McHenry County Blog

8th Congressional District Republican candidate Joe Walsh points out that President Barack Obama’s “Recovery Summer” theme hasn’t lived up to the Democrats’ expectations in the press release below:

The “Recovery Summer” Failed

Today the ADP released more bad news. The ADP Jobs Report, which monitors the strength of the U.S. private-sector, revealed that the U.S. economy shed 10,000 private-sector jobs in the month of August.

In May of this year, the Democrats promised the U.S. economy would begin to enjoy a significant economic recovery. The Democrats named this promised recovery “Recovery Summer.”

The Chicago Tribune's Business Section today presents no support for a "Recovery Summer."

In reality, there has been no such recovery.

According to official government websites, since the “Recovery Summer” began:

• our nation’s economic growth has stagnated, prompting economists to warn about their    fear of a “double-dip” recession;
• retail stores across the nation have posted significant losses;
• manufacturing jobs have decreased;
• the dollar is weaker compared to the Euro and the Canadian dollar;
• the stock market has declined; and
• Treasury bond yields have unexpectedly fallen.

The Democrats have owned this economy since January 2007 when they took control of Congress. Joe Walsh, the Republican candidate for the 8th District of Illinois, commented today on the bad economy.

“The Democrats in Washington have been wrong about this economy from the beginning. Higher taxes and more bureaucracy will not put this economy back on track.”

Congresswoman Melissa Bean voted for the health care law, the Stimulus, and cap-and-trade. Economists warn that all three of these pieces of legislation will hamper economic growth.

Walsh, who is challenging Melissa Bean in November’s election, added,

“The recovery will begin when Democrats no longer control Congress.”

This photo was taken at Melissa Bean's last debate. It was before Labor Day in 2006. Bean did not do well. She was skewered from the right by Republican Dave McSweeney and from the left by Independent Party candidate Bill Scheurer. No wonder she doesn't ever want to debate again.

While Alexi Giannoulias and Mark Kirk will debate for the U.S. Senate, Melissa Bean doesn’t want to have any debates with Joe Walsh and Bill Scheurer for the U.S. House.

She is following Rod Blagojevich’s and Jim Ryan’s lead in not debating me when I ran against them for Governor in 2002.

Bean doesn’t want an open comparison of her liberal voting record with Joe Walsh’s common sense conservatism.  And she doesn’t want criticism from the left from Bill Scheurer.

How would she answer Republican Walsh’s question,

“Where’s all of the jobs you bragged and campaigned on creating?”

I’m sure Green Party candidate Bill Scheurer would have some pointed questions, too.

Bean is stiffing McHenry County by not allowing a public discussion of her voting record.

Just as she would not hold a public town hall meeting on health care reform, on which she supported President Barack Obama.

The last time she debated was when she ran against David McSweeney and Bill Scheurer.

That was four years ago.

The 2006 debate. Dave McSweeney is on the left, Bill Scheurer in the middle and Melissa Bean on the right. Chris Krug is seen moderating.

It was sponsored by the Northwest Herald.

She didn’t do well.

You might say it was a disaster.

She doesn’t want another one of those.

That 2006 debate, by the way, was before Labor Day, the tradition beginning of political campaigns.

Two years ago, she refused to debate Steve Greenberg in public as well. A joint appearance before the Chicago Tribune editorial board was it.

Looks peaceful, doesn't he?

I don’t usually refer people to YouTube postings, but stimulated by 8th District Congresswoman’s inability to find time in her schedule for an interview with the Daily Herald, I thought you might like to see how she tries to control the few meetings she has.

“Bean declined a live interview, citing scheduling conflicts, but submitted her thoughts in writing,

” is what the Daily Herald article said.

Imagine that Bean hasn’t time to talk over the phone or in person to the newspaper that did repeated hit jobs on 8th District Republican opponent Joe Walsh.

She must really be nervous.

What you see on top is the threatening guy who walked around the audience when constituents were getting uppity.

The raw tape is below. It’s six minutes long. I watched it, but anything over three minutes on YouTube is pretty much too long for me. I figure if you’re making an argument and can’t make it in three minutes, you need to distill it.

After some criticism from a Bean supporter, whoever took the tape distilled it to a length that meets my requirements. So, if you have only three minutes take a look below. If you don’t, image the guy at the top of this article standing over you while you’re trying to ask a question.

Here the comments below the shorter version:

CStevenTucker
1 week ago

I attended this event and I assure you, Stanley Steroid was NOT reading. He made everyone in the room extremely uncomfortable. Again, this was DISGRACEFUL disregard for her constituents. We have had ENOUGH of the Political Elite in Washington. WE SURROUND THEM. If this makes you ANGRY help her opponent DEFEAT her in November! walshforcongress com

msjkulig
1 week ago

Here’s another blogger that thinks this video was “Over edited.” What a joke from someone who was not there to witness the THUGGERY firsthand! Visit the Foolocracy blog and tell them the truth!

msjkulig
1 week ago

The Thug exhibited this behavior without Bean saying a word about the blatant intimidation she knew her constituents must be feeling. I don’t care if the Thug worked for the library. Bean could have stopped the Thuggery at any time! She even “chuckled” when it happened. Bean chose this forum so she would not have to answer any questions about her voting record. Instead of having an open Townhall forum where citizens are free to have a dialogue with their Representative.

The following press release has been received from 8th District Republican candidate for Congress Joe Walsh:

JOE WALSH COMMENTS ON FAILURE OF STIMULUS BILL,

CALLS ON A NEW DIRECTION FOR THE AMERICAN ECONOMY

(Grayslake, IL) - Critics of President Obama’s nearly $1 trillion stimulus program have pointed out that the stimulus has failed to create jobs while wasting taxpayer money. A new analysis of stimulus spending in Illinois’ 8th Congressional District supports that criticism.

According to the Obama Administration’s “Recovery.gov” website, during the past 18 months the stimulus bill has spent more than $226 million in the 8th district to fund 244 projects, while only creating 169.46 jobs.

Joe Walsh, the Republican nominee for the 8th district, commented,

Joe Walsh

“If you do the math, you see that the Administration has spent more than $1.3 million per stimulus job!  While American families and small businesses are struggling and making tough choices, Washington is wasting their money.

“The stimulus has failed. According to the Obama Administration, this bill created fewer than 10 jobs per month in our district – 80% of those were government jobs. Sadly, this stimulus is a bailout for state and local government that was never designed to help the private sector grow the economy and create jobs.”

Joe Walsh’s opponent, Rep. Melissa Bean, voted for the stimulus bill.

Melissa Bean

In a February 13, 2009 press release, Rep. Bean promised the stimulus bill would create jobs, saying:

“This bold action is necessary to preserve and create jobs and spending.”

Bean stated taxpayer money would be spent in the right place, saying the bill “puts money where it matters.” In a January 28, 2009 press release, Bean touted the recovery.gov website, saying it constituted a new measure “of accountability and transparency [to] track every dollar of spending….”

Walsh commented on Bean’s empty promises,

“Melissa Bean promised the stimulus bill would create jobs. It didn’t. She promised our money would be well spent. It wasn’t.

“My campaign represents the voices of millions of Americans who believe we need new leadership in Washington.  With the support of the people of the 8th district, we are going to win this campaign.  When we do, we can begin to enact policies to promote private sector job creation – instead of pumping millions of taxpayer dollars into more government jobs.”

Yesterday’s cartoon in the Chicago Tribune leads me to wonder if 8th District Congresswoman Melissa Bean has divested her campaign of the money contributed by ethics-challenged New York City Congressman Charlie Rangel.

The cartoon's text says, "Charles Rangel Center for the Study of How Many Seats He Can Lose for the Democrats If He Hangs Around."

July 23rd was the date that challenger Joe Walsh called Bean out on the issue.

Since then, Illinois Congressman Phil Hare has given his Rangel contributions to charity.

Hare has even called for Rangel’s ouster from Congress.

Maybe it’s because of an internal poll by Bobby Schilling which shows the GOP challenger ahead by 45-32.

Democrats have held majority control of the U.S. House of Representatives for four years.

There was a huge red flag that financial hanky-panky was going on in the mortgage market.

It was in 2004, the same year Melissa Bean was elected. Here it is:

Securities and Exchange Commission found that Fannie May had used improper accounting. Fannie Mae was ordered to restate its earnings for the previous four years. This wiped out some $6.3 billion in profits that Fannie had reported but weren’t real.

Liberal Democrats like Bean did nothing to put a stop to reckless mortgage lending. She has sat on the House Financial Services Committee for four years.

People didn’t call it reckless but instead coined the phrase sub-prime.

They were happy to give out mortgages to people who couldn’t afford to pay back the loans as long as they collected their fees and we the taxpayers got stuck with the bill.

I pointed out how Bean got more than the $465,000 of “independent” campaign expenditures from the National Association of Realtors. She also got direct political monies to her campaign from the Realtors.

Bean took plenty of political money so the mortgage bad-loan money would keep on flowing.

Bean had plenty of green incentives to look the other way and forget to stop abusive practices that left us with a mountain of debt and foreclosures.

The Federal Election Commission shows Bean directly taking:

Melissa Bean

• $27,500 from the American Bankers Association PAC
• $8,000 from Equifax PAC, which does credit reports
• $24,500 from Experian North America Inc PAC (Experian is in the credit report business)
• $25,999 from the Financial Services Roundtable PAC
• $5,000 from the First American Financial Association PAC (First American is in the title insurance business)
• $31,500 from the National Association of Realtors Political Action Committee
• $23,000 from the Mortgage Bankers Association Political Action Committee
• $7,000 from the National Association of Mortgage Brokers
• $24,175 from the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts PAC
• $7,775 from the National Multi Housing Council PAC
• $6,500 from the PMI Mortgage Insurance Company PAC
• $1,000 from the Title Industry PAC
• $25,000 from the Trans Union LLC PAC (Trans Union is in the credit report business)

The above totals $236,949 without listing individual banks heavily in the mortgage business.
Bean politically profited from looking the other way.

It might help explain why she put no reforms of any kind about Freddie Mac and Fannie May into the financial reform law she now grandstands as a wonderful Democrat achievement.

Had Bean stood up for the taxpayers instead of her reaching out with palm facing up for political money, we might not have a glut of foreclosures that has depressed everyone’s home prices.

Bean also took another $34,387 from Fannie Mae ($20,000) and from Freddie Mac ($14,387).

Bean grabbed another $106,322 from Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Countrywide, CNA Financial (into subprime mortgages) and Washington Mutual. Washington Mutual gave Bean thousands in the months before it was seized by the FDIC and became the largest ever bank failure.

How much did this add up to?

To recap

• $465,000 National Association of Realtors “independent” campaign spending for Bean
• $236,949 directly from list detailed above
• $34,387 from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
• $10,500 from Sallie Mae
• $106,322 from Countrywide, Washington Mutual, Chase, etc, list detailed out above
• $ 853,858 for the above and
• this doesn’t include securities associations, foreign banks, G.E (G.E. Capital) credit card companies, life insurance companies and mutual funds, for example.

That easily runs more than couple of hundred thousand dollars more.

It is easy to say that Bean allowed the bad mortgage mess.

It got worse while she was adding over a million dollars to her campaign fund.

A coincidence?

Perhaps, but there should have been no surprise when she voted for billions of dollars of bailout monies to the big banks, including big foreign banks.

They got the money, Bean took the campaign contributions and we ended up with

• lower home prices and
• a national huge debt.

Friday night is one of the big ones for the McHenry County Fair.

A friend of McHenry County Blog did some comparison shopping, so to speak.

Photos arrived for the booths of both 16th District Congressman Don Manzullo and 8th District Congresswoman Melissa Bean.

No one would have expected either U.S. Representative to have been there greeting constituents.

Here’s what the Manzullo booth looking like:

Don Manzullo booth at the McHenry County Fair Friday night.

Manzullo’s booth was staffed and had a wide array of valuable constituent educational material.

Here’s Bean’s booth:

Melissa Bean's McHenry County Fair booth early Friday evening.

No information on the table. No one manning the booth.

Maybe the staffer are unionized.

That looks like the Woodstock VFW next door.

Here’s the latest email from Melissa Bean’s challenger:

Urgent Call to Action!
Great News!

The Illinois Republican Party has selected the Walsh Campaign Team to be the newest site for VICTORY and SUPER SATURDAY.

The Victory program is the Illinois GOP statewide program to help Republican candidates get elected through an unprecedented Voter Identification Program (phone bank) and Get Out The Vote GOTV campaign.  This is the largest undertaking the Illinois GOP has ever launched, and the Walsh Campaign Team is now part of this dynamic and exciting program.

We would like to thank the Party Leaders for selecting the Walsh Campaign for this great opportunity.  This is a strong testament of the determination, strength and old fashioned hard work that YOU, our grassroots volunteers, have shown time and time again. Are we up for another challenge?  We can do this!

And There’s More!

We have also been added to the Super Saturday program for this Saturday August 7th!  Yes, this Saturday.  This is an excellent opportunity for our team to take on a tremendously important challenge.  We are gathering as many volunteers as possible to man the phones and make calls on behalf of Joe Walsh and the Republican Party this Saturday!!

Super Saturday @ Walsh Headquarters
Aug 7th 10 am – 7 pm
218 barron Blvd (Rte 83)
Grayslake, IL 60030

Joe Walsh expresses his enthusiasm to the McHenry Fiesta Days Parade crowd.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!!!

We are also pleased to announce our statewide recognition keeps on rolling right down to Springfield!  Joe Walsh and the entire Walsh Campaign Team have been invited to participate in the Illinois State Fair and Republican Day activities on August 19th.  Joe will be on stage with the entire Illinois Republican Slate and we want YOU to be there to cheer him on.   The Joe Walsh Campaign is sponsoring a motor coach bus to take our volunteers along to Springfield to celebrate.

Once again, the immediate CALL TO ACTION is this Saturday 10 AM to 7 PM, to make phone calls for Joe Walsh.

We understand this is short notice, but every once in a while an opportunity comes out of no where and provides a significant challenge.  But as we know, with great challenge comes great reward.  When we pull this off, we will have solidified our position on the statewide GOP stage and we will be well positioned to charge head first into the last three months of this campaign right down to victory on November 2nd!!

Joe is absolutely pumped-up about this opportunity and he’s ready to lead the charge.  He knows we can pull this off and is incredibly appreciative of all your hard work that got us to this point and to this opportunity.

Please take a moment now to email or call Marianne Bailey to reserve your time slot in the Joe Walsh Victory Center in Grayslake this Saturday or all next week.

Please Call and volunteer:

Marianne Bailey
Volunteer Coordinator
Walsh for Congress Committee, Inc.
Marianne@walshforcongress.com
847-849-9508

The Joe Walsh horse trailer.

Green Party candidate Bill Scheurer saw the horse trailer that Republican Joe Walsh is going to take around the district and came up with this “Top 10 Reasons”:

Top 10 Reasons Why Joe Walsh Is Living In A Horse Trailer

10.  It’s the only way he could afford to live in the district.
9.    Someone told him it came with free ice cream.
8.    He couldn’t afford a car.
7.    It’s big enough to hold all his supporters.
6.   Cars are unconstitutional. The founding fathers didn’t drive cars!
5.   He gets all his best ideas from a talking horse.
4.   To demonstrate the GOP housing plan. It even has windows!
3.   Someone promised him a free pony ride.
2.   The bank foreclosed on his campaign office.
1.   That darn bookmobile was all filled up with books!

“Just having some fun here at my fellow-candidate’s expense,” Scheurer observed. “Joe and I actually are on friendly terms. We both are favorite targets of the local paper that favors the incumbent.”

Cherry Valley Road horse.

In what was probably the McHenry County Planning Department’s first brochure, McHenry County was reported to have almost as many horses as people. My memory (faulty as it can be) tells me that there were 60,000 horses and between 90,000 and 100,000 people.

The ratio has changed, of course, but the county has a vibrant history of horses.

The following press release from 8th Congressional District Republican Joe Walsh says he has decided to make the symbol of his campaign a horse trailer, the outside of which he will ask voters to sign.

Wherever the horse trailed goes, it will certainly turn heads.

Walsh Rounding Up a Posse to Take Our Country Back:  You In?

Seeking to corral runaway federal spending and pull in the reins on proposed tax increases, 8th District Republican Congressional Nominee Joe Walsh plans to spend the final 90 days of the campaign traveling the district with a wrapped horse trailer in tow asking families a simple question,

“Let’s take our country back, you in?”

Why the horse trailer?

A horse trailer that could become the symbol of the Joe Walsh for Congress campaign.

“First, the 8th district is home to many horse farms,” Walsh explained.

“There are horse farms throughout McHenry and Lake Counties from Richmond through Antioch over to Winthrop Harbor and down into Wauconda and Barrington Hills.  I’ve attended three in-district rodeos already this summer.  Even in the more densely populated northwest suburban Cook County portion of the district, we have many residents who are connected to the outdoors and live in the 8th district because of our proximity to open green space.”

“Second, horses, and correspondingly our horse trailer, are a symbol of freedom,”  Walsh continued. 

“And that’s really what this election boils down to.  Are we going to allow unchecked federal power to further constrict our cherished personal freedoms or are we going to restore a sense of balance to our citizenry and our government?”

To reinforce this message, the horse trailer has been wrapped from top to bottom and Walsh is asking residents to sign their names to the trailer saying,

“Yes, I’m in…I want my country back”

at each campaign stop.

“We will ride this horse trailer around the district every day for the rest of this campaign,” said Walsh. “We want every Republican, Independent, and Democrat in the 8th who’s concerned about the direction the country is heading to sign our horse trailer. I’m hoping we get thousands and thousands of signatures before Election Day.”

Walsh’s campaign will be scheduling horse trailer events and signature rallies across the district.  Residents are encouraged to check back to the walshforcongress.com website for the days, times and locations that the Walsh posse will be riding through their neck of the woods.