Author: jbosco

  • Rahm: Higher Cigarette & Amusement Taxes

    Mayor Rahm Emanuel is considering an increase in city taxes on cigarettes and entertainment to help close an anticipated $369 million gap in next year’s budget, City Hall sources said Wednesday.  …

    It’s unclear how much the cigarette tax might be raised. A city tobacco tax increase would come on the heels of a $1-a-pack state hike that took effect July 1. The city last increased its cigarette tax by 20 cents — to 68 cents a pack — in 2006.

    Taxes on a pack of cigarettes in Chicago total $5.67, the second-highest per-pack tax in the nation, behind New York City’s $5.85 a pack. The city expects to bring in $18.7 million in cigarette taxes this year, compared with $32.9 million just six years ago, according to city financial records.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    Cook County has already proven that when you raise cigarette taxes you lose revenue.  The city’s own numbers are another example of that.

    Does Rahm have any plan to cut ANY spending?  Anything other than police officers?

    Why don’t we shut down the TIFs?  Take fund necessary to pay off the bonds and do so; take the rest of the funds and return them to the general fund.  That would be quick and easy.

    Enough with the !@#$^ taxes.

  • Mitt Romney on the Federal Reserve

    “Yeah, it’s interesting…the former head of Goldman Sachs, John Whitehead, was also the former head of the New York Federal Reserve. And I met with him, and he said as soon as the Fed stops buying all the debt that we’re issuing—which they’ve been doing, the Fed’s buying like three-quarters of the debt that America issues. He said, once that’s over, he said we’re going to have a failed Treasury auction, interest rates are going to have to go up. We’re living in this borrowed fantasy world, where the government keeps on borrowing money. You know, we borrow this extra trillion a year, we wonder who’s loaning us the trillion? The Chinese aren’t loaning us anymore. The Russians aren’t loaning it to us anymore. So who’s giving us the trillion? And the answer is we’re just making it up. The Federal Reserve is just taking it and saying, “Here, we’re giving it.’ It’s just made up money, and this does not augur well for our economic future.

    via Glenn Beck.

    You can only live on borrowed money for so long.  After awhile someone comes looking for what you owe… plus the vig.

    Refi that house now because if you think it’s bad now but wait until we have 9.0% unemployment and 9.0% inflation.

    The wheels are falling of the bus.

  • Ald. “New Tax” Cardenas Wants $5/mo

    Chicago should impose a “safety and security fee” — as high as $5 a month on homes and businesses — to generate the $70 million needed to hire 700 additional police officers, an influential alderman said Thursday.

    Ald. George Cardenas (12th), chairman of the City Council’s Health Committee, said Chicago desperately needs a surge in police hiring to ease a severe manpower shortage that has hamstrung the city’s ability to stop a surge in homicides and shootings.  …

    Police and Fire are the very definition of general funds.  This is nothing more than a $60/year tax on everyone.

    Fraternal Order of Police President Mike Shields said he would welcome “any new source of revenue” that could be used to bolster a police force that stands at 11,799 after a three-year hiring slowdown.

    Through Aug. 15, 420 police officers had retired, but only 127 new officers had been hired, he said.

    But, Shields said, “Why is it that we have to go to another source of revenue to pay for these officers? Policing is a basic city service that should be in the budget without a new fee. The mayor eliminated 1,252 police vacancies. The 2012 budget should not have been balanced at the expense of public safety. Those vacancies should have been filled.”   …

    Cardenas is the aldermen who championed Chicago’s nickel-a-container tax on bottled water.He also proposed an anti-obesity plan to tax Chicago consumers of soda pop, energy drinks and other sugary beverages anywhere from 15 to 30 cents-a-contain to a penny-an-ounce.

    via SunTimes.

    How about we eliminate the TIFs and put all that money back into the general fund?  Then we’d have money for police, fire, and all kinds of other services.  Heck, we might even be able to fund the teachers’ pensions.

    Ald. Cardenas, we’re taxed to death already!  Enough.

  • Blantly Racist Headline at L.A. Times & Tribune

    White working class: Clinging to guns, religion and Romney

    via Chicago Tribune.

    Here is Barack Obama’s full quote:

    You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them.  And they fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not.  And it’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
    Barack Obama, April 6, 2008.

     

    There is nothing inherently racist in Obama’s quote.  While it’s true that: (a) small towns in Pennsylvania incredibly white and it appears Obama means, “small town white folk,” and (b) he characterizes these people as “anti-immigrant”, Obama was at least careful not to directly inject race into the statement.

    We really need to find a way to come together on this race issue.

  • Illinois Unemployment at 9.1%

    Unemployment across Illinois rose to 9.1 percent in August, the third straight month of increases in the state, the Illinois Department of Employment Security said Thursday. …

    Unemployment in July was 8.9 percent. Increases in the unemployment rate in June, July and August followed nine months of slow but steady declines. The federal government said earlier this month that the national unemployment rate dropped from 8.3 percent to 8.1, but the decrease was thought to primarily be driven by people dropping off unemployment rolls because they stopped looking for work.

    via Crain’s Chicago Business.

    Not a good sign.

    It’s time for Madigan, Rahm, Quinn, and the rest of the cabal to stop lining their own pockets and start balancing budgets and becoming a little more business friendly.

    Do anti-business people understand that  no businesses = no taxpayers.  No taxpayers = no tax revenue.  No tax revenue = no government jobs or services?

    Government in and of itself creates nothing of value.  It’s all done with other people’s money.  What about that is so hard to understand?

  • One Word for CPS Teachers: Save

    Save.

    Save as much money as you can.

    Live well below your means.

    The pension time-bomb is coming.

    One of the most vexing problems for Chicago and its teachers went virtually unmentioned during the strike: The pension fund is about to hit a wall.

    The Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund has about $10 billion in assets, but is paying out more than $1 billion in benefits a year — much more than it has been taking in. That has forced it to sell investments, worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, to pay retired teachers. Experts say the fund could collapse within a few years unless something is done.

    via NYTimes.com.

    and;

    “Each day we wait to enact comprehensive pension reform, the problem gets worse,” Quinn said in a statement. “The unfunded liability will grow to more than $92 billion by the end of next fiscal year. Illinois is currently on track to spend more on pensions than education by 2016 and that is unacceptable.
    — Pat Quinn

    via Des Plaines, IL Patch.

    If you think that taxpayers are going to fund your pensions, forget-about it.

    If you think you can tax the rich to fund your pensions, forget-about it.

    If you think that people are going to move into a community where their property taxes increase by 7% every year in order to fund failing schools, forget-about it.

    If you think you’re going to get your COLA every year, forget-about it.

    You have two options:  Save every nickel and dime you can, or plan to work until you’re in your 70’s.

    Consider:

    Illinois has an unfunded pension liability of at least $83 billion, according to state figures. It had 45 percent of what it needed to pay future retiree obligations as of 2010, the lowest among U.S. states, data compiled by Bloomberg show.  …

    Illinois had about $28 billion of general-obligation debt as of May 8, according to bond documents. The state of about 13 million people plans to sell $50 million of debt next month for technology projects, John Sinsheimer, the state’s director of capital markets, said in an interview.

    via Businessweek.

    Further:

    Illinois’s backlog of unpaid bills has risen to more than $9 billion because of pension costs and falling federal aid, leaving the state “essentially treading water,” Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka said.

    via Bloomberg.

    $83B + $28B + $9B = $120,000,000,000 in debt.  The extra $50 million at 0.42% of the total is a rounding error.  It should also be noted that this does not include the City of Chicago (or any other municipality or county debt) which is another $12-16 billion in debt depending on who you ask.

    12,869,257 people in the state of Illinois.  Every man, woman, and child owed owes $9,324.54 to the state.  If you live in Chicago you owe another 5,910.34 locally for total of $15,234.89.  (Are you feeling good about your new contract yet?)

    I was just looking over the FY2013 Illinois State Budget as prepared by Gov. Quinn.  On Pg 37 we’re told that Debt Service is 5.42% of all outlays.  That’s over $3.3B per year paying principle and interest on money we borrowed.  That’s $3.3B per year we could use to hire police officers, or teachers, or fully fund the pension funds but will instead go to pay for our bad fiscal decisions of the past.

    More importantly, total expenditures are $61.0B.  That means that if we (a/k/a the State of Illinois) completely stopped operating, fired all the employees, shuttered all the buildings, and spend 100% of the budget on paying off debt we’d be debt free in 2 years.

    Oh, I know what you’re going to say… You’re going to tell me all about how the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund is not as underwater as the general state fund.  True, but it’s still broke and broken.  And there’s no money to fix it.

    Then you’re going to say that this is a right guaranteed by the Illinois Constitution.  Oh ya?  Well where’s the money going to come from?  The rich?  You wish:

    When New Jersey governor Chris Christie heard British Prime Minister David Cameron invite France’s wealthy to decamp to England to escape a proposed 75% tax rate, he felt something akin to déjà vu. Every day top executives of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Merck (MRK), and other companies commute from their homes in Pennsylvania to offices in Christie’s state, saving roughly two-thirds on their state income tax bill — and costing New Jersey’s treasury $50 million, by one estimate.

    via Fortune (a/k/a CNN).

    You don’t understand the Laffer Curve.

    The study, by the anti-tax group Change Maryland, says that a net 31,000 residents left the state between 2007 and 2010, the tenure of a “millionaire’s tax” pushed through by Gov. Martin O’Malley. The tax, which expired in 2010, in imposed a rate of 6.25 percent on incomes of more than $1 million a year.

    The Change Maryland study found that the tax cost Maryland $1.7 billion in lost tax revenues. A county-by-county analysis by Change Maryland also found that the state’s wealthiest counties also had some of the largest population outflows.

    via CNBC.

    You’re confused how a state and raise taxes and lose revenue.  It happens all the time.  I wrote a piece about cigarette taxes in Cook County; raised taxes, lost revenue.

    The more you tax something the less of it you get.

    You tax income, you get less income.  You tax babies, you get less babies.

    Even the left-loving Bono (of U2 fame) moves his wealth around to avoid taxes.

    In Illinois, if we quadrupled the state income tax on those with adjusted gross income over $500k it would take over 13 years just to get current state pension liabilities square.  This would not cover the additional debt of Chicago Teachers, Chicago Police & Fire, or any of the billions and billions of general debt.

    So take your 16% raise and start saving.  Save like your life depends on it.  Because it does.

  • Surgeon Sage Says

    “Surgeon Sage Says” (circa 1915)

  • Chick-fil-A Wavies 1st Amendment Rights

    Chick-fil-A has pledged to stop giving money to anti-gay groups and to back off political and social debates after an executive’s comments this summer landed the fast-food chain smack in the middle of the gay marriage debate.

    The Civil Rights Agenda, which dubs itself the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy group in Illinois, said Chick-fil-A agreed in meetings to stop donating to groups such as Focus on the Family and the National Organization for Marriage. Such groups oppose same-sex marriage.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    WT…?!  Why?

    Everyone please note how the Left does not wish to openly discuss issues of public disagreement — No National Discourse will be held.

    Opposing opinions will be silenced by any means necessary.

    I fully support Chick-fil-A giving money to any political cause it likes.  I don’t have to eat there.

    I fully support Progressive Ins. giving money to any leftest cause it likes.  I have have to buy Ins. from them.

    Warren Buffet = Geico.  Don’t have to buy their ins. either.

    Sheldon Adelson runs the Sands Casino group and gives a lot of money to Romney.  You don’t have to gamble at a Sands owned hotel.

    I could go on.

    But badgering people over and over and over and over and over and over until the have to submit to political correctness does not server the public good.  The solution for bad speech is not no speech but MORE speech.

    If you disagree with me, fine.  Be polite, state your case.

    I disagree strongly with what you say,
    but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
    –Voltaire –

    This Civil Rights Agenda stands for anything but.  It’s evil.

  • 400 Richest Americans’ Worth $1.7 Trillion

    The net worth of the richest Americans grew by 13 percent in the past year to $1.7 trillion, Forbes magazine said on Wednesday, and a familiar cast of characters once again populated the top of the magazine’s annual list of the U.S. uber-elite, including Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison and the Koch brothers.

    The average net worth of the 400 wealthiest Americans rose to a record $4.2 billion, the magazine said.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    I love stories like this.  The Left will go on and on about how its unfair that these people earn this money; it’s terrible that anyone should be allowed to have this much money, and what-have-you.

    So let’s just take.  Let’s just take all of it.  Let’s take these thieving bastards money and redistribute it so everyone benefits.

    $1.7 T / 314,409,835 people = $5,406.96 per person.

    That would be a one time payment by the way.  No one would ever get another nickel from these people ever again.  Hardly seems worth it to me.

    Maybe we should use it to pay off our national debt.  After all every citizen owes the government over $51,000.  Surely we’d all be better off if we just paid down the debt.

    $16T – 1.7T = $14,300,000,000,000

    After that we all now owe about $46,000 to the government, each. … Huh?!   Still seems like we all owe a lot of money.

    And this is the folly — we can Eat the Rich — but it would never be enough to save us from what we’ve already done to ourselves.

    Inflation and austerity are coming.  Plan for it.

  • Crumb & Get It: Baker with Principles

    [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s_CGWKN8Ak]