The city of Camden, New Jersey has just cut its police and firefighter contingents by 45 percent, in a city infamous for the second highest crime rate and a large number of suspicious fires.
At the same time, in New York City, a 75 year old woman had cardiac arrest, and with the failure to clean up the snowstorm that hit the city, it took three hours for help to reach her, and she passed away, and now her daughter is suing the city because of the lack of response.
It is easy to say–cut, cut, cut–rather than to tax to keep services. But these developments mentioned above are happening all over the nation, and it means crime rates will skyrocket, fires will destroy much property and kill large numbers of people, education will become truly a mockery, health care in hospitals will deteriorate, sanitation will not be able to keep up with vermin that will overrun where garbage gathers uncollected, libraries will shut down that offer people a chance for an escape and to do job seeking on their computers, etc, etc, etc.
There are no winners in this situation, including hundreds of thousands or even millions of dedicated public servants who will be unemployed as a result.
Instead of everyone facing up to the reality that we do not get necessary services by praying to God, but must pay the appropriate level of taxes to keep our service, even in a difficult time, the nation will deteriorate to a level that will destroy the body fabric long term.
It also is reality that more lawsuits will ensue, which will use up city and state budgets for attorney fees, and the likelihood of payouts in the millions of dollars for reckless endangerment of all citizens because of the budget cuts!
It is due time for all citizens to face reality: we are all in this together, and must stop seeing taxes as the great evil, as lack of services is a far greater sin! 🙁
Camden will turn into a war zone. Crime and criminal enterprises will trickle into philadelphia and put the city into worse shape. Giving up Camden to crime, is the equivilent to giving up a gate house during a siege. Its a sad day for eastern PA.