Mayor of Baltimore vs Me - an email battle

Email exchange between me and the Communist Mayor of Baltimore

As a student of finance with a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, I can assure you that your plan to increase the cost of doing business in the city will not increase revenues as you claim below. In fact, they will decrease revenues just as Governor O’Malley’s millionaire’s tax did. You see, most people will try to get the most for their dollar and if they have to drive to Baltimore County in the case of the beverage tax; or leave the state in the case of the millionaire’s tax, they will. This means that not only will you not get the beverage tax, you will also lose out on the sales tax charged on any taxable items in the purchase. In addition to this loss, the owner will lose revenue from repeat customers and will be forced to lay off employees in the process. Because of that you will lose Baltimore’s share of the state income tax for the now terminated employees and the store. This may drive the store owner out of Baltimore City and possible the state thanks to the aforementioned millionaire’s tax. This will cause the city and state to lose all of the corporate taxes associated with a Maryland business, property taxes, et al and give the city yet another vacant building collecting dust. Those stores who stay in business with a reduces customer base will be forced to raise their taxes. The only people who will actually be hurt are those who cannot afford leave. So in reality, you are actually raising taxing those residents who are poor and living paycheck to paycheck.

If you really are concerned about helping the city become revitalized, perhaps you should talk to former NYC Mayor Rudi Giuliani who managed to revitalize a much bigger city that was is a similar situation some time ago. Or perhaps you can take a page from the President Regan/Milton Friedman economic strategy of lowering taxes in order to bring in businesses. It worked great in the 80’s; it will work great now. There is no reason why Baltimore, with its strategic location and storied history needs to be this close to the edge of despair but then again, they once said the same thing about Rome. The Caesars ignored the warning signs and the history, will you?

Also, why is it that Baltimore Mayors always decide to cut the police, fire department and other areas you are actually supposed to take care of, yet the parties seem to get bigger and bigger every year? Perhaps we need a mayor who understand what most families do. You first fund the necessities and if there is anything left over, then you fund the entertainment.

Bruce

Baltimore, MD

From: Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake [mailto:mayor@baltimorecity.gov]
Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:34 PM
To: BRUCE NOWAKOWSKI
Subject: RE: A new beverage tax hurts those who can least afford it

Dear Mr. Nowakowski:

Thank you for your email regarding Baltimore City’s Fiscal Year 2011 budget and the proposed beverage tax, which I shared with the Director of Finance and senior staff. I appreciate the concern you have for the future of our city, and I thank you for taking the time to share your concerns and suggestions with me. Your opinion is important to me, and I hope that you will carefully consider and support my Comprehensive Plan to address this unprecedented fiscal crisis. All public comments will be individually reviewed as we move through the annual budget process.

An Historic Challenge:

Together, we face the worst fiscal crisis in the City’s modern history. Due to the Great Recession, our revenues have been hit hard while costs continue to grow. The gap between the cost of maintaining services and our expected revenue is an unprecedented $121 million.

$121 million is equal to half of the police force, the entire firefighter force, or the combined budgets of Health, Housing, Libraries, and Recreation & Parks. It is equal to a 36 cent increase in the property tax rate. If we don’t act to reform Police and Fire Pensions, the deficit will explode to $185 million. The City’s major revenue declines and cost increases include:

• Highway User Revenue (HUR), which funds road repair and resurfacing, is down more than $100 million (45%) since Fiscal 2007, including $60 million taken by the State to balance its Fiscal 2010 and 2011 budgets.

• Income Tax revenue has fallen nearly $31 million (12%) since its peak in Fiscal 2008 due to continued high unemployment.

• The City’s pension contributions and employee retiree healthcare costs have increased by $28.3 million and $23.3 million, respectively, over last year. Without legislation to reform the Fire and Police Retirement System, pension costs alone would grow by another $64 million.

Cutting Costs First:

In order to confront this fiscal crisis, we need to do what families are doing everyday: be realistic and honest about what we can afford and focus funding on core services that produce results. City government must tighten its belt and get more value for every single tax dollar. I started this process first by cutting the Mayor’s Office Budget by more than 10%, including a 13% reduction in salary expenditures.

For the first time this year, the City established a new “Outcome Budgeting” process in which City agencies competed for every dollar based on measurable results and efficiency. Outcome Budgeting promotes innovation and accountability. Priority is given to targeted, evidence-based services.

To preserve as much funding as possible for direct services to citizens, my budget will include $36 million in general savings by extending the Fiscal 2010 furlough plan, freezing pay increases, and implementing a new prescription drug employee cost-sharing plan. These savings ask much from our hardworking City employees, but will prevent the abolishment of up to 700 positions.

Making Tough Choices:

Even after tightening our belt, without some additional revenue, the City faces the prospect of closing seven fire companies, laying off sworn police officers, grounding police helicopters, shuttering dozens of recreation centers and swimming pools, slashing street repair and resurfacing, and abolishing 941 positions, 606 of them currently filled, according to the Preliminary Budget.

Some of the cuts we would be forced to make are simply unacceptable, especially those to police, fire, recreation, infrastructure, and health. We didn’t create this problem, but we have to solve it and do what is right for Baltimore.

A Way Forward:

To address this historic crisis, I developed a Comprehensive Plan to balance the City’s budget without drastically cutting essential city services or raising property taxes. The Comprehensive Plan would close the $121 million budget deficit with roughly $70 million in spending reductions (60%) and $50 million in new diversified revenue (40%) to fill critical service gaps outlined in the Fiscal Year 2011 Preliminary Budget. The Comprehensive Plan, including individual revenue proposals, requires City Council approval.

The primary objectives of the Comprehensive Plan are:

• Restore critical service gaps in public safety, infrastructure, recreation, and health.
• Avoid real estate tax increases on city homeowners and businesses.
• Balance the burden among residents, non-residents, businesses, and non-profits.
• Provide citizens choices to avoid new taxes and promote environmental goals.
• Prevent up to 355 layoffs.

The Comprehensive Plan will balance the City's budget, fully fund our obligation to public schools, maintain every single police officer and firefighter, reduce fire company closures, keep all community libraries open, and fund afterschool programs. A smarter, more efficient government and a diversified revenue stream will put Baltimore on sounder fiscal footing for years to come.

If all of the measures I am proposing are approved by the City Council, the following critical services that are currently underfunded in the Preliminary Budget will be restored by supplemental appropriations, with public safety, recreation, infrastructure, and health receiving top priority:

Public Safety

• Fully restore sworn police positions and maintain funding for the aviation, marine, and mounted units.
• Restore all fire suppression positions and reduce rotating fire company closures from four in Fiscal 2010 to three in Fiscal 2011.

Infrastructure

• Restore funding to resurface 200 lane miles (65 more than Preliminary Plan) and maintain the current 48-hour pothole repair lead time. These services are critical to fix the damage caused by the historic snowstorms.

Recreation

• Restore funding for recreation centers to the Fiscal 2010 level. All centers will remain open through the summer while a long-term recreation center plan is developed. Current recreation center funding is not sufficient to provide appropriate staffing, programming, and facilities at 55 locations. The goal of the long-term plan will be a smaller network of high-quality recreation centers that serve the entire City, with emphasis on neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of at-risk youth.
• Restore funding to open all swimming pools for six to seven weeks.
• Restore funding for twice-a-week trash collection in the parks, regular playground maintenance, and ball field preparation.
• Restore funding for youth football, lacrosse, track and field, boxing, tennis, golf, and fishing.

Health

• Restore funding for seven school-based health centers.
• Restore case management services for 5,400 clients through Baltimore Healthcare Access, addiction services for 85 homeless adults, and full funding for the Staying Alive drug overdose intervention and needle exchange programs.
• Restore the Senior Recreation Program.
• Restore funding to the Fiscal 2010 level to maintain animal control officers and shelter services.

Other Services

• Restore funding for vacant property demolition and stabilization.
• Restore Youthworks funding to the Fiscal 2010 level, adding 250 job placements to the Preliminary Plan level.
• Restore bulk trash pickup.
• Restore 12 Special Traffic Enforcement Officers to cover special events and emergency needs.
• Restore senior center staffing.
• Restore 311 call center hours to the current level.
• Restore public building maintenance.

These specific restorations total approximately $41.5 million and prevent up to 355 layoffs. I look forward to working with the City Council to determine how the additional $8 million in proposed revenue could be used most effectively. High on my list are important services that keep the city clean, including restoring graffiti removal crews, vacant property boarding and cleaning, mechanical street sweeping, and corner trash can collection, all of which are reduced in the Preliminary Budget.

Be Part of the Process:

Just like any family, a financial crisis of this magnitude has the power to rip us apart or bring us closer together. We must choose the constructive path of working together to fill these critical gaps in services to do what is necessary for our great city. Please work with me to address this unprecedented challenge.

The Comprehensive Plan requires City Council approval, and I need your support to protect our priorities and do what is right for Baltimore. Please contact your City Council member to share your thoughts as the budget process continues.

Visit www.baltimorecitycouncil.com to obtain the contact information for your City Council representative. All detailed budget documents are posted online at www.baltimorecity.gov.

Moving Baltimore Forward:

If the City Council approves the Comprehensive Plan, Baltimore can continue to make progress on core priorities, including public safety and public education, without raising property taxes. We can increase efforts to target Baltimore's most violent and dangerous criminals, reduce gun violence, and invest in smart crime-camera technology. We can reduce closures of fire companies to decrease response times. We can fully fund our City's obligation to public education. We can keep our community libraries open and fund afterschool programs that work. We can improve our network of recreation centers.

I've had the great honor of serving as mayor of Baltimore for just a few short months, and despite this unprecedented fiscal crisis, I know that Baltimore's best days are ahead. Baltimore will not be defined by crisis and cuts. We won't allow it. Instead, we will be defined by how we confront this crisis together, with honesty and shared sacrifice, so that our city can emerge better, safer, and stronger.

Sincerely,

Stephanie Rawlings-Blake

Mayor

City of Baltimore

Obama the Scary

Is it just me or does the thought of a “President Obama” scare the living hell out of everyone else too? This latest escapade with “Joe the Plumber” is just the latest proof that this man should not be anywhere near any elected seat of office, much less the most powerful position in the world. For those of you living under a rock or who use the Main Stream Media as your “trusted news source”, Barack Obama after a speech went up to a man who identified himself as “Joe the Plumber” and asked him if he had any questions. Joe basically asked Obama why he thought it was fair and Constitutional for the government to take his hard earned money from him and give it to people who have not earned it. Obama’s response was that he wanted to “spread the wealth around” which can easily be translated to the famous Karl Marx quote, “From each according to his ability to each according to his need”. This is basically a scam that politicians have been using since time began in which the leader uses money he levies through taxation to buy support from the general public that always leads to an ever increasing amount of property and power going to the government and an ever decreasing amount of our inalienable freedoms being “granted” by the government. It has failed every time it has been tried, from Ancient Rome; to the first government at the Plymouth Colony to the Soviet Union and even the Socialist Countries of the EU (most of whom had 20% unemployment and a much lower standard of living as a result). Starting on Friday and now this morning (Saturday) I have been hearing Obama on the news channels saying that anyone who does not willing give up to 70% of their income in taxes (add it up and don’t forget sales tax and all of the hidden taxes imbedded in the price of the goods you purchase) to this power buying scheme of his is selfish. Selfish?!?! Excuse me Mr. Obama; I do not know if you are reading this but if one of your handlers is and passes it on to you please tell me WHO THE HECK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!!!!!????? To tell me that I am selfish because I do not want to give up an ever increasing amount of my hard earned property so that you can give it to someone who hasn’t done anything to earn it in the hopes that you can bribe them into voting to keep your sorry butt in office is not only a slap in my face but also a slap in the face of everyone who has ever sacrificed for the sake of this country from Washington; Jefferson and their supporters through Lincoln to my Grandfather’s generation and even this generation whether it be those who just risked some money to those who sacrificed their lives to ensure that America became and continues to be the greatest country that GOD has granted us on Earth. I am not selfish. No someone who works hard for their property and merely wants to decide how to best dispose of it beyond what the government truly needs for its Constitutionally mandated duties (i.e. the military; roads; and keeping the border secured) is not selfish. That is the very definition of someone who is humbly going about their business. The definition of selfish is someone who takes what they have not EARNED and therefore is not theirs in order to use it for their own purposes, including the buying of votes!!! BARACK H. OBAMA, YOU SIR ARE THE SELFISH ONE, NOT ME!!! I donate money to the causes I deem are worthy and that is my right, not something that you or anyone else should dictate. Further, although at this time I am not “rich” by today’s standards, I hope to be one day. I will be opening up my own small business once I am ready (and by ready, I am also using who is in the White House as a factor so you may delay this should you cheat your way to victory with your ACORN buddies). When I do open up my business, I plan on giving a few people some money or “spreading the wealth around” as you put it, in exchange for them “spreading some labor and mental capabilities around” in return. See that is how employment in this FREE MARKET economy works. One person has something that they have an abundance of (i.e. labor hours and ability) and a need for something (i.e. money to purchase their wants; needs and desires). They seek out someone who has the opposite problem in that they have some excess money yet have a shortage of labor hours and/or ability. These two people get together and they decide to trade with each other what each has in abundance in exchange for what they need. The employer gets the employees extra labor in exchange for his excess money and both are happy. This system has always worked well until people like you step in and mess it up. You come in and give those who need money but have an excess of time on their hands money. Therefore they have no need to exchange some of their time for this money. Therefore their time becomes more valuable to them and they require more money before they are willing to give it up. When that happens the person who still needs the hours will spend more to get them but in turn has to raise the price of the product that was produced with those hours (because cost went up). This means that the person they are selling it to have to pay more for it; which means that this person has to charge more for the purpose they are using it for or do with less. Either way it’s bad for the economy. Obama are bad for the economy and the rest of the country for that matter. People need to read the Federalist Papers as well as the Book of Revelations and then listen to you before they vote Tuesday.

Orwell revisted

I was just working on some school work, which involved the discussion of critical thinking and ethics. Somehow the topic turned to politics, as it is prone to do when one talks about ethics.
This got me thinking, as it is prone to do. I remembered reading the book, Animal Farm my George Orwell as a teenager and likened it to the modern political season.
For those of you who have not read it, why not? It is a book about the Soviet revolutoin in Russia specifcally, but also one of the major American political parties as well. Here is a link to the Orwell website, which has the complete book availble online for free. http://www.george-orwell.org/Animal_Farm/0.html
Now that you have read the book (or re-read it). I will offer a breid synopsis of the book and you tell me what it reminds you of in terms of modern American Politics.
In the book, the animals led by the Pigs lead a revolution against their Human Overlords who represented the Kings and Dictators of old. As the book progresses, things start out well, the Pigs become the governing class, and send the children to school, they create a Constitution and proclaim that every animal should contribute what they can and receive only what they need (Marx' philosphy each according to their needs....).
Eventaully the Pigs garnered more and more control. The children all grown up turned on their parents, the horse (which represented the blue collar class) was too weak and tired to fight back and the Constitution became a "living and breathing" document which the leaders (the Pigs) changed to suit their needs.
In the end, the Pigs eventually became no better then the Humans and enslaved their "commrades" in the animal farm.
Now think about it. Who in the American political spectrum clims to serve the "blue collar" class? Who beleives in each according to their needs? and Public schooling?
If you read the language of the "Pigs" doesn't it remind you of the Clintons specifically, but also the Democrat leadership in general?
Scary isn't it? Think about that the first week in November 2008 when you pull those levers (push those buttons, punch those chads or however you need to vote). and remember this.
The two Presidents that are most thought of in modern American politics are Ronald Regan (the Republican) and Bill Clinton (the Democrat).
Ronald Regan's opinion on the power and greatness of America can be summarized by these quotes, "Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty" and, "Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States." both of which can be found at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/ronald_reagan.html
Clinton's opnion and legacy can best be summarized by these quotes... Well, actually I couldn't find anything memorable that they said so I will remind you of what they did (or tried to do). Pass the largest tax increas in the hisotry of America, try to take over Healthcare, try to strengthen the government control over schools, the airwaves and toilets.