New Challenge to solving the County Budget Deficit
“Bad Decisions that Have to be Made” David Rabbitt
The March 17 Petaluma Argus Courier article, “Rabbitt weighs in on county budget shortfall” exposes a new challenge to solving the county’s budget deficit: David Rabbitt.
Rabbitt tells the Argus that he found the budget learning curve to be “pretty steep.” This should come as no surprise for a person who, mind with well over a hundred errors in his campaign finance statements, showed that he cannot do basic math. Appears that the addition and subtraction learning curves are a bit too steep for Mr. Rabbit. Not a good sign for someone interested in fixing our budget.
His next quote is a frightening characterization of the quality of the decisions he sees himself making. He states, “The decisions to be made are not good. They are all bad decisions that have to be made.” If you have ever listened to Rabbitt’s ramblings you might want to give him the benefit of the doubt – that what he meant to say was that none of the alternatives are good and the decisions will be difficult. But, it is equally likely that he does not know what he said, or, maybe he is planning on playing to his strength – bad decision making.
A few quotes later Rabbitt suggests that the Board of Sups shares fairly close ideological backgrounds and feelings, then says, “Here I’m considered a moderate, but I’m a lifelong Democrat.” There are a lot, perhaps too many, ‘moderates’ calling themselves Democrats so it is difficult to understand what he means by the statement: “but I’m a lifelong Democrat.” Rabbitt is no champion of the Democratic Party, was not endorsed by them, campaigned with Republicans and found no reason to complain when racism was used on his behalf – hardly what the Democratic Party stands for these days. Rabbitt added the comment that “people make more out of (ideological differences) politically.” Sorry to disappoint you Mr. Rabbitt – informed voters are concerned about ideology, especially when you call yourself a Democrat but act out an ideology of a corporatist Republican.
Back to the budget. With all of the originality and uniqueness of a Big Box shopping development, Rabbitt is focused on “pension reform” as a key solution. Speaking of what he sees as needed changes he says, “It’s a leadership thing.” He then dismisses raising revenues/taxes (especially ones on businesses) as ‘not being popular.’ So much for that “leadership thing”. Sounds like he did mean bad decisions, not difficult ones.