September 11, 2008

Republicans like government as big as they can get it

Democrats Calling
By JOE CALIENDO

    Change" means doing things differently, and not just talking about things being different.
    Nationally, Republicans are trying to run not on issues but on personalities. Republicans make a big deal about a very inexperienced Alaska governor being a woman who would be the No. 2 elected person in the country. Alaska has about the population of Monmouth County living in it. I think it's great that they have a governor everyone likes. But the fact of the matter is that Sarah Palin probably has less experience than someone who's been a Monmouth County freeholder a couple of times.
    The Republican Party likes to smear people and say terrible things about opponents that are personal, derisive and generally ungentlemanly. And, it has been working pretty good for them over the years seeing as how they won the presidency a couple of times.
    The only people that suffered were everyone except the top one percent of earners in the country. Americans have lost businesses, jobs and sometimes their dignity and civil rights since Republicans have been in charge. I remember, under President Bill Clinton, when people were working, there was a budget surplus and American jobs were in America.
    The Republican Party has become more about style over substance, even here in Monmouth County and locally. I am not saying that the Republican Party's candidates talking about making government smaller is a lie they are telling. I am just saying that they say they make government smaller and then make it bigger.
    After Sept. 11, it was found that the FBI, the CIA and all these security agencies screwed up because they couldn't talk to one another and their lines of communication were horrible. Rather than fix the problem that was there, the Federal Government just went ahead and made a new agency, the Dept. of Homeland Security. So instead of fixing something that was broke, the Federal Government just waved a want and created something else with a multibillion-dollar budget.
    Here in Monmouth County, Republicans have given County Counsel Malcolm Carton a blank check for decades, and why? Because he is the best attorney they could find. From what I read in the Asbury Park Press, that is far from the truth. The man should have been gone long ago and either a cap should have been put in place for the legal fees or an in-house counsel should have been hired. But no, Monmouth has lots of lawyers earning a great big paycheck everyday for not a lot to do. It's all partisanship. It's all nonsense. Government is bigger than ever here in Monmouth.
    Now let's look at Middletown, where the Republican Committee here said it was going to build a $5 million arts center next to the railroad tracks (on the property bought from a former Republican local contributor). Supposedly, half the building was going to get paid by donations and half by the public. Well, as it goes, the $5 million turned into an $8.5 million building, which doesn't earn any money and the township pays the salaries for the employees that work at the $8.5 million building that was all paid for
by the taxpayers.
    This building could have gone to Croydon Hall, and not had trains passing by every 20 minutes or so. But government had to get bigger under Republicans, and more expensive, with more people on the payroll. That is what Republicans like doing and I can't see how they get away with them saying that their party wants to make government smaller. It's the last thing on their minds.
    The reason that taxes in Middletown are so high is because the Middletown Republicans like Big Government, giving friends and family jobs in Town Hall and talking about saving money, not actually doing it.

(Joe Caliendo is the chairman of the Middletown Township Democratic Party. He has been active in municipal government and politics since the 1961 campaign of former President John F Kennedy.)