No Longer Near, The End Has Arrived: The Inmates Are Torching The Asylum!
The day of reckoning has arrived. At last, “The Best Legislature Money Can Buy,” after decades of mal- and mis- and nonfeasance, has managed to plunge the state into near if not outright bankruptcy.
Massachusetts has the highest per-capita debt burden of any state in the nation, and it’s about to assume even more. Lot’s more. And we haven’t even yet gotten to the “Ticking Time Bomb” explosion of unfunded public employee pensions and benefits!
Not only are the inmates running the asylum — they’re preparing to burn it down!
Count on the so-called Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation — front for Fat Cat Big Business and Banking — to come up with its usual solution: Tax the average citizens even more! The voice of the amen chorus, the Boston Globe editorial elites, as would be expected are right there seconding the motion loudly.
Last year’s state revenue tax take was $1.152 billion more than fiscal 2007, a 5.8 percent increase. The Legislature spent every cent and then some. The budget it and Governor Patrick just approved for this new fiscal year totals $28.11 billion, a 4.86 percent increase over last year’s spending. It even raided the “rainy day fund” to spend more. Still not enough. So it passed another $800 million in new taxes. Still not enough. The “fulltime” Legislature is expected to approve $10 billion in borrowing before it goes home on vacation until after the November election — three months away
And now we learn even all that is still not enough: The Legislature plans to back another $2.5 billion of borrowing in our name to bail out the Mass Pike/Big Dig gross mismanagement fiasco.
We thought the most recent price tag of $15 billion for the Big Dig was ridiculous — especially since it was promised to come in under $5 billion when it was sold to the public in the mid-80s by the Dukakis administration. It was that same administration which also burdened taxpayers with the “temporary” income tax hike we’re still paying 19 years later. Back then the federal government, we were promised, would be picking up 90 percent of the cost. Initially it picked up a significant portion — until the feds recognized the state’s gross mismanagement and cut back, then cut off any additional funding. That stuck the remainder of the bill on the state to fund/finance, stuck it on taxpayers and tollpayers.
Of course the state has no money that doesn’t come out of our pockets, mine and yours and everyone else’s who works for a living.
It’s all over but for shutting off the lights. This irresponsible and unaccountable spending frenzy is now so ingrained on Bacon Hill that the pols no longer have a chance of stopping it or themselves. It’s become simply what they do.
We can no longer trust those running the state to do anything but worsen our plight. They simply don’t care to reform themselves, have no desire to recover from their spending addiction. They’ve hit bottom and are still digging the hole deeper and dragging us down into it.
Now more than ever, we citizens, we taxpayers, we voters — WE must take matters into our hands if we’re to survive as more than passive cash cows existing only for the ruling elite to milk. We must stand together and send a resounding NO MORE! We must vote YES with one voice on Question 1 in November and repeal the income tax. Not only are we saying “Not one cent more,” but “That’s it, the game is over!”
And while we’re at it, throw out every bumbling, profligate, tax-borrow-and-spend incumbent who has a challenger on the ballot.
Doing anything less than both is the act of a cash cow mooing as it’s led into the slaughterhouse.
1 comment July 19th, 2008
