News – Politics – Opinion – Podcasts
This book has been around forever. My first girlfriend in High School had it way back in the seventies. And while it has had several new covers over the years, given the current circumstances I took it upon myself to make a new cover art “suggestion” for the next printing.
I won’t even bill them for the copy writing. Consider it a donation.
(Updated…)
It occurred to me that this might be a better option and I wanted to make sure everyone had a “choice.” (on the jump)
GOP Rep. John Hikel has sponsored a bill that will allow bottled spirits of all types to be sold in markets, grocery stores, convenience stores, and other outlets. This change in the law will obviously benefit the free market and consumers in New Hampshire, but it will also result in the creation of lots of jobs, and lots more work for truckers, delivery people, stockers, etc. A Commerce Committee hearing will be held this coming Tuesday, February 7th, at 2:15 p.m. in Room 302 of the Legislative Office Building in Concord. You should be there and testify in FAVOR of the bill.
But wait! There’s a problem! To understand it, consider the famous picture above. You thought it was a raucous party of drunks in Concord, right? What might result if we allow expanded consumer choice and convenience in New Hampshire, and pass Rep. Hikel’s bill? No, you idiot. Read on to find out what the real problem will be….
I suppose you’ll want some context for that headline. Back in December (12/9/2011) I explained why New Hampshire should continue lowering tobacco taxes. I suggested we adopt some kind of schedule by which we would sunset tobacco taxes over the next decade based of the long term decline in sales. Why, after all, would you risk the states ability to invest in anything, including the left’s rhetorical “neediest residents in their most desperate hours (or something),” using an unreliable source of revenue in decline?
OK, what I actually said was
“Only a progressive zipper-head would rely on more revenue from something they want to get rid of. Increasing the tax on a declining market will only accelerate the unreliability of the revenue stream. That creates the opportunity for bigger budget holes that must then be filled on the fly.”
As if by magic, Sylvia Larsen, Democrat super-minoirty leader of the New Hampshire State Senate, in the face of declining unit sales, as fewer people smoke, after a decades long trend indicating that tobacco purchases will likely continue to decrease in the future, thinks we should increase our reliance on cigarette taxes in New Hampshire.
Zipper head. (doofus, goofball, goober, dunderhead, maroon, doh!) see note#2 below
Has the sweet milk of Obama’s class warfare rhetoric taken another sour turn? I’m talking about Warren Buffett’s secretary. How could a woman who is only paid $60,000.00 per year (according to her boss) be able to afford two homes while somehow amassing enough annual wealth to put her in a tax bracket that doesn’t even exist for the top1%?
That’s the question posed in an editorial in yesterday’s Investors Business Daily: Is Buffett’s Secretary a One Percenter?
An ABC News report, for example, says she “pays a tax rate of 35.8%,” in contrast to Buffett’s 17.4% The very top federal income tax bracket is 35%, not 35.8%, and that doesn’t kick in until a taxpayer has adjusted gross income above $379,150.
Does that mean Bosanek is among the 0.4% of taxpayers whose income hits the top federal bracket? You know, the “1%” Obama and his pals always rail about?
Good question.
Exposing the Granite State Fair Tax Coalition (GSFTC) as just another left wing front group for Christian Socialism and the Democrat party tax and spend agenda was easy. (Here, here, here, here, here, maybe here, here as well, and don’t forget here.)
But will it be any easier to unmask their newest facade? That’s right, the GSFTC is dead but not gone. It has been replaced by the exact same organization, all the same Liberal/Progressive players, but with a shiny new name. GSFTC is now Granite State Priorities (GSP).
How do I summarize this transition in a nut shell? Same old whore, new dress.
From the Wall Street Journal:
“This all-too-conveniently confuses the incidence of a tax with the burden of a tax. The marginal tax rate on every additional dollar of capital gains and dividend income from corporate profits can reach as high as 44.75% at the federal level (assuming a company pays the 35% top corporate rate), not 15%.
The Congressional Budget Office recently examined the distribution of federal taxes on various income groups. The report was ballyhooed by liberals as proof of rising income inequality, but that argument is for another day. What everyone has ignored is what CBO found about the relative taxes paid by different groups. And, lo, the rich pay more, which is probably why the press didn’t report it.”
Indeed” “why the press didn’t report it.” All we have heard from the Left is the inequality, a la Warren Buffet, is the inequality of who pays what for taxes. What they seldom report to the public, and what Warren Buffet absolutely doesn’t mention, is exactly the important info laid out above: double taxation. The money that Buffet receives has already been taxed once at the corporate rate (35% before legal deductions) and as an owner of the corporation (as that’s what shareholders are – owners) he gets taxed a second time on that income – referred to as dividends.
“New Hampshire is a very cost-effective opportunity for us to build out and grow the company,” he said. “Definitely that facility,
staying in the area where we’re at, provided the most business advantages for us and that growth.”
-Enterasys President and CEO Chris Crowell in the Union Leader.
Enterasys is moving 540 jobs to Salem New Hampshire from Massachusetts and adding about 80 more as part of the move. They want to stay in New England, and New Hampshire offers them the best growth opportunity to do that. Hell yeah, it does.
Still trying to play catch up here: Intro Ceremonies and Question 1, Questions 2 & 3, and Questions 4 & 5. Now, Questions 6 and 7!
Question 6 (which was asked by a young girl): you are going to abolish 3 Departments including the Department of Education; how are you going to replace them? I believe the underlying “gotcha” question was “and how will I get a decent education if the Feds are not involved?” (an adult formulated question, I presume):
Question 7: How will lowering corporate taxes bring back jobs to the US where many corporations already don’t pay [income] taxes?
As New Hampshire plays it’s traditional “First In The Nation Primary” role for the next few days, I am reminded of two things. First, as the Live Free or Die state, no matter who ends up as either the GOP nominee or the next president, we’ll still have to act like the sovereign Republic that we are and repel the borders from progressives and big government, both inside and out, for years to come. Second, there is what has to be my favorite New Hampshire bumper sticker; “Welcome to New Hampshire, Now Go home.” To which I would add,” unless you’d like to just move here.”
There are conditions for moving here, of course. We consistently have some of the lowest poverty, lowest crime, and the best standard of living for a reason. And as people speculate about our reasonably low unemployment as well, let me point out that these things are all related. It is the secret ingredient. It is what makes all the great things about New Hampshire possible. The answer; reduce the incentive for bad behavior.
If you don’t pay people a livable wage to remain unemployed, for some strange reason progressives cannot grasp, those people go find a job. And believe it or not, this works everywhere it is tried.
To the Editor: Henry Osmer objects to calling our President a “ruthless, uncaring s.o.b.”. I would not call him that, but I wonder about others. If my brother were a multi-millionaire but wouldn’t help me when I live in a hut on $20 per month, how caring might I consider my brother? If I had … Read more
Rep Ken Wyler, R-Kingston NH, took the Portsmouth Herald to task, in Fosters Daily Democrat, (Fosters.com) for its recent editorial on the cigarette tax decrease. The Herald would like us to continue raising tobacco taxes every year, just like when the Democrats were in power, essentially pimping the Democrat party argument that we need the revenue, and that the tax decrease was pointless.
I’ve been arguing for a much larger decrease of the cigarette tax than the Republican House settled on for years. It seemed obvious to me. We make a hell of a lot more on Rooms and Meals taxes and that revenue is shared with towns–(ironic considering how Democrats pilfered that tax for reasons that will become obvious in a moment.) Increased commerce overall is a benefit to the business community, profits, employment, wages, and the business tax revenue that grows as a result. Cigarettes are a draw, even as sales drop. Why don’t Democrats see it?
Victor Davis Hanson nails it, as always, with just a few words (from a column at PJ Media): [A]lways higher taxes fuel bigger government, which fuels an expanding recipient class which pays homage by reelecting more big-government statists who further fuel government for sympathetic dependent voters. For the conservative, who sees dependencies and overregulation everywhere, … Read more
It has been three years since the Democrat party produced a federal budget. The Democrat Senate has blocked repeated efforts by the Republican controlled House to ‘do something’ about that. President Obama, Senate leader Harry Reid, and the Democrat leaderships contribution (including their media homunculus) has been to demand compromise without giving any.
Update: on from my line below: we refuse to do anything unless we get all the lemmings lined up at the cliff. Well, it seems that the Occupy folks have decided that you WILL be a lemming, or face the consequences: At about 5:09 p.m., the female student was approached by a man at “the … Read more
From today’s Wall Street Journal, Alan Blinder argues against "The Folly of the Flat Tax."
Blinder, a member in good standing of the modern American political class, is a Princeton prof and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. He uses the word "progressive" like humans brandish garlic at vampires.
But in fact the real vampires are the members of the parasitic political classes. Blinder’s article should be titled "The Folly of Regressive Progressivism."
After all…
Does Carol SEIU-Porter agree with Nancy, that the reason the Democrats never passed a budget–it has been an historical 927 days–was that the “Republican would have filibustered it?” (Careful now….try to remember how many republicans there actually were before you answer)
The current Democrat class war is like punishing the advantage of literacy to pay for the economic misfortunes of people who refuse to learn how to read or simply do not read well. People whose only fault is having succeeded are somehow responsible for people who have not. And the Professional Left (and their amateur useful idiots) will go to any length to make the point, reinforcing the popular right wing adage, "Democrat’s do say the dumbest things."
Take Merrimack’s political village idiot, Fred Morse. In this mornings Sunday News Morse, who carries the lefts water in the print news at every available opportunity, made the following statement.
If there were any verifiable data that the richest were actually job creators in any substantial sense, that would be the lead story of FOX News every single night of the year. So when someone says that the idle rich are job creators, they are either misinformed or attempting to mislead the public.
I’m not sure if FOX actually uses the words ‘Rich people create jobs’ (I don’t typically watch any television news) but I’m reasonably sure they talk about business, finance, markets, capitalism, investments, and all their productive and beneficial side effects. These are the mechanism for creating wealth and for creating jobs. So not only are they (FOX) talking about it, the very existence of jobs proves the point; that investment of time and money by free people creates jobs and that by extension people who chose to create jobs by starting a business can become wealthy.
He gets right in the middle of the "Occupy Wall Street" kids (of all ages), and just Strikes Them Dumb! Just by asking a few questions! Lenin called liberals "useful idiots." These people are Obama’s "useful occupiers." After seeing Mr. Schiff on the front line of the battle, I pulled out his book published last year "How an Economy … Read more
Defeated Democratic state Senator Maggie Hassan made it official today that she will be running for governor in 2012. In her usual hokum, Hassan touted the typical big government solution to prop up the economy. As reported in the Union Leader, Maggie the Marxist, “stressed the need to create jobs by “investing” in education and job training programs and by fostering a business climate that attracts innovative small businesses and new technologies.” Translation: “investing” equals big-government spending and solutions…equals heavy taxation to raise such revenues. Such notions were brought with her as a carpet-bagging “massplant” to the Granite State.
The Union Leader reported that “Maggie the Marxist” pledged to be a fiscally responsible governor who would veto any sales or income tax and commit herself to a balanced state budget.“ This is laughable given her extensive record as a State Senator. My fellow Blogger Steve MacDonald absolutely nailed it on back October 5th when he wrote:
Hassan is a left wing, government first, spend then tax Democrat who wants socialized medicine, supports abortion from conception to birth (also here), and was more than willing to trample on opponents with the “Sullivan/Hassan Hates Speech (the left can’t control) amendment.” (also here, and here, …) She is also willing to lie about her opponents to get re-elected.
Obama on "effective" taxation:
GIBSON: All right. You have, however, said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, "I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton," which was 28 percent. It’s now 15 percent. That’s almost a doubling, if you went to 28 percent.
…
GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.
So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?
OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.
…
GIBSON: But history shows that when you drop the capital gains tax, the revenues go up.
Fairness? A very subjective judgement – another Hope and Change, which is not something on which to base public policy revenues. This is when things go off the rails – when tax policies enforce ideologies instead of their main purpose – to fund the essential functions of government. I’d rather go with something much more objective. To the rescue- Art Laffer on Effective Taxation (Rich States, Poor States, 4th edition, ALEC.ORG):
1. When you tax something more you get less of it, and when you tax something less you get more of it.
2. Individuals work and produce goods and services to earn money for present or future consumption.
3. Taxes create a wedge between the cost of working and the rewards from working.
4. An increase in tax rates will not lead to a dollar-for-dollar increase in tax revenues, and a reduction in tax rates that encourages production will lead to less than a dollar-for-dollar reduction in tax revenues.
5. If tax rates become too high, they may lead to a reduction in tax receipts. The relationship between tax rates and tax receipts has been described by the Laffer Curve.