Fellow employee Carrie came into work upset after receiving her monthly paycheck. "Did you look at your check?" she said. "Mine is $100 less. I will be paying an extra $1200 in state taxes this year."
Welcome to Illinois.
Our governors get convicted of felonies. Our legislature can not control its spending nor balance a budget properly. We are up to our necks in debt. No one is held accountable.
Democrat Governor Pat Quinn,
winning election by the narrowist of margins and capturing only four counties in the statewide vote, declared his 2010 victory a "mandate" for raising taxes. So ... our Democratic state representatives and senators, who seem to have one collective testicle among them, went along with the governor and the evil leader of Illinois politics,
Michael Madigan. BOOM! Illinois raised its personal state income tax
rate
66%. BOOM! Illinois raised its corporate tax rate from 4.8% to 7%. Way to encourage businesses to stay in or relocate to Illinois, geniuses. Significantly, the tax increases had
zero republican votes. Do we see a problem here?
A quick primer on Illinois pensions for state employees: Make a respectable pension program, write it into the state constitution, have employees pay into it for mega-years, have the state
not pay its share of the obligation year after year, then attempt to screw the employees who have faithfully paid in. Madigan now appears ready to have the weak-kneed state legislators pass a bill that appears to be contrary to the constitution, therefore putting the challenge to the Illinois Supreme Court.
In this state of massive corruption I can not help but believe that people with state pensions will end up taking it squarely up the butt without lubrication, courtesy of our elected officials. Wonderful.
I am quite surprised that the state's massive mountain of debt did not result in the expansion of gambling, a huge cash cow that sits on the horizon. However, those of us with long memories clearly remember what happened in the past. A state lottery was approved with the proviso that the money generated would go toward education in the state. Silly us. We did not understand that gambling revenue would go toward education, but that an equal amount would be taken
from education and be put into whatever pork projects were appropriate at the time.
What does this all mean? It seems that, from a realistic perspective, my choices are limited. With the investment in the pension system that I have made, I am stuck. However, don't be surprised if my midwest neighbor
KenP somedays sees a destitute Illinois carpet bagger at his doorstep, begging for a place to stay and trying to finagle a Mookie Dank buy-in out of a poker brotha who lives in a state that is not completely filled with idiocy and corruption at the state level.
Labels: 66% tax increase, democrat, downstate Illinois, KenP, Michael Madigan, Mookie Dank, Pat Quinn, pensions