Rewarding Failure Is Their Plan
by Anthony J. Oleck
Letter to the Editor in the Daily Local
Why is it that with all the bright economic minds we can muster, the best plan to fix the economy is one that rewards businesses who have failed at the expense of those who have succeeded? Or one that supports the real estate speculators or those who lived beyond their means at the expense of those who managed their finances prudently? And why do we think that creating short-term government jobs or handing out bigger welfare checks will get us out of this mess?
Government stimulus and government-created jobs are a Band-aid. Once the road is paved and the bridge is fixed that job goes away. Where are the new Microsofts or Apple Computers going to come from? Nothing is being done to stimulate the growth and investment in small business.
Our corporate taxes are the highest in the world, if you want to stimulate business and get real growth in the job market you need to lower those taxes to unleash the power of capital markets. Corporations don’t pay taxes – we pay those corporate taxes as well as all the other taxes levied upon us. Every corporation packages its cost in the cost of its product, we pay those costs when we buy the product. It just makes us feel better to think corporations are carrying that ball for us. They are not, we are taxing ourselves when we raise corporate taxes.
We are now in the process of bailing out banks, CEOs, and boards of directors of those banks that were run into the ground by gross mismanagement and greed. We are doing the same with our failed business model in the Detroit auto industry. So our answer to this economic catastrophe is to reward failure at the expense of those who ran and continue to run successful businesses. We will create infrastructure jobs that will eventually go away, we will grow government jobs and we will pay the generous pensions and medical benefits that go with those jobs for the rest of our lives.
Taxes will go up as a result of the ever-increasing span of government. And finally we will send tax rebate checks to people who don’t pay income taxes – a better word for that is welfare.
So this is their plan: reward failure, increase government and expand welfare. Folks, we are heading for a bigger problem than this country faced in 1929.
Tell Your Politician Not To Sip The COLA
by Tania Ciolko
Letter to the Editor in the North East Times
With the state of Pennsylvania facing a $2 billion budget deficit this fiscal year and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter shortening the yearly Mummers Parade and trying to close fire stations and libraries due to budgetary shortfalls, I was heartened to learn of one elected official recognizing the seriousness of this economic disaster.
State Rep. Curt Schroder, a Republican from Chester County, has announced he is returning his COLA (cost of living adjustment) to the state treasury.
With this announcement he is giving money back to the taxpayers – that would be you and me.
As a citizen of Pennsylvania and a taxpayer, I am requesting that my state senator, Mike Stack, a Democrat, and state representative, John Sabatina, also a Democrat, do the same; return their COLAs to the state treasury and give the money back to the hard-working citizens.
I urge everyone to contact their state legislators to find out what they did with their COLAs. Taxpayers should not support politicians who took the COLAs and vote to raise our taxes to make up the projected $2 billion deficits they created.