Time to Cut Spending, Taxes, Failed Democrat Programs
Bonus! Liberal Letter to the Editor Responding to this article At Bottom! Double Bonus: Op Ed by Westborough History Teacher at bottom
By Len Mead
November 20, 2009
Ho Hum -- In a recession Westborough property taxes will be up $399 or 6% . .. . . .while inflation is non-existent and housing values drop. Does that bother you, brother?
Wait! Our Democrat governor campaigned on getting us property tax relief. But -- wait again -- our Democrat kleptokrat "representatives" just approved raising every tax they could think of, keeping 
more of our monies and cutting "local aid" for our schools and public safety. How can that be?
Well, maybe Democrat Obama's "stimulus" program of almost a $1 Trillion with $4 billion shoved into our state will help turn things around. Except -- well, nobody seems able to define any NEW jobs -- but some can point to thousands of public sector jobs "saved."
Where growth and wealth is created in the private sector, unemployment is up over 10%. Only government jobs have grown. Does THAT bother you, brother?
Fortunately, Americans are finally waking up to what is causing our recession, higher taxes and the misery of growing unemployment. The causes are failed government programs, Democrat tax hikes and uncontrolled Democrat spending.
Yeah, yeah, Republicans can take some of the spending blame under Bush and the first bogus "stimulus" spending program. But the current Democrat $1 Trillion spending deficits and socialist takeovers of our capitalist structure, our banks, our autos and now potentially our heathcare and our lives makes the Bush fiscal mistakes chump change by comparison.
In eleven months the gap between Obama's strongly approve/disapprove index has dropped to minus 10% "strongly disapprove" -- the fastest approval/disapproval drop of any American president in history. Why? Because fortunately, Dear Reader, freedom loving Americans are recognizing that his Democrat programs are destroying our country.
Let me just point out a few irritating aspects of Obamacare -- the proposed government take-over of the greatest healthcare system in the world. The 1,900 page bill (called the "worst in history" by the Wall Street Journal) passed the house and-- God Help Us -- is now before our senate.
Recently deceased Democrat Senator Kennedy wrote into the bill that elected federal government officials are exempt --don't have to join --but unwashed citizens must. The proposal now includes fines and imprisonment for citizens resisting it. And it eliminates tax inflation indexing for "the rich" as defined by faceless, un-elected bureaucrats. One of Reagan's growth stimulating changes was to index taxes to inflation eliminating tax increases to government caused just by inflation. Do any of these Democrat proposals bother you, brother?
Let's quickly try to find how successful past government programs have been. Social Security -- bankrupt after 74 years. Our post office - broke after 234 years. "Cash for Clunkers" -- broke in one year after destroying hundreds of thousands of cheap running cars people starting out could afford and replacing them with mostly higher priced Japanese cars at a $3 billion taxpayer cost.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac government mortgage programs -- broke -- and so mismanaged by Democrats who forced banks to make loans to people unqualified to repay them (in the name of "affordable housing,") that the damage caused the collapse of our banking industry. $1 trillion "War on Poverty" -- lost. Enough! I'll spare you more examples.
You get the picture. So far, our free enterprise system has withstood these government failures and the wealth destruction taxes confiscated to pay for them have caused. But frightened, angry citizens are finally realizing that the private sector cannot stand much more of these Democrat government assaults and failures.
When this publication reported October 19th that our local Westborough Advisory Finance Committee approved every spending proposal to be presented at our Town Meeting including the tax-hiking $30 million Safety Complex and tax hikes on meals and hotels, I wrote the chair asserting that these recommendations were most disappointing to me. I suggested that in this recession, now was the time to restrain spending and control tax growth.
I continued, "Your committee's recommendation to gouge our hotel industry and restaurants with higher local taxes is truly offensive and destructive, in my view. One would have to question the value of your committee if one is a taxpayer. For years I have observed your committee taking hours questioning our town departments about pennies and dimes while budget busting labor contracts bankrupting our town seem to escape any criticism or comment. Why exist if all you recommend is more spending and higher taxes?"
The prompt response I received from the chairperson as an individual explained that the committee spent long hours meeting and that such issues were complex and multi-faceted -- but that, "Finally, I fully support anyone’s right to speak but personally do not appreciate incivility or unfounded attacks."
Fortunately, friends, our new Town Manager is actively looking for ways to control spending growth and eliminate failed local programs. He succeeded in Sturbridge. When he succeeds here, and voters pull the Republican levers in a landslide next election, we'll start digging our way out of this economic disaster. That's when taxes will be cut, failed Democrat spending will be slashed and
the private sector will start creating jobs and grow again.
Waite: We are the government By Eric Waite/GUEST COLUMNIST Fri Dec 11, 2009, 03:29 PM EST
WESTBOROUGH - As an 8th grade history teacher I get the opportunity to help my students learn about the United States Constitution. The culminating activity is one in which we hold a new convention with the goal of coming up with ideas on how to form an even more perfect union. The conversations often coalesce around a central dilemma formed as an awkwardly worded question: We the people, or we the problem? Last month, a column by Len Mead published in the Westborough News (“Time to cut spending, taxes, failed Democrat programs” – Nov. 20) made me think of these debates. The red thread I see running through Mr. Mead’s article is one in which he is not sure whether the people can be trusted. He refers to the “faceless, unelected bureaucrats,” as if the millions who toil to help run this country are not our neighbors, our former classmates and taxpayers themselves.
The president has the ability to appoint about 3,000 bureaucrats – individuals who love their country regardless of party affiliation and have ideas on how to get to the same place my students are heading during our debates. There are times when their ideas are different than mine, but I trust that they are doing their best. Do some of these government employees fail in their efforts? Are some corrupt and indifferent to those that they are supposed to serve? Is there waste in the system? Is it difficult to fire employees that are inept, and are those employees shuffled around instead of dealt with? The answer to all of those questions is yes. But just as that is true in the public sector, it is true in the other institutions of our society. Any organization that has people working in it will have the problems inherent in human nature.
What bothers me is the idea that the decisions that are being made that one person agrees with are wise and noble and just and the ones he or she doesn’t agree with are labeled poor and anti-American, crafted by “faceless, unelected bureaucrats.” Here is an example of what I mean: former President George W. Bush and the Republican controlled Congress decided to cut taxes. It was the platform he ran on in 2000. He was elected and he pushed this plan through Congress. When cautioned about the fallacy of cutting leading to greater revenue to pay for all of the things that our government does that we demand of it as a sovereign people, Vice President Dick Cheney chimed in that what Reagan proved is that deficits don’t matter. It is not that they don’t matter in an economic sense; they do and it is the interest in that debt – hundreds of billions of dollars a year – that has hampered this administration as it will hamper the next. Mr. Cheney’s point was that they don’t matter in an electoral sense. These tax cuts primarily befitted the wealthiest Americans – a move that contributed to a doubling of the national debt in Bush’s eight years.
To put that in perspective, keep in mind that it took from the founding of the republic under President George Washington to the end of Bill Clinton’s term for the national debt to grow to five trillion dollars. In the next eight years it went from five trillion to ten trillion.
The point of my above story is not counter Mr. Mead’s vilification of the Democrats by doing the same to the Republicans (okay, I guess I did that a little, but now I have that out of my system). My point here is to say that the concluding story he told is much more hopeful than it comes across. Like hundreds of Westborough residents, I was at the Special Town Meeting that discussed the need for a $30 million dollar public safety complex. I read the warrant, listened to the town employees and residents on the issue, and cast my ballot at the appointed time. The people then spoke and voted against this expenditure – is this not an example of democracy at work? I highly doubt, despite what Mr. Mead wrote, that every single recommendation made by the Advisory Finance Committee is in support of “more spending and higher taxes.” I also highly doubt that the pulling of Republican levers instead of Democratic one will really be an answer to the problem.
I believe that people often operate in their own self-interest. This is something the framers of the Constitution believed and they set up a system of government with that in mind. When taxpayers are promised an immediate deduction in their taxes (without a corresponding reduction in services that they benefit from) they will support that. It is understandable and thus we get back to my opening point:
We are the government.
The country we have, the world we created, for better or worse, has been shaped not by shiftless individual or politicians but by the countless collective decisions we the people have made. My students, over the course of the debate, come to that conclusion. We do not wallow there in the swamp of self-pity long though. I remind them that they must become the change they seek.
The country is now facing huge problems, huge deficits, two wars, climate change, a growing gap between rich and poor, the failure to remember, as FDR said, that we are “the descendants of immigrants and revolutionaries,” and that if we want to remain the land of the free, we must be the home of the brave. Before I cast slings and arrows at whomever is currently in charge, keeping in mind that I will agree with some of their decisions and not with others, and I will not think that once some other group of rascals are in power, all will be well with the world. Instead, I keep what Thomas Merton once wrote in mind: “The intellect is constantly being blinded and perverted by the end and aims of passion, and the evidence it presents to us with such a show of impartiality and objectivity is fraught with interest and objectivity.”