Illinois: One party kleptocracy

A state that is in trouble has just compounded it by attacking the source of its wealth.  As it is south of Chicago the state is a wasteland.  I live in St. Louis and nothing, nothing happens east of the Mississippi river.  Way to go Obamaland.  James Pethokoukis explains here.  Hat tip Instapundit.

Now we have Illinois vs. Indiana. The Prairie State has the worst debt rating of any state in the union and heading into 2011 faced a funding shortfall equal to 40 percent of its total budget. Only Nevada, hit particularly hard by the housing depression, is as nearly bad off, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Yet directly east of Illinois is the Hoosier State with a AAA credit rating. Indiana faces a 2011 shortfall of just 9 percent and expects to balance its budget even though the economic downturn has struck just as hard as in Illinois. Under Governor Mitch Daniels, a noted budget hawk who may run for the Republican 2012 presidential nomination, Indiana has continually pared back spending. It now has the fewest public employees per capita of any state. And it spends half as much per citizen as Illinois.

But faced with a fiscal crisis, Illinois decided this week to raise taxes by $7 billion a year, jacking up the individual rate to 5 percent from 3 percent and the corporate rate to 7 percent from 4.8 percent. That the state didn’t instead cut spending dramatically is not really surprising. One-party kleptocracies — and that pretty much is what Illinois is — always want more taxpayer money, not less.