By Ulysses S. Arn -
DIXON - Early Saturday morning "We are Dixon," the group behind the effort to pass a one percent sales tax increase in Lee County, held a small rally along Dixon's riverfront in front of a statue of the city's favorite son, Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Dixon police chief Danny Langloss and Dixon Main Street executive director Josh Albrecht spoke to supporters of the tax increase for about 15 minutes, focusing mainly on the planned $10-15 million sports complex that the Dixon School District plans to build with the expected $1.2 million in annual revenue the tax would bring. They touted the sports complex and the county wide tax increase to pay for it (and building repairs for the other Lee county school districts) as a quality of life issue. Yet at no point during this brief rally was a very important subject touched on by the proponents of the tax increase - that being the taxpayers.
Thankfully for the taxpayers of Lee County someone was at this rally who had their best interest(and wallets) in mind, me.
Lee County property owners already send roughly three-quarters of their property tax bill to the local school districts. Add to that the 67% state income tax hike from last year, on top of the accompanying increase in the state of Illinois corporate tax rate, and the 20+ new or higher taxes contained in Obamacare. And don't forget Taxmageddon coming January 1st, when the current federal income tax rates expire and return to their higher Clinton era levels. With all those hiked taxes at local, state and federal levels, taxpayers are simply tapped out. We don't have any more to give to government, even if it is only one cent on the dollar for purchases made in Lee County.
To put things simply we are Taxed Enough Already, and so I made up a sign and walked around the rally holding it up high to make the tax increasers aware of the fact that they do have opposition to their plans to take other people's money.
(Here's both sides of my protest sign. The Reagan quote reads "I have only one thing to say to the tax increasers: go ahead, make my day.")
As I made my way through the crowd of about 80 people - one-third of which were young children - on man took notice of the "taxed enough already" side of my sign and said that he didn't think "we" were taxed enough. That right there tells me that this guy is 1) A liberal Democrat who is in all likelihood going to vote for President Obama, and cancel out my vote for Mitt Romney. And 2) He is not at all informed like I am about the myriad of ways the federal government and the state of Illinois tax we, the people, to death.
Read more at usofarn.com
