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Emailed to the entire caucus, Wednesday Morning, 2-27-2013
Honorable Republican Representatives,
In the wake of the errant email in which NH Gas tax sponsor David Campbell (D-Nashua) reveals the true nature of his proposal, I wanted to take a moment to offer up some relevant observations.
Mr. Campbell remarked that his gas tax will provide a bounty (I’m paraphrasing) of revenue (taxation) for other purposes. It matters not whether he was being glib or just honest. The facts are these.
I wondered what Jennifer Horn would do as I wrote this; now we know – the non-silent silent answer. She did not “Choose Well”. The Press Release, which went out this morning, is after the jump. This is my Letter just sent:
Dear Jennifer (NH GOP Chair),
Right you are concerning the proposed gas – this should never have made it out of committee with a single Republican vote.
And that’s the problem – it got every single one of them. All of the Republicans on the committee, every one, voted for it; not a single Nay vote amongst them. In other words, they have turned your words below into hollow ones with their votes – that presser is of no importance at all as every single elected Republican just cut you off at the knees. Wait until NH Democrat Chair Buckley sends out his PR about “But Jennifer, all of YOUR Republicans sided with the Democrat Leadership and Maggie Hassan – doesn’t that put you on the wrong side of the issue?”. I see no comeback – your Party members have done just that from a perception standpoint – and voters will see that.
Your press release does make you look rather blinkered for ignoring the very Republicans that put you into such a position – a very foolish one. Castigating the Democrats while ignoring the bad behavior of your own Republicans – including the Minority House Leader? Not good at all and badly played.
Unfortunately, this PR blurb does not “thread the needle” that was necessary – you’ve now given more Republicans cover by not mentioning these chuckleheads at all. You have now given out the message “S’all right, vote for more expensive and bigger government – I’ll just ignore your part in it“. Again, how is this perception going to help in recruiting more voters to the Republican Party?
Yes, Jennifer, my answer would have been:
There is a good deal of couched language in this article, but a few things stand out. According to Edward Wyatt, fiscal analyst for the Office of Revenue Analysis, while tax rates are certainly a factor in the tax burden on families, it is more the existence of certain kinds of taxes that determines whether … Read more
Democrats lie about taxes, spending, and caring about the middle class, and two opportunities to prove that have recently 
presented themselves.
First, Nashua Democrat David Campbell, from whose progressive womb sprang the 15 cent per gallon gas tax, recently remarked in an email to Democrat party leadership that the Democrat gas tax was…
…”the gift that keeps on giving”
…
“As my father used to say, ‘Don’t spend it all in one place!” Rep. David Campbell, D-Nashua, chairman of the House Public Works and Highways Committee, wrote on Friday in explaining that his gas tax hike bill will generate “bonus monies” for purposes not directly associated with highways, roads and bridges.
Not directly associated is right.
The gas tax will screw you, your family, your small business, and the entire state economy out of millions more annually once fully implemented, money that will not go to wages, jobs, or anything but the Democrats government-first addiction.
| FEDERAL | STATE of NH | ||||
| Income Tax | Property Tax: | ||||
| Corporate Income Tax | Town Property | ||||
| Social Security | Town School Education | ||||
| Medicaid | State Education | ||||
| Capital Gains | County | ||||
| Marriage Tax Penalty | Inheritance & Estate | ||||
| Workers Compensation | Business Profit | ||||
| Meal & Rental Tax | |||||
| Electric Consumption Tax | |||||
| Meals & Rental Tax | |||||
| Real Estate Transfer | |||||
| (And there are many more….) |
“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.” Vladimir Lenin
On February 6, the NH House of Representatives voted on CACR 1, a bill which would have allowed citizens to vote on this constitutional amendment. CACR 1 basically declared a 3/5 majority vote in the NH House would be necessary to pass any legislation imposing new or increased taxes or license fees on the citizenry or to authorize the issuance of state bonds. (Might it be, if we shut down the spigot for a while, the “powers that be” may actually have to budget in a fiscally sound manner as do so many of NH citizens? Might the “powers that be” actually need to seek consensus before forcing citizens to pay increased fees or taxes that THEY deem appropriate? Might it be, if we have to have a majority vote before raising taxes or fees, the budgeting may be more transparent and streamlined?) Of course, the answer is yes to all those questions. Unfortunately, many of our state representatives did not agree. CACR 1 was voted Inexpedient to Legislate (which just means “kill the bill”) by a vote of 206 to 149.
Obama is saying that a majority of Americans want his approach to cutting the deficit: balanced. Problem is, he already got a boatload of new taxes and is already looking for more. Balanced: just like his use of the word “investment” means “spending more tax money”, his use of the word “balanced” means “more money … Read more
Just wondering.
More than a few folks in Merrimack probably had heart attacks when they saw the front page article “Council OKs 23.5 million budget” in the Merrimack Telegraph Journal. In the second paragraph, right below the front page fold, it claimed this new budget would mean a $5.25 increase per $1000.00 of assessed value.
That would be an increase of approximately $1,312.00 per year for a home valued at $250,000.00 and a new town rate of $10.50/1000 –the sorts of numbers typically reserved as the low end of a school budget that still can’t manage to teach math adequately.
Those are torch and pitchfork numbers.
“Ask a democrat and they will tell you “we have a revenue problem.” But the only reason you could ever have a revenue problem is if you first have a spending problem. But if you have elected Democrats, you will always have a spending problem. And you will always have a spending problem because … Read more
J.Robert Smith has a good article at American Thinker on Republicans taking back the tax issue, and that is certainly true, but there were two things in particular that stood out to me… First, the current US tax code consists of almost 74,000 pages. (What the…) Second, on one of those pages can be found this. (paragraphs appear here in … Read more
It is clear that the Editor of NH Journal doesn’t like this bastion of Conservative / Libertarian news and commentary, given that his veins run blue with Establishment Old Guard and all. After all, we’re just a bunch of ordinary schlubs here at GraniteGrok, bitter clingers to our guns, Bibles, and Conservative / Libertarian viewpoints – we’re just those icky types of folks who, unbelievably, actually have a core set of beliefs.
I guess that from his high perchdom of full time Editor and political operativeness, we don’t matter. Yet, there must be SOMETHING that we’re doing right because he decided to send a rather sneering email to me:
By vote of 186 to 165 the Democrat controlled New Hampshire House passed a 25% increase in New Hampshire’s fuel oil tax. As numbers go the tax itself is not a large number, but the sum it extracts from the state economy–on the backs of families and business owners who will end up paying it–is. … Read more
The New Hampshire Young Republicans (NHYR) want to know why Congress-critter Ann McLane Kuster (I prefer McKluster) is worth an estimated $1.8 million dollars but can’t manage to pay her property taxes?
“While Annie Kuster pushes a message that we all need to chip in a little extra, she has failed to pay her fair share. Yesterday we realized that a tax-and-spend liberal member of Congress is delinquent on her own taxes. Time and again, Uncle Sam’s cup is passed around and we are told to dig a little deeper. When the cup was passed to Annie Kuster, she didn’t chip in.
…
I can understand if she was late on a payment or if there was just a simple oversight, but this is not a one-time mistake. Kuster has been delinquent 6 times for over $40,000 in property taxes owed to the towns of Hopkinton and Jackson. With a reported net worth of $1.8 Million (Center for Responsive Politics) how can she in good faith and with any level of moral authority ask any more of the American people than she does of herself.
This arrived in my in-box, and I don’t have a link or details, so I’m just reporting what I received… but we’ll follow up with more information as it becomes available.
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
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
Tym Rourke, the person most likely to coordinate the spending of the tax money, is advocating for more revenue, so that he might–we can only assume–help spend it. Rourke is the Chairman of the Governors Commission on Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Prevention, Intervention and Treatment in New Hampshire, and he insists that because New Hampshire sells so much damn alcohol, even profiting from its aggressive promotion, that the state has a moral obligation to offset any downsides here in New Hampshire.
What’s next, a tax on hammers to cover time lost to thumb related injuries, or taxing shower curtains to defer lost productivity due to bathing accidents?
Phil Mickelson made some observations about his taxes. He said they were getting kind of high for his tastes and he might move from California to another state. The media got in their freight train and ran Phil over. So what is the lesson for all the other ‘Phil Mickelsons’ who are successful but live … Read more
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.
Phil Mickelson: “But if you add up, if you add up all the federal and you look at the disability and the unemployment and the Social Security and the state, my tax rate’s 62, 63 percent. So I’ve got to make some decisions on what I’m going to do,” I waited a couple of days … Read more
“Why are we not working on the budget and new jobs for NH. No the first thing they (NH Democrats) do is gun control for NH, raise the beer tax, vehicle registration fee increase of $30.00 to $50.00 per vehicle in your driveway, gas tax increase of 20%…”