Wilmington Government Head Bully Baker : "We Will Raise Taxes, Fees, and Anything We Can"

"Raising taxes. That's our job."
Wilmington, Delaware Mayor Jim Baker (D)

Posted below is startling video of Wilmington Mayor Jimmy Baker this past week, bloviating and blustering in typical buffoonish fashion on WITN Channel 22 - Wilmington's own taxpayer-funded propaganda network for city incumbents or, really, for the Mayor and his minions.

Such dismal public displays showcase how Baker is little more than an arrogant bully, entrenched at the head of a greedy patronage government that, like Baker, views itself as the center of all life in Wilmington, Delaware, if not the universe.

So much so that only the Wilmington government and its legion of mediocre public paycheck recipients get a free pass from the economic belt-tightening the rest of us responsible people have no choice but to endure.

In fact, Baker intends to "keep things going" for the bloated Wilmington government by taking it out of the hides of the public, just as he notes that unemployment in Wilmington has topped 10%.

The absolute first thing Baker says when asked how he intends to deal with the (at least) $9,000,000 budget deficit the city government has racked up :

"We will raise taxes. We will raise fees. We will raise everything that we can."

You may remember after the city government announced that the first thing on the chopping block would be new police recruits and the 2009 police academy how Monty "The Mayor's Moustache " Montgomery (Baker's chief minion) pooh-poohed the suggestion that Baker would push tax increases.

Monty should either clamp a muzzle on "The Boss" or perhaps give a call before Boss Baker goes on taxpayer-funded TV and shows him a dishonest fool by directly contradicting Monty's "my boss doesn't like tax increases" double talk.

"I don't care if they're happy about it or not. Go jump in a lake...I don't care who's upset. Be upset. But that's because you're stupid. OK?"
- Mayor Jim Baker Responds to Complaints about a $15.5 M Subsidy to Private Developers

You may also remember Mr. Richard Dyton, the small business entrepreneur being fleeced of his Vandever Street rehabilitation project by the Mayor's favorite revenue dragnet : imposing 10's of 1000's of $ in vacant property "fees", under threat of property seizure.

Baker summarily dismisses those like Mr. Dyton who have the temerity...nay, the audacity...to question how the city can justify borrowing $ 15,500,000.00 to subsidize wealthy developers while small businesspersons like Mr. Dyton are bled dry by punitive fees, fines, and taxes.

If people in Mr. Dyton's predicament don't pay up in full, immediately, their property is literally snatched from them by the city government at sheriff sale (perhaps to be handed over to the likes of former city councilman Norman Oliver or some other crony of the city's incumbents).

However when it comes to reducing the excessive ranks of city employees and easing the burden on taxpaying citizens who are coerced into paying for too many government employees for such a small city....well, see here now...*harumph*... the other side of Baker's mouth (the same one that has been sucking the public teat for 40-some odd years) suddenly becomes oh so compassionate :

"That's someone's livelihood you're taking away from them...in a bad time. Why would you wanna do that to people?"

Undoubtedly Mr. Dyton's livelihood, held hostage by Baker's bullies, doesn't qualify for Baker's selective compassion calculus.

In review, Baker's priority list, in descending order, to make sure he "keeps things going" for the patronage crony operation that is Wilmington government :

1. Cancel new police officers. [Done.]

2. Raise taxes, fees, and everything we can. [On the way.]

3. Drain all cash reserves. [You betcha!].

5. Cut city council in half. [Who needs all those stupid annoying legislators representing the people?]

4. Cut expenses like travel, cars for city officials, office supplies. [Travel?? Like Baker's and Monty's taxpayer-funded junket to the presidential inauguration???]

6. Then, finally, maybe, possibly cut city into the government's patronage rolls. [NEVER. GOING. TO. HAPPEN.]

Baker readily admits that the city government work force is so union-dominated (74%) that it makes any reduction in government patronage jobs into a perverse exercise in rewarding seniority over merit.

Even if we had a mayor who wasn't so keen to bully the citizenry to ensure as many people as possible stay on the public payroll, such a move would surely beg a battle with organized labor muscle like AFSCME, perpetually feeding at the public trough and doing their damndest to ensure full employment for bureaucrats. (Oh, yay!!).

"All you're doing is thinking. Any idiot thinks."

Wilmington, Delaware Mayor Jim Baker (D)

Baker is the epitome of an abrasive abusive self-absorbed been-there-way-way-wayyyy-too-long public office holder.

This disgraceful man's dictatorial "f**k anyone who says otherwise" persona is the driving force of a city government that will do anything and everything to preserve itself and its wasteful, slothful, often stunningly-frivolous abuses of tax dollars.

There is never a lack of initiative in serving their narrow special interest groups (i.e. gov't employees, shady unaccountable 'non-profits', wealthy property developer(s), unions, and the Democrat party).

They'll do whatever has to be done to "keep things going" on the heels of a 100% explosion in city government spending foisted onto Wilmingtonians over the last 10 years.

Forget any checks and balances. The city government is an exclusive franchise of the Democrat party. There is literally only one non-Democrat amongst the entire cadre of decision-makers and his mantra seems to be "go along to get along".

How all this fatassery afflicts Wilmington's prosperity and citizenry is simply irrelevant to people who believe the city would fall into the river without 100's upon 100's of government minds at work perpetuating the big honkin' revenue machine, with tidy pay and perks to boot.

Baker unwittingly ends his televised 18 minute train wreck of a psyche dump with words that mirror the way many thoughtful rational citizens view his reign of error :

"I cannot believe people would buy that garbage from that fat pig."