Thursday, April 10, 2014
Our City Council and Mayor Forgot Something at the Meeting on Monday April 7........
This has been National Volunteer Week April 6 - 12.
National Volunteer Week is a time to celebrate people doing extraordinary things through service. Established in 1974, National Volunteer Week focuses national attention on the impact and power of volunteerism and service as an integral aspect of our civic leadership. The week draws the support and endorsement of the president and Congress, governors, mayors and municipal leaders, as well as corporate and community groups across the country.
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26 comments:
Just read the article in the dishrag about the county budget. Interesting factoid - our county sheriff (the chief law enforcement officer for the entire county) makes about $70,000 per year. That is about $20,000 LESS than Peru's Chief of Police. Interesting.
Interesting how Bartley always manages to place "Proclamations" on the council agenda for similar obsrvances such as Child Abuse Awareness Week as was the case at Monday's meeting. The mayor reads these proclamations aloud quite regularly. Funny that "National Volunteer Week" never made it into the record on Monday. Especisally considering the efforts over the past weekend by a group of volunteers colecting trash thoughout the city. Very peculiar that this observance was overlooked by Bartley and others.
These Peru officials are so ridiculously petty in the way they refuse to recognize the efforts of Alderman Perez and his volunteer initiatives. Another example of a complete lack of professionalism on the part of the clerk, the mayor, and the gang of seven.
Vindictive, childish, and counter-productive behavior by Peru's elected officials is just another reason to step up and work to replace these people with some adults asap.
Lets recall these elected officials for this slight of hand.
8:06 AM
I like your comment, it is exactly on target.
There is no activity in Boss Harl's campaign disclosure this quarter, but he still has $26,197.20.
Those proclamations are received from the group and then posted.
I proclaim this Corruption Free Government Month!
Be nice if the rest of the city counsel could be bothered to help on the clean up. Put away your differences we all live in the same town! What would it take for everyone work together and clean up the town! We all call home.
Hats off to Rodney for taking the time.
The rest of counsel And Mr Harl take notice. We the people won't forget . Actions speak louder than words!
Don't say I didn't warn you. The fence is up for the CVS project and how soon will the inflateable rate show up?
Most of the council are baby boomers. The Baby boomers are the most selfish generation in history.
Actually the baby boomers have seen the greatest inflation adjusted increase in taxation and reduction in government benefits and net wealth in modern history.
Perhaps you think they are selfish, but their earnings have paid for the prior generations retirement and health benefits, and a vast majority of post war infrastructure highways and they made almost every major advance in medicine and science in the twentieth century.
As they enter retirement they are being told benefits must be reduced, pensions are threatened, and medical care must be limited or denied.
It is always easier for the older generation to blame... Many of the baby boomers are pointing to generation x as being the most narcissistic , but that generation will inherit environmental issues and other challenges. Each generation has it's call to serve and meet the next challenge. Selfishness and simple black and white thinking is not limited to any single group or generation.
It only seems like it has chosen the Peru leadership as its poster children ;)
I have watched the last council video and things to listen for are Waldorf speaking about the manhole on Wenzel Road which he wanted smoke tested like right now because a heavy rain could cause big issues.
Also the proposed discussion on the agenda and restrictions about to be applied to individual aldermen who want to have items put on. Listen to Ald. Radtke at the end about applying formal rules to public comment.
And then laugh and listen as Mayor Harl asked 3 times if there was any public comment. Since there is so little public comment why do the aldermen want more formal decorum put in place. Will we need to now be in proper formal attire?
This city is becoming more unfriendly to the average person day by day.
More to soon be heard about the Rte 6 Tourist Association headed by Bob Vickery. I actually have questions than answers at this time about it.
You need to check your facts 12:43. The Baby Boomers broke the sacred bargain that every American generation will pass a better country on to its children than the one it inherited. They are reaping more than they sowed. They graduated into the strongest economic boom in American history. They needed less education to get a good job. A college education cost them a small fraction of what it does for their children. One income was sufficient to get a family ahead economically. Federal income-tax rates have fallen steadily since boomers entered the labor force while government retirement benefits have proliferated. At nearly every point in their lives, they chose to slough the costs of those tax cuts and spending hikes onto future generations. They are leaving the workforce wealthier than their parents did, with even more government promises awaiting them. They demanded lower and lower priced consumer goods, so low that the market could not produce them at a profit. The boomers turned to China and other low wage countries to fuel their materialistic needs.
Boomers will enjoy full Medicare prescription-drug benefits. They will draw more-generous retirement benefits than their parents did at their children's expense. A couple retiring in 2014, will accrue $400,000 more in Medicare and Social Security benefits over their lifetimes than they paid in taxes to support those programs. Middle-class families today are 5 percent less wealthy than their parents were at the same point in their lives, even though families today are far more likely to include two wage earners. Those ages 55 to 64 are 10 percent wealthier today, even after the Great Recession, than Americans of that age bracket were in 1984. Those younger than 35 are 68% less wealthy than the same bracket was in 1984. The baby boomers built an economy where young people need a college education to move into the middle class. But the boomers who run state legislatures and universities have collectively pushed the costs of education into the stratosphere. The increase has saddled young workers with more than $1 trillion in student debt--the average college student today borrows six times more to finance education than the average student in 1970. The boomers keep their low taxes, but the next generation of workers starts with a debt boulder strapped to its back with no gain. Today, men who grew up in the middle class are likely to earn less than their fathers did.
The Greatest Generation lived through the Depression, defeated Fascism, created the largest economy the world has ever seen, invented computers, and put a man on the moon. Their children, the Baby Boomers, stole the fruits of these achievements. Not being satisfied with that, they stole from future achievements, in the form of uncontrollable debt. They consumed at least three generations worth of wealth in one generation. They are complacent and self-righteous. They tend to vote for whoever promises to give them the most money or will make them pay the least amount of taxes. Boomers could care less about screwing over future generations; this is demonstrated by their lack of ability to choose a leader that is more intelligent than a bag of hammers. At all levels of public policy and moral leadership, as a generation they failed. The Boomer Progressive Establishment in particular has been a huge disappointment to itself and to the country. They increased the rights of criminals while taking rights away from the law abiding. They developed a welfare state in which a single mother is better off staying single than marrying the illegitimate father. They destroyed the nuclear family. Boomer financial leadership was selfish and shortsighted. Boomer CEOs accelerated the trend toward unlimited greed among corporate elites – holding profit margins above employment. They broke the century old business ethic that required corporate leaders to hold their employees and their suppliers equal to the shareholders. Boomer members of corporate boards sit by and let it happen. Boomer academics created a profoundly dysfunctional system that systemically shovels resources upward from students and adjuncts to overpaid administrators and professors who by and large have not, to say the least, done an outstanding job of transmitting the cultural heritage of the past to future generations.
Such vitriol directed at the generation that DID have as much to do with manned space flight as the WWII pilots, DID contribute more dollars to this "welfare " state your older generation retired upon, and is the first who will now receive less than they paid in.
Check when they were born. You are blaming them for much of what happened in the Two decades after WWII, and it's true they did point out racial inequality, challenge the industrial military complex, iProtest oil wars, and invent the Internet so we can have this polite discourse, and btw they did NOT have a world war (came damn close) which your generation claims to have risen up and stopped, while ignoring any culpability in allowing the ULTRA conservative fascists to rise to power in the first place. One thing the Fascists did have in common with you was an extraordinary ability to BLAME others for misery. I prefer to share it. The boomers have made many mistakes. Happy to own up to them. What were yours?
I have seen the vitriol this "greatest generation" spews on its children. And if this" greatest generation" is so perfect , I guess it's only failing was that it could not raise it's children well. OR perhaps it did raise them well enough to rebuild the world, address our civil rights, attempt to provide a safety net with their FICA payments, begin the environmental movement , and reject the pompous, self serving attitudes that carried over past the great sacrifices of WWII. The greatest of your generation died on the beaches of Normandy and in the Battle of Midway. And they sure as hell did not do it so the survivors could spout pseudo conservative crap about how their children spent all the money on health care , retirement, social programs and education.
You do their legacy no honor by rejecting the contributions of your children and simplistic lumping of and entire generation with the tag selfish.
They righted wrongs here, and there is a strong case they are still trying to right them, while old power and dark money still clings to the old sins as if they were sacred. Don't just drink the coffee. Wake up.
4:58 - Nice try. Baby Boomers are greedy and caused all of our current problems. They outsourced to China. They increased benefits without increasing taxes. They destroyed the nuclear family. They destroyed the greatest industrial economy the world has ever known. It is time to start taking back from the boomers. We need to tax their retirement and limit their FREE medical care. We need to un-shelter their assets so they can start paying their part of the bill.
I'm not a baby boomer. My parents are. And my parents were very hard working people. They are retired now. Living comfortably. What the United States needs to do is stop giving $ to other countries, cut out all exports/imports. What is one thing that the United States can't produce for the people? Nothing in my opinion. There would be good paying jobs and jobs available for all. What did other countries do for the United States when Katrina happened? When the World Trade Centers collapsed? Look what the United States does to help other countries when they have a catastrophe? Is the United States being used by other countries? I really think so. To blame the baby boomers is wrong. It's our crooked politicians!!!!!!
Our crooked politicians are baby boomers.
Illinois is leaving so much money on the table. They don't need to raise the income tax for everyone. They just need to start charging income tax on retirement - especially 401K's and IRA's. These plans allow a tax deferral - i.e. you don't pay tax while your working but you pay as you withdrawal. Quite a tax advantage. The trouble is, in Illinois, you get the tax advantage while you are working - and when you retire the withdrawals are 100% income tax free. Talk about having your cake and eating it too. The Boomers in the legislature set this scam up pretty good for their favorite voting block.
The different viewpoints of various generations starting with 10:54 AM are outstanding examples of the free expressions provided by this owners, Lois Carrolls, blog.
I believe that this constructive criticism is both healthy and provides a means to understand the viewpoint of each generation of the other. As a person who took steps immediately before the birth of the baby boomers and lived during a time when few individuals knew what financial credit was as well as how it worked and has seen a evolvement to the point to where almost all are kicking the can down the road for the next generation to pay and a continuous unemployment rate of 11% (actual rate of over 16%), insecure future of social security, and reduction of the middle class have empathy for today's younger generations and do believe that we should confront the problems of today that we have created rather than will them to the next generation..
Ethically you do not owe the younger generations as you pass them the responsibilities of America but you do owe them the responsibility of taking care of our age groups problems and hopefully leave them the same, if not better, opportunities as we were left.
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6:18 am, Sorry, but you are mistaken about the withdrawals being tax free. When you take 401K withdrawals after retirement, those withdrawals are taxable. The advantage is that at your retirment age and income the rate at which you are taxed will be less. You are way off base suggesting that taxing retirement savings as an option to raise revenue. Way off base!
10:04. You are exactly correct.
They are taxable at the federal level. Illinois does not tax retirement income.
According to the Illinois Department of revenue, "most" retirement income, including pensions, 401k, social security, self directed IRA's, any government pensions can be excluded from your adjusted gross income when you file your state return. In fact the don't even withhold. I could not find a circumstance that would make this income taxable at the state of Illinois level.
I am retired military and I guarantee you that 100% of my pension is tax free in Illinois. I use a popular computer program to file my taxes and the retirement income check list of "retirement income which is exempt from Illinois State Income taxes" includes military retirement pay, social security, IRA's, 401K's, TRS, IMRF, 403B's, Police and Fire retirement..." and many more.
Bottom line - Illinois does not collect income tax on just about any retirement income.
If the State of Illinois is going to have an income tax, EVERYBODY must pay it. It makes no sense to exempt retirement income!
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