Posts archived in Economics and Debt

4 comments

December 7, 2011 by amglolz

Maine Conservatives find a job-killing regulation they support!

Today, Naran started a thread that unites 90% of AMGers behind the proposition that Portland’s city hall is right to implement an expensive, job-killing regulation on Maine small businessmen.

Finally, they come around to the dark side! As you friendly neighborhood communist pinko, let me welcome you to the People’s Republic of Portland.

Why would AMGers turn 180 degrees so quickly? Easy answer: In this case the businessmen in question are SOMALI.

The job-killing regulation in question requires taxi drivers, most of whom are African immigrants, to get their taxi license and pay a fee in person rather than through a representative. The city had been letting people use a representative but then decided that their rules didn’t allow it.

The AMG “pro-business” crowd somehow sees nothing wrong with having people stop working to go get a piece of paper in person just because the guv’mint has a rule saying so. If the Somalis don’t like it, why, they are asking for special rights. Got to be that. They are Somalis, after all. It couldn’t possibly be that they are trying to make a living and don’t like a stupid rule, right? That would be something regular Mainers do, not Somalis!

If you call AMGers on this contradiction, as a few posters have, the answer is some variation of “we have all got to play by the rules.”

Melvin Udall says:

The Somali taxi drivers have learned from the same day voting debate. Claim oppression, suppression, and depression. And throw in repression too.

No Melvin. They learned from AMG, where electricians and carpenters complain about housing regulations, where accountants complain about accounting regulations, and where small business owners complain about health care regulations. Complaining about regulations is sort of AsMaineGoes’ reason to exist.

Rarely is it ever said to the regular complaining Maine business people that they need to suck it up and “play by the rules.” What I usually hear is, “Hey, let’s CHANGE the rules, because Ayn Rand wouldn’t have liked them.”

Except when they are Somali.

Weird, huh.

Who would have thought AsMaineGoes would side with Portland City Hall in a story that basically reads, “Small businessmen sue city over useless regulation?”

No one, until you find out exactly who is doing the suing.

Leave a comment.
2 comments

April 28, 2011 by amglolz

Hey, want some economic development that works?

AMGers are split on a proposal by a Republican legislator to stick it to those damn hippies and tax bicycles.

They aren’t split on the underlying motivation- they’d LOVE to stick it to those dirty hippies with their healthy, non-fossil fuel burning mode of transportation – but some people just dislike taxes more than they dislike hippies.

This has come up on AMG before. In general, building trails or paths or bike lanes is just a waste of time and money. You know, touchy-feely stuff. They’ve been waiting to get their guy into the Blaine House so we can see some real economic development.

I was reminded of this AMG pick-on-the-bikes thread when I read some news today from Cincinnati. The city of Cincinnati had planned to renovate and restart their streetcar system. This kind of system is very popular in Portland, Oregon and several other cities around the country. Portland, for instance, claims that every one dollar they invest in the streetcar system has resulted in thirteen dollars of private investment along the route.

But the naysayers in Ohio know it is touchy-feely bullshit. If Starbucks sipping elitists like the idea too much, it must be a bad thing. The new government in Ohio withdrew funding for the project.

Where am I going with this? Well, streetcars and bike paths are sort of similar. People in cities like quiet, clean, frequently available transportation options. And they like bike paths. They’re both “quality of life” improvements that don’t make a dollar for dollar direct profit- but they are the sort of thing that attract families to your city. Young families especially. Professional families too.

But Ohio is going to keep doing what they’ve been doing, because that has worked so well. Same for Maine’s rural conservatives. They just need to lower taxes a little bit more and all the young families are going to do the math and move there in droves.

That idea is just false. People dont dive into the local tax records when they buy a home. They want a nice home in a nice area with nice recreational options.

My point: Maine conservatives who usually pray at the alter of “business-friendly” never seem to want to look at the city in Maine that prospers the most: Portland.

Do tax rates REALLY matter? Hmm. Idaho has really low taxes. Do you know any big companies from Idaho? Do you own anything sold by an Idaho business?

Now think about San Francisco. Can you think of any big companies that have found success out there?

Why the difference? Why isn’t Idaho doing better than San Fran? More locally, why is Portland doing better than everywhere else? Why hasn’t Apple and Google left California for the low tax paradise of Idaho? Or Mississippi?

When conservative Republicans are in charge nothing is done to attract people other than lower taxes. This leads to a place like Mississippi. Yeah, it’s cheap, but the schools suck. The health and lifestyle sucks. Therefore, the economy sucks.

Meanwhile, places like Portland, Oregon try new things. They build things people want. Portland, Maine does this too. We’ve got an extensive bike and trail system, pretty good schools, and a bunch of other stuff that costs a bit more money but, well, all those kids from your town who moved here seem to think it’s worth it.

Leave a comment.
10 comments

April 15, 2011 by amglolz

Dan Demeritt

The PPH has picked up on LePage public-relations guru Dan Demeritt being slightly less effective at business than, say, anyone with fewer than five foreclosures pending.

Mr. Demeritt earns over $80,000 in state salary for his public relations smarts.

But have you noticed something? He isn’t doing a whole lot of public relations! Adrienne Bennett has supplanted Demeritt as the person always quoted in news articles on LePage’s behalf.

What is her pay? I hope it’s at least half of Demeritt’s.

And if she has a significant other, I hope he landed a plum “executive assistant” job, too, like Demeritt’s wife enjoys, which brings the Demeritt family income above $130,000.

Because I haven’t seen Demeritt do anything worthy of his salary, but Ms. Bennett seems to not suck so bad.

This is absurd theatre. Demeritt has $130,000 in household income and he can’t run a pizza shop. LePage was on vacation because he has “nothing to do.” LePage can’t find department heads because the taxpayer-funded $117,000 salaries are “not a lot.”

Out. Of. Touch.

Maine: Open for business? Or Maine: Open for surreal, live-action political theatre of the absurd? I vote for the second.

 

Leave a comment.
1 comments

April 1, 2011 by amglolz

The problem with the labor mural? It’s all a LIE!

Economike just lays it all out there, telling us historical dunces that the labor mural’s message is simply false:

The mythology is the mural’s implicit narrative – the counterfactual that “better conditions” systematically were withheld by employers and that union organizing somehow created a general improvement in working conditions.

I know most conservatives see no use for today’s labor unions, but I thought most still granted yesterday’s unions some credit for how we don’t all work 15 hour days locked in a building with no bathroom breaks and lots of flammable material stacked against the walls. But, I guess even that is just too much for Economike’s libertarian wet dreams.

Things only got better because the rich people got nicer.

We should rename Labor day to, “Thank the Nice Rich Man You Only Worked 40 Hours And Didn’t Even Lose Any Limbs Day,” in honor of the true heroes of America’s middle class history.

 

Leave a comment.
1 comments

by amglolz

Oh, you posted some numbers off the Internet? They must be true.

AMG user “Watcher,” already known for making the discredited-everywhere-but-AMG assertion that the Affordable Care Act taxes regular people on the sale of their homes, now decides to opine about America’s budget challenges using terribly wrong numbers he found somewhere in the bowels of the conservative echo-net:

In this thread he writes:

(CNSNews.com) – Imagine that you had an average monthly income of about $170 balanced against average monthly expenses of about $940–and that you were more than $14,000 in debt. Then imagine that as of today, you had only $58.60 in cash left in your bank account and $130.50 left on your line of credit. Now multiply these numbers by 1 billion and you will have the up-to-date financial situation of the U.S. government.

You don’t have to go past the first two numbers, which imply an income to expense ratio for the Federal government of about 1:5, to see that this little bit of folksy math just doesn’t make sense.

In reality our federal government income to expense ratio for 2010 was more like 2:3. That number isn’t a secret or anything.

Why must AMGers lie about this? A two to three ratio is still going to piss everyone off more than enough. Why exaggerate the problem 10x (50% expenses over income versus 500%) unless you are just a compulsive liar?

And does Watcher, or anyone else, fact check anything? No one has corrected this obvious error. Does no one on AMG even have a tiny bit of actual knowledge about how our government funds itself? They all like to pretend they are experts.

Liberals are banned pretty much on a weekly basis, but someone like Watcher starts all sorts of threads grounded in easily disproven factual premises and doesn’t even get a little editor’s note asking him to kindly refrain from broadcasting bullshit. I have a feeling if someone posted numbers about LePage’s budget that were off by 10x it would be deleted before Naran could even write a snappy comeback pulled off a shelf labelled “1958.”

These are all rhetorical questions, by the way, because most of us already know the answers to all of them.

Leave a comment.
8 comments

March 23, 2011 by amglolz

How to get Governor LePage to listen

Turns out there is a simple way to get Governor’s attention: send him an anonymous fax.

That’s what it took to get a labor-themed mural removed from Maine’s Department of Labor building. From the Portland Press Herald:

[The Governor's spokewoman] said the Governor’s Office has received “several messages” from the public complaining about the mural. She released an anonymous fax dated Feb. 24 that apparently comes from someone who sat in the Labor Department lobby.

“In this mural I observed a figure which closely resembles the former commissioner of labor,” the person wrote. “In studying the mural I also observed that this mural is nothing but propaganda to further the agenda of the Union movement. I felt for a moment that I was in communist North Korea where they use these murals to brainwash the masses.”

The fax is signed “A Secret Admirer.”

Lessons for persons aspiring to influence our state’s executive:

(1) Anonymity is okay. Great for me.

(2) The Governor is very responsive even when only a few people write in. Again, good for me and my growing legion of dozens of readers.

(3) Signing “A Secret Admirer” is not tacky or too middle-schooley. Personally, I don’t like this one but I can do it if it helps get my voice heard.

(4) Use a fax. Shit! I don’t have one of those. I don’t even have a phone line with which to connect a fax machine.

So I’m three-quarters of the way towards having a determinative voice in Augusta. Does anyone around here meet all four criteria?

 

Leave a comment.
0 comments

March 16, 2011 by amglolz

What if we paid our Governor like we want to pay teachers?

It made news recently when Maine’s representative of the Khmer Rouge, also known as Mike Tipping, noticed that our Governor had not required any cut to his own pay or pension despite asking teachers to take a large cut in the form of increasing pension contributions from 7.65% to 9.65% of their gross salaries as well as getting fewer benefits when they retire.

AMGers, put in the odd position of defending a lack of government cuts despite insisting that our state is headed towards bankruptcy, nevertheless put up a brave fight. Some immediately noticed that Maine’s constitution does not allow pay changes to the Governor while he is serving.

His hands were tied!

Bullshit.

He could have just refunded the state, personally. He could donate the excess. He could cut pay for his next term, or the next governor. He could request a constitutional amendment allowing the Governor’s pay be decreased during his term, but not increased. There are, frankly, a billion things he could do but he hasn’t done any of them.

And prior Governors have been able to take pay cuts.

This made me wonder- Republicans love to tell us how overpaid teachers are and how we should make them “accountable.” If this is so important, why not make the Governor accountable in the same way? So on the behalf of Republican accountability-mongers everywhere let me suggest the outlines of a future bill known as the “Governor Accountability Act.”

The first thing to do is allow the Governor to be fired. Accountability for teachers means that politicians, school boards, and administrators have complete leeway to fire a teacher. Therefore, to equalize the situation for the Governor we must immediately implement a change to our Constitution to allow a recall election at any time.

That may lead to some slight chaos in our state government, between the constant recall petitions from one side or another and having a recall-fearing Governor make “election year decisions,” usually not the best ones, for his entire term. But this is no different than a teacher’s change in behavior when he or she fears firing at any moment. They are less likely to rock the boat on class sizes, curriculum standards, and funding problems if they know that complaints might mean losing their livelihood. So be it.

The second requirement would be to link Governor pay to performance. Teacher “accountability,” of course, means linking pay to student performance on standardized tests. Likewise, Governor pay should be linked to economic performance.

If Maine’s economy shrinks, so does the Governor’s pay. You may ask, what if the Governor is caught up in a national or global economic slowdown and Maine’s economy shrinks despite his best efforts? No matter. Teacher merit pay doesn’t, and can’t, take into account whether a particular class has more or fewer students from homes that encourage learning, ate a healthy breakfast, or otherwise have their grades affected by any of the nearly infinite variables outside the teacher’s control. Therefore, reducing the Governor’s pay based on “results” rather than his actual effort is surely fair.

Third, no more budget increases. Teachers aren’t getting budget increases to buy supplies and books. Class sizes are increasing with workforce cuts. Likewise, our Governor shouldn’t be allowed to increase the budget several hundreds of millions of dollars over the last budget, as Governor LePage has requested, just to try and keep voters happy. I know this makes things really tough, but no tougher than the situation for a teacher trying to raise her student’s grades and therefore keep her “merit” pay during a time of serious budget cuts. I don’t want to hear any whining about this one. Fair is fair.

Lastly, the Governor must of course take the pay and pension cuts being required of teachers. Currently a Governor must work all of one day to qualify for $26,000 in annual pension benefits for life. This must be raised to be comparable to teachers who work twenty-five years for the same benefit. And the Governor should contribute the extra 2% towards this pension. If this takes a Constitutional amendment, well, maybe the Governor should ask for one.

I think with all these changes we would see a remarkable improvement in the performance of our Governor. It just makes sense.

Which of our results-oriented Republican representatives will introduce this bill?

 

 

Leave a comment.
2 comments

March 7, 2011 by amglolz

Teacher explains LePage budget proposal impact.

A Maine teacher posted two videos on YouTube explaining LePage’s proposed pension changes in detail. In two parts:

Leave a comment.
« Older Entries