The Chicago Tribune has an editorial blasting Cook County Democrats:
On Tuesday the cost of taxable items you purchase in Cook County will increase by a full percentage point. Chicagoans will awaken July 1 to the highest sales tax in the nation. Cook suburbanites will face sales taxes several percentage points higher than at stores in collar counties. Expect merchants in those counties to post more of the big signs that boast: "No Cook County Taxes."This was the work of
This tax increase by such a wasteful and shabbily run government amounts to grand theft without the police pursuit.
two public employee unions that greatly influence which Democrats get elected to county offices.The Tribune editorial singles out John Daley and Todd Stroger,two very important Cook County Democrats.Remember,Obama supported this Cook County Machine Democrats as Sunil Greg reports:
In 2006, the Cook County Board President, John Stroger, faced near-daily chronicling of the incompetence, scandal, and patronage under his administration. These revelations included not only the typical employment of family members and friends, but more disturbingly what one Chicago newspaper referred to as a "catalogue of horrors" at a County hospital and what another uncovered at the Juvenile Detention Center where staff encouraged fights among the youth in "the gladiator room". Although normally untouchable, challenging Stroger was a formidable reform candidate, Forrest Claypool, who had been endorsed by every major paper in Chicago. This 'machine versus reform' race provided Obama with a seemingly tailored opportunity to demonstrate his new brand of politics and yet, although Claypool was a senior advisor to him during his Senate race, Obama chose not antagonize the machine and remained silent throughout the campaign, even after Stroger suffered a debilitating stroke a week before the election. Following Stroger's victory (52% to 48%), local committeemen selected Stroger's son, Todd, to replace him on the general election ballot, and despite general voter outrage over this cynical act of nepotism, Obama immediately embraced Todd Stroger, calling him a "a good progressive Democrat" who will "lead us into a new era of Cook County government." To no one's surprise, since winning the general election, Todd Stroger has hired a plethora of family members and friends, while slashing essential positions and services, including nurses and law enforcement officials, and proposing massive tax increases. When asked about the situation at the County under Todd Stroger, Obama said he was not following it, something he apparently has the luxury to ignore.The "new era" of Cook County government means the highest sales tax in the nation which hits poor and middle class people particularly hard.Here's The Chicago Sun-Times on the highest sales tax in the nation.
