A valuable lesson in how to purge the Republican party of big spenders of other people's money (aka RINOs, “Republicans in Name Only”) has been taught to us all by the voters in Miami-Dade County, Florida. They just voted to recall their mayor, one Carlos Alvarez, RINO extraordinaire.
Alvarez had been reelected in 2008 by a large majority. What caused the recent shift in voter sentiment? He pulled a typical RINO stunt after his reelection: he agreed to a plan that raised property taxes sharply and gave even more money to unionized public employees. He went along with raising the employees' pay and unfreezing their benefits, and covered it by jacking up property taxes on two-fifths of property owners by an average of 13%.
Alvarez had earlier agreed to hand over copious quantities of taxpayer cash to build a new baseball stadium for the Florida Marlins.
This struck the voters as profligate and insulting, considering that the jobless rate in the county is 12%. The property taxes used to reward the public employee unions, and the multimillionaire athletes and team owners, are coming out of the hides of people struggling to pay their food bills.
The recall campaign was funded in part by a wealthy businessman angered by reckless spending. Alvarez was voted out by 88% of the votes cast. Good riddance to a gross RINO.
