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Tomorrow there is a hearing (10am – LOB 301) for HB 330. HB 330 would allow any county delegation in New Hampshire to adopt a ‘County Income tax’ to be administered by the New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration (DRA). HB330 sells its tax as money that would go toward paying for education (public education at government run schools) and who could possibly dare to be against dumping more money into government run education?
/steve raises his hand
“In the case of the Japanese, they usually commit suicide before they make any apology.” —Senator Chuck Grassley
Timmy apologized today. Well, sort of…eh…not really. I mean, I don’t really think he meant it. First, Tim, “Mother Hubbard” Horrigan told the Union Leader,
That is not an apology…that is a bunch of excuses for the bad behavior. That shows me he is strident and lacking any remorse.
Sandra Fluke is making the case that allowing employers to deny contraception on religious grounds could just get so out of control that they (employers) might deny coverage for other things like….say…Leukemia. Hey -I just met you, And this is crazy. But here’s my number…so Leukemia maybe? I am not quite sure what should be … Read more
Back in April of 2012 we reported on how 71% of New Hampshire’s public schools failed to meet their adequate yearly progress in math and reading. (Not very ‘progressive’ of them.) We later debated the potential benefits to local New Hampshire school districts who could ‘potentially’ collect a tax windfall per student with the program–more than they would lose if the new voucher legislation was passed. (It passed.) We made fun of left wing criticism (narrative) against the scholarship program and even showed how it had saved other states money. We even reminded Liberals that they have been known to argue against overturing settled law (which the school voucher program is), the same Democrats who were now focusing on the budget as promised trying to overturn every law Republicans passed that they could–as quickly as possible.
Well, New Hampshire Democrats are still Democrats and the scholarship program passed by House Republicans is a threat to their union monopoly on education. So a scholarship program that is specifically designed to direct private money to help the most vulnerable, low income families in our state, gain access to schools with the potential to deliver better outcomes, must be repealed.
Not all that long ago I pointed out that “Forward” is the new backward. As we progressed into 2013, everyone inherited a tax increase courtesy of the forward progress of the Obama Administration as it kept its promise not to rasie taxes on the “middle class. Well it has only been two weeks since then … Read more
The beer tax is coming out of Ways and Means as ITL. The committee vote was 14-2 against the bill, suggesting that the publicity factors had their desired affect (We helped a little). The bill was immediately unpopular. Everywhere it was brought up in the blogosphere and social media people were against it. Local brewers … Read more
Democrat Charles Weed has something more important for New Hampshire than that “focus on the jobs and the economy” narrative they ran on. It’s called HB 148, and it would take New Hampshire’s votes for president and make them completely meaningless. HB148 abandons our ability to apportion our state electors for president and lumps our … Read more
I told them. If you want people to quit smoking, you had best not get used to the revenue from tobacco taxes. Don’t count on it for anything if you want to extinguish smoking in our lifetime. You know, make it history? But what did New Hampshire Democrats do when Republicans tried to back away from tobacco by lowering the tax just one thin dime? They snapped like addicts in withdrawal. They got the Democrat DT’s and everything.
You can’t cut the tobacco tax. We’re losing revenue. We need that revenue. I gotta have revvvaaaaannnooooo. (Insert primal scream here.)
Their new plan? Same as their old plan. Raise the tax on a product they don’t want around to tax. Yeah, that will fix the wagon (actually it wont) ….until January2014 when a provision in Obama-Care delivers the coup de gras.
I have already observed, on several occasions, the professional lefts efforts to perpetrate a prevailing media narrative about the sorry state of higher education, the “crumbling” mental health apparatus and our inadequately funded alcohol awareness and treatment programs. They are doing this to fertilize the budgetary soil for the necessary tax and spending increases required to (they would argue) help alleviate the growing injustice of under-educated, alcohol abusers, with a side order of mental health issues, that only an increase in state-managed taxpayer dollars can possibly resolve.
Well I am here to help. With one wave of my blogging wand I will “educate” the people on how we can reduce the prevalence of “mental health issues” and “alcohol abuse” in the Granite State (or anywhere), without more spending or taxes, all the while mocking the motley cabal of un-aborted, specula-wielding, would-be-tax-increasing left-wing harpies and their policy-cuckolded camp followers, who have been celebrating four decades of “legally” clawing defenseless unborn children out of women’s wombs.
Women are entitled to their choice of undergarments and even if these are an odd choice for a mature woman, we should not be disrespectful. Some day, we will all get old and…excuse me, you’re saying she’s a elected state representative? You’re saying she’s the chair of a house committee dealing with deadly serious subjects? That she … Read more
Why do Democrats want women to be defenseless in the face of rapists and murderers? Why do Democrats want to ban self-defense when when violent criminals break in to our homes? At GraniteGrok.com, we report, you decide. (But anti-gun Democrats are insane.)
Second Amendment fever is spreading like wildfire…even into the sanctum of Chicago-area Democrat meetings. “Molon Labe”, my friends, and enjoy (watch until the end).
Democrats claimed they would bring civility to Concord but as Rick Olsen observed here, at the hearing for HB 135, the Democrat committee chair yelled at the people who had come to the hearing–because they applauded when they liked what they heard. “…We are forced to sit here and suffer through this…I am not going … Read more
“Because hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils one is likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction than it is.” —Rebecca West
I posted this on Facebook yesterday. It is a simplified look at Democrats and taxes. I though I’d share it with the Grok audience. Rule #1 – Insist that we need more revenue so we must raise some taxes. Rule#2- Tell people that if they let you raise “these” taxes you will then cut “those” … Read more
I’ve been blogging this subject for years because at every opportunity Democrats (and a handful of Republicans) resurrect the notion that running a commuter rail line into and or up through the Nashua-Concord corridor would be good for something.
That’s like saying “hey doc just leave the endoscope in my colon, that way the next time I need it, it will already be there.”
It is damn near the biggest waste of time and money we could imagine, destined to become nothing more than a fiscal albatross that bleeds us dry, and yet like some three-year old who relentlessly carpet bombs you in the ten-items-or-less aisle with ear-piercing screams until you relent and buy them that chocolate bar, the mass-transit zombies you thought you’d put down keep getting back up so they can eat your brains.
Commuter rail is as useless in New Hampshire as a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest and whose only possible value (and I use that word very loosely) is as the ideological lefts equivalent of a gold-digging trophy wife you can never divorce–that’s more expensive, and paid for by you whether you use it, need it, ever see it, or not
In the last session, the NH Associations of Chiefs of Police (NHACP) decided that legislation that more fully allowed NH Citizens to realize their Natural Right to self-defense and lobbied the legislators (I do wonder if that would be legal – I seem to remember that association dues like this are paid out of property taxes. Thus, wouldn’t this be illegal??). For all their kvetching about a “Wild West” (echoing what others always say when gun laws are relaxed), the same thing happened here in NH as elsewhere – nothing happened. At all. Nada, when it came to actions by lawful citizens. And like those “else where naysayers”, the NHACP ended up looking like Chicken Littles. ‘Cept no sky fell.
Well, HB135 is now up for a vote – once again, hypocritical Democrats are trying to change “settled law” and reverse what Republicans passed last session. Will we see the NHACP throw in with the Democrats in limiting Citizens’ Rights – after all, the empirical evidence shows that the law has been successful has happened. I outline a couple of what I thought to be key phrases .But ask yourself – given their failed prophecy, will they again try to act as the Oracle at Delphi?
A social services advocacy group called New Futures recently promoted a study that suggested a cost recovery tax per drink on all cocktails in New Hampshire. They (or the study they promoted) claim that excessive drinking costs the state as much as 1.15 billion per year. The tax could/would, help offset those costs.
New Hampshire has a large percentage of the population that drinks alcohol but the primary source of the expense appears to be binge drinking, which I have discovered is another moving target on the social sciences spectrum. According to the CDC, binge drinking (for women) was recently changed–for reporting purposes–to four or more drinks on any one occasion.
That’s like calling binge-shopping visiting four or more stores on any one occasion. Women can sit and talk for hours making four drinks more like one per hour, which in the real world is called “nursing.”
The Concord Monitor is reporting on a plan by New Hampshire Democrat David Campbell (D- Nashua), that would eventually extract $115,000,000.00 million more dollars per year out of the pockets of struggling New Hampshire families. He’d like to raise the gas tax and the increase the cost to register your vehicles every year.
His ‘plan’ would raise the price you pay for gas five cents a year for three years. At the same time the cost of your vehicle registration would also increase five dollars a year for three years. So you’d’ see two separate tax increases every year for three years; is that two new taxes of six?
The promise, and given past experience this means nothing coming from a New Hampshire Democrat, is that they will use this additional tax money exclusively for road and bridge work.
We obviously need money for roads and bridges but I don’t think we need any new taxes and fees–so I have a better idea.