The transportation industry sucks… That is a scabby way to begin a column, but after discovering that a deadbeat logistics company residing in Elwood, Illinois has used up taxpaying resources; leaving this small community with a $163 million debt to repay, has this professional driver concerned about America’s future. CenterPoint International Center-Joliet has become the largest master-planed inland port in North America thus, created 3800 jobs.
Most of the people employed at CIT-Joliet earn starvation wages, as fat-cat developers zip around in a $750,000 Turbine Helicopter, just to get a birds-eye view of their 6500 sq foot immense transportation infrastructure. Adjacent to Interstate 55 & Interstate 80, CIT-Joliet is in cahoots with BNSF and Union Pacific Railroad as an Intermodal Terminal.
Truck drivers with rail containers, line up for miles to enter this huge transportation hub and others deliver freight to CIT’s warehouse. “The work is tiring and I kept getting sick,” explained 26-year old dock worker, Holly Kent-Payne during her interview with the Chicago Tribune.
Holly is not the only one who is sick. In fact, this TIF district of Elwood is also sick with financial worries and used future tax money to reimburse developers for some expenses. Furthermore, CIT-Joliet has 88 million dollars in TIF notes, fundamentally IOU vouchers at a 10 percent interest rate for the next 20 years.
This is a risky move to investors and now the Village of Elwood has decided to take legal recourse with these greed-crazed bastards for unpaid promises.
Now, businesses like this will leave America in worst shape than it was thirty years ago. Our interstate system slowly rots with decay, our law enforcement has been corrupted and wages will soon be based on piecework, just like it was in the 19th Century.
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