-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”
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.
Two separate incidents concerning memorial street signs in Chicago encapsulates perfectly how warped, truly immoral, and evil the Democrat Party in the U.S.A. has become.
On January 4 a white teenager with special needs was found wandering aimlessly in a black Chicago neighborhood and when police found him he had a frightening tale of race-based torture to tell. But before he was rescued Facebook users were treated to videos of four black kids hooting and laughing as they beat the teen bloody while yelling “F white people” and “F Trump.” Unsurprisingly, because it is a white person being tortured, liberals from coast to coast are insisting this isn’t a racist hate crime.
A new radio spot being played on Chicago talk radio by a purportedly “Christian” environmentalist group is using a pack of lies about Christianity and the environment in order to push left-wing Senator Mark Kirk into signing onto the President’s global warming policies.
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.
I have known Mike Flynn for several years, now, and work with him at Breitbart.com, now he has announced his run to replace the disgraced Aaron Schock in the Illinois 18th Congressional District.
Illinois Congressman Aaron Schock just announced that he is resigning because of the mounting troubles over his illicit spending.
Obama’s Chicago terrorist has been sentenced to 18 months in prison, authorities in the Windy City announced late last week. No, not his old terrorist, Bill Ayers, his newer terrorist, Rasmieh Yousef Odeh, the woman he hired to work as an Obamacare “navigator” in Illinois.
Several years ago the FBI had arrested Emad Karakrah and charged him with a series of crimes. Karakrah was involved in several plots and crimes including narco-terrorism and a 2009 plot to bomb Oprah Winfrey’s Chicago TV studios. But for some inexplicable reason, the FBI just released this dangerous man out of prison.
The Mayor of Bloomington, Illinois seems to have lost his mind after a local Tea Party blogger mentioned his son in one of her posts. The Mayor launched into an unnecessary, hyperbolic attack on the blogger calling her “total garbage,” and a “sick dirty slimy ignorant fool.” His spittle-specked attack was replete with a lack of proper punctuation, misspellings, and often in all caps. It was like he reverted to a 12-year-old mentality with his over the top reply.
A recent survey of the wealth of members of Congress revealed that, on average, it would take the combined wealth of 18 American households to equal the wealth of a single member of Congress. While this is an averaged statistic and individual cases vary, a review of the wealth of members of the Illinois delegation to Washington proves the rule rather than the exception.
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.
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 Senior Senator, Democrat Dick Durbin was forced to respond to a Chicago Tribune story that revealed that his wife is a lobbyist who received high-dollar federal contracts. Durbin said it was purely coincidental… then offered to sell us the Brooklyn Bridge.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel has over $8 million in his campaign fund and usually that sort of cash is quite a harbinger of election success but maybe not this time as the mayor’s approval ratings crater and at least two powerful opponents warm to a run against him, one of whom might be backed by the deep pockets of the national teachers union.
In 2011 a political operative attempted to sue the Illinois news website 
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.
Leave it to leftist Illinois to use a museum dedicated to celebrating Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest presidents in history, as a platform to celebrate a loser like Adlai Stevenson while at the same time ignoring Ronald Reagan, a native son, big winner, and another greatest president.
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!