WASTE, FRAUD AND ABUSE – THE DEMOCRAT PLATFORM

One year after Mayor Nutter announced the closure of fire companies, pools and libraries to fight a financial crisis of “incredible proportions,” his administration announced today that the city will face a $31 million deficit unless further reductions are made next year.

City Budget Director Stephen J. Agostini and Nutter’s chief of staff, Clay Armbrister, outlined for City Council today the ingredients for the newest alarm, which include faltering wage tax revenues, expected state revenue that never materialized, and costs expected from new casinos.

Agostini has already asked department heads to slice their spending by 7.5 percent next year as he prepares to present a 2011 budget to Council in January or February. Agostini would not say how the city would close the deficit, though he said he was monitoring every hire right now in trying to avoid taking on long-term costs. LINK

Some cuts could come before the budget is passed in June.

You have to hand it to the democrats. When it comes to politics it’s a blood sport. It has to be when you are this incompetent. Since democrats can’t win a fair contest of ideas they must try to destroy their political enemies. That way there is no alternative to their failed policies. That’s what we have in Philadelphia. Like many other big cities Philly is a one party town and that keeps us in perpetual distress. 

Think about it for a second- Philly has been a one party (democrat) city for roughly two generations. The democrats have had free rein to implement every aspect of their social and financial agenda for years. They have done so and look at where we are: Philly is a perpetual financial basket case, a crime and filth ridden city that taxes business out of existence and forces its most productive residents to flee like the proverbial Lot without looking back. This city should be a democrat Utopia. I don’t know to some maybe it is.

Whenever things get bad, if the heat gets turned up on our politicians, a familiar pattern emerges: They blame the municipal unions, alternately known as the “Little Guy” or “Working Families” depending on who the democrats are vilifying this week. If they have others to demonize, they allude to how they are standing up for us. If they are being called on their irresponsibility, they blame the greedy unions for the whole mess. That’s crap. Big Insurance, Big Pharma, Big Oil and greedy unions. It’s always everyone else’s fault, not BIG GOVERNMENT. Government is the model of efficiency. Government is good and just. Uh huh.

We saw that this week with the SEPTA strike. Mayor Nutter and Governor Rendell ripped the union leadership for demanding what they felt was their fair share of the pie. After all the union leaders aren’t stupid. The federal government is printing TRILLIONS of dollars they don’t have. Most of that is being wasted hand over fist with little or no oversight. They wanted assurances that their people would get paid. When they felt like they were being screwed they went on strike. The strike is now settled. Imagine that.

The contract they got was crap in any event. Five years with about 3% each year. The cost of living in this part of the country is well over that. So the workers will not break even when it is all said and done. Hooray for management.

The funny thing is the politicians could solve the SEPTA problem in one fell swoop if they really wanted to: Simply open it up to competition. Want to drive the bus drivers salary’s down for real? Make SEPTA compete. It will never happen though. The democrats will never allow it to happen.

Now in the middle of contract talks with the Police and Firefighter unions the city announces that they are suddenly short another 31 million. OOOPS! My bad. Yeah we just didn’t see that one coming. Bullshit. This is a blatant attempt to influence the talks probably because they are going poorly for the city. No one in city hall just misses 31 million dollars like that (unless they stole it). If they are that bad at math they should be fired. Once again the administration is rolling out the scare tactics and talking about layoff’s. This is after the Nutter administration begged for and got a 1% raise in the city sales tax. Tax and spend.

Now I can back up what I am saying easily. I have tons of examples of how the taxpayers get fleeced by the incompetent politicians of this city.

Case in point: Tonight we had a class in work on the new exhaust systems that are being installed in the fire houses. Diesel emissions are heavily suspected of causing Cancer. For many, many years firefighters lived and died with the exhaust from the fire trucks. Firefighters get all sorts of Cancer at a much higher rate than the general public. After our union studied the issue they decided that there was a dire need for exhaust equipment to be installed in the fire houses. As usual the city balked (even though the sanitation workers had the equipment in their maintenance bays already). Apparently exhaust is bad for the Ozone but just fine for firefighters.

So our union fought for all  fire houses to be equipped with diesel exhaust equipment. We presented extensive testimony and evidence about the danger (as if there is really any question) of long-term exposure to diesel emissions. Funny thing is, if we were talking about second-hand smoke in an office building there would be no argument. But truck exhaust filling the fire house is A-ok.

That was in 2000. NINE years later, (a third of my career) we finally got training on the new systems. They have been installed but are not yet operational because they still have problems that need to be worked out. Now the real crime here is that the systems would have cost 2 million dollars to install back in 2000. The city however installed a cheap scrubber system that was not what the contract called for. You can’t “scrub” or “filter” toxic gas clean. It still remains toxic. Breathing toxic gas causes cancer. Cancer costs money in terms of health care. Remember how devoted democrats are to health care and bringing down the costs and all that? Hope, change, hope, change! Riiiiiiiiight.

So as predicted the “scrubbers” failed and were abandoned. That was a couple million down the drain. Now nine years later the scrubbers sit rotting on the apparatus floor waiting to be picked up and disposed of while the department tries to get the correct system up and running. The cost? About 10.5 million dollars. ONE THIRD of the current projected, unforeseen  deficit. This is just ONE story from ONE city employee. You get the picture. Imagine what it’s like at the FEDERAL LEVEL.

Do we even need to talk about the 54 million dollar radio system that needs a thirty million dollars upgrade after just a few years ? 

What’s the use…