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- Meehan tries hard to make lemonade from lemons
- Re-published: Special Investigator Probes Possible MEDIA COURTHOUSE- Jehovah's Witnesses, Abuse Scandal
- no snitchin
- Taxi Workers, Nurses and Jobs: Big day in Philadelphia tomorrow
- So, got any plans for this weekend?
- Representative Chris Carney: Keep standing up for us, not the insurance companies
- Representative Jason Altmire: Listen to us, not the insurance companies
- 9th Ward Democrats "WEAR"N OF THE GREEN" St. Patrick's Party Fundraiser this Friday Night
No Cuts to Essential Services!
Submitted by ebrax on Wed, 02/11/2009 - 5:50pm.
The Coalition to Save the Libraries, Neighborhood Networks, and a growing coalition of community groups and labor unions are coming together to demand no cuts to essential services.
We believe that by creating a tax system where everyone pays their fare share we can avoid cuts to libraries, rec centers, fire stations, and other essential services.
The attached flyer has our demands and a menu of options to raise revenue without putting the burden on the backs of poor and working Philadelphians or small businesses.
We are encouraging labor unions and community groups to sign on and individuals to call their city council people.
This is an opportunity for all of us to come together and influence how this financial crisis gets addressed. One option is to slash crucial services. Another option is create temporary tax increases for those who can afford to pay more.
Nice flyer
and great idea to flyer the meetings. Just curious, however, why no mention on the flyer the idea of raising wage taxes with exemptions for people with low incomes? Is your thinking that's too controversial or proscriptive? Don't you want folks at the meetings to suggest those policies specifically?
Point three
on the back of the flyer is "exempt a certain amount of wages, property value and gross business receipts from taxation while raising rates." So wage taxes are included there. With the wage tax the idea is to make a small raise and exempt low wage workers. With the gross receipts tax the idea is to raise rates but exempt the first $X so that small businesses are not hurt. Same basic idea with property taxes, raise rates, but exempt the first $X of value so that people with lower value properties don't pay more.
why no mention of pew pole
a week or two ago pew published a pole that had a slight majority(but still a majority) of philadelphians wanting service cuts and not tax increases to solve budget crisis,yet it was not mentioned once on this site.certainly other poles can show different results but pew has a pretty good non partisan reputation for their poling.some thought for the majority opinion should be given when discussing diferent budget fixes.
And YPP commissioned a poll
showing dramatic difference of opinion the other way.
The issue isn't so much whether people would trade off service cuts before tax hikes, but at what point does a service cut become untenable. I'm pretty sure that when anyone in the City is even talking about laying off thousands of police officers and firefighters and closing dozens of libraries then we've gotten to the point where we're not discussing trade-offs but, frankly, some sort of breakdown on the social contract.
What people need to establish right now is, in this time of crisis, what are the essential services that we'll stand by and what will it take to ensure that the infrastructure of a society that guarantees a basic standard of quality life for Philadelphians is protected at all costs?
No offense, but I'll stick with Pew
Despite a questionable release in the past like when Pew recommended that 30th Street Station be renamed in honor of Ben Franklin (not that credit is not due, but I think enough credit has been bestowed by now!), I'm going to take Pew's research over a poll commissioned by YPP most of the time. A non-partisan research foundation has a lot more on the line to be right than a couple of political bloggers who may or may not be trying to self-justify their positions. It's nothing personal, it's just sound opinion of evidence sources.
Having helped pay for the YPP poll
and having wished there had been enough time to have made Pew pay for that one, I am glad Pew ended up doing one. My reading of their press release was that it was pretty inconclusive though.
No offense taken - though I supported YPP's poll
But that's not the point. The point in responding to ian is that when we're pitting libraries against fire stations, we're not in a discussion about tradeoffs, but about whether City government is going to ensure basic safety and a minimum quality standard of life. So while Pew might be non-partisan, and might have put out a poll that I too wouldn't quibble with, I just don't think we're even remotely on the same page in terms of discussing what's at stake. It's not my piece of the pie I'm fighting for; I'm wondering what's happened to the role of government when they've raised the rhetoic about core services to this level.
What I don't understand about the service cuts
I don't understand how the relationship between the respective cuts of 10, 20, and 30% with regard to the level of service. Nutter has instead chosen to just list numbers stating how much service would be lost in each doomsday scenario, but I don't think we've been told how they've come to these numbers! Without a transparent process, there is an inherent conflict of interest. Ramsey doesn't want to lose his force, so he could be making overly conservative estimates to scare people away from his department. Likewise, Ayers may be doing the same. We need transparency to make sure that the right decisions can be made in order to optimize the public good. While this is easier said than done, it's at least good to consider.
"I don't think we've been told how they've come to these numbers
that's because we haven't.
I spoke to councilman green's office months ago and they told me that the mayor refused to give them actual numbers.
the longer this goes on, the more the mayor breeds distrust. he is emptying the well of political capital and good will.
Ahem
I think that one of the underticket races this year is for Controller. Some would argue, in fact some candidates for that office would argue, that detailed budget information - not just for each department as a whole but within departments (how much each one spends on maintaining their fleet of cars, for one exmaple) should be public information. That the City Controller should be a bully pulpit to make sure every dollar spent is well used by putting that information in the public's hands.
Many of the elected row offices it could be argued serve no purpose as an elected office other than as a place to park ward leaders and family members in jobs just outside of mayoral fiscal oversight and civil service rules. A Controller's office, however, that acted as a truly independent and out-spoken fiscal watchdog would be a real boon for a public that really wants to look at the real numbers in this budget crisis.
Just sayin'.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Great flyer.
How are these things to be done in a timely manner?
Joshua Vincent
www.urbantools.org
www.ourcommonwealth.org
Phree Philly