And There it is....

The "Death Spiral" has become painfully visible, even to those willfully blind:

• Cook County taxpayers are outraged after property tax bills showed up in the mail. The bills are skyrocketing this year. The city of Chicago and its public school district's fiscal problems literally hit home over the weekend, when property owners saw their second installment tax bills.
  
  Outside the assessor's office, city homeowners told one property tax horror story after another.
  
  "Our taxes increased fivefold," said William Phillips of Rogers Park. "I was expecting it to go up maybe twice as much but not four to five times as much."
  
  "My tax bill increased almost $1,200 dollars," said Cornes King of Chatham.
  
  "More than tripled. The city's piece more than tripled," said Logan Square resident Janelle Squire.

The common complaint?

• "I don't think that I'm getting the services for what I'm paying for," said King.

Neither do a lot of the people paying a lot more than you. Who is the media blaming most of all?

• The bills that arrived over the weekend reflect rising Cook County real estate values and, in Chicago, the city's $588 million levy increase. Most of it is to restore police and firefighter pensions that Mayor Rahm Emanuel says his predecessors underfunded.

Rahm can't even say "Daley" out loud and relies on the media to say "his predecessors." His only "predecessor" ran the city for how long? Twenty-two years. But he throws the First Responders out there front-and-center.

And the pain isn't over - not by along shot:

• Sensing taxpayer unrest, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle promised not to consider a property tax increase to resolve her government's deficit.
  
  [...] But the Chicago Public Schools Board is expected to approve a $250 million property tax hike to pay for teacher pensions. The new levy was enabled last week by the Illinois General Assembly and Governor Bruce Rauner. The additional charges, hundreds of dollars more for an average city house, will appear on tax bills a year from now.
  
  [...] Homeowners could also have less money to pay their property taxes if the Illinois income tax is raised eventually to address the fiscal problems in Springfield.

What are these people going to do? Not all of them, but some are going to simply pack up and leave. Look for someplace more affordable. Someplace that they feel they're getting their money's worth. Somewhere that isn't Cook County.

How many? That'll be the interesting part - one-in-twenty? One-in-ten? Chicago lost something like a quarter million residents in the last census. In reality, it was probably a wash due to illegal conversions and illegal aliens. But in terms of properties that are generating property tax revenue? Places like Englewood have well over 2,000 vacant or abandoned properties, and those are the parcels with buildings on them - how many bulldozed lots? What about Austin? North Lawndale? How many lots were sold to assorted make-believe churches for $1? They might enrich a pastor at some unforeseen future date, while he endorses the flavor-of-the-day aldercreature, but what kind of taxes are being generated today?

And what happens in a few years when the politicians reassess and find even fewer citizens (and businesses) to tax, and the same unpaid pension obligations and the crushing debt in Springfield?