Today, right now, the tireless efforts of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and the Chicago Board of Exchange (CBOE) are about to bear fruit. They are about to get a $100 million dollar tax break via SB 397. Given all the shouting we’ve been doing about the 1% sucking the souls and of the rest of us here’s an example of how much more ass they are willing to kick WHILE we are in the damn streets! Time to get off the bench and call these prick-rat-bastards and tell them to vote no on this odious corporate giveaway; here are the numbers. Get your accountability on and make a call, when you’re done I’ll commence with the hilarity, taunting and invective.

You can reach your House member by going here and clicking their name to get their office number. You can reach your Senate member here and clicking their name to get their office number. Did it feel good to get a justice done before noon? Were our elected official’s offices surprised to hear you helping them do the right thing? Good, keep at it they obviously cannot be trusted to do the right thing if left to their own devices.

So if you’re like me you might be asking a couple of questions. One, how the hell did this happen? Two, where the frick-frack is the money coming to give these bloodthirsty, greedy, corporate bastards a $100 million dollar tax break? Let’s get in the way back machine. Rahm Emanuel had just bought an entire election and big corporations were throwing massive public temper tantrums while threatening to leave the state. If that seems like years ago it was only February. It was at this point when Sears, the CME and other corporate “citizens” dialed up their friends and dispatched them to Springfield like so many flying monkeys. At the forefront of that band of furry, $5,000 dollar suit wearing, corporate servants flew our angry marmoset of a Mayor Rahm Emanuel. 

It was widely reported that he failed to get this done but here it is happening. Am I laying this at Rahm Emanuel’s tiny cloven hooves? No, he didn’t introduce this thing, the DEMOCRATIC Senate President John Cullerton and House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie did. Is the very kind of thing he lobbied for, why yes, yes it is and it is happening because hundreds of lobbyist, like our Mayor worked very hard to make this happen. I know, technically speaking our Mayor is not a lobbyist. After all, lobbyists answer to people and are paid by private funds. Our Mayor answers to no one and is paid by public funds, so he’s not a lobbyist. He is however, making it clear that when nasty push comes to ugly shove he is not one of the 99% and he and his friends have been working their brimstone-stained fingers to the bone to make this day possible under the administration of a Democratic governor via the Democratic leadership of the Democratically controlled General Assembly. Wow, this is what democracy looks like?

One of the most telling aspects of this story is the behavior of Terry Duffy, the Executive Chairman of the CME Group. First he lost his natural mind about having to pay taxes as he threatened to leave the state. Then he got Mayor Emanuel and a number of other campaign investments to come up with something that would make him happy and lobby for it but, knowing who actually runs the state, never picked up the phone to talk to Gov. Quinn. You can’t make stuff like this up, you could but no one would believe you.

Since you probably have forgotten where the money has come from to create this $100 million dollar handout here are some of the people who lack campaign investments like Mayor Emanuel to fight for them and what they will be losing. The budget will be $76.3 million dollars lighter for community services to people with developmental disabilities and $56 million dollars smaller to fund group homes, day centers and temporary housing for homeless families. 
We’ll be spending $180 million dollars less on education that would be pre-schools, afterschool programs and the like. 

You probably noticed I didn’t get into the weeds about how the bill will work because I’m more concerned about what it means. Think about this for just a moment. At a time will millions of Americans are out in the streets screaming about how the 1% are not pulling their weight; the CME and our Mayor and its other campaign investments are demanding that they get tax breaks while making eye-popping profits.  If these people want to leave the state let them but I believe we should present them with a bill for every tax break they have ever gotten and when they pay it I’d help them pack. But I’d be willing to walk naked down State Street if they’d do such a thing. One, that would be a lot of money, the CME Group is not a collection of brilliant people corporate welfare has long taken care of them. Two, these guys don’t have the heart to pay for anything that’s why they’re all too happy to steal education and social services from people without the political power to defend themselves from Satan’s little helpers. Prick-rat-bastards all of them and yeah, I’m talking to Rahm, Terry, Barbara and John. I’d say shame on you all if either of you had any.