cbs2chicago.com - Cook County Tax Hike In Effect, Businesses Furious

cbs2chicago.com - Cook County Tax Hike In Effect, Businesses Furious: "As CBS 2's Joanie Lum reports, a 1 percent sales tax increase is in effect Tuesday, hiking the sales tax in the city of Chicago to 10.25 percent. By comparison, the sales tax in Lake and Will counties is 7 percent, and in DuPage County, it's 7.25 percent. A sales tax of 10.25 percent is also significantly higher than the sales tax in other major cities. The next highest rate in the country is in Memphis at 9.25 percent. New York, Los Angeles and Dallas all have a sales tax of under 8.3 percent, Phoenix has a tax of 6.3 percent, and Denver's sales tax is only 3.6 percent. The Cook County Board voted to raise the sales tax at the end of February, after a five-month stalemate on the 2008 budget. Board President Todd Stroger and his supporters ultimately prevailed, saying the tax hike was necessary to provide health care and other services."
-----------------
Chicago now has the highest sales tax in the US, at 10.25%, in order to fund the city's welfare state and pay exorbitant salaries to Todd Stroger's friends and relatives for the non-jobs the don't do.

Businesses are outraged, but with a Democratic city government, county government, and state government, they have no legitimate voice in politics. Everything is framed in terms of the Democrats and their constituencies. Their only route to influence in this state is through corruption: payoffs and campaign contributions to the Democrats and the few Republicans who are part of what columnist John Kass calls "The Combine." That, of course, is dangerous with the Feds lurking around. And we are now on the verge of electing as President of the US a man who came straight out of the Chicago machine.