In this Thursday, Oct. 23, 2014 photo, an abandoned apartment building is locked and uncared for near downtown in Danville, Ill. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)
Listen To You Tell Me Texas Friday 5/25/18
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During our visit last week we talked about the Seattle city council’s idiotic decision to impose a head tax on local businesses of $275 per employee per year. We reported that immediately after that city council vote, Amazon, Seattle’s largest employer, suspended work on its new office tower. Of course, it goes almost without saying that Seattle’s city council is comprised 100 percent of Democrats save for one woman who calls herself a “Socialist Alternative,” whatever far left whack-o political party that is.
We went on to talk about the now all-but-irreversible economic decline of Democrat-run cities like Baltimore, St. Louis, Newark, Philadelphia, Detroit and, notably, Chicago.
Interestingly, our piece of last week serves as an apt prelude to a story this week in Breitbart on the subject of the State of Illinois. It seems that folks are fleeing Illinois in droves – more than 71,000 net out-migration since 2016.
Chicago is, as you would expect, the biggest single contributor to the exodus. Chicago stands alone among major American cities for having consistently lost citizens for the past five years. Chicago’s troubles are vast. The city can barely pay its bills – in fact the lights stay on only because of the forbearance of the utility companies to which Chicago owes millions in past-due power bills. On top of the fiscal disaster we then add the gun and gang crime and the general lawlessness that is literally destroying the city from within.
Two questions arise. First, why are people leaving Illinois? Well, see the paragraph above. But also don’t forget high taxes, high fees, stifling regulations and a corrupt bureaucracy that increasingly makes doing business not worth the trouble.
In the State of Illinois, state and local governments keep taking a bigger bite out of their citizens’ incomes to fund massive, unsustainable pension liabilities – pensions that were handed out to Illinois public employees in return for union campaign cash to keep corrupt politicians in office.
Meanwhile, essential services – say for example, law enforcement – continue to erode.
The second question is, who is leaving Illinois? You can surely guess that answer. The people fleeing Illinois are the ones who can afford to. They’re the better educated, better employed and more talented who have options that those further down the economic ladder don’t have. They are the ones with the earnings that pay the taxes. When the tax burden becomes so great that they leave, those left behind have no capacity to take up the slack. This fact is exactly why the cities we mentioned earlier went into decline with little chance of revival.
And who dominates political offices at every level in Illinois? Again you can guess. The Illinois legislature is nearly two thirds Democratic. The Chicago city council has exactly one Republican out of 50 seats.
So, again we say, cities and states run by Democrats almost always have two things in common that combine into the cruelest paradox: They have the highest taxes and yet they’re in the worst financial shape.
The source of the decline is so very obvious, yet those on the still refuse to believe their own lying eyes. The question isn’t will these Democrat-run cities and states collapse. The only question is when. In saner states like our own Texas, we see and are doing better. The danger is a future federal government controlled by the Democrats and Berneites. In their hands the federal government will tax the sane states to cover the cost of left wing failures, and thus take every state into the same death spiral.
Until people in these democratic controlled disaster areas wake up and break the cycle of ruin they have put themselves in there is not much anyone can do to help. God helps those who help themselves. So far they do not seem to want to get out of the cycle of ruin they have been in for the past 40 or so years.
It is a shame too. Look at all those once beautiful buildings going to ruin that could be brought back to their once glorious state if the right people could get into power. BUT…only the people can change things. If they choose not to and flee…well,that is totally up to them. Frankly, I do not have much sympathy for them because they have chosen to keep voting in the very people who have put them in the mess they are in. They have chosen to sit there in the violence and complain instead of DOING something. Thing about it is, where ever they go, they are the same people with the same problems…just carrying them to wherever else they go to.
Sadly and alarmingly, Illinois is the model for the type of government that these leftist have in mind for the whole country. This pattern is the preferred form of governing that we see in most 3rd world countries; some that were very prosperous before falling into the clutches of socialism/communism. In an effort to squeeze the producers for more and more of the burden of wasteful spending, these leftist chase out the golden geese, along with their golden eggs. The only thing left is goose droppings. However, those in control have already amassed a fortune in golden eggs, and live in opulence, most likely in another country where living conditions are much better. As Linda mentions, until the residents become more alert and educated to what is happening, this cycle will continue. Oh heck, I almost forgot, this possible escape route has already been closed by these leftist……..they have destroyed the public education system.
Unfortunately when the majority of the “better educated, more talented” of the north, northeast come here to Texas, they seem to have learned NOTHING from their experience in the progressive utopias they left and promote the same political and social agendas here that destroyed their former cities and states.
Trace, you took the words right out of my mouth