By: Diane Benjamin
A comment was made on line from a local far leftist about Rivian a couple months ago. He claimed Rivian is an emerging technology and therefore deserves government subsidies. In other words, he believes government is entitled to use your tax dollars to pick winners and losers.
What Constitution, laws, or commons sense justifies that opinion? Progressive Ideology is poison to your wallet.
Using citizens as test rats and we pay for it with our data and money to fuel others wealth and investments and jobs)careers…the new “emerging technology” business model it seems. Lots of local elected bodies/leaders in this game I fear.
A shame.
What is the definition of “emerging”? They have been at this , what 10 years or so? If it doesn’t work, then pile on more taxpayer dollars until it does work. Watch this November as voters line up to help keep this fleecing of our dollars go on and on and on and…
All the more reason “refund recapture” to leave IL. I saw a news headline a few days ago where residental property owners someplace else in IL were going to get soaked for the same reason.
If the truth was known I would guess Rivian is having financial problems or else they feel it has alawys been a win win for businesses to protest their property taxes to get it lowered and the locals bend to allow it.
I was recently talking to someone else about State Farm corporate closing and District 87 taking a tax loss on that. We didn’t know if Corp. South was in Unit 5 or 87. Actually we weren’t all surprised they just didn’t pick up and leave IL all together. Which is still a possibilitty I guess.
State Farm Corp. South is in Unit #5 assessed at $65+ million. State Farm Corp. is in Dist. #87 assessed at $45+ million.
Government and private business are a dangerous combination. Low information liberals are too ignorant to see that. JK
This is why TIFs and taxpayer funded corporate welfare needs to end. Let’s get some common sense council members elected. Either the businesses can compete in a market without special benefits, or they cannot. This is also why data centers should get zero tax benefit if they get built in McLean county.
The problem is the local and state governments always compete for the big corporation jobs using tax incentives. No tax incentives, no jobs. Mitsubishi did the same and when the incentives dried up they packed up.
So there’s two choices.
1. Play the capitalist incentive game.
2. Let the socialists seize the means of production, business moves over seas, and everyone except the politburo ends up on permanent welfare.
Theres a fair question to raise: Should the government pick winners and losers? But it’s not an issue of conservative vs progressive. For instence, under Trump, the Federal government spent around 10 billion dollars of taxpayer money buying a significant part of Intel. Thats not okay either. I can give dozens of examples of these types of actions on both sides of the political aisle and I can also find lots of examples where the far left and far right would find agreement on related issues (opposition to TIFs for one).
Theres alot of common ground on issues if we stop pitting ourselves against each other. I even heard alot of the same refrain between. The tea party and the occupy wall street. Different movements and different people sure- but there is absolutely a significant area of policy overlap. There is a reason that there arw a number of Americans have a positive view of BOTH Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.
TEA Party wanted limited government. Without money and much smaller staff only essentials are possible.
Both movements had some really similar positions. Just to name one- both were vehemently opposed to the large corporate bailouts of the Great Recession and felt like there was too much overlap between political and economic elites- that government was less concerned with helping us and more concerned with helping themselves.
If we want to move forward as a country and actually bring about some positive change (which let’s be honest- both Obama and Trump have largely failed to manifest) we need to focus on the things we have in common and work to convince each other of our solutions rather than demonizing one another. I know that you can do better on that front.