What happens when Tea Baggers get control

[Edward Twinkletoes]

Maybe they'll use the precendent set by Obamacare to ban unions from striking.

 

[fasteddy]

It seems to be a well run community. Spending taxpayers money just because they have it is not good fiscal policy and the taxpayers there have elected folks to reduce spending. They have that right!

When you get into local government you more easily see the impact of fiscal philosophy. In a community of just over 10,000 people in a rural area, government services are minimal in nature. $1000.00 here and $1000.00 there and at the end of the year it's real money. I can afford to buy my lunch every day but I choose not to. That makes me frugal, not wrong. That the people entrusted witht the taxpayers money in that town are frugal is a good thing.

Government leaders should all be more aware that it is not their money they are spending.

 

[justapixel]

This month, some locals were dismayed when the Gang canceled "Nature Halloween," a pumpkin-painting and educational event that typically drew 1,000 costumed kids. It cost the township about $1,000.

The parents should have paid $1.00 each for their kid's participation.

Or did you want senior citizens living on a fix income with no kids to pay for your kid's entertainment?

 

[chance1]

really good thread

what is the govt. RESPONSIBLE to pay for - what should tax $ definitely cover

difficult times call for difficult measures

some think that any benefit that is currently being provided is .......... a right

others think you need to zero base these decisions

not easy

 

[rareboy]

I grew up in a village controlled by pinched, miserly, ill educated and poorly travelled white men.

If it meant taxes, they voted against it.

I 1960, my father, as a new councillor, tried to get a warm winter coat and footwear for their constable, because in those days they didn't even pay enough for him to afford decent housing. It got voted down.

He got voted out because he was 'progressive'.

These nasty withered little men voted down libraries, sewers...anything that would affect their taxes.

Let the service clubs do it. Let the public pay for it. well the service clubs can only run so many bake sales and the ethos of cheap meant that no one wanted to pay for anything.

The village is now a piece of shit. No one wants to live there.

Meanwhile, the neighbouring towns, with the parks, the schools and the other services are where all the people want to live.

So make all the arguments you want.

The roundheads will destroy the future value of their communities.

 

[chrisrobin]

 

[Kulindahr]

Government leaders should all be more aware that it is not their money they are spending.

That's an important point.

I can really sympathize with the people in that town -- we've also had a rise in police force size (specifically, mostly sheriff's department) unrelated to either increase in population or in crime. I wish we had a council here with the authority to slash it like these four did -- all ours can do is give an up or down on the sheriff's budget, and giving a down is political suicide because then you're "endangering our children" (though people are starting to learn that the opposite is true)... so the sheriff's empire keeps getting bigger, with more deputies, more toys... and more money the county can't afford (even with a huge increase in the tax base thanks to a recent set of County Commissioners who approved a huge backlog of development applications which had been stalled for nothing but aesthetics).

If we here had some way to tell the sheriff that it isn't his money, maybe we could send half the sheriff's department packing, too.

It takes a village.

That phrases means people working together. If you have no choice, that isn't people working together, which means you don't have a village, you have authoritarianism, and extortion.

And that produces more tea-bag folks.

 

[Kulindahr]

Nice thesis, except that this township already was balancing its budget every year. As the former boardmember was quoted in the article asking, Where's the crisis?

A balanced budget is not an indicator that all is well.
Just the item about the police force says they had a problem: government agencies believing they had a right to just keep growing and demanding more from the [STRIKE]serfs[/STRIKE] citizens.

When you have that, there is a crisis -- and the former board member who couldn't see that was part of the problem.

Education is one thing - especially EARLY education- should be a top priority for any society. We either pay for that, or we pay for more prisons, welfare, and homeless centers.
As for the "luxuries" like Easter egg hunts, senior citizen outings, etc . . . those address qualities of communities which offer higher standards of living. And if the economy no longer supports those wonderful assets, then people will pay for them themselves, or learn to do without. Sad, but true.

There's a town here that came up with an interesting approach to paying for a park: they needed a new elementary school, they couldn't afford the parks budget as it stood and build the school -- so they did a land swap and put the school next to a park, and made the park part of the school grounds. The soccer field, jogging trails, and existing play equipment became school equipment. Maintaining it was no longer a budget item for the parks, but came from the schools. The school would have had t budget for it anyway; this way, they got the school, and didn't have to shut down any parks.

The sequel: when they needed a new middle school, it went in just down the bike path from the elementary school. That placement allowed the two schools to share outdoor facilities via the short bike path that went under a road; it also allowed them to include a wetland in the school property -- an outdoor laboratory for the kids. They got that one by a land swap, too -- thanks to federal regulations the owners of that wetland were sitting holding worthless land, but a local government using it for education purposes could get around a lot of the blind restrictions, so they traded for a spot that would have been more expensive for the city to have built a school on and to operate it.
Side benefit: when invasive species show up in that wetland, they don't last long -- the kids see them, report, and one class or another does a hunt-and-pull session.

 

[Kulindahr]

I don't think anybody refutes that.

Government waste is a huge problem. I hope if Republicans do win they at least tackle the issue of inefficiency.

We need a Grace Commission with teeth. It's likely they could slash $400 billion a year from spending and no one would miss it.

 

[justapixel]

It takes a village.

Those children can make life wonderful (or unbearable) for everyone in the community. Same argument as for funding universal public education. Everyone should pay taxes to support public schools and after-school programs. It's a basic responsibility of a community to provide for the next generation. Or do you want the next generation to become lawless teenage vandals? And you do want the next generation to be intelligent enough and to have enough sense of a community to make wise decisions when they are old enough to vote and decide how to care for your aging generation, don't you?

Parents should pay the $1.00. Dont take it from me at the point of a gun.

 

[JackFTwist]

I don't think anybody refutes that.

Government waste is a huge problem. I hope if Republicans do win they at least tackle the issue of inefficiency.

Didn't the republicans have the senate, house, and presidency from 2001-2007? I assume those hard working dedicated officials eliminated all the waste and inefficiency. If they didn't, then what did they do exactly?

 

[Kulindahr]

kids would starve

old folks would be on the street

babies wouldnt get medical treatment

blacks wouldnt get educated

gays would die with hiv

those among others would be the mantra and reported as fact by NBC, ABC & CBS

Not a chance.

If they did it like the Grace Commission, every single dollar to be cut would be identified as to where it was from, with no doubt at all.

The original commission found agencies that no longer have functions, but they get office space and salaries. Then found duplication of services where no redundancy is necessary. Those are the first two to come to mind. There was no doubt that what they found was waste -- but many politicians found it expedient to make sure the government kept on renting things that were never used, paying people who do nothing, and all the rest.

 

[Kulindahr]

Didn't the republicans have the senate, house, and presidency from 2001-2007? I assume those hard working dedicated officials eliminated all the waste and inefficiency. If they didn't, then what did they do exactly?

It was Republicans more than Democrats who sent the Grace Commission report into oblivion. They cheered the idea at its inception, but I guess when they found out where the waste was, they chickened out.

 

[bike10]

Will "tea bagging" become offically recognized activity?

 

[Kulindahr]

Will "tea bagging" become offically recognized activity?

I'm aiming for Olympic sport status.

They have tee-shirt cannons; my plan is a tea-bag cannon.