-By Lisa Volpe
As the Illinois legislature continues to meet in Springfield with no state budget on the books, there are some who want to implement a new tax on satellite television customers. This is a discriminatory tax that’s perpetually suggested. The bottom line is that the cable industry wants to impose a satellite tax to make it less attractive for consumers.
The idea proponents are floating is to place a new 5 percent tax on every subscriber’s bill for no other reason than to suppress the satellite industry’s efforts to compete with cable.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle see this tax increase for what it is and have repeatedly rejected it. Since 2009, the cable industry has tried to pass satellite tax bills 53 times in 28 states – and state legislatures across the country have debated and rejected these new consumer taxes time and again. The reason is simple: satellite taxes discriminate against consumers who chose a wireless alternative to cable for their television.
Cable companies in Illinois pay rent – known as a “franchise fee” – to cities and towns for digging up public roads and for hanging wires. The cable industry somehow thinks satellite consumers should pay a tax simply for providing a competing service.
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Springfield Needs to Stop This Unfair Satellite Tax”
In Illinois we have a complicit, left-wing media establishment that will never write a bad story about Democrats. This deal with 8th District Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth–a candidate for the US Senate, no less–is a perfect example. Duckworth is being accused of punishing two whistleblowers who were trying to uncover Duckworth’s massive mismanagement when she was at the VA and yet the media is practically silent on the story.
Last month I noted that the Illinois state legislature is still pushing yet another tax to bedevil its already over taxed citizenry with the plan to push a tax on satellite TV providers. That plan has not abated.Unfortunately, it is just another example of Illinois burdening it citizens because of the failure of the politicians.
The move for school choice is not only growing in Illinois in general but in Chicago in particular as politicians and parents both see the downward spiral of the public education system picking up speed.
Adam Andrzejewski has thrown his hat in the ring to become the new Illinois Governor’s pick to replace deceased State Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka and I think there isn’t a better, more qualified candidate than Adam.
With the passing of Illinois State Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka, the state is faced with a bit of a dilemma. How should she be replaced? 
Transparency, shmansparency. Once again we see a government doing its level best to keep you, the people, from being able to find out what it is that government is doing to you. This time it is in failing Illinois where lawmakers are trying to make it much, much harder to fulfill a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
Only days after the 2014 election that gave Illinois a new business-minded, tax-cutting Republican as its new Governor, Illinois State Senator and nominal Republican Dave Syverson gave us all a perfect example of why the Illinois GOP is such a crashing failure when he chirped up that he’d love to make the “temporary” state income tax hike permanent, BEFORE the new Governor even gets a chance to take office.
The Republicans bumped up their gains in the Senate and the House of Representatives and also gained in Governor’s mansions across the nation and even deep, deep blue Illinois was affected by this GOP wave. But even with these few bright spots, Illinois is the worst state in the union on every level.
In another example of why government unions should all be eliminated, two union operatives in the Illinois school system have been the happy recipients of million-dollar pensions–courtesy of the taxpayers–for teaching classes for only a single day.
Illinois is in such bad shape it can’t even produce no littering signs that are properly spelled, it appears.
Obama’s Illinois perennially ranks at the very bottom of every statistic that marks a successful state and a new report on America’s “sinkhole states” finds that Illinois again ranks at the very bottom this time for how much state debt each citizen is saddled with.
Last weekend Illinois GOP candidate for Governor Bruce Rauner took the ALS “ice bucket challenge.” When he did he urged Illinois Democrat leaders to join him in the challenge. In reply, the state’s Democrat House leader outrageously found a way to link the charitable challenge to a claim that Republicans are like the ISIS terrorists in Iraq!
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.
Eric Kohn over at Illinois Mirror has a great piece that highlights the main difference between real capitalism and the sort of crony capitalism (which isn’t capitalism at all) that the left so dearly loves.
Aurora’s Democrat State Representative, Linda Chapa LaVia, decided to let her racist flag fly on the floor of the House earlier this week when she called a bi-racial Republican a”half” of a minority during a debate on her failed teachers union-backed attempt to harm Illinois’ charter schools.
Of course, even by any measure of the left’s ideas of what a “minority” is ancestors wise Anthony fits the bill. He is part Africa and part Hispanic having a Puerto Rican background. He was a policeman and was elected as a Republican in 2013.
Senator Mark Kirk (RINO, ILL) has always been a 50 percenter with the Republican Party, meaning that he only supports the party he is supposed to belong to around 50 percent of the time. But now, seemingly by his own admission, he’s become a full Democrat with his decision to fight against the GOP nominee for Senate and support the re-election of Democrat Senator Dick Durbin, the single most left-wing promulgator of lies in the U.S. Senate.
The U.S. Constitution says that our Second Amendment rights shall not be infringed. That’s pretty straightforward. But a middle school in Illinois has decided that shall not really means that you have no rights unless government says you are allowed to have them.