-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.
Last cycle this website did not support Mr. Morrison for the first district seat on the Cook County Board of Review. There was a big reason for this. Morrison was a heavy supporter, donor and voter for Democrats prior to suddenly launching his campaign as a Republican.
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?
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.
You gotta hand it to new Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle. Not only has she risen above her goofy name and won a highly important political position, but she’s achieved the art of almost saying something that she means.
The Wilmette Beacon 
Newly elected Cook County Commissioner Jeff Tobolski is leaving the office of mayor of the Village of McCook, Illinois. Now, a few weeks after the election, the Chicago Sun-Times