Posted on 12/02/2002 9:17:47 AM PST by nypokerface
So how are you fixed for cash this holiday season? Are you in debt like most Americans? According to the American Bankruptcy Institute, a fun place to work, the average debt for every man, woman and child in the United States is $6,000 each, and that excludes any mortgage obligation.
Faced with that knowledge, Mayor Bloomberg has a solution: He is raising property taxes and wants to reinstate a commuter tax on working Americans who come to the city to make a living. Bloomberg really doesn't care that the median price for a house in the New York metropolitan area is an astounding $328,000, nor does he care that the average working American makes less than $50,000 a year. No, Mayor Mike wants more money from workers, despite the fact that the city already imposes an income tax.
And Bloomberg is not alone. All over the country, cities and counties are running in the red, and working Americans are following close behind.
The reason that most governments, including the federal one in Washington, cannot balance the books is that few officials are watching how the money is being spent. There is no federal agency that automatically oversees government spending. The investigative arm of the General Accounting Office, which is efficient, is called upon by Congress only after there is a massive theft or fraud. Thus, wiseguys all over the U.S. have figured out that government-spending projects are easy pickings.
In California, it is estimated by the state that as much as 20% of Medi-Cal payments are stolen through a variety of scams. The situation is so bad that California spends $50 million a year just to investigate the scams.
In Massachusetts, the so-called Big Dig construction project has run over budget by $11 billion. Democratic Sens. Edward Kennedy and John Kerry were instrumental in bringing massive federal funding to the Big Dig, where the people's money has been looted by modern-day pirates. Why haven't Kennedy and Kerry raised hell about the corruption? And, while we're on the subject, why are people living in Nevada being forced to pay for a road in Massachusetts, anyway?
Let's go back to Bloomberg for a moment. Right now, in New York, more than 11,000 city workers receive disability payments, costing Mayor Mike close to $175 million every year. So I say this: Have all of those receiving disabilities reexamined by city doctors. I'm willing to bet you a trip on the mayor's private jet that the city could cut disability payments drastically if that happened.
But it won't happen, because the unions would scream, the lawsuits would fly and Mayor Mike would hear the gnashing of teeth outside his multimillion-dollar Manhattan brownstone, from which he is safely protected from his proposed commuter tax. For the mayor knows it is much less complicated to take more money away from people who have to buy ordinary homes than it is to root out endemic fraud and waste. Need more money? Let's gut people's take-home pay.
And so it is the holiday season, and the tax geese are getting fat. Would you please put a penny in Mayor Mike's hat? If you haven't got a penny, a half-penny will do. And if you haven't got a half-penny, you are pretty much like everyone else in America - $6,000 in the hole.
The urban centers in this country kill the will of the nation's geographical voter intent. The sooner that urban areas reach critical mass, the sooner we can begin to resurect them with a fresh start. No AFSME, no teacher's unions, etc...I remember when South Philadelphia residents swept their own residential streets, scrubbed their own sidewalks, and people were civil.
I wonder if big cities are even necessary anymore. I mean, I realize we still have shipping, so we need ports and hubs. But it seems to me workers and corporations will become more and more decentralized. It seems to me that the answer to traffic congestion will not be light rail, it will be virtual offices. Maybe I am just a dreamer. But I envision a day when big cities are a relic of the past. It's sort of a high-tech version of Jefferson's old agrarian dream. Except, in this case, it's information, not farming, and it's bandwidth, not chattel slavery, that will run the system.
Oh well, I guess I am a dreamer. Not that I know what I am talking about either, but if we could just let those blue zones become a thing of the past, wouldn't it be great?
They make a good point with the comparison to the Big Dig, though. Massive fraud only becomes a problem when the government institutions that are involved are so large that the amount of money lost to fraud is nothing more than pocket change.
I am waiting for the bond ratings of our cities to show itself next year. Ken Lay is chump change compared to our municipalities. The unfunded pension liabilities, lawsuits, missing assets, outright theft, no-show jobs, etc... will be showing up on some credit ratings soon. Those who run our cities have become nothing better than money laundering modern day warlords.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.