Posted on 01/26/2022 7:35:25 AM PST by KeyLargo
Politicians and pork: Where Illinois’ new, regressive taxes on gas, vehicle titles and more are going under ‘Rebuild Illinois’ – QuickPoint
If you haven’t read the Better Government Association’s recent report on project selection under Illinois’ celebrated “Rebuild Illinois” spending plan, do so. It’s sad enough, but much worse when you consider how the program is being paid for: The poor and working class are being hit hardest.
Rebuild Illinois is a multi-year spending program passed in 2019 that promised to help advance Illinois into the 21st Century with $45 billion in infrastructure improvements like roads, bridges, rail improvements and other public works projects. The BGA report focused mostly on pet political programs favored by former House Speaker Michael Madigan for the district he represented, such as $98 million for reducing noise from freight train brakes in the area.
However, the bigger story is the entire process by which projects were selected for funding, and that story is hardly limited to Madigan. The process was “largely shrouded in secrecy,” as the BGA described, and “individual powerbrokers in state government were allowed to move many of their favored projects — traditionally called pork — to the top of the list without the normal bureaucratic scrutiny and screening usually given to massive public works projects.” From the BGA’s report:
(Excerpt) Read more at wirepoints.org ...
Now, how is Rebuild Illinois being paid for? Overwhelmingly, by new or higher taxes falling hardest on the poor and working class. As reported by the Chicago Sun-Times in 2019:
The gasoline tax doubled to 38 cents per gallon, which alone will take over $1.2 billion every year from consumers. It will increase each year in line with the consumer price index, which is now soaring. Cigarette taxes went up by $1, to $2.98 per pack, bringing in $156 million a year for the state. The sales-tax exemption on trade-in vehicles valued at $10,000 or more was ended. Vehicle certificate of title fees jumped from $95 to $150. Certificates of title for campers and motor homes jumped from $95 to $250.
When I realized IL didn’t care about the law, I made a company-wide policy that we never did business in IL or on behalf of a resident of IL.
Fired all our clients there. Never looked back except in disgust.
Life is too short and the risks too great.
Illinois republicans aren’t republicans. Every few years a real republican gets into office and they are destroyed by the media. Chicago media is the largest problem. They report what the public unions tell them. I have houses in Illinois where I lived most of my life and Wisconsin where I spend most of my time now. I always shop and fill up my car before going to Illinois. Its cheaper for me and I don’t want to give Illinois a dime. The Illinois government and public unions are simply criminals.
It won’t repair one more pothole. Every cent will go to bureaucrat salaries and bonuses.
When you're hemorrhaging population like that, raising taxes only makes the death spiral go faster. The problem is not that taxes are too low. The problem is that expenses are far too high (due to unions and corruption and corrupt unions, etc.), taxes are far too high, and the business that supports the tax base is leaving the state.
They are going to long for the good old days of”PAUL POWELL SECRETARY OF STATE” and his closet full of shoe boxes filled with cash.
Just as other Blue state Democrat politicians, know and are planning on - they do not give a crap about conservatives fleeing their states, since they know they would never vote for them.
They know that Biden will continue to shovel more taxpayer money to support their failed policies.
Also they know and are continuing to bring in more and more illegals into their sanctuary states that will continue to vote them into office for life.
People leaving are a symptom. High-paying jobs are leaving and people are following them. Bringing in illegals, who overwhelmingly work low-wage jobs, doesn’t solve the problem.
“...doesn’t solve the problem.”
As I said, the blue state politicians don’t consider it a problem to be solved, as long as they continue to be voted into office, by a Democrat electorate.
BTTT.
One wonders how the estimates of increased revenue considered the effect of the lower excises taxes in Wisconsin and Indiana.
We have a lot of friends and relatives living in Iowa, Illinois and Indiana.
Illinois leads the way re people moving out of state in those 3 states. Indiana is gaining with former Illinoisans. Iowa just stays steady.
Re the losing states measured by one way U-Haul, California is 50th and Illinois 49th on the list for the second consecutive year, indicating those states once again witnessed the largest net losses of one-way U-Haul trucks. .
Illinois has a lot snow birds, who decide to stay in Florida, after a really bad winter in Illinois and a good winter in Florida.
In the past for decades, my wife has seen many widowed friends and relatives go to Florida to live after their spouse died.
Chicago, its suburbs and the U of I area control the state and the good tax payers in the rest of the state get tax raped each year to pay for the worthless tax suckers in Illinois.
Illinois government and local school boards can pass laws and policies which causes tax paying citizens to move their children to private schools. This frees up space for illegals.
I know that. But they can only ride the Titanic down so far.
All governments in illinois are basically multigenerational kleptocracies. Avoid. I really don’t know how the place can ever be fixed without it collapsing first.
“Illinois has a lot snow birds, who decide to stay in Florida, after a really bad winter in Illinois and a good winter in Florida”
If they have any sense, Illinois winters last about 183 days.
“I know that. But they can only ride the Titanic down so far.”
But just as in other blue states, the elites and elite politicans have made themselves very wealthy over the years in office and just like Gov. Pritzger, have mansions in other states, - red states.
https://patch.com/illinois/chicago/pritkzers-purchase-12-1-million-equestrian-estate-florida
I have yet to see any of that money being used in my surrounding counties.
I’ve been a lifelong resident of Il-16, in North Central Illinois, just south of the Wisconsin border. We had a true conservative, Don Manzullo as a congressman for 20 years. In 2010 the democrats gerrymandered the 16th and 17th together to get rid of one GOP rep. We lost Manzullo and had that backstabbing punk, Adam Kinzinger dumped on us. Last year the dems redrew the electoral map again and drew the 16th in such a way Kinzinger has virtually no chance of winning. That’s how they reward republican treachery. Pritzger’s family owns the Hiatt Hotel chain and there isn’t a republican in the state that stands a chance of defeating the Chicago Machine.They’ve owned this state since the 1920s and no reason to think it will ever change. Republicans are nothing but comic relief.
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