Budgets

Personal Endorsement: Rick Notkin for Gilford Budget Committee

Consider this a personal endorsement of Rick Notkin for Gilford Budget Committee. I’ve known him for a couple of years now and he literally is a straight shooter AND will watch over how your tax monies are spent just as miserly as I do! Please, if you want someone that supports limited government, please give … Read more

The Big Lie

For those too young to remember, the Big Lie is an expression for a propaganda technique coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”. Well, times … Read more

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So, what did we learn in Thursday’s New Hampshire House Session?

by Representative Judy Aron So, what did we learn in Thursday’s House Session? We learned that the majority party, while supporting interpreters for the deaf and hard of hearing at the State House (HB488), are totally tone deaf to the successes and economic principles that made New Hampshire a great place to live. The Majority … Read more

NH tax taxes Democrat taxes

NH Democrats Stop Business Tax Cuts – Pass Tax Hikes Instead

Ways and Means Chair Susan Almy led the charge to end prosperity in New Hampshire. The Granite State has experienced historical growth in employment and its labor force after a series of business tax cuts were implemented. Democrats disagree on that point not that it matters. They need to raise taxes to pay for their spending.

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Stop the insanity

If there’s anything that we should have learned over the last half century, it’s that spending more money on schools does nothing to improve student achievement, and that there is no correlation between the amount spent and the results obtained.

And if there’s anything that we should have learned during the two decades since the Claremont decision, it’s that even making every district into a ‘rich district’ does nothing to improve student performance.

These results shouldn’t come as a complete surprise.  We’ve been focusing all our attention on money, and very little on what we’re doing with the money.  It’s almost as if we think that something will work better if we pay more for it, or if we take the money out of a different pocket.

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Daddy, why do we have taxes?

Percy Blakeney recently made the argument that ‘the proper function of taxation is to raise money for core functions of government’.

The first problem with this is that it ignores the fact that there are lots of other ways in which money can be raised, apart from taxation:  Principally user fees, but also penalties, sales of goods and services, donations, raffles, and so on.

So it might be more precise to say that ‘The proper use of taxation is to raise money for core functions of government only after all other avenues have been shown to be ineffectual’.

But there’s still a problem. 

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Taxes: Can we have too much of a good thing?

Progressive taxes: What is the definition of too much? Americans generally accept the concept of progressive tax rates. We do. That is a fact of life. But our tax rates must not be punitive or de-motivating. Allowing those things to occur causes damage to the social fabric. That is the problem with socialism. What Socialists … Read more

Budgets

Tales from the BudComm – Coerced charity is not charity

“We can legally do it – but is a simple majority vote to give your property tax monies to a charity that you otherwise would not actually moral?” Every year since I’ve been politically active and paying attention, “outside agencies” keep coming to my hamlet to get the townfolk to give them money.  No, not … Read more

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