Illinois As Middle-earth

Not in the Midwest; in Middle-earth—that’s where I live. I am a creature more lowly than a Hobbit. I am an Illinois taxpayer. My village is in DuPage county, not far from the Shire, west of the Lake, and distant enough from Spring-in-the-Field that, until recently, I could earn my living with little interference.


But…the world has changed, and, with it, the tax rates. I can feel it in the air quality, and in the water user fees. My hand trembles when I see the sales tax on my invoice. Where is this money going? I could have bought some lembas bread, on sale, with it. Instead, it is being transferred to the municipality’s account.

A year ago, this tax was raised by half a cent on the dollar. Protests were made by business and consumer groups, but in the end they were stifled by politicians, who are masters at concealing the truth, at twisting it, spinning it, or tabling it for future consideration by a committee. As Dwarves mine their caverns for mithril, so politicians bleed their constituents dry for revenues. While you wonder where your dollar went at the store, they reassess your home, and grab a few more hundred bucks.

In 2009, the county collector charged me $5,277.48 for living in my own home. This year, she wants sixty-eight more dollars. I look around. It’s the same shack I’ve occupied for seventeen years. The single bathroom my family uses is the one thing that didn’t change, when the world, as a whole, did. I’ve got asphalt shingles on top of thatch, and windows as old as the race of Elves. Yet Gwen Henry in her castle on County Farm Road has assessed my house at $316,700. My property has been on the market now for a month, listed at $199,999, and no nibble from prospective buyers has disturbed the “For Sale” sign in the yard.

Ms. Henry has a reason for her intractable figures. Though the present value of my home has diminished significantly, my tax bill reflects the fact that 2006 was, in fact, a good year for real estate. My home’s “fair cash value” from that year, even allowing for the market collapse in the ensuing years, somehow precludes any lowering of my liability. In other words, the year 2006—and not the birth of Christ—should henceforth serve as the reference point for all historical events and home sales data.

I know that sounds like arrogance on the part of government. Yet Ms. Henry, believe it or not, is unconvinced that this reasoning alone will protect the county from any revenue shortfall. After all, when 2006 lapses as a factor in formulating property values, heretics among the middle class will inevitably surge toward her office, holding in their hands new appeals and petitions, dangling like so many super-sized teabags. Best, she has decided, to head off the mob preemptively.

From a vault in her chamber, the troll-like Treasurer has secured an ancient scroll with an incantation to defeat any conceivable legal or procedural maneuver which might come from the people. She has included this incantation in the brochure which she mailed out with everyone’s property tax bills last April. It reads, in Legalese—



“The assessment is a variable, which when divided into the amount of funds requested (by the taxing district), creates a percentage or tax rate each of us must pay. Even if your assessment were reduced significantly, the tax rate would increase by the same amount, resulting in the same dollar amount due.”



Translation: The game is fixed. What’s more, Sauron is stirring in far-off Spring-in-the-Field.

Quinn the Grim, Sauron’s ally, has mobilized an army of AFSCME members, misshapen beings who were once men in the private sector. The army is led by pundits of terrible voice and countenance. They have overrun the countryside, east and west of the Illinois River, demanding a “one percent surcharge for education.” A few math-savvy peasants reply that raising the state income tax rate from three to four percent would constitute, not a one percent, but a thirty-three percent, hike. The army responds by predicting budgetary chaos, mass layoffs of busybodies, children eating dirt. The Mayor of the White City screeches hysterically on the local news. Some people waver. Demigovernor Quinn continues his onslaught. Personally, I liked it better when we had a leader who used profanity on tape, and quoted Kipling and the Bible. Blagojevich the Foul-mouthed at least had a human side. Quinn is all business—or, rather, anti-business.

Quinn would burden Illinoisans with higher taxes, more onerous regulations, and the sight of his unsmiling face on television for many seasons to come. And so I, with my Fellowship of Conservatives, have decided to act. We will march through prairie and cornfields, over I-55, toward the Enemy’s lair in Spring-in-the-Field. From its outskirts, I shall proceed alone to the edge of the Grand Deficit in the center of the city. The Deficit is a hole of unimaginable immensity, so deep you can drop eighty billion dollars in pension obligations into it, plus all of Mount Doom, and still have room for an echo. Into this chasm, I shall toss the thing that is most precious to politicians, and which, henceforth, they can never confiscate—my last paycheck.