At some point, Americans are going to have to square with the resounding failure of our two-party political system by shedding the dysfunctional loyalty most voters have to either a Democrat or Republican affiliation. Why? Because neither party delivers anything resembling representative government any more. We elect politicians whose primary mission is continuity of government at our expense.

The allegiances to the modern American Democrats or Republicans are based on well-crafted illusion, disseminated by corporate media on behalf of the two-party political machine. It is brilliant in its simplicity. As long as voters are polarized, the status quo is guaranteed. What self-respecting Democrat will ever vote for a Republican, and vice versa? Couple this with a stranglehold on the primary system, including nonsensical gerrymandering to protect incumbents, and you have a control grid that is efficient and manageable. (See RCReader.com/y/primary.)

The minute voters decide that the candidates presented for election are unacceptable - and as a result cross party lines, or better yet abandon those lines altogether and choose third-party candidates en masse - things will begin to change in a hurry. Americans do not give enough weight to the desperate desire of politicians to be re-elected.

For months now, Governor Bruce Rauner has said he won't negotiate a state budget unless his "Turnaround Agenda" demands are met. In the meantime, he has slashed funding for the child-care-assistance program, homeless services have been decimated, mental-health services are going without cash, universities are struggling, and even the Meals on Wheels service for the elderly is cutting back deliveries.

But one of the most important things missing from the debate over that "Turnaround Agenda" is how much money the governor's proposals would truly save state and local governments. Even for those who support the ideas, is it really worth all this pain?

There is simply no hard, reliable, trustworthy data out there because numbers from both sides of the debate on union-related subjects such as the prevailing wage are so steeped in ideology.

Among other things, the governor is demanding that local governments, including school districts, be allowed to opt out of paying the prevailing wage on construction and other projects. The amount is set by county, and all publicly financed projects must pay those wages. Unions say killing off the prevailing wage won't save much if any money because productivity will drop when inexperienced, low-wage employees are used to replace trained construction and trades workers.

But just for the sake of argument, let's say that's not true.

Reuters released a special report late last year that went largely under the corporate media's radar. Titled "The Echo Chamber," it exposed that at the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), "a handful of lawyers now dominates the docket."

"The Echo Chamber" examined 10,300 petitions before the Supreme Court from 2004 through 2012, triangulating the number of appeals filed, the names of attorneys and their firms, and the percentage of appeals accepted and heard by SCOTUS.

Some high points:

1) Sixty-six of 17,000 lawyers' appeals were at least six times more likely to be heard than all other lawyers' submissions combined in that same period.

2) These 66 lawyers account for less than 1 percent of lawyers who filed appeals with SCOTUS yet were involved in 43 percent of the cases chosen to be heard.

3) Fifty-one of these 66 lawyers represent corporate interests, turning SCOTUS "into an echo chamber - a place where an elite group of jurists embraces an elite group of lawyers who reinforce narrow views of how the law should be construed."

4) Twelve top firms had an 18-percent success rate in getting their petitions heard and were involved in a third of the cases before SCOTUS. Of the business-related cases accepted by SCOTUS, these top firms were involved in 60 percent.

5) Out of 8,000 firms doing business at the Supreme Court, 31 firms accounted for 44 percent of all cases heard by SCOTUS.

6) A group of eight lawyers accounted for 20 percent of all arguments made before SCOTUS in the past decade versus 30 attorneys in the decade before, demonstrating the diminishing circle of influence at the high court.

7) Demographically, of the 66 top lawyers, 63 are Caucasian and only eight are female. Thirty-one worked as clerks for SCOTUS; 25 worked in high-level positions for the U.S. Office of the Solicitor General, whose attorneys represent the government before SCOTUS; and 14 worked for both, making them "consummate insiders."

Which state has the highest taxes in the Midwest? Not Illinois, that's for sure.

The Illinois Policy Institute is claiming otherwise, citing "new research." But that research was actually based on tax collections from Fiscal Year 2013, when the Illinois state income-tax rate was 5 percent. Today - in Fiscal Year 2016, more than two years later - the state income tax rate has dropped to 3.75 percent. So if you look at tax collections in the first six months of this year, under the new rate, Illinois' state tax collections come out to $1,597 per person - more than $60 lower than Wisconsin's $1,661. That's just a fact.

Beyond that basic inaccuracy, that letter simply ignored some fundamental facts about state taxes - the first being that comparing state tax burdens is like trying to compare apples and mashed potatoes.

Take Indiana. Its income-tax rate is a flat 3.3 percent - which looks pretty good next to Illinois, right? But in Indiana, almost every county imposes its own income tax - which can range up to almost 3 percent, for a total income tax rate of 6.3 percent. That's a whopping 68 percent higher than Illinois!

And while it's true that people in Illinois pay more in income taxes, per person, than people in Missouri, there's a very good reason for that: We make more money. The average per-capita income in Illinois is $29,666 - above the national average, and substantially higher than the Missouri per-capita income of $25,649. So if you want to move to Missouri and pay less, remember that's because you're likely to make less.

Then there's the huge issue of comparing Illinois' regressive flat income-tax rate with our neighboring states' progressive rates. In Wisconsin, people in the highest income bracket pay a top rate of 7.65 percent. Iowans pay almost 9 percent on taxable income over $68,000. And people in Minnesota pay a hefty 9.85 percent on taxable income of $154,951 and above.

Here's the real point: When you start cherry-picking statistics on state tax rates, you can prove just about anything you want. The real task is figuring out the best, fairest way for a state government to raise the revenues necessary to pay for the services that its people demand. And you can't develop smart, effective tax policy based on a misleading, simplistic, and out-of-date chart.

But if you could, I'd choose one from the Tax Foundation (that same place the Illinois Policy Institute cited) that ranked the combined state and local tax burden in every state. Illinois comes in at number 13 - compared with Wisconsin, which had the fifth-highest tax burden in the nation.

Elizabeth Austin, Vice President for Policy & Communications
Innovation Illinois