T stuff specifically on the transgender issue.
• 45:01
  So he's taking a move to the center for a presidential run.
• 45:06
  You've even got some other Chicago Democrats sort of following in the same way.
• 45:10
  One of them is Susanna Mendoza, who just wrote an opinion piece in the Chicago Tribune.
• 45:15
  She is currently the comp troller under Pritzker.
• 45:19
  And um, she's making a move to the center, probably because she wants to run for Chicago mayor.
• 45:25
  And you you look at these folks, and actually there's quite a bit of a challenges going.
• 45:30
  Tony Preckwinkle, the longtime Cook County Board president is being challenged by another Democrat.
• 45:35
  So it appears that some of them want to make a move to the center.
• 45:39
  I don't think it's enough.
• 45:40
  And I think still they are controlled by their most progressive members.
• 45:46
  Where do you think Illinois politics is going to be?
• 45:48
  I mean, um, is there any time that this state will look at at least becoming a purple state sometime in the future, or is it that uh so many people have left?
• 45:56
  I mean, businesses are looking at leaving anything.
• 45:59
  Uh before we came into the discussion, we mentioned that even the Boeing plan was looking at leaving Virginia because of uh their radical ideologies of the new governor that came in.
• 46:09
  Um what is a turning point?
• 46:12
  Well, everybody's been waiting for the turning point in the state of Illinois.
• 46:16
  There's no doubt about it.
• 46:17
  Um, I think what's happened in Minnesota, especially with the fraud allegations, I think you're gonna see that same sort of level of fraud.
• 46:23
  You already have it in California.
• 46:25
  I think you're gonna see the same thing in the state of Illinois as they dig deeper.
• 46:29
  And I think you know, uh look, Illinois is not a lost cause entirely.
• 46:35
  Uh Governor Pritzker only he barely won.
• 46:38
  He won with 54.5% of the vote.
• 46:41
  That's not a blowout.
• 46:42
  That's not 60%.
• 46:44
  That's doable.
• 46:45
  And in fact, President Trump in 24 got more votes than um Governor Pritzker got in 22.
• 46:50
  So the votes seem to be there.
• 46:53
  It's a matter of bringing them out.
• 46:55
  The issue with Illinois, though, is that it is so heavily controlled by the unions.
• 47:00
  And so on these off-year elections, if you don't actually get all the Republicans to show up and vote for common sense, and instead you only get some Republicans who show up, and then you've got other voters who say, well, uh, when it comes to state politics, I like my pension and I like my union benefits, and so I'm gonna vote for a governor who's gonna keep those going.
• 47:22
  So maybe federal level they vote one way, you know, governor level, they vote in another way.
• 47:27
  That's gotta stop.
• 47:28
  That's where the nonsense has to stop.
• 47:31
  And uh, I don't know if we're at that tipping point yet, but I think we're only one massive fraud case away from that, or something's you know, that's that is out of the norm, like the Bears move into Hammond, Indiana.
• 47:46
  That could also stoke some problems.
• 47:48
  As far as businesses, that's the other thing about the Bears thing.
• 47:51
  It is interesting because Boeing left Seattle in 2001, comes to Chicago, they were guaranteed, which seems paltry by now, right now.
• 48:00
  A paltry $60 million in tax incentives to come to Chicago.
• 48:04
  That's nothing compared to what Governor Pritzker is handing out to other companies to get here.
• 48:09
  But they get $60 million, they stay until 2022, and then they leave.
• 48:14
  All right, and they leave for Virginia because quote unquote, they want to be closer to their number one customer, which is the U.S.
• 48:22
  Defense Department.
• 48:24
  And then Abigail Spanberger gets elected, and within a month, she's proposing all sorts of crazy ideas, crazy DEI initiatives, new housing affordability and ideas, a tax increases, just going nuts on stuff.
• 48:38
  And what is Boeing announced?
• 48:40
  They're moving out of Virginia to be closer to a previous home that they used to own in St.
• 48:46
  Louis, Missouri.
• 48:48
  Now you can't help but think, though, this has something to do with the business climate in Virginia and the move from Seattle to Chicago to Virginia to Missouri.
• 48:57
  These headquarters are looking for the most favorable place where they can land for tax purposes on their company.
• 49:04
  There's no doubt about that.
• 49:06
  That's amazing.
• 49:09
  Well, uh, it is what it is.
• 49:10
  We got the uh uh primary coming up.
• 49:13
  Uh um when is the primary at uh I'm supposed to be an election judge and a complete uh March 17th is the primary here in the U.S.
• 49:22
  I had it all in because they wanted me to be in Israel uh uh um for the 16.
• 49:27
  I had told him I can't make it, you know, there's no way because of course uh March 17 is our primary here.
• 49:33
  And uh we'll see.
• 49:34
  We'll see.
• 49:34
  Hopefully, we get some good competition.
• 49:36
  Um, anybody you like in the race uh run it possibly from the Republican side running against Prisker.
• 49:42
  Well, I think the only person who has an opportunity to beat Prisker is Ted Dobrowski because he's the only one who uh can really attract the suburban voters.
• 49:51
  He's um a policy walk.
• 49:53
  He's um, you know, mild mannered, he's not vitriolic.
• 49:57
  He's um, you know, he's just a nice guy.
• 50:00
  But he's a smart guy and he's a principled guy.
• 50:03
  And I think that's the type of uh candidate that will be attractive to a whole host of suburban voters who just want things to change on the fiscal side and but also on the school side.
• 50:15
  They want parental rights to be enforced.
• 50:18
  I think that's been a really hot button.
• 50:20
  And when it comes to Trump and immigration and all these other things that people like, oh, I can't vote for a Republican.
• 50:25
  I mean, the truth is is that they, you know, for when it comes to Ted Browski, look, let's just enforce federal laws.
• 50:32
  That's what we're going to do.
• 50:33
  We're going to cooperate with ICE so we can enforce federal laws so that we don't have the nonsense happening in the streets.
• 50:39
  And that's so I think that's a that I think that's actually a reasonable position.
• 50:43
  And I think that's where most people are.
• 50:44
  So he's got a real task in front of him, though, to raise his name ID so that people know who he is, and then they then vote for him on March 17th.
• 50:53
  No, hopefully, look, uh, it's it's funny because I went, you know, um, you have to go to training, of course, uh, even though you've been uh election job many times.
• 51:02
  And I was in my training, and the first two questions came out is what would happen?
• 51:06
  What are we gonna do if ICE comes into our voting you know, uh facilities?
• 51:11
  Uh and I started laughing, uh, because I'm like, what a ridiculous question you ask, you know, uh, from these individuals who can be judges, uh, probably probably democratic judges in this case.
• 51:21
  And then the gentleman who was uh basically running the conversation from the uh Illinois state side of the house, is like, well, you know, ICE can't come in there, they're not a law enforcement, and of course they are law enforcement.
• 51:33
  Uh, but my thinking was well, if everybody is a citizen, why would law ice come into your facility to begin with?
• 51:39
  So, but um it is what it is, you know, uh, until the Illinois voter uh wakes up uh and starts actually looking at uh how the globe is looking at the uh United States, not how uh you know their own little group is looking at them uh at the state level.
• 51:54
  Uh we might be where we are today.
• 51:56
  Uh Jeannie, I'm gonna I know that you're a little bit busy, so we're gonna cut the segment a little bit shorter today, but um just uh is there anything we're missing?
• 52:06
  Uh any recommendations you have, any advice you have for uh listeners out there and also for the Illinois who are gonna be going to the uh polls uh you know on March 17th for the primary, of course, in uh November for the general election.
• 52:20
  Well, I mean, my it's why I've always said look, it's you can't just leave your vote out there for somebody else to grab.
• 52:27
  You can't just pretend like it doesn't matter or sort of get in this mindset that oh, nothing's ever going to change.
• 52:35
  Uh listen, it's it's your duty as a citizen to vote.
• 52:39
  You know, hopefully you vote informed.
• 52:42
  Um, because if you don't, you're just going to leave it up to the idiots that do vote to elect other idiots to rule over you.
• 52:51
  It's so important to be an informed voter.
• 52:55
  Uh it's our, you know what they want to say, you're killing democracy.
• 52:59
  Well, I'll tell you what kills democracy.
• 53:01
  It's citizens who don't vote or vote vote for people that are actually opposed to the Constitution.
• 53:10
  That is uh gotta tell you, it's kind of my life mission to make sure that people are informed.
• 53:17
  No, you know, I I remember when I was running for office here, uh, there was a gentleman in front of me.
• 53:23
  Actually, I went to vote for myself, of course.
• 53:26
  And then he walks in, he goes in and gets his ballot, process it as I'm waiting to get, you know, to the uh machine for myself to vote.
• 53:34
  Uh the gentleman, of course, the election jury, he's like, sir, uh, you didn't vote for anybody.
• 53:39
  He's like, yeah, I didn't see anybody there that I actually uh liked uh to vote for.
• 53:44
  I don't think any of them would deserve my vote.
• 53:46
  Like, well, you still want to cast it.
• 53:48
  He's like, yes, I would have cast it.
• 53:49
  I want to make sure that nobody steals my vote.
• 53:51
  There's Illinois.
• 53:52
  I was laughing my ass off because you know, as much as uh be like, you know, I could have told them look, you should vote at least for me.
• 53:58
  I'm here a line.
• 54:00
  But uh, you know, hey, look, that's the way you should be, right?
• 54:03
  Go in and uh if you don't think anybody deserves it, don't vote for him.
• 54:06
  But at least cast your ballot.
• 54:08
  Uh so that way they know that you know your cat ballot has been cast.
• 54:12
  But uh, I thought it was a funniest, but uh I rather have that voter than have somebody who just disengaged uh across the board.
• 54:20
  You know, because I guess it doesn't help us out at all.
• 54:22
  Jeannie, uh any other issues, uh anything you're working on now or anything else that uh you want our audiences to be aware of before we sign off.
• 54:33
  Uh well, we are still working on our quote unquote Illinois Doge effort, and we still get a lot of good tips in through our tip line.
• 54:40
  You can go to breakthrough-ideas.com, you can go to our doge il.com site and put in a tip if you have one.
• 54:46
  I think that that's where your money's going.
• 54:48
  I think that's really important.
• 54:50
  Uh, and also if people would want to listen to my radio show, it's Monday through Friday, 11 a.m.
• 54:56
  to noon on AM560.
• 54:58
  That's a WIND Salem radio station.
• 55:02
  And I co-host that um that show with Amy Jacobson.
• 55:06
  We cover a lot of uh local and state politics and policies, but we also do hit on some of the national things.
• 55:13
  And I love to have you on Sargas too, and would love to have you on about the latest build up in the Persian Gulf and what's gonna happen to Iran.
• 55:22
  And did you want to just mention quickly what is gonna happen?
• 55:28
  Uh uh you saw I told you what two weeks ago, this is gonna be slow dragged through the process, it's still being slowly dragged.
• 55:36
  Um we'll find out, right?
• 55:37
  In 10 days.
• 55:38
  But uh, 10 days, okay.
• 55:40
  Yeah, he's gonna he's gonna do something.
• 55:42
  Uh he has no choice, but uh there's one other asset I can't talk about that still hasn't made it there.
• 55:47
  So we're waiting for that one to roll in.
• 55:49
  So that's why I give the 10-day process if it moves in faster, you know, we might be rock and roll.
• 55:55
  But uh I I think people have to understand you cannot just destroy that country.
• 56:00
  There's 90 million people, you know, and just taking those 90 million people and just you know, they may decide, okay, we're done.
• 56:06
  Thank you.
• 56:07
  Uh you know, we're gonna go somewhere else.
• 56:09
  Where are you gonna take him?
• 56:10
  You know, and and uh and the devastation, the asymmetric war that you're gonna have to be dealing with.
• 56:15
  We'll handle it, we'll clean it up, but it's gonna be ugly uh in the first stages.
• 56:19
  And uh I think uh Trump rather see an internal change take place with a possible coup or even the departure, you know, and god forbid if he has a heart attack, suddenly Khamenei passes out, at least you know you have an opportunity for for a possible change.
• 56:34
  But he'll probably have to take some kind of a multi-action um once you move all those forces and you know yourself.
• 56:40
  You don't put the toys uh on the ground if we're not gonna play for with him, right?
• 56:44
  Uh so but uh let's let's see what the targets are gonna be uh and how it's gonna be reshaping that entire region in the long term.
• 56:53
  Um and nobody can guarantee that one, Jeannie.
• 56:56
  No one.
• 56:57
  Uh much appreciative for being on the show.
• 57:00
  Again, my uh discussion today was was with Jeannie Ives.
• 57:03
  Uh, I recommend everybody to follow her on Breakthrough Ideas.
• 57:06
  Uh I'm your host, Lieutenant Colonel Sorgis and Gear, U.S.
• 57:09
  Army Retire, CEO of the Near East Center for strategic engagement.
• 57:12
  And this is a national security hour, which can be heard on weekdays at 8 p.m.
• 57:16
  Eastern time on American Outlaw Talk Radio, listen on iHeartRadio, our world class media player.
• 57:21
  Our free apps on Apple Android Alexa.
• 57:26
  All episodes of National Security Hour can be heard on demand on Podcast Network Worldwide.
• 57:31
  God bless you all, and we will talk to you next week.