Tully Still Stuck On Stupid

In 2007, Matt Tully was screaming at the top of his lungs that crime had become too much of a problem to ignore, and that we needed to raise our income taxes 65% so we could put more police officers on the streets and reduce crime. Tully got his wish. We got socked with the income tax increase, which boosted annual city-county revenues about $90 million a year, but we never got any of those new police officers we were promised. A funny thing happened though. Every year that Mayor Greg Ballard has been in office he has boasted that overall crime in the City was down, except for the surge the past couple of years in the homicide rate. Nonetheless, Tully received his marching orders from his downtown mafia masters who need to replenish the till to fund future public subsidies for the next round of real estate development projects from which only the elites will derive a benefit. "Raise our taxes!", the sycophant columnist blares, a notion he calls "radical" supposedly "because the political environment has become so toxic and so averse to new taxes that even suggesting the idea can put a politician in peril."

Will he bother to ask what happened with the money from that 65% tax increase? Oh, he's got that one figured out. That's your fault too for complaining about property taxes so much that the state legislature capped them, effectively starving local governments of much needed revenues. But what about the $120 million a year in property tax revenues the politicians are diverting to their real priority-TIF slush funds to be used to reward their campaign contributors? Oh, but we have to hand out money to the politically-connected campaign contributors because, you know, nobody would ever invest in our City otherwise. Yeah, he knows that the politicians aren't seeking this money for more cops, but he's so anxious to please his masters that he has not a concern in the world how devoid of credibility he's become to the Star's readers, what few are left. It's also a reflection of the total disdain he holds for average taxpayers in this city. Go to hell. Why don't you just say it, Matt? We know that's what you're thinking. Don't you have any respect for yourself? Have you become that big of a prostitute for the downtown mafia that you are completely incapable of critical analysis? What an embarrassment to the journalism profession you have become.