Emma Berry

Posts Tagged ‘Plano’

The larger percentage of local governments across the USA and the federal government in Washington are headed up by the wealthy of our nation–those who have personal gross  income in excess of $166,000 per year. And in Washington the wealth factor goes even higher.  In our Congress we have 263 multimillionaires–almost half.  If our Congress were truly representative to the people that it is supposed to serve, this percentage, instead of consisting of about 48% of multimillionaires, would be at 1% or 2%.  Yes that is correct, if our Congress were representative of the people, we would have one or two multimillionaires which would be representative of our population and not    263.  As for the rest of them, they all range in income from the upper 2% down to the upper 5%.

So our Congress is representative of about 5% of Americans.

These people are totally out of touch, and furthermore don’t give a damn, regarding the MAJORITY of Americans and how we live.   They really don’t get it because they are doing just fine.  America, as it has become today,  works for the rich, the upper 5%–just not the other 95%.

THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE MAKING DECISIONS FOR THE REST OF US!  IT IS ABSURD! WE DO NOT HAVE A DEMOCRACY.  WE HAVE AN OLIGARCHY OF THE RICH.

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Local governments are not any better. Look at the recent decisions made, for example by the local city council of Plano Texas.  In November of 2009 they paid $2.1 of taxpayer money  in incentives  (extortion) to Pizza Hut to move their headquarters from Addison Texas (a few miles away) to Plano. I believe that one of their council members referred to is as a “jewel” in their crown.  Perfect analogy from a “royal” ruler. Sometimes I think that some of the people heading up our governments treat act as if they are in some fraternity or sorority vying for prizes during Greek week instead of actually representing citizens.  Citizens of Plano who do not belong to the upper 5% club will be paying in the form of higher property taxes.  Yes the City of Plano had to raise property taxes for the second or third time in as many years.  Do you wonder why?

If you do, I can give you another reason:  Just this week they allocated $7.5 million dollars for improvement of their public golf course!  What percentage of citizens in Plano do you think play golf?  I would venture to guess that at the very most it would amount to one or two percent.  Nowhere near the majority will benefit from this expenditure–yet all of the property owners will be paying for it in the form of higher taxes.  This is the same council who told their black community that they could not afford $500,000 for a black community center because as one council member smugly put it:  “They represent the whole community and not just a neighborhood.”  Ironically, he was the only black member of their city council.

As for bringing the headquarters of Pizza Hut to Plano.  This might have been worth it if Pizza Hut had been located in another state, but in an adjoining city within the same urban area?  Please.  How many people do you think moved to Plano from Addison?  How many people do you think now shop in a grocery store in Plano who once shopped in Addison?  That move was little more than an ego trip for the city council that raised property taxes for the citizens of that community.

And Plano is not that different from all the other local governments across the USA and all the local governments across the USA are not that different from Washington.  They are all ruled from the perspective of the rich.  Someone needs to tell these people that they are not the majority.

YES THIS IS A CLASS WAR AND YOU ARE WRONG (OR RICH) IF YOU SAY OTHERWISE.

MY LORD!  Shades of 2008 and the endless yammer about flag pins and the Reverend Wright!  What a bunch of puffed up self-righteous buffoons!

We have been listening to all the pundits right and left including the President yammer endlessly since Friday about the “appropriateness” of building a Mosque so close to ground Zero in Manhattan.  Close?  You gotta be kidding?  Have you ever been to Manhattan?  EVERYTHING  IS “CLOSE” THERE.  If they built a mosque anywhere on the entire island it would be “close”.

Besides, the fact is that there are already over a 100 mosques in Manhattan so what the heck.  What the hell difference does one more make?  And as Sarah Palin’s hyperbole twit tweeted: “…building a Mosque only a few steps from Ground Zero. . .”  BS!  The proposed Mosque is two city blocks away. If  you’ve ever walked around in Manhattan you would know that the proposed Mosque will be a great deal more than “a few” steps away from Ground Zero.  If Sarah Palin were to walk that two blocks in her red high heels that she wore during the Biden debate she would realize that the proposed mosque is quite a bit more that “a few steps from Ground Zero.”   Aren’t there any people on television any more who will hold these people accountable for their BS?

SO WHAT IS THE BIG FLAP OVER NOTHING  REALLY ALL ABOUT?  WHAT IS THIS YET ANOTHER MOUNTAIN OUT OF A MOLE HILL ABOUT?

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I’ll tell you what it is about:  It is about the Republicans and Centrist Democrats using gossip and opinion about faux issues to avoid discussing real solutions such as–HOW ARE WE GOING TO CREATE JOBS?

We should know by now what does not work:

1. Extortion payments to Wall Street don’t work. If they did, then the $700 billion payment that we made as George Bush’s parting gift to Wall Street would have already yielded jobs.  Instead Wall Street thugs used it to pay themselves multimillion dollar bonuses while cutting even more jobs for Americans.

2. Lowering taxes for the Rich does not work–except of course for the rich. If cutting taxes were the answer, our economy would be healthy today.  Most economists argue that the cuts have benefited the nation’s richest households at the expense of the middle and lower class

In 2003, 450 economists, including ten Nobel Prize laureate, signed the Economists’ statement opposing the Bush tax cuts, sent to President Bush stating that “these tax cuts will worsen the long-term budget outlook.

But if you want to take the word of people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin over the word of 450 economists–go ahead and join the dumb and dumber club. I prefer the company of the smart and educated club myself.

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WHAT CAN WE DO?

WE CAN STOP THE SELLOUT OF LOCAL ECONOMIES!

We can forget about Wall Street and we can forget about Washington except to try to elect people to Congress who will not  take the conservative bait of faux issues like flag pins and mosques.

Leave those kinds of stupid discussions up to the Glenn Becks, Hannitys  and Sarah Palins.

WE THE PEOPLE CAN LIGHT A FIRE UNDER THE ASSES OF THOSE WHO PURPORT TO REPRESENT US LOCALLY.

Instead of blowing $2 million dollars for an extortion payment to a Wall Street corporation like Pizza Hut and then raising property taxes on the people of Plano, the people of Plano would have been better off if their elected officials had used that money to help the people of the community establish a locally owned corporation.

Just last Monday that same bunch of elected officials on Plano’s City Council approved a $7.5 million upgrade of its public golf course.  What percentage of people in Plano do you think play golf?

We need to start paying attention to our local government–up close and personal.

1. WANT CRUMBS? Vote for John Lingenfelder, the Democratic choice. John will do better than many Democratic candidates in representing the majority of this district, but he will still be tied to Democratic party politics which are run by the Clinton corporate centrists–the same bunch that brought us NAFTA and the deregulation of the entire financial industry.  Yes the “Bank Modernization Act of 1999″ which made our current economic crash possible was created by a Republican Congress, but Bill Clinton signed it into law in late November of 1999. He could have let that disaster die on his desk without signing it.

2.  WANT TO RETURN TO THE HIGH ROLLING WAR SPENDING STATUS QUO OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION? WANT TO HAVE THE SOCIAL SECURITY COFFERS ROBBED?  Want a Representative who thinks that the solution to disagreements with other nations is to “nuke” them?    Then by all means vote for Sam Johnson. Sam rubber stamped all of Bush’s  UNFUNDED requests for military appropriations for Iraq–the single most reason for our current national debt.  To use an example from his 80 year old era, Sam Johnson is about as “fiscally conservative” as one of the Gabor sisters.

Sam Johnson is part of the same current Republican corrupted government of Collin County whose commissioners gave Johnson’s son a no-bid multi-million dollar contract in 2006 to manage the North Central Texas Fusion Center. [A Fusion center is a data-mining center that is designed to spy on Americans in some of the same ways that the East German Stasi spied on its citizens.  Don’t take my word for it.  Google North Central Texas Fusion Center.  There are 40 such centers all over the USA.  They were established during the Bush years via the Patriot Act.

The Collin County Clerk’s office is so corrupt that the Texas Rangers raided this nest of Republican corruption in the spring of this year and confiscated hard drives .  It seems that the county clerk used taxpayers money to help pay for her campaign.  There is more to the story than that. They even allowed county employees to campaign on county time and paid them overtime.  Read more in The Collin County Observer.  These are Sam Johnson’s good ole boy and good ole girl Republican pals.

3.  WANT AN ANARCHIST?  Then by all means vote for a Tea Party candidate because that is what these people stand for:  Anarchy. Listen to their rhetoric.  They are Republicans on steroids.  Their vision is no taxes except for war.  No health care, no public schools, no public institutions.  I guess their idea of health care is that people go off into the woods to die if they can’t afford to pay for Wall Street sponsored  health care insurance.  Their idea of education is home schooling with the Bible as the only textbook.  Instead of police, everyone will pack their own weapons and shoot to kill on sight.

By and large these people are angry Americans who are venting their anger via this movement.   Listen to them and their rhetoric.  What actual solutions are they offering?  They offer even less than the party of no, the ‘Knights of Knee’.  They have no workable solutions.

4.  WANT SOMEONE WHO REALIZES THAT NONE OF THESE SOLUTIONS ARE GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE MAJORITY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE? Then vote for Emma Berry and other true independents who will represent the majority of Americans. And yes I do offer solutions and not more of the same–despite what some misguided people from the Party of NO may say about me.

First of all we need to do all we can to encourage small businesses and to do this we can begin by changing the definition of a small business from “less than 500 employees”  to “less than 50 employees”.  That is right.  The current definition of small business in Washington is “less than 500 employees”.   THAT IS ABSURD!  This means that the 29 million mom and pop operations all over the USA must compete with subsidiaries of large Wall Street corporations like Bechtel for small business incentives.

Second of all, we need to rebuild the manufacturing base in the USA. We were sold a bill of goods beginning in the mid 1990’s–not unlike the deal that the tailors in The Emperor’s New Clothes sold to the people in that story.  We were told that manufacturing was obsolete, that this is a new era for the USA.  We are to become a “service” economy.  We would be retrained to use computers.  The other “lesser” countries would be the ones who manufacture goods.

This was utter nonsense!  As long as there are human beings on the face of the earth we will need goods that are made by other human beings. ALWAYS!  Use your god-given common sense for five seconds.

The real reason behind this bill of goods that the American people were sold was the greed of Wall Street.  They wanted cheap labor to increase their profits and thus the size of the dividend they could give to their rich investors.  In the USA, the American workers demanded fair wages and decent (or at least half-way decent and safe working conditions).  Such demands cut into their profits.

As a nation we are more vulnerable and insecure as a result of having our manufacturing base decimated by the rich.  For example, at the moment we are enjoying the cheap goods that Wal-Mart provide us through their deals with China.  But what happens when China decides to raise their prices?  What recourse do Americans have?  We can either pay the prices or do without.  That will be our choices because we do not make the goods here on US soil (or goods that we trade with them on which we could raise prices).

Third and finally, communities need to establish locally owned corporations. These corporations are set up in ways similar to Wall Street Corporations, but with some differences.  The ownership of these corporations is limited to people who live in the area.  When people move out of the area, their stock does not travel with them.  They must either sell it or turn it back to the corporation.  They agree to this in the very beginning when they purchase the stock.  It is part of the corporation’s legal charter.  Yes it can be done.

The products and goods produced by these local corporations are intended primarily for use and consumption by local residents.  The raw materials used to create these goods and services comes from the local area and/or region.

WHY ARE LOCAL CORPORATIONS A GOOD IDEA?
They stabilize the local economy.  These businesses, unlike Wall Street corporations, are anchored in the community.  Wall Street corporations exist to pay the largest dividends possible to their investors.  Their investors are scattered all over the world.  This means that even if a factory may be making a profit in a particular community, that if it serves the greater good of the global investors of that corporation for that factory to be shut down and its assets sold off, then that is what will happen and often does.

Because of the bad deals that the local city governments and Chamber of Commerce have made with these Wall Street corporations, the citizens of the community are left holding the bag of unemployment, reduced property values and neighborhood blight.

Local corporations stabilize local economies and provide leverage that community government representatives can use when bargaining with Wall Street corporations who may want to locate in their communities.

Right now local government do nothing but give away huge chunks of taxpayer assets to Wall Street pirates in exchange for a promise of jobs in the community. “Oh sure, here is a large piece of land that you can have tax free.   Oh no, of course we will look the other way while you pollute our air. etc.”

Who do you think pays for these deals?  Some one does.  It’s YOU the taxpayer.  No finer example than our nearby city of Plano.  Plano has raised property taxes $75 a year over the past two years (based on medium price of $250,000 home).  Why?  Oh you will hear righter wingers yammering about public schools (since many of them send their kids to private schools anyway) but that is not why property taxes are raised on the people of Plano.  It is raised on them because of the bad deals that their local city council make with Wall Street organization like Pizza Hut.  You want to know why you are paying higher property taxes in your community?  Then look to the Wall Street deals that your local government leaders cut.

Again.  Several local corporations stabilize the local economy and reduce the need for these kinds of back room Wall Street deals that taxpayers end up paying for.

SOMEONE NEEDS TO REMIND LOCAL LEADERS THAT TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS IS A MYTH

Back in June of this year Plano City Council member Harry LaRosiliere, the panel’s only black member, said the council’s job is not to appease every neighborhood, but to make what it believes is the best decisions for the whole city.

“They are feeling the impact of a budget cycle that is affecting everyone in the city,” LaRosiliere said of the Douglass community. “A lot of us are feeling pain in different ways. This is how they are feeling it.”

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Well, Mr. LaRosiliere, while “a lot of us are feeling the pain”, HP Enterprise is not among them. Overall revenues at the HP were up 12.7 per cent to $30.8bn in the second quarter ended in April, and with HP keeping tight reins on costs, [no doubt thanks to council members who sell out their communities] net earnings grew by 27.8 per cent, to $2.2bn.  Perhaps the council could take back part of the community’s assets that you forked over to HP?

Dell Services, another Wall Street Corporation who received corporate taxpayer welfare from the council is not “feeling the pain either.” Dell Services  had a total revenue in the quarter ended April 30 was $14.9 billion, a 21-percent increase from a year ago.

Frito-Lay posted an 8 percent gain in second-quarter operating profit, its parent company said Tuesday.

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SO WHERE IS THE PAIN?

IT IS ON MAIN STREET, NOT WALL STREET.

The solution is NOT to continue to extend corporate welfare to Wall Street.  It’s time to start telling these people no– not the citizens of Plano.  Why don’t you and the other council members ask for part of the community store back that you gave away to these Wall Street corporations?

and NEXT time when you make these deals with Wall Street pirates, why don’t you insist that they share a percentage of their profits with the community?

Another solution would be to stop inviting corporations into the community altogether and instead build community-owned businesses.

HOW ABOUT GIVING A LITTLE OF THOSE TAX BREAKS YOU GET BACK TO THE COMMUNITY?

Community leaderships all over the USA for the past 30 years have bent over for corporations and literally sold out their communities for the lure of a Wall Street corporation settling down in their community–not exactly “settling” down because corporations don’t do that much any more.  It’s more like parking for a while.  Then when they are ready to pull up stakes–regardless the profitability of the  plant   that’s exactly what they do.  Their “bottom line”  is not aligned with the bottom line of the community.  They are global insects.  They sell off the assets, fire the employees and head off for greener pastures in Brazil, India or China–leaving the people in the community to deal with unemployment and lowered property values.

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It’s time for community leaders to buck up and stop smooching corporate America’s behind.  It’s time for community leaders to stop selling the farm to these carpet baggers.

No finer example than what is happening tonight in Plano Texas, voted the richest city in the USA in 2008.

Tonight members of the Douglass Community are going to a city council meeting for a last ditch effort to save their community center.  To save a purported $500,000 a year the Plano City Council want to shut down the community center in the Douglass neighborhood and have the people there attend another facility in another part of Plano.  The people in the Douglass Community are largely black and poor.There is more to the story, but this is an overview.

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Consider  the Plano City Council corporate giveaways from the past:

“.  .   .  Plano is preparing to offer its largest economic package [sellout] ever to lure Pizza Hut’s corporate headquarters from Addison. The package, drawn up during months of secret talks, includes grants and tax breaks totaling about $2.5 million. Plano’s City Council will discuss the package Monday.  .  . “     [Dallas Morning News Nov 23, 2009]

In September of 2006 the Plano City Council voted to raise the property tax rate 2 cents.  The move added about $40 a year to the property tax bill of a home values at $244,000.  Since then, Plano has awarded $4.1 million in direct cash subsidies to 17 companies according to the Plano Economic Development Corp, the quasi-public body that works with the city on business deals. That total does not include property tax breaks, infrastructure improvements or other incentives that the city might have offered.

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It is time for community leaders to stop giving away the community’s assets to Wall Street Carpet baggers and to start developing local business who are invested in the community.

We can start by asking that the corporations give back to the community on the same levels that the community has given to them.  ENOUGH OF CORPORATE WELFARE!

LET’S HAVE A LITTLE COMMUNITY WELFARE.