The Nashua Telegraph spent most of the election season giving up huge chunks of their Sunday commentary page to the mouth-pieces of special interests promoting left wing causes like health care deform, so why stop now that the election has passed? This week we get the implausible assumptions of Cathy Silber, the coordinator of the Granite State Fair Tax Coalition (GSFTC), who upon seeing the blood in the water on November 3rd, has attempted a preemptive strike for her pet special interest project–an income tax for New Hampshire.
Silber has been fighting "The Pledge," an oath signed by Granite State candidates who promise to vote against any sales or income tax should they meet that big bad wolf tax on the way to Grandmothers house, or anywhere else. So Silber is the "Anti-pledger," plying class warfare rhetoric dressed as "fairness" in her quest to drag New Hampshire down the broad based tax rabbit hole, with the lie that it would take pressure off property taxes and create a more fair redistribution of wealth…oops I mean a more fair distribution of the tax burden. Wait. I had it right the first time.
What, you don’t think GSFTC is seeking the redistribution of wealth?
Take a look at who is in the "fair tax" coalition. Union heavyweights; the NEA-NH, SEIU-1984(NH), and the NH State Employees Association, our state government employees union. Who else? How about a slew of social justice groups like the Unitarian Universalist’s and the NH Council of Churches, anti gun, pro-global warming, supporting redistribution of wealth, all left wing causes aided in their minds by a new broad based tax.
Takes all the ‘Air’ out of Fair, don’t you think?
So Silber’s part is to play mouthpiece to a coalition of groups who would all (conveniently) stand to benefit in some way from a sales or income tax.
The unions, the State Employees Union specifically, view tax dollars as a raw material necessary for their survival. It is the sunshine that warms the public sector soil, from which the fruit of union dues are harvested; energy and power redistributed from the pockets of taxpayers into the hands of Union bosses and then union friendly tax and spend democrats who know what side their bread is buttered on. Without your tax dollars the public unions wilt and die.
More evidence? The GSFTC redistributive birth just happened to coalesce as the new democrat majority was strengthening back in 2006, when the path to broad based taxes suddenly seemed more probable. Build it and they will come. The left dreamed of big taxes and suddenly there was group of progressives there calling them fair.
So understand first and foremost that this so-called "non-partisan"desire for a fair tax is nothing more than a left wing partisan effort hiding behind tax-exempt "non-profits," carrying water for the democrat party, with the goal of screwing you out of more money with which to grow government.
So when Silber tells you our revenue structure is out of date, she believes it is–because she and her partners want to build a bloated central government with healthy unions and a redistributive addiction. Maybe you don’t want to pay for that. Maybe you think these are choices you’d rather make yourself.
What then to make of Silber’s Nashua Telegraph commentary? It is a hail Mary pass on a 325-110 legislative gridiron, in the final seconds of a game she can’t possibly win. The Republican earthquake destroyed any real chance the GSFTC had at fooling enough of the people for some of the time, but here she is trying again before the new legislature implement’s a state wide spending cap, or resolves education spending, or cuts the budget, or implements right to work, or worse–an amendment prohibiting a sales or income tax altogether.
That’s no reason not to make a desperate plea to the liberal ghetto dwellers and RINO’s who managed to keep a few democrats up in Concord. Unfortunately, the problems with her plea start the minute she abandons her opening retrospective history lesson/come together-stay focused rhetoric, and tries to sell us on her agenda.
The next budget gap is likely to be huge. Exactly how huge matters less than what we’re going to do about it. Hard times mean revenues fall as needs rise.
Huge? So much for that damn surplus the democrats imagined.
This is actually a tail wagging the dog argument. The hugeness of our "budget gap" (Budget Gap is an Orwellian code for "it’s not the spending") is entirely a product of democrat fiscal policy. So exactly "how huge," really does matter more. Our "budget gap," which we lay-folk call a DEFICIT, exists because a partisan-progressive majority imagined as much revenue as they could to justify spending they knew they’d never be able to cover. The spending was well in excess of even the wildest cost of living or inflation estimates and no where near the historical trends, during what the same democrats have called the hardest times since the great depression. So we are left to conclude that a) the democrats are incompetent b) it was intentional to force us into the broad based tax which Silber magically appears and lobbies the people for, or c) all of the above.
I choose ‘c.’
And it has to be "c" because the unvoiced solution to the spending gap happens to be a tax structure based entirely on sales and/or income taxes, two of the most unstable and unreliable revenue streams in a down economy–guaranteed to fall short and require new taxes, new debt or drastic cuts in services, right when a state can afford them least. Only a redistributive socialist progressive would put you in that bind on purpose while convincing you that it’s good for the state and even make taxes go down, though she does not dare to make a case for that here.
We continue.
…even in good times our state budget has a built-in gap. because the revenue system, by design, doesn’t raise enough money to keep up with rising costs.
No, it’s still the spending, which she proves with this next bit.
Who doesn’t agree that we should only spend what’s necessary and no more? Who doesn’t advocate efficiency?
Taken together and viewed through recent history the GSFTC just shot itself in the foot. Or maybe we need to understand what Silber’s definition of "necessary’ is?
The Buckleycrats overspent to grow an inefficient bureaucracy, exceeding the average cost of living over four years (I’m guessing here) by about 20%. Was that necessary? It was if you wanted to create a budget gap large enough so that Cathy Silber and the GSFTC could promote a sales or income tax. Necessary is relative. Tail wags dog again never revealing the real nature of the problem. We don’t need a fair tax, we need more taxes.
Silber then offers up the sacrificial lamb of injustice. Low wage workers pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes, high wage workers pay a lower percentage, and that’ just not fair.
Gosh, Cathy, I think low wage workers pay a higher percentage of their income for widgets, toothpaste, crescent rolls, bus fare, movies, and latte’s as well. So what’s your point? Deception, which is why Silber uses percentages not real dollars, to make a case.
Using Silber’s percentages from the editorial (which are probably wrong anyway), someone who makes $14K/year will pay $280.00 per year for the full manifold of state government services. That works out to one weeks wages out of fifty-two for which they get (for the most part) some kind of police protection, fire, EMT’s, 911 service, first responders, roads, infrastructure, all of John Lynches dopey programs, and anything else on public support, and all the welfare and aid programs low income people are more likley to use. Sounds like a bargain and hey, it’s cheaper than "free" health insurance.
At $52K per year, Silber’s number produces an annual average tax obligation of almost $3600.00, for all the same state services, with very likley, less dependence on the same system.
She then leaps to $1.65 million, no stranger a leap than any other she’s made though why not a kajillion? We discover to our embarrassment that the business/entrepreneur or investment class of residents in New Hampshire, the job creators, risk takers and innovators (whether they run for federal elected office or not) pay $33,000.00 per year based on Silber’s percentages, for the exact same set of state services.
Without laboring on the fact that the people making 1.65million are paying probably paying more than that through other taxes besides those she uses–let’s look at her numbers another way. If the whole of the value of infrastructure and services the state has to offer–constitutional or not–were condensed into one token item–a package of gag-gift plastic dog poop for example–the rich bastard is paying $33,000.00 for the same cheap pile of crap that the low income worker gets for a one time low annual payment of $280.00. Cathy Silber thinks this is unfair to the low income workers.
I think Silber is selling you a pile of crap. (a $280.00 pile for $33,000.00, call now, operators are standing by)
This is a scam by omission. GSFTC omits it’s benefactors and their true intentions, all the while cherry picking numbers. But they have to. New Hampshire does not have a
structural problem with revenue. It has an ideological problem with spending, one that the voters on November 2nd have just tried to fix. The GSFTC knows it has just taken taken mortar shrapnel to the chest and could bleed out if the Republican Caucus can manage to herd it’s cats into a veto proof force that might then enact legislation making the lefts redistributive dreams impossible to achieve.
This has nothing to do with fair. The GSFTC seeks the redistribution of income and class warfare, and it is bad for New Hampshire, and there is noting fair about it.
