-By Warner Todd Huston
This week ABC 7’s Chuck Goudie aired a report made in conjunction with the Better Government Association that explored the efficacy of the Illinois Township and what they discovered is just more waste and ripoffs of the Illinois taxpayer.
Townships were originally created for two main purposes: raising taxes to take care of roads in unincorporated areas and to provide temporary aid to the poor. Unfortunately the I-Team and the BGA have discovered that this extra layer of government is collecting large amounts of taxes, spending only a fraction on the two purposes for which they were created, and banking all the rest amassing huge surpluses all the while hiring friends and family members for false, make-work jobs that create no wealth for the community.
This report finds that most of the money that these townships take in goes to salaries for township employees.
Consider southeast suburban Rich Township: only five percent of it’s tax money is spent on state-mandated help for the poor. Rich Township spends almost 45 percent of it’s budget on salaries. At the same time, according to state records, Rich lives up to it’s name by socking away almost $4 million in taxpayer money.
The report discovered that many of the township governments across Cook County find themselves in similar situations. Little of the tax money they take in goes for the actual purposes that the township was created for while money is either banked unused or spent on things that are unnecessary. Worse, there is no oversight of what these townships do.
If you want to see what is going on in your Cook County township, the Better Government Association has an interactive map that details all their research.
This fits in nicely with the sort of thing I have been talking about for years. Government means make-work employees that have useless jobs that spawn expensive benefits and pensions but add nothing worthwhile to the community. These people are leeches off the productive people of society. Government jobs are not real jobs, they are a waste of the taxpayer’s money. Government jobs do not help the economy because they steal money from productive members of society. Government jobs do not “make” anything but waste. And this report proves that adage correct once again.
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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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