I'm Fed Up With the State Government in Illinois

Despite everything I have paid to the state of Illinois in taxes this year every paycheck, this greedy state still wanted more when I filed taxes Monday.

The amount wasn't all that much in the grand scheme of things (a little over $100), but every little bit taken away is money that could be saved or better spent elsewhere, especially for a working lower middle class guy like me.


I probably wouldn't care so much about taxes, if the taxes were actually being spent on what they should be, but they aren't.

Despite the state raising the cigarette tax by a dollar a pack in 2012, and raising the state income tax 66% in 2011 on people earning 60,000 dollars a year or more, the state still isn't paying it's bills. In recent years, the state has delayed paying vendors providing services to the state for months at a time, and has refused not only to pay school what they already owe them, but has cut school funding.

Their failure to properly fund schools has left districts in a bind, with only two choices to make to stay afloat financially: Cut services/close schools, or raise already excessive property taxes.

 Fearing that they won't be re elected if they raise property taxes, most districts are choosing the first option.



The Granite City school district, which serves my hometown of Granite City, and two smaller communities, is considering closing one of it's elementary schools, a school named Neidringhaus Elementary (pictured at left).

Not only is that state not funding basic services like schools, but they have overspent on other sectors of the budget, and borrowed to such an extreme that they have now had their government credit rating dropped to A minus by the credit rating company Standard and Poor.

Then there's the corruption that's a major problem.....

Of the states' last two former governors, one is about to be released from federal prison, and the other is serving a 14 year prison sentence. The second former governor, Rod Blagojevich was so corrupt, he tried to sell an empty Senate seat to anyone willing to pay, and tried to shake down a children's hospital in Chicago for campaign donations (and threatened to cut off their state Medicaid funding if they didn't cooperate).

It's frustrating living here, the Missouri border is only 10 miles away, it looks so tempting....