Watch your wallet, Obama and his cronies are at it again
by Howie Carr
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Watch your wallet, Obama & Co. are at it again
I think I’ve seen this “Sequester” movie before. Only it had a different title — it was called “Prop 2 1/2 Override.”
Obama and his common nightwalkers in the media are trotting out the exact same scare tactics that the local teachers’ unions and assorted municipal layabouts have been employing to frighten the bejesus out of taxpayers around here for decades.
It happens every spring. The schools need more money. The voters yawn. The school superintendent ups the ante and says, well, if you don’t give us the extra money then the first thing we’ll have to cut is the high school football team. Followed by the band. Not the third assistant associate deputy senior school superintendent making $120,000, but the football team.
Then the selectmen threaten to close a fire station. Or lay off cops. The town dump? No longer open on weekends.
The problem for the hacks is, this shakedown may work the first time, maybe even the second. But as Barack Obama is now complaining privately, eventually the law of diminishing returns sets in. Before he embarked on this latest the-sky-is-falling campaign, perhaps Barack should have consulted with the little boy who cried wolf.
Here’s how absurd these scare tactics are. Over the weekend the semi-official Associated Press breathlessly reported in a story on the National Park Service: “3,500 volunteers who provide 40,000 hours on resource management duties would be eliminated.”
They’re eliminating … volunteers? How does this save money?
Listen, everybody who’s on a payroll took a 2 percent pay cut Jan. 1 when the Social Security taxes went back up.
Learn to live with it, the peons in the Dreaded Private Sector were told. Two percent — big deal. But when the privileged class — the government — takes a 2 percent “cut,” which isn’t really a cut, it’s “draconian.”
Do you remember any sob stories about the terrible suffering of Josh and Mindy, the $1 million-a-year Yuppies? Imagine if they had been interviewed, and had told the reporter that because of their approximate 5 percent Barack pay cut, their kids were going to have to drop out of college, the bank was going to foreclose on their house, the repo man was coming for the BMW, etc.
Readers would have laughed. But we’re supposed to tremble with fear when Barack uses the same scare tactics.
Barack is now reduced to saying that the draconian cuts may not show up immediately, which means, they won’t show up, period. Because they aren’t really going to happen.
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Carr: Instead of rail, make tracks to N.H.
by Howie Carr Thursday, February 28, 2013
If you absolutely, positively had to get somewhere by a certain time, who would you trust more to get you there?
Fung Wah Bus or Gov. Deval Patrick?
Say what you will about Fung Wah, it’s Dreaded Private Sector, not some spoiled hack who’s had everything in his life handed to him.
And a trip on Fung Wah costs 15 bucks. Does anyone doubt that Deval’s preposterous Fall River-to-Boston high-speed rail will come in for less than $2 billion?
Which is why I suspect that Deval is going to have a problem putting across his “legacy” plan to become America’s next railroad baron. The headline on his new website is “Choosing Growth in Our Communities.”
Surely he meant to say, “Choosing Taxes in Our Communities.”
Not that Deval has an inflated opinion of his own proposed boondoggle.
“When we decided settling the west was important, we built the transcontinental railroad.”
He’s comparing the Pittsfield-to-New York line to the transcontinental railroad? At least he got the name right, though. His very brilliant mentor, Barack Obama, has been known to refer to the “intercontinental railroad.” Isn’t a Harvard education great?
“Earlier this year, the lieutenant governor and I laid out a plan to prepare for a better future.”
Nice to include Crash Murray in there. Of course the only plan Tiny Tim is laying out right now is one to avoid going to Club Fed, once his dear friend, convicted felon Mike McLaughlin, begins singing to the grand jury.
“Many people ask, how will this plan help me?”
It helps you if you think you have too much money. Because once Deval starts taking care of the don’t-kill-the-job trade unions growing rich off their Davis-Bacon so-called prevailing wages on these never-to-be-completed rail projects, your wallet will be lighter. A lot lighter.
Why do we need better public transportation, Deval?
“Police and firefighters need it to get to emergencies.”
Police and other first responders riding to 911 calls on the T? If that’s the future in Massachusetts, my suggestion is, buy a gun. And a fire extinguisher.
It won’t cost much, of course. The income tax will “only” go up from 5.25 percent to 6.25 percent. Maybe that’s the real legacy Deval’s looking for — to beggar working people by jacking up the income tax rate to Dukakis-era levels.
What I don’t understand is, if these new railroads are such a good “investment in the future,” why don’t we let private companies bid on them, like we’re doing with casinos? Surely they’ll see what a gold mine it will be, running empty trains back and forth from Boston to Bristol County.
Hey, Deval, you want to improve transportation in this state? I’ll tell you what we really need. Six-lane highways north, to New Hampshire, so we can get the hell out of this state, first for tax-free shopping, and finally, forever.
In the meantime, Fung Wah forever!