IL Town Runs Out of Gas Money for Police Cars

Dixmoor, Illinois, has a government spending problem. After years of taxing its inhabitants into leaving, resulting in a loss of $600,000 in tax revenue last year, the city has run out of cash to pay for the gas for the town’s police cars. “It’s horrible,” reported Dixmoor Fire Department Chief Thomas Wendt. “My staff had payments bounce today because they didn’t get their checks.” Public Works says that if there is a major snowstorm, the department doesn’t have enough money to pay for the gas to get the roads cleared. The Police Chief says he’s tapped himself personally to pay for gas for the black and whites.

Dixmoor has an unemployment rate in excess of 10 percent, sales taxes of a whopping 9.5 percent, and income taxes of 5 percent. The plurality of households make less than $15,000 per year, and virtually all residents earn less than $100,000 per year. That makes it difficult to adopt the Obama solution: tax the rich. When there are no rich people left, bankruptcy becomes the only solution.

Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the book “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).