-By Warner Todd Huston
Over the last few days a western Cook County Walmart store hoisted a banner celebrating the end of the Cook County soda tax. The Walmart sign proves what a terrible idea this tax really was.
Months ago the county board for Cook, the county that boasts Chicago as its hub, levied a one cent per ounce tax on soda pop and sugared drinks. The tax was never popular. Even when it was passing the people were in the process of rising up against it and eventually the pressure got so bad that the board capitulated and announced that December 1 would mark the end of the tax.
The tax was set at a penny per ounce, so that was a hike of 20 cents per bottles of pop in a store cooler, 50 cents on a Double Gulp at 7-Eleven, and $2.88 on a case of pop at any Cook County store.
The tax was supposed to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the county budget over the next few years, but it was revealed that the county expected $18 million in new tax revenue in the first month of the tax. But all officials really got was $300,000 because people either bought their pop in another county or stopped buying pop altogether. So, when ever you hear a government entity proclaim how much they will make in taxes with a new tax, know this is always a lie.
Think I am just blowing steam? We go back to the Walmart mentioned above. This Walmart in Streamwood, a far western city in Cook County, had posted this sign in the week leading up to the end of the tax:
Folks, let’s realize what this sign really means. It means that Walmart felt it was worth the expenditure of a few hundred dollars to create this banner to alert customers that they can buy soda again without the odious tax.
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Tax Victory: Chicago/Cook County Soda Tax Canceled Starting Today”
A new poll of likely Chicago voters seems to find that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is in bad shape for his re-election coming up next year. The poll shows that two other candidates are far and away more popular than the incumbent mayor. One of those two is Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, a woman who is nearly an out and proud communist. But, if Chicagoans would vote for Lewis, they don’t deserve the vote at all.
Why is it not a surprise that the first moves to make Chicago the home of the Barack Hussein Obama Presidential Library are born in corruption? But I suppose it is a fitting way to start a library for one of the biggest failure and most corrupt politicians ever to sit in the White House.
On WLS AM 89 radio political reporter Bill Cameron featured an interview with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel that shows just why math is soooooo darn hard for politicians.
So, a Chicago suburb has a woman who was fortunate enough to become a Cook County judge even though she has severe mental problems… and by severe I mean besides being a black power-pushing, halfwitted Democrat. I mean she was actually diagnosed as a mental case and suspended from the bench because of it. But typical to Chicago, now this nutcase expects to get her job back. Because raaaaacism, I suppose.
Illinois continues to rack up plaudits as one of the worst states in the entire country for every measure that makes a successful state. Bad bond ratings, among the highest for people moving away from her, worst pension messes, crummy education, etc. And now, Illinois has won the booby prize as the single worst state in the union for its unemployment track record. Yaaaa, Illinois.
Illinois State Representative Sara Feigenholtz thinks her job is to “give rights” to people. Feigenholtz recently blurted that out in an interview giving us a perfect example of the key difference between those interested in preserving the American system, its morals, and traditions, and those that have no interest in such niceties and instead what to wholly remake the relationship between government and citizen giving government more and more power over everyone.
Recently NPR’s Morning Edition aired a segment on Chicago’s “gun violence” featuring taped comments from local Catholic Priest Father Michael Pfleger. Unfortunately the taxpayer-funded radio show presented Pflager as a benign “social activist” and never informed listeners of just how radical this man is.
State Senator Donnie Trotter is 
We’ve all heard the news of the strike forced on Chicago’s public schools by Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, I’m sure. Barely open for a week, the greedy teachers are now walking off the job but the main reasons for this strike presented by the CTU really don’t stand up to close scrutiny, for sure.
This is a perfect example of Old Media “gotcha” reporting. On July 3, the Washington Post 
Now the very same accused criminal that Chicago Democrats wanted people to vote for in Tuesday’s primary is being pressured to to step down from his office now that he won — pressured by the exact same Democrat officials that 
Here are a few of the results of last night’s primary race in Chicago and the surrounding areas. Unfortunately, for a city of millions, less than 30,000 dragged themselves to the polls to vote. Even more to Chicago’s shame, there are only just over a million people even registered to vote in a city of just under three million citizens!
If you want an example of why Democrats are truly a party of criminals, you have but to look to Chicago for your examples and not just because Chicago has one of the highest rates of Democrat pols being convicted of crimes. This particular election, Chicago Democrats are actually urging voters to vote for a state rep. that was just this month arrested and charged with bribe taking instead of voting for his opponent that has a clean record — but was a Republican.
Rick Santorum visited Illinois last night stopping at Christian Liberty Academy in Arlington Heights, a Chicago suburb, for a 7PM rally that drew over 2,000 people who came to hear the presidential primary candidate speak.
On Thursday night I attended the Chicago Tea Party meeting which featured a jazzed up first term Congressman Joe Walsh who came to announce in which District he’d take a crack at running to affect his reelection to Congress. Without stringing you along, Walsh chose the newly redistricted 8th for his run.
Cook County Comptroller, Constance Kravitz, was another one of those oh, so wonderful appointees of the dismal Todd Stroger, the previous failure that sat in Preckwinkle’s chair. Kravitz was struggling to make ends meet at $165,000 tax dollars annually, so I can see why it was so hard for her to get her facts straight at work. It’s a lot of pressure to be living at such subsistence pay, you know?
Now this is the sort of corruption we are used to seeing in Illinois, eh? This week the Chicago Tribune and WGN TV has found up to 23 retired union operatives that are collecting millions in taxpayer dollars because they had pals in government tweak the state’s pensions laws to favor them.
News today had it that two Cook County Commissioners have refused to take the agreed upon furlough days as required by the 2011 budget, days meant to save the county money. Both William Beavers and Earlene Collins have both refused to take the 10 days off.