-By Warner Todd Huston
CBS2 reports that the Cook County Board has quietly approved of raises for County employees. Yes, this is the same County Board that is fighting over a one half cent tax hike and claiming that the coffers are empty causing hospitals to close up for lack of funds.
While businesses all across the country are freezing salaries, stopping new hires, and even cutting salaries ten and twenty percent, County government is giving luxurious raises to its employees. That’s your tax dollars being spent to give public employee raises when the voters are seeing hard times.
Must be nice to have a cushy, extravagant, recession proof, government job during these hard times, eh?
And now for the understatement of the year…
Cliff Kelly, a former Chicago alderman who hosts a talk show on WVON Radio, said, “If most people knew this, they would be very upset about it.”
Ya think, there, Cliffie?
Salaries like a Grade 19 County Board employee — who started at the minimum of $41,000 in 1998 — now earning $70,000, according to the budget passed last week by the Cook County Board. That’s an increase of 71 percent in 12 years.
Can anyone show me where some untrained, hack can make $70,000 a year in the private sector?
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, TheRealityCheck.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, and the New Media Journal, among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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