Hey, Govenor Quinn, What's All That Noise Outside.....

    While many states consider boosting their economies with tax cuts, Illinois officials are betting on the opposite tactic: dramatically raising taxes to resolve a budget crisis that threatened to cripple state government.

    Neighboring states gleefully plotted Wednesday to take advantage of what they consider a major economic blunder and lure business away from Illinois.

    By going where no other state dares to tread, Illinois could prove itself to be a policy pacesetter or the opposite — a place so dysfunctional that officials created a jaw-dropping budget crisis and then tried to fix it by knee-capping the economy.

    Illinois faced a budget deficit of $15 billion in the coming year, equivalent to more than half the state's general fund. Officials warned that state government might not be able to pay its employees. It certainly would fall further behind in paying the businesses, charities and schools that provide services on the state's behalf.

    To avoid that, the Democrat-controlled General Assembly voted to temporarily raise personal income taxes 66 percent, from 3 percent to 5 percent. Corporate rates will rise, too — from 4.8 percent to 7 percent — when Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn signs the measure.

    The increase is expected to produce $6.8 billion a year for the four years it's in full effect. That should be enough to balance Illinois' annual budget and begin chipping away at a backlog of roughly $8 billion in old bills.

    Here is an over simplified version of what is and will happen:

    The people that elect the Democrat politicians are two basic types, idealists and the "freebie" crowd.

    The idealists have a Utopian socialist vision that if everyone were equal, all problems in the world will go away. They will vote for whomever they think will make the world magically better. They listen to the socialist blather from Democrats and buy in. The idealists and socialist politicians start giving a chunk of working people's money to the freebie crowd.

    The freebie crowd uses their free food stamps to eat, get free medical to breed more urchins, use the extra money from those urchins (via welfare) to buy beer and luxury items, etc. Then they use their free bus pass to go to the polling booth and vote in Democrats. Those Democrats insure that the above freebies will continue.

    Now throw an outfit like ACORN into the mix that encourages this behavior. This is destructive and problematic. For all of ACORN'S and the left wing's big words, having irresponsible people voting is bad policy. By busing lowlifes, druggies, and decent but non productive people to the polling places, the balance gets shaky.

    When the idealists plus the freebie crowd is over 50% of the voting population, the out of touch politicians are encouraged and can stay in power. All is well until the money starts drying up. The politicians then overtax the productive people to support their constituency.

    The productive people start becoming unproductive. There comes a point where they are forced to go elsewhere. They trickle out of the city or state, gradually leaving behind insolvent places like New York, Illinois, and California.

    The freebie crowd hangs around for awhile, then they are forced to move when their former states can't afford to support them any more. They start another den of insolvency elsewhere. The Idealists are left blaming the productive people for all the world's problems and wondering what the heck happened? (We are about at this point in the US.)

    It never seems to occur to either of these groups that work and productivity builds economies, not idealism and laziness.

    And let us not forget the failed policies of the crooks and mobsters of Chicago and Cook County. Why is Springfield still the capitol? Shouldn't that have been moved to Chicago since they are the ones who call the shots? And even now people are still surprised by all this. These are the people who gave us Obama, Blago and Ryan.

    All this will prove is that the politicians, unions, and corporations that agree with the politicians will continue to get richer and the people will get poorer.