Evidence that Politicians Can’t Make Good Business Investments

From the Chicago Tribune web site.

Here’s another indication that members of the Illinois General Assembly should not be in charge of investing your retirement money.

My first non-part-time job was as a Budget Examiner of the United States Budget Bureau.

As a baby budget examiner, I was given the budget of the Small Business Administration.

Once the budget went to the printer, I found there was nothing to do.

My boss decided that I should meet some people with Small Business loans.

One was in Cleavland. He was using his minority loan to produce sweet potato chips.

After trying a couple, I asked if he really thought there was a market.

“Maybe not here, but down South,” was his reply.

I’d suggest that the loan went into default, but was running for McHenry County Treasurer in 1966 when I could have checked it out.

Having banks and loan officers at the Small Business Administration make loans is probably better than allowing Illinois State Representatives and Senators make the decisions.

Those who voted for subsidies to Sears

  • allowing the company to subtract their Illinois payroll from their obligation to pay withholding taxes on their employees’ earnings, plus
  • indenturing School District 300 property taxpayers for another ten years.

For 10 years Sears can keep up to $15 million a year, which it otherwise would have sent to the Illinois Revenue Department.

In addition, for next 15 years, the Sears TIF-like arrangement will cost local tax districts something between $250 million to $300 million.

or School District 300, the cost will be “as much as $160 million,” according to D300 Spokesperson Allison Strupecl.

In signing the big business tax break bill for those his allies in the Occupy Wall Street movement would call the 1%, our esteemed Governor Pat Quinn, never a businessman, said,

“Investing in Illinois employers is a key to growing our economy for years to come.”

Right.


Comments

Evidence that Politicians Can’t Make Good Business Investments — 1 Comment

  1. Cal, do we really need this as ‘Proof Positive’ that many Politicians are nothing more than pawns?

    ANY business that thrives off the wallets of the very communities which supports it, then comes back around and makes demands that the hard working people give up their rights to the tax benefits that should be returned to the community who paid for the company’s successes in the first place, is tantamount to nothing less than “Extortion!”

    I believe you could use examples of such “Community Extortion” right in McHenry County.

    Doesn’t some car dealer get tax breaks because of threats that if he/she would not get the tax breaks, they would move elsewhere? (Haven’t the Pols figured out that if a business can’t afford to pay their rightfully owed tax bill, they havnen’t the money to move anywhere else?)

    If Politicians had any back bone, they would turn right back around and create a law that says that any business who uses the tax base as a means to ‘threaten’ a pull out, not only would they be denied, but they would be charged with a crime?

    Of course any business can shut down and go eleswhere and it is not a crime. I’m speaking to the business that first makes demands with one hand, all the while is using the other hand to massage another ‘fallback’ deal.

    The fact remains that much of the fault lies in the very hands of those who live in the communities where this behavior takes place.

    Although they are getting their hats handed to them year after year, they continue to live in silence as the winds of ‘Greed’ blow them.

    (That is, the money from their hard working hands right into the bank accounts of these “Extortion Artists” so they can keep up a lifestyle of flying back and forth from home to home, rarely even spending their own money within the community that supports their habits!)

    All the while a money trail exists from the community thief, right to the campaign accounts of the politician who is supposed to represent the rights of tax payers.

    But then again, who’s looking anyway?

    Karma is looking, that’s who…..Sears is all but finished. “Time” can be a real unfriendly bedfellow.

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