States Going Belly Up Part 6

Louisiana -

An area lawmaker accused state revenue workers Tuesday of failing to do their job of collecting taxes. “We’re just leaving money on the table,” state Rep. Mert Smiley Jr. said during a meeting of the Louisiana House Committee on Appropriations. Smiley, R-St. Amant, pointed to a recent tax amnesty program that generated more than $450 million, partly from people who simply neglected to pay their taxes. Proceeds also came from tax bills that were in dispute.

California again -

More than 15,000 San Francisco city workers across all departments will receive layoff notices Friday, and most of them will have the option of being rehired to work a shorter week, Mayor Gavin Newsom said Tuesday.

And

The Los Angeles Unified School District's board voted Tuesday to send notices of possible layoffs to nearly 5,200 teachers and other workers while urging union leaders to negotiate concessions that could make some of the cuts unnecessary.

Arkansas -

Total tax collections in Arkansas continued to decline in February, with the rate of decline higher than that seen in January.

Year-to-date (July 2009-Feburary 2010) gross revenues totaled $3.467 billion, down 3% from the same period in the 2008-2009 period, and 0.1% below the forecast, according to a memo from the Arkansas Department of Finance & Administration. The year-to-date decline in the July 2009-January 2010 was 2.4%.

New York -

New York Governor David Paterson and the state legislature have agreed to reduce their revenue forecast by $850 million for the next 13 months, a state report said on Tuesday. The Democratic governor in February cut $750 million from his revenue forecast for his proposed $136 billion budget for fiscal 2011, which starts on April 1. "The national economy, and to a greater extent, the New York economy, will experience a weak recovery which will translate into slow receipts growth," said the report on the state economic and revenue consensus estimate.

Uh wrong David. There's no "recovery" going on, just a bunch of deception that you fell for. I would imagine in a few years the statements will be something like "No one saw the double-dip coming" and "We had NO IDEA the Feds were lying to us." Dumb on purpose.

Indiana -

The latest revenue report on Tuesday showed the state took in $85.5 million less in taxes in February than was predicted less than three months ago. That puts the state $869 million below what lawmakers expected when they passed the budget for the fiscal period beginning in July.
Gov. Mitch Daniels did not immediately order any budget cuts, but since it's been 17 months since actual revenues met projections, he said further spending reductions might be necessary if revenues continue to sag.
"We'll just have to keep looking at it. There's not a state in the union that's done as much as we have, and we're not out of tricks yet," Daniels said.

Indeed.

The Federal Gubmint -

The U.S. Postal Service said on Tuesday that it would reduce its workforce by another 30,000 positions and slash overtime this year in an effort to reduce costs.Together these staffing reductions will result in cost savings equivalent to eliminating 50,000 full-time positions, according to Chief Financial Officer Joseph Corbett.

The Real Effect
When everyone abandons any pretense of morality and embraces relativism, is it any wonder when everything goes kaput? No one is responsible for anything and everyone is responsible for nothing. Makes sense, non?

Part of the issue is that everyone is merely trying different flavors of socialism. Where property rights are not absolute and it's just a matter of getting enough cooperation and fixing the formula. But much like Keynesism it's not the taste that causes the havoc, it's the whole damn idea that's wrong.

When you remove any sort of incentive for people to take care of property or themselves, who's going to take care of their property, much less their neighbor's? You want to fix it? Then do the following:

1. Eliminate the income tax. State and Federal.
2. Eliminate the property tax. State and otherwise.
3. Put the leash back on the Federal Government. They're like your local librarian, drunk with power, running around getting into everything. It's not their business nor jurisdiction.
4. Let it all fail and then rebuild using the capital that remains.

Far more painful(for the politicians) in the short run, far less(for us) in the long run.