Well once again we have arrived at the silly season, defined by budget time in an election season.   Both the city and county have stated they have in excess of eight million dollars worth requirements above available funding.  Both have indicated a tax increase is may be proposed.  The state however has taken a different option: one of no tax increase, no pay raises and a voluntary buy out of over 2000 employees.

Each year normal economic activity causes the revenue flowing into government coffers to increase.  The basic principle requires keeping the growth of the cost of government with in that available rate of revenue growth.

In good times the rate of revenue growth is high and as the economy slows so does the rate of revenue growth.  As the state is doing, we at all levels of government need to slow the growth of government to the economic lower rate supported by the revenue growth rate.  We must some times actually reduce the cost of some of the activities that we approved in good times, but that are no longer affordable during the economic slow down.

The housing market is flattening; gas is near or above four dollars per gallon, food prices are up over forty percent.  In fact the cost of everything that is consumed by the families of our community has sky rocketed.  Some say that raising the tax on the typical home another one hundred dollars per year is not so much and for some of us that might be so, but for other less fortunate than ourselves it may mean food on the table or transportation to work.  To raise taxes now is the equivalent of kicking a person while they are down and shame on any who would do so.  

The silent mountain has finally rumbled and ElBaradei speaks. The Associated Press reported on June 21, 2008 that IAEA Chief Mohamed ElBaradei is now outspoken about the large-scale military exercise by Israel and warned that he would resign as chief of the U.N. nuclear agency if Iran is attacked by any country.  AP reported that ElBaradei's remarks were made in an interview with Al-Arabiya television and warned that any attack on Iran could turn the region into a "ball of fire."  I wonder why he can not seem to the same level of passion against the people that he is supposed to be regulating.

There is a real question that needs to be asked about ElBaradei.  ElBaradei’s watch the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty has been complete failure.  India, Pakistan, and North

Korea have weapons.  Iran and lord knows how many others are trying to develop such programs.  ElBaradei and his UN team seem to be either complicit or incompetent.

Now that the election is over the "Power Brokers" (PBs) will return to the forefront to get government backing for the construction of the MPC.  That financing envisions government bonds backed by the sales taxes from a block of commercial develop in existence today (like St B?).  If the Center and commercial development to be built around it fail to produce the required funds for payment of the notes; then sales tax proceeds from the set aside commercial block (St B?) will be diverted to pay for the notes used to build the MPC.  The very big problem with this plan is that all the sales taxes that end in the Montgomery County's coffers are committed to the school system, today and into posterity.