Programming Note:

·  Dan Proft will join WLS morning personality Jerry Agar for a post-State of the Union address discussion this evening on WLS-AM 890 (www.wlsam.com) beginning after the Democrat response to the President's address which is expected to be approximately 9pm CST. Proft and Agar will talk politics and policy until 12:00 midnight tonight. Their guests will include Congressman Peter Roskam, Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., University of Chicago international relations professor Charles Lipson, and retired two-star Gen. David Harris.

·  Showing his range (in an admittedly disturbing way), you can also hear Proft on the Don Wade & Roma Morning Show on WLS-AM 890 on Wednesday and Thursday morning this week at 7:20am where the three will review and discuss the latest episode of American Idol from the previous night.

Last week, I attended a forum at Northwestern University featuring Illinois' four state legislative leaders.

What I thought would be an opportunity to get a preview of forthcoming policy battles instead turned out to be a chilling glimpse into what the my afterlife will look like if I am condemned to the fiery abyss.

My damnation will be an eternal tax policy lecture from Illinois State Senate President Emil Jones, who, by the way, bears a striking aural similarity to Mushmouth from Fat Albert & the Cosby Kids fame.

During the 90-minute forum, Jones, who told the audience he was inspired into political involvement by President John F. Kennedy, was himself a profile in courage, the courage to tax.

"I have no problem raising taxes," said Jones, a proponent of raising taxes on Illinois business and raising the state income tax, whose courage has clearly been contagious in the General Assembly and other Democrat-occupied territories.

When asked about Illinois' dubious rank as the state with the largest unfunded pension liability in the country, Jones, unencumbered by the trappings of logic or relevance, responded by denouncing the Bush tax cuts.

When asked why some fail to appreciate his courage to tax, Jones lamented the state of taxpayer-funded schooling saying that much to his chagrin civics was no longer taught in primary and secondary schools so people do not understand government the way he does.

Clearly.

Apropos of nothing in particular, Jones argued for sufficient taxes to provide government health care for every Illinoisan. After all, said Jones, he has good taxpayer-provided health care so how can he tell someone they shouldn't be entitled to good taxpayer-provided health care as well?

It apparently didn't occur to Jones that if it is equality of status he's after, it would be quicker if we just took away his taxpayer-provided health care.

I left the forum that night with two distinct thoughts. First, I recalled William F. Buckley's description of his reaction after listening to Bill Clinton's second Inaugural Address after which Buckley said he had to drop an ashtray on the ground to make sure gravity still existed.

Second, I re-committed myself to being a better person. In the next world, I just got get away from these guys.

Dan Proft is a Principal of Urquhart Media LLC, a Chicago-based public affairs firm and political commentator for the Don Wade & Roma Morning Show (5-9am) on Chicago's number one news talk radio station, WLS-AM 890. He can be reached at dan@urqmedia.com.

For other Dan Proft commentaries (radio & print), please visit: http://www.urqmedia.com/proft/

For other recent Don Wade & Roma interviews, commentary, and discussions visit: http://www.wlsam.com/sectional.asp?id=16410

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Have you gotten over your euphoria over the CTA bailout yet?

Only in Illinois could hiking a regressive tax and narrowly dodging an opportunity to reform the fiscally unsustainable underpinnings of mass transit in Chicago be described as averting the so-called doomsday scenario.

Never underestimate the lengths to which the lumps of lobbyist fodder in our legislative bodies will sink in order to provide cousin Frickie with his third public pension.

If you enjoyed the CTA bailout, you are really going to get a kick out of what is in store. Next month, gaming legislation is set to move in Springfield designed to make Illinois into Las Vegas Midwest.

Here's what's on the table: a city-owned, land-based casino in Chicago more than three times the size of the state's current riverboat casinos; the sale of the dormant 10th riverboat casino license; the sale of an additional 11th riverboat casino license; 3,600 slot machine positions spread over existing horse racing tracks; and advancement deposit wagering at the tracks. (For you gaming laymen, advancement deposit wagering--when it is not legally sanctioned by the government--is commonly referred to as "bookmaking".)

I am no ardent opponent of gambling but this proposal would make Steve Wynn blush.

So, like any good confidence men, the Democrats in Springfield have a plan to pluck us pigeons.

Proposition #1: How does 30% of the house take for education sound? Just think, we won't have to argue about school funding in Illinois ever again.

Hmmm... That reminds of the time in 1985 when the state decided to apply all of the proceeds from the Illinois Lottery to fund public schools so that we wouldn't have to have the debate over school funding that we have subsequently had for each and every one of the 23 years since.

Proposition #2: Because of the general boob-ery of the Springfield class, Illinois is at risk of losing $6 billion in federal transportation funds for unfailingly failing to produce the required 25% state match. Our old friend the roulette wheel can take care of that with due speed.

Selling massive, permanent gaming expansion under the auspices of better schools and safer roads & bridges--it just sings, doesn't it?

It promises to be Illinois Democrats' greatest heist yet.

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Programming Notes:

Fresh off his uncontrollable lurch into the insight that Clinton and McCain would win their respective New Hampshire primaries, Proft will be on Bruce DuMont's "Beyond the Beltway" program Sunday night. That's 6-8pm on WLS-AM 890 with a television rebroadcast of the program's first hour at 10:30pm on WYCC, Channel 20.


On Wednesday, January 16, Proft will join Grover Norquist (Americans for Tax Reform) and Ramesh Ponnuru (National Review) for a panel discussion sponsored by the America's Future Foundation (http://www.americasfuture.org/) entitled "The State of the Republican Brand." The event is from 7-8:30pm on Jan. 16 at the Union League Club (65 W. Jackson, Chicago).

Click here to listen to an .mp3 of this commentary as heard on today morning's Don Wade & Roma Morning Show on WLS AM-890.

Click here to email Dan Proft

When asked to offer his opinion on the Illinois Republican Party, renowned conservative anti-tax activist Grover Norquist said, "Someone's got to be the bad example."

Thanks to the votes of three Republican State Senators for the Democrats' mass transit bailout plan, the GOP in Illinois has gone from "the bad example" to a Marx Brothers movie-except without the funny.

The good news is that Senators Groucho, Harpo and Zeppo have given the party a message to voters that it has desperately sought. The bad news is that the message is: "Vote Republican: We'll Raise Your Taxes."

The real names of the players in this Republican comedy troupe are State Senators Kirk Dillard, John Millner and Dan Cronin.

They all hail from DuPage County, the soon-to-be last bastion of Republican hegemony in Illinois if it is left to Dillard, Millner and Cronin.

By capitulating to scare tactics and voting to increase the sales tax by a quarter of a percentage point in Cook County and a half of a percentage point in the five collar counties--as they did--in order to finance an agency that has been run like a banana republic for decades, these three Republican state senators served to eliminate perhaps the most critical distinction of principle between the two parties--at least as to how the two parties operate in most of the rest of the country.

Ceding moral authority on the tax issue is the political doomsday scenario for Illinois Republicans.

Those three Republican votes--and all three were needed for the legislation to pass out of the Senate--did not only bail out a moribund regional transit agency. Their votes gave Governor Blagojevich and a host of other Democrats on the hot seat a free ride.

Do you know how politically tone-deaf you need to be to make Rod Blagojevich look good? Senators Groucho, Harpo and Zeppo do.

And Republicans in Illinois wonder why they lose?

Dan Proft is a Principal of Urquhart Media LLC, a Chicago-based public affairs firm and political commentator for the Don Wade & Roma Morning Show (5-9am) on Chicago's number one news talk radio station, WLS-AM 890. He can be reached at dan@urqmedia.com.

For other Dan Proft commentaries (radio & print), please visit: http://www.urqmedia.com/proft/

For other recent Don Wade & Roma interviews, commentary, and discussions visit: http://www.wlsam.com/sectional.asp?id=16410

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, January 09, 2008 Contact: Dan Proft (p) 312-575-9500 (c) 312-446-6488 dan@urqmedia.com Proft's latest featured commentary: Explaining New Hampshire   Programming Note: Fresh off his uncontrollable lurch into the insight that Clinton and McCain would win their respective New Hampshire primaries, Proft will again be on the one hour televised version of Bruce DuMont's "Beyond the Beltway" Sunday night at 10:30pm on WYCC, Channel 20. For the radio version of BTB from 6-8pm Sunday evening on WLS-AM 890, DuMont will be broadcasting live from Grand Rapids, Michigan. I do not pretend to understand the mind, to the extent there is such evidence, of the befuddled iteration of Homo sapiens known as the Democrat primary voter. Thus, in order to explain New Hampshire Democrat primary voters choosing the "experience to hope for change" over "hoping for a changed experience", or was it "united for experienced hope", no, wait, "experiencing hopeful change"? Sorry, I am a slow drinker when it comes to big government Kool-Aid. Let's try again. Thus, in order to explain how Hillary Clinton shocked the chattering classes, I must harken back to my days of unhinged youthful exuberance. The year was 1984. The movie that briefly changed my life was Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo in which local break-dancers "Turbo" and "Ozone" intervene to stop a developer from tearing down their neighborhood community center. Riveting, I know. After seeing that movie, this then 12-year old white kid from Wheaton, Illinois, was going to change the world with his inspirational form of dance just like Turbo and Ozone. You could say I was imbued with the audacity of hope. Mom and dad indulged me for awhile. They gave in to my demands for parachute pants and red Chuck Taylor high-tops. They tolerated my endless looping of Chaka Khan's "Ain't Nobody" on my Sanyo boombox. But when I put cardboard down in the living room to practice my "helicopters" and "windmills" and, instead, busted up some of the furniture, enough was enough. The adults in the Proft household re-asserted their authority. The same thing happened in New Hampshire. The adults let the kids have their romp in Iowa where Democrat caucus goers under 21-years-old more than tripled relative to that demographic's historic percentage of the electorate. But the Great Society liberals over yonder New England way weren't going to let the same blog-happy, weepy teenagers who put Sanjaya into the finals of last season's American Idol force an ethereal cliche-machine down their throats. They prefer their teddy bears from Vermont and their radical liberals from the 1960s. It wasn't Hillary's facsimile of human emotion. It wasn't a repudiation of the punditocracy. It wasn't even the vaunted "Clinton political machine" on the ground in New Hampshire. Even in the deconstructionist netherworld of the Democrat Party, the adults call the shots. Dan Proft is a Principal of Urquhart Media LLC, a Chicago-based public affairs firm and political commentator for the Don Wade & Roma Morning Show (5-9am) on Chicago's number one news talk radio station, WLS-AM 890. He can be reached at dan@urqmedia.com. For other Dan Proft commentaries (radio & print), please visit: http://www.urqmedia.com/proft/ For other recent Don Wade & Roma interviews, commentary, and discussions visit: http://www.wlsam.com/sectional.asp?id=16410 © All Rights Reserved ###

Dan Proft has the Iowa Caucus covered. Tune in to hear his Iowa Caucus and President Election analysis:

Thursday, January 3rd, 9pm - Mark Johnson's Blog Talk Radio
Analysis of the Iowa Caucus and the future of the ILGOP
Listen live at www.ilgopnet.com

Sunday, January 6th - Connected to Chicago with Bill Cameron
Analysis of the Iowa Caucus results and the ongoing Presidential campaign
WLS 890-AM @ 8am - Click here to listen live
WZZN 94.7 FM @ 6am - Click here to listen live

Sunday, January 6th - Beyond the Beltway with Bruce Dumont
Analysis of the Iowa Caucus results and the ongoing Presidential campaign
WLS 890-AM @ 6pm - Click here to listen live

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When it comes to political prognostication, I am a student of the William F. Buckley school. This is to say I do not predict things that I do not want to happen.

That and I am feeling a bit gun-shy after my New Year's college football bowl predictions.

So instead of offering the obligatory win, place, and show predictions for the Iowa caucuses, I extend a simple neighborly, "thank you" to our friends in the Hawkeye state for welcoming all comers to their political proving ground--even Alan Keyes.

Perhaps the nation's most engaged electorate and statistically its most literate, Iowa voters demand substance from candidates in exchange for countenancing their shtick and, in so doing, begin the important process of telling Dennis Kucinich to pack up his tin-foil hat and head back to Cleveland.

Think of what Iowans subject themselves to so that the rest of us don't have to.

For the last year, would-be caucus goers have been pounded with more unsolicited audition tapes than Clive Davis' A&R reps.

They dutifully watched bootleg copies of "Huckaboom", Mike Huckabee's vaudeville act with Walker Texas Ranger, and Extreme Makeover: Presidential Edition, the painstaking philosophical reconstruction of Mitt Romney.

They bore witness to Ron Paul and the Charge of his surprisingly well-financed Libertarian Light Brigade and, in the closing days, to John McCain aiming to stage the greatest comeback since Lazarus.

They have survived sleepless nights frightened that Hillary Clinton might be hiding in their closet and they have politely sung along to the bubble gum pop of Barackstar and his legions of fans who don't vote.

Such is their commitment to the responsibilities that accompany their political pre-eminence that Iowans have even endured country huckster John Edwards, a man so oily he could be a member of OPEC, who feigns to be a Heartland family farmer trapped in the body of a parasitic trial lawyer (I repeat myself).

Thanks to Iowans' heroic due diligence in separating the wheat from the chaff, metaphorically in this case, a month from now Hillary Clinton will be squaring off against the next President of the United States.

Like I said, I only predict what I want to happen.

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Dan Proft is a Principal of Urquhart Media LLC, a Chicago-based public affairs firm and political commentator for the Don Wade & Roma Morning Show (5-9am) on Chicago's number one news talk radio station, WLS-AM 890. He can be reached at dan@urqmedia.com.

For other Dan Proft commentaries (radio & print), please visit: http://www.urqmedia.com/proft/

For other recent Don Wade & Roma interviews, commentary, and discussions visit: http://www.wlsam.com/sectional.asp?id=16410

© All Rights Reserved

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