Posted on 08/09/2010 2:53:07 PM PDT by blam
Why Paul Krugman Is Totally Wrong About Cities Having Blackouts
Kid Dynamite
Aug. 9, 2010, 5:16 PM
I have railed recently against bailouts of our individual states and cities, trying to explain the concept of fiscal responsibility, and that every community has choices to make about what it values. Today, I'll entirely avoid the topic of teachers, since, like puppies and kittens, education evokes emotional responses, making it impossible for people to analyze the situation philosophically and rationally.
As usual, it comes down to the difference between "can't" and "won't." Town claim that they can't afford certain services, but in most cases, the answer is really that the citizens CHOOSE not to pay for them - that they won't fund them via higher property taxes. This is nothing new - it's been going on as long as towns have been collecting property taxes.
If you've read a major paper lately, you've hear about the city of Colorado Springs, where citizens have elected to make major cutbacks in spending and thus, in services received. From the WSJ in April:
"Like many American cities, this one is strapped for cash. Tax collections here have fallen so far that the city has turned off one-third of its 24,512 street lights.
But unlike many cities, this one is full of people who are eager for more government cutbacks.
The town council has been bombarded with emails telling it to close community centers. Letters to the local newspaper call for shrinking the police department and putting the city-owned utility up for sale. A commission is studying whether to sell the municipal hospital. Another, made up of local businessmen, will opine on whether to slash the salaries and benefits of city employees.
"Let's start cutting stupid programs that cost taxpayers a pot
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Try this cuts in the big predominately Black eastern cities and watch them burn.
Fine by me. Some folks need to learn a lesson.
Krugman is right that the lights are going out. And it’s not just the lights. Everything government does is going to stop. Maybe he should read “Atlas Shrugged.” It’s his visionary governmental philosophy that is causing it. We did not have these problems until the “progressives” came along.
If they can't pull at your heart strings, you might recognize what's going on. Some might call it piracy or, as I prefer, tyranny.
One has to really wonder how this frakin’ idiot received a Nobel Prize...
The media and their own ignorant point-of-view will guide them to exactly the wrong solution to their problem. The one that they've gone to over and over again. Maybe once they've killed all the crackers, it'll work this time. If not, they'll still get to feel good about it.
” Maybe once they’ve killed all the crackers. “
Not enough people remember that there was a time in history when the downtrodden blacks did, in fact, fill the crackers and take over. Today, we can see the result of that action. It is modern Haiti.
OOPS! Kill the crackers, not fill the crackers.
While the Baraqqis and MSM proclaim “Recovery Summer”, the plummeting state and local tax receipts tells the REAL story of the economy.
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