Emanuel formally announces run for Chicago mayor
By DON BABWIN, Associated Press
"We cannot ask taxpayers for more when families are struggling to stay afloat in this economy," he told supporters packing an elementary school auditorium on the city's North Side. "We cannot price Chicagoans out of their homes, their schools and their communities."...
"We cannot keep putting off hard choices and hoping things will get better, while drawing down each year on rapidly diminishing reserves."
You know what that means. If he wins, the front line city workers are in trouble. Politically he cannot cut services. He needs to go after personnel costs. 80% of those expenses are for police and fire. Another political hot potato. That leaves the 20% of us who have already taken furlough days and no pay for overtime. We're an easy target. My guess is lots of privatization. Of course this won't really save the city any money. But it's easier to hide the costs. And the kickbacks are tremendous. Then there's the pension. Don't plan on getting anything more than you would have gotten if you were eligible for social security. He has connections all the way up to the White House. He can get the laws changed and interpreted any way he likes. The shortfall is $600 million. We need new revenue. But they won't admit that until they are in such a deep hole there's no way out. In the meantime the city workers will pay for all the corruption, mismanagement and other sins of our politicians. And no city employee will be immune from the dismantling of our hard fought pensions.
Just what we need, another Career Politician Feeding from the Taxpayers Trough, telling us what will be Best for us?
ReplyDeleteNo thank you!
There MUST be a BETTER choice than Rahm!
I read the scumtimes article about rahm wanting reform. Yes, no-bid contracts are just a small percentage of the waste the daley administration has started, but true reform lies in the political waste pandering to the people that contribute the least to society.
ReplyDelete* Cut non-essential services. Sad reality but needed. No more programs that do nothing and have never been proven to do anything to help the "youth" or "underprivileged". The only thing that these services have been proven to do is re-elect democRATs.
* More public safety employees. Police, Fire and OEMC departments are short. Not enough police and fire personnel to respond to calls, and OT is still a problem at OEMC and the airports despite the new hires. You keep cutting people through attrition or consider layoffs in these departments, it's not only political suicide but the city will fall apart. It's close now, just imagine when no one picks up the phone at 911. It's bad enough that some jobs are coded out without officers getting to the scene or 1A calls are in a RAP.
* Cut from the top, not the bottom. Too many chiefs, not enough indians. Can't put that any better. No need for departments to have dozens of 100k supervisors and their 90k assistants when you have 3 line employees making 40k doing all the work.
* Attract companies and businesses to Chicago, don't push them away with red tape bureaucracy, fees, high taxes and near impossible steps to get a business license. That goes for small business owners too. I'd like to own a business but don't have the 10k cash to palm the building inspector, or the 10k to "donate" to the alderman's election to get me a business license. How about incentives to open businesses...oh wait, that sounds too much like a Regan/Republican idea and we all know that Republicans are just pure evil with their fiscal responsibility nonsense! We need to tax the shit out of the evil corporations and if they don't like it they can leave! Oh wait... they did leave, and if more leave who will provide jobs for everyone? Hrmmm...
Mr. Emanuel, doubt you will read this but we don't need another life long bureaucrat who follows the Daley business plan. You have the chance of becoming the guy who saved our city, or the guy that handed a drowning man an anchor.