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Goodbye Illinois
My wife and I moved to Illinois in 1975, got married, raised a family, had careers and contributed to our communities. We recently sold our house and moved to Arizona.
Taxes and politics drove our decision.
From a tax perspective, Illinoisans reportedly have the highest tax burden in the country. Property taxes rank in the top two. Last year, we paid over $17,800 for our Lake County house. State and local sales and gas taxes are among the highest in the country.
To make matters worse, the governor wants to increase income taxes on those earning more than $250,000 by over 60%. Small business owners, already devastated financially by the virus, would be severely impacted.
Politically, things are worse.
We lived in a state where one party has absolute control in Springfield and Chicago. As a result, millions of voters are essentially disenfranchised.
We lived in a state where one party refuses to consider structural reforms that would reduce government spending by around $6 billion per year.
We lived in a state where one party refuses to address ever-increasing retirement pension and healthcare costs. These unfunded liabilities are well over $240 billion, and represent the largest and fastest growing line item in the state’s budget.
We lived in a state where the governor willfully chose to shut down the state’s economy, and impose arguably the most restrictive stay-at-home, social distancing and re-opening orders in the nation. As a result, more than 1.2 million people have been laid off and thousands of businesses have shuttered their doors.
We see the future — a continuation of one-party rule; self-centered and short-sided leadership; and ever-increasing taxes and fees.
We have taken our tax base and disenfranchised political voices and left Illinois.
Mark and Sandy Paulson, formerly of Buffalo Grove
Kenosha could be your neighborhood
I walk my dog by Sheridan Road everyday. I have friends who live on Sheridan Road. It’s named after a Civil War general who is known for being super-racist against Native people. As legend has it, the road was built to have a straight line from the North Chicago Navy Base to Chicago so the military could break labor strikes.
Looking north on Sheridan from near my house, you can see Bowen Park, where my polling place is, and where the Waukegan Independence Day parade usually concludes. You can see the green overpass pedway, where my wife and I took aerial photos of the Black Lives Matter protest that marched down Sheridan in June.
Further north is Galaxy of Books, where I would buy my comics every week throughout grade and high school. A little farther north is the home of the Kenosha Kingfish, a minor league baseball team. Tuesday night, on Sheridan Road, about 15 miles north of my house, a 17-year-old white “militia” member shot and killed Black Lives Matter activists.
I could write volumes about why we need to support Black Lives Matter, and why the irresponsible hate spewed by leaders high and low exacerbates social divides instead of attempting to heal them. There are a lot of community voices we need to listen to as well.
The main thing people should think about is how Kenosha could be your neighborhood. It’s a rust belt town — the auto companies closed the union plants and moved to non-union countries, while the high school remains named after Walter Reuther. It’s a disproportionately white police force. It’s a town that under-funds social services, and that relies on fines, fees and tickets. It’s a city where the poor response to COVID-19 has exacerbated existing problems.
That sounds a lot like Waukegan. Like Zion. Like Joliet. Like Aurora. Like Elgin. Like Gary, Cicero and thousands of other cities across America. Everyday is a choice, and for too long America has chosen to build Confederate monuments over fault lines. Is it any wonder that when those fault lines shift, that monuments to racism fall?
Matt Muchowski, precinct committeeperson, Waukegan 359 legislative and political organizer, American Federation of Government Employees
Don’t interfere with COVID-19 research
President Trump recently signed four executive orders designed to “restructure the prescription drug market,” one of which holds the potential to impact patient expenses and drug pricing. Specifically, this order states that the dollar amount paid for Part B drugs under a Medicare plan as administrated by a physician will be equitable to the prices that other countries are paying. Said prices would be on par with the international pricing index (IPI), the model that includes prices from other developed nations.
In the midst of a global pandemic, while dealing with a virus that is unknown and attempting on all fronts to develop a vaccine, is this really the time to be implementing an order that will affect the bio-pharmaceutical industry?
The president is touting this order as an instrument to reduce out-of-pocket expenses and lower drug costs. While on the surface reducing costs may sound like a very good idea, and saving Medicare patients money makes a great talking point. In reality, it seems questionable that the United States should be taking the price controls from other countries that have government-run healthcare systems, and plugging them into a free market health system, like we have in the U.S.
These executive orders are evidence that the Trump administration’s priorities are misaligned in that government price controls will always be politically motivated and not designed for the well-being of the public. The president’s proposal to link domestic drug prices to foreign prices threatens the work that the American bio-pharmaceutical industry is doing to advance treatments and find a vaccine for COVID-19 in that financing that might be utilized towards the vaccine trials could now be diverted elsewhere.
To best ensure success in the fight against COVID-19, it is imperative that our lawmakers protect our bio-pharmaceutical scientists and researchers from policies like IPI that might impede their chances to do so.
Kathy Clemens, Glenview, College of Lake County teacher
