Posted on 02/19/2011 3:26:44 AM PST by grace522
Freindly Fire Note:
On February 17, Governor Tom Corbett authorized the $42 million shipyard bailout. Two ships will now be constructed --- even though there are no buyers, nor any in the foreseeable future --- and hundreds of union jobs will now be subsidized. So much for the pledge of responsible government and fiscal restraint, especially in light of the $5 billion budget deficit.
The wildly successful model that Gov. Christie has given his colleagues --- popularity will rise if you stick to your campaign promises --- is, incomprehensibly, falling on deaf ears. It is bad enough Corbett is being labeled "Governor MIA" for scarce appearances during his first five weeks in office. But when his first sign of life is choosing a bailout associated with politically-connected powerbrokers over the taxpayers who just elected him, the idea that Pennsylvania is on the right track becomes a hard sell.
As of now, the status quo still rules the day...
Column originally published January 6, 2011:
Corbett Can Drop Anchor On Governor’s Taxpayer Boondoggle
In the movie Dave, Kevin Kline plays a presidential lookalike who finds himself running the country after the real President falls into a coma. Convening a Cabinet meeting, this political novice uses common sense to expose the ludicrous mentality of the entrenched Business As Usual crowd.
(Excerpt) Read more at freindlyfirezone.com ...
bfl
I feel somewhat differently about it: not a disappointment, but a betrayal.
“Corbett is a big disappointment
I feel somewhat differently about it: not a disappointment, but a betrayal”
Betrayal is exactly the right word!
Alarming. I’ve been trying to get back to PA ever since I moved to Jersey 8 years ago.Maybe we’re better off staying for a while. Not liking what is happening in the Commonwealth lately.
This isn’t Wisconsin. Corbett is unwilling to PO unions up to and including the “Education Association.”
His education plan does involve a little school choice, but only in the poorest performing school districts, not statewide.
The teachers unions won’t support it, but I don’t expect any storming of the State Capitol over it.
We went the other way, from Jersey to PA. Guns are so delightfully legal here! :) Crime rate much lower. Taxes, about one-twentieth what we were paying for a similar place.
For us, PA isn’t heaven or even Texas, but it’s close enough!
"Shortly before leaving office, Rendell authorized $42 million in taxpayer money to be sent to the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority (PRPA) to help bail out the sinking Aker Shipyard in Philadelphia."
So did Rendell do it and Corbett didn't overturn it hence Corbett did it or what?
ping
well shoot guys, we need some sign of industry on our ocean front borders of PA,,, right?
Our last GOP governor, Tom Ridge, authorized spending megabucks on sports facilities. I can’t figure out if we elected the Republicrats or the Demopublicans.
Several years ago one of my many car magazines did an article on Soviet built Model A trucks. The Soviets produced these trucks into the fifties; long after they were obsolete. The trucks were such an embarrassment that they’d take them from the factory to a crusher plant where they were recycled into steel, which went back to the factory for Model A stamping.
In an economy that desperately needed trucks, the ones this factory built were such an embarrassment that they kept them secret. The reason they kept the factor working is that the employees had to have work. Now, you would think they’d re-tool the plant to make something different. But top-down economy’s simply don’t work. Therefore you end up with astonishing events like building trucks to keep the workers working and the crusher’s crushing.
The article didn’t go into the intricate politics, all of which must have taken place in smoke-filled rooms by men who reported only to the Politburo. The worker/employment aspect is paramount in Socialist economic fantasy. They turn the world on its ear with absurdities, like building ships for which there are no customers.
Obama orders business to hire people, with no reference to supply and demand.
On the good side. I believe that Obama is the Socialist flu virus that so sickens the body politic that it will either die or forever after be immune. I think that we’ll recover. Ronald Reagan reached us because he spoke to the Conservative immune system inside 63% of the body politic. When we’re done with Obama, we’ll be done with Progressives, Socialists, and Communists for at least the next fifty years.
About the time we completely recover and it’s another golden-age like the fifties, somebody will say, you know we can solve (homelessness/ poverty/ inequality/ (fill-in-the-blank)) if only we’d add a tax to supply money for... And, by that time, enough people will be guiltily well off and not remember the dark days of the Obama Flu that we’ll start down this dead end again.
I suspect there would have been a fair market for at least some of those Model A trucks here in the US (especially if they were priced just above the scrap value).
I suspect there would have been a fair market for at least some of those ..
but then the crusher employees would have to be taken care of.
Those crusher employees could get a job at the iron ore mine, incremental blast furnace or coal mine.
Apparently, since the government controlled 100% of all employment of 100% of all workers in the Soviet Union, they decided that they could not.
PA politicians rarely rock the boat. That’s why they haven’t elected a president from PA since 1856, and he never rocked the boat either. Santorum is their biggest boat rocker, and the voters sent him packing before they did his friend Arlen.
Tom Ridge was Arlen Speceter with an “R” label; oh, I forgot, Arlen wore an R label too for decades before he confessed to being a PA charlatan, actually born in KS, but a true Democrat.
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