I received this email from a Left leaning person (supposedly a NH resident but I’m not totally sure; any NH person with any worth wouldn’t take such a position!) complaining that because we do not have an income tax here in NH, people are SUFFERING! Because the State refuses to tax people more, problems will continue to abound:
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:32:47 -0500
From: <redacted>
Subject: New NH Parks PlanI have just returned from Thanksgiving and had not heard about this…my real concern is that the current lack of a Fair Tax System in NH bars any new outlays of funding regardless of how worthy they may actually be..I am thinking of the closure of long -term care beds for brain injured patients and lay offs of last few months. Reduced funding for Medicaid, –ahh the list goes on.. In my opinion our governors and legislators have hoodwinked NH citizens for years pretending to pass balanced budgets by shortchanging both obvious (state commitment to employee retirement promised for years) and hidden costs (mental health, etc) If we are to maintain the outdoor culture of this state we of course need an ongoing commitment to our parks – but to do this we must have a Fair and Equitable Tax system that does not put all its reliance on property tax.
My response to this?
The post from <redacted> uses a common technique that induce sympathy and support for her argument. By highlighting sympathetic examples that induces reflexive support, and ignoring the overspending, waster, and irresponsibility of the Democrats who have controlled NH government for the past six years, she paints a false picture of the options we will face in cleaning up the mess the Democrats have left the Republicans.
First things first: All the new taxes and fees that the Democrats have raised in the past several years in order to create ever larger spending pressure and state government must be reversed and reduced.
The time-honored ruse of the Democrats is to say "Show us where you will cut!". They do this so that they can then generate hysterical opposition from the narrowly focused interest-groups who benefit from that particular state spending (mainly government employees and their unions mainly, but also anyone else who directly benefits); in addition, the government-spending interest groups then maneuver to threaten, and cause, as much havoc, pain, and disruption to the public as they can, in order to "prove" that reducing spending on their department is ill-advised. Causing such disruption is easy, when we think about it, because government is a monopoly; that is, the public has no alternative.
This problem is endemic to almost all government, because our "services" are being provided by a monopoly, and one that very jealously protects its monopoly (by force of law). A solution to this problem is a puzzle that faces all who attempt to reverse the ever-widening spiral of more taxing and more spending by government and those who benefit from such irresponsibility. A solution to this problem is one of the main issues that will face Republican leadership after next year’s elections.