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Pennsylvania Lawmakers Invite Citizens to Get on This Fiscal Crisis Thing

Either some Pennsylvania lawmakers are out of ideas for closing the state’s budget gap or they’re sick of the belly aching from the Keystone citizens because they’ve decided to put out there for the ordinary Quakers to give their suggestions for fiscal improvement.

So far there has been approximately 750 suggestions that range from consolidating school districts, “El excess management positions. 15 school districts in one county equals 15 superintendents, health care plans, IT departments, administrative departments, maintenance depts and so on” to downsizing the size of the state legislature, “downsize our legislature, there has been several articles on our size compared to other states whith [sic] smaller legislatures and much larger populations.”

Of course there are less constructive ideas such as the idea of having one huge pee party from “Gary” in Mount Joy (our bolding):

URINALYSIS for everyone who receives their salary from Tax dollars. Every tax dollar that comes out of our pocket pays for every teacher in the state, every state trooper, every state university professor, every congressman. We as taxpayers need to know that our tax dollars are not being used to fund illegal/ illicit drug use. We should have a Urinalysis for Every Teacher, every Congressman, every State worker, Every Professor of the state universities. If that is implemented, you will notice a lot of retirements/resignations. Saving the tax payers loads of money as well as stimulating the workforce because of the jobs that will need to be filled. This Is not an invasion of privacy.

EVERYONE IS ON DOPE!

And then there’s “frank” from York, PA who isn’t buying this pollution nonsense:

get rid of state car inspections & emissions testting [sic] – all the garbage about the air is all made up. And if we are the only country doing so, it proves that the goverment are liars! Yea every knows thats true

“Joe Wehner” from Pittsburgh just feels like hating on the whole process, thankyouverymuch:

Like our government, this site is a joke! They only publish dumb democrat liberal views. GOD Forbid any views that work… They won’t publish views outside of their agenda to ruin America.

But we like we said, there are some decent suggestions.

Pennsylvania website takes taxpayers’ ideas to save money [Philadelphia Inquirer]

URINALYSIS for everyone who receives their salary from Tax dollars. Every tax dollar that comes out of our pocket pays for every teacher in the state, every state trooper, every state university professor, every congressman. We as taxpayers need to know that our tax dollars are not being used to fund illegal/ illicit drug use. We should have a Urinalysis for Every Teacher, every Congressman, every State worker, Every Professor of the state universities. If that is implemented, you will notice a lot of retirements/resignations. Saving the tax payers loads of money as well as stimulating the workforce because of the jobs that will need to be filled. This Is not an invasion of privacy.

EVERYONE IS ON DOPE!

And then there’s “frank” from York, PA who isn’t buying this pollution nonsense:

get rid of state car inspections & emissions testting [sic] – all the garbage about the air is all made up. And if we are the only country doing so, it proves that the goverment are liars! Yea every knows thats true

“Joe Wehner” from Pittsburgh just feels like hating on the whole process, thankyouverymuch:

Like our government, this site is a joke! They only publish dumb democrat liberal views. GOD Forbid any views that work… They won’t publish views outside of their agenda to ruin America.

But we like we said, there are some decent suggestions.

Pennsylvania website takes taxpayers’ ideas to save money [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Double-dipping the Economic “Recovery”

Thumbnail image for tax man.jpgIn case you haven’t heard, it’s go time for the Obama administration to cover its continually-growing deficit with no sign of increased foreign investor demand for unstable and uncertain US debt. What happened to passing a health care overhaul before Christmas? And what about those 140 failed banks in 2009? And hey! What became of that $700 billion in stimulus money that was supposed to save and create bazillions of jobs?
Here’s the solution. Tax their asses.
NYT:

President Obama will try to recoup for taxpayers as much as $120 billion of the money spent to bail out the financial system, most likely through a tax on large banks, administration and Congressional officials said Monday.


In a desperate scramble to come up for cash, the administration has thrown out a couple of unpopular ideas (unpopular if you’re a banker, of course) including excessive taxes on bonuses and bizarre financial transaction taxes. Like squeezing blood from turnips, apparently these guys forget that it was less than a year and a half ago that Hank Paulson appeared on the Hill threatening full-on financial doomsday were TARP not instituted rightf*ckingnow. So much for pulling out the bazooka in his pocket.
And let us not forget that shit rolls down hill. Who do you think would ultimately be responsible for these additional monies? The banks or the idiot customers who continue to shovel out ever-increasing fees to said banks? Exactly.

Lobbyists for bankers, taken by surprise, immediately objected to any new tax. They said financial institutions had been repaying their portion of the bailout money in full, with interest. Losses from the $700 billion bailout fund — estimated to run as high as $120 billion — are expected to come from the automobile companies and their finance arms, the insurance giant American International Group and programs to avert home foreclosures, and the president is aiming to recoup that money.

I really, really hate to side with the bankers here but they are absolutely right. If retribution for the financial crisis is our goal, taxing them to death isn’t the way to achieve that. If paying our government’s bills is the goal, however, I could see how this could easily be spun into populist payback for the pain and suffering of the last 2 years.
Hate to break it to you, America, but any money potentially recouped by this genius scheme has already been spent and certainly wouldn’t result in any long term benefit to us as a country. I’d use the pay day loan analogy again but hell, isn’t it played out by now?