On Not being California... - Granite Grok

On Not being California…

Tax Money down the toiletNew Hampshire is not California.  We are not California because with the exception of 2007-2010, we try to avoid letting Democrats run the entire state government.  (We’re also not Massachusetts for that same reason.)  And this is good, because while Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has now implemented “cost controls” for Healthcare providers in his state, guaranteeing(long term) less access, longer waits and poorer service, California is a bloody disaster.

The tax and spend, unsustainable pension and benefits, land of environmental extortion, saw sales tax revenue drop 33.5% last month.  While but one small part of the problem that is “California” all the problems can be linked directly to things that New Hampshire Democrats want you to experience right here in the Granite State.

And it all starts with taxes.

Taxes based on income and sales, which democrats want, are the ones that go down the fastest, right when your average unthinking leftist insists we need them most.  They are a bucket filled with holes, at the very moment when you need to bail more water out of the boat.  Fewer jobs, less commerce, less taxes.  And this is precisely why I continue to rail endlessly against the lefts rhetoric on tobacco taxes.  Your say lips say you want to end smoking but your rhetoric says you want more tobacco taxes.  What that really means is that you are an incompetent dope ill suited for economic management.  Or perhaps you are lying about your real motivations.  Neither is good for the people of New Hampshire.

Tobacco is a microcosm of the Democrat tax and spend psychosis.  They insist we should be collecting more revenue from tobacco, but when you raise the tax your long term revenue declines.   So whatever you build on the initial revenue is destined to fail if you do not raise taxes to replace that lost revenue.  But what do you tax?  Income and sales taxes are no less reliable.  The more you increase them, the less you will eventually collect, which means that every government edifice the Democrats construct on this model is simply teetering on a foundation of sand.

Because taxes inevitably reduce consumption, relying on consumption taxes will inevitably result in every Democrat promise built upon them having some kind of expiration date.   When that time arrives, the Democrat party will drop all of its lofty promises and use political calculation to decide who gets screwed and how much. The who and how much goes two ways.  They can raise more taxes at a time when you need your own money more than ever, and/or they have to cut something.

….Unless, as in 2010 (in New Hampshire), the people elect officials willing to take the necessary steps–and all the slings and arrows that go with them–to keep the cost of government under control and within the means of the people who have to pay for it; to limit the scope of responsibility to a revenue model of stable long term growth.  To put us back on more stable and predictable footing; a place where people and businesses can make decisions without having to wonder if their government is going to take some abrupt leap in one direction or another to deal with problems of their own manufacture.

New Hampshire Democrats ran state government like a playground full of OCD kids on a sugar high.  They grew total spending for the state government by around 23% in just two terms in office, during an economic down turn.  In took us 223 years, since the state constitution, to get to a budget over 9 billion.  In less than 0.01% of that time, New Hampshire Democrats added another 23%.  In the face of declining revenue.

In the face of declining revenue, they spent more.  A lot more.  And the result was constant budgetary chaos.  There was no stability.  State employees were expected to do their jobs never knowing if they would still have them in a month.  No one knew how Democrats would pay for the new spending, or what wold be sacrificed to make the numbers balance.  The Democrats went on fishing expeditions for revenue; they tried to use their police powers to rob 110 million from a private fund.  They passed taxes in the middle of the night without hearings or committee reports.  They were like crack addicts selling off the family property to finance their habit,  imagining revenue from selling state land without knowing what land or for how much.  And they were only in control for four years.

And yet this is the same place California is,  just magnified, and the common denominator is Democrat rule.  California Democrats have let the unions, the environmentalists, and their own party rhetoric, lead them to places that cannot be reached in the real world, and the check is due.

Back in New Hampshire, we took a step back from that, managed to eliminate the 800 million dollar deficit left by New Hampshire Democrats, and put state spending in line with the current state of available revenue.  It’s stable, predicate, and responsible.  it is everything that Democrat rule is not.

 

 

 

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