Political Pandering

Ask any democrat on the Common Council if they support tax relief for senior citizens and they will gladly point to the money they annually set aside in a special account for senior tax relief.  However, if you ask them to point to the plan that addresses how to distribute those funds, and they will come up empty handed.  Question them further and the whole story begins to unravel.  Ask them how much of the funding that they have allocated has been spent on senior tax relief and the answer will be “none.”  Ask them how much of the funding allocated from last year, or the year before, has been spent on senior tax relief and again the answer will be “none.”

Be even more direct and ask them why they are putting large sums of money into an account simply to allow it to lie dormant because of their own inaction.  It would be interesting to see if they even have an answer for that one, at least one they are willing to admit.  The answer, however, is simple.  They are pandering for senior votes.  They are hoping that the senior citizens of New Britain will be naive enough to buy into their empty promises.  They are all hoping that the seniors of New Britain won’t ask the tough questions about how they can get the money, or what they need to do to receive tax relief from the city.

This is just another example of a horrible mismanagement of city funds.  While programs such as senior tax relief are noble gestures, they are also empty gestures.  The democrats in this town have failed to deliver on their promises of tax relief for seniors year after year, and yet each time they pull out the same tired propaganda machine to demonstrate how much they care.  And who suffers?  All the citizens of New Britain do, as the money set aside does nothing but accrue small amounts of interest and dust.  Everyone can agree that it would be far better to have that money spend doing good for the city, keeping the pools open in the summer, helping pave roads and clean up blight, rather than just doing nothing but giving the democrats something to campaign on.

So please show the democrats that you are not going to accept the same old broken promises.  If you have a neighbor or family member who is a senior, get them to ask the tough questions, or ask them yourselves.  The democrats will only change if they are voted out of office and realize that the public is not going to accept “business as usual” any longer.