source: London Permaculture via Flickr (cc)

This post is about credit unions, and it seems to be turning into a rant.  Rather than read it, I suggest you go here to see some entertaining short videos that the credit union folks have put together.  My experience has been a bit different.

Occupy Wall Street are good folks, I’m sure. I even tried to display their banner on this blog, but for some reason the plugin doesn’t work here. Anyhow, they suggest I get away from the big banksters and open an account at a credit union.

I actually take advantage of the big banksters in a couple of ways, but that’s not for this post. Most of my banking is at a bank which is less big, folks there are nice, I would be inclined to stay. But when they hit me for an unjustified (tho legal) $30 charge, it was time to switch.

Now, you can’t just walk into any old credit union. You have to have a connection of some sort. You live or work in a certain neighborhood, work for a certain employer, are a member of a certain organization. So I found a credit union that welcomed persons living or working in any of eleven counties, one additional municipality, or working for some specific employers or even working in particular buildings. And their relatives. And members of certain organizations including the Rockford Lithuanian Club.  They claim almost 25,000 members and nearly $300 million in assets. Not big for a bank, but should be big enough to do the job. Add a couple of good reviews (no bad ones) on Yelp, and I am ready to make the switch.

You can’t quite open an account on-line (maybe if you’re a lobbyist or terrorist you could, but I couldn’t), so I went to their site, filled out some forms, signed and mailed.

Interesting fact: They ask you to sign a proxy, meaning that their existing Directors can re-elect themselves or choose their successors, you will have nothing to say about it.  You aren’t required to sign this, but certainly they facilitate it.

About three weeks after I mailed the form I had heard nothing, so I contacted them. A very nice lady called back, “Sure, you have an account, we just must have not got around to telling you about it. Let me send you our welcome package, some checks, etc.”

Six days later, here comes the welcome package. Postage due, $1.61. Oh well. It tells how to access my account on line. Of course there’s no money in it yet. Next day, here come the checks and deposit slips, so I send in a deposit. Now, it’s a couple days later, I want to try my on-line account to see whether there’s money in it.
Oops. “Wrong Pin.” Seems the pin they sent me does not work. Or maybe the site does not work. I dunno. So the next day I phoned the very nice lady, who is becoming a bit less nice, but somehow got the account working.

And here it gets interesting again, something I’ve never seen before.  You log on with your account number and a pin, then you get to a second screen where you enter your password.  So far, normal.  But this screen includes an on-screen keyboard.  You must use it to enter your password.  You cannot enter it directly, and you cannot paste it from LastPass.  And it is not case-sensitive.  Thus, it frustrates keyloggers but encourages short simple passwords. I wonder how easily it could be hacked?

Well, I shall ask the nice lady about this, since I need to ask her to interpret the contradictory terms on their various fee and feature schedules. And by the way, the link supposed to lead to their annual report is broken.

So much for getting this switch done in time for the new year.

image credit: Rosalyn Davis via Flickr (cc)

David Bernstein and Noah Isackson have a pretty good article in Chicago Magazine, Gangs and Politicians in Chicago: An Unholy Alliance. Focusing mainly on Alderman but also including State and Federal legislators, they assert that “gangs” provide the money, votes, and workers that enable officials to attain and retain their office.  In exchange, the governments these legislators control provide funds and favors.

Isackson and Bernstein stop short of suggesting how to repair this problem, but reading thru the article it’s clear that the main way these “gangs” prosper is thru unauthorized distribution of drugs.  And one of the main favors aldermen provide is assistance in avoiding “law enforcement” efforts to arrest them. End the drug prohibition, most of the “gangs’” income will end, and candidates will no longer get “gang” money.  They’ll have to rely on crooked lawyers, lobbyists, etc.

Some of the drug money, of course, has gone into real estate, with “gang” members able to get favors such as rezoning and inspection waivers. A land value tax, by constraining real estate speculation, would be of assistance here.

Image of 3710 N. Kenmore from Cook County Assessor

Gary Lucido writes of a small parcel at 3710 N. Kenmore, offered at $9.9 million ($4950/sq ft) after failing to sell when offered at lower prices. While the price seems outrageous, the property is very close to Wrigley Field and could be used for a billboard or rooftop viewing platform. We know that the former use has commanded $350,000/year on a nearby building, which seems to justify a multi-million-dollar asking price.

So we have a parcel worth, let us say, five million dollars.  What are the taxes? Using data from the Illinois Department of Revenue, our friends at the Civic Federation publish estimates of the effective tax rate for various kinds and locations of property.  For residential parcels in Chicago, they estimate that the real estate taxes at 1.45% of actual market value. So on that basis, a parcel worth $5 million would pay $72,500/year.

But the Assessor doesn’t think this parcel is worth $5 million.  His estimate is $569,580.  (That is, the assessed value, which is supposed to be 10% of market value. is $56,958.)

Looks to me like this parcel is underassessed by something like 90%.  Even if we pretend it’s worth just $569,580, tax at 1.45% should be $8259/year.  Which is  $64,241/year less than the  “fair share” I estimate above.

So how much does the property actually pay? The Realtor’s listing says $147.  Surely this is a typo, no residential property in Chicago can pay so little?  Actually, the County Treasurer confirms it (I can’t seem to link to the actual record, but go here and search for parcel 14-20-218-047-0000).  This parcel receives three different kinds of exemptions: Homeowners, Senior Citizen, and Senior Freeze.  Apparently the net result is a tax bill of $147/year, on a multi-million dollar property which would “normally” pay about $72,500/year toward the costs of running the schools, parks, and various city services. Need we wonder why our local governments are in financial difficulty?

There are several additional points to be raised here.  First, assessment geeks may note that I have conflated data from several different years.  Of course that’s true, because taxes are always based on the value as of the start of the prior calendar year, and calculation assessment/sales ratios cause further delays. I also have not mentioned the multiplier, a factor which might help explain the details of this case but does not alter the basic fact that the property is severely underassessed.  Nor have I mentioned the owner of the property, beneficiary of this governmental failure.  The name of the apparent owner is on the Treasurer’s record, and he seems to have a Facebook page.

Finally, let’s give credit where credit is due.  Not only to Gary Lucido who might not realize the significance of the story he broke, but importantly to the open information policies of the Cook County Assessor and Treasurer.  Pretty much all assessment and real estate tax data is public record.  The income tax involves far worse outrages, but we rarely can see them since individual cases are confidential, and specifics have to be inferred from other sources (as for instance in this case.)

Postscript, a few hours later:

I was thinking about how the Assessor could come up with such a low value for this property.  Basically, what’s a very small residence on a tiny lot worth in the Wrigleyville neighborhood?  Very possibly the answer is $569,580. This particular parcel is worth many times that because of its precise location, but the Assessor does not consider that.  And if I owned the property, I would appeal any higher assessment.  Evidently the assessment rules need to be changed, so that the potential use of the property is considered. One does wonder how many dollars stay in speculators’ pockets because of this failure.

Chicago is no longer a media center, but still important enough to have Occupy action. I stopped by Jackson/LaSalle this afternoon, there were a few hundred people with signs and a good attitude.

Some occupiers

More occupiers

Occupiers

I saw no "media" of the type that has satellite trucks and excessively attractive newsreaders, but Distract Chicago was there.

Well-put

The scheduled teach-instarted nearly on time, with St. Xavier Professor Aisha

Teach-In

Karim speaking about Marx’s Communist Manifesto.  Unfortunately, the acoustic conditions and the speaker’s accent prevented me from a full understanding of her case.

It looks from the previews like WordPress might be doing some things to my images, but I’ll wait to see the actual post.

The Census Bureau is another source of  interstate migration data.  Those reports are simple population numbers with no income data attached, altho I believe the original source data includes income. The Tax Foundation’s data of course can’t recognize people who do not file federal income tax returns.

• If you believe transit’s main problem is that it doesn’t have enough money to spend, you can support the (newly-announced) Riders for Better Transit. It seems that you can’t exactly become a member; you can only click a box to show your support, and/or join the parent organization, Active Transportation Alliance.
• If you believe that transit workers are good, kind, noble, and generous, but management is foolish, and, yeah, more money is probably needed too, you can join Citizens Taking Action.  The site gives no indication about how one could join, but does announce, and by implication invite one to, their next meeting.
• If you think transit riders’ main problem is that transit investments and operations are poorly planned and poorly managed, a lot of money is wasted, and, if any more money is needed, it should come from a tax on land value, because land value reflects (among other things) the quality of public transportation, then you’re invited to support The Transit Riders’ Authority. Find where  it says “join TRA! Here’s a membership application:”  There is no membership application, but a PO Box, phone number and email address are given; perhaps they work.

Not that CTA conducted any surveys or hearings prior to deciding on this seating configuration.  For comparison, consider BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit serving north-central California. Their seats are 22″ wide.  Riders have indicated a willingness to cut that down to 20″, but no further. How does BART know this?

Because they conducted a survey. They took some seats around and asked folks what they thought. They also provide comparisons to seats in other cities, as indicated on this pdf.

Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that the BART board is elected, not appointed.

Have CTA apologists anything to say here?

Now we have one insisting that the government needs to break the Google monopoly and vigorously enforce “privacy” laws against Google. The mp3 of this interview with Scott Cleland, author of Search and Destroy: Why You Can’t Trust Google Inc is here.

Cleland seems to want government to protect us from the threat that Google is.  I agree that Google can be a threat, as they really do want to organize all the information about all of us, and seem to be pretty good at it. But I think the real threat will happen when Google and Government merge.  Until then, we are probably best advised to use the good cheap or free alternatives to Google’s services, and to work without signing in to Google to the extent possible.

My own experience with Google Adsense, btw, occurred when trying to buy some traffic to the Henry George School web site.  People concerned about “poverty” might be interested in us, so I tried that keyword.  The problem was that most of the news articles Google coded as “poverty” were about crime and criminals.  So I excluded some words, I think it was “gun”, “police,” and a couple others.  Adsense failed to recognize these exclusions.  On one of the google discussion groups I found other people who have experienced similar problems.  Eventually, Google said something to the effect of “if you want to keep advertising with us you’ll have to pay more money per hit.”  I guess we would have had to pay enough to justify having a Google Human get involved, and that was too expensive, so the project was put aside.  The dollar cost was modest but the benefit was more modest.

But our state is a leader in economic development scandals, and continues to advance.  Now an employer can just keep the tax money withheld from employees’ paychecks.  Even if in 2003 it closed a plant which had received $36 million in incentives when built.  Even tho normal employers are personally liable for withholding taxes which they are supposed to have collected and remitted to the State.

I propose taking this one step further, allowing all employers to keep all the money which they are supposed to have withheld, on condition that they return the money to their employees.  Simple, no administrating or auditing required. Who knows whether Motorola will be audited anyway?  Now that would be economic development.