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HOWARD PEARL VOTED FOR A PAINT TAX. He was also the 5th R vote, therefore arguably the one responsible for its advancement because 8+5=13. Read that again if he’s YOUR senator. I put those words in all caps because he’s MY senator and I am adding today’s HB451 roll call to Howard’s senatorial rap sheet. … Read more
Here’s a hard truth those on the Left will never acknowledge: Anyone who pays taxes in Vermont is already paying MORE than “their fair share.” We already pay the highest property taxes in the country. Is that fair? We have the third-highest state and local tax burden at 11.53 percent. Is that fair? Only eleven … Read more
Just days after a popular Burlington coffee shop announced it would close amid a strike and challenging financial and social conditions in downtown Burlington, a Barre restaurant is sounding the alarm about overtaxation. Barre restaurant owner Diane Duquet Hood says she plans to take her concerns about rising property taxes directly to local lawmakers after … Read more
A handful of New Hampshire Republicans put on a show this week. The message? Thank you, Governor Healey, for keeping Taxachusetts, taxachusetts. Mass Fiscal and the New Hampshire lawmakers pointed to a list of 15 taxes implemented in Massachusetts, 12 of which New Hampshire does not have. Those include an income tax, a millionaire’s tax, … Read more
Here’s a thought experiment for you to try. Imagine that you meet with your employer to tell him all the things you want to buy, and how much money you’d need to be able to pay for them. You tell him that you think you should get paid whatever amount would be needed to make … Read more
The City of Burlington will go slow on a plan to increase the property tax exemption and shift the burden to higher-value properties. The City Charter Change Committee had planned to move forward Monday night with discussions on a new homestead property value exemption of up to the first $50,000 of real estate value. The exemption – … Read more
Hat tip to Compass Vermont for their recent article highlighting the state’s public input survey on the choices our legislature will have to make when they return to Montpelier in January, End of the Easy Money: Vermont Braces for Its Hardest Budget in 10 Years. The main point: Vermont is running out of money and … Read more
A few weeks back, I had the privilege of co-hosting Granite State Live. GraniteGrok has had a close relationship with the program since its inception, but this was the first time I had the opportunity to co-host. Not for lack of invites, mind you, but logistics and time on my side. Our second guest was … Read more
Policy debates in New Hampshire are remarkably superficial. For example, an organization called the Tax Foundation recently released its “State Tax Competitive Index”, which scored New Hampshire the third-best State: But should New Hampshire’s tax policy be to achieve as high a rating as possible on the Tax Foundation’s “competitive index”? The Governor, the local Koch … Read more
Steve MacDonald was kind enough to share “RINO-Russ Barry” (a/k/a State Rep Ross Berry) Is Gaslighting You About “Local Control” And Property Taxes on his Granite Grok blog. Thank you, Steve! We noticed that State Rep Dan McGuire didn’t like our posting. We’ll share his criticism below, and then respond. Note that the focus of “RINO-Russ Barry” (a/k/a State Rep … Read more
When you talk to legislators about political reform, whether it’s in the schools or anywhere else, they are often interested in making small changes — largely because those seem to be the only kind anyone thinks can be made. (The technical psychological term for this is learned helplessness.) I’ve been thinking for a while now … Read more
California, New York, and to some degree, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania all have state exit taxes. When you’ve had it up to here, they make sure to get another piece of you before you try to take your economic toys and find a new home. These apply to high-value sales and high earners, and … Read more
Before getting into the meat of my “Part Deux” to my previous article on the Nashua library, let’s give a hat tip to a few people, starting with Grokster Beth Scaer, a well-known local library watchdog. She was the one who brought a new Ink Link article on the library to my attention. Next, there’s … Read more
If you really believe that ‘there is no place in our country for political violence’, then you can’t support taxation. Because taxation — forcing people to give you their money, to spend it on what you want, by threatening them with harm if they don’t give it to you — is perhaps the oldest and … Read more
I know the Senate is in recess and it’s a holiday weekend, but I think I’m barking up the correct tree emailing Senator Gray, who chairs the committee most likely to receive my fantasy bill. He usually replies with a “thank you for your email” within a few hours, sometimes on weekends, and sometimes with … Read more
The financial website Wallet Hub just came out with state rankings for public education, and Vermont came in overall 19th out of the fifty states. Pretty “meh” on the surface. But the overall score was based on components of outcomes and safety, and purely on the outcomes side, Vermont ranks 25th. That’s more like a … Read more
I’ve been accused of being like a dog with a bone, but I’m not going to apologize for obsessing about broad-based taxes, which include the cost of renewing your car’s registration. I wrote about this matter almost a year ago and revisited the topic recently in my article comparing town hall to city hall, but … Read more
The US Navy Submarine Service is also known as “The Silent Service” due to its stealth capabilities of “running silent,” allowing evasion of detection while underway in the world’s oceans. A majority of the Grafton County Commissioners seem to have joined the US Navy Submarine Service by “running silent” on the building of another courthouse. … Read more
No one’s left to defend educational freedom, except for a motley group of independent, unfunded homeschoolers teaching their kids at home. Given that they broke free of centralized control and approvals of their home programs, many have a healthy mistrust of state control over education. Most folks never read, or understood, history. They simply trust … Read more
The so-described education reform law, Act 73, is in effect. Its first order of business, creating a Vermont Redistricting Task Force, is done, and now said Task Force is getting down to its task of drawing up at least three maps of new mega-school districts for the legislature to consider next year, scrapping our current … Read more