NATO Protest Recap: Black Bloc Chants for ‘Dead Cops’…Bottles of Urine and Feces…CNN Criticizes Cops

The BlogRSS Feed

Government ‘Illinois’: French for ‘Just like Greece’

An editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal, “The Greece Next Door” [subscription required], makes a powerful comparison showing how the liberal progressive agenda of the Illinois legislature is causing the state to, well, look a lot like Greece — minus the fires and riots (so far — with the notable exception of Chicago, where a win by any professional team could spark a catastrophe in seconds).

Quoth the Journal:

Run up spending and debt, raise taxes in the naming of balancing the budget, but then watch as deficits rise and your credit-rating falls anyway. That’s been the sad pattern in Europe, and now it’s hitting that mecca of tax-and-spend government known as Illinois.

Though too few noticed, this month Moody’s downgraded Illinois state debt to A2 from A1, the lowest among the 50 states. That’s worse even than California.

This isn’t exactly what the Democrats in Illinois had planned:

Only a year ago, Governor Pat Quinn and his fellow Democrats raised individual income taxes by 67% and the corporate tax rate by 46%. They did it to raise $7 billion in revenue, as the Governor put it, to “get Illinois back on fiscal sound footing” and improve the state’s credit rating.

How’d that work out for the now-Greco-state? Moody‘s didn’t like it, and once again we see that higher taxes are not the answer:

In its downgrade statement, Moody’s panned Illinois lawmakers for “a legislative session in which the state took no steps to implement lasting solutions to its severe pension underfunding or to its chronic bill payment delays.“ An analysis by Bloomberg finds that the assets in the pension fund will only cover ”45% of projected liabilities, the least of any state.” And — no surprise — in part because the tax increases have caused companies to leave Illinois, the state budget office confesses that as of this month the state still has $6.8 billion in unpaid bills and unaddressed obligations.

I’ll be darned, the liberal tax-and-spend agenda failed again. Who could have seen that coming?

Even more interesting than the comparison of Illinois to Greece is how Illinois stands in contrast with Wisconsin.

Remember when leeches and union thugs occupied Madison — before Occupying was cool? We were told that Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s agenda was going to bring about the end of the world . . . or something.

So, were the protesters correct?

In contrast to the Illinois downgrade, Moody’s has praised Mr. Walker’s budget as “credit positive for Wisconsin,” adding that the money-saving reforms bring “the state’s finances closer to a structural budgetary balance.”

The editorial goes on to note that, as a result of Walker and the state GOP’s efforts, Wisconsin jumped rom #41 to #17 in Chief Executive magazine’s business-climate rankings of the 50 states. Illinois — that bastion of leftist policy — dropped from #45 to #48.

Surely, as a result of his efforts, Gov. Walker is — if not adored — respected by the people of Wisconsin, right? Um, not so much.

Even though he was able to balance the budget without hiking taxes, the governor faces a union-financed, union-backed, union-led recall effort this year. Wisconsinites should take notice:

If Wisconsin voters want to see where a state ends up without the kind of reforms that Mr. Walker made, they need only look to the Greece next door.

Comments (4)

  • berlet98
    Posted on January 26, 2012 at 1:19am

    WMAQ in Chicago Censors Life

    Chicago, City of the Shady Shoulders, legendary for political corruption and its murder rate, can now be called Censorship City as well thanks to WMAQ-TV. In defiance of federal law, the NBC affiliate is refusing to air a pro-life Super Bowl ad sponsored by Randall Terry.

    Randall Terry isn’t exactly a household name and has as much of a chance of being elected president as I do but he is very well-known in anti-abortion circles and raised sufficient funds to run the ad in 25 venues throughout the country on Super Bowl Sunday.

    Despite the fact the 30-second spot was accepted and will air in Boston, Kansas City, Minneapolis, St. Louis, and in other locales, NBC’s WMAQ essentially told Terry they would break the law and refused to run it.

    With reasonable cause for suspicion, Terry believes Chicago’s Democrat machine headed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, President Barack Hussein Obama’s former Chief of Staff, is behind the WMAQ decision to repress the free and legal expression of his pro-life views.

    Obama, the most avid supporter of abortion ever to sit in the White House, couldn’t very well allow his hometown to embarrass him with facts, now could he?

    As a bonafide candidate for federal office, Terry is entitled under FCC regulations to sponsor the ad and stations licensed by the FCC are required to air it or said license will be subject to revocation.

    Randall Terry is “legally qualified” under FCC regulations

    Report Post »  
  • Zhivago
    Posted on January 22, 2012 at 9:41pm

    Maybe the author can’t spend the 5 minutes to look up a history of my state, but Illinois had a lot of problems for a long time. In fact, very little the current corrupt government is doing now makes much of a difference because the last 7 corrupt state governments have run us into the ground. Three of the last four companies I have worked out regularly bribed elected officials in order to get state contracts. When I complained I was always told “we have to, that’s just how you do business here”.

    As for companies leaving IL for greener pastures, I think that is a myth. Lots of companies bluffed that they were leaving, but few if any actually left. Get your facts straight.

    Report Post »  
  • ObserverOnTheHill
    Posted on January 22, 2012 at 10:07am

    Not sure how this went wrong. Everyone knows if you just take more from the producers in society then it will all work out nicely. Oh right, they just moved out. I guess that increases the ratio of “give me some from your stash” crowd to the ” I have a stash ‘cuz I work” crowd. Oh, now I see, it’s just basic math, something the educated “elites” can’t grasp but my 6 year old does. HMMMM……

    Report Post »  
  • stogieguy7
    Posted on January 21, 2012 at 1:59pm

    Ilinois has 102 counties; 99 of them supported the Republican in 2010. Three (2 small ones downstate + Cook) supported an appalling dullard, the tax and spend hack who replaced Blago. Somehow, enough dead people in Cook County voted for this creep that he won by 0.1%. And now we’re stuck.

    Not only has he doubled-down on tax increases (he raised it twice as much as he said he would), but we get the same crooked mismanagement and congressional boundaries gerrymandered so badly as to knock 5 GOP congressmen out of their seats this year. How Texas‘ map was tossed and ours wasn’t is astounding. Oddly, I don’t know anyone who supports these idiots in Springfield, but the machine manages to stick us with them.

    If only Cook County could be jettisoned from the rest of the state!!

    Report Post » stogieguy7  

Comments are closed.

SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER!

Glenn Beck Radio

Listen to Glenn Beck 24/7 Listen Now