I read a very thought provoking and rather well thought out post today at DemConWatch. With the burst of the housing bubble, multiple industry bailouts, and loss of jobs, government at every level is looking at cutting services and raising taxes. But which services to cut? Which taxes to raise? Taxes are, after all, a necessary evil as our government needs to get funding from somewhere.

That article asked for comments from the readers, and I am doing the same. If taxes have to be raised, or services cut, which do you feel are necessary? Below is the comment I posted on their site. Just a little setup: the commenter before me posted a list of things like tax on gasoline, taxing incomes of the wealthy, and sin taxes. Here is my comment:

I heard something today...

The sin taxes might actually be detrimental to a budget in the long run. When they impose a sin tax, it is usually a little more about changing behavior rather than making money. In Virginia, Tim Kaine is proposing doubling the tax on cigarettes in order to offset the cost imposed on medicare and medicaid when smokers develop emphysema/lung cancer. If they didn't smoke, though, chances are that they would live much longer. We would have many more people living many more years and the cost of general health care for all of them, even if all they required were routine checkups and treatment for minor illneses, would equal more than the outlay under the system where individual freedoms may mean that people choose to live a little more recklessly.
As far as what services to cut? I agree with Karen-Anne in that there is a whole lot of waste that needs to be cut before any essential services lose a penny. They should look at expense accounts and future contracts, and they should definitely look for more efficient ways to govern before raising any taxes or cutting any services. If our leaders tell us that sacrifice is essential, they need to set that ball rolling by setting an example.

In the business that I am in, I have seen expenses in certain areas swing to the good by large amounts simply by stressing to the employees the importance of "best practices". I have seen the same accounts swing back terribly when those same practices are allowed to fall by the wayside. The difference? Better management led to the good swings while poor management led to the bad. Our leaders, no matter what the level of government, are being paid to manage their local/state/federal governments. It is time they start doing so.

Paul Nawrocki, aka the Sandwich Board man, aka Anti-Joe the Plumber seems to think that walking around the streets of Manhattan with a sign that says "Almost Homeless" will net him an executive position. How's that working out for you, Paul? How about taking an example from James Williamson.

All he wants is a job, but James Williamson and his fresh MBA diploma aren't having any luck. So the 25-year-old is taking advantage of a captive audience - the one in the back of his yellow cab.

He's posted his résumé on the divider behind the front seats, in the hope that one of his customers might be the employer of his dreams.

Mr. Williamson gets it. He has the tools necessary to succeed in this world. He realizes that the American Dream is not something that is handed to you, but something that you strive every day to achieve. He is taking opportunity instead of hoping that someone will take pity on him as they stumble across him on a busy Manhattan street. He realizes that he may not have the job he wants right now,

"I was hoping the economy would be better by the time I got out," he said. "I was hoping for an entry-level job. I was just trying to get my foot in the door. I was confident with my degree, and then after the first month I started saying, 'Oh, maybe I'll take customer-service jobs.' "

but he has the tools he needs to get ahead. He is not waiting around while looking for his opportunity, either. He realizes that some kind of job will at least help pay the bills, so he drives his taxi around NYC making contacts all day long. He hasn't had a real hit yet, although one patron has offered him some advice on his resume.

Good Luck, Mr. Williamson, I am rooting and praying for you.

This guy is the anti-Joe the Plumber. His name is Paul Nawrocki, the Sandwich Board Man, and he is the face of Unemployed America.

Recently, Barack Obama released details of his plan to create 2.5 million new jobs. Think along the lines of using a tire pressure gauge to stop global warming. Let's see if maybe the former toy company exec would be interested:

First, he wants to replace the heating and air conditioning systems of government buildings with more efficient models. In order for Paul Nawrocki to do this he would have to be retrained from executive to HVAC repairman. I just don't see it.

Second, he wants to replace the light bulbs in all the government buildings with fluorescent squiggly bulbs. I just can't see Paul Nawrocki being a janitor/maintenance man.

Note: His O-liness claims that the preceding items would save the government "billions of dollars". I have an idea. Let's get all of the banks, mortgage companies, credit card companies, automobile manufacturers, and state governments to use fans in the summer and to wear an extra sweater in the winter. We could be out of the Bailout Crisis in the span of two years!

Third, Obama says that millions of new jobs would also come from "the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s."

Notice that he says, "millions of jobs" for the part about the infrastructure. For a plan that generates 2.5 million jobs that would mean a half million hvac technicians and janitors and a two million member road crew. Can you see Paul Nowraki in any of these jobs?

How bad is this? A 'sign' of the times?




Does this guy really think that he is going to get another executive job by walking around all day with a sandwich board? The people that do things like hire executives are way up high in the skyscrapers seen in the video. Rest assured that, were it not for CNN, they would have never seen him. Of course, if we don't bail out the auto industry, we'll be seeing lots of these sandwich board execs milling around the streets in Detroit.