Time for TIFs to go

Since they've become little more than sources
of municipal corruption which deprive schools and
other vital entities of needed funds, TIFs should
be outlawed at the federal level. The original helpful
notion, promulgated by Rep. Jack Kemp, has morphed into a
grotesque way to keep tax monies from the public good
but easily available to the politicians. Since when is
Chicago's LaSalle Street, with its Federal Reserve Bank,
etc., a "blighted area"?? (Yeah, blighted by large numbers
of the uncaring rich, maybe.) When former Mayor Daley
crated the LaSalle Street TIF, the proof was in that the
fix was in. No other information necessary to the point.
According to The Reader's Ben Joravsky, Chicago has 160 of
these, relatively few in truly economically depressed areas.

But it gets worse: TIF funds, which were originally intended
to boost economic development in poor neighborhoods, are now
subsidizing large corporations blackmailing the city, the CME
being one. "We'll leave the city unless you fork over millions..."

So LEAVE, already. The fewer thieves left in Chicago, the better.

TIFs: initially an innovative idea perverted by the greedy, now
deserve the ax. --And soon!