Wall Street Journal: Steve Malanga: How Harrisburg Borrowed Itself Into Bankruptcy

Online Journal E-Mail Center

October 29, 2011 -- 5:00 a.m. EDT See all of today's editorials and op-eds, video interviews and commentary on Opinion Journal. STEVEN MALANGA Steve Malanga: How Harrisburg Borrowed Itself Into Bankruptcy

Can the capital of Pennsylvania stiff creditors when a credible payment plan is available?

Labels: Bus Econ municipal debt, Governance fail, Governance Municipal debt, Governance Municipalities, US st PA,US st PA Harrisburg*  *  *MARY KISSEL 
Barry Silbert: So Who Needs Wall Street?

Barry Silbert of SecondMarket is innovating around America's broken public capital markets.

*  *  *STEVEN E. LANDSBURG 
Steven E. Landsburg: How the Death Tax Hurts the Poor

It encourages the rich to pick extra fruit, leaving the trees a little barer for the rest of us.

REVIEW &  OUTLOOK

The Other Jobs Crisis The immigration crackdown has created labor shortages.  Asmaa Sakharov? Europe rewards the wrong Arab revolutionary.  Less Popular All the Time 'ObamaCare' has become the great unmentionable.

TODAY'S COLUMNIST PEGGY NOONAN Noonan: The Divider vs. the Thinker While Obama readies an ugly campaign, Paul Ryan gives a serious account of what ails America.   BEST OF THE WEB TODAY JAMES TARANTO Best of the Web Today: Crowd Displeaser Three years later, will Obama's victory site become an Obamaville?

COMMENTARY

HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR. Jenkins: Great, Good and Guilty? Will Rajaratnam now testify against Rajat Gupta in return for a shorter sentence? *  *  *Notable & Quotable Actor Michael Caine on his brief youthful flirtation with communism. *  *  *Notable & Quotable Tim Carney on Obama's lobbyist supporters. *  *  * WEEKEND BOOK REVIEWS Multiple Personality Deception "Sybil Exposed" argues that the famous patient who inspired a 1970s panic was more the victim of her psychiatrist than of mental illness. Carol Tavris reviews. *  *  *BRENDAN SIMMS Birth of the Modern World Niall's Ferguson's "Civilization" tells of how the West—and not, as the book's subtitle has it, "the rest"—came to be a source of economic dynamism and political stability. *  *  *JACQUES BARZUN The Years With Trilling Jacques Barzun reviews "Why Trilling Matters" and recounts his own intellectual partnership with the literary critic.

See all of today's editorials and op-eds, video interviews and commentary on Opinion Journal.

US st PA, US st PA Harrisburg, Governance fail, Governance Municipalities, Governance Municipal debt, Bus Econ municipal debt, 
*****

Westminster Maryland Online http://www.westminstermarylandonline.net/ http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/

Kevin Dayhoff Soundtrack: http://www.kevindayhoff.net/ Kevin Dayhoff Art: http://www.kevindayhoffart.com/

My http://www.explorecarroll.com/ columns appear in the copy of the Baltimore Sunday Sun that is distributed in Carroll County: https://subscribe.baltsun.com/Circulation/

Budget problems continue for Maryland’s local governments

And it is only going to worse…

December 1, 2009 by Kevin Dayhoff

I did this piece of art in September 1994. The more things change the more they stay the same. At some point, the entire manner in which local government in Maryland is funded needs to be changed so that all our tax revenue does not get lost in a black hole in Annapolis and gets re-directed to the government that is closest to the citizens. Woman with the Ones above Carroll County
http://kevindayhoffart.blogspot.com/2009/12/woman-with-ones-above-carroll-county.html)

Read: See Charles Schelle’s article on the press conference today when the employee layoffs were announced: 18 county government employees to lose jobs By Charles Schelle Move to save estimated $3 million http://www.explorecarroll.com/news/3672/layoffs/

See also: Carroll County Commissioners to hold news conference on budget http://tinyurl.com/yhcoklt - and - Carroll Co Budget, Carroll Co employees, MD State Budget

18 county government employees to lose jobs:

This is so sad. And at this time of the year; not that any time of the year is a good time to lose employees – or your job...

My heart and prayers go out to the employees who have lost their job – and to the folks who were forced to make theses difficult decisions.

I happen to agree with the Carroll County government press release today, Carroll Co MD Commissioners eliminate positions http://tinyurl.com/y9zyanu http://tinyurl.com/y9zyanu: “Carroll County already has one of the leanest staffs in Maryland. A survey by the Maryland Association of Counties ranks Carroll as the second-lowest number of employees per capita.”

The problem is certainly not with over-staffing on the part of Carroll County government.

The problem is the systematic irresponsible spending in Annapolis and now the state is balancing its books on the backs of local government.

Neither the current administration or the Maryland General Assembly has the stomach for raising taxes – especially after the fiasco from the Maryland Special Taxing Session from November 2007, which only made matters worse…

So instead of doing the correct thing and cutting-out systemic wasteful spending, they want to force local government to raise taxes.

Add this to the incredible amount of money that Maryland has lost to surrounding states in retail sales as a result of raising the retail sales tax. Remember there is barely any location in Maryland that is not within 40 miles of the state line…

And add to this the large number of high income Marylanders who have simply left the state as a result of the prohibitive tax increase that was levied against them…

The result is a net loss of a great deal of state revenue that is above and beyond the turndown in the economy – especially since, until the recent taxing initiatives had such a disastrous result, most economist and political pundits considered Maryland recession proof.

This is a mess. And it is not a mess that will be solved anytime soon because nothing will hold the Maryland General Assembly accountable and the ruling party in Maryland is so arrogant they are completely inaccessible to any contrarian argument or debate, discussion or dialogue…

~~~~~

20091201 sdosmked Budget probs continue for MD local govt
[19940914 0758b Woman w Ones above CC]

*****

Kevin Dayhoff Soundtrack: http://www.kevindayhoff.net/ Kevin Dayhoff Art: http://www.kevindayhoffart.com/ Kevin Dayhoff Westminster: http://www.westgov.net/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevindayhoff Twitpic: http://twitpic.com/photos/kevindayhoff Kevin Dayhoff's The New Bedford Herald: http://kbetrue.livejournal.com/

*****

Westminster Maryland Online http://www.westminstermarylandonline.net/ http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/

Kevin Dayhoff Soundtrack: http://www.kevindayhoff.net/ Kevin Dayhoff Art: http://www.kevindayhoffart.com/

My http://www.explorecarroll.com/ columns appear in the copy of the Baltimore Sunday Sun that is distributed in Carroll County: https://subscribe.baltsun.com/Circulation/