Illinois...a sad State of affairs

[macrockett]

www.suntimes.com/news/elections/2109508,CST-NWS-quinn18.article#

Brady bashed as anti-union
Quinn hits opponent's hiring record, minimum-wage stance

March 18, 2010

BY STEVE CONTORNO Staff Reporter

SPRINGFIELD -- Gov. Quinn and House Speaker Michael Madigan took turns Wednesday attacking GOP candidate for governor Sen. Bill Brady as an anti-labor politician who would work to abolish the minimum wage.

Speaking at a gathering of the Illinois Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Quinn told the pro-union crowd that Brady owned a construction company that only hired non-union workers, and Madigan said the Republican senator from Bloomington would work "to spread that gospel all over the state of Illinois."
» Click to enlarge image
Gov. Quinn (left) told a pro-union crowd that GOP candidate for governor Sen. Bill Brady owned a construction company that only hired non-union workers.
(Rich Hein/Sun-Times/AP)


RELATED STORIES
Quinn, Madigan rip Brady before union crowd

"We're not going to have a middle class if we allow a lot of anti-labor, anti-union operators to get in politics and tear to shreds fundamental things we all agree on," Quinn said. "He doesn't believe in the minimum wage. He wants to abolish it."

Brady's campaign offered a pointed rebuttal.

"We're not going to have a middle class if we continue the job-killing policies and insider politics of the Blagojevich-Quinn administration," Brady campaign manager Jerry Clarke said. A Brady campaign official added that Brady's construction company has hired both union and non-union workers in its 40-year history.

On the minimum wage, Brady spokesman Dan Egler said the senator favors "re-coupling the state minimum wage with the federal wage," which is $7.25 an hour, 75 cents less than the state's current minimum wage.

But Egler said, "I don't remember him ever saying" he would abolish it altogether.

Quinn also accused Brady of embracing a budget proposed by the conservative Illinois Policy Institute that would impose $4.7 billion in cuts -- more than double what Quinn has proposed -- and freeze spending for three years. The governor called it a "slash-and-burn" policy.

Still, Quinn and Madigan both predicted that the governor's race would be heated, tight and expensive. "We're going to be in the toughest political battle in Illinois in a long, long time," Quinn said.

On another front, Quinn signed legislation that will move the primary election from February to the third Tuesday in March. The election was moved to the first week in February to give President Obama an early victory during his 2008 run, but produced one of the lowest ever voter turnouts in 2010

Well I guess the unions have made up their mind as to who they are voting for...

[asmodeus]

Brady needs to watch those Chis Christie videos for an example of someone who would truly motivate Republican voters.

Brady should bask in his anti-unionism and be proud of it. If he were to vow not to raise taxes, and vow to cut back on public pensions, he would win in a landslide. He doesn't need to do anything else other than those two things.

[macrockett]

Mar 19, 2010 13:29:38 GMT -6 asmodeus said:

Brady needs to watch those Chis Christie videos for an example of someone who would truly motivate Republican voters.

Brady should bask in his anti-unionism and be proud of it. If he were to vow not to raise taxes, and vow to cut back on public pensions, he would win in a landslide. He doesn't need to do anything else other than those two things.

Agree.

[macrockett]

For Immediate Release: March 24, 2010
Contact: Sara Wojcicki
217-782-0576
Cross, Andrzejewski Call for Forensic Audit of Illinois Budget
Audit would thoroughly review state spending and practices during Blagojevich/Quinn era

Springfield…House Republican Leader Tom Cross is joining with conservative reformer and recent gubernatorial candidate Adam Andrzejewski in calling for a comprehensive forensic audit of Illinois’ finances dating back to former Governor Rod Blagojevich’s first-term.

“During a time when every family, every school, and every non-profit organization is assessing their own budgets and finding ways to make every dollar stretch a bit more, it is only appropriate that we ask the same from government,” said House Republican Leader Tom Cross.

House Resolution 1057, requires the Auditor General to immediately begin a forensic audit of state spending, hiring, procurement and contracts. The resolution also asks the Auditor General to review the actions taken by Boards and Commissions as they relate to spending, hiring and contracts during the Blagojevich/Quinn era.

The resolution also provided the Auditor General with expanded powers, including that of requesting subpoenas from the House of Representatives to complete its review. A bi-partisan group of lawmakers would be assigned to oversee the effort by the Auditor General.

“There is not a person in this state that would say government is running as efficiently as it could be,” said Andrzejewski. “So that is why I am pleased to be working with House Republican Leader Tom Cross to see if we can make government more efficient, effective and responsible. I believe this audit will identify areas of cost-savings and efficiencies that will help reduce the cost and size of government.”

“We need to demonstrate to Illinois taxpayers that we are doing everything we can to make government run efficiently and effectively,” said Cross. “This audit is a major first step to restoring the public’s trust in Illinois government.”

[doctorwho]

Mar 24, 2010 11:54:58 GMT -6 macrockett said:

For Immediate Release: March 24, 2010
Contact: Sara Wojcicki
217-782-0576
Cross, Andrzejewski Call for Forensic Audit of Illinois Budget
Audit would thoroughly review state spending and practices during Blagojevich/Quinn era

Springfield…House Republican Leader Tom Cross is joining with conservative reformer and recent gubernatorial candidate Adam Andrzejewski in calling for a comprehensive forensic audit of Illinois’ finances dating back to former Governor Rod Blagojevich’s first-term.

“During a time when every family, every school, and every non-profit organization is assessing their own budgets and finding ways to make every dollar stretch a bit more, it is only appropriate that we ask the same from government,” said House Republican Leader Tom Cross.

House Resolution 1057, requires the Auditor General to immediately begin a forensic audit of state spending, hiring, procurement and contracts. The resolution also asks the Auditor General to review the actions taken by Boards and Commissions as they relate to spending, hiring and contracts during the Blagojevich/Quinn era.

The resolution also provided the Auditor General with expanded powers, including that of requesting subpoenas from the House of Representatives to complete its review. A bi-partisan group of lawmakers would be assigned to oversee the effort by the Auditor General.

“There is not a person in this state that would say government is running as efficiently as it could be,” said Andrzejewski. “So that is why I am pleased to be working with House Republican Leader Tom Cross to see if we can make government more efficient, effective and responsible. I believe this audit will identify areas of cost-savings and efficiencies that will help reduce the cost and size of government.”

“We need to demonstrate to Illinois taxpayers that we are doing everything we can to make government run efficiently and effectively,” said Cross. “This audit is a major first step to restoring the public’s trust in Illinois government.”

can we get him to add IPSD 204 to the list also ?

[macrockett]

www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-pensions0328-20100327,0,681818.story
chicagotribune.com
Yes you can

March 27, 2010

"Illinois legislators have taken a step toward solving a future problem of funding pensions, but it does absolutely nothing to solve the emergency now. They have to change who gets what benefits, when, for current public employees, too. …

"The federal government bailed out Illinois and other states with stimulus money. They can't tell Congress it has no business demanding reform of these unsustainable pension plans."

U.S. Rep. Michael Quigley, D-Ill.

•••

We won't begrudge Gov. Pat Quinn and legislators their end-zone dance over Wednesday's approval of less generous pensions for future public workers in Illinois. We do, though, want to warn them that a Democratic congressman from Chicago intends to push lawmakers in this and other states to adopt much more demanding pension reforms.

Rep. Quigley sees Illinois lawmakers' reluctance to reduce current employees' pension benefits going forward as an act of denial: "The private sector is being forced to change how it funds current employees' retirements. The public sector can't behave as if it exists in a vacuum." He tells the Tribune editorial board he's drafting federal legislation that would force states to have sustainable pension plans before they ask Washington for more money. In Illinois, with its nation's-worst pension funding, that would mean substantially raising taxes — or adjusting workers' pension benefits. "Some states would have gone under without the federal stimulus help," Quigley says. "To those who continue down this ruinous pension path, don't come knocking on Congress' door for more money."

This candor from their fellow Chicago Democrat won't cheer Quinn, House Speaker Michael Madigan or Senate President John Cullerton. None has shown any moxie for curtailing current employees' future pension benefits, even though those obligations threaten to crowd out education and other vital funding for many years. In official Springfield, that which is necessary but difficult — such as speaking truth to public employees — can get dismissed as out of the question. It's easier to avoid unpleasantries now, wait until the next election passes, and then debate how high to raise taxes on citizens.

•••

Many of the pols who run Illinois blithely deflect calls to curb current employees' pensions. They say state lawyers tell them the state constitution forbids such revisions. Unfortunately for the pols, one of the nation's top law firms now says that's just false. A legal analysis by Chicago's Sidley Austin LLP concludes that, under the constitution, "(S)tatutory pension rights are not frozen in place for all eternity and may be amended to alter the parties' relationship on a prospective basis — meaning to alter benefits to be earned in the future." Sidley's analysis, performed for the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, says the state's authority in this realm is quite broad, provided it scrupulously protects benefits already earned.

We realize that any change to current employees' pensions could wind up before Illinois judges anticipating … their public pensions. For that reason alone, the case for reducing future benefits wouldn't be the slam-dunk that timid clients always desire. The mere risk of legal battles frightens some pols: Last year, Quinn reversed course on firing two University of Illinois trustees because, he said, they might file a lawsuit.

But there's a far more dangerous strategy for the governor and legislative leaders: pretending that lower benefits only for future hires will rescue Illinois from the debacle that Illinois pols, with their impossible pension promises, have spent decades foolishly crafting.

•••

When lawmakers get serious about a fiscal 2011 budget, they'll have to admit that last week's pension bill does precious little to address their multiyear deficit of nearly $13 billion. Some of them, we'd wager, will wind up using that failure as … their argument for a tax increase.

Does Illinois need that tax increase and its inevitable drag on miserable job creation? Illinoisans still don't know.

Nearly three months into this legislative session, lawmakers behave much as they did last year: They simply won't make hard decisions to change how state government spends money now.

Excellent short- and longer-term cost reduction proposals from Quinn's Taxpayer Action Board, the Civic Committee, the Civic Federation, the Illinois Policy Institute and others are gathering dust while, each day, Illinois sinks deeper into insolvency.

It's as if a crisis has paralyzed lawmakers who won't, or simply can't, respond. Curbing current employees' pensions is only one blind spot: Legislators aren't moving most Medicaid patients to managed care. Or raising employee health care contributions. Or forcing agencies to manage smarter by rolling back expenditures to earlier years' levels. Or closing obsolete institutions. Or aggressively selling surplus land and other assets. Or privatizing food and janitorial services, Or sunsetting townships and other antiquities among the 7,000 local government taxpayers have to support. Or revising retiree health costs. Or ...

Yes, legislators, you can do these things. Now. Maybe citizens will start demanding that, before you slash money for education or raise taxes, you make all manner of major spending reforms.

If, though, you can't manage state government through this challenge, voters have to elect legislators who can.

Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune

[doctorwho]

Mar 27, 2010 21:54:17 GMT -6 macrockett said:

www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-pensions0328-20100327,0,681818.story
chicagotribune.com
Yes you can

March 27, 2010

"Illinois legislators have taken a step toward solving a future problem of funding pensions, but it does absolutely nothing to solve the emergency now. They have to change who gets what benefits, when, for current public employees, too. …

"The federal government bailed out Illinois and other states with stimulus money. They can't tell Congress it has no business demanding reform of these unsustainable pension plans."

U.S. Rep. Michael Quigley, D-Ill.

•••

We won't begrudge Gov. Pat Quinn and legislators their end-zone dance over Wednesday's approval of less generous pensions for future public workers in Illinois. We do, though, want to warn them that a Democratic congressman from Chicago intends to push lawmakers in this and other states to adopt much more demanding pension reforms.

Rep. Quigley sees Illinois lawmakers' reluctance to reduce current employees' pension benefits going forward as an act of denial: "The private sector is being forced to change how it funds current employees' retirements. The public sector can't behave as if it exists in a vacuum." He tells the Tribune editorial board he's drafting federal legislation that would force states to have sustainable pension plans before they ask Washington for more money. In Illinois, with its nation's-worst pension funding, that would mean substantially raising taxes — or adjusting workers' pension benefits. "Some states would have gone under without the federal stimulus help," Quigley says. "To those who continue down this ruinous pension path, don't come knocking on Congress' door for more money."

This candor from their fellow Chicago Democrat won't cheer Quinn, House Speaker Michael Madigan or Senate President John Cullerton. None has shown any moxie for curtailing current employees' future pension benefits, even though those obligations threaten to crowd out education and other vital funding for many years. In official Springfield, that which is necessary but difficult — such as speaking truth to public employees — can get dismissed as out of the question. It's easier to avoid unpleasantries now, wait until the next election passes, and then debate how high to raise taxes on citizens.

•••

Many of the pols who run Illinois blithely deflect calls to curb current employees' pensions. They say state lawyers tell them the state constitution forbids such revisions. Unfortunately for the pols, one of the nation's top law firms now says that's just false. A legal analysis by Chicago's Sidley Austin LLP concludes that, under the constitution, "(S)tatutory pension rights are not frozen in place for all eternity and may be amended to alter the parties' relationship on a prospective basis — meaning to alter benefits to be earned in the future." Sidley's analysis, performed for the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, says the state's authority in this realm is quite broad, provided it scrupulously protects benefits already earned.

We realize that any change to current employees' pensions could wind up before Illinois judges anticipating … their public pensions. For that reason alone, the case for reducing future benefits wouldn't be the slam-dunk that timid clients always desire. The mere risk of legal battles frightens some pols: Last year, Quinn reversed course on firing two University of Illinois trustees because, he said, they might file a lawsuit.

But there's a far more dangerous strategy for the governor and legislative leaders: pretending that lower benefits only for future hires will rescue Illinois from the debacle that Illinois pols, with their impossible pension promises, have spent decades foolishly crafting.

•••

When lawmakers get serious about a fiscal 2011 budget, they'll have to admit that last week's pension bill does precious little to address their multiyear deficit of nearly $13 billion. Some of them, we'd wager, will wind up using that failure as … their argument for a tax increase.

Does Illinois need that tax increase and its inevitable drag on miserable job creation? Illinoisans still don't know.

Nearly three months into this legislative session, lawmakers behave much as they did last year: They simply won't make hard decisions to change how state government spends money now.

Excellent short- and longer-term cost reduction proposals from Quinn's Taxpayer Action Board, the Civic Committee, the Civic Federation, the Illinois Policy Institute and others are gathering dust while, each day, Illinois sinks deeper into insolvency.

It's as if a crisis has paralyzed lawmakers who won't, or simply can't, respond. Curbing current employees' pensions is only one blind spot: Legislators aren't moving most Medicaid patients to managed care. Or raising employee health care contributions. Or forcing agencies to manage smarter by rolling back expenditures to earlier years' levels. Or closing obsolete institutions. Or aggressively selling surplus land and other assets. Or privatizing food and janitorial services, Or sunsetting townships and other antiquities among the 7,000 local government taxpayers have to support. Or revising retiree health costs. Or ...

Yes, legislators, you can do these things. Now. Maybe citizens will start demanding that, before you slash money for education or raise taxes, you make all manner of major spending reforms.

If, though, you can't manage state government through this challenge, voters have to elect legislators who can.

Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune

This is the door I hope someone kicks in-- it already has affected almost every single private sector worker-why is there 2 sets of rules. Well it appears maybe there isn't !
So while Sidley & Austion takes a break from working on the BB law suit ( yeah it's them behind the estate) -- maybe there is a way to actaully affect the deficit today-- if any politicians have the stones to puruse.

Maybe Michael Quigley is one such pol -- and I will support whomever takes this kind of common sense stance- regardless of party. I would like to see some GOP commentary on this also...Mr Brady the white courtesy phone is ringing, please answer it.


Many of the pols who run Illinois blithely deflect calls to curb current employees' pensions. They say state lawyers tell them the state constitution forbids such revisions. Unfortunately for the pols, one of the nation's top law firms now says that's just false. A legal analysis by Chicago's Sidley Austin LLP concludes that, under the constitution, "(S)tatutory pension rights are not frozen in place for all eternity and may be amended to alter the parties' relationship on a prospective basis — meaning to alter benefits to be earned in the future." Sidley's analysis, performed for the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, says the state's authority in this realm is quite broad, provided it scrupulously protects benefits already earned".
"

[doctorwho]

Mar 19, 2010 13:07:16 GMT -6 macrockett said:

www.suntimes.com/news/elections/2109508,CST-NWS-quinn18.article#

Brady bashed as anti-union
Quinn hits opponent's hiring record, minimum-wage stance

March 18, 2010

BY STEVE CONTORNO Staff Reporter

SPRINGFIELD -- Gov. Quinn and House Speaker Michael Madigan took turns Wednesday attacking GOP candidate for governor Sen. Bill Brady as an anti-labor politician who would work to abolish the minimum wage.

Speaking at a gathering of the Illinois Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Quinn told the pro-union crowd that Brady owned a construction company that only hired non-union workers, and Madigan said the Republican senator from Bloomington would work "to spread that gospel all over the state of Illinois."
» Click to enlarge image
Gov. Quinn (left) told a pro-union crowd that GOP candidate for governor Sen. Bill Brady owned a construction company that only hired non-union workers.
(Rich Hein/Sun-Times/AP)


RELATED STORIES
Quinn, Madigan rip Brady before union crowd

"We're not going to have a middle class if we allow a lot of anti-labor, anti-union operators to get in politics and tear to shreds fundamental things we all agree on," Quinn said. "He doesn't believe in the minimum wage. He wants to abolish it."

Brady's campaign offered a pointed rebuttal.

"We're not going to have a middle class if we continue the job-killing policies and insider politics of the Blagojevich-Quinn administration," Brady campaign manager Jerry Clarke said. A Brady campaign official added that Brady's construction company has hired both union and non-union workers in its 40-year history.

On the minimum wage, Brady spokesman Dan Egler said the senator favors "re-coupling the state minimum wage with the federal wage," which is $7.25 an hour, 75 cents less than the state's current minimum wage.

But Egler said, "I don't remember him ever saying" he would abolish it altogether.

Quinn also accused Brady of embracing a budget proposed by the conservative Illinois Policy Institute that would impose $4.7 billion in cuts -- more than double what Quinn has proposed -- and freeze spending for three years. The governor called it a "slash-and-burn" policy.

Still, Quinn and Madigan both predicted that the governor's race would be heated, tight and expensive. "We're going to be in the toughest political battle in Illinois in a long, long time," Quinn said.

On another front, Quinn signed legislation that will move the primary election from February to the third Tuesday in March. The election was moved to the first week in February to give President Obama an early victory during his 2008 run, but produced one of the lowest ever voter turnouts in 2010

Well I guess the unions have made up their mind as to who they are voting for...

Does Quinn and the rest of the democrats somehow feel one cannot be middle class if they do not belong to a union ? Dangerous stance to take with the sentiment out there right now.

[macrockett]

www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0329-jobs-20100329,0,5979740.story
chicagotribune.com
Chaos keeps jobs out of state

By Mike Lawrence

March 29, 2010
Quantcast

On the campaign trail and in the Illinois Statehouse, politicians woo us by pledging allegiance to "jobs, jobs, jobs." But we need to pierce the platitudes and demand they focus on the chaos, chaos, chaos.

Agencies reluctantly curtail services for those with mental illness. School districts move to drop more than 15,000 teachers. Small businesses that sell goods and services to the state struggle to meet payrolls while they wait months for state checks. All because governors and lawmakers have overpromised and underpaid, allowing the state of Illinois to become a shameless deadbeat.

"We always fought over how large the state appropriation would be. Never occurred to us … that they would pass the state appropriation and never send the money. Which is a really clever idea," University of Illinois President Stanley Ikenberry wryly told a newspaper editorial board.

"I think the longer we wait, the bigger and more intractable the problem becomes," he added.

Fortunately, pillars of our corporate community concur. Using their influence as folks who actually create those jobs, jobs, jobs, they warn Illinois' post-recession economy will reel as other states rebound unless we take bold steps to eradicate a $13 billion deficit, one of the worst in the nation. So, exhibiting no-nonsense leadership lacking in Springfield, the business titans have proposed tax increases premised on public pension reforms and billions in spending cuts addressing not only the crisis of the moment but long-term obligations that have escalated in recent years.

The executives do not relish depositing more of their personal and company earnings in government coffers. However, they deem the alternatives of borrowing on top of borrowing to support unsustainable commitments as markedly more repugnant. Illinois, one of five states to lose jobs in the last decade, cannot stem the employment exodus and re-establish itself as a land of promise if it continues race toward a fiscal cliff.

It will offer neither the trained and educated workforce nor the quality of life needed to entice and keep jobs here. Further deterioration of its once premier higher education system will undercut the capacity of public universities to serve less affluent people. Taxes for those lucky enough to earn wages will skyrocket as the state becomes a wasteland.

The Civic Federation, whose members include companies that helped build Illinois into an economic giant, has proposed increasing the individual income tax rate to 5 percent from 3 percent, hiking the corporate tax to 6.2 percent from 4.8 percent and scrapping some business tax breaks. It also supports taxing retirement benefits, which likely will stir protests from older Illinoisans. But the state could exempt $50,000 of such income and still realize nearly $1 billion.

Indeed, we need almost universal sacrifice to avoid a fiscal Armageddon. The federation and another business-backed group, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, properly condition endorsement of additional revenue on eliminating nonessential government outlays — many of which the two organizations and the Illinois Policy Institute, among others, have identified.

"Although our common sense recommendations for reducing the state budget deficit may not be immediately popular in Springfield, these problems will not go away by ignoring our obligations or borrowing to pay operating expenses," said Laurence Msall, the federation's president.

Thus far in this election year, our politicians have been more fascinated by the "it's the economy, stupid" mantra from the successful Clinton presidential campaign in 1992. But the business community's intervention packs a far more relevant message.

It's the chaos, stupid.

Mike Lawrence, former director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, covered Illinois politics for 25 years as a reporter.

[macrockett]

Most recent compilation of top pensions in Illinois

www.ntui.org/NTUI/downloads/stop_quinn_top_100_pensions_2009.pdf

[southsidesignmaker]

Let me get this right.

I have been self employed and an owner of a small chapter S Corporation in our lovely state. I had the same CPA since my early twenties and have saved religiously in IRA and Keogh plans.

Our firm has religiously paid income taxes (State and Federal), payroll taxes, Sales taxes, and all kind of goofy minor annoying taxes.

I have taught my family to be self reliant, pay for very high college tuition without complaint. Drive crappy economical cars when times get tight, basically "Live within one's means".

Our pension plans have taken a serious hit along with net worth related to both business and residential assets.

I have watched our great state go from charging a 1% income tax to a 3% income tax and now a possible 5% income tax.

On the sales tax front I can remember a 5% tax at the corner candy store. On certain items in Cook county you can have the luxury of paying double that tax (10%+).

The state is insolvent period.
Our Social Social Security System has serious cash flow problems
Medicare / medicaid is in disarray

In the mean time we promise pensions that are escalating daily, folks using "Link Cards" as if they were credit cards. Welfare has become a way of life for many. Unemployment benefits get extended as if they are a right.

Folks we are indeed financially broke as a state, lets make sure we are not on the way to becoming morally broke also.


Politicians that look at at raising taxes without seriously addressing the structural issues that caused these concerns are "pissing in the wind".

[asmodeus]

It was just released that 47% of Americans pay NO federal income taxes (or actually get credits). The top 10% of earners pay 73% of the taxes. Of course, most of the people paying no federal income tax pay other taxes such as sales taxes. But do we really want a society where half of the population pays NO FEDERAL TAXES and yet has a vote on how much to tax the rest of us?

It's just sickening.

finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html?x=0&.v=1

[macrockett]

Apr 8, 2010 8:51:47 GMT -6 southsidesignmaker said:

Let me get this right.

I have been self employed and an owner of a small chapter S Corporation in our lovely state. I had the same CPA since my early twenties and have saved religiously in IRA and Keogh plans.

Our firm has religiously paid income taxes (State and Federal), payroll taxes, Sales taxes, and all kind of goofy minor annoying taxes.

I have taught my family to be self reliant, pay for very high college tuition without complaint. Drive crappy economical cars when times get tight, basically "Live within one's means".

Our pension plans have taken a serious hit along with net worth related to both business and residential assets.

I have watched our great state go from charging a 1% income tax to a 3% income tax and now a possible 5% income tax.

On the sales tax front I can remember a 5% tax at the corner candy store. On certain items in Cook county you can have the luxury of paying double that tax (10%+).

The state is insolvent period.
Our Social Social Security System has serious cash flow problems
Medicare / medicaid is in disarray

In the mean time we promise pensions that are escalating daily, folks using "Link Cards" as if they were credit cards. Welfare has become a way of life for many. Unemployment benefits get extended as if they are a right.

Folks we are indeed financially broke as a state, lets make sure we are not on the way to becoming morally broke also.


Politicians that look at at raising taxes without seriously addressing the structural issues that caused these concerns are "pissing in the wind".

It is about power and money SSSM, you know that. You get power by creating a constituency that can rely on you to bring home the bacon. A quid pro quo. Government unions. Foot soldiers.

In most states they live like Kings with their compensation package. And the private sector, the risk takers pay for it. With an average compensation package far below that of the public sector.

Meanwhile, basic goods and services get crowded out by those promises made by politicians to the public sector employees.

[macrockett]

Apr 8, 2010 9:01:43 GMT -6 asmodeus said:

It was just released that 47% of Americans pay NO federal income taxes (or actually get credits). The top 10% of earners pay 73% of the taxes. Of course, most of the people paying no federal income tax pay other taxes such as sales taxes. But do we really want a society where half of the population pays NO FEDERAL TAXES and yet has a vote on how much to tax the rest of us?

It's just sickening.

finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html?x=0&.v=1

Yes it is.

[doctorwho]

Apr 8, 2010 8:51:47 GMT -6 southsidesignmaker said:

Let me get this right.

I have been self employed and an owner of a small chapter S Corporation in our lovely state. I had the same CPA since my early twenties and have saved religiously in IRA and Keogh plans.

Our firm has religiously paid income taxes (State and Federal), payroll taxes, Sales taxes, and all kind of goofy minor annoying taxes.

I have taught my family to be self reliant, pay for very high college tuition without complaint. Drive crappy economical cars when times get tight, basically "Live within one's means".

Our pension plans have taken a serious hit along with net worth related to both business and residential assets.

I have watched our great state go from charging a 1% income tax to a 3% income tax and now a possible 5% income tax.

On the sales tax front I can remember a 5% tax at the corner candy store. On certain items in Cook county you can have the luxury of paying double that tax (10%+).

The state is insolvent period.
Our Social Social Security System has serious cash flow problems
Medicare / medicaid is in disarray

In the mean time we promise pensions that are escalating daily, folks using "Link Cards" as if they were credit cards. Welfare has become a way of life for many. Unemployment benefits get extended as if they are a right.

Folks we are indeed financially broke as a state, lets make sure we are not on the way to becoming morally broke also.


Politicians that look at at raising taxes without seriously addressing the structural issues that caused these concerns are "pissing in the wind".

"lets make sure we are not on the way to becoming morally broke also.
"

too late ! -- look at how the state is governed- doing things ' just inside the law- back door deals' ( remind you of any SD you know ?) - morals and ethics seem to have no place any more- as long as it is somehow legal ( and a few cross that line also) -

which is why I agree- no to any more taxes without major fixes-- and for me and many others - not another damn dime to a SD that governs the same way.