City Journal, a conservative-leaning publication that focuses on the, as they would call it, "bloating" budgets of Democratically run cities, has an article in their current issue with a somewhat misleading title.
"A Philly Tax Cutter" says the title but what follows is eight and half paragraphs (out of nine) of the kind of hack-job, anti-Philly screed that was probably typical of travel guides in the mid-1980s. Falling back on many of old stereotypes and vague statistical estimates (8000 people left the city last year!), the article goes the oft-traveled route of beating up on the city and its political leaders for running a high-tax, inefficient operation that essentially shakes down businesses and chases away any enterprise that can pick up and move.
Most of the article, the subhead of which is "Can Mayor Nutter cure the city’s cancer?" (a lovely metaphor), talks about Ed Rendell and John Street - simultaneously praising them for following the advice of folks like City Journal and cutting taxes while also excoriating them for not cutting taxes enough.
Only in the last few sentences, which read:
So Nutter will face serious problems as he takes office this January. CONGRATULATIONS, MAYOR NUTTER: BOY, ARE YOU SCREWED, read the cover of a recent issue of Philadelphia. But don’t count Nutter out: he claims that he will get rid of the $250 business start-up fee and cut both the profit and the gross-revenue parts of the privilege tax. “We’ll make Philadelphia a model city,” he says. With a tax cutter in the mayor’s office, who knows?
does the article do any looking forward.
Trust me when I say that I've kept tabs on what City Journal has written in the past about Philadelphia and this is not a case where that publication's regular readers need a recap of Philadelphia's tax situation. In fact, it seems like Philly bashing is a regular column.
Anyway, I've reprinted the only relevant (though rather vacuous) part of the article for you. If you care to take a walk down bad memory lane, feel free to read the whole thing.