Bambenek Announces for 52nd District Ill. State Senate

On Wednesday, 6/15/11, I will be announcing my run for the Republican nomination for the State Senate for the 52nd District currently held by Democrat Mike Frerichs. After having spoken with many of you and others around the district and state, I have been honored and humbled by the outpouring of support. Together, I know we can bring this seat back home to the Republican Party.

It goes without saying the level of harm that years of Democratic Party governing have caused this state. Many companies have left Illinois to never return, crushing tax increases, billions of unpaid bills, and the list goes on. The only way this changes is by changing the people in Springfield. The good news is, the 52nd State Senate district is one seat where we can replace a tax-and-spend Democrat with a conservative fiscal watchdog.

This race will be difficult, make no mistake. Several Republican groups have listed this as a Tier 1 target and you can bet the Democrats will defend it with everything they have. I am up to the challenge, but I will need your help. Here are a few things you can do to help now:
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Bambenek Announces for 52nd District Ill. State Senate”


Quinn’s Tax Hikes Chasing Away Chicago Merc?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn and his profligate Democrat Party cohorts have been racking up the loss of one business after another since they decided to wildly raise the state’s taxes. Quinn’s and the Democrat’s next target seems to be the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, an ongoing Chicago tradition since 1898.

Chicago has the third highest corporate tax rate in the country and CME’s Chairman, Terence Duffy, and its Chief Financial Officer, James Parisi, say it is a burden with which they don’t think they need to contend.
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Quinn’s Tax Hikes Chasing Away Chicago Merc?”


Class Of 2011 Faces Highest Unemployment Rate In History

From BankruptingAmerica.org…

Graduates Face 21.1 Applicants Per Job

Arlington, VA – Today, BankruptingAmerica.org (an awareness campaign by Public Notice) released a new Web video titled “Is Washington Creating Our Job Crisis?” As the 1.7 million college students of the class of 2011 graduate, they face one of the highest unemployment rates for college graduates in U.S. history.

This video (runtime 1:01) launches just days after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy produced just over 50,000 jobs in May, the lowest number of jobs created in 2011 and the fewest jobs in eight months.

With unemployment rising to 9.1 percent, college graduates aren’t the only ones worrying about their economic future. A recent poll conducted by the Daily Beast/Newsweek found that by almost four to one, Americans say our economy is not delivering the jobs we need. Americans are even losing sleep over the economic crisis: 56 percent are so angry about their personal economic situation that they have lost sleep.
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Class Of 2011 Faces Highest Unemployment Rate In History”


Destroying the Dollar

-By Alan Caruba

Something I never thought I would ever see in my former hometown, a wealthy New Jersey suburb of New York City, was a Dollar Store, but one opened recently in a former supermarket. Dollar Stores are giving Wal-Mart, Target, and similar outlets a run for their money and it’s not hard to see why. The local one has just about everything you could need and all for astonishing low prices.

In countless ways people are looking to save money these days. The looming problem, however, is the question of what happens when Americans wake up to learn that even a dollar can no longer buy anything?

When Faith in U.S. Dollars and U.S. Debt is Dead the Game is over – And that Day is Closer than You May Think” is the cheery title of an article recently posted on EconomicCollapse.com.
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Destroying the Dollar”


More Arts Funding Boondoggles in Age of Obama Economic Meltdown

-By Warner Todd Huston

Yes, it’s time for another tale of millions of your tax dollars wasted by the NEA on “art” in America.

Supporters of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) like to puff themselves up as saviors of high “art” in lowbrow America. They love to imagine that without their advocacy for spending millions of our tax dollars to support dubious art projects, why, “art” in America would vanish. After all, you people are all uncultured, Neanderthals, you know?

Bruce E. Walker recently alerted us of the newest boondoggle to come out of the NEA. This time the NEA is sponsoring hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to video game makers.

Yes, video games. Apparently the NEA thinks we have a dearth of video games in America and they need to rescue this important and neglected “art” from somehow disappearing.
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More Arts Funding Boondoggles in Age of Obama Economic Meltdown”


Announcing the Running on Empty Tour

-By Warner Todd Huston

Americans have sent Obama a bill for: $560,699.03

The number above is how much more gas will cost Americans over the next 12 months compared to the price when President Obama took office.

Americans for Prosperity Foundation is kicking off the Running On Empty Tour, a national grassroots tour to highlight President Obama on his administrative policies that have led to some serious pain at the pump for all Americans.
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Announcing the Running on Empty Tour”


Pay Up America, Each of You Owe The Govt $534,000

-By Warner Todd Huston

Obama will not take a check. You must sign over your homes, your 401k’s, the pink slip to your autos, all your savings…. come on America, be patriotic, pay Obama what you owe him. It amounts to $534,000 per person, so you better get your accounting in order.

Where does this $534,000 number come from? USA Today says that a little known government report pegs the government’s unfunded mandates at $61.6 trillion. Yes, that’s trillion with a “t.” That is the amount of money that all the un-Constitutional spending by the federal government will cost the taxpayers if it all continues to be mandated by law, court orders, regulations, and back room deals made by grasping government officials…

Read the Rest at RightPundits.com.


Ill. Democrat Assaults Fellow Senator On Floor of Senate!

-By Warner Todd Huston

Apparently, when anyone dares question an Illinois Democrat he gets violent… even if he’s a state senator and he’s right on the floor of the senate itself.

51st District Senator Kyle McCarter (R- Lebanon) objected during the debate today about the ComEd utility legislation the Democrats were pushing. His fellow Senator, the 36th District’s Senator Mike Jacobs (D, Moline), was pushing a vote on the bill without telling everyone present that his father, former senator Denny Jacobs, was a lobbyist for ComEd, the company that would benefit most from the bill.

Sen. McCarter rose to his feet and calmly alerted the house to the fact that not only was Senator Jacobs’ father a lobbyist for ComEd but that the Democrat Party was the largest recipient of ComEd’s campaign cash.
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Ill. Democrat Assaults Fellow Senator On Floor of Senate!”


Debt Ceiling Debate: Democrats Won’t Even Vote For Their Own Ideas!

-By Warner Todd Huston

Late on Tuesday the GOP led House of Representatives defeated a vote to raise the debt ceiling. This is not a surprising vote, to be sure, but the odd part of this deal is that some Democrats voted with Republicans even after sending a letter to Obama only a month ago saying they supported raising it.

In mid April, 114 Democrats sent a letter to President Obama pledging their support for a “clean extension of the debt ceiling.”

These 114 Democrats agreed with Obama that the debt ceiling needed to be raised without adding spending cuts to the bill and that anyone that wants to force spending cuts to be added to the bill would be “willfully risking the full faith and credit of the United States of America.” It was an emergency, they claimed.
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Debt Ceiling Debate: Democrats Won’t Even Vote For Their Own Ideas!”


Chicago Tea Party: Do You Have Time for a $90 Billion Phone Call?‏

Like Do you have time for a $90 Billion phone call? on Facebook share on Google Buzz

Please contact your legislators today to tell them to support critical pension reform in the state of Illinois. A vote may happen this week, before the May 31 deadline. Illinois is broke with an estimated public debt of $210 billion. Our debt was downgraded 9 times in 2010. Governor Quinn and the Democrat politicians in Springfield raised your income taxes by 67% in January, yet we still have an $8 billion budget gap. The main cause is exorbitant pension and healthcare promises made to public employees. Thousands of public employees have been promised million or multi-million dollar pensions.

Contact your State Representative and your State Senator and let them know you want them to vote “Yes” on public pension reform.

Click below to find the phone and email address of your own:
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Chicago Tea Party: Do You Have Time for a $90 Billion Phone Call?‏”


Democrats Plan: Destroy U.S. Healthcare So They Can Re-Build it in Socialist Image

-By Warner Todd Huston

Obama and his Democrat pals have been lying to you, America. They do not want to find a cure for America’s obviously ailing healthcare system. They want to erect its headstone. Democrats want to destroy every aspect of our healthcare system. They have to, you see, because if they don’t they cannot rebuild it to operate under a socialist model. More proof of that was highlighted by Conn Carroll earlier in the week at the Washington Examiner.

Carroll rightly points out that Obamacare is purposefully designed to collapse Medicare and to run 25% of all hospitals out of business. Sure this will hurt — even kill — thousands of America’s most vulnerable citizens, but, heck, you have to break a few citizen eggs to create the ideal, socialist omelet, don’t you know?
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Democrats Plan: Destroy U.S. Healthcare So They Can Re-Build it in Socialist Image”


Defunding of Planned Parenthood Upended With Secret Amendment in Tennessee Budget Work

-By Warner Todd Huston

One of the Things Wrong With Our Legislative System Appears in Tennessee

One of the things wrong with our system of creating legislation and passing it into law in America today has appeared in Tennessee. The Volunteer State is not the only place things like this happen, either.

Recently the Tennessee legislature passed a bill to remove state funding from the abortion mill operator Planned Parenthood. The bill was a hard fought victory for the Tennessee GOP and finds favor with the voters as well. As it happens, while the budget was winding its way through the Tennessee legislature a thus far unnamed state senator slipped in an amendment that no one saw, no one voted on, and no one knew anything about. This surreptitious amendment completely upends the defunding of Planned Parenthood quite despite the open legislative process that eliminated the funding in the first place.
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Defunding of Planned Parenthood Upended With Secret Amendment in Tennessee Budget Work”


$90,825 Literally Went to the Dogs in D.C.

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Chicago Tribune reports that $90,825 in so-called stimulus money went to the dogs in Washington D.C. No, not the Blue Dogs. It went to actual dogs.

The National Park Service (NPS) spent $90,825 in stimulus funds to upgrade Marion Park, a popular dog destination on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. The money went to repainting the existing fence, sidewalk repair, and purchasing new benches and trash cans for the park.

Wonderful ,eh? What a waste of money.


Illinois State Legislators Try to Explain to Fox Business Network Why Ill. Is Going Bankrupt

FOX Business Network (FBN) has been airing a series called, “Entitlement Nation: Makers vs. Takers.” The last episode will feature a special focus on two of the biggest entitlement programs in the country: Social Security and Medicare.

FBN will interview Illinois House GOP leader Tom Cross and State Treasurer Dan Rutherford to examine how entitlements have affected the Land of Lincoln… I’ll answer that, by the way: badly.

When: Friday, May 27th, 2011; 11 AM/ET
Where: FOX Business Network (FBN)

(AT&T, Channel 211; DISH, Channel 206; DIRECTV, Channel 259)


Will Illinois Be America’s Greece?

The chief fiscal officer of tax-and-spend Illinois is preparing to warn lenders that allowing it to borrow any more money would be a major risk. Will his be the first state to go bankrupt?

Treasurer Dan Rutherford is a Republican in a very blue state, and the usual critics will say his warning is political grandstanding. We think the guy who counts Illinois’ money has simply embraced fiscal reality and sanity in shouting from the financial rooftops: “Don’t help us anymore; we can’t afford it.”

Rutherford on Monday said the state was in a deep hole and needed to stop digging and that he was willing to contact all the major bond houses and warn them that lending Illinois more money would be a “major risk.”

“If I need to send letters to the rating companies to tell them the treasurer of Illinois is opposed to more borrowing, I’m going to do it,” Rutherford said. “We need to cut our spending and break our unsustainable borrowing cycle before we realize a further financial disaster.”…

Read the rest at Investors.com.


Political Corruption: An Illinois Specialty

-By Warner Todd Huston

In just one more example of the thousands of examples of political graft in Illinois, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that being a board member of the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board is one giant no-show, do-nothing pay off to friends, family, and allies of Illinois’ Democrats. Members make up to $100,000 a year to do practically nothing on this useless board and we, the people, are paying through the nose for it all.

Members of this board have a grueling yearly schedule, indeed. They meet once a month. Well, “meet” is relative as rules allow them to just phone it in… literally… as members constantly “attend” the meetings by listening in over the phone. So, yes, they are paid up to $100,000 a year to make a phone call once a month.

Even so, maybe you’d think that their actual duties are time consuming aside from that big once a month meeting? Not according to the Post-Dispatch. You see, the board also has full time, paid staffers that assemble all the reports and then make the recommendations for the board members to vote on. When the members “meet” they usually just rubber stamp the work of the paid staffers.
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Political Corruption: An Illinois Specialty”


Tenn. Voters To Get Chance to Say Abortion Not A ‘Protected Right’

-By Warner Todd Huston

This could shape up as a major battle between supporters of infanticide and pro-lifers in 2014. Pro-abortion forces will likely flood the Volunteer State with out-of-state money to defeat a referendum that may appear on the 2014 ballot allowing citizens to decide whether or not their state constitution really does have a special right protecting abortion.

This referendum is aimed at over turning a 2000 state court decision that read all sorts of “rights” into the Tennessee Constitution that had for 200 years never appeared there. The decision erased several state laws restricting abortion under the assumption that the state constitution had even stronger protections for abortion that does the U.S. Constitution.

The referendum will read as follows:
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Tenn. Voters To Get Chance to Say Abortion Not A ‘Protected Right’”


American Government Must Be Torn Down and Rebuilt

-By Warner Todd Huston

In New York you need a license to work as a gas pumper at a gas station. A contradiction since you do not need that expensive license, training, and government meddling to pump your own gas in New York. In Chicago it is supposedly illegal to fly a kite inside the city limits. In Delaware it is illegal to have a basketball hoop on your driveway. In nearly every city and town it is illegal to build a shed on your own property without government approval and fees spent to “allow” you to do so.

These are all examples of how the United States of America has fallen severely away from the land of liberty and personal freedom we once enjoyed. These are also examples of why we need politicians that will run on eliminating laws, regulations, a government meddling, not adding more.

We are being “governmented” to death, America. The nanny state has reached out to quash everything we as individuals want to do. We cannot put up a yard fence, we aren’t allowed to park certain vehicles on our own property, we cannot have garage sales without licenses, fees, “allowances,” and government meddling.
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American Government Must Be Torn Down and Rebuilt”


Sen. Dick Durbin Caused ‘Gang of 6’ Talks to Fall Apart

-By Warner Todd Huston

From a gang of six to a gang of Dicks, Durbin torpedoes compromise once again

The “gang of six” is a group of senators who had taken it upon themselves to come to some sort of agreement over the competing budget ideas between Republicans and Democrats. It was hoped that these six senators could find a compromise that could kick off the debate with some sort of general agreement right at the start. But it was doomed to begin with. In fact, it is easy to understand how the new “gang of six” talks fell apart in the U.S. Senate this week.

The gang of six had the misfortune of having Dick Durbin (D, IL), one of the most partisan, far left senators in America, as a member. Compromise was never in the cards.
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Sen. Dick Durbin Caused ‘Gang of 6’ Talks to Fall Apart”


Tax Dollars Going to a 350-Pound Guy in Calf Who Pretends He’s a Diaper-Wearing Baby

-By Warner Todd Huston

Here is the waste and fraud that your tax dollars are put to, America. Senator Tom Coburn has alerted the nation to a 30-year-old man in California named Stanley Thornton, Jr., who is paid by Social Security to lay about his house and pretend he is a baby replete with diapers, baby bottles for nourishment and a 300 pound “nurse” to take care of him.

No kidding. This guy pretends to be a baby and we, the people, send him Supplemental Security Income benefits to do it.

Of course, this California nut claims that he is mentally unable to cope with life and that his SSI benefits are needed because he is “disabled” by his mental state of thinking he is a baby. But Coburn thinks this guy is just scamming the government.
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Tax Dollars Going to a 350-Pound Guy in Calf Who Pretends He’s a Diaper-Wearing Baby”


Newt’s Tuesday Blogger Conference Call

-By Warner Todd Huston

I just finished with a blogger conference call held by Speaker Gingrich in which he tried to further explain where he stands on Paul Ryan, the budget, and Obamacare.

Newt has have been characterized as “trashing Paul Ryan,” and Ryan himself took a swipe at him on a Chicago radio show (Ryan said something like, “with conservative like him who needs enemies?”), and of course many see his purported attack on Ryan as a violation of Reagan’s famed 11th Commandment. So Newt has a lot to answer for, for sure.

He’s badly confused the situation and some are calling for him to drop out and give it all up. Even Rush Limbaugh is claiming that Newt knows he can’t win the nomination and this whole thing is just an effort at positioning himself for other things in the future. (Rush says Newt might just be angling for a position at the Aspen Institute)
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Newt’s Tuesday Blogger Conference Call”


VIDEO: The Morality of Profit

Profit is not “taken,” it is earned. Profit is as moral as can be.

Courtesy of the Atlas Network.

The Atlas Economic Research Foundation is a nonprofit organization connecting a global network of more than 400 free-market organizations in over 80 countries to the ideas and resources needed to advance the cause of liberty.

Atlas Network Your Tube Channel.


Government Steals Little Girl’s $2,000 of Lost-And-Found Money

-By Warner Todd Huston

There is an ages old American tradition where it concerns found money. We are all familiar with the concept that if one finds a pile of money lying on the ground and it is taken it to the authorities, if the actual owners cannot be found, then that money becomes the property of the person that found the money and dutifully turned it it. If the owner does turn up, of course, a reward is usually the result. This practice is meant to encourage honesty among the populace. But the city of Dallas, Texas is destroying that honesty-is-the-best-policy ideal with its greed.

As the story goes, in February teenager Ashley Donaldson found an envelope stuffed with $2,000 in the parking lot of shopping center in North Dallas. Like a good citizen she took the envelope to the local police and they began the process of trying to find the owner. Now, in May, the police have given up the search and have decided that the owner of the money cannot be found.
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Government Steals Little Girl’s $2,000 of Lost-And-Found Money”


Thanks Governor Quinn: Illinois Loses Another Business and One More (Sears) on the Way Out

-By Warner Todd Huston

Wisconsin is celebrating over the stupidity of the political class in Illinois, a state that is steadily destroying its business climate and mounting some pretty high tax rates. The town of Menasha, Wisconsin, though, loves Illinois because Prolamina Corp. has chosen it for a new flexible-packaging plant, one it is moving from the Land of Lincoln to Wisconsin.

Prolamina Corp. will begin building its new facility in Wisconsin in August. The facility will be serving the needs of the “tobacco, cheese, pouch materials, pet food, medical, produce and snack food markets.”

“The location offers lower operating costs, improved response times and lower freight costs to customers,” said Bevis, who started the company last year as Packaging Solutions Holdings Inc., Lake Forest, Ill.

So, Illinois has lost yet one more business. There has been a steady stream of business fleeing from Illinois.

This news comes as a prelude to reports that Sears is shopping for a new state to move to, as well.

Sears has its Headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago but is now considering a move out-of-state.
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Thanks Governor Quinn: Illinois Loses Another Business and One More (Sears) on the Way Out”


GM Exec: Reporting GM’s Failures Hurts… Republicans?

-By Warner Todd Huston

In an odd turn of events, former GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz thinks that anyone that criticizes GM is not only “mis-informed” but insists that those “foaming ideologues” that criticize the car giant are “damaging the Republican Party.”

It is interesting that an executive in the company derided as “Government Motors” is trying to direct attention away from his minders in the Obama administration and toward the opposing party, and just before a general election at that.

It is also interesting to see Lutz defending GM as the “future” of the car business. Lately GM has not been turning out the sort of products that puts the company at the head of much of anything.
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GM Exec: Reporting GM’s Failures Hurts… Republicans?”


Left Laments Ryan’s GOP Budget NOT Raising America’s Ire

-By Warner Todd Huston

The left is desperate to color Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s GOP budget plan (The Path to Prosperity, as it is styled) as the end of America, crazed to call his plan a killer of old people, and maniacal about saying that the GOP and Ryan want to destroy the country by asking for a few budget cuts. The left even claims that “the country” or “the people” are against the GOP budget proposal. But even lefty blogger Dave Weigel is asking the seminal question: where are the protests?

Now, there does seem to be enough evidence that the people are not very optimistic about America’s economic outlook. And members of Congress are certainly feeling the heat over the budget. I recently spoke to GOP Chief Deputy Whip Rep. Peter Roskam and he confirms that. So, the American people are exercised about the budget. They just aren’t mad about the Ryan plan.

The fact seems to be that the Democrat’s are losing the issue and all their demagoguery against Ryan — led by the chief demagogue in the White House — are not winning the American people over to their side by trying to make Paul Ryan out to be an ogre.
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Left Laments Ryan’s GOP Budget NOT Raising America’s Ire”


Rep. Peter Roskam on the Ryan Budget Plan: Obama’s Lack of Leadership Gives GOP a Leading Issue

-By Warner Todd Huston

No one but the worst sycophant thinks that President Obama’s latest stab at a federal budget is a serious plan. In fact, that he’s come before the American people again with a second budget plan itself bespeaks of a president badly floundering on the issue. This has left the Republican Party, and more specifically the GOP led House of Representatives, as the only real game in town on the budget, the debt, and in correcting the Bacchanalia of spending that Congress has indulged for nigh on the last 100 years.

Sadly the Old Media has let Obama skate on the fact that this is his second stab at a budget. If this had been a Republican president forced to throw away his first budget plan, forced to offer a second one, the Old Media would be proclaiming him a president in trouble, a failed leader, a man without influence. Obama, however, has been given a complete pass on his total failure to lead and convince.

Regardless, the GOP has proven to be the adults in the room here with its public face of Paul Ryan and his “path to prosperity” budget plan. As flawed as it might be it is the only serious plan on the table at this time.

I recently spoke to GOP Chief Deputy Whip Peter Roskam (R, IL) about the House plan.
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Rep. Peter Roskam on the Ryan Budget Plan: Obama’s Lack of Leadership Gives GOP a Leading Issue”


Tax Day Tea Party Now Even Bigger: Cain, Grover, Cisco – 4/18‏

The 2011 Chicago Tax Day Tea Party on Monday, April 18 at noon in Daley Plaza has grown even bigger. Businessman, tea party star and Presidential Candidate Herman Cain is now set to speak at the rally. Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform and one of the original authors of the Contract with America will also speak in Chicago on tax day. But that’s not all. We’ll also be joined by Cisco Cotto and Dan Proft from WLS AM-890.

Let us know you’re coming by registering here. You can also RSVP on Facebook here.

Herman Cain, Grover Norquist, Cisco Cotto and Dan Proft will round out an already stellar group of speakers, liberty leaders and regular people who are making a difference. The confirmed speakers at the event include:
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Tax Day Tea Party Now Even Bigger: Cain, Grover, Cisco – 4/18‏”