Taxes? We don’t pay no stinkin’ taxes!

Taxes? We don't pay no stinkin taxes!
Taxes? We don’t pay no stinkin taxes!

Peggy Gilmour and I were both graduated from college in 1973 (it only took me three years).  She went on for a graduate degree in nursing and I went o nto the family coal business and then some.  Though Ms. Gilmour dropped off the radar screen for a period of time – at least according to the free bits at LinkedIn – at some point in our respective careers, we were both CEOs.  As such, I would like to think that each of us had a passing understanding of state and federal tax codes and the implication of same on our respective businesses; truth be told, it did not take a rocket scientist to understand that the short version is – they either paid taxes on the income they earned or they were exempt from paying taxes on the income they earned.

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This Week On GrokTALK! – the after edition

While creating today’s GrokTALK! podcast, we had Dean Dr. Julianne Cooper from Liberty Harbor Academy and Josh Youseff who ran for the NH State Senate this last cycle on to talk about education. We ended up talking on a number of issues concerning education and during that discussion, I remembered this post from 2009 about then retiring NEA General Counsel Bob Chanin and read some of his words:

Despite what some among us would like to believe it is not because of our creative ideas. It is not because of the merit of our positions. It is not because we care about children and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power.

…And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year, because they believe that we are the unions that can most effectively represent them, the unions that can protect their rights and advance their interests as education employees.

…This is not to say that the concern of NEA and its affiliates with closing achievement gaps, reducing dropout rates, improving teacher quality and the like are unimportant or inappropriate. To the contrary. These are the goals that guide the work we do. But they need not and must not be achieved at the expense of due process, employee rights and collective bargaining. That simply is too high a price to pay.

Here is the clip:

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NH State Senator Peggy Gilmour – I demand who should control education dollars

And that would not be parents – From today’s Concord Patch: ‘Sen. Peggy Gilmour, D-Hollis, had urged her colleagues to overturn a committee recommendation and then pass the repeal bill. In a statement, she said, “The program has no accountability of public money. It allows private, non-profit corporations to determine where public education dollars are … Read more

It’s for the children

I’m sure Mr. Cohn misunderstood, Deerfield teachers are prohibited from ‘striking’:  

I hadn’t really looked at it this way…

Question For Conservatives: Why Are Your Children Still In Public School? David Groessh, PatriotUpdate.com, posted this question on Wednesday.  I read it early this morning and thought gee, he’s right.  He says in his opening paragraph: ‘You would not let your little children play in a busy street, jump off the roof of a ten-story building, or … Read more

Am betting that the Teachers Unions ain’t liking this all that much!

From California: …The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a legal challenge filed against Proposition 209, the 1996 initiative approved by California voters, which argued that the law discriminates against minority students in admissions to California universities. The three-judge panel said that the court was bound by a 1997 9th Circuit ruling that upheld … Read more

And the Teachers’ unions can’t understand why we don’t believe them?

In my opinion, public education has gone down a path of disaster in many ways – too many teaching methodologies that are not much more than somebody’s fad idea instead of being verifiably certified effective, teachers who believe their mission is to indoctrinate students with “a worldview” instead of teaching subject basics well, and unions that want you to simply believe that higher salaries and perks are an instant panacea to what they’ve been doing the last 30 years.

So, DO watch this of a high school student asking other students some simple, basic American Civics and geography questions.  Watch the utter cluelessness (with the exception of one young lady) and the blank stares of these high schoolers when the mic is offered in their general direction.

(H/T: The Blaze)

Well prepared and taught by their teachers, eh?  The problem for parents and taxpayers is…

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Taxpayers On The ‘Rack’

Elective Surgery on the taxpayer dime?  I have a question for progressives.  If a fetus is just a lump of tissue, isn’t abortion just another form of plastic surgery?

You can’t even find a Democrat willing to admit the procedure is not elective.  It’s woman’s choice, yes?

And if you’ve ever gotten an unwanted earful from some feminis, going on  about what pregnancy can do to a woman’s body,  appearance is a consideration.  That makes it cosmetic, yes?

So if  abortion is the elective, cosmetic, removal of unwanted tissue, and not the termination of a human life, why doesn’t the liberal super-state demand the wholesale taxpayer funding of liposuction, nose jobs, and breast implants?

Sorry, trick question.  If you are a public school teacher in Buffalo New York, boob jobs are already covered by taxpayer dollars.

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A Funding “Solution” For Democrats Concerned about Budget Cuts

Remember all that stuff we didn’t have to have in the New Hampshire budget before 2006 when the democrats started piling it up into what has become our Billion dollar budget deficit? I don’t either. I’m not even sure what they spent it on which is why I am convinced I can do without it. All this caterwauling is clearly just cover for keeping the bloated bureaucracy alive so they can milk it for union campaign contributions.

Two Congressmen And A Free Throw

HR 1 The US House just finished it’s work on HR1, cleaning up after democrats who in 2010 abrogated yet another  obligation when they found themselves incapable of writing the budget they really wanted right before an election.

The liberal-progressives wanted more spending but that was not politically advantageous.  And since the single driving-force behind all Democrat decisions is politics the budget got relegated to the back of the bus, where the electorate’s short attention spans were meant to forget that democrats were never fiscally conscious representatives–they just tried to play them on the campaign trail. 

But avoiding the high profile budget battle was more evidence that they had something to hide. The Democrat House majority was appropriately sedated and placed under observation, while the Senate saw minor adjustments but no change in leadership.  So the process of changing our spending ways would still have to go through a Democrat controlled Senate and across the desk of a President who thinks the words "spending cuts" are just a rhetorical flourish used to provide cover for more spending.

Obama’s budget is proof enough of that.

But Obama only proposes a budget.  The House is in charge of spending.  So the new Republican congress went to the back seat of the Hopey-changey bus and picked up the budget obligations abandoned by the 111th congress.  This wwas a free shot at changing the fiscal direction of the country before writing their own first official budget, which was not due until later in 2011.  It was a gimme, a free throw, but one that had to survive the democrat Senate and the Spender in Chief.

So how did it turn out?

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