The Taxman Takes Another Bite

The Newburyport City Council provided quite a show Monday evening. There was drama, deal-making, possibly a little skull-duggery and for the PG-13 set, several councilors even discussed their showering habits and it was all topped-off with a $300,000 tax hike. The meals tax pushed by Councilor Cameron was nearly de-railed when a proposed ordinance that put the spending cart before the tax horse was deemed legally suspect and tabled, splitting the coalition committed to making it more expensive to dine in our city. Undaunted, Cameron with the able assistance of Councilor Connell and input from Mayor Holaday, who was watching it all on t.v., devised a plan to keep the taxpayer squeeze alive. At this point, the committee recessed to hastily write a new proposal to keep the votes of the "sidewalk two" in favor of the tax.

Now, prior to the meeting I took a quick gander at the city budget and found a line in nearly every department labeled "Longevity". During the break in the action, I asked Councilor Earls what exactly these longevity payments were. As I feared, he informed me that they were payments, above salary and overtime that the city was contractually obligated to pay public employees based on their length of service. These bonuses start at $718 for the Harbormaster's Dept. and top out at $128,133 for the Fire Dept. and total $313,573.38 for this fiscal year, excluding the school department which didn't itemize their personnel expenses. Councilor Earls also informed me that education was one of the few areas that isn't walled off by collectively bargained agreements, so it receives the vast majority of whacks from the budget axe.

It is a given in America that contracts are inviolable, unless you were a secured creditor of Chrysler and your rights conflicted with the president's political patrons at the UAW, that is. While the city must pay these bonuses, even though it meant cutting foreign language programs from the schools and guarantees future cuts, there is nothing stopping the unions, other than greed, that represent the public employees of this city from re-negotiating these ridiculous contracts. I've been around long enough to realize that AFSCME, which represents most public sector union members in this country sees taxpayers as nothing more than an ATM. Which is why they spent $87.5 million in the mid-term elections trying to keep as many of their Democrat party patrons in office to keep that money flowing. But won't they do it for the children? Shouldn't a decent salary, generous health and retirement benefits and plentiful overtime be enough?

The residents of this city, state and nation need to realize that public sector union contracts are bleeding us dry. Because the pension fund for state workers has an unfunded liability of $22 billion, $1.3 billion was spent this year to shore it up. That's a devastating $1.3 billion in cuts to local aid, which could have been spent on schools statewide. You can bet that Gov. Patrick and the Democrat-controlled legislature will bail the fund out again this year and every year until we wake up and stop them. Here's hoping watching California go banrupt will wake the voters' of Massachusetts up.

MassGOP Must Reach Out To Hispanics To Survive

There have been many interesting takes this week on Tuesday night's debacle and how to prevent it from happening again in 2012. While there is much to be said for organizing RTC's and focusing on GOTV,that only gets you so far.In short, as 11% of the electorate,we can organize and coordinate with a precision that would put the Michigan State Spartan marching band to shame and we will still lose in near landslides. I believe it was SSR that brought up the demographic hurdle Republicans face in statewide elections. He broke the Democrats' base into three groups:

1) Progressives/Moonbats

2) Public/Private Sector Unions

3) Minorities

If we hope to start winning elections outside of Worcester County we need to cut into the Dems base in addition to appealing to independents. Of the three legs of the Democrats' stool the only one we have a remote chance with is minority voters, particularly hispanics. Let's face it, most voters' make their decision based on who will best protect their interests. A Republican party that is committed to limiting the size and scope of government and promotes individual opportunity will never appeal to progressives or union voters. Why do I think that message has a small shot of winning over hispanic voters? Because Puerto Rico has a Republican governor that is advocating those positions.

From the WSJ:

Move over, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. You’ve got a tax-cutting, pro-growth competitor who may be even bolder than you. His name is Luis Fortuño and he is the governor of Puerto Rico, a place that, if you can believe it, is in worse fiscal shape than the Garden State.

When Mr. Fortuño took office in January 2009, Puerto Rico had a 46% budget shortfall equal to $3.3 billion. Things were so bad, he told me in a telephone interview from San Juan on Tuesday, that he had to fly to New York while still governor-elect to explain his fiscal plan to the investment community in order to avoid a sharp downgrade of Puerto Rican debt. “We were one step from junk status,” he says.

and

The governor says he cut 20% of the budget but “it was not enough.” Puerto Rico needs “to provide an environment for our people to flourish and to let their ingenuity take them where they want to go.” He adds: “Puerto Rico has not been competitive. Investors have been going to Singapore and Ireland. Our system was failing us.” And it wasn’t for lack of capital. Commonwealth debt offerings, he says, always sell out quickly. “There is plenty of money here but it has not been worthwhile taking risk” in private-sector ventures.

I'm not saying Republicans should suddenly become pro-amnesty and attempt to out-pander the Democrats for Hispanic votes. Just the opposite. Senator-elect Marco Rubio (R-Fl) refused to play the pander game to the point that Charlie Crist accused him(a son of Cuban immigrants) of not "being hispanic enough". Republicans need to start going into their communities and asking hispanics for their votes instead of just assuming that because they tend to be Catholic that they'll magically start voting R because of social issues. And we need to get started on reaching out yesterday.

On NRO Jim Geraghty's political sage discusses the Republican's problem relating to hispanics leading to the wipeout in California:

Jim: You mentioned California. Is that state gone for Republicans for the foreseeable future?

Obi-Wan Kenobi: Michael Medved said yesterday that Fiorina won the white vote by 9 percent, which is 61 percent of the total vote. But she did abysmally among Hispanics, getting only 28 percent. If she merely got to 40 percent, she wins.

Hispanic voters for a lot of reasons are nascent Republicans. But there are perception problems that need to be broken through. Those problems are not solved by doing what the consultants recommend — talking only about the economy while dancing around other issues. Our candidates need to be talking about ideas and discussing the difference between conservative and liberal philosophies. The question is one of educating voters about what those philosophies mean to them.

As much as I admire Gov. Christie, the MassGOP should try inviting Gov. Fortuno to the Commonwealth to campaign for our candidates next time. It's not like we have anything to lose.