Illinois is running out of time and money

[Valin]

Washington Post:

 

George F. Will

April 25 2012

 

After trying to tax Illinois to governmental solvency and economic dynamism, Pat Quinn, a Democrat who has been governor since 2009, now says “our rendezvous with reality has arrived.” Actually, Illinois is still reality-averse, so Americans may soon learn the importance of the freedom to fail in a system of competitive federalism.

 

Illinois was more heavily taxed than the five contiguous states (Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin) even before January 2011, when Quinn got a lame-duck legislature (its successor has fewer Democrats) to raise corporate taxes 30 percent (from 7.3 percent to 9.5 percent), giving Illinois one of the highest state corporate taxes and the fourth-highest combination of national and local corporate taxation in the industrialized world. Since 2009, Quinn has spent more than $500 million in corporate welfare to bribe companies not to flee the tax environment he has created.

 

(Snip)

 

To prepare for Illinois’ probable plunge into insolvency, read “Freedom to Fail: The Keystone of American Federalism” by Paul E. Peterson and Daniel Nadler in the University of Chicago Law Review. They note that only 25 of the world’s 193 nations have federal systems, and in most of the 25 the freedom of the lower tiers of government is more circumscribed by the central government than American state governments are by the federal government. American states’ greater freedom — autonomy under America’s system of dual sovereignty — from the central government’s supervision requires that they be disciplined instead by the market for government bonds, and by the real possibility of default.

 

(Snip)

 

 

 

[Geee]

My son and DIL worked very hard last year trying to improve their business. Everything extra they took in went to the tax increase by the State of Illinois. They will not bother this year.

[Rheo]

Good read.

 

And the Red Ink Flows Freely on the Red Line

by John F. Di Leo

 

What Chicagoans now call The Red Line used to be known as the Ravenswood Line, a century-old commuter train, part of the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). It runs all the way from Howard Street on the north to 95th Street on the south.

 

As Aliotta-Haynes-Jeremiah famously said of nearby Lake Shore Drive, it’ll take you “from rags on up to riches” in just fifteen minutes. But unlike the scenic LSD, this train line can also give you a close-up view of some pretty rough neighborhoods, making some stations very dangerous. And the more dangerous a place is, the more you put off repairing it, until the cost of needed repairs winds up being as high as it can possibly be.

 

Chicago’s Mayor Emanuel (D, Wilmette) and Governor Quinn (D, Moscow) have announced that they’ll put off these repairs no longer. Announcing a billion dollar repair bill for the total CTA plan, they expect to spend some $86 million in 2012 on temporary fixes for seven of the Red Line’s north side stations alone.

 

On the one hand, no responsible commentator would claim that some repairs aren’t needed. I grew up in Evanston, and both my father and my grandmother started their daily rail commute at the Howard El station every day for years. I saw the line deteriorate even then, and that was decades ago. Yes, the line needs work.

 

But on the other hand, no responsible politician proposes a billion dollars in new spending when the city, county, and state are bankrupt, when tax rates have already been hiked past the breaking point, when unfunded pension obligations alone have a claim on all anticipated revenue for decades, when the economy is stagnant with no prospect for real recovery on the horizon.

 

John F. Di Leo is a Chicago-based Customs broker and international trade lecturer. He lived the first year of his life a stone’s throw from the Howard El Station, and that station remained his family’s gateway to downtown Chicago during the dozen years they lived in south Evanston. But like so many others, his family fled to more hospitable neighborhoods in the 1970s, leaving the area to those reflexive Democrats who continued to look at the decay with satisfaction, and vote, year after year, for more of the same.

[Valin]

My son and DIL worked very hard last year trying to improve their business. Everything extra they took in went to the tax increase by the State of Illinois. They will not bother this year.

 

I have family in the Rockford area....they are not happy campers.

[Evad]

Someone posed the question some time ago, "Is there any state run by a RAT governor that isn't totally screwed up?"

I think the short answer is "NO".

[Saltbag]

I only get upset by federal assistance. Do I want Illinois, California, New York, etc. to fail? Of course not. Do they deserve it? Yes.

[Evad]

I only get upset by federal assistance. Do I want Illinois, California, New York, etc. to fail? Of course not. Do they deserve it? Yes.

 

hmmm....New York, Kalifornia??....do they need to fail????

hmmm..tough choice for me.

Of course, I am a heartless. right wing, knuckle draggin', gun totin' TEA baggin', zero hatin'....oh well, you know.