#cook county | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mostlysignssomeportents · 1 day

Text

The tax sharks are back and they’re coming for your home

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TODAY (Apr 27) in MARIN COUNTY, then Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

One of my weirder and more rewarding hobbies is collecting definitions of "conservativism," and one of the jewels of that collection comes from Corey Robin's must-read book The Reactionary Mind:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reactionary_Mind

Robin's definition of conservativism has enormous explanatory power and I'm always finding fresh ways in which it clarifies my understand of events in the world: a conservative is someone who believes that a minority of people were born to rule, and that everyone else was born to follow their rules, and that the world is in harmony when the born rulers are in charge.

This definition unifies the otherwise very odd grab-bag of ideologies that we identify with conservativism: a Christian Dominionist believes in the rule of Christians over others; a "men's rights advocate" thinks men should rule over women; a US imperialist thinks America should rule over the world; a white nationalist thinks white people should rule over racialized people; a libertarian believes in bosses dominating workers and a Hindu nationalist believes in Hindu domination over Muslims.

These people all disagree about who should be in charge, but they all agree that some people are ordained to rule, and that any "artificial" attempt to overturn the "natural" order throws society into chaos. This is the entire basis of the panic over DEI, and the brainless reflex to blame the Francis Scott Key bridge disaster on the possibility that someone had been unjustly promoted to ship's captain due to their membership in a disfavored racial group or gender.

This definition is also useful because it cleanly cleaves progressives from conservatives. If conservatives think there's a natural order in which the few dominate the many, progressivism is a belief in pluralism and inclusion, the idea that disparate perspectives and experiences all have something to contribute to society. Progressives see a world in which only a small number of people rise to public life, rarified professions, and cultural prominence and assume that this is terrible waste of the talents and contributions of people whose accidents of birth keep them from participating in the same way.

This is why progressives are committed to class mobility, broad access to education, and active programs to bring traditionally underrepresented groups into arenas that once excluded them. The "some are born to rule, and most to be ruled over" conservative credo rejects this as not just wrong, but dangerous, the kind of thing that leads to bridges being demolished by cargo ships.

The progressive reforms from the New Deal until the Reagan revolution were a series of efforts to broaden participation in every part of society by successively broader groups of people. A movement that started with inclusive housing and education for white men and votes for white women grew to encompass universal suffrage, racial struggles for equality, workplace protections for a widening group of people, rights for people with disabilities, truth and reconciliation with indigenous people and so on.

The conservative project of the past 40 years has been to reverse this: to return the great majority of us to the status of desperate, forelock-tugging plebs who know our places. Hence the return of child labor, the tradwife movement, and of course the attacks on labor unions and voting rights:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/06/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom/

Arguably the most potent symbol of this struggle is the fight over homes. The New Deal offered (some) working people a twofold path to prosperity: subsidized home-ownership and strong labor protections. This insulated (mostly white) workers from the two most potent threats to working peoples' lives and wellbeing: the cruel boss and the greedy landlord.

But the neoliberal era dispensed with labor rights, leaving the descendants of those lucky workers with just one tool for securing their American dream: home-ownership. As wages stagnated, your home – so essential to your ability to simply live – became your most important asset first, and a home second. So long as property values rose – and property taxes didn't – your home could be the backstop for debt-fueled consumption that filled the gap left by stagnating wages. Liquidating your family home might someday provide for your retirement, your kids' college loans and your emergency medical bills.

For conservatives who want to restore Gilded Age class rule, this was a very canny move. It pitted lucky workers with homes against their unlucky brethren – the more housing supply there was, the less your house was worth. The more protections tenants had, the less your house was worth. The more equitably municipal services (like schools) were distributed, the less your house was worth:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

And now that the long game is over, they're coming for your house. It started with the foreclosure epidemic after the 2008 financial crisis, first under GW Bush, but then in earnest under Obama, who accepted the advice of his Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who insisted that homeowners should be liquidated to "foam the runways" for the crashing banks:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/06/personnel-are-policy/#janice-eberly

Then there are scams like "We Buy Ugly Houses," a nationwide mass-fraud outfit that steals houses out from under elderly, vulnerable and desperate people:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/11/ugly-houses-ugly-truth/#homevestor

The more we lose our houses, the more single-family homes Wall Street gets to snap up and convert into slum properties, aslosh with a toxic stew of black mold, junk fees and eviction threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

Now there's a new way for finance barons the steal our houses out from under us – or rather, a very old way that had lain dormant since the last time child labor was legal – "tax lien investing."

Across the country, counties and cities have programs that allow investment funds to buy up overdue tax-bills from homeowners in financial hardship. These "investors" are entitled to be paid the missing property taxes, and if the homeowner can't afford to make that payment, the "investor" gets to kick them out of their homes and take possession of them, for a tiny fraction of their value.

As Andrew Kahrl writes for The American Prospect, tax lien investing was common in the 19th century, until the fundamental ugliness of the business made it unattractive even to the robber barons of the day:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-04-26-investing-in-distress-tax-liens/

The "tax sharks" of Chicago and New York were deemed "too merciless" by their peers. One exec who got out of the business compared it to "picking pennies off a dead man’s eyes." The very idea of outsourcing municipal tax collection to merciless debt-hounds fell aroused public ire.

Today – as the conservative project to restore the "natural" order of the ruled and the ruled-over builds momentum – tax lien investing is attracting some of America's most rapacious investors – and they're making a killing. In Chicago, Alden Capital just spent a measly $1.75m to acquire the tax liens on 600 family homes in Cook County. They now get to charge escalating fees and penalties and usurious interest to those unlucky homeowners. Any homeowner that can't pay loses their home.

The first targets for tax-lien investing are the people who were the last people to benefit from the New Deal and its successors: Black and Latino families, elderly and disabled people and others who got the smallest share of America's experiment in shared prosperity are the first to lose the small slice of the American dream that they were grudgingly given.

This is the very definition of "structural racism." Redlining meant that families of color were shut out of the federal loan guarantees that benefited white workers. Rather than building intergenerational wealth, these families were forced to rent (building some other family's intergenerational wealth), and had a harder time saving for downpayments. That meant that they went into homeownership with "nontraditional" or "nonconforming" mortgages with higher interest rates and penalties, which made them more vulnerable to economic volatility, and thus more likely to fall behind on their taxes. Now that they're delinquent on their property taxes, they're in hock to a private equity fund that's charging them even more to live in their family home, and the second they fail to pay, they'll be evicted, rendered homeless and dispossessed of all the equity they built in their (former) home.

It's very on-brand for Alden Capital to be destroying the lives of Chicagoans. Alden is most notorious for buying up and destroying America's most beloved newspapers. It was Alden who bought up the Chicago Tribune, gutted its workforce, sold off its iconic downtown tower, and moved its few remaining reporters to an outer suburban, windowless brick building "the size of a Chipotle":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/16/sociopathic-monsters/#all-the-news-thats-fit-to-print

Before the ghastly hotel baroness Leona Helmsley went to prison for tax evasion, she famously said, "We don't pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes." Helmsley wasn't wrong – she was just a little ahead of schedule. As Propublica's IRS Files taught us, America's 400 richest people pay less tax than you do:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/13/for-the-little-people/#leona-helmsley-2022

When billionaires don't pay their taxes, they get to buy sports franchises. When poor people don't pay their taxes, billionaires get to steal their houses after paying the local government an insultingly small amount of money.

It's all going according to plan. We weren't meant to have houses, or job security, or retirement funds. We weren't meant to go to university, or even high school, and our kids were always supposed to be in harness at a local meat-packer or fast food kitchen, not wasting time with their high school chess club or sports team. They don't need high school: that's for the people who were born to rule. They – we – were meant to be ruled over.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/26/taxes-are-for-the-little-people/#alden-capital

#pluralistic #chicago #illinois #alden capital #the rents too damned high #debt #immiseration #chicago tribune #private equity #vulture capital #cook county #liens #tax evasion #taxes are for the little people #tax lien certificates #tax sharks #race #racial capitalism #predatory lending

307 notes · View notes

alwaysbewoke · 1 month

Text

334 notes · View notes

reasonsforhope · 1 year

Text

Toledo City Council just approved a plan to turn $1.6 million in public dollars into as much as $240 million in economic stimulus, targeted at some of the Ohio metro’s most vulnerable residents.

“It’s really going to help people put food on the table, help them pay their rent, help them pay their utilities,” says Toledo City Council Member Michele Grim, who led the way for the measure. “Hopefully we can prevent some evictions.”

The strategy couldn’t be simpler: It works by canceling millions in medical debt.

Working with the New York City-based nonprofit RIP Medical Debt, the City of Toledo and the surrounding Lucas County are chipping in $800,000 each out of their federal COVID-19 recovery funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.

The combined $1.6 million in funding is enough for RIP Medical Debt to acquire and cancel up to $240 million in medical debt owed by Lucas County households that earn up to 400% of the federal poverty line.

“It could be more than a one-to-100 return on investment of government dollars,” Grim says. “I really can’t think of a more simple program for economic recovery or a better way of using American Rescue Plan dollars, because it’s supposed to rescue Americans.”

How It Works

Under the RIP Medical Debt model, there is no application process to cancel medical debt. The nonprofit negotiates directly with local hospitals or hospital systems one-by-one, purchasing portfolios of debt owed by eligible households and canceling the entire portfolio en masse.

“One day someone will get a letter saying your debt’s been canceled,” Grim says. It’s a simple strategy for economic welfare and recovery.

RIP Medical Debt was founded in 2014 by a pair of former debt collection agents, and since inception it has acquired and canceled more than $7.3 billion in medical debt owed by 4.2 million households — an average of $1,737 per household...

Local Governments Get Involved

The partnership with Toledo and Lucas County is the third instance of the public sector funding RIP Medical Debt to cancel debt portfolios.

Earlier this year, in the largest such example yet, the Cook County Board of Commissioners approved a plan to provide $12 million in ARPA funds for RIP Medical Debt to purchase and cancel an estimated $1 billion in medical debt held by hospitals across Cook County, which includes Chicago.

“Governments contract with nonprofits all the time for various social interventions,” Sesso says.

“This isn’t really that far-fetched or different from that. I would say between five and 10 other local governments have reached out just since the Toledo story came out.”

What's the Deal with Medical Debt?

An estimated one in five households across the U.S. have some amount of medical debt, and they are disproportionately Black and Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau...

Acquiring medical debt is relatively cheap: hospitals that sell medical debt portfolios do so for just pennies on the dollar, usually to investors on the secondary market.

The purchase price is so low because hospitals and debt buyers alike know that medical debt is the hardest form to collect...

The amount of debt canceled for any given household has ranged from $25 all the way up to six-figure amounts. Under IRS regulations, debts canceled under RIP Medical Debt’s model do not count as taxable income for households...

Massive Expansion Coming Up

After not one but two donations from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, totaling $80 million, RIP Medical Debt is planning for expansion.

It’s using a portion of those dollars to create an internal revolving line of credit to expand to places where it can find willing sellers before it has found willing funders.

The internal line of credit means the nonprofit now has new, albeit still limited, flexibility to acquire debt portfolios from hospitals first, then begin raising private or public dollars locally to replenish the line of credit later and make those funds available for other locations.

“People often ask, do you only work with nonprofit hospitals, or do you work with for-profit hospitals? And I’m like, I just want to get the debt, regardless of who created the debt. If it’s out there, I want it,” Sesso says.

Fundamentally, they are not solving the issue of medical debt, but easing its pressure from as many lives as possible — while also upping the pressure on lawmakers and the healthcare industry.

“We’re intentionally taking the stories of the individuals whose debt we have resolved, and putting their stories out into the world with intention in a way that tries to push and create more of that pressure to fundamentally solve the problem,” she says.

-via GoodGoodGood, 4/6/23

#toledo #ohio #chicago #cook county #new york #medical debt #healthcare #healthcare access #united states #us politics #debt crisis #debt relief #hospital #nonprofit #good news #hope

300 notes · View notes

girlactionfigure · 2 months

Text

An Israeli-American attorney is suing her supervisors at the Chicago Public Defender’s Office after being asked to remove a photo of herself holding an IDF-issued rifle against the backdrop of an Israeli flag claiming it is “akin to displaying a Nazi swastika”.

Attorney Debra Gassman, assistant public defender of Cook County, said that the photo had been taken during her volunteer service in the IDF during the first Gulf War.

Define N@zism for them! AM YISRAEL CHAI ✡️✡️✡️

naz_hashem

#Israeli American #Chicago #Cook County #IDF Reserve

49 notes · View notes

royfmc · 1 year

Text

McDonough County Sheriff Refuses to Enforce New Illinois Law Banning Assault Weapons

McDonough County Sheriff’s OfficeSheriff Nick Petitgout110 S. McArthur St.Macomb, IL 61455 Media Statement January 11, 2023 ~House Bill 5471~ As your Sheriff, I wanted to give citizens of McDonough County an update on the recent passage of HB 5471, also known as the Protect Illinois Communities Act. As your duly elected Sheriff my job and my office are sworn, in fact, to protect the citizens…

View On WordPress

#advocacy #assault weapons #Chicago #cook county #gun control #Illinois #McDonough #politics #Pritzker #Roy F. McCampbell #sheriff

54 notes · View notes

my90smemories · 1 month

Text

Justice,IL is where I grew up. My family always made it seem like it was far away from Chicago. As a kid I was Chicago, Homewood, Joliet (I hated Joliet) & of course Justice & surrounding towns Hickory Hills, Bridgeview of where I grew up.

#chicago #illinois #justice #map #815 #773 #708 #312 #cook county #will county

2 notes · View notes

dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

Text

Just days after Illinois became the ninth U.S. state to ban assault rifles, the state already hit a roadblock to implementing the law: defiant sheriff's offices.

At least 74 Illinois sheriff's departments have publicly vowed to defy elements of a recent gun-control law signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, which banned assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and switches. The offices have vowed to not check if weapons are registered with the state or house individuals arrested only for not complying with the law.

As the number of uncooperative sheriff's offices increased, Pritzker has made his own vow – to ensure those members of law enforcement who fail to "do their job… won't be in their job."

The Illinois Sheriffs' Association issued a statement Wednesday expressing continued opposition to the law. Simultaneously, dozens of sheriff's offices began to post nearly identical messages promising they would not check for compliance with the law or arrest offenders of the law.

Jim Kaitschuk, executive director of the Illinois Sheriffs' Association, said he drafted the statement which sheriff's offices began to sign or modify.

"Therefore, as the custodian of the jail and chief law enforcement official for DuPage County, that neither myself nor my office will be checking to ensure that lawful gun owners register their weapons with the State, nor will we be arresting or housing law abiding individuals that have been charged solely with non-compliance of this Act," DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick wrote in a statement, which was mirrored by dozens of other offices.

With a population of over 920,000 residents, DuPage County is the largest county to defy the law.

ABC News was able to identify at least 59 sheriff's offices that issued a nearly identical statement, the main identifiable difference between the statements being the letterhead and name of the county in the text of the statement.

In total, at least 74 offices said they plan to not use resources to enforce elements of the law, impacting nearly 4,000,000 Illinois residents, or over 30 percent of the state's residents.

Other than DuPage county, the most populous counties in Illinois – Cook, Lake, and Will Counties – have not issued any statement opposing the law. The deadly 2022 Highland Park parade shooting took place in Lake County, which is enforcing the law. Most of the sheriff's offices opposing the law reside in counties with less than 100,000 residents, though nine defiant counties have populations exceeding 100,000.

Kaitschuk said he disagreed with the idea that sheriffs have an obligation to check compliance with the law or house offenders in their jails.

"That is not a charge that is provided to us, or mandated to us in the bill that passed and was signed by the Governor," he said.

Many of the sheriffs defying the law have described their opposition to the law as akin to civil disobedience to protect the Second Amendment.

"We will not be enforcing it in this county; I will also not house anyone in my jail that has violated this act because we know it to be an unlawful act by the general assembly and the Governor," Jefferson County Sheriff Jeff Bullard Sr. said in an online video.

Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell, whose jurisdiction covers nearly 200,000 residents, signed a modified version of the statement. In an interview with ABC News, Campbell based his opposition to the law due to both adherence to the Constitution and the ineffectiveness of the law.

"The law will have zero impact on the murder rate in the state of Illinois," Campbell said.

Some offices took less defiant stances which include waiting for movement from the courts or legislative action.

"I understand that our nation had witnesses frequent tragedies involving gun violence and I am in no way attempting to minimize the impact these events have had," St. Clair County Sheriff Richard Watson wrote in a statement, in which he said he opposed the law but did not promise to defy it.

When asked why he decided to not enforce the law rather than wait for action from the courts, Campbell returned his belief that the law is unconstitutional and will eventually be struck down.

"Because between now or Tuesday when the bill was signed into law by the Governor, how many people can have their constitutional rights violated?" he asked. “And I don’t believe any U.S. citizens should ever have their country’s rights violated at anytime."

Pritzker addressed the defiance, commenting that members of law enforcement who fail to enforce it might lose their job.

"The fact is that yes there are of course people who are trying to politically grandstand, who want to make a name for themselves by claiming that they will not comply," he said. "But the reality is that the state police is responsible for enforcement, as are all law enforcement all across our state and they will in fact do their job or they won't be in their job."

Kaitschuk rebutted the idea that Pritzker has the authority to fire members of law enforcement, especially elected sheriffs.

"I'm just not aware of any provision that provides the Governor that opportunity to do so," he said.

Eric Ruben, a law professor at Southern Methodist University and fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, told ABC News that the public statements made by the sheriffs could significantly impact residents' behavior.

"Even if it's posturing and political, it does send a signal to residents in these communities that they don't have to worry about the law," he said.

Ruben added when sheriffs made public statements about the enforcement and constitutionality of a similar 2013 New York state law requiring the registrations of assault rifles, New York received far fewer registrations than expected, suggesting noncompliance with the law.

"Ultimately, it's not the sheriff's job to decide on the constitutionality of laws," he said. "That's generally something that the courts do."

On Thursday, Pritzker reaffirmed his stance that the sheriff's offices should not be making decisions about which laws to enforce and which to ignore.

"You know, you can have all the resolutions and declarations that you want," Pritzker said. "The reality is that the laws that are on the books, you don't get to choose which ones people are going to follow."

Ruben added that the sheriffs' public statements about checking that residents register their guns could be a "red herring" or distraction since the law does not call on law enforcement to check that citizens register their firearms unprompted.

Pritzker made a similar point on Friday, noting that registering the guns is ” not something that requires the intervention of a sheriff.”

Kaitschuk said the Illinois Sheriffs' Association does not intend to challenge the law in court; however, on Tuesday, the Illinois State Rifle Association declared its intention to go to court.

"Challenge accepted. The Illinois State Rifle Association will see the State of Illinois in court," Richard Pearson, the association's executive director, said.

During a bill signing on Friday, Pritzker remarked he was confident the state law was constitutional.

17 notes · View notes