Going to Extremes as the Downturn Wears On and On and On…….

Republicans are slated to win a bunch of seats. In the Senate, PA, DE, and CO look bad, for example. That means irresponsible fiscal austerity plus a risk of deflation, another dip in recession, and a lot more pain.

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p>After all, fiscal austerity is working so well in Ireland!

in MA, CA and other locations show we still have along way to go before we’re really cutting “to the bone”?

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Bell, California, a 2.5-square-mile city just outside Los Angeles

City Manager – $800,000
chief administrative officer – $787,637
his assistant -$376,288
Police chief -$457,000

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– Mass Probation Department Excesses (Going from 2 officers to 11 in Belchertown… how much would going back to 2 Probation officers save the state?)

– DeLeo was instrumental in getting much of the $6 million for the three-month pilot project, and was fairly proud of the hometown bacon when he attended a press conference at the Winthrop Town Pier Tuesday. But there was no way he was joining US Representative Edward J. Markey and other dignitaries on a ceremonial cruise to Rowe’s Wharf. (do we need to spend $6 million on this NOW?)

– Gov Patrick approves a 10-year master plan for at least $750 million in new construction and renovation projects. On June 14, the University of Massachusetts Building Authority had voted to proceed under a Project Labor Agreement (PLA), meaning that only workers who pay dues to a union will be hired for one of the largest building projects now in the offing. Since roughly 80 percent of the construction workforce in Massachusetts is open-shop (non-union), the PLA amounts to naked political favoritism for organized labor — and a raw deal for everyone else. (Using non-union workers would employ 12-15% more workers and reduce the unemployed)

When Suffolk University’s Beacon Hill Institute analyzed the costs of building126 Boston-area schools, it found that PLAs inflated the winning bids for construction projects by almost 14 percent, and added an extra 12 percent to the actual construction costs. When it comes to public construction, PLAs all but guarantee that taxpayers will be overcharged.

As The Wall Street Journal observed wryly in April: “Boston’s Big Dig, Seattle’s Safeco Field, Los Angeles’s Eastside Reservoir project, the San Francisco airport, Detroit’s Comerica Park — all were built under PLAs marked by embarrassing cost overruns.”

According to a statewide Suffolk University-7 News survey taken in March, Massachusetts residents have no use for PLAs either. Asked whether private contractors working on public projects should be compelled to hire exclusively through union hiring halls, 69 percent said No. Opposition to excluding non-union laborers from work that their taxes help fund was expressed by clear majorities of both men (77 percent) and women (61 percent); of Democrats (52 percent), Republicans (88 percent), and independents (76 percent); of whites (69 percent) and minorities (67 percent). The same was true when respondents were sorted by age or geography — strong majorities were against union-only mandates. Even among union households, 59 percent were opposed.

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p>The gutless manipulative practice of cutting programs so we feel the pain while we continue to waste money at extravagant rates continues. This $26 Billion being passed next week is another colossal waste of borrowed money. Since we don’t have the political will to make cuts where needed, our only hope is dried up funding… and now the Dems are stopping even that from happening. The real shame is they are simply delaying the inevitable by a year.

Rate charts for the Income Tax going back to the age of greatness for this country

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p>When the USA was #1 in infrastructure, #1 in college graduates, #1 in technical innovation, and #1 in gross national product the maximum income tax rate was 90% and the top 5% paid at least 70%.

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p>That was how the USA could afford to build the interstates, build the land grant college system, and fight wars without mortgaging their children.

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p>There used to be a culture of honor where those who had more contributed more.

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p>Now we have a culture of greed, and “What is mine is mine” and who gives a !!#$$%!! about the country, the roads, the public higher education system, etc.

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p>Thank you Ronald Reagan for gutting the honor and future of the USA with voo-doo economics based on greed and dismantling long term planning and honest revenue structures and regulation.

In today’s NYT

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How did we get to this point? It’s the logical consequence of three decades of antigovernment rhetoric, rhetoric that has convinced many voters that a dollar collected in taxes is always a dollar wasted, that the public sector can’t do anything right.

The antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud – to checks sent to welfare queens driving Cadillacs, to vast armies of bureaucrats uselessly pushing paper around. But those were myths, of course; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed. And now that the campaign has reached fruition, we’re seeing what was actually in the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need, services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole.

So the end result of the long campaign against government is that we’ve taken a disastrously wrong turn. America is now on the unlit, unpaved road to nowhere.  

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p>PS to the editors :Even for the strong of heart how annoying to get to the bottom of this comment to press quote or preview to have to look at W’s furrowed brow.