The Corruption, Waste and Mismanagement Tax.

Welcome to the Kingdom of Chicago - Ruled by the benevolent Pharaoh Daley II, son of Pharaoh Daley I. He and his anointed High Priest Aldermen of the Council have deemed the unclean citizenry to offer further coin and toil to fulfill the needs of the Gods and the Great Unbalanced Checkbook.

A small list of 'misplaced funds' by the The Chicago Sun (Ra) Times:

SCANDALS: YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WASTE

• HIRED TRUCKS -- In 2004, the Chicago Sun-Times blew the lid off this $40-million-a-year scandal, which called for the city to lease hundreds of dump trucks, whose owners often bribed city officials to get work on city job sites. The program had been around for decades, but was abolished in 2005. City employees now drive dump trucks leased from one company -- not the 165 companies that cashed in on Hired Truck.

• RIGGED HIRING FUND -- More than 1,400 people have staked claims to the $12 million fund created to compensate victims of the city's rigged hiring system. The fund was created to settle the long-running Shakman case. Daley's former patronage chief was convicted last year of rigging city hiring to benefit the Hispanic Democratic Organization and other pro-Daley armies of political workers.

• FEDERAL HIRING MONITOR -- Well over $2 million in legal fees -- and counting -- have been paid to federal hiring monitor Noelle Brennan and her staff. Brennan was appointed in 2005 to oversee city hiring by a federal judge livid with the city for making a mockery of the decree that was supposed to end political hiring and firing, but never did. Hundreds of thousands of additional legal fees were spent on attorneys who represented Daley, the City Council and the Black Caucus in the Shakman case.

• MORE LEGAL FEES -- Chicago taxpayers coughed up $251,314 in legal fees in 2006 alone to represent non-targeted city employees drawn into federal investigations swirling around City Hall. And that's not counting dozens of other city employees represented by the city's Law Department. Tens of thousands more were paid to Vince Connelly, the former federal prosecutor hired to quarterback the city's response to the federal investigation.

• JON BURGE -- More than $10 million in legal fees have already been spent to defend the former Area 2 commander and his cohorts against charges they tortured criminal suspects for decades while police brass looked the other way. The city is on the brink of a settlement with three men allegedly coerced into murder confessions. The settlement is expected to duplicate or exceed the $14.8 million tentative deal reached last fall. Two other torture victims are still attempting to negotiate with the city.

• 50/50 SIDEWALKS -- A Sun-Times investigation found that the city overcharged 60 percent of taxpayers, who ended up paying more than half the cost of their new sidewalks. Senior citizens were overcharged the most. The program has since been renamed the "Shared Cost Sidewalk Program."

• WORKERS COMPENSATION -- One of every five patronage workers on the secret clout list kept by the mayor's former patronage chief filed at least one worker's compensation claim against the city, a Sun-Times analysis found. That incredibly high injury rate would make patronage work one of the most dangerous jobs in America. Chicago taxpayers pay those claims.

• MINORITY BUSINESS FRAUD -- The parade of white-owned minority fronts that have cashed in on this program is led by the Duff family. But it also includes a host of other political insiders, including Tony Rezko, Gov. Blagojevich's now-indicted former fund-raiser, and the sister of Hispanic Democratic Organization chieftain Victor Reyes.

• STOLEN ASPHALT -- Federal officials charged in 2005 that city employees had been using Hired Trucks to steal asphalt from city paving jobs since at least 1999. Those thefts cost taxpayers about $100,000. But the loss was likely greater. The Sun-Times found that the city used an extra 16,000 tons of asphalt -- about 840 truckloads -- during the 2004 construction season. Many of the extra tons came from jobs run by city foremen who went to prison for stealing asphalt.

• VACANT LOT CLEANING -- The city spent more than $3.5 million in 2004 to have Streets and Sanitation crews use Hired Trucks to clean privately owned vacant lots. Some were owned by politically connected people, including former Illinois Gaming Board Chairman Elzie Higginbottom, the mayor's chief fund-raiser in the black community.

• TOWING PROGRAM -- Shortly after taking office, Daley turned towing over to EAR, a company whose owners have close ties to Jeremiah Joyce, one of the mayor's closest friends in politics. Three years ago, the Sun-Times exposed how the city sells about 70,000 cars each year to EAR for no more than the going scrap-metal price, regardless of the vehicle's age or condition. Owners get nothing for the car, even though they're still on the hook to the city for fines and towing fees. The towing company resold the cars through private auctions held at city auto pounds and kept the proceeds. The city ended up paying more than $100,000 to a dozen people whose cars were towed and wrongly sold for scrap before owners could rescue them from the pound.

• SOS SCANDAL -- Legal fees and settlements tied to this burgeoning police scandal could drag on for years and mirror Burge totals. Seven members of the Chicago Police Department's newly disbanded Special Operations Section stand accused of home invasions, kidnappings and robberies. Their alleged ringleader has been charged with trying to hire someone to kill a former SOS officer who was serving as a government witness.

• BUILDING DEPARTMENT BRIBES -- Nearly a dozen city building inspectors have been accused of accepting bribes to ignore building code violations, as part of an ongoing joint investigation by the inspector general and the federal government. It's the same department that hired the teenaged sons of Carpenters Union officials to serve as city building inspectors in 2004.

Tell you what, I'll gladly pay and STFU if you'd just try to even HIDE this stuff from me. Mostly I feel like a goddamned moran for purchasing a house in Chicago - in Cook County.

People constantly ask me if I'm a Republican or a Democrat - uh, can I have neither, please? How about something new?