Live Fee Then Die - Say Hello To New Hampshire's 'Fee' Staters? - Granite Grok

Live Fee Then Die – Say Hello To New Hampshire’s ‘Fee’ Staters?

The left has tried to turn the Tea Party into their boogeyman. But you know what the Tea Party wants?  They think we are taxed enough already.  Stop adding taxes.  Stop spending more money than we take in.  Stop making government cost so damn much that small business can’t hire to pay for what government we actually need.

And the Free Staters just want New Hampshire to keep its small government character.  They, like the Tea Party, prefer local control to being lorded over by the state or federal government.  Government, yes – but as local as it can be and small and efficeint.  And what’s truly funny about the Democrats attacks on the Free Staters is that many of these folks actually agree with Democrats on several issues.  Some of them are Democrats.

Which brings us to Democrats.

Democrats are easy.  More central government, more spending and growth of central government, more command and control, less local control and more taxes and fees to pay for it..  So what do you think?  From now on should we just refer to New Hampshire Democrats as “Fee” Staters?

It fits them. “Fee” Staters.   Many of them came here to make New Hampshire like the tax and spend states they left.  Their motto?  Live Fee then Die.  And they have earned it, with your money by the way, which truth be told they believe belongs to them along with all your property.  That’s why it is so easy for them to regulate your land or your business or what happens on it.  It is why they do not balk at the idea of raising taxes and fees during a recession.  All property belongs to the government first, and what you have you are allowed to keep because they have not yet used the legislative state to take it from you.

You didn’t build that.  Spread the wealth around.  The class warfare.  State control of industry and large swaths of the economy.  These are all Democrat ideas that exist at the state and national level.   it is who they are.  Why else would we need to have a conversation about taxes?   It is just Orwellian News-speak/propaganda to soften the inevitable fiscal blow to the head; to convince enough voters to let the state take more, for any reason they can think might resonate long enough to get the tax or fee in place.   But once you let them tax you more they don’t just stop.

In New Hampshire the Democrats took a lot more.  During the recession the “Fee” Staters (many originally from outside New Hampshire) added over two billion dollars to the cost of state government. (From 2007-2008 they accumulated the largest single increase in the cost of government in 20 years).  By the fall of 2010 they had added or  increased over 100 taxes and fees.  They tried to use the force of law to take money from a private doctor’s fund; they felt entitled to it.  They increased the cost of car, truck, and motorcycle registrations, tobacco, rooms and meals, land and deed transfer taxes, added or raised shore land fees, wetlands fees, terrain alteration fees, raised the fee to take wild turkey, added a court filing fee, went after more diesel fuel and gasoline taxes, and even tried to tax milk.  They also removed exemptions on taxes that would increase costs for everyone. (Remember, it’s not your money–that exemption let you keep more of what belongs to ‘Fee’ Staters.)

As the economy worsened the Fee Staters just kept spending.  They wanted more tobacco taxes, pet shop license fee increases, capital gains taxes, beer and gas taxes, and every time a tax or spending cut came up the Democrat “Fee” Staters said no.

The ‘Fee’ Staters in the Democrat party were so bad at managing your money that they downshifted millions in costs on to towns and cities by…

• Eliminating municipal revenue sharing so that our cities and towns would receive
($50M) less over the biennium.
• Reducing the state’s payments ($27M) that cities, towns and school districts
make on behalf of their employees.
• Suspending public waste water grants, downshifting another $10M.
• Underfunding catastrophic aid for another $26M.
• Cutting tuition and transportation aid for another $2M.
• Freezing the municipal share of the Rooms and Meals tax at 2008 levels,
downshifting another $15M.

The “Fee” Staters were meddling with the cost of your health insurance coverage with a slew of state mandates that would force everyone’s rates up (before Obama care even loomed near), made the education funding mess they created worse, denied parents their rights, and despite the state of the economy and the budget decided that Peace Corps service entitled you to state financed retirement benefits.  Hey. Screw the pension problem, lets add more beneficiaries.

And lest we forget, back in October of 2009 we had a conversation about taxes.  The “Fee” Staters held a ‘Tax” Summit.  The purpose?  To find a path to a sales and or an income tax.  Why?  Because despite all the taxes and fees the “Fee” Staters had raised on the backs of New Hampshire businesses and families, all the bonding and fiscal hijinks, they were still nowhere near balancing their grow government first budget.  They needed bigger and broader taxes on top of all the fees and taxes they had already raised.   Without one time federal money they would have left a smoldering hole in the state budget to the tune of 800 million dollars.  That same 800 million dollar hole that was still there when Republicans took over and there was no revenue anywhere to fill it.

Late of the night LLC and tent taxes, Rube Goldbergian gymnastics to hide revenue projections far from the scope of reality; projections based on their desire to spend and grow government first and foremost without regard to who has to pay for it.   The “Fee” Staters added more than 100 new taxes and fees and downshifted costs during a recession.  Tried to use the police state to seize private money.  Added costs and made operating a business more tedious and expensive.   And blocked every effort to cut spending so we would not have to rely on borrowing or one time money–or more taxes.

The even sadder part in all this; this is but a fraction of the abuse the Democrat “Fee” Staters heaped upon us in just four short years.  The Democrat party “Fee” Staters have but one mission.  To turn us into Massachusetts or some other tax heavy behemoth bureaucracy.   But New Hampshire got great because it has resisted that effort.  We rank well for wages, incomes, low poverty, high quality of life, low crime and a low tax burden because we reject the Democrat “Fee” Staters.  We reject their taxes, their fees, their nanny-statism and the expensive bureaucracy that goes with it.

And on November 6th you need to stand up and reject the Democrat tax and spend agenda again.  Unless you’d rather New Hampshire was like Taxachusetts.

One more point; where were the so-called moderate or temperate Democrats all this time?  The more fiscally minded members acting as a brake upon the Democrat” Fee” Staters radical growth of government? They were few and far between, if any, told to walk on votes or strong armed into toeing the growth of the regulatory state and the Tax and spend agenda.

So there basically weren’t any.

 

 

 

 

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