Illinois

Chicago drivers gouged at the pump this Memorial Day weekend

By Hilary Gowins
05/23/2014
An estimated 32 million drivers will hit the road this Memorial Day weekend, according to AAA. And those leaving from the Chicago area will feel much more pain at the pump. The national average for a gallon of gas is $3.65. In Illinois, the average price per gallon is $3.83. But the average price per...

TAGS: gas tax

The ObamaCare hard sell in Illinois

By Naomi Lopez Bauman
05/23/2014
President Barack Obama is quick to paint an underdog picture when it comes to his fight to push through the Affordable Care Act. He has claimed that: “We didn’t make a hard sell. We didn’t have billions of dollars to spend on commercials like our critics did.” But the federal government directed almost $155 million...

Illinois’ misguided push to ban Google Glass continues

By Bryant Jackson-Green
05/23/2014
Illinois Sen. Ira Silverstein wants to ban Illinois drivers from using Google Glass, even before complaints about drivers using it have become an issue. Silverstein has been pushing a Google Glass ban for some time, even before it became available for the general public to buy, and this week representatives from Google went to the...

TAGS: google glass

Burnham shuts down public website for ‘maintenance’ in wake of corruption scandal

By Brian Costin
05/22/2014
In the wake of a corruption scandal, the village of Burnham has taken down all public information from its website and placed the site in “Maintenance Mode.” The scandal came about after the village’s former clerk pleaded guilty to stealing more than $700,000 from local taxpayers, and an online transparency inquiry by the Illinois Policy...

Madigan’s millionaire tax returns

By Naomi Lopez Bauman
05/22/2014
House Speaker Mike Madigan couldn’t get a progressive tax hike on the November ballot. His next effort, to get an extension of the tax hike, has failed so far. Now, he is back with yet another money-grab scheme. Madigan has proposed an advisory referendum on the fall ballot proposing a millionaire surcharge. (An advisory referendum...

TAGS: millionaire tax

Illinois politicians’ obsession with tax hikes

05/21/2014
Fifty percent of all Illinoisans would leave the state if they could. Twenty-five percent think it’s the worst state to live in. Another 72 percent don’t trust their government. These numbers came from three recent Gallup polls. In all three surveys, no state polled worse than Illinois. You’d think with results like that, the last...

Illinois: $27 billion in tax increases since 2011

05/21/2014
A new report by Americans for Tax Reform shows that Democratic governors have enacted more than $58 billion in tax increases since 2011. Republican governors, on the other hand, have collectively signed more than $36 billion in tax cuts. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, one of the nation’s top five most tax-happy governors, has signed 29 tax increases...

Madigan and Illinois’ million-man migration

By Michael Lucci
05/21/2014
Gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner publicly opposes the tax-hike plan championed by Gov. Pat Quinn and House Speaker Mike Madigan. Rauner claimed that raising income taxes again in 2015 will cause more businesses and people to flee the state. Madigan fired back at Rauner with one of the most poorly-conceived statements of this campaign season. Madigan...

No room in Illinois family budget for another tax hike

By Benjamin VanMetre
05/20/2014
Illinois politicians are nervous. They don’t yet have the votes to pass another tax hike, and they’ve done nothing to prepare a balanced budget under the actual 2015 income tax rates. Now they’ve resorted to guilting Illinoisans into paying higher taxes. We’re all familiar with these stories by now. Politicians have focused on narratives that...