Strike The Root Blog

Chicago, the City of Big Shoulders, is about to become the City of Big Tax Increases, as evidenced by Mayor Richard Daley’s proposed 2008 budget:

“Daley unveiled a proposed $5.9 billion budget plan Wednesday that contains $293 million in tax, fee and fine increases, including a $108 million property tax hike—a record amount for him. The owner of a $250,000 home would pay about $100 more a year under Daley’s proposal, according to city budget officials.”

Da Mare has his undergarments all in a bunch over the negative PR fallout. City council aldermen are understandably nervous about the potential backlash from their constituents, and have voiced their grievances accordingly.

Daley’s reply to the city council can essentially be summed up as, “Well if you want all these swell city services to brag about to the voters in your ward, somebody’s gotta pay for them.” And after all, each ward office budget is being increased by a whopping 120%, so perhaps he has a point. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, indeed.

But heaven forbid anyone suggest that the city government permanently cut any of these precious “services,” which would subsequently render tax increases a moot issue. This is the one and the same city government that “gave” us the multi-million-dollar boondoggle that is Millennium Park, a costly monument to Daley’s political egotism that was delivered four years after the new millennium began, after having run some $325 million over budget. (But hey, at least we got those cool waterfall fountains with huge projected images of people synchronized with spraying water to make it look like they’re spitting on you! Awesome!)

But increasing taxes on already overburdened taxpayers is but a trifle compared to King Richard II’s fragile emotional state:

“Daley met with several editorial boards, including the Tribune’s, after delivering his budget address on Wednesday.

“‘All of a sudden, you are blasting me the first day without ever hearing anything’, he declared. ‘I went there for maybe an hour and, all of sudden, you decided everything is bad, everything is wrong, that I don’t understand struggling families. That is an insult to me.’”

He was insulted. Awwww, poor baby…

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 11th, 2007 at 9:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, taxes, politicians, Yourmerica, economics, fraud-waste-abuse. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.