My letter to the editors--now, if it gets posted....

I sent this letter to different newspapers: The Sun-Times, the Trib(HAH!), Daily Herald, Springfield and my little DG paper. Let's see who posts it!

I am a state retiree, one of the "regulars", whose pension averages around $25,000 a year. I'm somewhat luckier than over 75% of my fellow retirees because I can collect Social Security, yes, that's right. Over 75% of state retirees do NOT collect Social Security--all they have is their pension.
I worked for the Department of Corrections for about 30 years, over 2/3 of that time at Stateville, not what I would consider a "cushy" job. But we, that worked there, felt that we made a difference, we were to be firm, fair and consistent with inmates, we dealt with their families and with the public. I had worked my way from the young woman who had a low paying clerical job, to a correctional officer and then counselor. I could take care of my family and I paid taxes. I never made 6 figures at the job...not even close, but I knew I would be secure in my retirement because we had a contract, we had a pension and I kept my part of the deal and I paid my 8 - 9% of my pension cost every paycheck...but the state(and the people of Illinois) don't care and don't want to live up to their side of the deal. It's not that Illinois is spend drunk. In fact, we're 47th in revenue spending and 50th in state employee per citizen capita in the United States. What we are, is tax-phobic.
Not that the state doesn't make deals--over 2/3 of the state based corporations in Illinois pay NO state income tax and/or sales tax! We allow corporations to take many of the same deductions  that the Federal tax system uses, but on our flat income tax, those deductions are destructive to our financial situation and a majority of states have dropped these deductions.
Ways to raise revenue? First, we need to get rid of the Single Sales Factor--this alone costs us about $600 Million just from Caterpillar annually!  Drop the federal accelerated depreciation and go back to normal depreciation rates(would bring in about $300M annually), a deduction that allows no tax on dividends paid by foreign corporations to US parent corporations in Illinois(gain $400M annually). Getting rid of the Retailer's Discount on Sales Tax, at least for large retailers--Walmart keeps about $9 million annually of what we Illinois citizens think we're paying in sales tax! Like the Waltons need that money more than our citizens. That would bring in another couple hundred million annually.
And before all of the "OH NO, The nice corporations would LEAVE if we make them pay their FAIR SHARE!!!!" If Illinois tax structure was the same as Iowa's, we'd raise $6 billion more in revenue every year...Wisconsin's?  We'd raise about $9 billion more. Illinois taxes are not overtly high, that's just the sound byte.
I'm tired of seeing how my finances could be ruined over time while CME, Sears, Motorolla, United, Boeing, Caterpillar pay less in taxes than the average Illinois citizen. Its time to see the real problem, and its with the ones that control what's seen on TV and what stories get printed in the paper, not the 70 year old teacher living on your street--she deserves her pension, she worked for it, as we all have. And we demand to be respected. We're not demanding 6 or 7 figure pensions as some of our pols get. We want what we negotiated--a livable pension, nothing more and certainly nothing less.