-By Warner Todd Huston
As the state of Illinois edges near becoming the first U.S. state to ever be rated junk bond status, the Democrat-controlled legislature of the bankrupt state of Illinois has just voted to slam its citizens with a hefty 32 percent hike in state income taxes.
After a series of delays as a legislature obviously embarrassed by its own actions dithered, the State House finally approved of the Senate’s override of the governor’s veto with a 71-42 vote burdening the state with a massive tax hike. It was a vote that saw ten of the state’s Republican contingent abandon Republican values and join the Democrats in approval.
Thursday’s vote permanently increases the state’s personal income tax rate from 3.75 percent to 4.95 percent. It also raises the burden on businesses raising the rate from 5.9 percent to seven. It all amounts to a 32 percent hike for the average Illinoisan and a $5 billion tax hike overall.
The new tax hike all the more galling because Illinois already has the highest property taxes in the nation, a fact that often forces retirees out of their homes and fleeing to other states. This is also a situation not lost on the state’s African American population, either. Illinois is witnessing a growing number of its African American citizens moving out of the state with Chicago and Cook County residents leaving at the fastest rate.
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Bankrupt Illinois Slams Citizens With 32% Income Tax Hike, More to Come”
John Adams was one of the truly indispensable men among our founding fathers. He was the man that wrote one of the first fully written out Constitutions in human history when he wrote the Constitution of Massachusetts. He wrote a seminal book on government that helped inform the founders of our nation, he was an ambassador to France and other European nations, he was our first vice president, our second president, and more.
This Independence Day holiday is an excellent time to revisit one of Red Skelton’s most endearing works: his recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and what that pledge means.
Today America enjoys the celebration of 241 years as a nation by noting the day we declared our independence from England. Sadly, that celebration has, for too many, become the “Fourth of July” holiday, a day of picnics, rote parades, “white sales,” and for some a day off work. Of course, we should not and don’t celebrate any “July Fourth” holiday. We celebrate Independence Day, the day we formally separated from our parent nation and took those first unsteady steps into the world as a nation of our own.
After a Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer attempted to assassinate Republican members of Congress in Virginia, many on the left began insisting that “both sides” need to moderate their violent political rhetoric. But history proves that leftists are guilty of most of the politically-motivated violence in the U.S
The media is upset this weekend that President Donald Trump canceled the “White House Muslim Iftar Dinner tradition started by Thomas Jefferson.” But the media is wrong in every respect. Thomas Jefferson never held any Iftar dinner and only three out of 45 presidents ever hosted one, so there is no such “tradition” to cancel.
Illinois Rep. Julie Stratin of Chicago’s 11th District has introduced a bill to have all state shelters immediately euthanize dogs with predominantly white coats. Stratin says that white dogs represent too much white privilege and she wants to level the playing field for dark colored dogs, the Chicago Tribune Times reports.
Over the past year, Breitbart Spots has been hitting cable sports network ESPN pretty hard over the question of its liberal bias. Or, as ESPN ombudsman Jim Brady recently said in a tweet aimed at this reporter, “beating that same dead horse.”
TV reality show star Kim Kardashian, the woman who is famous because someone released her sex tape, is now trying to wade into political debates, this time saying that she wants heavier restrictions on America’s Second Amendment rights… but not for her armed bodyguards, of course.
A new video seems to show a CNN camera crew preparing to film a standup with reporter Becky Anderson and carefully staging a group of Muslims holding signs protesting the London terror attacks to make it look as if London’s Muslims were standing against terrorism.
A few years after the Civil War as the nation started upon its long road toward reconciliation, rebuilding, and healing the wife of one of the war’s union generals noticed the touching devotion of Confederate widows, wives and their children as each year they came together to place flowers and little flags at the graves of their fallen. Mary Simmerson Cunningham Logan was so moved by the devotion she witnessed that she urged her husband, Illinois General John A. “Blackjack” Logan, to look into creating what was to become Memorial Day.
HEADQUARTERS GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC
The fake news media went mad last week when a Republican candidate from Montana got in a tussle with a pajama-boy-like journalist on the eve of Election Day. Across the fake news establishment the media whined about the “violence” inherent in the Republican Party in the era of Trump. But this narrative totally ignores the history of political violence perpetrated by Democrats that goes back well before the Civil War.
Guerrilla filmmaker Ami Horowitz has been excellent at exposing the stupidity of the left and his latest film takes aim at the empty logic of “white privilege” as taught in our feckless colleges and universities.
In the aftermath of the terrible bombing of children in Manchester, England, the pop singer who they came to see has offered to pay for the funerals of the victims, a report says.
A new study has found that over 7 million American voters are illegally registered to vote in more than one state, and that doesn’t even include the number of counties that have more voters registered than they have voting age population.
After the hilarious ABC sitcom, “Last Man Standing,” was canceled this month, many fans became suspicious that the network only dumped the popular show because of its conservative political content. Now the show’s star, comedian and actor Tim Allen, is also expressing how shocked he is over the fate of the show.
It really is the most amazing thing, this Republican Health Care Bill. Usually, as a partisan, you can point to the lies from one corner of the political world and screech about how unfair it all is. But in the case of this latest Republican-sponsored health care bill, the sad fact is that all four of the most interested parties in this debate are simply lying outright about what this bill does.
After Fox News host Bill O’Reilly was fired over a long list of sexual harassment charges, a former Fox News guest and bomb throwing blogger has cast her own veiled accusation of sexual harassment at yet another powerhouse Fox News host. Late last week blogger Debie Schlussel insisted that Sean Hannity invited her to his hotel room and then black balled her from the network when she refused. But only days later, Schlussel was found walking back the accusation.
As the State of Florida continues to be one of the nation’s key bellwether states it has also become a major swing state with Democrats seeming to have increased their presence in a state that has until recently seemed a bit more solidly red. This means that by 2020, Florida could become one of the most important states in the county.
The Washington Post’s Daniel W. Drezner gave us all a perfect example of a typical left-wing media trick meant to slam conservatives with outright lies only to “apologize” later when no one will pay attention.
