Mark Penn, a prominent Democratic pollster released new results of surveys taken late last week on what Americans think about the Hamas attacks on Israel.
Not surprisingly, the vast majority of Americans, 84%, support Israel over the Hamas terrorists. The only group of Americans who are NOT fully supportive of Israel are young people of college age (18-24).
Here are a few examples of how the young differ from older adults in their opinions on the attacks.Side with Israel over Hamas. 84% of all voters Only 52% of college-age voters There is no moral equivalency between Hamas’ murders and Israel’s actions. 61% of all voters say there is no moral equivalency Only 36% of young voters say there is no moral equivalence Do not believe that Hamas terrorists killed 1200 Israeli civilians by shooting, raping and beheading people. 17% of all voters don’t believe it happened 32% of young voters (almost twice as many) don’t believe it
As Penn summarizes the situation: “College-aged students are completely misinformed about the facts and biased against Israel.”
That leads us to wonder, who filled their heads with all these wrongheaded and even bigoted ideas?
Associated Press Style Guide Changes Definition of “Terrorist”
Free Beacon: The Associated Press instructs reporters and organizations that rely on its style guide to avoid referring to Hamas as a terrorist organization. The news outlet states in its “Israel-Hamas Topical Guide” that because “terrorism and terrorist have become politicized, and often are applied inconsistently … the AP is not using the terms for specific actions or groups, other than in direct quotations.” The guidance will affect how dozens of regional newspapers and national outlets like Politico report on the ongoing war in Gaza. Hamas, an Islamist militant group dedicated to the annihilation of Israel and Jews around the world, is classified as a terrorist organization by dozens of countries, including the United States and the European Union. Hamas has undertaken hundreds of terrorist attacks against civilians since 1993, according to the Jewish Virtual Library. Instead of referring to Hamas—which earlier this month killed hundreds of innocent civilians, including children in an unprompted attack on Israel—as a terrorist group, the outlet says journalists should call its members “militants” (Free Beacon). Ed Morrissey: This kinder, gentler approach to Hamas terrorism is unlikely to induce much sympathy for the killers, but the Associated Press is clearly giving it the old college try (HotAir).
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer won the nomination for Speaker of the House on Tuesday after five rounds of votes.
Republicans were voting by secret ballot until they were able to get to a candidate who received a simple majority of the conference votes. After each round of votes, the member who received the lowest numbers was eliminated.
Candidates running had the option to drop out before each round of votes if they felt that they did not have enough support. 109 votes were needed to win.
Before the first round, there were seven GOP Republicans running for Speaker. Reps Tom Emmer, Mike Johnson, Byron Donald’s, Kevin Hern, Austin Scott, Jack Bergman and Pete Sessions. Sessions received the lowest amount of votes during the first round of votes and dropped out.
Bergman dropped out after the second round of votes, as he received the least amount of votes.
Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK) (R) and Rep. Mark Alford (R-MO) arrive to a House Republican candidates forum where congressmen who are running for Speaker of the House will present their platforms in the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill on October 24, 2023 in Washington, DC. Members of the GOP conference will hear from the candidates who hope to succeed former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who was ousted on October 4 in a move led by a small group of conservative members of his own party. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Emmer secured the majority of votes during the fifth vote.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan was voted out of the race for speaker of the House on Friday after failing to receive the necessary votes on three separate ballots. Jordan lost in a secret ballot vote 86-112.
How colleges brazenly get around Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling
Now that race-based affirmative action in college admissions has been overturned in a landmark Supreme Court decision, colleges, and universities are scrambling to diversify their student bodies without running afoul of civil rights law.
Several top-ranked schools are rolling out a slew of new essay prompts that fish for demographic information with leading questions — and some are going so far as to directly ask about prospective students’ race.
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore asks students to “tell us about an aspect of your identity (e.g. race, gender, sexuality, religion, community, etc.) or a life experience that has shaped you as an individual…”
Meanwhile, Rice University in Houston asks applicants: “What perspectives shaped by your background, experiences, upbringing, and/or racial identity inspire you to join our community of change agents at Rice?”
And every single Ivy League school has added an application question about students’ backgrounds, according to college admission expert and Ivy Coach managing partner Brian Taylor.
It’s a clever loophole: ask about race … without expressly requiring students to write about their race.
And some schools aren’t even remotely subtle about their motivations.
Largest EV Charging Station in the World Runs off of Fossil Fuels
Today there are fewer than 900,000 electric vehicles on California’s roads. In 2035, the year the state outlaws the sale of new gas automobiles, EV advocates claim there will be 13 million electric cars.
But that is highly unlikely.
Signs of a strained electric grid are everywhere. Take the Harris Ranch Tesla Supercharger station in Coalinga, California, off of Interstate 5 – the largest EV charging station in the world.
How’s this for irony: the entire station is powered by diesel generators hidden behind a Shell station, despite promises they would be solar powered.
Every EV that replaces a fossil-fuel powered car represents another bite taken out of a power grid that’s more and more precarious every day.
New York Judge Arthur Engoron, a registered Democrat, granted summary judgment against Donald Trump last week in a case alleging real estate fraud by the former president. Not waiting for the trial to begin, where evidence would be produced, experts would testify, and discovery would conclude, Engoron revoked the licenses for Trump’s key properties, including Trump Tower and the Trump International Hotel, and set up a fast timeline to dissolve the Trump Organization and its connected entities. Engoron said Trump and his associates inflated the values of his properties, but several legal experts disagreed.
Viva Frei, a lawyer who hosts a show with fellow lawyer Robert Barnes called Sidebar, broke down his assessment of the case with Barnes in an 18-minute video on Monday.
“It would seem that the REAL fraud is coming from the Court and from the corrupt Attorney General,” he said. “A breakdown of the absurdity coming out of New York from last night’s stream.”
It would seem that the REAL fraud is coming from the Court and from the corrupt Attorney General…
Viva Frei noted that the state is bringing the case for fraud against Trump, not a victim such as a bank. He said prosecutors accused Trump of overvaluing the worth of properties to obtain more favorable loans — but Trump then turned around and paid the loans off on time.
“The corrupt state of New York thinks they’re the victim,” he said.
Viva Frei pointed out that to grant summary judgment, there must be agreed-upon facts. There wasn’t — Trump didn’t agree that Mar-a-Lago was only worth $18 million, he said.
Barnes declared, “The case has no grounds, whatsoever, no legal or factual grounds whatsoever.”
He said, “It’s a threat to everyone’s civil rights and civil liberties, because what the state is saying is if we don’t like you politically, we’ll weaponize one of our many vague laws on the books to go and destroy your business, and destroy your family.”
Barnes said what was disturbing was that the state can bring these types of charges without showing “that the state has ever been defrauded.”
He said, “It shows you what a joke the standing doctrine is. They don’t allow the vaccine injured to sue, because somehow they don’t have standing … but if you have not been defrauded a penny, nickel, dime, or dollar, you have no complaining victim, the state has lost no money, in fact the state has gained money, then you get to sue and destroy someone’s business?”
Barnes expressed concern that not only did the state sue the Trump Organization, but they sued Trump and his kids personally.
“His kids had nothing to do with this. … It’s pure retaliation,” the lawyer said.
He said it’s “overweaponization, where you’re locking up your political opponents … then you don’t have a country, a rule of law at all.”
He said the case should have been transferred to the commercial division, but the judge refused to transfer it since “he’s a rogue, partisan hack.”
He said New York probably has the most corrupt judges per capita in New York, followed by Washington, D.C.
Barnes said it’s because “the judges are in on it.”
The lawyer said the fraud statute allows “the state of New York to steal people’s businesses whenever they feel like it.” He said it was “utterly preposterous” that the “world’s most sophisticated banks” would have lent money without knowing the worth of the Trump brand. He said that “they would have had their own independent appraisers.”
Barnes said part of the problem is “Republican judges” have covered up for “corrupt prosecutors.”
He said, “The left today in power thinks like the Soviets, old-school communists. … Don’t think 1960s, think 1930s. … It’s New York pretending they’re North Korea.”
He added, “What the judge is trying to hide, is that the banks came in with the exact same valuation as Trump did.”
Addressing the judge’s premature ruling, he said, “It’s a denial of right to trial by jury.”
Barnes explained that the property value assessed by the government is not related to the market value. He said prosecutors used the low-end real estate tax appraisal which has little to do with market value. Barnes said the judge “lies by omission.” He added, “Judges lie every single day in America. Probably no one lies more than judges do to get the conclusion they want to.”
Barnes and Viva Frei discussed how they looked at comparable nearby real estate properties, which were far higher even though they weren’t located on the waterfront with the Trump name brand. Barnes said he believed the actual value of Mar-a-Lago “should be half a billion easily.” That is the estimate Trump provided, which Barnes said he thinks is low.
Legal scholar Alan Dershowitz said Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James shouldn’t be leading a case against Trump due to her campaign promises to go after him. “You can’t have prosecutors even civilly prosecuting a defendant if they made a campaign promise that they have to fulfill. They are not neutral and objective,” he said.
He added, “Why can’t the biggest banks sue him and take care of themselves … this doesn’t pass the test of a legitimate civil complaint, and I think they should challenge this vigorously.”
The trial began on Monday. Trump did not request a jury trial, which a legal expert told The Arizona Sun Times was because his legal team expects the judge to taint the jury instructions so they can only come to one conclusion. Without the cover of a jury’s decision, the expert said, it will be easier for an appeals court to pinpoint the flaws in the trial coming from the judge.
– – –
Rachel Alexander is a reporter at TheArizona Sun Times and The Star News
“The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky,Crime and Punishment
Miss Constitution is puzzled at the initial comments regarding removal of the Speaker of the House by all Democrats and a handful of Republicans. The immediate effect of this is that the line of succession to the Presidency is changed from the Speaker of the House, as third in line to the Presidency, to the Pro Tempore of the Senate – Patty Murray – and then the Secretary of State – Anthony Blinken. It is Constitutionally important, then, that a Speaker be selected as quickly as possible.
The initial universal comments bordered on hysterical – Republicans will be a laughing stock – how will this look to the public? One former Senator called the vote the equivalent of the French Revolution and the lobbing off of heads. Only a narcissist could call for a vote on the continuance of the Speaker of the House; only someone so loathsome that he should be expelled cried a former Speaker; only Republicans could create defeat out of the mouth of victory explained an ecstatic liberal commentator.
Goodness. What happened?
None of us can know the whole story, but it appears that the narrow majority held by Republicans in the House of Representatives after the 2022 election, resulted in a difficult vote for a new Speaker of the House. The difficulty arises because the Republican Party has three distinct sets of voters and hence Representatives – roughly the conservatives, the moderates, and the liberals. This is not true for the Democrat Party, they have diversity by ethnicity but not by policy or ideology. The Democrat Party votes as a monolith and does not tolerate dissent. One might ask Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., about diversity of opinion in the Democrat Party.
Republicans, in the last few cycles where a Republican Speaker presided over the House of Representatives, have generally selected a Speaker from the liberal wing of the Party. One of the myths that has floated around Congress for some time and believed in deeply by some Republicans is the myth of bipartisanship. Since the Democrat Party is now a single ideology– a liberal Republican Speaker was thought to be able to work with Democrats on important matters. The problem with this lovely thought is that while Republicans will gladly work with Democrats, Democrats will never work with Republicans on crucial issues.
So, after fifteen rounds of votes a liberal Republican, Kevin McCarthy, was selected in January of 2023, with certain conditions attached for support by the conservative and moderate wings of the Party. Among these conditions:
Regular order in the House of Representatives, meaning committee assignments for proposed Bills, public hearings on proposed Bills, amendments debated on proposed Bills, and timely votes.
One-issue Bills in the House of Representatives and time to read them, debate them, hold hearings on them, add amendments to them, and vote for them. In other words, no Omnibus bills of 4,000 pages with members of the House given two hours to read.
Management of time in the House of Representatives so that the required 12 Appropriations Bills that must be proposed, sent to committee, heard by the public, amended, and voted on, be able to be completed by the end of the fiscal year that is September 30.
To assure that these promises were kept, Kevin McCarthy agreed to being subject to any member of the House requesting he vacate the Speakership by a majority vote. September 30 has come and gone. The 12 Appropriations Bills have not been worked; the House had to pass a Continuing Resolution to keep the government funded that included monies not debated and amended. Regular order has not been restored and a six-week time frame is all that is allowed until the next financial crisis that will no doubt be “fixed” by another Omnibus Bill no one will be able to decipher before the mandatory vote.
This same dysfunctional process occurs every year just prior to Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Hannakah.
Therefore, a request to vacate was proposed by House member Matt Gaetz and a vote was taken. A new Speaker will be chosen within a week. The hard lesson learned by Kevin McCarthy, and hopefully the American people, is not that Matt Gaetz is an enemy of the Republican Party and a selfish human being, it is that Kevin McCarthy thought his bipartisan work with Democrats would inspire some of them to vote to retain him as Speaker. He was assured of this by former Speaker Pelosi. He learned that this type of bipartisanship is a myth. Had McCarthy simply kept his promises of regular order and open debate in the House of Representatives, he would still be Speaker.
When did bipartisanship become a myth?
To some extent the notion of closely working with the other Party in a two-Party system has always been a myth. Where it has occasionally worked it is lauded as noble. Jefferson and Hamilton hated each other as representatives of totally opposite views of proper governance. The Civil War pitted members of Congress against each other with such venom that violence broke out. Woodrow Wilson refused to take any Republicans to the Paris Peace Convention after WWI, so they refused to back his League of Nations. Congresspersons of both Parties used to live in Washington, DC and socialize together; many were great friends. This is not true today.
Where does the country go from here?
The Republican Party should not fear the optics. Their interest in a legislative process that is open, transparent, and fiscally sound is their Brand. That the Party consists of three factions regarding policy is not a negative if it is understood that the spirit of bipartisanship must reside within the Party. Hopefully, the new Speaker of the House will be efficient, collegial, and accountable to the voting public that has asked the Republican Party to do what it can through the House of Representatives to get the nation back on track. If it fails, and continues to fail in this regard, the Republican Party will go the way of the Whigs, who actually threw their President, John Tyler, out of the Party while he was still President.
Part of the Rule of Law that all Americans agree to honor is that bundle called Unwritten Law. We are required to be courteous and kindly, and we are required to be courteous and kindly even in politics. The comments Miss Constitution is hearing from commentators of all political stripes is appalling. Their interviews of those Republicans who voted to oust the Speaker for not honoring his pledges to them should be an attempt to understand their thinking. Otherwise, they are actually demanding that the Republic Party be a mirror of the Democrat Party – the first symptom of impotence.
Witness in Disbarment Trial of Trump’s Former Attorney John Eastman Found ‘Vote Laundering’ of 280,000 to 300,000 Votes in Pennsylvania’s 2020 Election
The sixth week of the disbarment trial of Donald Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar, John Eastman, wrapped up Friday with testimony by two witnesses from Eastman’s team. Attorney Kurt Olsen, who is representing Kari Lake in her election challenge, testified first. Next, Ray Blehar, a retired Department of Defense analyst, testified, discussing his findings that 280,000 to 300,000 votes in Pennsylvania were “vote laundered” through the electronic tabulating machines.
Olsen began his testimony by explaining why he became involved in an election lawsuit over the 2020 election. He said, “I believed that something was not right.”
He listed what concerned him: video clips of poll workers not allowed to watch tabulation, the controversy in Michigan’s Antrim County, results that didn’t make sense, such as the stopping of counting ballots overnight in key counties, and “clear violations of law.”
Earlier in the trial, former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman testified that the machines in Antrim County flipped the vote from Trump to Joe Biden, but it was treated as a mistake. Gableman said it could not be determined whether it was intentional since the log files were deleted.
Along with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Olsen filed a Motion for Leave to File a Bill of Complaint with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking to stop Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin from certifying their 2020 election results due to multiple violations of state law. He worked with prominent attorneys and experts, including attorneys Jay Sekulow, Ken Starr, Larry Joseph, and economist Charles Cicchetti. Olsen said he found Cicchetti’s work “reliable and accurate.”
Olsen said the complaint addressed actions by non-legislative officials who violated state laws, often citing COVID-19 as an excuse. These included changing signature verification procedures, changing the cut-off date for ballots to be accepted, removing voter ID requirements, changing the procedures to open ballots by mail, and using unmanned drop boxes. He said the illegal actions violated the Constitution’s Electors Clause.
Olsen said they relied on the Ryan Report, a letter sent by former Pennsylvania State Representative Francis Ryan and 14 other legislators to Representative Scott Perry (R-PA-10) on December 15, 2020, which expressed concerns about irregularities in Pennsylvania’s 2020 election. The report found 9,005 ballots mailed with no mailed date, 58,221 ballots returned on or before the mailed date, and 51,200 ballots returned one day after the mailed date.
Ultimately, Olsen said the Supreme Court split 4-4 on whether to accept an expedited review of the case (Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had just died), rejecting it, which he said meant half of the justices believed the complaint was likely to succeed on the merits. California Bar Disciplinary Judge Yvette Roland, who contributed to Democrats while on the bench, said it was irrelevant and instructed Eastman’s attorney to move to another topic.
Next, Olsen discussed a consent decree in Georgia signed before the 2020 election that he believed was illegal. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger signed it with Democratic Party committees regarding signature verification, which changed the law. It added in a requirement of two additional people to review signatures, and only if both of them agreed they didn’t match would the signature be rejected. Olsen said this was both a statutory and constitutional violation.
He said Cicchetti analyzed the rejection rate due to this change, comparing it to 2016, when it was around 6 percent. In 2020, when the number of mail-in ballots more than doubled, or was maybe even higher, Olsen said, the rejection rate went down 17 times the rate of 2016, to around one-tenth of 1 percent.
Eastman’s attorney, Randy Miller, asked Olsen to review the difference between voter fraud and illegality in elections. Olsen said even if it’s merely illegal behavior — not proving the intent of voter fraud — the votes affected cannot be counted. He said that includes votes where the signatures were not properly verified. He also pointed out that “irregularity” has the same meaning as illegal in elections.
Blehar took the stand about halfway through the day. He discussed his study, which concluded that vote tabulation anomalies in Pennsylvania were “not a matter of chance and are almost certainly the result of systematic vote shifting” of write-In and minor party votes cast through ballot adjudication. After reading on a conservative site, he decided to conduct the study that 220,000 votes were switched statewide from Trump to Biden, so he downloaded the data on votes cast and compared it to exit polling.
He said the day after the 2020 election, he determined by observing polling data and counting outstanding mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania that it was very unlikely Biden could win the election in the state at that point.
Roland objected to much of his testimony and did not allow reports he had co-authored into evidence, usually because he hadn’t been designated an expert; they weren’t relevant or lacked foundation. She refused to designate him as an expert, stating that Eastman’s team should have requested that status for him 50 days before trial, citing a rule of the disciplinary court. However, judges frequently waive those types of rules.
One of those reports was the vote spike report, which Roland objected to the day before when physicist and auditor John Droz, who launched and oversaw the report, was testifying. Roland said since Droz didn’t examine the data personally, it could not be admitted, and he was not permitted to talk about it. Blehar was one of three other statistical PhDs who went over the data personally, but she still refused to admit it into evidence.
Next, Miller asked Blehar about a critique he and the other statistical PhDs worked on refuting the MITRE Report. MITRE put together a report on the 2020 election anomalies, stating there were no serious problems. Blehar said in Michigan, the MITRE team identified the wrong voting anomaly, one that didn’t exist; it was merely a typo made by an election clerk. Blehar’s team, on the other hand, investigated the actual vote spike. He said MITRE’s examination of Anterim County relied on “media fact checks” rather than actual analysis of the voter data. He said it could not have been a data glitch as the media said; it was a change that affected ballots which was done either knowingly or unknowingly.
Miller asked Blehar about an affidavit he prepared to be used in litigation. In it, Blehar referred to “vote laundering,” where he observed votes being shifted back and forth on election night. His affidavit stated, “Preliminary analysis found many instances of ‘Third Party’ vote laundering.”
In other words, votes were moved from Trump or Biden to the ‘Third Party’ then allocated to either Trump or Biden in a later transaction.”
He added that the votes may have been moved to “an adjudication folder for later reassignment,” not to an actual third-party candidate. He said the swap was “likely from human intervention.”
Blehar summarized, “My analysis of the data relating to Pennsylvania’s 2020 general election concludes that there were numerous anomalies and/or inconsistencies in the results and that an estimated 280,000 – 300,000 Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, and Green Party electors (voters) were disenfranchised because their votes were manipulated (i.e., changed) by the election system software, election administrators, and/or by introduction of other disruptive software (i.e., malware) or a combination of the three.”
The trial, which is live-streamed, continues most of next week and the following week unless interrupted by the Georgia prosecution of Eastman. Next week, it begins at 10 a.m. PST on Tuesday.
The Supreme Court has been critical in deciding many issues facing the United States. Recently, it ruled against states that passed restrictive gun control laws. The court also ended Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, calling it unconstitutional.
Because of former President Donald Trump, the court enjoys a strong conservative majority. Democrats have called for expanding the court, to add more liberal justices. It appears liberals fear decisions future decisions that could undermine their agenda.
Just last week, the court decided to take up a case coming out of Texas and Florida. The conservative legislatures in both states passed laws that strike at a major issue affecting all Americans. And, if Justice Thomas has his way, this case could change social media forever.
From Fox News: On Sept. 29, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it will rule on state laws enacted by Florida and Texas that prohibit tech giants from canceling users based on their political views. Expect Thomas to lead a majority of the justices to conclude that internet censorship is inconsistent with democracy and must be stopped…
The court will decide who is protected by the First Amendment — the tech companies that claim they’re like newspapers, or the millions of social media users. The smart money is on Thomas persuading a majority of the justices that democracy requires an uncensored internet.
The Supreme Court agreed to rule on laws from Texas and Florida that address social media censorship. The issue was taken to the highest court after lower courts issued conflicting decisions on these laws.
Both states banned social networks from censoring content of users. State lawmakers claimed social networks are violating the First Amendment rights of users, when they take down content the companies appear to disagree with.
In recent years, conservatives have accused social networks, as well as search engines like Google, of blocking content that conflicts with leftist political views. Social networks have even banned users, including former President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Google has been accused of “burying” search results to hide information from users.
Social media companies have reason to be worried. In 2021, Justice Clarence Thomas compared online companies to phone companies, utilities, and public accommodations. These companies are not allowed to deny service to someone, based on their speech.
A cellphone service cannot deny you access, because of your political views. Nor can an airplane deny you a plane ticket, because of whom you vote for. Thomas appears to believe the same standard should be applied to social networks, which are used by billions of people around the world.
How the court rules could shake up social media forever. If it rules to ban censorship by social networks, Americans will be free to express their views without fear of being banned. Liberal-run companies will no longer be able to suppress pro-conservative views.
It could change online news as well as the fate of many elections.
Key Takeaways:
The Supreme Court will soon rule on social media censorship.
The court agreed to take up lawsuits over laws from Texas and Florida.
This case could mean the end of social media censorship for good.
Chicago homeowners might be blaming the vacancy-plagued downtown office market for their next big jump in property taxes.
As the value of downtown office buildings continues to plunge, homeowners may bear a larger share of the tax burden, Crain’s reported, citing a study by the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation and the Center for Municipal Finance at the University of Chicago.
If the tax value of downtown office buildings drops by 20 percent, which some experts believe is a conservative estimate, the average Chicago home’s property tax bill could rise from $5,244 to $5,424. In the event of a 40 percent decline, homeowners could see a nearly 10 percent increase, with the average residential bill reaching $5,723, assuming taxing authorities maintain their current levy rates.
This situation presents a challenge for Mayor Brandon Johnson, who aims to freeze the city’s annual property tax levy while simultaneously proposing an increase in real estate transfer taxes for all property sales of $1 million or more, which could further impact declining property values.
About half of downtown office towers are in financial trouble, leading to mortgage defaults, foreclosures and other distress-related symptoms, according to Farzin Parang, executive director of the Building Owners and Managers Association of Chicago. Some downtown property values have fallen by as much as 80 percent, Parang told the outlet.
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The study highlights the interconnectedness of Chicago’s property tax system. When owners in one real estate sector pay less in taxes due to reduced property value, owners in another sector may have to cover the difference unless their values have also decreased.
The outcome will largely depend on how tax assessment officials respond to downtown’s soaring vacancy rate, which currently sits at a record-high of more than 25 percent. Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi has previously raised downtown valuations, and thus the tax costs for landlords and their tenants, but the Board of Review has often reversed or limited the severity of these increases.
All of Chicago is scheduled for a reassessment in 2024, and tax bills due in 2025 will be adjusted based on new valuations. However, individual building owners can request new valuations annually, potentially putting Kaegi in a challenging political situation as commercial properties depreciate and shift more responsibility for funding governments to homeowners.
