• Home
  • Illinois News
  • Illinois Politics
  • US Politics
  • US NEWS
  • America First
  • Opinion
  • World News
  • Second Amendment
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
Illinois Review
  • Login
  • Register
  • Home
  • Illinois News
  • Illinois Politics
  • US Politics
  • US NEWS
  • America First
  • Opinion
  • World News
  • Second Amendment
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Illinois News
  • Illinois Politics
  • US Politics
  • US NEWS
  • America First
  • Opinion
  • World News
  • Second Amendment
No Result
View All Result
Illinois Review
No Result
View All Result
Home US NEWS

Di Leo: Illinois and the Great Path Downward

John F. Di Leo by John F. Di Leo
August 30, 2019
in US NEWS
Reading Time: 4 mins read
A A
7
26
SHARES
432
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Screen Shot 2019-08-30 at 11.31.18 AM

You might also like

OPINION: Battlefield Los Angeles 2025

OPINION: Should the Trump Administration be Gatekeeping College Admissions?

Bernard Kerik, Hero of 9/11 and Close Friend of Illinois Review’s Mark Vargas, Passes Away at 69

By John F. Di Leo

First, the state of Illinois’ new governor signed a record number of tax and regulatory increase bills in Springfield, and then Chicago’s new mayor delivered a State of the City address announcing her plans to do the same to Chicago.

It’s been a good week for the tax collector, the political hack and the bureaucrat; it’s been a bad week for everyone else.

As statewide progressive income taxes – and many other forms of property grabs – loom large on the horizon, the message is clear to any Illinoisan with a house, a job, a business, a bank account, or in fact anything of value at all:

Get Out.

Get out now.  

Get out while you still can.

Every household in Illinois has a six-figure debt from pensions alone, and there’s only one way the establishment is interested in addressing it:

J.B. Pritzker and Lori Lightfoot have it in for you, and they both have at least four full years in which they intend to treat your possessions as their own personal source of kindling.

There are real solutions to Illinois’ problems, of course. Immediately correcting the pay scales and contracts of public employees to address the pension crisis… immediately reducing the size of government… immediately ceasing our sanctuary status and ejecting our million illegal aliens… immediately returning to a true criminal justice system in which our state’s criminals are actually imprisoned, instead of being released in a revolving door.

But all proper solutions are off the table, in a state long ruled by a single party that exists only to expand the welfare state, and to reward the ward heeler and the city sealer.

So it’s tax-and-spend, tax-and-spend, on an ever greater scale, as far as the eye can see.

Laboratories of Democracy

Illinois’ effective bankruptcy bears an important lesson to those who have believed in the old “laboratories of democracy” theory, long promulgated by leftists and other fools.

There have always been people – usually teachers – who claim that our nation was meant to be a collection of “laboratories”… fifty different states, each of them able to do whatever they wanted… Big government or small government, socialized programs or private sector solutions… And these advocates never recognized it as an inherent conflict with the policies of our Founding Fathers philosophy.

They were wrong, in so many ways.

America was always meant to be a nation of small government. Government was to be limited at every level – not just federal, but state, county, township, and city as well.

Yes, each state was to have the choice of whether to get there with a unicameral legislature or a bicameral one, or with a stronger governor or a stronger speaker of the house, or with home rule in every city or a wilder collection of unincorporated communities.

But our Founders never intended for some of our states to be essentially unAmerican; our Founders never dreamed that some states would choose massive, costly, overbearing and intrusive government, sure to result in bankruptcies that would infect their innocent neighbors.   That was never to be one of their options; in fact, our Founders wrote state constitutions designed to keep it from ever happening.

But it has happened… not just in Illinois, but in many more states as well. And what we have today, by allowing Democrat-run states like Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and California to spend themselves into bankruptcy, has unavoidably become a national crisis, not small localized crises.

These bankrupt states are a drag on the entire nation. Whether they are ultimately successful in convincing Washington, DC to rob the rest of their countrymen to pay off their unsustainable debts or not, these “laboratories of economically destructive policies” have hurt us all.

There is only one way for a nation to prosper, and that is if the entire nation is bound to the same philosophy – the same commitment to small government, low taxes, low spending, and the rule of law.

We simply cannot survive as long as those with suicidal impulses are allowed to pull down their neighbors with them.

Now, on to another subject…. Umm… Know anybody who wants to buy a nice house in Illinois?

Copyright 2019 John F Di Leo

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based trade compliance professional, writer and actor. He will next be seen on the stage in Mundelein, in the Kirk Players’ production of the Oscar Wilde comedy, “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime,” October 4-6, 2019 in Mundelein.

 Don’t miss an article! Use the free tool in the margin above to sign up for Illinois Review’s free email notification service so you know whenever IR publishes new content!

Related

Tags: ChicagoIllinoisJ.B. Pritzkerlaboratories of democracyLori Lightfoot
Share10Tweet7
Previous Post

Thorner: “Beware of free gifts,” Rev CL Bryant tells Chicago area audience

Next Post

AOC Bad Idea: Abolishing the Electoral College

John F. Di Leo

John F. Di Leo

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based trade compliance trainer and transportation manager, writer, and actor. Once a County Chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party in the 1990s, after serving as president of the Ethnic American Council in the 1980s, he has been writing regularly for Illinois Review since 2009. Professionally, he is a licensed Customs broker, and has worked in freight forwarding and manufacturing for over forty years. John is available for very non-political training seminars ranging from the Incoterms to the workings of free trade agreements, as well as fiery speeches concerning the political issues covered in his columns. His book on vote fraud, “The Tales of Little Pavel,” his three-volume political satires of the Biden-Harris regime, “Evening Soup with Basement Joe,” and his new non-fiction work covering the 2024 campaign, "Current Events and the Issues of Our Age," are available in eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.   

Recommended For You

OPINION: Battlefield Los Angeles 2025

by John F. Di Leo
June 11, 2025
0
OPINION: Battlefield Los Angeles 2025

By John F. Di Leo, Opinion Contributor There are many public policy decisions that are difficult, decisions that require serious thought and perhaps consultation with advisors. And then...

Read moreDetails

OPINION: Should the Trump Administration be Gatekeeping College Admissions?

by John F. Di Leo
June 2, 2025
0
OPINION: Should the Trump Administration be Gatekeeping College Admissions?

By John F. Di Leo, Opinion ContributorXi Mingze is the 32-year-old daughter of Chairman Xi Jinping, the dictator of China.She attended Harvard University from 2010 to 2014 under...

Read moreDetails

Bernard Kerik, Hero of 9/11 and Close Friend of Illinois Review’s Mark Vargas, Passes Away at 69

by Illinois Review
May 29, 2025
0
Bernard Kerik, Hero of 9/11 and Close Friend of Illinois Review’s Mark Vargas, Passes Away at 69

Bernard Kerik, 9/11 hero and close friend of Illinois Review’s editor Mark Vargas, has died at 69. His life embodied courage, redemption, and unwavering love for country

Read moreDetails

Breaking: Biden Diagnosed With Advanced Cancer—Family Weighs Treatment Options

by Illinois Review
May 18, 2025
0
Breaking: Biden Diagnosed With Advanced Cancer—Family Weighs Treatment Options

Biden’s shocking cancer diagnosis raises new questions about years of Democrat cover-ups and the betrayal of public trust. What else have they hidden while pushing America into chaos...

Read moreDetails

Opinion: Pope Leo XIV and the Question of Moderation

by John F. Di Leo
May 9, 2025
0
Opinion: Pope Leo XIV and the Question of Moderation

By John F. Di Leo, Opinion ContributorWhether one is Roman Catholic or not, after all, it matters to us all whether the spiritual leader of a billion people...

Read moreDetails
Next Post

AOC Bad Idea: Abolishing the Electoral College

Please login to join discussion

Best Dental Group

Related News

IL Freedom Caucus calls on Lurie Children’s Hospital to cease gender services for kids

October 27, 2022

Beckman: Is the Brigham Young University racial slur controversy another hoax?

October 27, 2022

Salvi polling shows closer race

October 27, 2022

Browse by Category

  • America First
  • Education
  • Faith & Family
  • Foreign Policy
  • Health Care
  • Illinois News
  • Illinois Politics
  • Opinion
  • Science
  • Second Amendment
  • TRENDING
  • US NEWS
  • US Politics
  • World News
Illinois Review

© 2024 llinois Review LLC Editor in Chief Mark Vargas Publisher Thomas McCullagh Chief Counsel Scott Kaspar

Navigate Site

  • Checkout
  • Home
  • Home – mobile
  • Login/Register
  • Login/Register
  • My account
  • My Account-
  • My Account- – mobile

Follow Us

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Illinois News
  • Illinois Politics
  • US Politics
  • Health Care
  • US NEWS
  • America First
  • Opinion
  • TRENDING
  • Education
  • Foreign Policy
  • Second Amendment
  • Faith & Family
  • Science
  • World News

© 2024 llinois Review LLC Editor in Chief Mark Vargas Publisher Thomas McCullagh Chief Counsel Scott Kaspar

Are you sure want to unlock this post?
Unlock left : 0
Are you sure want to cancel subscription?