Do tax cuts cost lives?

[Guns Guns Guns]

Stopped at a red light in a crime-wracked neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey, a 31-year-old woman watched as her friend slumped to the floor after a bullet smashed through the back window of the 31-year-old's Pontiac minivan.


"I looked back and there was a gunman walking up on my car," said the driver, who declined to be named out of concerns for her safety.



"I turned away and he fired two more."



As the shots rang out, she turned the wheel and hit the gas to escape what turned out to be the second fatal shooting that day in Newark, where nearly a sixth of the city's police force was laid off amid budget cuts about two years ago.



And Newark is by no means unique in implementing police cutbacks to save city money. Meanwhile, violent crime soared 18% nationwide last year, marking the country's first rise since 1993, while property crime also spiked for the first time in a decade.


Her death is one of at least 71 homicides so far this year in cash-strapped Newark, where police say they have reorganized after more than 160 police officers were cut from the force in November 2010.



Police expenditures in Newark have since declined every year for the last three years, according to the city's business administrator, Julien X. Neals, leaving cops to sustain public services with decreasing resources.



Analysts say the trend isn't unique.



"Most cities have cut back since 2008 and the recession, though some more than others," said Gregory Minchak, a spokesman for the National League of Cities.



Town and city halls in places including Detroit, Michigan; Jacksonville, Florida; Kansas City, Missouri; and Scranton, Pennsylvania, have tentatively put public sector jobs on the chopping block this year to help fill budget gaps.



In January, the mayor of crime-ridden Camden, New Jersey, nearly halved its police force while cutting close to a third of its fire department in an effort to close a $26.5 million budget deficit.


"We're now having that frank public conversation about what do we want from government and how much do we want to pay for it," said Brookings Institution fellow Tracy Gordon.






http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/28/us/new-jersey-newark-crime/index.html

 

[RockX]

What tax cuts??? Again when liberals run cities, this is what happens.



Booker assumed office as Mayor of Newark on July 1, 2006, and is the third consecutive black person to govern the city since 1970.

On October 16, 2006, Booker formally introduced his administration's first adopted Newark City Budget. They approved a $697.1 million budget resulted in an 8.3% increase in the city's property tax, which is one of the largest property tax increases in the city's history. The budget also increased the number of city employees from 3,968 to 4,197[SUP]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Booker#cite_note-29[/SUP][SUP]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Booker#cite_note-30[/SUP] These increases were cited as necessary to fix the structural financial deficit and secure a solid foundation for Newark’s future. Booker pledged to not increase taxes the following year, a promise he kept – the City of Newark did not raise taxes for the following two years.

Despite criticisms, Booker has also raised the salaries of many city workers. However, the Booker Administration and the City of Newark imposed one-day-a-month furloughs for all non-uniformed employees from July through December 2010, as well as 2% pay cuts for managers and directors currently earning more than $100,000 a year.


The previous mayor's....

Newark has been marred with episodes of political corruption throughout the years. Five of the previous seven Mayors of Newark have been indicted on criminal charges, including the previous three Mayors: Hugh Addonizio, Kenneth Gibson, and Sharpe James. As reported by Newsweek: "... every mayor since 1962 (except the current one, Cory Booker) has been indicted for crimes committed while in office.

Addonizio was mayor of Newark from 1962 to 1970. A son of Italian immigrants, a tailor and WWII veteran, he ran on a reform platform, defeating the incumbent, Leo Carlin, who, ironically, he characterized as corrupt and a part of the political machine of the era. During the 1967 riots, it was found that Addonizio and other city officials were taking kickbacks from city contractors. He was convicted of extortion and conspiracy in 1970, and was sentenced to ten years in federal prison.[86]

His successor was Kenneth Gibson, the city's first African American mayor, elected in 1970. He pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion in 2002 as part of a plea agreement on fraud and bribery charges. During his tenure as Mayor in 1980, he was tried and acquitted of giving out no-show jobs by an Essex County jury.[87]

Sharpe James, who defeated Gibson in 1986 and declined to run for a sixth term in 2006, was indicted on 33 counts of conspiracy, mail fraud, and wire fraud by a federal grand jury sitting in Newark. The grand jury charged James with spending $58,000 on city-owned credit cards for personal gain and orchestrating a scheme to sell city-owned land at below-market prices to his companion, who immediately re-sold the land to developers and gained a profit of over $500,000. James pleaded not guilty on 25 counts at his initial court appearance on July 12, 2007. On April 17, 2008, James was found guilty for his role in the conspiring to rig land sales at nine city-owned properties for personal gain. The former mayor was sentenced to serve up to 27 months in prison.