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The continued growth of employee payroll and healthcare benefit expenses, along with what county officials describe as a “restricted use of transportation-related taxes,” are driving the county’s general fund shortfall.
Summary and audio linked here.
Much of the routine trade and investment between China and America is entirely appropriate and in America’s interest. But inserting the Chinese Communist Party into America’s pay-to-play system and its economic development strategy isn’t just crossing a line. It’s a leap into an abyss of stupidity.
Summary and audio linked here.
Illinois paid the price for embracing Fauci’s “science.” Here’s the retrospective.
Podcast link is here.
And as the previous article reports….toll increases to pay for Cook County/Chicago incompetence
Start taxing the illegals for their phones, free rent, transportation and all their other benefits. Watch how fast they leave the once great state of Lincoln.
Well you could cut spend, oh who am I kidding?
Just raise taxes like you were going to do anyways. They are legal extortionists.
An extortionist is a person who commits extortion. It refers to anyone who uses violence, threats, intimidation, or the abuse of their authority to force someone to hand over money, property, or do something against their will.
The continued growth of (bloat) ,,,
Taxistan knows how do da bloat better than any state.
Dems own da bloat and will never ever try to stop it.
Da Bloat pulls da D lever every election.
Bloat is the offspring of corruption.
OK. Time to beat the property tax increase once again. Where else can the County go for more revenue? Cutting expenses is never on the table. Next thing you know, she will propose a tax on UHauls moving out of the County to penalize those pesky emigrants who want to get out of town.
Yes, since Cook County can’t build an electrified fence around its border to keep residents from moving, your U-Haul tax is a good option.
Lets face it, the corrupt Dems in Illinois are just terrible managers of Big Guvmnt.
Most of these jobs should be outsourced but the Dems masters, the Illinois public sector unions, would never allow it!!
Terrible managers in your eyes but not the majority of voters. That’s what they care about. Not some dude that lives in Colorado because Hoodridge was too expensive for him.
Hoodridge was Ok it was Taxistan and all of the corrupt Dems ruining that state that I did not like.
Plus a better job opportunity and better weather led me out to Colorado.
Also, my bank account is $200K+ fatter since I left Taxistan over 20+ years ago.
A +65% increase in county spending in just 6 years explains a lot to most taxpayers. The punch bowl is empty, the party is over. Democrats created a fiscal mess in the state, Chicago and Cook with unbridled spending. Who will clean it all up!? The logical and fair place to look for a fix is the public unions – they are the main culprits.
Elon Musk can clear it up. He’s a trillionaire.
Yes he can. He can help the DOGE crew audit Crook County.
Political animals are specifically to blame for creating this mess. Temporary supplemental Covid funds are now considered baseline revenue for budget making purposes. This is how political animal Kam Buchner shoehorned his un-reform of the RTA through the Springfield sewer. Create a fictional ‘fiscal cliff’ and use the Useless Media to scare the AWFLs into voting for political animals who then confiscate more taxes to cover their charade.
Great news. You have completed the trifecta of having the State, Cook County and City of Chicago all with deficits. Throw in CPS and you’re batting a 1000. So what solution will they pick? Behind door one we have higher taxes. Door two hides more debt. Behind door three is one time accounting gimmicks to make the budgets look balanced. Let’s bet the farm and go for all of the above. And before you point out the obvious, there are no other options in that state.
What do you want to bet they drag the decision out? Unfortunately Prickwanker is up for election in November.
And she will be elected by the slaves that live there.
Ah yes, the time honored tradition of slaves being able to vote.
Only in Chicago. The slaves get to pick their masters. Unknown history. After the civil war, some slaves chose to stay with their masters rather than explore freedom despite the ostensible freedom to do otherwise. The reason was that they valued the slavery they knew than the freedom they didn’t.
They were no longer slaves and CHOSE to stay. You seem to struggle with the concept of free men choosing government that you don’t agree with as some form of slavery. That doesn’t make them slaves. Far from it. They are happy with their decisions as is evident by Illinois Democrats continual re-election.
One word, GERRYMANDERING!!
Republicans can’t win any statewide offices where gerrymandering has absolutely zero impact. But sure, it’s because of gerrymandering.
The point is one cannot freely choose when one is ignorant of the alternatives. For many, the safety of bondage is better than the uncertainty of freedom. People can choose to be slaves or they can choose to be free. It happened in the ante-bellum south. The slaves had choices. Many slaves chose the uncertainty and risk of escape to the safety and certainty of bondage. There were vastly more slaves in the south than slave owners. If the slaves decided to rebel as a whole, it would have been impossible for the south to subdue them. Chains didn’t keep… Read more »
And the people that vote similar to you are enlightened and those that vote differently are ignorant. I’ve met many ignorant voters in my life including several encounters on this site. It doesn’t seem to coincide with just one party. The fact remains that people tend to vote their own self interest and in Chicago and Illinois, those voters trust Democrats more. It doesn’t help that the ILGOP puts forward candidates like Bailey.
Former slaves voted Republican until Democrats invented Jim Crow. Public employees and retirees will vhasote Democrat until someone offers a better bribe … or until bankruptcy and/or insolvency and/or inflation emancipate(s) the rest of us. Taxpayers and parents and illiterate grads will have long memories during the reconstruction that’s only just begun. A crow in every pot!
People vote their own self interest. Shocking. You think the founders weren’t aware of that?
Of course the founders were very aware. That is why the Constitution gave us a republic, not simply a democracy. And why only one of the houses of Congress was elected by direct vote. And why they built checks and balances to try to stop the tyranny of the majority.
They didn’t foresee that 200 years later the country would be taken over by people bleating “It’s what the voters want!” as if that justifies anything and everything.
My question for you is whether you applaud or deplore the results of elections dominated by low-information and/or self-interest voters. Also, do you have a view of whether self-interest has a short or long time horizon? Some think that the stock market produces a useful consensus on the trajectory of the economy and perhaps election results provide a useful consensus on what “the people” collectively want from those who are elected. Athenian democracy lasted for a time but then descended into chaos when crowds were persuaded by oratory by politicians with agendas. Socrates R.I.P. I’m concerned that larger American cities… Read more »
Beautiful, P.T.
Directionally, PPF is not wrong. Chicago and Illinois elect Democrats. I believe he ignores or discounts the voter fraud that, in close races, sways primary election results, though he is otherwise correct. However, I disagree that voters in Illinois are voting in their own self-interest, as he claims. Most Democratic voters appear to be casting their ballots based on tribal, racial, or ethnic affiliation rather than policy. Only true progressive voters support candidates for their policies rather than their tribal affiliations—a distinction unscrupulous candidates have long exploited for their own power. For example, Brandon Johnson ran as a progressive candidate,… Read more »
Are public employees and retirees true progressive voters or self:interest voters? No reason they couldn’t be both, of course. And no way to tell which is dominant. People can hold principles (and vote them) contrary to their narrowly defined self interest. But the Roosevelt’s and the Kennedy’s did not miss many meals.
I’m a retired public employee, City of Chicago, and I never voted a democrat and never will. Nor am I a voter who places my self interests above my political beliefs and vote for safe streets, economic success and common sense agendas of which the democrats fulfill none of those issues. The pension laws and rules were in effect way before I was hired and minimal changes that were made I had no control over since I never voted for any democrat who run the state so my pension is what the laws allowed. A democrat mayor, took away the… Read more »
“Slave” or “serf” is rhetorical not literal. I do hope you’ve read “Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. I regard it as the seminal work about betrayal of the working class.
“Restricted use of transportation-related taxes?”
How about “unrestricted spending is ‘driving the county’s general fund shortfall?'”
The county’s problem isn’t lack of revenue, it’s lack of spending restraint
So what’s Toni’s plan to cut $550 million from County spending? A few hundred each from County employees should more than cover it, it’s the least they could do, and they do the least.
Every employee that owes back taxed would at least put a cut in that!
Payroll, employee benefits and of course pension benefits are draining the bank accounts. Who would have thought?