While we make something happen others are busy wasting.

Thanks.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to yesterday’s successful fundraiser. With your help we will make something happen in East Hartford and Connecticut as a whole.

We have a long road ahead of us before we, caring citizens and taxpayers of all affiliations, will be able to reverse the damage of years of reactionary policy making.

Preemptive waste

In East Hartford we have 3 candidates running unopposed. Henry Genga (D) in the 10th House, Tim Larson (D) in the 11th House and Gary LeBeau (D) in the 3rd Senatorial district.

Being unopposed you would think that these candidates would opt not to run a campaign, or at least not with our tax dollars. What I’ve found is that 2 of these candidates decided it would be a prudent and responsible choice for them to use our hard earned and easily stolen tax dollars to campaign against nobody. Where is the conscience in these candidates? Where is the sense of fiscal responsibility? The desire to help the electors in the district? I can’t think of a more clear example of the spend it because you can mindset that is destroying this town, this state and this nation.

Shame on Henry Genga

Shame on Gary LeBeau

These two representatives were there when the law was written to allow unopposed candidates to fleece the taxpayers by receiving campaign grants and it’s now clear why they didn’t change it.

I find it insulting that both these candidates are triple dipping into our pockets without remorse. First they created taxpayer funded careers for themselves in the East Hartford School District, then they decided they needed taxpayer funded representative salaries and now they are grabbing at taxpayer dollars to further their own personal political aspirations. There is truly no better definition of an ‘establishment candidate’ at the state and local level than these two.

We know based on the vast evidence of recent history that these two excel at creating and utilizing government waste, but how are they at doing what they were elected to do, responsibly represent their constituents? It’s time for you, Mr. Genga and Mr. LeBeau, to step up and return the money you took from the Citizen’s Election Program today. Our wallets are not your personal bank accounts.

Did you see?

Jason Rojas received the endorsement of Margaret Hacket, the chair of the Manchester BOE, in the JI. Her reasoning?

Rojas understands that we need more funding for education

Wow. I wonder how Manchester taxpayers feel about that assertion. East Hartford spends about 4-5 times as much per student than the average area private school tuition. Manchester spends about the same with an average expenditure of $13,400 per student in the 07/08 budget. Will more money or yet another backer of big education finally fix the system?

Let’s take a look at the current representatives who have had their hands in the East Hartford School District.

John Larson – Current U.S. Congressman
Gary LeBeau – Current State Senator
Henry Genga – Current State House Representative
Michael Christ – Current State House Representative

Consider, we have a congressman, a state senator and two state house reps who represent the education industrial complex and East Hartford’s education system is still broken. East Hartford’s education costs are increasing at a record pace and performance is stagnant at best. Why haven’t these politicians performed on their election promises and fixed the educational system? How many times have these officials campaigned on education?

Jason Rojas’ major campaign issue, according to his candidate bio in the latest iTowns section, is reforming the property tax system. Intrigued, I read on. Sadly it appears his motivation to reform property taxes is to ensure that the educational complex is free to grow unconstrained by the ability of local taxpayers to shoulder the bill. East Hartford’s educational costs are a crushing burden on this town which are driving business and residents away. Jason’s answer? Push the burden of East Hartford’s broken system onto all the state residents through the income tax. While we spread the impact of our broken system we in turn would have to shoulder the cost of other far more expensive broken systems such as Hartford, New Haven, Waterbury and others. I suspect that in the long run everyone but those supporting the largest and worst run systems would be better off leaving education financing local.

East Hartford has been electing champions of the educational status quo, which Rojas unarguably is, for decades to all levels of government with naught but negative results election after election. Maybe it’s time for a new direction. Or as Obama might say, “Change we can believe in”.