Articles tagged as

Spending

How big do we really want our Government to grow?

Remember, as you look at this graph – this is not due to inflation: This isn’t like a car, or a house, where the price has risen pretty much because of inflation. This is because of the expansion of government, and that government has become more expensive. Remember too – as Government takes more from … Read more

Democrats, Trains And HB 218

De railedThe Union Leader has a great editorial in this mornings Sunday News titled "Free Trains."  It is great for several reasons the least of which is that it mirrors concerns I have been expressing for years.  That no matter who pays to build them, someone has to pay to keep them.  That would be New Hampshire Taxpayers. But Democrats are aghast that the NH House would dissolve the New Hampshire Rail Transit Authority–the head of a beast seeking to force commuter rail upon us–because hey it doesn’t cost anything.

But it does cost and it could lead to something that costs us even more in the future.  A lot more.

December 2009 at NH Insider – I hit it out of the park when someone compared road taxes to rail taxes.

Passenger rail costs are not limited to the root infrastructure itself.  That would be rails versus roads.   Taxpayers would have to subsidize passenger rail-cars, fuel the cars, maintain the cars, probably pay the workers and their benefits, and support the entire system when it fails to turn a profit, which will be always and probably forever.   While roads have some other infrastructure nothing compares to rail.

In contrast people buy their own cars, and pay for their own fuel and maintenance.  They may buy the car to get to a job that’s probably not funded by taxpayers either. (Except in Concord) Taxpayers do not need to subsidize any of that where with rail we’re supporting all of it.  So there is no possible apples to apples comparison to road and rail taxes. 

The state also makes a lot of money on registration fees and fuel taxes for road vehicles, tolls and license plates, and some towns rely so heavily on registration fees that even minor reductions can cause budget issues.   Passenger rail offers no comparable net increase in revenues and in all likely hood a net loss.  So Passenger rail risks reducing revenues and increasing tax obligations for no significant greater good. 

Read the whole thing here. 

But that’s hardly the most pressing point about the ongoing illusion of free commuter rail…

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“Retard” Makes A Comeback

In a moment of honesty, John Gage, the head of the American Federation of Government Employees Union (AFGE), calls elected officials who want to cut government pay “Mentally Retarded.”

Supporting A Corrupt Business

Would you stand up in a public hearing and defend an organization implicated in aiding illegal activity, sexual abuse, statutory rape and sex trafficking?  What kind of people would?  How about democrats, union members, and greedy corporate stooges on the take? (oh, my!)

If it was anyone but Planned Parenthood, the national media sensation that admits it has a ‘training’ problem, the professional left would be storming the castle not just to demand why taxpayer dollars were begin given to these criminals, but when the bastards were going to be rounded up and put on trial.

There would be bus loads of angry folks protesting outside executives homes, harassing staff and customers.

Left wing bloggers, even at that sad little web site Blue Hampshire, would be disconnecting their brains from their keyboard, bellowing about the injustice and abuse, the violation of civil rights, and another destructive association by a political party full of hateful bigots and misogynists who view women as second class citizens.  A few of them might even ponder running a few people down in the crosswalk.

But this is Planned Parenthood, a national business, a big business, that makes plenty of money while using its status as a “health care provider” to milk taxpayers for money it does not even need.  And there are still a few people here in New Hampshire willing to stand up and say incredibly stupid things in defense of a business model that seems incapable of protecting the interests of the young girls it claims to champion from a life as an underage sex slave.

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Don’t Say There Is No Place To Cut.

Privatize the public school system and shift the educators, staff, maintenance, and transportation and facility costs off the books, along with converting public benefits and pensions into the same kind of programs the rest of the private markets have, and you would see property tax rates plummet.

Norelli Tries To Feed You The Blue Pill (again)

Democrats latest rallying cry is that we can’t cut the state budget if it means downshifting costs on the towns.  But they didn’t seem to care too much about all the downshifting when they were doing it. 

But that is what you get when you let left wing clowns run your state.  Larsen/Norelli/Suckley Investment Advisers Inc, the Fat Cat Executives of the Tax and Spend Democrat Party of New Hampshire, gave the state government a one billion dollar bonus ($1,000,000,000.00) on the backs of the towns and the taxpayers during a job shedding, wage declining recession.

And we are now to believe this concerns them?  The only thing that concerns the Democrats is if and how they can blame someone else for their destruction, and find a way back into power so that the lefts only solution to a billion dollar deficit can be enacted as swiftly as possible.

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The One-Trick Tax-And-Spend Donkey By Any Other Name…

No Good Dancing DonkeyThe New Hampshire democrats have a name for their new 501(c)(4) non-profit.  It’s the July Fourth Forum. What, “We just lost The Whole Damn State” was already taken?

As with most things named by democrats it presents a notion diametrically opposite its true intention.  We see this same naming tactic in their legislation  (at least in DC).  Their bills always have the words American, Freedom, Rights, Choice, or Affordable in the name, usually including two or more at any given time.  This is meant to serves as a warning to anyone who dares gaze upon the hundreds of thousands of words that follow the name of their bill (not that they want anyone to actually read them).   If allowed to become law it will hurt Americans, deny freedoms, infringe rights, cost a fortune and leave you with whatever choice the government has decided is best for you and few if any other.

So the only word in any name of any Democrat bill that has any hope of being remotely accurate must be the word “Act.”  As in, that American-Freedom-Rights-and choice-stuff  is all just an act.

Which brings us back to Kathy Sullivan’s ‘”July Fourth Forum.” 

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DON’T RAISE THE DEBT CEILING

While it is true that the political/government/ruling classes will attempt to cause as much pain and dislocation to society as possible (they’ll be looking for political gains, as always), America can actually handle a debt freeze pretty easily. Here’s why, and how, from RedState.com: Might Someone Please Educate Fox News and the Rest of the Media? … Read more

Facebook Doodlings – How WOULD you cut Federal spending?

Back in November, my friend Jim started a bit of a discussion on FB with this video that explains how big government ultimately destroys a nation’s prosperity.  Idiots guide to public sector that produces no wealth

Another friend, Scott, issued a challenge:

There’s certainly no doubt that republicans and democrats alike (or conservatives and liberals alike, if you prefer) have built an enormous, expensive and unwieldy government over the past 50 or more years; or that, as a county, we’ve been …living beyond our means (or at least beyond what we’ve been willing to pay for) for at least the past 30 years. It’s time to pay up, America.

Now the question is what to cut and I look forward to that debate. Waste, fraud and abuse is the popular refrain but, even if we eliminate that (which would amaze me), the effect will be negligible. 

What substantial, popular programs will we eliminate?

<insert cricket chirps>  and then he adds, after some time:           

It seems the surest way to stifle a conversation about overgrown government is to try & bring it around to specifics.  C’mon, folks. No ideas?

Of COURSE I rise to the bait!

OK, I’m game! Ground rules – it enhances individual freedoms from the current structure, decentralizes control back to more local control, and enhances accountability.

Why shouldn’t Education be more localized…

 

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A Modest (Budget Cutting) Proposal

Public Sector Unions SuckThere are plenty of towns like mine trying to figure out where they can cut costs.  But every conversation seems to end at cutting education or safety services.  While I find it hard to believe that there is nothing else in a budget you can trim, I think I have come up with a reasonable compromise (if not just for the sake of our own rhetorical amusement) that can cut at least a little bit of money from the budget without affecting staffing or resources.

Any teacher, support staff, officer, firefighter or public employee who currently pays union dues will have the total amount of dues paid calculated and that amount removed from their respective department budgets (aka:paychecks).  This will do the one thing no one ever seems willing to do; include the unions in the burden of cost cutting.

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Can we be saved? Or is it too late?

Given the REAL state of the union (see below), can our nation be saved? MAYBE, says John Stossel. Probably NOT, says Prof. Walter Williams. Impossible, says the New York Times (which hates America anyway), as noted by Reason magazine’s Jacob Sullum…but then there’s a WILD CARD. There’s Freshman Senator Rand Paul….  

Mark Fernald as “Hugh Jihass”

Does Democrat Mark Fernald do the letters to the editor follow up over at Fosters Daily Democrat or is he just complicit?  Amidst a series of letters posted on January 14th at Fosters.com is a smarmy bit of left wing drool authored by one Hugh Jidette.  Fernald liked the letter so much that he shared it on his email distribution list saying…

Here’s an excellent letter from Foster’s Daily Democrat.  I encourage all to write their own letters to expose what the right wing is up to.

Mark Fernald

Forget what the right wing has been up to, what has Fosters and Mark Fernald been up to? 

Hugh Jidette is a false name.  Huge Jidette (Huge Debt) appears as a fake Presidential Candidate to deliver awareness ads about out of control spending and the risks of borrowing on the scale the democrats embraced.  Hugh was all about borrowing money.  But Some on the left spun that and sold it to their peeps as proof that the Republicans were lying about taxes and using the campaign to justify slashing the deficit to punish hard working civil servants.  That exact same theme has found its way here in the letter published in Fosters, by a Hugh Jidette from Rochester, but with a local spin. The national left wing meme viewed through a granite state filter.

But we have no way of knowing if it was written by Fernald himself, Kathy Sullivan, Ray Buckley, The Center for American Progress, ‘Norris Cotton’ over at Red Hampshire, or by Fosters Editorial Staff.  

One thing we do know is that the person vetting letters over at Fosters should change their name to Hugh Jihass, and that by forwarding it as if it were written by an actual local resident, Fernald looks like a Hugh Jihass as well.

 

Once you have finished giggling, and before some democrat named Huge Jidette from Rochester comes forward to take credit, the text of Fernald’s Email is available on the jump, followed by an example of some original video put out in the debt awareness campaign.

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Michele Bachmann leads the charge!

"I have launched a petition drive calling for Members to vote no on raising the debt ceiling. And as a result of your hard work, we’ve collected nearly 100,000 signatures for our Don’t Raise the Debt Ceiling petition drive." I signed it. Feel free to join the fun!

A request from Frank Guinta (R-NH) on the Debt Ceiling

We sent him to cut spending, cut the size of Government, and cut its intrusiveness as well.  Already, Frank and his staff are putting things into place to try to keep his promise: to be the peoples’ Representative. 

He completed one item – he voted to repeal the deficit inducing / Government Growing / Liberty killing Obamacare:

“I repeatedly told the people of New Hampshire last fall that I would vote against this misguided piece of legislation, and today I delivered on it…It exceeds the limits of the Constitution, places unfair and unrealistic burdens on small business owners, inserts the government into your relationship with your family doctor, and sinks Washington even deeper into debt.”

An associated item that Obamacare does is accelerates the growth of the Debt Ceiling (remember, it was sold on 10 years of revenue but only 6 years of spending – TILT!).  We are now over $14 Trillion in debt and the Obama Administration is on track to add another $1.3 Trillion this year – 3 years of Trillion+ dollar deficits!  The problem is that Obama is framing this as an all or nothing venture – either we keep spending at that rate or the Government shuts down.

Nonsense – they could do what my family does or when I ran a small biz when money got tight – line up the bills, schedule them as needed, pay those on time, and cut the rest.  Certainly, Obama could do the same thing; just ask yourself -> when it snows in DC, why are all non-essential US Govt workers told to stay home – and then DC looks like a ghost town?  If they are non-essential then, why have them the rest of the time?  If the jobs they do are not absolutely necessary (want, not need), isn’t that a sign that Govt is doing too much with too many at too high of a cost?

In this case, Frank is looking input:

  • Vote a higher debt ceiling?
  • Shut it all down?
  • A better answer?

Frank and his staff have reached out to GraniteGrok and asked us to spread the word – he wants to know what you think and how YOU would handle the problem in a typical NH common sense way.  We’ve asked, however, that if you do send in your ideas and suggestions, that he list them so you can see yours and your fellow NH citizens’ ideas.  You can be sure that the ‘Grok will be doing the same!

The request:

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The Debt Ceiling Vote: STOP THE MADNESS NOW!

There’s a heated discussion going on all over America. It’s about the upcoming vote on whether to "raise the debt ceiling" so that Congress and the political/government/ruling classes can continue spending money we don’t have…WE DON’T HAVE IT! But…there are always "excuses" to continue DOING THE WRONG THING. NH Republican Reps. Charlie Bass and Frank Guinta will show who they are, what they are, what they believe in, and what they don’t believe in, with their votes on this issue.

And let there be no doubt about it: There can be only one decent, honorable, intelligent way to vote….

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“…it was like a spaghetti bowl…”

No, was not at TMEW’s most favorite restaurant (Olive Garden) where that spaghetti bowl appears, it is from here: How much federal money, all told, does NPR receive? Lamborn doesn’t know. "The funding is so convoluted and opaque," he says. "We asked the Congressional Research Service to look at the books, and a senior analyst … Read more

Budget Committee season comes to a close – tonite

One more official night for the Budget season….Public Hearing on the School Board budget was Tuesday and the Town Budget one is tonight.  Then my elected responsibility is done for the year.  At the last regular meeting, I sorta tied things up for a bunch of people who might have thought it was going to … Read more

Hey, it isn’t costing US anything…

Three Shell MonteThis is the vast "Three Shell Monty" played at the governmental level.  You send me your taxpayers money for my project, and I’ll send you my taxpayers tax monies for your projects.  We’ll hide it using other governmental agencies, but we politicians (wink, wink) have set the rules – just watch our hands.   And we’ll sell this game as "Free Money" – hey, it doesn’t cost US anything, right?

Once again, we run into the case that when the locals either don’t have the money or are unwilling to ask their taxpayers for more to pay for what they want, they go for the "free money".  From yesterday’s Laconia Daily Sun (P. 9):

Pulling together the funds to buy Colonial is going to be complicated

In the next town over, Laconia, there is an old building that houses what used to be an old style stage theater that, now that its run as a converted "multiplex" is over, has now sat vacant for a number of years.  Simply, no entrepreneurs wanted to buy it for any purpose.  Yet, there are those in town that just want to see it restored to its former magnificence and start doing plays and such.  However, I do think that the sub-head says it all:

Formation of non-profit corporation seen as needed because for profit business is not going to step forward

Ya think?  If folks, over the years, are not willing to ante up their own personal money (most people, even the uber-rich, are loathe to just throw their money away) for a project, it generally means it is a loosing proposition.  Loosely put, if there is no profit, there is no need there for which people are willing to spend (unless it is flat out given to him).  Yet, there are those that still want to City to buy it?

“Where do we get the $1.4-million to buy it?” asked City Councilor Bob Hamel (Ward 5). “It’s not coming from the city.”

No one questioned Hamel’s presumption that the city would not contribute to the cost of purchasing the property.

So what does it say when even the City Fathers won’t ante up?  In short form,

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