(Via Drudge) I’m putting this one up mostly because of the last name – it’s Mayor Michael Nutter, and the game is “Give us money or we’ll shut down services that you don’t want to shut down.” It’s apparently a favorite game of urban Democrats, given that it seems to happen with distressing regularity in our larger cities:
Nutter Warns Of ‘Virtual Shutdown’ Of Courts
[snip]
The city has asked the state to approve a temporary sales tax increase in Philadelphia and allow changes to how the city makes its pension payments.
Without those changes, Nutter says nearly 1,000 police officers and 200 firefighters would be cut.
The reason for the cynicism is that threatened cuts like these are never in areas where voters might shrug and go “Fine” – which is of course where the cuts should be, for precisely that reason. Staying within budget is hard; it’s much easier to spend it all on feel-good projects (for various definitions of ‘feel-good’) and scare the taxpayer with budget cuts. In other words, Philly voters should contemplate that this is a problem that’s largely of the City of Philadelphia’s own making.
Alternatively, Philly voters could perhaps contemplate that the real problem is that they’re electing too many Democrats…
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.