It's always been taxpayer robbery but we can't afford this any more

State, city, now county bankrupt. Chicago Sun Times: Jody Weis received $76,308 in unused vacation when he resigned.

Weis and Masters are among 1,026 city employees paid $7.4 million for their unused vacation days since September, 2010, in the transition from former Mayor Richard M. Daley to Mayor Rahm Emanuel

Add this to the San Francisco story of "public servants" making more in retirement than private sector workers make who are actually on the job and you have the reason people are in revolt around the country.

But the former Chicago police chief used clout to circumvent even the paltry rules on the books. That's common too in other public policy arenas.

Then we have ridiculous fig-leaf reform measures like this from our Dem governor (after he did a sweetheart deal prior to the election, which we lost by a few thousand votes centered around Crook County):

Quinn's office argues the move would save the state money and make government more efficient, saying the bill would apply to high-level management positions such as attorneys, legislative liaisons and deputy chiefs of staffs for state agencies.

Quinn spokeswoman Brie Callahan said if those currently applying for union representation are approved, just 760 of the state's 45,000 workers would be non-union. Callahan said that leads to situations where managers can't discipline employees under them, leading to some facilities where "no one is in charge." If approved, 92 percent of the state workforce still would be represented by a union, she said.

Illinois wants to borrow money to pay fat pensions while stiffing basic human services providers.

No one is in charge. Come on, it's the unions, with their prime booster in the White House, wrecking this country. At some point taxpayers are just going to refuse to pay. We might have civil disobedience. How interesting what sparks it in San Francisco, liberal nirvana.

At some point even clueless people might ask themselves why they're a Democrat.

More. Illinois budget FAIL, the Dem Chicago Way writ large in the country, while private sector unemployment is at Depression levels. 

More. For information on your state's unsustainable entitlement overhang go here. More resources here.

And this: Bill McGurn, WSJ: Democrats and Dying Cities. What South Bend tells us about the 2012 election:

Joel Kotkin, a presidential fellow at Chapman University who writes on successful cities, says that places such as South Bend often overlook their homegrown businesses and their real competitive advantages, e.g., a low cost of living. "Often these advantages are very different from what the pundits tell them," he says. "For example, they are told to invest in 'clusters' in fashionable fields like green tech or nanotechnology or in the arts, when they should be trying to figure out how to be themselves but only better."

He could be describing South Bend. Instead of providing a low-tax, low-regulation, business-friendly environment for all comers, the city is chockablock with special zones and industrial parks whose tax revenues go to other government-directed investment projects.