➡ Chicago residents are protesting against a significant increase in property taxes, with some bills doubling from the previous year. The tax hike is part of an attempt to address the city’s financial issues, but residents are questioning where the money is being used as they see no improvements in their communities. Meanwhile, the high taxes are causing people and businesses to leave the city and state, leading to a decrease in population and job opportunities. The situation has sparked a modern-day Boston Tea Party, with residents burning their tax bills in protest.
➡ High taxes are causing people and businesses to leave cities, hurting those who were promised benefits from these taxes. Companies need to make a profit to survive, and if taxes are too high, they’ll move to places with lower taxes. This is causing growth in states with lower taxes and decline in states with higher taxes. People are starting to protest these high taxes, and if city leaders don’t listen, these protests could spread across the country.

If you thought a socialist revolution was taking over our nation’s cities, wait until you hear these residents of the city of Chicago. They are revolting. They’re rising up and they’re letting their mayor, who’s now officially the single most unpopular mayor in the nation, know that his days before the city council are indeed numbered. This is the moment Chicago’s most loyal residents said, enough is enough. And what happens next could determine whether the windy city survives or collapses under the weight of its own failed policies. Well, people have gathered here tonight at Harmony Community Church here in Lawndale, as they’re trying to light the way to fairness with this bonfire and discussion tonight.

Many homeowners across Chicago receiving a hefty property tax increase in the mail and they’re all wondering where that money is going. How can you maintain your home if your taxes are constantly going up? Homeowners in Lawndale are searching for answers together tonight about their property tax hikes. Community leaders partnered with the Lawndale Christian Development Corporation to host this bonfire, allowing neighbors to discuss their options. One man says he received a bill this week that was $977 more than what he paid last year. Tax increases tied to a TIFF that I have no idea why.

Ogden Pulaski TIFF is collecting money from our neighbors in our streets, but we’re not being notified for what or why it’s in the bill. The Tea Party has officially come to Chicago. Over the weekend, community leaders organized what they called a property tax bonfire, a modern-day Boston Tea Party, where residents literally brought their tax bills to burn in protest. As you heard, one Chicago resident received a bill showing his taxes jumped by nearly $1,000 in a single year, but that wasn’t even the worst of it. According to Dr. Richard Townsell, Executive Director of the Lawndale Christian Development You heard that right.

Homeowners are paying double what they paid last year. In fact, reports from West Garfield Park, the medium homeowners saw their tax bill surge by nearly $2,000. It’s a staggering 133%. These are predominantly black and brown neighborhoods who’ve endured decades of neglect, disinvestment, and abandonment. And now the city is hitting these residents with their highest tax bills ever, with a whopping 100%, 130% tax increase. And so to that, we all say, hey guys, welcome to the party. Welcome to the Tea Party, right? Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas released data showing that median residential property tax bills in Chicago jumped on average 17%.

The largest single-year increase in at least 30 years, but that citywide average masks the catastrophic reality in Chicago’s south and west side neighborhoods where more than 37,000 homes saw their property tax assessments more than double in a single year. But that’s just par for the course for the state of Illinois as a whole. They now hold the dubious distinction of having either the highest or second highest property tax rate in the entire nation, depending on which year’s data you examine. Illinois homeowners pay more than double the national average in property taxes. Double the average Illinois family shells out over $6,000 annually as compared to the $3,000 national average.

Now, of course, as you heard the residents asking earlier, the fundamental question in all of this is, where’s all this money going? It’s certainly not going to all the free stuff these socialist mayors were promising their constituents. So where is it all going? Short answer, nobody knows. No one has any idea. The residents of Chicago keep asking that very question, and the city refuses to answer it clearly. They’re being told that the taxes are for TIF. That stands for tax increment financing. It’s a funding tool that’s supposedly designed to spur local redevelopment, but you heard them residents are openly saying, where is it? We’re seeing absolutely no improvements, no better schools, no new infrastructure, no economic development in their communities.

And that’s because the money is getting caught up in a massive $17 billion budget for the city that Mayor Brandon Johnson just unveiled. It’s a budget design to close a massive $1.2 billion deficit, or it may be getting spent on things like this. Fences at the Chicago public school system. Among the findings, employees at the cash strap district spent millions on trips to Las Vegas and even overseas. What is up with this? Mike Tobin is live there in the Windy City. Good morning, Mike. Good morning, David. The inspector general took a look at the travel expenses of teachers and principals in the Chicago public school systems and concluded that when the bank accounts were fat with COVID money, the staff ran wild, as you mentioned, trips to Egypt, Finland, Hawaiian resorts, even one on a safari, and there was no oversight to stop them.

The amount spent on travel in 2021 was $300,000. It jumped up in 2022 to $3.4 million, doubled in 2023, and kept getting bigger in 2024. The report concludes that more scrutiny was put to whether the expense paperwork was done correctly than whether the expenses were excessive. As a result, more than 90% of the traveling employees went over the allowable limits. Oftentimes, lodging at airfare was double the allowable rate. One of the reasons the trips were not rejected is that they were not asking for approval. Of 15 international trips noted by the inspector general, 12 were never submitted for approval.

And then we start seeing wildlife trips, balloon rides, staff staying extra days for personal reasons, and this in a school district that claims a $700 million budget hole. If you love staying encouraged and up to date for everything happening in our growing movement, then you’re going to love my brand new weekly wrap-up. Every Friday, we’ll send you one uplifting email filled with everything you need to stay connected. Replays of my livestreams, our top performing videos and podcasts, and a full look at upcoming events, special announcements, and the latest Patriot wins from our amazing community.

It’s your weekly boost of hope and clarity, delivered straight to your inbox, so don’t miss out. Join the weekly wrap-up today and be part of a growing community that’s celebrating victories and shaping a new conservative age together. Head on over to turley.pub slash recap and sign up now. It’s free, it’s encouraging, and it’s the perfect way to end your week on a high note. My colleague here just put out every tax instead of a breathing tax that he wants to institute. We really can’t have much more taxes in this city or people, corporations, businesses, are going to leave the city of Chicago.

The fact that no one up here has a budget plan is because they’re hiding the ball behind their back. If there’s anything, I’m going to tell you the truth. His plan may not raise property taxes, but it puts a tax on everything else. The reality of the situation is that taxpayers cannot take it anymore, right? We talked about red light cameras. They need to be eliminated, period. We shouldn’t be talking about equitable distribution. They need to be eliminated. We talked about the first thing that we would do is sign an executive order to ban the booting and seizures of vehicles for unpaid parking tickets in the city of Chicago.

We got to change these practices and make this city a place where people actually want to live and raise a family. And that’s what we need. Kids are being failed each and every day in our public schools, and we must stop it. And we must have more teachers, especially teachers that look like us. Black male teachers. That’s your favorite job. I want to get Brandon Johnson back in there. Just not an economics teacher. Listen, we got so much work to do to change our public schools, and we’re willing to do it.

Thank you. Chicago is experiencing precisely what virtually all other Democrat-run cities are experiencing. It’s what economists call a structural deficit. It’s where their growing expenses consistently outpace their revenues. Their growing expenses consistently outpace their revenues. So over the past decade, Chicago’s expenses have risen by 64 percent, but their revenues have only grown by 54 percent. So that gap keeps widening, and politicians keep finding new things to tax instead of cutting spending. And the result has been a massive exodus of residents from the city. Chicago currently is at its lowest population in a century.

And it’s not just the city. The state of Illinois as a whole has been hemorrhaging residents for years now. The state lost population for the last nine consecutive years. Since 2020, nearly half a million, you heard that right, half a million residents fled the state of Illinois seeking lower taxes and better opportunities. Over 50 percent of Illinois voters cited high taxes as the main reason they would leave if given the chance. And as you heard that young man point out, it’s not just individuals leaving, it’s businesses too.

Mayor Johnson’s new cloud tax, which is a tax on tech companies, his new corporate taxes, his new social media taxes, they’re already driving tech companies, corporations, and employers out of the city. That means fewer jobs, lower revenues, and eventually, you guessed it, higher taxes on the residents who stay behind, who remain in the city. And that is exactly what those residents at the beginning of our video, at the bonfire, were shocked to discover. When all of these well-generating dynamics flee the city, they become the next in line to make up the difference, to make up the budget shortfall.

The very people who were promised all the free stuff are suddenly finding out that they’re the ones funding it. And we talked about this last week in our video on Ma’am Donnie and the mass left UG crisis that’s already happening, all these people fleeing New York City before he’s even sworn in. Money is mobile. Money is mobile. Capital is not fixed, it’s not stagnant. Capital easily, and that’s the key, it easily, very easily moves. And one of the unwritten laws of economics is when companies face unprofitability through taxation, they always leave, always.

Companies have to turn to profit, or they don’t work, obviously, right? They fold. The only way a company works is if it is able to charge more than what it costs to produce its product or service. That’s how employees get paid. That’s what attracts investors. Companies have to make money, and they make money by charging more for their products and services than the expenses accrued by offering those products and services. And the major expense for companies is taxes. And if those taxes threaten the profitability of a business, that business, by definition, will pick up and relocate to where those taxes are reduced.

This is why red states are booming, and blue states are declining. But the good news is that fiscal sanity does seem to have a way of reawakening among even the most liberal-minded voters, especially when they start to realize that they’re the ones who are going to be flipping the bill from more and more of these socialist experiments. And that experiment, of course, involves doubling their tax bills while their streets, their schools, and their services remain underfunded. That bonfire that you saw earlier is actually being called, Chicago’s own Boston Tea Party movement.

And that’s, they’re right. As you can see, it’s not going away. Residents are organizing, they’re researching California’s Prop 13 model that effectively capped their property taxes, and they’re demanding transparency. They’re done. They’re done standing around and tacitly supporting their city crumbling right before the very eyes. But Chicago isn’t unique. It’s a preview. Cities across America are facing the same choice. Cut spending and reform government or tax residents until they flee or until they revolt. Brandon Johnson, as you can see, chose the latter. He’s implementing a progressive tax agenda that punishes success, drives away businesses, and crushes working-class homeowners, especially those in black and brown communities, while claiming, ironically, to fight for equity and justice.

The property tax bonfire over the weekend wasn’t just a protest. It was a declaration. Chicago’s most loyal residents, the ones who stayed through decades of neglect and decay, are saying they will not subsidize socialism any longer. They will not be taxed out of their properties. And if Chicago’s leadership doesn’t listen, that bonfire could spread to every major city in America. Because when you tax people into poverty in the name of progress, eventually they stop asking nicely and they start fighting back. [tr:trw].

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