QUOTE OF THE DAY
Chicago Tribune: Inspector General: ‘My 60 Chicago City Council investigations’
In the past 30 years, 32 Chicago aldermen have gone to jail. Clearly there’s a desperate need for oversight. When I agreed to police the City Council in 2011 as legislative inspector general I made it clear that I was not going to be a lap dog, despite the aldermen’s efforts to marginalize my office.
Consider the requirements to file a complaint against an alderman:
•A complainant must identify himself or herself and sign and swear to a complaint.
•The city Board of Ethics must give permission to continue an investigation.
The Southern: Southern Illinois doesn’t have clout like it once did
Southern Illinois has quite the historical political roster: Former Illinois House veterans Clyde Choate and C.L. McCormick; former Congressman Ken Gray; former U.S. Senators Alan Dixon and Paul Simon; former Illinois Secretary of State Paul Powell; former Du Quoin Mayor John Rednour Sr.; and long-serving SIU President Delyte Morris.
All now deceased, these men (among others) were the stuff of legends in Southern Illinois.
They were political powerhouses — in governments at all levels — and characters of gargantuan proportion to boot. But the political clout of Southern Illinois today is less evident, say local political observers.
Crain’s: Democratic candidate for state treasurer caught in property tax flap
A dispute over property taxes has erupted in the race for Illinois treasurer, with Democratic nominee Michael Frerichs having to explain why he failed to pay a type of property tax on space he leases for his political and legislative offices — the latter for six years in a row.
Mr. Frerichs, a state senator who represents the Champaign area, says that he now has paid the levy on his political office but that the legislative office legally should not have been billed, since it is used exclusively for public purposes. Senate President John Cullerton’s office says it agrees with him.
But the Illinois Department of Revenue so far is ruling that Mr. Frerichs does owe the money — just over $1,800 to date, including interest. And GOP nominee Tom Cross hopes to make a major issue of it in a race that generally doesn’t draw many headlines.
LA Times: Don’t rely on expected government pension to pay for retirement
Dear Liz: My husband works for the government and will be receiving a pension when he retires. Am I still supposed to save the recommended amount for retirement from my income or can that amount be reduced since we know we have the pension? We are starting a family and could use any extra money we can get right
Answer: If your husband is just a few years away from collecting that pension, counting on it to be there is reasonable. Since you’re just starting a family, though, it’s much more likely that retirement is decades away, and a lot can happen in that time.
Your husband could be laid off or fired, or he could quit. Even if he sticks it out, the government could change the way his pension is accrued to make it less generous. (The rising cost of public employee pensions concerns many lawmakers and taxpayers.) Even if he gets what he expects, his pension may not be enough to support the two of you in old age.
Tax Foundation: Sales Tax Holidays: Politically Expedient but Poor Tax Policy 2014
- 16 states, primarily in the southeastern U.S., will hold a sales tax holiday in 2014, down from a peak of 19 states in 2010.
- Sales tax holidays do not promote economic growth or significantly increase consumer purchases; the evidence shows that they simply shift the timing of purchases. Some retailers raise prices during the holiday, reducing consumer savings.
- Sales tax holidays create complexities for tax code compliance, efficient labor allocation, and inventory management. However, free advertising for what is effectively a paltry 4 to 7 percent sale leads many larger businesses to lobby for the holidays.
Joel Kotkin: In the Future We’ll All Be Renters: America’s Disappearing Middle Class
From early in its history, the United States rested on the notion of a large class of small proprietors and owners. “The small landholders,” Jefferson wrote to his fellow Virginian James Madison, “are the most precious part of a state.” To both Jefferson and Madison, both the widespread dispersion of property and limits on its concentration—“the possession of different degrees and kinds of property”—were necessary in a functioning republic.
Jefferson, admitting that the “equal division of property” was “impractical,” also believed “the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind” that “legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property.” The notion of a dispersed base of ownership became the central principle which the Republic was, at least ostensibly, built around. As one delegate to the 1821 New York constitutional convention put it, property was “infinitely divided” and even laborers “expect soon to be freeholders” was a bulwark for the democratic order.
This notion of American opportunity has ebbed and flowed, but generally gained ground well into the 1960s and 1970s. The very fact that the United States was more demographically dynamic, notes Thomas Piketty, naturally reduced the role of inherited wealth compared to Europe, most notably in France, where population growth was slower. Mass prosperity hit a high point in America in the first decades after the Second World War, the period where the country achieved its highest share of world GDP at some forty percent. By the mid-1950s the percentage of households earning middle incomes doubled to 60 percent compared with the boom years of the 1920s. By 1962 over 60 percent of Americans owned their own homes; the increase in homeownership, notes Stephanie Coontz, between 1946 and 1956 was greater than that achieved in the preceding century and a half.
Reason: Rat Out Your Employer On Taxes. Win Cash Rewards!
A former employee has filed a lawsuit charging that Vanguard Group, the gigantic ($2 trillion under management) and very successful mutual fund company, provides services to the funds it manages at “artificially low,” “at-cost” prices, which may be beneficial to investors in those funds but (the suit argues) results in lowering the federal and state income taxes it pays.
New York’s False Claims Act, under which the employee is suing, entitles him to a generous share of any tax proceeds as well as attorneys’ fees if successful.
The Philadelphia Inquirer and Wall Street Journal have more; the complaint is here courtesy of TaxProf. The company denies wrongdoing, and the general question of transfer pricing on which the claim hinges is very well aired in the tax and accounting literature, which makes it seem unlikely that auditors would have neglected the issue.
Cato: The Pragmatic Libertarian Case for a Basic Income Guarantee
From the perspective of anyone concerned with limiting government and encouraging individual responsibility, the contemporary American welfare state is a disaster. According to a report by the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner, welfare programs at the federal level alone cost more than $668 billion annually, spread across at least 126 different programs. Add another $284 of welfare spending at the state and local level, and you’ve got almost $1 trillion dollars of government spending on welfare – over $20,000 for every poor person in the United States.
Not only does the U.S. welfare state spend a lot; it spends it badly. Poor Americans receiving assistance face a bewildering variety of phase-outs and benefit cliffs that combine to create extremely high effective marginal tax rates on their labor. As a result, poor families often find that working more (or having a second adult work) simply doesn’t pay. And still, despite massive expenditures by the welfare state, some 16% of Americans are left living in poverty.
Wouldn’t it be better just to scrap the whole system and write the poor a check?
Chicago Tribune: Drivers won’t need to hand over license as bail for traffic offenses
Motorists who are pulled over in Illinois no longer need to hand over their driver’s license in exchange for a citation under a bill signed into law on Saturday.
Senate Bill 2583, sponsored by Sen. Michael Noland, D-Elgin, and State Rep. John D’Amico, D-Chicago, eliminates the requirement that drivers post their license as bail for certain traffic offenses. The new law allows the motorist’s signature on the citation to suffice as a guarantee that they will either appear in court or pay the required fines.
The law goes into effect immediately.
CARTOON OF THE DAY
