Re: CRIZ: The further looting of Lancaster City, County and State
Your CRIZ piece was an eye-opener and should be required reading for EVERY resident of Lancaster County. This entire initiative is nothing but a giant shell game and scam to benefit the well-connected.
Please keep it more accessible on your website and don’t let it fall off the front page. People need to understand what is going on here. Someone just told me that the private developers of the new “pool project” by the old RCA plant will also be sticking their heads into the CRIZ trough.
CRIZ = corporate welfare at the expense of PA taxpayers.
While I am no fan of CRIZ I must say that CRIZ seems an awful lot like a euphemism for “public – private partnership”. A term favored by past politicians.
CRIZ reminds me of a quote from the book The Godfather: “A man with a briefcase can steal more money than a man with a gun.” Once again a few will feast while the multitudes starve.
According the Sen. Smuckers office, CRIZ is more like a loan program designed to support projects capable of returning tax dollars sufficient to replay the loan. The project targets properties that developers avoid due to environmental issues etc. CRIZ is intended to be self supporting. Time will tell. Interested people need to help the Senator keep an eye on it.
EDITOR: If we pay for current projects with future tax dollars, were will our children and grandchildren find tax dollars to pay the governmental expenses of their times?
I am surprised by the editors concern for the future. We have been putting current spending on the backs of future generations for a long time. I recall a prior Newslanc discussion using a bridge example, whereby future bridge tolls pay for the current construction of the bridge….
EDITOR: The bridge is paid for by its tolls, not with tax revenues due future generations.
State Store clerks’ wages must be worse than you say they are, John. A 2% increase would bump the rate from 3.07% to 3.13%. For someone making $50,000, that would be a $3.50 a year (amounting to a total of $1,570). That’s money going directly to the general fund, and it’s levied FAIRLY on all Pennsylvania wage-earners, not just drinkers.
It’s just a talking point anyway: the liquor tax will never go away, and everyone knows it. But it sure would be good to see the State Stores go away to be replaced by something that serves all Pennsylvanians rather than John’s favorite drinker, Mister and Mrs. Least Common Denominator.
From my own experience those that get shut off usually start taking their business elsewhere. What a beauty of irony, considering that John’s experience as a State Store clerk never includes customers that CAN take their business elsewhere. We’re stuck with one choice, no matter how we’re treated: the State Store System.
Every store is the same, and you are forbidden by law to buy outside the State. We don’t even have the option of buying outside the State and then paying the taxes.
On the BAC/DUI numbers, my apologies: it’s 0.15, not 0.12. But then feast your eyes on this, which only makes the point more strongly: In 2010, 70% of drivers involved in drunk driving fatalities had a a BAC level of .15 or higher – a trend that has remained relatively unchanged for more than a decade. (Source: NHTSA/FARS, 2012) Three percent of drivers involved in fatal crashes in 2010 had a prior DWI conviction within the past three years. Among these drivers with a prior DWI conviction 42% were involved in a fatal crash and had a BAC level of 0.15 or higher at the time of the crash. (Source: NHTSA/FARS, 2012)
The median BAC level remains twice the legal limit at 0.16, and drivers with a BAC level of .15 or higher in fatal crashes were nine times more likely to have a prior conviction for driving while impaired than non-drinking drivers. (Source: NHTSA, FARS and Traffic Safety Facts Alcohol-Impaired Driving, 2012)
So my last statement wasn’t true by 3/100ths of a percentage point. Again, my apologies. But the point remains correct. (And you’re a thief: the booga-booga stick line is mine, as you well know, and I named Wendell W. Young IV as the stick-shaker. But I wouldn’t expect you to credit me.)