The State Supreme court announced that is sees a conflict between current state law and spending cap initiatives approved by voters (Manchester in particular). This is not unexpected but it is fortuitous, and to some degree ironic. In their quest to defend any liberal-leaning municipalities desire to spend beyond the ability of their residents to pay for it, groups like Keep Manchester Moving have just financed the blueprint by which the now Republican super-majority state government can adroitly engineer a fix.
Articles tagged as
Taxes
Taking All The ‘Air’ Out Of “Fair”
The Nashua Telegraph spent most of the election season giving up huge chunks of their Sunday commentary page to the mouth-pieces of special interests promoting left wing causes like health care deform, so why stop now that the election has passed? This week we get the implausible assumptions of Cathy Silber, the coordinator of the Granite State Fair Tax Coalition (GSFTC), who upon seeing the blood in the water on November 3rd, has attempted a preemptive strike for her pet special interest project–an income tax for New Hampshire.
Silber has been fighting "The Pledge," an oath signed by Granite State candidates who promise to vote against any sales or income tax should they meet that big bad wolf tax on the way to Grandmothers house, or anywhere else. So Silber is the "Anti-pledger," plying class warfare rhetoric dressed as "fairness" in her quest to drag New Hampshire down the broad based tax rabbit hole, with the lie that it would take pressure off property taxes and create a more fair redistribution of wealth…oops I mean a more fair distribution of the tax burden. Wait. I had it right the first time.
What, you don’t think GSFTC is seeking the redistribution of wealth?
Take a look at who is in the "fair tax" coalition. Union heavyweights; the NEA-NH, SEIU-1984(NH), and the NH State Employees Association, our state government employees union. Who else? How about a slew of social justice groups like the Unitarian Universalist’s and the NH Council of Churches, anti gun, pro-global warming, supporting redistribution of wealth, all left wing causes aided in their minds by a new broad based tax.
Takes all the ‘Air’ out of Fair, don’t you think?
Feds Play The Lynch Shell Game With Themselves
Taking a page from the John Lynch Playbook, the Federal Reserve is planning to buy 500 billion in treasury bonds. This is the Federal Government taking money from it’s right pocket, putting it in its’ left pocket, then putting it back in the right pocket, and claiming to have 500 billion more to spend.
What if Politicians HAD to beg for taxes….hmmmm
Don Boudreaux hits it exactly on the head: The Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein pities politicians for all the time the poor dears must spend raising money from donors who can choose whether or not to contribute. I pity taxpayers for all the time politicians spend taking money from them, whose only choice is to hand … Read more
Greedy Progressive Politicians require your money – for their purposes. Here is your answer!
Thanks to AFP-NH and Tom Thompson!
Guest Post – Leigh MacNeil
There are two clear choices on Tuesday. We can continue down a path of big government, higher taxes and less freedom, or we can demand from our legislators a limited government with less spending, lower taxes and more freedom.
Obama Appleseed
Unions are basically socialist constructs, huge businesses whose product is workers dues dollars. They cannot 
survive without them so they need to manipulate the business/worker environment to maximize their income earning potential.
The biggest union scam ever conceived was the public sector union. Taxpayer funded employees pay dues which are then used to influence elections at every level in favor of a political class that will then build union power by growing government, and adding more dues paying union employees whose additional funds will then keep the pro-union politicians in power.
Want to know why democrats care about public school class sizes? More teachers, more dues, more democrats. It has nothing to do with learning. Now project that thinking across the entire "grow government" universe and you have a massive scheme to swell the bureaucracy at your expense that should be illegal but is not. But with Obama serving as their Johnny Appleseed, using your money–provided by the democrat congress–he’s been creating and saving dues paying public union jobs (and democrat campaign coffers) all over the nation.
Public Service Is About Trust
I’d just assume have a root canal without pain killer as suffer through an editorial by Carol Shea-Porter, but sometimes you have to take one for the team. So I have immersed myself in the last rights editorial of the soon to be former congresswoman from New Hampshire’s first district, which is ironically titled, ‘Public Service is about trust.’
Trust?
Before I proceed let me offer up a comment on Carol’s notion of trust. In traditional progressive fashion the meaning of trust has had to have been tortured before admitting under duress and threat of death to its friends and family members, that Carol’s application of it’s meaning holds any relevance at all to the historical application. In fact Carol’s willingness to even use the word in this context, nay–any context at all–in reference to what she refers to as her public service, is a public disservice to the word, the language, the people of the first district, and serves to cement the likelihood that she is the disconnected, ruling class political shill we suspect her to be, if not also clinically insane.
Gov. Lynch and the NH Democrats Balance the Budget!
Great! Except IT’S A LIE. Here’s how they "did it." The following is from Republican State House Rep. Bob Rowe:
New Hampshire has a two year budget, not one year, and one side is talking about the first year of the budget and the other about the total two year budget. Yes, the Governor and Legislature balanced the first year budget ending June 31st, and yes, the State will be seriously in the hole at the end of the second year on June 31, 2011; by about 14 to 19%. We will be starting the next budget on July 1, 2011 with a $600 to $800 million revenue shortfall. We did balance the first year budget, but at the expense of the second year and later years. Here are some, not all, of the methods used to break even or have a surplus at the end of the first year:
Ok, Like, This Is Me On The defict, Eh.
In twenty months the democrats have added $3,039,049,594,342.88 dollar deficit. (That’s trillions). That’s more debt than the entire history of America from its founding to 1990.
Conservative Resonation…Progressive Resignation
Two key points of interest came up in polling over the past week…
[#1] "Voters more likely to see Democrats as dominated by extremists"
Did you hear that Marjorie Smith and Mary Jane Wallner? Did you?
According to The Hill’s 2010 Midterm Election Poll, "likely voters in battleground districts see extremists as having more dominant influence over the Democrat Party than they do over the GOP." I can’t say that I’m surprised but it’s gratifying to see evidence of what you instinctively knew all along.
The difference in this is 7 points: 44% Democrat, 37% Republican. The poll, having a 1.5% MOE, was of likely voters; not from any particular party, not just independents, and not random people, but 4,047 likely voters, living in key-race districts.
The icing on this cake is the fact that 22% of Democrats in the poll said that their party was dominated by "extremists", compared to 11% of Republicans answering the same question….how ’bout that, ladies? (using the term very loosely)
The candy on top of the icing is what Independents said: 43% of likely independent voters thought that the Democrat party was more dominated by "extremists", compared to 37% who felt the same way about the Republican party.
Oh boy! Democrats had better get the burn cream and bandages out, and ready to apply in 14 days.
[#2] "Independents prefer cutting the deficit to spending on jobs"
Lynch Lied.com Updates
Swing on over to Lynchlied.com to check out some of the most recent ‘lies.’ There’s a new one posted that is near and dear to my heart. (I’ve been talking about it for years) It reminds us that John Lynch’s support of RGGI is a broad based tax that has sucked 25 million dollars out … Read more
Hey, NH residents! Here’s what Gov. John Lynch and the other NH Democrats are doing to your property taxes!
Cost Shifting – the act and decisions by the Democrats in Concord to so miserably manage the NH State budget so as to no longer pay to local counties, cities, and towns, what they promised to do. Like this: Reductions in State Aid to Cities and Towns in the FY 2010-2011 biennial operating budget: FY10-11 … Read more
Fiskal Konservative
…a diarist from the Daily KoS, expects you to believe that he is actually been undercover, hiding so far up under the left wing, that he would be permitted to keep and maintain a diary at the Daily KoS.
Not Even A Passable Fraud
Matt has a nice post up at Red Hampshire revealing the disconnect between reality and the fantasy of Paul Hodes. He provides us with a mid-debate tweet from the Hodes campaign…
…and then offers us the evidence that Hodes is lying about it by posting the AFT press release refuting Hodes.
This is all fine for what it is worth. But what interests me more is that this tweet contradicts his own campaign focus and reveals the fundamental flaws of a liberal democrat like Paul Hodes. These are not the words of any fiscal conservative I know.
How To Win With Tax Hikes
Heritage for America
Destroying The Future Of America
Democrats continue to insist that they created jobs. To do this they extracted trillions from our economic future in an effort to create jobs that did not yet exist–that perhaps were not needed yet. Looking at similar exercises, cash for clunkers–which moved car sales forward a few months but has since resulted in a collapse in the market; the home mortgage bail outs, supports, credits, and the "home affordable" programs which improved home sales briefly but which have since collapsed (also to historic lows); and then there’s the stimulus, several public sector employee bailouts, bank lending infusions, small business bills, and everything in between including health care reform–many trillions spent, all made with claims that they would create, save, or incentivize job creation.
Lets concede the possibility that some jobs were saved or created with money from the future. Let’s also, for academic purposes, concede the number of 1.4 million-3.3 million jobs saved or created ( quote from Paul Hodes campaign if that matters). What happens now? Even if we can agree to these figures the mathematical reality is that despite these efforts, and at great expense, we still lost more jobs than we saved or created. Millions are still unemployed with hundreds of thousands more people working less, working shorter hours, or who have given up looking altogether just in the 12 months since someone declared the recession over. We got a net sum loss with the price of admission, and that debt is now looming over our ability to sustain or improve the job picture moving forward because of the Faustian fiscal political calculation the democrats made in what now appears to be a series of vote getting scams gone horribly wrong.
So, Mike Kitch – is the evidence starting to add up fer ya yet?
That would be Mike Kitch of the Laconia Daily Sun who took great exception to a Notable Quote I put up some time ago:
"A democracy cannot survive as a permanent form of government. It can last only until its citizens discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority (who vote) will vote for those candidates promising the greatest benefits from the public purse, with the result that a democracy will always collapse from loose fiscal policies, always followed by a dictatorship."
-Lord Thomas MacCauley
At the time, we "had words", because of his absolute assumption that because it had never happened in the past, it was impossible to see that happen in the future. Well, dude, start reaching for your salt, because unless something drastic happens, you will be eating your words. With Obama doubling the level of where poverty benefits kick in (from 100% to 200% of the poverty level, more and more will come to be more dependent upon government – and that will turn into entitlement. As I have said before, Kitch is fine with the taking of money from the prudent and giving it to the profligate – after all, they NEED it more than we do (shades of Atlas Shrugs!).
But it is not just those in poverty that can vote and vote for more and more benefits (and with the US at the tipping point of almost 50% of the population receiving some sort of public dole) – there is another growing constituency that is aligned with that group.
It seems that others have recognized that special interests, in a coordinated fashion, of plundering the public treasuries (city, state, and national), as this article from the Washington Examiner points out:
Obama’s ascendance was no anomaly, but testament to the rise of a powerful political coalition in America made up of those who benefit from expanding government, including public-sector employees and their unions; activists at organizations that survive on government money; and recipients of government benefits.
Obama’s election in 2008 was merely the clearest indicator of the extent to which this coalition has successfully amassed power in the last 50 years.
Indeed. And I watched that here in Belknap County when the Commissioners, trying to be frugal, cut the budgets of these "outside agencies" – and holy hell descended upon those Commissioners at a meeting where the "gimme groups" all gnashed and wailed. Result: the feckless Republicans who controlled the "County Delegation" made sure that the money was put back in. Way to go for the brand, duds!
What About Union Campaign Ethics
Bill O’Brien, the next speaker of the New Hampshire House, has drafted a bill for next session meant to resolve the conflict of interest that exists when state employees campaign for state politicians. Mr. O’Brien’s motivation, as reported in an article in the morning UL by John DiStaso, is Pam Walsh who collected thousands in political consulting fees from Teflon John Lynch while employed by the state.
The State Union objects to the bill on the grounds that the language in the proposed bill is too broad, that no state employee would be able to work for anyone running for office in the state. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
When you boil it down, there really isn’t any difference between a lobbyist and a public service union member who draws a taxpayer funded paycheck. These folks have an immediate financial interest in who is elected to office. They actually pay an entity (the union) to represent them in negotiations with the very government for whom they work, for the purpose of expanding their share of taxpayer patronage, a goal that is directly affected by who is elected to office. Their natural inclination will be to support politicians who will reward them with financial remuneration and/or expand union access or power to achieve similar gains. Not only is it a conflict of interest, it is a home field advantage that no other voter or taxpayer can hope to compete with, paid for by the taxpayers themselves from the dues paid out of taxpayer funded paychecks.
Why is this even legal?
Data point – So, Hodes and Shea-Porter, not giving Obama his desired tax hikes will result in utter despair?
The only gnashing of teeth will come from the Socialist Progressives / Statists that will be denied what is essentially a dime more for spending and more control. Remember, the Bush tax cuts were back in 2001 and 2003 – once again, the Progressives are trying to redefine our vocabulary – at what point does "repeal" no longer apply? Obama wants to raise marginal tax rates, he raises taxes for ALL of us. But does it really matter – or is this Obama further fundamentally transforming America "for fairness"?
(H/T: The American)
Veronique de Rugy is becoming one of my favorite folks online – she does what I would love to do – the research of data set and presentation by visualization techniques (translations for simple Democrats: make hard stuff easy to understand). In the post, she explains the back ground AND WHY OBAMA IS BEING MISLEADING. Her conclusion?