(Above is an informative article).
Rochester faces a $1.7M budget hole in 2009 and $3.9M in 2010, 2009 is
being patched with a variety of "temporary fixes". Both annual shortfalls are
attributed to "un allotments" by the State.
Every farmer knows a calf enthusiastically gravitates to its mother's
teet. The calf will remain on the teet until the cow runs dry, or the farmer
intervenes.
In the case of Rochester, the cow (Minnesota) has run dry, and the farmer
(Governor Pawlenty) has cut off the milk supply.
The problem is compounded in that Minnesota has been on the "teet" of the
Federal Government, and that teet is also running dry.
The biggest issue is that the teet to which the Federal Government is
addicted, the taxpayer, now finds 65% of its own milk providers, the taxpayers,
are unable to provide any milk at all; with fewer contributing each day.
So Rochester best figure out how to make do utilizing its own receipts. If
a local service is not required to maintain life itself, consider
discontinuing it; if it is required to maintain life, such as police and fire,
figure out how to do more with less.
The teet at all levels is drying up. Rochester needs to get busy figuring
out how to run its government at a far lesser cost. Give up the teet.
Don Flassing
Advisory Board
"Cash for Clunkers" Successful?
I panned this program on the Editorial Page before the program started,
with considerable criticism from readers. So where do we stand?
The program has just been increased three fold. We and our grandchildren
will now be expected to pay additional billions in future taxes to finance
these trade-ins. They are not "free".
Taxpayers have prior given $25 billion in bailouts to GM and Chrysler. In
the process bond and stockholders lost everything, while GM is now owned
by the unions and the government. The Chrysler money was mostly poured down
a European "rat hole".
A small minority participating in the "Clunker" program are buying GM or
Chrysler products. Ford, the only domestic company without government
interference, has sold its fair share of cars. Over half the cars purchased are
foreign. While this may provide jobs for some union workers in the US, the
profits, which are the basis of permanent business growth, go to Japan or
elsewhere.
Those using the program, are in large part "next year's buyers", simply
reducing future purchases at the expense of taxpayers.
Each car requires 20 pages of government paperwork. Processing has been
inordinately slow. Whether all the cars actually qualify, and exactly what
is happening to all of them is less than certain.
What we do know is that hundreds of employees have been hired by the
government, at a cost of millions, to "manage" the program. Fat chance they
won't remain on the payroll to unwind all the bureaucratic mess long after the
program ends.
Somehow this program has all the earmarks of Social Security, AMTRAK,
Fannie, Freddie, Medicare, the Post Office.....always broke and needing
taxpayer money ad infinitum.
I can hardly wait for government run healthcare, which given the same
"success", will cost $3-5 trillion instead of the projected $1-2 trillion? And
the paperwork.........
Whether you have traded your clunker in, or you and your children are just
paying for someone else's clunker, characterizing this program as a success
defies reality.
Don Flassing
In a message dated 8/6/2009 2:52:53 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
sellnow@postbulletin.com writes:
Here's our editorial topic list for today...
Editorial topics for discussion:
* School district reinstates most of the teachers who had been given pink
slips. * Federal stimulus money being infused into the economy through research
grants. * Cash for clunkers programs has been successful. * Students targeted for help did better on state tests.
Every year we read that the school district will not renew the contracts of xxx teachers due to budget constraints, then when the dust settles we read that yyy of those will actually get offers. I understand that this is necessary, the district cannot send a contract until they are certain that the funds are available and due to the state system that is not known until later in the year. The article today (Wednesday) on this is fine from a human interest perspective, that is, xx teachers will not get laid off, from a fiscal standpoint the story misses the point, why didn't the board get information on the net full time equivalent teachers, administrators, support staff, etc that will be working this next year. If the 78 positions that were not offered contracts are still vacant that is important, the fact that other staff did not renew their contracts thus allowing their position to be offered to one of those who did not initially get an offer is a different story.
— Ray Schmitz
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