Articles tagged as

Taxes

Don’t Say There Is No Place To Cut.

Privatize the public school system and shift the educators, staff, maintenance, and transportation and facility costs off the books, along with converting public benefits and pensions into the same kind of programs the rest of the private markets have, and you would see property tax rates plummet.

The One-Trick Tax-And-Spend Donkey By Any Other Name…

No Good Dancing DonkeyThe New Hampshire democrats have a name for their new 501(c)(4) non-profit.  It’s the July Fourth Forum. What, “We just lost The Whole Damn State” was already taken?

As with most things named by democrats it presents a notion diametrically opposite its true intention.  We see this same naming tactic in their legislation  (at least in DC).  Their bills always have the words American, Freedom, Rights, Choice, or Affordable in the name, usually including two or more at any given time.  This is meant to serves as a warning to anyone who dares gaze upon the hundreds of thousands of words that follow the name of their bill (not that they want anyone to actually read them).   If allowed to become law it will hurt Americans, deny freedoms, infringe rights, cost a fortune and leave you with whatever choice the government has decided is best for you and few if any other.

So the only word in any name of any Democrat bill that has any hope of being remotely accurate must be the word “Act.”  As in, that American-Freedom-Rights-and choice-stuff  is all just an act.

Which brings us back to Kathy Sullivan’s ‘”July Fourth Forum.” 

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A Modest (Budget Cutting) Proposal

Public Sector Unions SuckThere are plenty of towns like mine trying to figure out where they can cut costs.  But every conversation seems to end at cutting education or safety services.  While I find it hard to believe that there is nothing else in a budget you can trim, I think I have come up with a reasonable compromise (if not just for the sake of our own rhetorical amusement) that can cut at least a little bit of money from the budget without affecting staffing or resources.

Any teacher, support staff, officer, firefighter or public employee who currently pays union dues will have the total amount of dues paid calculated and that amount removed from their respective department budgets (aka:paychecks).  This will do the one thing no one ever seems willing to do; include the unions in the burden of cost cutting.

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More on “it’s not mine to give”

More on the meme – is the use of property taxes really charity? (earlier here and here). From the Laconia Citizen, 1/14:  Rebuttal to Laura DiFonzo

By all means, all of the charities (which you call service organizations) you list do good work; no one on the Gilford Selectboard or Budget Committee have stated otherwise. What they have said, if I maybe so bold (as I am an elected Budget Committee member but do not speak for the Committee here), is that it is rightfully up to the citizens of Gilford to make that  decision, via the ballot box, whether or not to use their tax money AND that of their neighbors’ to support them. 

Personally, I am against the practice of sending tax monies and plan on voting no on these warrant articles.  Why?  I do not have the hubris to demand that my neighbor, or my fellow citizens in Gilford, to be forced to support any given charity no matter how good the intention even if I believe they should. At that point, it is no longer charity – it is forced giving.  Charity is an act of individual kindness and responsibility; using tax monies is neither. Someone is declaring their disrespect for the property of others (i.e., their money) when they advocate someone else’s money should be used for a purpose that they might not otherwise support.  

It should be up to the individuals of the town to make their own decisions whether or not to reach into their own wallets and no one else’s.  Ms. DiFonzo asks the question of "what is a NH Citizen to do?" The answer is exactly what she is doing – as a United Way volunteer who works diligently to persuade individuals to be charitable and part with their money for her cause, she asks individuals as it should be.

Is she now advocating that people should no longer have a choice in how their money is to be spent?  Does she believe that politicians should now be in charge of who receives charity – and who doesn’t?  And by her Letter, is she signifying that all should be forced to give to those she supports?

In my estimation, these charities have lost their way and have become too professionalized as well as too dependent upon government monies.  Perhaps, as the United Way does, they should return to the roots of charitable contributions – seeking funding from the actual public instead of from the individual town Public Treasuries.

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Mark Fernald as “Hugh Jihass”

Does Democrat Mark Fernald do the letters to the editor follow up over at Fosters Daily Democrat or is he just complicit?  Amidst a series of letters posted on January 14th at Fosters.com is a smarmy bit of left wing drool authored by one Hugh Jidette.  Fernald liked the letter so much that he shared it on his email distribution list saying…

Here’s an excellent letter from Foster’s Daily Democrat.  I encourage all to write their own letters to expose what the right wing is up to.

Mark Fernald

Forget what the right wing has been up to, what has Fosters and Mark Fernald been up to? 

Hugh Jidette is a false name.  Huge Jidette (Huge Debt) appears as a fake Presidential Candidate to deliver awareness ads about out of control spending and the risks of borrowing on the scale the democrats embraced.  Hugh was all about borrowing money.  But Some on the left spun that and sold it to their peeps as proof that the Republicans were lying about taxes and using the campaign to justify slashing the deficit to punish hard working civil servants.  That exact same theme has found its way here in the letter published in Fosters, by a Hugh Jidette from Rochester, but with a local spin. The national left wing meme viewed through a granite state filter.

But we have no way of knowing if it was written by Fernald himself, Kathy Sullivan, Ray Buckley, The Center for American Progress, ‘Norris Cotton’ over at Red Hampshire, or by Fosters Editorial Staff.  

One thing we do know is that the person vetting letters over at Fosters should change their name to Hugh Jihass, and that by forwarding it as if it were written by an actual local resident, Fernald looks like a Hugh Jihass as well.

 

Once you have finished giggling, and before some democrat named Huge Jidette from Rochester comes forward to take credit, the text of Fernald’s Email is available on the jump, followed by an example of some original video put out in the debt awareness campaign.

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Sullivan’s New Hampshire

Sullivan's NH -Burning down the houseThe ‘Su’ in Suckly, Kathy Lawsuit’ Sullivan, has a regular editorial in the Union Leader.  I have no idea why but after reading it and taking a shower to get the brimstone smell off of me, I have to make an arbitrary decision as to whether I should comment.  Normally I do not.  Her template is the recipe for left wing baby formula and so unoriginal I could probably find it in every other paper in the country with the word New Hampshire replaced with (insert name of your state here.)  But this time she closed her ditty with the words…"They are about to destroy the New Hampshire we love."

This is red meat-bait for right wing carnivores.  It begs the obvious question, ‘"what New Hampshire do they love," they being Sullivan and the far left democrats, and history has been kind enough to provide us with an answer.

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Repeal The “Evergreed” Law

The Evergreed law screws taxpayers. It gives automatic wage and benefit increases based on the last approved contract removing any incentive on the part of the unions to negotiate in good faith with a town or city unless it thinks or knows it can do better than the contract it already has.

See what happens when Legislators apply their own “tax caps”?

Here in NH, tax caps are fairly common in the news.  For readers in other states for which this may be unknown (think Illinois, California, or New York), these legal instruments put into place by votes of the general citizenry of the various local governments that limit the growth of spending by elected officials. Why?  … Read more

Why Not Cut The Gas Tax?

I’ve been suggesting for years now that cutting the cigarette tax would raise more revenue.  That is the point of a tax after all.  And with neighboring states that are stuck on stupid when it comes to the rules and affects of taxation any reduction will increase other commerce as people come over the border … Read more

Guest Post: The State manipulates its view of things,,,

Guest Post: Frank Handibode’s earlier guest post on this is here. New Hampshire Property Appeals Process Unfair Hey, New Hampshire property owners, get a load of this. The Board of Taxation and Land Appeals (the BTLA) has ruled that if you appeal your assessments to them, it is perfectly okay for a town or assessor … Read more

Brunelle’s Road To Damascus Moment?

Road%20To%20Damascus.jpgAfter four years of defending the democrat budgeting strategy of spend first tax later (during what any democrat worth his donkeys-ass referred to endlessly as the ‘worst recession in history’), NHDP executive director and NH House rep from Manchester Mike Brunelle shows us his new conservative streak.

“No matter who you are, Republican or Democrat, you were elected to work on the economy and jobs. I don’t think the people of Manchester want them to be dealing with these social issues,” said Brunelle. “We need to be focused on the working families in this state. … Anything other than that is beyond frivolous.”

It is all part of their new strategy, as I pointed out here yesterday…

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What Would We Do Without Studies Like These?

Riding in on the heels of the UNH/Hirshberg cow fart research we have other news from the research front of which is just begging to be made fun.

Someone has discovered that oral sex is a gateway drug to intercourse among teenagers. A three-year study determined that teens who have oral sex are more likely to have intercourse than teens who do not. And if you ask the Baptists they will tell you that intercourse leads to dancing, or was that the other way around?

“I see most of the health policies out there and guidelines for preventive services talking about sex generally, but they do not specify oral sex. That is an important distinction because teens don’t consider oral sex to be sex, and many are not aware of the risks involved,” Halpern-Felsher said.

So oral sex leads to intercourse and intercourse leads to unwanted pregnancy.  Who is surprised?  The experts, of course.

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A Guidebook for the New Hampshire Legislature!

Absolutely everything they need to know for 2011 is to be found IN THIS GUIDE.  All they need to do is print it out, read it, understand it, and design a new tax system for New Hampshire this coming session. Excellent!

Why I Need Your Tax Dollars, by Gary Hirshberg

Gary Hirshberg CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farms wants you to know what he thinks about a recent taxpayer investment in organic farming. His editorial in this mornings Union Leader goes on at great length extolling the virtues and benefits of organic farming. It will create jobs, better food, help grow the organic farms footprint and provide fresh local dairy products.
He never mentions that his fresh local dairy farm is owned by a huge multinational French conglomerate of which he is a prominent international player. (Big Dairy!)

A practical lesson on raising taxes – revenues drop! Unexpectedly!

I just through that last word in – after all, it seems that the Obama covering press always seems to present bad news modified by that word ("Today, the Labor Department reported another unexpected rise in the unemployment rate…"). Well, it applies to forecasts as well, as the clueless Oregonian politicians and class envy voters … Read more

Breaking The Addiction To Government

Image: thesassyminx.comThe December New Hampshire labor report, period ending October 2010, is not all that remarkable.  Coos County is still suffering while overall the state is hanging in at 5.4%.  This number is still reflective of issues with the size of the labor force versus mid 2009 numbers.  We have to watch that as we head through the November and December reports into January, where holiday hiring will add to the labor force, and then most likley drop off.

What may have been the most interesting aspect of the new report however, was this paragraph from the first page.

In New Hampshire private industry GDP growth was below that of government. The current dollar change in private industry between 2008 and 2009 was almost non-existent. less than a $1 million dollar difference.  When adjusted for inflation private GDP saw a 1.5% percent decrease.  Government however (this is New Hampshire State Government) saw a 4.6% increase in current dollars.

This is how Democrat-controlled states feign growth. 

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For Quite Some Time

For quite some time more than a few of us out here in the private sector have been paying into our own retirement plans–if we can–for years.  After the Housing bubble burst many of us began reducing the amount we contributed as a lousy economy consumed opportunities, wage growth and jobs–our neighbors jobs or even our own. 

Companies, small businesses in particular, that were once able to provide some benefits and 401K matching dollars shifted gears, re-directing that revenue (if they had it) to keeping the business afloat so they could pay enough remaining core employees to keep the company "a company"–with desks, paperclips, sticky-notes, and a space to keep them in.  We paid for our own retirement plans, owners and managers paid for theirs, took pay cuts, employees took pay cuts, millions accepted reduced hours, part time status, or were overcome by the recession and had to be let go.

At the same time various levels of government were handing out (or handed) billions and billions of dollars that did not exist, to prop up the public sector unions.  These unions, collective bargaining groups (emphasis on collective) were the primary benefactors of the past two years accumulation of debt.  Government rules favored them in opposition to all else and in contradiction to common sense, not just for cash handouts but the hand out of sparse jobs as well.  Even at the local level, the public sectors union handlers, who are really nothing more than fat cat capitalists selling shares in human flesh for a profit, in the from of a dues check each pay period, have fought against the tide to raise union salaries, benefits, and keep or create more jobs that must be paid for by the people going the opposite direction.

So the public sector unions, operating as nothing more than a private business, whose goal is to grow revenue, continued to do just that at taxpayers expense, all the while whining about private sector greed and malfeasance. We need to call them out for this. 

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The Invertebrate Jeanne Shaheen?

So did Jeanne Shaheen vote for cloture on the Reid’s Frankenstein tax compromise and will she vote to pass it? I ask because it includes Billions for a one year extension of ethanol subsidies that Senator Shaheen just insisted we could not afford.

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