John Kass now appears at his own website, a spot you would be wise to visit once or twice a week for the latest biting commentary. A recent piece guest written by Dan Proft has struck a chord with a whole lot of folks even moreso than the “Rich Men North of Richmond” guy. Here’s a long excerpt and some commentary…
“I was hysterical,” Lisa Markiewicz told ABC-7 News recently. “Are we going to lose our house? What do we do? How do we stop this? We worked hard to get here.”
“I was hysterical” he starts the piece. Nice! Classic! That’s sort of how people feel after they get robbed, or otherwise victimized by the violent criminals roaming Chicago. Instead of profiling the criminals who rape, rob and murder across Chicago, this piece is about the criminals who wear suits and were elected. Of course, Proft doesn’t say the obvious: Democrats have owned politics in Chicago, and indeed most of Cook County for generations now.
Markiewicz lives in the Cook County portion of Tinley Park, one of the areas comprising this year’s triennial county property tax reassessment. She was hit with a 210% increase in the assessed valuation of her home in a county where any talk of rising home values in the actual marketplace is properly treated as gallows humor.
Gooder and harder. You and other low-information voters voted for these idiots low-information politicians for decades, and now you’re complaining.
Forty-five minutes north of Markiewicz, middle-income families in communities like Des Plaines and Schiller Park saw median property tax increases (per their triennial reassessment last year) of nearly 30%; the largest increase in 30 years.
Prepare to laugh out loud if you click play on that video…
In the collar counties, the situation is generally worse as commercial property taxes do not subsidize residential property taxes in the way they uniquely do in Cook.
Despite that distinction, Cook County homeowners of Tinley Park, Des Plaines, Schiller Park, and those in the collar counties have something in common: they don’t actually own their homes.
Emphasis added. It’s true.
During the 1970 Illinois Constitutional Convention, like cat burglars in the night, Chicago Democrat shot callers quietly seized the homes of Cook County families to use as collateral to finance the seven-figure net present value, defined-benefit pensions they guaranteed for their political warriors in the public sector unions.
Now there’s some political prose! Preach it!
They have been slowly liquidating people’s homes through confiscatory property taxes ever since.
“The system is broken,” said Markiewicz.
No.
To paraphrase what I once said about the entire State of Illinois, Cook County isn’t broken. It’s fixed.
Yep. It’s all “fixed.”
The System is producing exactly what those in charge desire.
In 1972, two years after the new state constitution, the longest-serving state House Speaker in American history, Mike Madigan, founded his property tax appeals law firm, Madigan & Getzendanner.
Golly, I wonder what opportunity Madigan identified from the system he enshrined “legally” (this is a word that should always be accompanied by scare quotes when used in reference to Illinois)?
Probably the same opportunity the longest serving Chicago Alderman in Chicago History, Ed Burke, saw when he ascended to Chairman of the city’s Finance Committee a decade later and launched a similarly lucrative property tax appeals business within his law firm, Klafter & Burke.
Therefore, getting back to poor Lisa Markewicz of Tinley Park, we should all feel great empathy for her and her neighbors and bring down fiery condemnation on the longevity lords of The System, right?
Not exactly.
At some point over the past five decades, this stopped being a story of politicians fleecing their constituents and became a story about the residents of Cook County and ultimately greater Chicagoland playing Patty Hearst to the Chicago Democrats’ Symbionese Liberation Army.
Madigan and Burke were getting property tax relief in the billions for their corporate clients while Joe Punchclock and Sally Housecoat saw the property taxes on their bungalow launched upward like a Space X satellite.
Yet, Joe & Sally threw in with Madigan & Burke. They didn’t question the local government school superintendent’s salary. They didn’t question K12 spending at all, in fact, even up against student achievement. And they certainly didn’t question the innumerable sweeteners and other pension manipulations by the public sector unions. Further, they punished anyone who did.
The Joes & Sallys of Cook & the Collars consistently re-elected Madigan’s & Burke’s city and suburban loyalists.
Yup. They elected these crapbirds that gave us gun control, higher and higher taxes, increasing regulation along with lousy schools, generous pensions, greater and greater benefits for government employees of every time. Did we mention more and more government employees? That’s their army!
The Joes & Sallys were Madigan’s & Burke’s alibis. They couldn’t have been stealing from us, officer, they were with me last night serving the community.
Madigan & Burke loved to tell those beautiful lies, and the Joes & Sallys loved to hear those lies again and again.
It was a five-decade sing-along in tribute to The System,
“Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me: There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree.”Just as in “1984,” the Joes & Sallys took the political lords’ anthem of deceit, injustice and betrayal that was dressed up in high-minded antonyms. And they made that anthem their own.
Now that the Joes & Sallys are being done in by The System they propagated, they cry out for help.
Where are the authorities? You mean the Cook County judges slated by Madigan & Burke you ratified? You mean the Cook County States’ Attorneys they selected, and you elected? You mean the U.S. Attorneys selected by U.S. Senators you elected backed by Madigan & Burke drawn from the “legal” arm of The System they erected?
Emphasis added.
The Joes & Sallys would have us believe they haven’t noticed how absent those authorities have been for the last 50 years except to occasionally put away from some dim-witted, bribe-taking alderman or sloppy governor who fell out of favor with The System. Appearances must be maintained.
Some Joes & Sallys plead, “I didn’t know, really.” But they did. They knew. They participated. And even those who didn’t participate should’ve known regardless. A basic understanding of what is happening around you is a small price to pay to live in a free society.
Moreover, willful ignorance of the law is no defense to punishment under it and neither is willful ignorance of The System.
Ignorance of the “System” is no defense to getting what you voted for, good and hard.
Here we are.
The two longevity lords who bilked tens, maybe hundreds, of millions of dollars out of The System are going to spend their 80s, or whatever time they have left in federal prison. Appearances must be maintained by The System at the federal level too.
And Lisa Markiewicz and the rest of Chicagoland’s Joes & Sallys will continue to be whittled down to nothing by The System they spent their adult lives serving.
I, for one, can muster no empathy. Their System beat it out of me.
Yep. You (or at least the majority of your neighbors and fellow Chicagoland residents) voted for it. So you get it. Good and hard.
Enjoy that high crime and even higher taxes while your kids and grand kids can’t even read their diploma.
Politicians stopped serving the people long ago. They only serve themselves and their cronies. That applies to every level of government. Our country is almost assuredly broken.
Most people, like water and electricity, take the line of least resistance. It’s not easy being a concerned citizen. If it were, everyone would do it. Please, don’t allow your political position to become a “fashion statement,” as a lot of feeble-minded people have and which we are now seeing/living with those results.
Legislators I get, them being slick and slippery. But now it’s the judges, like third world countries we have no “adults” to keep things under control and Constitutional. At least in Illinois, California, New York , Washington (Seattle), Massachusetts, New Jersey, the Courts are so slanted it’s ridiculous to even consider a win for gun rights.
Just like here in Illinois, the money spent going up the Courthouse flag pole to try and reach the SC is astronomical, and then the Judges have a high chance of denying the case. Pre-requisite of having to have a citizen be a victim or have a loss, a “damage” is asinine as the Southern Illinois Judge said, “no one has had any damage from the law yet!” Well what about all he FFL’ and their lost business revenues? What about the rifle I wanted to buy or the handgun I can’t collect for my children’s inheritance or for my own collection? That’s damage, personal, monetary, civil rights, my happiness is damaged. The “fear” of being arrested for being a “lawful” gun owner in Illinois and deciphering a purposefully complicated process to stay legal. Scaring citizens from potentially becoming gun owners to use a God given right to self-defense, potentially Causing someone to be hurt maybe fatally because they didn’t or couldn’t purchase a self-defense firearm. Isn’t that “injury”?!?!
We Americans declared Independence once for our Religion, our Land, our Freedoms to work and not be taxed 3%. But we have allowed so much infringement against our lives it’s become normal to let it slip away.
Well, my brothers, NORMAL has gotten irritating. Taxes, inflation, fuel prices, food prices, schools teaching communism and taboo instead of educating, more Taxes, more regulations, Electric vehicles, Sent free aid and Billions to Ukraine and Zelensky in one year the. Israel has gotten in the last 80 combined with promises of more and even our kids next, men competing against girls and using their locker rooms, oh and more taxes, don’t forget to register your Guns and renew your FOID-FOOL card that gives us back our 2nd Amendment rights that our grandparents, great grandparents fought and died for. Tyranny!! But hey, we’re secure here in America right? Chinese spy balloons flew over all the time in the 1970’s. Houthi’s shot missiles at our Cruisers 5 years ago or 25?!? No? China owns farmland all over the US and has bought our politicians, but that’s happened all throughout our history…hmm.
Seems that things are going south and those in power are trying to disarm the lawful citizen. Just doesn’t make sense.
People get the government they deserve.