Cambridge politicos lick their chops

At the prospect of squeezing more bucks out of hapless Cambridge restaurant goers. Check out this juicy tidbit: City officials interested in taxing restaurant meals

Seems that our generous new governor wants to pass a bill allowing cities to raise the meals tax by 2%. Guess the reaction of Cambridge political hacks.

The bill has garnered support from local officials, who said that the tax would diversify the city’s revenue options, which currently relies heavily on property taxes.

Funny, never, but never, a word about lowering taxes by cutting back on pork. Say, the "Peace Commission"(about 80 K yearly), or "Affirmative Action"(read: racial and ethnic quotas), which comes in at 94 tho a year.

While we're at it, how about a ten percent across the board cut in city expenditures. Can anybody truly believe that there isn't at least that much fat in city programs.
(most likely it is closer to thirty percent)

Oh, and since it is tax time, wonder how many Massachusetts liberals opt to put their money where their mouths are and pay their taxes at the voluntary 5.85% rate?

Cambridge Bureaucrats - Paragons of Pettifoggery

Well, the CCC(Crusading Cambridge Chronicle) continues to hound our gallivanting rogue mayor over his travel receipts. And RR (Rascally Reeves) and his cohorts continue to engage in pettifogging stonewalling.

It seems that instead of just doing the decent thing and forking over the receipts(they are public records after all), Reeves and his pals at City Hall are being as petulantly refractory as possible, even going so far as to drag in the poor Deputy City Solicitor to send out a stationary bill:

The city asked the Chronicle for more money this week to look at Mayor Ken Reeves’ travel receipts.

The Chronicle gave City Solicitor Don Drisdell a check for $130.85 on Feb. 26.

“We have exhausted $130.85, the full amount of your payment of the above estimate, which you paid by check dated February 15, 2007,” states a letter sent March 14 from Deputy City Solicitor Nancy Glowa.

Glowa said the city auditor would need an additional $38.03 to continue the public records request.

The fee would cover an additional two hours worth of work — at $15.21 per hour — for a city employee to compile the receipts. City officials had previously estimated that it would take only five hours to fill the public records request.
The Chronicle plans to pay the additional fee.

Now, although it is bizarre to go after Reeves for not keeping travel receipts which he was not obligated to keep , still, it surely presents a merry spectacle: seeing our pompous fool of a faux mayor getting his ass kicked when he is so used to getting it kissed!

Note the breathtaking imperiousness of the Cambridge bureaucracy: arrogantly charging annoyance fees for public records. By the way, the Chronicle is wrong to cave in and pay the fees. Both morally and perhaps practically. About a year ago, some petty tyrant in Inspectional Services tried to make Cambridge Citizen cough up some bucks for copying public documents. Cambridge Citizen ignored her and went to her boss, who personally copied the documents for free! If the City really wanted to hand over the documents without hassle, it could do so very easily.There is mucho discretion in such matters.

But, in all fairness to the Chronicle, they probably had no such option. In this case they seem to be up against the Cambridge bureaucracy in all its pettifogging glory.

All bureaucracies tend towards petty arrogance, insulated as they are by civil service rules and unions. This tendency is exacerbated in Cambridge. The Cambridge bureaucracy, like Cambridge itself, is different. It is even more cut off from the people than ordinary bureaucracies. In a normal city the bureaucrats are supervised directly by a mayor elected by all the people. A Cambridge bureaucrat answers primarily to a Super Bureaucrat(aka the City Manager), who in turn is hired by City Clowncillors, all of whom are elected at large according to a perverse system of proportional representation which ensures that their real concern is not the people as a whole but the cultivation of their own little voter clique.

No wonder the Cambridge bureaucracy is so often totally out of control.

I

Immigración? No problema! So says señor Jeff Jacoby

Know what the problem is with immigration? There ain't enough of it! Know what the problem is with illegal immigration? No problema! Just make 'em all legal! Or so says Jeff Jacoby, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, oops, I mean the Boston Globe.

Now, señor Jeff is a dandy fellow and normally the only voice of reason at that loony left wing tract where he works.

But in his last two columns, Illegal immigrants are here to stay, and What if we deport them all,
Jeff has apparently been imbibing Wall Street Journal laissez faire moonshine(immigration shimmigration, let 'em all in, the market will sort everything out)

The illegal immigrants are here to stay because........ well, because they're just here to stay.
We can't put them all on buses because..........well, we just can't.

So, American workers, live with it! Anyway, it's all for your benefit. Cheap labor makes things cheaper. And those low prices sure come in handy when you're living on unemployment benefits.

Cambridge Schools - Where Does All The Money Go?

Psssst! Calling all intrepid Globe and Chronicle reporters. Boy, do I have a hot lead for you!

Next time you see your pals at the Cambridge School Committee, you might ask them this:

Where does all the money go?

According to figures from the Massachusetts Department of Education, Cambridge per pupil expenditure is $17,459! per annum (up from $9, 653 in 1999). The state wide average is $7,421.


Hey, but it gets better. While the number of students in Cambridge SHRUNK from 7, 702 in 1999 to 6,136 in 2005, total school expenditures rose from $86,870,720 to $107,695,697 in the same years.

And boys and girls, when you get some answers, please contact me.

Sincerely,

Cambridge Citizen

The Brave New World of the Cambridge School System(cont'd)

More on the bizarro world of Cambridge schools. Now it's the Globe's turn to enlighten and instruct us. Per its usual standards, the Globe starts off with a misleading header: A wealthier influx shuffles classroom seats. It turns out that by "wealthy" the Globe and the Cambridge School Committee mean a pupil who can pay for his lunch.

Then the Globe reports - with a straight face - that this "influx"(of course, the Globe gives no figures) has occasioned a debate over "controlled choice" pupil assignment. Should the desired mix remain at 45 % poor and 55% "wealthy" ? Or should it be changed to 35% - 65%? Should the permitted variation from this norm be plus or minus 10% or plus or minus 15%?

And if you think that the manifest absurdity of this debate might occasion the Cambridge school elites to reconsider their "kid counting" scheme, think again. The article ends with these reassuring words by the Cambridge School Superintendent:

"...there is no chance that we will eliminate controlled choice."

The Brave New World of the Cambridge School System

The Cambridge Chronicle continues its brilliant coverage of Cambridge with this gem: Schools change diversity quotas :

The article commences in a breathless tone:

The Cambridge School Committee recently made drastic[my emphasis, CC] changes to a system originally meant to desegregate the city’s schools in the 1980s.

Gee, I wondered, what "drastic changes " could have put our Chroniclette in such a fret. Could you suppose that the dolts on the School Committee finally decided to scrap their Orwellian "Controlled Choice" program, whereby pupils are assigned to schools on the basis of race and class.

No way!

This was the "drastic" change:

....the School Committee unanimously supported a plan to change the Controlled Choice formula, which assigns students to schools based on a formula of 55 percent wealthy or middle-class students to 45 percent poor students, with a flexibility of 15 percent at each kindergarten.

Schools can adjust the student population for the ratio of poor to rich students by 15 percent in either direction under the new plan. The previous plan only allowed a 10 percent adjustment.

So this was the tweak that put the Chronicle in a twitter!

Once again, a foolish policy covered by a fatuous media.

To Cambridge "Peace"Commission: Rest in Peace, Please!

This just in, straight out of the horse's arse's mouth, viz.: the Cambridge Chronicle:

'On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Peace Commission, the Cambridge City Council declares “Cambridge as a ‘City of Peace’ in the year 2007...” '

Happy birthday, comrades! Can it be twenty five years already? It just seems like yesterday that the the Cambridge Peacenik Commission was cozying up to the Soviets. Now the jihadists are its pets. One thing has remained the same however: its resentment of the U.S.A.

The Cambridge "Peace" Commission is ridiculous; everybody knows it is ridiculous; heck, I suspect that, deep down, even the Commission itself knows that it is ridiculous.

But the Commission just won't go away. How does it do it? In search of an answer, I went to the Commission's site. I started to read its self description....

The Cambridge Peace Commission's mission is to promote peacemaking within Cambridge, at the personal, neighborhood and citywide level. Originally established in 1982 to confront the concerns of nuclear war, the Commission has expanded its mission to challenge local forms of discrimination that foster violence and to promote ideas and programs that affirm diversity and build community within our city. Dedicated to the concept of thinking globally and acting locally, the Commission connects international issues with Cambridge. The Commission is a resource linking peace organizations, social justice efforts, anti-violence coalitions, communities and the municipal government.

And then, as I shook myself to stop nodding off, it struck me how these loonytune commissioners have been able to survive for so long: they've wrapped themselves in a protective cocoon of mind-numbing bureaucratese, leavened with lefty buzzwords - rendering them virtually immune from rational scrutiny. First they disarm you with a barrage of pieties (diversity, community, anti-violence) and then they finish you off with soporific prose(promote....mission...international... communities ...blah, blah, blah, and more blah).

Having reduced their critics to a state of stupor with benumbing rhetoric, the peacocrats are free to do what all bureaucrats do best: nada!

The Cambridge "Peace" Commission has a cozy little relationship with the Cambridge Chrockicle. The paper publishes Commission PR handouts masquerading as columns, under the cloying title "Peace Matters." Well, peace certainly matters* but not the Peace Commission.

*Maybe the Commission and the Chronicle should discuss that with Dar al-harb jihadists.