[ SECRET POST #6730 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6730 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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[Bowsette /Super Mario]



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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 35 secrets from Secret Submission Post #963..
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Local politics

[(Anonymous)]

I work for a city government, so I pay more attention than a lot of people, but probably not as much as I should.

It doesn't help that we're not allowed to discuss politics at work and I regularly hear unhinged takes from the "I pay your salary with my taxes" brigade when a) I also pay taxes, if I pay you back your $2.00 will you please fuck off? and b) actually we don't get federal, state, or even county tax money towards our salaries and c) there is no citywide separate income, property, or general sales tax. Almost the entire budget is real estate developer fees and hotel occupancy taxes; if you're not a tourist or involved in construction, or maybe paying rent on a city facility or something, you actually pay bupkis towards my salary.

We keep hoping to pass a local income tax measure so parks and recreation and libraries can stop sadly dividing the pocket lint and loose change left over after the cops are done getting paid for overtime, but the "I pay your salary with my taxes" brigade goes apeshit at the t-word and then screams when we have to close because half the park rangers and library staff got laid off. Again.

And we don't pay into social security, so whining about our cushy pensions makes me laugh. I have twenty years of service and if I quit or get laid off, I still wouldn't get a pension because I'm still not vested; I was hourly for the first ten years and half time for a chunk of the second. And I have to work 30 more years if I want to make 90% of my salary in retirement, which is scary because I already qualify as "very low income" because I make less than 50% of the area median income. The "I pay your salary with my taxes" brigade thinks we should all work for free, instead.

Someone was ranting at me recently that the mayor and city council are punishing them for not voting for the latest failed local income tax measure by closing parks and libraries instead of cancelling the mayor's pet projects. I really wanted to ask "and what projects are these?" because I was curious, but decided it wasn't worth a) getting in trouble because no politics allowed but the public ranting at us about "I pay your salary you parasite" is fine or b) being splashed with more flying spittle. I suspect the answer might be "how dare the mayor try and scrape together funding and space for homeless shelters when it's much cheaper to load homeless people onto buses and abandon them in the desert to die, or perhaps tie them up and drop them off a pier to drown."

There might be more shady real estate bullshit going on but a) I haven't heard anything super egregious and b) maybe if we had a local sales tax so half the budget wasn't coming from real estate kingpins and would-be slumlords, there would be less incentive for the mayor(s, this is a perennial problem regardless of their party affiliation) to let said real estate kingpins bribe them and/or use them as handpuppets.

Not a huge fan of my councilmember; I got dumped into his district via redistricting.

As for state politics, I used to think our governor was a career politician and hence intrinsically slimy but at least was pro-LGBT and pro-immigrant, but nope, in addition to being a rabid shitweasel about the homeless, he's recently walked back policies intended to help immigrants and gone full-bore anti-trans, plus keeps reaching out to right-wing reactionary shitheads.