sweasel.com

And may I just add, the area in question is such that having Bengali as a first language (or maybe Somali) would be distinct advantage in helping the little… darlings… play with plastic bricks.

Or benefit forms, for when they grow up.

I remember as a kid when the public schools wanted a tax increase they would always threaten to cut the High School Football program.

Yeah…California is the Mother Ship for that kind of budgetary thinking. First to be laid-off are Fireman, Police and Teachers. Never the fucking adminstrators. Always the same crap from the teachers unions crying about student to teacher ratios being higher than (insert socialist shithole here) but they NEVER mention that if you added all the useless administrators into the equation you’d have a ratio of something like 6 to 1. Teachers don’t generally TEACH their whole careers…they spend the last 10 or 15 years tallying up the left handed lithuanian lesbians, just to make sure THEIR needs are “properly” met. Bastiges.

Jeezus! $50-60K for a fucking play offficer??!!! How did we all get so fucking stupid?

A play officer! Isn’t that an awesome job description?

Here’s a playground. Here are some kids. Liberals think you need a fifty-grand administrator to make that formula work.

Weasel, I’ve heard it called the Prop 13 effect. Limit property taxes? Their response: We’ll get you summsabitches, how do you like less firefighters, more rotting garbage, less cops?

So we give them more money in other taxes, what do we get? Junk bond status, yeah California!

I want to be a Senior Play Officer when I grow up. Jeebus where in the hell do you get experience in “adventure play?” Is there like a degree in it, or maybe OJT? I’m pretty sure infants don’t have teeth. There’s a dream job, showing someone how to do something to something that doesn’t exist. I think I’ll go ask Alice.

What gets me…how is this different than your typical protection racket? Nice domestic tranquility ya’s gots there…be a SHAME if somethin’ happened to it…
It’s fucking extortion, and should be approached the same way. Our government in CA should be facing RICO charges. Fucking insane.

Reminds me of something that happened back in 1991/2 when I was attending my first year at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. They were trying to get the football team moved from Division 2 up to Division 1.

At the same time, they were going to close the library on Sundays. There was an advisory vote of the student population (non-binding). IIRC, it was the largest vote turnout in the university history, with over 10,000 votes cast. The move to Div 1 football, which added a about a quarter to our tuition, won by just a few tenths of a percent. The university president declared it was a clear majority and started the process immediately.

The vote to add $1 to our fees to keep the library open seven days a week? Passed with 80%, but it was a “bad precedent” and was never enacted.

Just a couple quarters later, the state jacked up tuition by almost 100%, phased in over a few years. It doesn’t take a genius to know that the university President wanted that football team before we all knew what was coming.

If I was Senior Play Officer the little darlings would learn several marching jodys featuring Barney, sudden and violent death of same, and snot (I believe in *reasonably* age-appropriate material) before lunch, and then we would adjourn to the spitball range for practice. Tuesdays would be Cleaning and Disassembly (okay, just disassembly) of Common Household Appliances, complete with the Naming of the Parts (e.g. doohicky, thingamajig, and whatsit).

we here in the people’s republic of MA call it the “fuck you you stupid, demanding taxpayer” syndrome. Exhibit A would be Easter Weekend 2009 when the western tolls into the city of Boston had 1 (yes, that’s right…1) working toll collector. the traffic backup was more than 5 hours. The 2 week shut off of the lights on the Zakim bridge “to save all that wasted energy” was just another example. God forbid we should require any of the gangbangers in Dorchester sporting the latest in $400 sneakers and an I-phone to get a job.

I’m a California schoolteacher and let me tell you…it’s BAD here
money-wise. We’ve already weeded out all the useless jobs, and now are down to deleting counselors. Bad.

Yep. Can’t get by without the counselors…

If there isn’t a name for this tactic, there needs to be. It gets used on us too, even in Alabama: “Well, we’d really like to keep from raising property taxes, but without that increase, we’ll have to get rid of all school sports, cut police salaries, and reduce garbage pickup to one day a week. Your call, idiot citizenry. Just ignore the fact that the entire city council, school board, and pretty much every official in the county just voted themselves a 25% salary increase.”

Gromulin is absolutely right. If this was done by anyone other than the government, we’d call it organized crime.

“murdelating”

This act is frowned upon in most jurisdictions around here. I suppose if you flee from Stateside to Ol’ Blightey, one can indulge in the pleasures of bygone era.
Britisher Murdelating, on the other hand, … with stone kromlechs in the background and druids in flowing robes performing interpretative dance at full moon.

Th Sweasel is reverting to her primordial form. Did not take long at all.

Cutting muscle before cutting fat is not only a shrewd defense tactic, it’s policy. Politically influential careerists and politicians’ useless relatives occupy the plum high-paid, do-nothing jobs in a bureaucracy, so when a budget crunch compels a cut to staff, it’s the overpaid drone or his patron who decides where to cut, and the answer is, inevitably, not him.

I remember as a kid when the public schools wanted a tax increase they would always threaten to cut the High School Football program

Seriously? School taxes should go for schooling. Want a football team, get a corporate sponsor.

More seriously….the fed should get out of education. Did ya see that the NEA has Alinsky as ‘recommended reading’?

So no one knows what this effect is properly called? I would LOVE to know its name to use in discussions with lunatics.

The term I read definitely had “national park” in it, but “effect” doesn’t seem right. And you can imagine how many hits I get on “national park” and words like “effect.”

I wish I could help you out: Oregon voters just voted away money on the basis of that particular con. New Yorkers fall for it every time. All I can add is that it’s a country cousin to the “Hot Meals for Orphans” pitch.

Meh. I just had another go at Google and Bing, but with no luck.

Interestingly, Google has no function that lets you jump to the end, to the least likely hits. I got 164,000 on “national parks” searching only in Wikipedia. When I tried to jigger the URL to jump to the end, I got a message saying Google will never show you beyond the first 1,000 hits.

My DD’s high school was brandie new. I didn’t want her to go there in the first place as I feel new schools have no tradition and no soul. Plus she was thriving at the high school she was currently in. But…. no matter what I tried to do and trust me I was looking for any loop hole I could she was forced to go there. We were promised state of the art every thing, computer lab, chem labs, library. Oh the glory of that school.

The football team got their stadium but the chem lab didn’t even have gas the first year she was there. I could go on and on and on but the real kicker was….. they forgot to order textbooks. Since there was no budget left for books they had to borrow them from the surrounding high schools. I am sooo glad she is no longer there and I’m sure they are glad I didn’t have any younger children.

That reminds me of my first science class at my high school in California. I think the year before I got there, they had just installed a new, state of the art running track around the football field made of some kind of rubber. Cost a small fortune. Our science teacher had pointed out that his lab class, where we were working with chemicals, didn’t even have a functional eyewash fountain. So they installed one to appease him. He demonstrated it on the first day, just to show us that it did not work. It had such low pressure that it barely flowed.

par for the course. I was jsut reading a blurb about Obama killing a tax credit on people below $95,000 per year that he SWORE was permanent, because he is STRUGGLING with record deficits that the press is too far up their own assholes to admit HE IS CREATING!!!!

When you take the benefits package into account, that ‘play officer’ is sucking up £67,372 p.a., which at current exchange rates is $107,600.

Cameron’s mob will not be any better, even if they were inclined to be. The hookworm infestation has burrowed too far into the body cavity, and a dose of antihelmintics strong enough would kill the patient.

So when Arizona faces a budget crisis they shut down the public toilets. We are only famous for two things: a big hole in the ground and highways. Where are the tourists supposed to potty? It just pisses me off.

This was Southern Ohio, porknbean. The voter’s priority list was

1-4) Football
5) Teachers.

A main reason they couldn’t get a tax levy passed for the public schools was that the rich part of the city, who sent their kids to private schools that all had football teams of their own, voted down public school taxes for years at a time. So much for the compassion of rich liberals (and non-liberals too I suppose)

I think part of the problem with Googling it is that you need a synonym for a different word from “effect.” Effect, used in that kind of phrase, implies result–but what you are talking about is more like an explanation, excuse, justification. . .con. . .bait and switch. . . oops, back On Topic. I tried with “syndrome,” which is even further off than effect–with no success. Gonna go curl up with Roget’s for a bit. . .

I think the term you are looking for is “Old Faithful” list of budget cuts. Found reference here:

http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2002/02-09-25.htm

Hmmmmmmm, Oldcat. For a second, I thought that scratched the braincell. But wherever I found this, they were definitely coining a term for the gambit.

strategem, feint, device?
manoeuvre, expedient, pretext?
syndrome?
hey–even gambit?

And I LOVED this sentence from Oldcat’s find:

Whenever the bureaucracy gets to devise the plan, services to the public will be slashed savagely before anybody in the bureaucracy loses a job, and the most popular services will be the first to be cut.

Red-lining Yellowstone?

The version of it that I remember referenced the Washington Monument.

I have seen some interesting stats recently. Government salaries at various levels have increased substantially in the last ten years, now exceeding private sector salaries. This in addition to gold-plated pension systems that are easily gamed for extra payoffs.

Oregon voted a tax increase by referendum; Oregon state workers have a higher average salary than the rest. (The referendum increased corporate and top bracket taxes only; union money funded a huge YES campaign.)

Over half the unionized workers in the U.S. are government employees.

Sometime soon, the breaking point will be reached.

In France in the 1700s, the nation (and the government) were crushed by the hordes of salaried officeholders. The tax bureaucracy was so inefficient that the crown imposed a tax on offices (the “paulette”) which was the only money the King could actually spend.

We know how that ended. À la lanterne!

Rich R is correct – I first heard it as “Closing the Washington Monument” when I worked in DC and they did exactly that. Whenever they failed to pass the budget or a continuing resolution at the end of the fiscal year, all the museums on the National Mall would be closed while all the usual pork continued merrily along.

I believe it first came to national attention during the Newt vs. Clinton budget battle. They closed the National Gallery during a once in a lifetime exhibit featuring every existing Vermeer – the only exhibit that ever gathered them all in one place. People had travelled from all over the world to attend, only to find that our politicians had thrown a tantrum. Clinton made Newt and the Republicans look like fools, even though they were correct on the substance of the issues.

BTW – I waited in line for four hours in freezing drizzle to get a (timed entry) ticket to that exhibit. It was worth every minute.

Oh, man — I wanted so badly to see that exhibit! Vermeer is my absolute favorite. As an aspiring artist, I totally imitated him — by which I mean, had a very low output and bumped along near bankruptcy.

I don’t remember the shenanigans around the show, though.

Try “pothole syndrome” as the term you’re looking for; I ran across it at the Chicago Boyz blog. See the comments to a post from 29 January 2010 titled “Annual CTA Proposed Reductions.” (No link in case it sends me to spam Siberia.)

The second commenter defines pothole syndrome as “the most visible possible cuts in service to punish the voters who are so stingy.”

That pretty much sums it up, I’d say.

Here in Tampa a debate over a sales tax increase resulted in threatened cuts to a nature preserve used by the school system, as if that cost real money. The police department parked 40 brand new cruisers out of sight and used the oldest most worthless relics in the fleet for the highest visibility jobs.