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Has Chicago’s Soda Tax Popped?



As if Chicago, Cook County or Illinois itself needed yet another black eye to its ongoing financial woes: Thursday, the federal government stated that Illinois may be in violation of federal law when it comes to the application of Cook County’s sweetened beverage tax, which could cost it $87 million in federal food stamp money.

The sticky situation arose when, in November of 2016, Cook County decided that the penny-per-ounce tax would be the best way to attempt to buffer the shortfalls in the county’s budget. Plus, as we were assured, if the tax dissuaded you from purchasing a sugary drink (as Politifact’s article showed, Chicago’s soft drinks are now the most expensive in the nation), it’s for your own good anyway because of health reasons or something.

Illinois fiscal problems are well documented. Currently, Illinois owes over $250 billion in pension debt, which was part of the reason for Moody’s Investors to downgrade Illinois credit rating to just above junk-status. As Illinois Policy’s Ted Dowbrowski and John Klingner report in their article:

“The state’s fiscal collapse is the culmination of decades of budget gimmicks used to paper over Illinois’ structural spending problems and misplaced spending priorities that favor special interests over ordinary residents.”

The piece goes on to say:

“Illinois has suffered 21 downgrades from the three major ratings agencies since 2009.

The downgrades began when Illinois started borrowing to conceal its growing pension crisis. As governor, Quinn borrowed a total of more than $7 billion in two years to make the state’s pension contributions.”

Instead of trying to tackle the ongoing and well-documented spending problem, Illinois resorted to passing a variety of taxes such as an increased income tax and the much derided Soda Tax. Shortly after passing the bill, Cook County was met with a lawsuit by the Illinois Retail Merchants Association and several grocers who alleged that the tax was “too vague and violated the State Constitution.” A few days after that, Illinois Circuit Judge Daniel Kubasiak issued a temporary restraining order stating also that the tax was unconstitutional.

Yet, on August 2nd, the highly contested tax bill went into effect and less than a month later, it is under heat from the federal government. The problem is, as the Chicago Tribune’s Greg Trotter and Ally Marotti reports:

Purchases made with federal food stamp benefits are exempt from the soda tax under federal law, but Cook County has allowed retailers to tax those purchases and provide refunds as a workaround for stores that haven’t been able to program their point-of-sale systems.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Services, the federal agency overseeing the SNAP food stamp program — officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — warned Illinois that federal money could be withheld if the problem isn’t fixed.

USDA officials told the county the regulation was “unacceptable” in a phone call in late June, according to its memo to the state.

“It is (Food and Nutrition Services’) strict interpretation that retailers may not charge the tax to SNAP recipients at any time and that providing an immediate subsequent refund at a customer service does not cure the problem or the violation of the law”

Doubtful the fledgling Soda Tax, nor Illinois vast fiscal problems have seen the last of their controversies.




Jordan, Meadows blast House Democrats after Lewandowski hearing



Jordan Meadows blast House Dems after Lewandowski hearing

Yesterday’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee by former Trump campaign manager Cory Lewandowski was a sham. It was poorly executed even as a bashing session for Democratic lawmakers to rant about the President’s campaign. One would think that after three years and multiple investigations, they’d give up. But this is all they have left. Democrats on Capitol Hill have nothing of substance left in their tanks.

House Freedom Caucus members Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows went on Fox News to blast their progressive colleagues for not only having the hearing in the first place, but also for their duplicity in handling all things associated with President Trump. The Democrats are not seeking the truth, otherwise they’d be looking into the real collusion and obstruction that has been taking place from their side of the fence. Instead, they’re talking impeachment as a distraction from their own shortcomings, their own failures.

This really comes down to a double-standard. The Democrats will hold hearings if the President sneezes wrong but if clear and unambiguous wrongdoing is uncovered about a Trump opponent, Democrats suddenly see nothing.


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‘Lite’ versions of Medicare-for-All are no better – and possibly worse – than the real thing



Lite versions of Medicare-for-All are no better - and possibly worse - than the real thing

How do Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and other Democratic candidates plan on sinking Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders? By highlighting how their radical Medicare-for-All proposals are several steps too far to the left for America and by offering “lighter” versions of their semi-popular healthcare plans. But there’s a problem with their proposals. All of them will lead to the same conclusion – single-payer healthcare – and all of them may actually be more damaging to the economy along the way.

This is saying a lot since the $32 trillion Medicare-for-All is an absolute existential threat to the United States economy. How could these lighter versions be worse?

Before we answer that, let’s look at what would happen if Buttigieg’s Medicare-for-All-Who-Wants-It, Biden’s Obamacare 2.0, or Harris’s Medicare-for-All plus private supplements ever become law in America. They all come at it from different angles, but what they’re describing is a public option for health insurance that would be taxpayer-funded and remove the out-of-pocket expenses from those who choose to take it instead of a private healthcare plan. This sounds reasonable to many Americans who want health insurance available to everyone, even those who cannot afford it, but who do not want to lose their own health insurance.

But what nobody’s mentioning is that the holes in a public option create problems for everyone, including:

  • Dichotomous healthcare services. There will be “good” healthcare offered to those with private insurance and “bad” healthcare offered to those taking the public option. We see this in action with the VA, which was intended to offer superior services to veterans. But the opposite has been proven to be the case. When government injects itself as an option against the private market, invariably the solutions they present are unambiguously inferior to the private variations. Americans will not be told of this dichotomy. Instead, they will find out when it’s too late that the healthcare they’re receiving is horrible compared to what they would have received under the private market option.
  • Increased costs across the board. What does a public option mean for the private market? Fewer customers. Fewer businesses enticing employees with health insurance benefits. Fewer healthy people paying for healthcare while higher-cost participants make private insurance more expensive for everyone. As for those on the public option, their acceptance of taxpayer-funded health insurance will, of course, drive up taxes for nearly everyone, including the middle class that nobody seems to want to admit will get hit with these taxes.
  • An eventual shift towards single-payerAs private health insurance becomes less lucrative and eventually becomes a money-loser, companies will start pulling out. We already saw this without the public option in Obamacare. Throw in a public option and it eventually becomes cost-prohibitive to offer anything other than supplemental insurance for uncovered procedures such as cosmetic surgery. The public option will become single payer by default within 3-5 years after it’s launched.

Nobody outside of the health insurance industry likes the health insurance industry, but over a hundred million Americans rely on this industry to keep themselves and their families from paying the extremely high costs for medical care. The combination of health insurance driving medical expenses and a government driving the health insurance industry has resulted in diapers costing $20 each after birth. They know most American will not care about the details as long as they’re not paying for it out of pocket, so they can encourage hospitals and doctors to charge outrageous rates. This all changes for the worst once single-payer is in place.

Back to the original premise – these “lighter” options could actually be worse for America than full-blown and immediate Medicare-for-All. With the latter, everything is upfront. They will tax us at extremely high rates to pay for their pet project. It will be horrible. But it will be understood from the beginning. With the half-measures proposed by the “moderates” in the group, the way it all pans out will be in a constant state of radical evolution. Prices will fluctuate so rapidly that changes will need to be made on the fly. It’s like inserting a knife into our backs slowly instead of just plunging it right in. The constant tearing of tissues over time may make us bleed out faster than if they just stabbed us quickly.

The various public option proposals are all single-payer-in-training. They will invariably become Medicare-for-All because private insurance will die a slow death as a result. Meanwhile, our healthcare quality and economy will die much more rapidly.


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The real reason behind California Democrats’ attack on Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash



Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) speaks at a rally after her measure to limit when companies can label workers as independent contractors was approved by a Senate committee on July 10.(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Today, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 5 into law which would limit the use of independent contracts.

Newsom in a signed written statement said that the new law, “will help reduce worker misclassification — workers being wrongly classified as ‘independent contractors’ rather than employees, which erodes basic worker protections like the minimum wage, paid sick days and health insurance benefits.”

The author of AB 5, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), in a written statement said, “As one of the strongest economies in the world, California is now setting the global standard for worker protections for other states and countries to follow.”

This might sound great but does Newsom or Gonzalez genuinely care about these workers or is there a more devious reason?

Here is the real reason -the Janus Decision.

In Janus vs. AFSCMF, the US Supreme Court ruled that labor unions are inherently political and that employees cannot be compelled to support them financially. What has been the result? Tens of thousands of government employees have opted out of their unions and the typical $800 to $1,200 a year they hand over to unions are gone.

Where does that money go? The vast majority of those tens of millions of dollars goes to the Democrat Party and candidates like Newsom and Gonzalez.

So by reclassifying Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash drivers as employees, what is Newsom and Gonzalez hoping to occur? According to the LA Times, Newsom stated, “the need to ensure workers in the new tech sector businesses can join labor unions.”

There you go, folks. Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash drivers can join a union because they are now employees.

What will be the result?

These companies will have to drastically raise their rates to comply with the new law, thus you will pay much more to use these services. These companies will have to dismiss tens of thousands of drivers that relied on these jobs to supplement their income or even their only source of income.

For the driver’s that are lucky to keep their jobs, what will happen to them? You can rest assured that the unions will be there to extract their hard-earned money as they are pressured to join the union. Conveniently, the tens of millions they raise will be going into these politicians political bank accounts.

Now I have no love-loss for these companies. I’m a transportation CEO and they are my direct competition. This might even help me make more money.

Even if that is true or not, the facts are this had nothing to do with protecting these drivers. It was a devious plot to fill their campaign war chests will millions of dollars at the expense of you and these drivers.


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