Elections

The Illinois Tax Increase: “Legislators ought to hang their heads over awful income tax deal”

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There will come a time when all sides can dispassionately discuss the great Illinois income tax deal of 2011.
 
Today is not that day.
 
Today is a day for anger. Our Springfield leaders have failed us in producing a one-sided monstrosity that will cause true pain, avoids needed decisions, makes it markedly harder to get a job in a state with too few and, worst of all, won’t really solve the state’s fundamental budget problems.
 
I wish this normally left-leaning blogger could report otherwise. I can’t. This one is indefensible.

Greg Hinz gives the horrible details.

As our colleage Carl from Chicago so aptly puts it: Stone-cold redistributionists run our state.

Greg Hinz concludes:

So, the folks who run Springfield can talk about how they made the tough decision. But, I think, they instead acted like another fellow who just decided to grab everything he could get. That would be Todd Stroger, father of the nation’s highest sales tax and, as of this writing, the former president of the Cook County Board.
 
We’ll have to see how the taxpayers of Illinois react. But if this taxpayer is typical, watch out.

Greg is right. But it is a long time until the next election.

The Shooting in Tucson

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I have had a house in Tucson for the past five or six years. It is in Gabriel Gifford’s Congressional district. I know the corner of Ina Road and Oracle Road where the shooting occurred. I know and like Tucson and Arizona. I would rather be living there than here because I have serious fears about California’s future while I think Arizona is now in pretty good hands. They had a housing bubble but they have more sensible people in that state government.

Gabriel Gifford’s district includes some of the most affluent areas of Tucson. To be re-elected, she had to be a “blue dog” Democrat. She has an appealing personal story. Her father is a sheriff of a neighboring county and her husband is an astronaut. I would not have voted for her because she had a very attractive opponent but there was very little of the animosity in that election that there was in other district races. Some of her constituents were unhappy about her healthcare vote. She had gotten the message and voted against Nancy Pelosi for minority leader of the Democrats, one of 17 Democrats to do so.

The press conference by the Pima County sheriff yesterday was disgraceful. I watched the whole thing. He went over and over his theories that harsh political discourse was somehow a cause of the shooting. He repeated the whole mantra three times by my count. Other than that, he provided very little information, for example, declining to give the suspect’s name when everyone with an internet connection knew what it was. I think he may have been reacting to personal distress as he probably knows Ms Gifford’s father and has known her for a long time. I also suspect he is a Democrat as Tucson is a rather left wing city being the site of the University of Arizona. The City Council has been very left wing and several members were defeated in the previous election as they had spent far too much money on frivolous projects, some of which had never been completed.

There is a lot of wild talk on left wing web sites, some of which is being rolled back as Daily Kos and the DNC scrub web sites of similar images and rhetoric as conservative sites and people they are attacking. A lot of it has been scrubbed but some people have found Google caches.

Like this DLC “targeting map.”

There has been a lot of talk about how “angry” Arizona people are. Well, maybe they have reason to be angry. The Obama administration has sued the state to try to stop an Arizona law that merely enforces a federal law that Obama seems disinterested in enforcing. Arizona is overrun with illegals immigrants, drug violence is 60 miles away in Mexico and auto insurance rates are sky high because of car theft. Someone I know had a LoJack system installed in his car. When he realized the car was stolen, the police activated the locator and the car was already 60 miles into Mexico.

Some of the angry rhetoric comes from a sense that the people have lost control of the government since Obama was elected. The health care bill was opposed in every poll of public opinion. The Republican minority was completely opposed. Yet, the bill was passed by procedural maneuvers never before used to pass legislation of this magnitude. As the people have learned more about the bill, they like it less. Nancy Pelosi told us they have to pass it so we can find out what is in it. Yes, the people of Arizona are angry. But it had nothing to do with yesterday’s shooting.

The young man is obviously a paranoid schizophrenic. His ramblings on a You Tube video contain the typical delusions of schizophrenics. He goes on about the government controlling minds through grammar. He appears to be obsessed with grammar and goes on about introducing a new currency for which he will be the Treasurer. These are the delusional ravings of a psychotic. There appears to be some level of disappointment that he is not associated with a political ideology, especially the tea party. There are already think pieces about “violence”, by which they mean talk radio and Fox News, just as Clinton did after the McVeigh bombing in Oklahoma.

By day’s end, the argument that the political right—fueled by anti-government, and anti-immigrant passions that run especially strong in Arizona—is culpable for the Tucson massacre, even if by indirect association, seemed to be validated by the top local law enforcement official investigating the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D).

This refers to that disgusting press conference by the Pima County sheriff. They even have a video of his rant.

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, an elected Democrat, at a news conference Saturday evening.

Yup, I guessed right.

One veteran Democratic operative, who blames overheated rhetoric for the shooting, said President Barack Obama should carefully but forcefully do what his predecessor did.

“They need to deftly pin this on the tea partiers,” said the Democrat. “Just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people.”

Another Democratic strategist said the similarity is that Tucson and Oklahoma City both “take place in a climate of bitter and virulent rhetoric against the government and Democrats.”

Isn’t it odd that movies about the assassination of George Bush are not considered too extreme ?

I think Representative Gifford will recover as the gunshot wound track passed from her temple out her forehead, probably missing her brain. A family friend said she is now in induced coma, no doubt to minimize cerebral edema from the contusion to the brain from the shock wave. I don’t know if the Democratic party will recover from its disinterest in debate and its tendency to try to demonize its opponents instead of argue with them.

“An 83% Tax Hike? Make Democrats Own It.”

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This is madness … . This is Illinois!

Last year, during my gubernatorial primary race, I frequently referenced a Cook County company with 160 employees whose CPA told them that they would add $750,000 to their bottom line by moving 35 miles away to Valparaiso, IN.
 
On the four borders of Illinois, every business is doing a similar calculation and coming to the same conclusion. The Illinois Democrats hate the private sector.

Adam Andrzejewski, at his site For The Good of Illinois.

You work 50 weeks a year if you are fortunate enough to be employed. Each week is 2% of your working year. Adding a tax of 2.25% means you will be working one more week per year for the government of Illinois. The government of Illinois is legendarily opaque, corrupt and wasteful. Giving it more money makes no sense. It does not deserve more money from the taxpayers. Destroying the competitiveness of Illinois even further is a terrible idea. Putting a tax increase onto Illinois businesses and citizens during a deep recession is an insane idea.

The GOP squandered a chance to make Illinois part of a national wave last year, so this tax increase is almost certainly going to happen. Nonetheless, the GOP should, at least, oppose this destructive tax increase.

If you are an Illinois taxpayer, please contact your representative and make your opinion known.

(And be happy. It makes you more resilient for the long term to be happy.)

UPDATE: I called, and was treated very courteously, and let my State Senator and State Rep. know that I oppose the tax increase. If you live in Illinois, please do the same.

UPDATE II: Here is a petition against the tax hike.

UPDATE III: Six Springfield Republicans are reported to be leaning toward voting yes on state income tax increase! If you live in one of these districts PLEASE call and give notice that you are a voter and you oppose any Illinois tax increase.

St. Sen. Larry K. Bomke (R-50, Springfield )- Phone: (217) 782-0228
St. Sen. Dale E. Risinger (R-37, Peoria )- Phone: (217) 782-1942
St. Rep. Bob Biggins (R-41, Elmhurst )- Phone: (217) 782-6578
St. Rep. Dave Winters (R-68, Rockford )- Phone: (217) 782-0455
St. Rep. Ronald A. Wait (R-69, Belvidere )- Phone: (217) 782-0548
St. Rep. Roger L. Eddy (R-109, Hutsonville)- Phone: (217) 558-1040

UPDATE IV: Noon. Saturday. They have not yet voted. They are going to vote on Sunday. There is still time to call your Senator or Representative.

Chicago Tea Party January 5, 2011 Meeting: Cedra Crenshaw

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The January Chicago Tea Party meeting is tomorrow night, at Blackie’s Restaurant & Tavern (Clark & Polk), 755 S. Clark, Chicago at 7:00 p.m. Sign up here. The featured speaker will be Cedra Crenshaw: “The Mom V. The Machine. Cedra phentermine med will discuss what the Republican party needs to do to expand its base and reach out to new voters.”

Odds are better than even I will be able to go to this.

Responses

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Cromagnum, in response to my post on Chesterton, has posted a useful and informative comment here. It reads, in part (an excerpt from Eugenics and Other Evils follows):

The Socialist system, in a more special sense than any other, is founded not on optimism but on original sin. It proposes that the State, as the conscience of the community, should possess all primary forms of property; and that obviously on the ground that men cannot be trusted to own or barter or combine or compete without injury to themselves. Just as a State might own all the guns lest people should shoot each other, so this State would own all the gold and land lest they should cheat or rackrent or exploit each other. It seems extraordinarily simple and even obvious; and so it is. It is too obvious to be true. But while it is obvious, it seems almost incredible that anybody ever thought it optimistic.

Pundita has written a tour de force response to my post on Senator Richard Lugar: “Wikileaks plus first disbursements from 2009 US aid bill for Pakistan already under scrutiny for graft. Senator Richard Lugar please take note.”

In a wide ranging post, she makes note of three key issues:

1. Congressional oversight: If you’re having a hard time wrapping your mind around the concept that vital information would be withheld from key congressional defense/intelligence committees — which can’t make informed recommendations without such data — while thousands of low-level civilian government and military employees had access to the data, you should listen to the interview; it’s enough to make your blood boil if you’re an American.

2. Allegations of corruption in the distribution of aid monies: Two months after his remarks came the news that even the first small disbursements were already in trouble due to charges of corruption. Because aid monies disbursed to the Pakistani government become the sovereign property of the government and thus immune to oversight the 2009 aid bill aimed to get around the problem by disbursing the money to NGOs. The workaround simply opened another avenue for graft:

3. The sometimes head-scratching priorities and decision-making of American officials: Yet the revelation doesn’t fully explain why the U.S. military and executive and congressional branches have consistently made bad calls on Pakistan because this has been going on for more than a half century — ever since the U.S. first became involved with Pakistan. Yet these bad calls weren’t seen as such until NATO floundered in Afghanistan. That finally put a crimp in the style of Washington’s anti-Russia crowd but over decades the crowd and its counterpart in Europe looked the other way while Pakistan ran riot because they saw the country as a weapon first against the Soviet Union then against Russia.

No matter who wins the presidential election in 2012, I wager that many of the structural problems that have plagued our foreign policy in recent years will remain. One of the most appealing aspects of the Tea Party movement is its “pay attention!” ethos. Complain about elites all you want, they can’t cause so many problems if we citizens are performing our own oversight functions.

Update: Thanks for the link, Professor Reynolds!

There are some very good comments in the comments section. I will try and respond more fully at a later date.