Todd Stroger’s “American Way”

I have always known this particular sentiment was prevalent among politicians, but I never thought one of them would admit to it.

The Chicago Tribune reported the following on a WGN 720AM radio interview with host John Williams and Cook County President Todd Stroger:

Host John Williams asked: Isn’t it unfair to keep targeting smokers with tax increases?

“That is the American way,” Stroger replied. “And the way that it’s generally done is, you find some group that’s small enough where they can’t beat you up, and you tax them and you tell everybody else, ‘See? We didn’t tax you.’ “

This may be the single most outrageous quote I have ever heard by a public official.  OK, maybe its not as outrageous as Gov. Blago comparing himself to Mandella, Ghandi, and King, but this quote is a distant second.

The targeting of certain less-powerful groups for higher taxation is wrong but commonly practiced (and never admitted).  What is unusual is that Todd Stroger admitted the process and called it the “American Way.”  Yes, segmenting certain groups for higher taxation is about as American as segregation.  I have an idea.  How about we increase sales taxes to 25% for all Cook County officials with a first name of Todd?

The other problem with Stroger is that he didn’t even apply his own tactic by increasing sales taxes on every resident in Cook County.  The increase has left us with the highest sales tax in the country and resulted in 3 townships (Barrington, Hanover and Palatine) voting to secede from the county.

The Tribune recently called Stroger “an inept heir of a wasteful county government overloaded with lazy political hacks.”  Wow, I was only going to call him a great multi-tasker.  In addition to the above issues, Stroger had to fire his own cousin from her $175 thousand position as County CFO.  Not only is he battling a tough primary, Thanksgiving at his house is going to be rough.