Party of the rich: Crook County Democrat Party boss rips off poor to benefit wealthy

The Cook County assessor's office has always been a cash cow for the Democrats. And there has never been a Republican assessor in Crook County.

The assessor is Joe Berrios, who is also the chairman of the Chicago Machine, formally known as the Cook County Regular Democratic Organization. He was nominated for that post by Illinois Democratic  Party boss Michael Madigan, whose tiny law firm presumably makes a fortune appealing taxes assessed by Berrios' office.

Madigan is the "speaker-for-life" of the Illinois House of Representatives.

If you live in Cook County and you are voting Democratic you are voting for Berrios. If you live in Illinois and you are voting Democratic you are voting for Madigan.

It's that simple.

From the Chicago Tribune:

In the first effort to measure the cost of Cook County’s error-ridden assessment system under Assessor Joseph Berrios, a new study estimates that at least $2.2 billion in property taxes was shifted from undervalued Chicago homes onto overvalued ones between 2011 and 2015.

Because the county’s assessment system is skewed in favor of high-priced homes, the errors amount to a staggering transfer of wealth that benefited Chicago’s most affluent homeowners at the expense of people who own lower-priced homes.

The study, released Thursday by the Municipal Finance Center at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, was conducted by Professor Christopher Berry, a critic of the assessor’s office who testified at a County Board hearing in July about flaws in the county’s assessment system.

The analysis involved calculating a citywide fair tax rate using the tax bills of homes that sold, then seeing how those tax bills differed from the amount that would be expected if the assessor valued property fairly.

Cook County is losing population. Illinois is losing population. Surprised? You shouldn't be.

Illinois isn't the Land of Lincoln anymore--it's the Land of Leaving.