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Karen Heller: The lesson from the streets: Big money is not the answer

Friends, what have we learned this past week? Plenty.

Pundits will tell you that Chris Christie won New Jersey's gubernatorial race and Jon Corzine lost it because there's a backlash against President Obama's agenda.

Wrong. Fewer than half of registered voters went to the polls, mostly to vote against Corzine, a sweater vest with a nominal pulse.

Despite making millions in Wall Street, then spending them on his campaign, Corzine proved a poor manager who did little about New Jersey's punitive property taxes. Also, it was not a good year to be associated with Goldman Sachs.

As a federal prosecutor, Christie went after politicians. Voters love this. Christie even went after politicians dealing with rabbis selling kidneys and fake Gucci bags, which, really, you cannot make up.

You can mock a politician about almost anything, such as wealth and sweater vests. But not, as Corzine learned in attacking Christie, his weight. Then you insult voters, too.

What does this tell us? It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a former Goldman chairman to be returned to Trenton.

New Jersey spent millions trying to fix the heartbreak of Camden. The lesson? You can give poor people fish in a fancy aquarium, as The Inquirer's Matt Katz reports, but if they don't have proper sewerage and their streets remain unsafe, all that good will amounts to is squalor.

Cities are healed by people, not merely cash going into the pockets of the powerful. Plenty of folks have to be enticed to move to hurting cities, to put down roots, improve housing, launch businesses serving residents, invest emotionally and financially in revitalizing a community.

And places like Camden need involved, committed local governance. Otherwise, the state is pouring money down a clogged drain.

In Philadelphia, the Board of Revision of Taxes is the poster child in a very crowded field for municipal incompetence. Turns out the board violated the Sunshine Act by voting privately to shift the setting of property values for taxes to the Finance Department, according to City Solicitor Shelley Smith.

This is a whole new level of ineptitude. They ought to hand out medals for this. The BRT is so incompetent and secretive - the former sort of forcing the latter - that it can't even put itself out of business legally.

What the BRT doesn't do is important. It fails to collect money for services while the city squanders funds on malfunctioning departments - like the BRT.

City Council, with a staff of 200, wants to hire a publicist for as much as $100,000. True, Council could benefit from a better image. Most days, it does not feel the love. Guess what? It already has a communications director, who earns $96,000. So, in the age of cutbacks, Council plans to spend twice as much to burnish its image, damaged, in part, from being wasteful.

In Harrisburg, however, money thrown at legislators can do wonders, though not for taxpayers, whom - correct me if I'm wrong - they serve.

Special interests spent $1.5 million to avert levies on cigars and smokeless tobacco projected to net the commonwealth almost $38 million in new taxes this fiscal year. One purveyor told The Inquirer's Mario Cattabiani that he spent money on receptions and cigars for lawmakers as revenue for Pennsylvanians went up in canapés and smoke.

Natural-gas interests did even better, dispensing $1.6 million on lobbyists. That's a drop in Marcellus Shale drilling revenue to avoid taxes that would have produced $107.2 million in funds this year.

"Invest a lot of money, and you are going to have a lot more clout at the bargaining table," said Barry Kauffman of Common Cause of Pennsylvania.

But it isn't a lot of money. A $3.1 million investment created a $145 million loss in state revenue. Legislators can be wined and dined and smoked to protect the interests of the few over the concerns of the many, proving that they're lobbyist-wise and taxpayer-foolish.


Contact columnist Karen Heller at 215-854-2586 or kheller@phillynews.com.

Comments   
Posted 05:55 AM, 11/10/2009
tr88
Keep burying your head in the sand. The gall of a liberal to trot out even more "answers" based on the mess they've made of our cities. The heartbreak of Camden is the Obama agenda and what got us here. High taxes, bigger spending, government dependence is a recipe for disaster. Ignore that and you'll see a wipeout of democrats as never seen before.
Posted 08:43 AM, 11/10/2009
xi_lives
Karen..you're in denial. American's are afraid of what our government is doing to them. 2010 will make 2009 look like a picnic.
Posted 08:58 AM, 11/10/2009
longshanks
When few people vote, the right wins. But they are right about one thing. Americans grew tired of what Republicans did to them for so long. Just think Republicans owned 28 of the last 40 years in the White House. Now you know where to point the finger. We'll be taking them out to the wood shed once again in 2010 and 2012. But let them parade for 4 elections in 50 states....it's all they have.
Posted 11:50 AM, 11/10/2009
xi_lives
Longshanks...you're missing the story. The story are neither democrats or republicans...the independents are abandoning this too liberal government in droves.
Posted 12:30 PM, 11/10/2009
rbpeeple
Wake up, people...neither the R's or D's care about you. All they care about is power, ego, and wealth.
Posted 02:11 PM, 11/10/2009
puddydawg
xi_ that's longshanks answer for everything. Republican Baaddd!! Democrats Gooodd!! He knows nothing else. Cause if he did he would know that the facts are that since Ronald Reagan this country has been in it's longest sustained up economy in its history, until the Big O. And he is right about one thing the R's were in power for most of it.
Posted 02:18 PM, 11/10/2009
bobmc
tr88, how is obama responsible for camden?
Posted 07:49 AM, 11/11/2009
MikeP
Not quite,xi. Voters are abandoning the Republican Party and registering as Independants. At this point, the Republican Party is starting to look more like a second tier party like the Green Party. Republican polcies have never been responsible for a healhy economy. Reagan's polcies, or should I say Donald Regan's policies, were a complete failure. Remeber the massive deficits that Clinton had to deal with after Bush I left office. Bush II followed the same policies and, surprise, surprise, he left us with massive defifits. Republicans made government bigger, created huge deficits and got a loan from Communist China to finance all of their spending. They added $5 trillion to the deficit because of their failed policy of giving tax cuts to the super wealthy as a job creations tactic. We're still waiting for the jobs. But we did see that gap between the super wealthy and the rest of grow to historic proportions. Whenever the economy is bad, Democrats win. Until Bush II, I would have been happy to say "Let the Republicans handle Foreign Policy and let the Democrats handle the economy. Domestic/social issues? Moderates from both parties only please. That would be the perfect situation.
Posted 04:49 PM, 11/11/2009
puddydawg
Mike holy cow... do you just say things and think that makes them true? Waiting for the jobs? Unemployment was at it's lowest until 2008. I keep hearing this is a jobless recovery, what the F is that? There is no such thing. If unemployment is over 10%, up from 8% then there is no recovery period. Tax cuts didn't work? After Reagans tax too effect the amount of tax revenues went up, not down. I do agree that the gap between rich and middle class went too high. But given a choice between then and now, i'll take then. And please don't talk about Republicans and the deficit. My God in nine months Big O has TRIPLED anything the Republican EVER did. The sad thing is you believe your own bull cr@p.
Posted 12:13 PM, 11/12/2009
Hulk
Longshanks, Any idiot knows that it is congress that makes the laws not the president. With that said, for how many years has congress been dominated by the democrats?
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