Run Waterbury Like a Business?

Waterbury has a large tax rate that drives businesses away. Waterbury has the largest unemployment rate in the state. So this is easy. Get rid of the high tax so businesses could move in and employ people. WS mentioned before that city government cannot just sign a lower tax bill it has to budget for less. Business tax revenue hover above seven percent of the budget. Even if the budget were brought down, say to a surplus, which it has, it won't make too much of a difference to the business tax end of it.

There is a simple dynamic here, high taxes, high unemployment. No mayoral candidate makes this connection but in all fairness, with the mindset that permeates between all three parties, there is little they can do about it. You need revenues to run the city, if you cut taxes you won't pay the bills.

But the mindset is wrong. The archaic tax system lends itself to business moving to low mill rate towns. Mill rates are lower in small towns because they have smaller budgets. Companies want to move to Cheshire, Prospect, Watertown because they have lower mill rates. They don't have superior quasi government run development corporations, they don't have a marketing plan and go to trade show or offer tax "incentives" (that all but admits taxes are too high), no, they have a number and a small one or smaller then ours. The mindset is that lower taxes or the elimination of certain taxes will bring about less revenue. We say that's not true. Just the opposite. The idea is not to get as much as you can from your customer (tax payers) its to get more customers, lower taxes do just that. Just ask the small towns or states with growing populations or countries that are modern and industrious.

We'll say it again. A low tax brings in more business that highers people who pay taxes who then buy things from other businesses that expand and higher more people. The city grows and when a city grows so does its tax base and so does revenue.

It has to start at the business end. They cannot just pay whatever the mill rate is and have it subject to inventory and equipment. That can't happen, it just can't. The outright elimination of business from this system is what's needed. The solution could be that business pay the tax on property that they reside only and forget the tax on equipment and inventory. That would be the start in the right direction. There's one candidate that goes over the usual laundry list of ideas (old ones) of bringing in business and then adds that he would actively look for locations, as in, in his car driving around. Ridiculous. Other candidates have simular ideas and they all seem to harp on the necessity of getting money from state government to make improvements, that is continue to be a government on state welfare.

If Waterbury were friendly to commerce then it wouldn't penalize it in the form of high taxes, it would then maybe grow with a healthy revenue stream and we wouldn't have to go to Hartford with our hand out. There's always talk about running the city as a business and it always refres to the internal workings of the city, or with marketing stradegies, never has it been used in reference to price point, that is, taxes.

War and Peace

Before the Bosnian evasion there was little drumbeat, alliance building, UN coddling or any public relations maneuvers that led up to war. In fact during the invasion and subsequent troop installment there was little opposition. Sure the president said that this would be a quick incursion and the troops would be home but it didn't happen. If the US erred in the campaign, who cared. Milosevic was a genocidal creep. The racial killings ended and troops are still there keeping the peace. It may not be good policy to invade a country when we have little to no strategic interest. We can assume that since the Democrats are fine with the Bosnian campaign then we can infer they feel war is necessary if a countries leader commits ethnic cleansing.

So here we go years later into Iraq with a president of a different party. Lets say that there were no weapons of mass destruction, or state sponsored terrorism. Would the left be content that we at least stopped a leader that committed ethnic cleansing of its Kurdish and Shia citizens? Democrats are not the bad guy here but there is a matter of inconsistency if one were to say on the one hand Bosnia was okay but Iraq is not even brazen to suggest, as the New York Times editorial and Barak Obama have, that if genocide ensures if we leave, that's okay.

The Iraq war has a lot to be critical of but the end result is that it is a democracy. The country is a mess but seems to be on the mend, is the campaign worth it? If we look at the map we can see that Afghanistan and Iraq are big countries and that if there is stability in these places it would be a lot easier to contain Iran, whom, by all accounts, is a complete menace to the region and the rest of the world.

If the Iraq war is bad policy to the leading Democratic contenders is it only so because it wasn't executed correctly due to, as they say, an incompetent president? If so then this is an opposition of the means, are they in agreement with the ends which is a stable and free Iraq? Or in the very least, an Iraq that doesn't anymore ethnically cleans its citizens. In short is the opposition to Iraq by Democrats have less to do with mistakes and more to do with the fact that George Bush is running the war?

Met Melt Down

The Mets are done for the season choking in historic proportions. Its one thing to lose a game that a team should have won but to lose in clumps a whole month long is rare. And it is unlike the Mets to do so, traditionally they were a come back by surprise team, unlikely hero's hence the tag "miracle" Mets or Met "magic", "you gotta believe", "amazins" and on and on. The implied pretext to all of this is "we stink and it would take a miracle, magic, faith..." and so the team has turned the corner and now magically lost. They've become the boys of spring-early summer the Aprilmayzins.
And since they've turned the corner then maybe its time to change the image as well. Its time perhaps to shed they're 40 plus year expansion team reputation. They're building a new stadium moving out of horrible Shea which is situated practically on an airport tarmac. They should also ditch their uniform and name. Uniform because by design the orange represents the long gone Giants and blue for the Dodgers. This team has to have its own colors and stop paying homage to they're opponents for the sake of fans long gone. Then there is the name Mets. Maybe not as pressing to change as the colors are but the name is synonymous with their underdog past and degrading nicknames to go with it.
The team needs a fresh start, a re-launch. They won when they weren't suppose to and lost when they shouldn't, both in a big way. The team is not horrible as it stands for the next year it would be a good time to forget all of it and start fresh.