News – Politics – Opinion – Podcasts
There has been so much talk in the last few weeks, and it appears that there are only two schools of economics, and they have very different views on the impact on the economy. The ironic fact is that both parties use tariffs, including Biden/Harris, but the mainstream media only wants to go after Trump … Read more
A nullity” and “we declare these acts void“ This was the bold conclusion about British Acts that Thomas Jefferson came to in his powerful 1774 pamphlet, A Summary View of the Rights of British America. Written nearly two years before the Declaration of Independence, it foreshadowed ideas Jefferson would later develop further. He asserted several fundamental principles that … Read more
Here at the ‘Grok, we’ve had the good misfortune of watching how Democrats create the need for new taxes in real time. This is important. Dems will run on a platform with no tax hikes or new taxes if they must, but these promises are empty. Once in charge, the first order of business is … Read more
In the movie Tootsie, Bill Murray’s character is a playwright who has a running conversation with Dustin Hoffman about a scene he’s writing, “the necktie scene,” that’s just not working. He finally surrenders to Hoffman’s diagnosis of the problem, “I’m rewriting the necktie scene without the necktie.” I was reminded of this joke when I saw … Read more
I’d never heard of this loser until today. His name is Misah Pride (sounds made up to me). He is the mayor of South Portland. It’s across the Fore River from North Portland. It is safer than the way Joyce Craig left Manchester, NH (most cities are), is mostly white, picked Biden over Trump in … Read more
Among the various new taxes proposed by Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign are increased levies on capital gains and taxation of unrealized capital gains on wealthy Americans. Given recent history, this is particularly sneaky. The Biden-Harris team sparked rapid inflation, so now the Harris-Waltz duo wants to tax the phantom inflationary gain even before citizens holding … Read more
A few sentences into his recent piece in InDepthNH (and other places), Andru Volinsky demonstrates that he has no idea how the statewide education tax actually works, let alone how it should work. First, no one gets excused from paying anything. Every district collects the full SWEPT tax, spends it on adequacy, and applies … Read more
As mentioned in [Part 1], the most straightforward (and least Marxist) way to fund schools would be to use a uniform (per capita) tax. You take the budget, divide it by the number of taxpayers, and that’s the tax each one pays. But even that ends up implementing a sort of reverse Marxism, taking money … Read more
By Jane L Johnson | Mises Wire – No American politician running for office wants to talk about taxes—unless, of course, it’s to promise a tax cut. No Misesian views taxes with anything but suspicion, and Mises himself held some principled views on taxes: Taxes are necessary. But the system of discriminatory taxation universally accepted under the misleading … Read more
After looking at [Part 1] and [Part 2], we can consider a third case, where the kid who takes the EFA comes from a district that would be tuitioning him to a school outside the district, because the district doesn’t offer the grade that he’s in. For example, suppose each district pays $15,000 to tuition … Read more
Okay, so given what we saw in Part 1, let’s consider what happens when a student leaves each of the two districts to open an Education Freedom Account (EFA). In District 1, what changes? Things that change are highlighted below: Before After Taxpayers 1000 1000 Students 100 99 Budget $2M $2M Adequacy $400,000 $396,000 … Read more
One of the things that allows so much nonsense to be bandied about when discussing school funding is that almost no one — including legislators, judges, and DoE officials — seems to understand how SWEPT (Statewide education property taxes) and adequacy grants are related. In what follows, I’ll use nice round numbers that approximate but … Read more
OK, I admit, I “stole” part of Steve’s post because I loved the alliteration (“Bradley’s Burgess Biomass Boondoggle is Back in the News“). If you remember, the Burgess wood chip electricity generation plant went bust when the NH Government taxpayer subsidies were finally denied to it. Frankly, with the caterwauling from NE Planned Parenthood that … Read more
The recent—and unfortunately more regular—flooding Vermont has experienced since last summer has damaged a lot of infrastructure, but the impact on our roads due to washouts is a big one—and an expensive one for the state and local municipalities. This raises a critical question of where the money is going to come from to fix … Read more
Bureaucracies don’t bloat themselves, so the more progressive locales across the increasingly fruitless plain like to spend other people’s money with such abandon that they are always looking for new things to tax, like the rain. It happens to be raining where I am, and as I write this. It is unlike what they’ve seen … Read more
Former President Donald Trump recently suggested repealing income tax on Social Security benefits. Is it pandering, or is it an idea with merit? Trump wrote on Truth Social, “SENIORS SHOULD NOT PAY TAX ON SOCIAL SECURITY!” Whether you think paying income tax on Social Security is appropriate or not, what actually happens? The government levies … Read more
If you are a rank-and-file Democrat in the Vermont House of Representatives – a soldier in the Supermajority – you are told by Party leadership how to vote. The majority leader will, in fact, hold up a paper sign, Yes or No, informing you how to cast your ballot on key issues. And you better … Read more
Former President Donald Trump continues running the most issue-focused campaign our nation has ever seen. You would not know it if you followed only the mainstream media echo chambers, but the truth is that our 45th president has been rolling out a detailed and bold policy agenda for over a year. His recent focus has … Read more
The Democrat/Progressive supermajorities that voted to override Governor Scott’s vetoes of laws that resulted in the massive property tax bills most Vermonters are receiving this month are now spinning the line that they did the responsible – nay courageous — thing by kicking the can down the road and appointing yet another panel of (mostly) … Read more
Like many other groups that want you to think that they have the best interest of your liberty and your wallet at heart, Granite State Taxpayers (GST) releases a scorecard, and the 2024 report is in! Of the 67 reps they’re honoring with so-called “perfect scores,” 25 of them voted for the RTK tax(HB 1002). … Read more