With all the excitement of organizing for the July 31st day of action home demo this past Sunday(full report coming up tonight), we were a little behind on reporting on other local news. As anyone who has been following the news about the congressional debate over the debt ceiling can attest, McHenry, Illinois Tea Partier Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) has gotten his fifteen minutes of fame by posting You tube videos of his temper tantrums and verbally sparring on cable new programs, claiming “I won’t place one more dollar of debt upon the backs of my kids and grand kids unless we structurally reform the way this town spends money!”According to a Chicago Sun-Times article that first ran on July 27th, Joe Walsh has some fiscal responsibility and family values issues of his own to deal with: his ex-wife is suing him for over $100,000 in late child support payments. While Walsh's campaign back story makes him out to be an unfortunate out-of-work lawyer that lost his Evanston, Ill. condo, and the Sun-Times describes him as “sometimes-employed financial consultant/venture capitalist/Republican activist”, something doesn't quite add up:
From the sun times:
"Before getting elected, he had told Laura Walsh that because he was out of work or between jobs, he could not make child support payments. So she was surprised to read in his congressional campaign disclosures that he was earning enough money to loan his campaign $35,000.
Joe personally loaned his campaign $35,000, which, given that he failed to make any child support payments to Laura because he ‘had no money’ is surprising,” Laura Walsh’s attorneys wrote in a motion filed in December seeking $117,437 in back child support and interest. “Joe has paid himself back at least $14,200 for the loans he gave himself.”While we in South Side Chicago Anti-Racist Action are no fans of the Democratic Party, we don't particularly like to see uppity Tea Baggers give lectures on how to be responsible with money when they can't even pay child support. Our advice to Rep. Walsh would be to take some of that $175,000 in taxpayer money that he collects as a salary for being a member of congress and ensure that his children go to college so that they don't end up being as ill-educated and hypocritical as their father.
For more on the Tea Party movement, check out teapartynationalism.com and this useful review of the report.
Read full report here from the Chicago Sun Times
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