6:00 AM
Just woke up from a dream in which the Illinois Republicans nominated a candidate who thinks the answer for a state on the verge of bankruptcy is to LOWER the revenue available for education and to cut funding for necessary services to children, the sick and the elderly. Oh yeah, in the dream, he wants to force state employees into 401K programs, even if they cost more for taxpayers.
There was a lot of other stuff in the dream that I don”t have time to post right now.
6:05 AM
Uh oh.
We’re awake now. Time to get to work.
Illinois Education Association is an association of more than 130,000 members composed of Illinois elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty and staff, educational support professionals, retired educators and college students preparing to become teachers.
With enough help from the precincts yet to be counted we might be able to put your nightmare to bed. If not, the work starts ASAP to oppose such a disastrous set of proposals.
The late William Buckley stated that idealism becomes cost prohibitive as it approaches reality. Though I do not do Buckley justice, the point remains that we need someone at the helm that we live within our means. Many want to make the issue like the big bad Republicans want to torture the downtrodden; such chicanery really speaks more about the person spouting such nonsense that government should take money and redistribute it through entitlement programs. This ubiquitous notion throughout government led us to a $12 billion dollar budget hole that apparently we cannot afford, does not work, and only creates more waste.
This is why I and apparently millions of others cannot support a simple tax hike where there will be business as usual. More taxes to expand government, give other peoples’ money to the people government wants to be the winners of the giveaway, and then assuredly end up like Michigan.
Anyone with a hopeful dream like Mr. Barron can certainly see the folly of Illinois simply raising taxes: Michigan did the same thing, and sure enough, just three years later after a massive tax hike and no change in welfare, entitlements, or business-friendly reforms, they are back in Illinois’ position. Michigan robbed people through raising taxes and hiring more workers. Now there is even less tax money, Michigan is the biggest employer in the state, and even though the last tax hike was supposed to solve everything, a new last tax hike to solve everything is needed. Tough concept to figure out: we take a lot more of the workers’ money and they have less to spend at businesses, creating less tax money, and many businesses even need to contract more because of less revenue. This results in less sales tax and hurts local governments. And on and on and on. Of course, many will say: It can’t happen here. Right.
Sound familiar?