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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Things are Tough All Over

Things are Tough All Over

by John Cole|  July 5, 20118:55 am| 36 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics

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Norquist’s vision for you and me:

When Engine 5 pulled up to a burning house on Woodlawn Avenue early on March 19, the firefighters were told that a man might be trapped in the back left bedroom. As two firemen trained a hose toward that corner, Capt. Don Ragavage crawled through smoke and flames to search for the missing resident.

It was an inopportune moment for the water pressure to plummet. But that is what happened when Engine 5’s motor, strained to the limit by 16 years and more than 100,000 miles of hard service, abruptly sputtered and died.

Only a month earlier, the fire chief, Buddy Martinette, had lobbied the City Council to replace the cantankerous engine at a session devoted to the latest of Wilmington’s six consecutive budget gaps.

“The mechanics really don’t think it will make it,” the chief warned at the time.

“You need another mechanic,” shot back Charlie Rivenbark, the Council’s foremost fiscal curmudgeon.

Mr. Rivenbark was not smiling, and once the scattered snickers quieted, none of his colleagues took issue. The fire truck fell off the table for the fifth year in a row.

Read the whole thing- they went from a prosperous little city to a disaster in which they basically can’t even afford cameras in cop cars.

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36Comments

  1. 1.

    gene108

    July 5, 2011 at 9:16 am

    “I make sure that I take care of my equipment,” said Andrew Comer, a master firefighter. “I do my job well when I respond to calls. But I’m not going to go above and beyond to try to make this department any better right now. They’re not doing anything to make my life any better.”

    “I make sure that I take care of my equipment,” said Andrew Comer, a master firefighter. “I do my job well when I respond to calls. But I’m not going to go above and beyond to try to make this department any better right now. They’re not doing anything to make my life any better.”

    I find these quotes, from the article, interesting.

    Right-wingers argue that taxing the rich or rolling bank bonuses for people in the financial sector will kill productivity, because people will be asked to do the same work for less money.

    I find it interesting they don’t see the result stagnant wages and decreasing purchasing power – due to higher fuel and food prices – has on the rest of America.

    The reality is 1,000,000 families of four that pull back on a $2,000 one week vacation sucks $2 billion dollars out of the economy, while one rich guy foregoing the purchase of a BMW only sucks $100,000 out of the economy.

    I really wish the destruction of what were once respected middle-class jobs – teaching, firefighting, and law enforcement – because of a lack of tax revenue would get more traction in the media and the public consciousness.

    If there’s any hope to staving off the budget cutting mania, we are no experiencing it would be documenting how hard one middle-class people have been hurt by it.

  2. 2.

    p.a.

    July 5, 2011 at 9:19 am

    Beside the architects, don’t forget the enablers.

  3. 3.

    Scott

    July 5, 2011 at 9:19 am

    I’m sure Charlie Rivenbark has a plan to get the city out of dire financial straits. Probably something like “Build the dang fence” or watching “The Undefeated” or sending e-mails of the Obama witch doctor picture…

  4. 4.

    CalD

    July 5, 2011 at 9:29 am

    Cameras in cop cars have a well-known liberal bias.

  5. 5.

    Emma

    July 5, 2011 at 9:29 am

    What amazed me were the comments suggesting that it could all be fixed by cutting pay and firing middle managers. And working harder “until the job was done” for no pay. It’s here that we see how well the Republicans’ concerted effort at spreading the “no taxes, no union, no insurance, work hard, die in poverty and it’s all good” message has worked. They have invested decades and millions in doing it and it’s paid off beautifully. They own the think tanks that create the message, the media that puts it out there, and not only the Republican politicians but a fair section of the Democrats too.

    We’re screwed.

  6. 6.

    Walker

    July 5, 2011 at 9:30 am

    My family has lived in Wilmington for 200 years.

    Unbelievably, the transplants from up north have made it even more intolerably conservative. And they have continually destroyed the environment. I cannot even bear to visit my family any more with what that town has become.

  7. 7.

    gene108

    July 5, 2011 at 9:36 am

    Unbelievably, the transplants from up north have made it even more intolerably conservative.

    I think people really underestimate how conservative the North is.

    The absence of the single-issue Bible Belt voter doesn’t mean Yankees are particularly liberal, in other respects.

  8. 8.

    cleek

    July 5, 2011 at 9:39 am

    Wilmington also does good tourist biz. but this year, they’re having to deal with a long-burning wildfire – Wilm is right in the middle of the bottom red zone) that has blanketed the city with smoke.

  9. 9.

    UncommonSense

    July 5, 2011 at 9:54 am

    Let the market decide which fires get extinguished and whose lives get saved. That should work out just fine for everybody. Everybody knows there is nothing wiser or more compassionate than the market.

  10. 10.

    rb

    July 5, 2011 at 9:56 am

    Let it burn! Right, guys? Right?

  11. 11.

    ppcli

    July 5, 2011 at 10:06 am

    @gene108:

    The north of the US (or at least parts of it – New Hampshire, Upstate NY, Calvinist Western Michigan…) may no doubt be as conservative as parts of the deep south, but I think the key here is that the northern transplants in Wilmington were self-selected. I expect the people who look at Wilmington NC and say “Yes, that is the place for me. I will leave my northern home for there.” are in general much more conservative than the average northerner.

  12. 12.

    cathyx

    July 5, 2011 at 10:17 am

    I was really hoping that at the end of the story, it would say that then a week later Mr. Riverbank’s house caught fire and there was no way to put it out and he lost everything.

  13. 13.

    ppcli

    July 5, 2011 at 10:26 am

    Ironic addendum to the comment at 11:
    Despite the incessant propaganda to the contrary, most of the doctors I know in Canada are extremely happy there. But I know two who did leave for much more money in rural parts of the States, and both are generally quite conservative by Canadian standards.

    I was talking to one of them – who moved into the bible belt – this weekend at a school reunion and his wife mentioned that even for them it was a bit much. Also, she echoed an observation I’ve made, that the myth of lower taxes in the U.S. is a bit misguided. In Canada federal taxes (income tax and the GST – a federal VAT) are much higher. But the feds also do things that exploit economies of scale, while the same responsibilities that are shouldered by states in the U.S. have inefficiencies resulting from widespread duplication of effort. Provinces and local governments have generally *far* lower taxes in Canada, and the various hidden taxes in the form of fees for annual car registration, ubiquitous tolls for roads, etc. are much lower. (Not to mention the separate cost of health insurance, whether paid by the employer or the individual, and the huge bite from payroll taxes, with no deductions as with regular income tax.) When you add it all up, the U.S. doesn’t do that much better. In fact, she claimed that when she did the calculation, she found that she paid a bit more in the U.S.

  14. 14.

    John X.

    July 5, 2011 at 10:34 am

    I know the region. The transplants aren’t exactly conservative. They’re anti-tax zealots.

    More precisely, they are part of a wave of union/public worker middle class retirees from New York and Jersey who have moved to the state because it is closer and cheaper than Florida. They are virulently anti-tax because they could give a fuck about the community.

    They got theirs and have cashed out for a gated golf resort in Southeastern North Carolina. The idea of paying back in order to improve their cheap backwater is the exact opposite of the reason they moved.

    They want the region poor and undeveloped. Anything else, and they wouldn’t be able to live like lords on their middle-class savings.

  15. 15.

    Linnaeus

    July 5, 2011 at 10:54 am

    @John X.:

    That’s a grand irony if I ever saw one.

  16. 16.

    ruemara

    July 5, 2011 at 11:01 am

    7¢. I raised the taxes by 7¢ and closed the budget gap. http://nyti.ms/iqeQ71. For all those here thinking it’s conservatives, we’re looking at the same stupidity in my very liberal town. 2.5 million to be ‘saved’ by firing workers, yet no reductions in services and the ‘savings’ are going to council’s pet projects. What they really want is to make the fire & police union knuckle under and to get at our pension. and all pushing this plan are card carrying Democrats. If Wilmington had a council with serious stones and a will to save the town, they raise the fucking taxes and be damned if they screw the city over any more, but no one gets into politics to help, they get into politics to have the biggest goddamn egos on the planet. Bastards.

  17. 17.

    Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937

    July 5, 2011 at 11:10 am

    Unbelievably, the transplants from up north have made it even more intolerably conservative.

    These areas promote themselves as low tax and get disgruntled, grumpy, conservatives to retire there. Now you have strangers on fixed incomes with no vested interest living there.

  18. 18.

    arguingwithsignposts

    July 5, 2011 at 11:10 am

    @John X points to one of the real problems not just with this area, but Florida and Arizona (and I’m sure other states as well):

    More precisely, they are part of a wave of union/public worker middle class retirees from New York and Jersey who have moved to the state because it is closer and cheaper than Florida. They are virulently anti-tax because they could give a fuck about the community.
    __
    They got theirs and have cashed out for a gated golf resort in Southeastern North Carolina. The idea of paying back in order to improve their cheap backwater is the exact opposite of the reason they moved.

  19. 19.

    Stillwater

    July 5, 2011 at 11:27 am

    If Wilmington had a council with serious stones and a will to save the town,

    Sometimes you have to destroy the town in order to save it…

  20. 20.

    JohnR

    July 5, 2011 at 12:01 pm

    By the time you can see the iceberg, it’s probably too late to change the Titanic’s course. I don’t laugh at this stuff, because it’s all of us that have been shafted. Look at the headlines today – the debt-celing negotiations haven’t got far to go. And what does that mean? It means that the GOP is so sure that Obama’s going to cave that they feel no need to concede on anything, and therefore Obama will have to cave and concede everything. The only down-side for the GOP leaders is the probable crash of the world economy, but as with Lord Farquadd, that’s a sacrifice they’re willing to make. They’ll somehow struggle through..

  21. 21.

    not a gator

    July 5, 2011 at 12:06 pm

    Eh, sounds more like housing bubble hubris. The mayor was a developer who thought les bons temps were going to roll forever. The city took on more debt than it could handle and now current services are getting squeezed.

    Everyone is depressed, but those who feed on fear and hatred, the wannabe’s, the greedy, the TeaTards, are starting to dominate local politics, and nobody really protests because they’re jobless, depressed, and broke. The homeowners are having their ARMs adjust and are underwater, find a new job but can’t move, etc, so more taxes is the last thing they can afford.

    Could be Gainesville, Florida.

  22. 22.

    not a gator

    July 5, 2011 at 12:09 pm

    I’m sure Charlie Rivenbark has a plan to get the city out of dire financial straits. Probably something like “Build the dang fence” or watching “The Undefeated” or sending e-mails of the Obama witch doctor picture…

    That sort always does. Angry, deluded nerds.

    (This is why I like scientists. They may be nerds, but they’ve learned the hard way not to fall in love with their own hypotheses. You can do amazing things with an evidence-based approach.)

  23. 23.

    not a gator

    July 5, 2011 at 12:15 pm

    What amazed me were the comments suggesting that it could all be fixed by cutting pay and firing middle managers. And working harder “until the job was done” for no pay.

    Yet Realtors™ think they should be paid 7% of the transaction amount for listing an auction on the internet.

    This is the American decadence — those will real training, skills, and talent should give away their services for free, while the useless, idiotic, and heartless should be remunerated in an economically wasteful manner.

    The Wall Street boyos were onto something when they complained that even the most rapacious investment funds only skim 3% off the top in transaction costs.

  24. 24.

    not a gator

    July 5, 2011 at 12:17 pm

    Btw, you know who extracts giant gov’t subsidies while wailing about the welfare state and high taxes?

    Landlords.

    The ultimate rentiers.

    Interesting that America was never wealthier than when we were giving away plots of land for people to live on for free. Now we’re more like Europe. Come on, economosclerosis.

  25. 25.

    not a gator

    July 5, 2011 at 12:24 pm

    My family has lived in Wilmington for 200 years.

    Unbelievably, the transplants from up north have made it even more intolerably conservative. And they have continually destroyed the environment. I cannot even bear to visit my family any more with what that town has become.

    Not so unbelievable when you realize the transplants are rootless (otherwise they would have stayed home), I-got-mine-so-fuck-you opportunists who gladly paid into the tax rolls while they were extracting something out (a government job, high-quality free public education), but now, early-retired and fat and sassy, are having their 25-yr-old libertarian moment and figure they can go where the livin’ is easy. They then proceed to shit the bed wherever they go.

    NC has even more of a problem in that it attracts “half backs” who have spent decades in Florida and are moving halfway back to NY/NJ.

    Don’t be surprised if they either a) push hard for a big increase in senior services in the state budget as they get older, at the expense of education or b) move back to NY/NJ. New Jersey already has a big problem with the “very elderly” returning to NJ after decades of not paying taxes there to get their overly generous Medicaid services when they become sick.

    It’s not just businesses performing arbitrage between states, it’s American citizens too. You’d think that people would care about what happened where they live, but, you know, not all are created equal after all.

  26. 26.

    not a gator

    July 5, 2011 at 12:26 pm

    Also, she echoed an observation I’ve made, that the myth of lower taxes in the U.S. is a bit misguided. In Canada federal taxes (income tax and the GST – a federal VAT) are much higher. But the feds also do things that exploit economies of scale, while the same responsibilities that are shouldered by states in the U.S. have inefficiencies resulting from widespread duplication of effort. Provinces and local governments have generally far lower taxes in Canada, and the various hidden taxes in the form of fees for annual car registration, ubiquitous tolls for roads, etc. are much lower.

    May I just say HA-HA!

  27. 27.

    not a gator

    July 5, 2011 at 12:27 pm

    In fact, she claimed that when she did the calculation, she found that she paid a bit more in the U.S.

    That’s because she’s just a petty bourgeois doctor’s wife, not a member of the landed aristocracy. Fools and their money, &cet. NEXT!

  28. 28.

    not a gator

    July 5, 2011 at 12:32 pm

    For all those here thinking it’s conservatives, we’re looking at the same stupidity in my very liberal town. 2.5 million to be ‘saved’ by firing workers, yet no reductions in services and the ‘savings’ are going to council’s pet projects. What they really want is to make the fire & police union knuckle under and to get at our pension. and all pushing this plan are card carrying Democrats.

    In local politics it’s not about R and D (except when it comes to religious right nutjobs who sometimes infest local city councils). It’s about who has their hand in what till.

    The pet projects are usually real estate projects. The politicos hope to extract a personal profit. The populace gets mad and (stupidly) thinks keeping taxes low will keep a lid on this behavior. (It doesn’t, because these clowns just go into debt, I mean it’s OPM, duh.)

    Your choice comes down to crook and lying crook. Whatchagonnado?

    In my town the crooks stay in power because the alternative keeps spouting anti-gay crap along with their anti-tax rhetoric.

  29. 29.

    WereBear

    July 5, 2011 at 12:38 pm

    but now, early-retired and fat and sassy, are having their 25-yr-old libertarian moment and figure they can go where the livin’ is easy. They then proceed to shit the bed wherever they go.

    Too sadly true. And states push their retirement communities and their lack of income tax aimed at luring these same people.

    I find it deeply ironic; just when they are going to need more services, they move to a place with less.

  30. 30.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    July 5, 2011 at 1:20 pm

    RE: public employees and limits on their efforts. I’ve been asked to tweet and blog from my telephone for work. Guess what — it is my personal telephone. I get no contribution from my job for its cost (unlike ALL of the managers). I have a limited plan based on my budget. So I have no incentive to use it for work. That’s what is going on here — lower level public employees are asked to use personal resources. So of course the answer is no.

  31. 31.

    sparky

    July 5, 2011 at 1:31 pm

    whenever i am in NC i make sure i never tell anyone i am from NY. the hatred of my former fellow citizens (read narrow-minded jerks) there is palpable, and more than a little justified. with so many people, we’ve become a plague of locusts, destroying the planet wherever we land.

  32. 32.

    The Spy Who Loved Me

    July 5, 2011 at 1:38 pm

    I read the whole thing and couldn’t detect a partisan slant on the part of anyone. This was an area heavily dependent on real estate development and when the market went bust, so did city revenues. In bad times, everyone has to weigh priorities and decide what has to be paid for now, and what can wait a little longer.

    The article mentioned that last year there had been a property tax increase and that the mayor was hearing from the working people that they just could not handle another increase. At the same time, government workers had not received pay increases for the last three years. At that point, the city council had to decide who to please and it was a choice between city employees and every single property owner in the city of Wilmington. It’s hardly surprising who won.

  33. 33.

    Angelia

    July 5, 2011 at 1:57 pm

    A similar thing happened to my store in Suffolk, VA. We were located in an older downtown, under going some redevolopment, but still a lot of abandoned buildings. The empty store front attached to my studio, caught fire and spread into my place, part because two of the fire hydrants on the street did not work.

  34. 34.

    demz taters

    July 5, 2011 at 3:09 pm

    Not so unbelievable when you realize the transplants are rootless (otherwise they would have stayed home), I-got-mine-so-fuck-you opportunists who gladly paid into the tax rolls while they were extracting something out (a government job, high-quality free public education), but now, early-retired and fat and sassy, are having their 25-yr-old libertarian moment and figure they can go where the livin’ is easy. They then proceed to shit the bed wherever they go.

    Arizona in a nutshell.

  35. 35.

    The Raven

    July 5, 2011 at 3:37 pm

    Support for the state and municipal governments was one form of stimulus that did not go far. It is, however, a crying need.

  36. 36.

    Mike in NC

    July 5, 2011 at 3:55 pm

    John X @ comment 14 has it exactly right. I work in Wilmington. I live with these people. Refugees from the snowbelt who left their kids and grandkids behind. The fancier the mansions, the more upscale the country clubs, the more elaborate the gated communities, the bigger and more selfish the assholes you’ll find inside.

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