And NEXT.....
"the gas tax is the only way...."
Please see State Government On Probation (and related links within, thank you).
"The tax brigade builds..." by Joan Vennochi, Globe Columnist | October 25, 2009
JUST WHAT Governor Deval Patrick needs during an election year....
The ONE Massachusetts network. Their message - raise taxes, don’t cut state programs....
You know the drill:
1. Pull up to pump
2. Get out of car
3. Drop pants
4. Insert gas pump into ass
A well-organized group of passionate liberals begging him to resurrect a concept that every governor since Michael Dukakis tried to bury.
Taxachusetts.
It’s true. Some Massachusetts taxpayers are outraged. Not because state government is taking too much of their money, but because the recession and declining state revenue mean government has less of their money to spend....
Who the heck is she talking to?
It could electrify the burgeoning Anyone-But-Deval political movement....
Or maybe the message will connect in another way.
But PROBABLY NOT!
Maybe Massachusetts citizens will focus on a transportation system in financial distress; a judicial system that is so underfunded it can no longer deliver justice, according to the chief justice of the state’s Supreme Judicial Court; and safety net programs so threatened that the mentally disabled and their advocates are reduced to holding vigils in the governor’s office.
Did you see my links? You KNOW WHERE the $$$$ is going?
If they focus on those needs, argues Meredith, more citizens may conclude that increasing the gas tax is the only way to solve the transportation crisis; reorganization isn’t enough. It’s OK to lift sales tax exemptions on cardboard boxes and cement mixers. It makes sense to do away with film tax credits, even if it means seeing less of Cameron Diaz in Boston.
It MAKES HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of DOLLARS of SENSE, folks!!
See: The Hollywood Heist of Massachusetts
Now WHAT COULD YOUR TOWN do with that $$$$, Bay-Stater!?
Why not tax professional services, such as those supplied by lawyers, accountants, hairdressers, manicurists; and political consultants?
Because TAXES ARE TOO HIGH and WASTED AS IT IS!! Why throw MORE MONEY at LOOTERS?
And how about repealing those tax breaks given to Fidelity and John Hancock back in the 1990s?
Yeah, it is ALWAYS AMAZING how LOOTERS ALSO ESCAPE TAXES!! Helps to know those on the hill!
Still, it seems like a tough time to sell new taxes to many people, including the governor. Patrick faces a challenging political environment, illustrated by low approval ratings and the need to call in his friend, President Obama, to help raise money and fire up supporters.
Related: Slow Saturday Special: Patrick's Invisible Approval
Slow Saturday Special: Obama Pimps For Patrick
Now, he has to weigh pressure from a tax-loving liberal base against the antitax sentiments of more moderate voters.
So if he wants those abysmal numbers to go even lower....
Over the past year, much of the news out of Beacon Hill reminded Massachusetts of everything they dislike about state government.... When the public is periodically enraged by examples of patronage, waste, and corruption, it’s harder to engage in a rational discussion of how much money should be spent on health care, human services, public safety, schools, and local aid....
I'd like to STOP SHOVELING the TAX LOOT out the door!
The theme plays right into the hands of a candidate like Charlie Baker. The Harvard Pilgrim CEO promises no new taxes, as well as the repeal of the sales tax increase that became law this year....
See: Patty Cake, Patty Cake, Baker's Man....
--more--"And NOW they are talking about an income tax hike!!!?
And as much as I hate to post the resident Zionist neo-con's writing, you must give them them credit when they deserve it. I just wish they would see some of the other issues my way, but....
"...so who will save us now?" by Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | October 25, 2009
TIME AND again, Citizens for Limited Taxation has come to the rescue of Massachusetts taxpayers. Will the taxpayers now come to the rescue of CLT?
For 35 years, CLT has been an unwavering foe of high taxes and government arrogance, two commodities for which Massachusetts is well-known. It was created in 1974 to fight a proposal for steeply graduated income-tax rates, a proposal it defeated in the 1976 election. When the grad-tax returned to the state ballot in 1994, CLT led the fight to defeat it once again.
In 1980, CLT stunned the Massachusetts political establishment with its successful crusade to slash property and auto-excise taxes, which were then among the highest in America. CLT’s weapon was Proposition 2 1/2, a ballot question vehemently denounced by the state’s liberal elite, including the League of Women Voters, the Massachusetts League of Cities and Towns, and the Massachusetts Teachers Association. In an editorial, The Boston Globe blasted the measure’s “meat-ax approach’’ and condemned its proponents as “fanatical critics of municipal government’’ who were oblivious to the devastation they would cause.
But the voters followed CLT, and approved Proposition 2 1/2 by a wide margin. Far from wreaking havoc across the commonwealth, the law became “the most powerful engine of change in recent Massachusetts political history,’’ as the Globe would later acknowledge - the single greatest factor in “the state’s amazing turnaround.’’
But they NEVER LEARN!!!
In 1996, the nonpartisan civic-affairs journal CommonWealth described Proposition 2 1/2 as “the most sweeping public policy reform in recent Massachusetts history - and one that did not come about from the efforts of ‘progressive’ reformers.’’ Nevertheless, it pointed out, CLT accomplished much that even “good-government liberals might well applaud,’’ including a decreased reliance on regressive property taxes, a more sensible real-estate assessment system, better management of municipal budgets, and - since Proposition 2 1/2 allows local communities to override the statutory levy limit with voter approval - more democratic decision-making, at least when it comes to property taxes.
CLT is almost preposterously tiny, and it has always operated on a shoestring. Its four paid staffers make far less than many of their opponents - the legislators, lobbyists, and union officials whose appetite for higher taxes and more government spending never seems to diminish. Barbara Anderson, the incorruptible happy warrior who became CLT’s executive director in 1980, earns just $10 an hour.
Yes, WE LIVE the CREED!
But even a shoestring budget needs to pay for shoestring, and CLT is no longer sure it can do so. Between the recession and the exodus of fed-up citizens from Massachusetts, CLT’s membership has shrunk dramatically, from 10,000 in the mid-1990s to only around 3,000 today. CLT has also lost some of its most generous donors - among them Richard Egan, the founder of
Related: EMC Moving Out of Massachusetts
As a result, CLT announced last week, “we are hurting financially more than ever before.’’ The group’s annual fund-raising brunch on Nov. 15 may be its last hurrah: If turnout is low, says co-director Chip Ford, CLT will shut down on Nov. 16.
No organization lasts forever, and at 35 CLT has already outlived many advocacy groups. No doubt diehard welfare-statists and big-government lefties would be happy to attend CLT’s funeral. No doubt many Massachusetts residents have more pressing personal concerns.
But with state government once more a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, with the state’s sales tax rate now up to 6.25 percent, and with Beacon Hill hungrily seeking for more revenue, the prospect of CLT’s demise should be setting off alarms.
Were it not for CLT, Massachusetts taxpayers and businesses would be forking over far more of their wealth to the tax man than they do. In addition to blocking graduated tax rates and reining in property taxes, CLT forced the repeal in 1986 of an income surtax enacted under Governor Michael Dukakis and led a successful ballot campaign in 2000 to roll back state income taxes. Though it hasn’t won every battle, it has never shied from the battlefield.
Related: I Made Forbes Magazine
Yeah, our "leaders.... ignore the result even if voters approved the question."
That's Massachushitts democracy!
With hard work and good humor, CLT has made Massachusetts a much better place than it would otherwise be. It has survived a lot in the past 35 years, but it cannot survive indifference. If you’re free on Nov. 15, you might want to join Barbara Anderson for its fund-raising brunch.
--more--"I can hear the screeching already: But we need to save services!!!
"Myth of the underpaid public employee" by Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | September 30, 2009
THOUGH it hasn’t been true for years, many people believe that government employees receive lavish employment and retirement benefits in order to compensate for their meager paychecks. The reality is that their paychecks aren’t meager at all: Government jobs often pay more than those in the private sector, and the difference between the two is growing.
Consider the lucrative lot of the men and women who work for Uncle Sam. In 2008, according to data from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, the 1.9 million civilian employees of the federal government earned an average salary of $79,197. The average private employee, by contrast, earned just $49,935. The difference between them came to more than $29,000 - a differential that has more than doubled since 2000.
Take account of total compensation - wages plus benefits - and the disparity is even more striking. In 2008, total federal civilian compensation averaged $119,982 - more than twice the $59,908 in wages and benefits earned by the average private-sector employee. Chris Edwards, a scholar at the Cato Institute, has documented the steady widening of the gap: In 1960, federal workers averaged $1.24 for every $1 earned by a private employee. By 1980, the federal advantage was up to $1.51; in 2000 it was $1.66. Now it is $2 - and climbing. When ranked alongside 72 industries that span the US economy, federal employees take home the seventh-highest average compensation. Among the workers they outearn, Edwards shows, are those in such fields as computer systems design, chemical products, and legal services.
How come the "token conservative" is the only one providing links?
It isn’t only at the federal level that the political class so handsomely takes care of its own. “State and local government workers get paid an average of $25.30 an hour, which is 33 percent higher that the private sector’s $19,’’ Forbes magazine reports. “Throw in pensions and other benefits and the gap widens to 42 percent.’’ The Tax Foundation calculates that “non-wage compensation’’ for the average state and local government employee worked out to $12,362 in 2007. For the average employee in the private sector, the comparable figure was just $8,784.
Americans increasingly fall into one of two camps. Those who work for the government - about 15 percent of the labor force - tend to enjoy sumptuous perks, virtually indestructible job security, and pensions that are guaranteed for life. The rest of us work in the private economy, where millions of jobs can be wiped out by a recession, defined-benefit pensions are disappearing, and competition and downsizing are facts of life.
But the TOP ECHELON is GETTING BILLIONS in BONUSES!!
There is a backlash coming, and it gets closer with each new revelation of public employees enriching themselves at taxpayer expense. Employees like the double-dipping Florida college president who took a lump sum “retirement’’ benefit of $893,286 and receives a $14,631/month pension, yet continues to collect an annual salary of $441,538. Or like the former Massachusetts lawmakers who qualified for tens of thousands of dollars in enhanced pensions - many while still in their 40s - merely by resigning from the Legislature. Or like the Buffalo, N.Y., police detective who is serving a 45-year sentence for setting up drug raids in order to steal money and jewelry, but still receives an annual pension of more than $40,000.
A full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal last week was the clearest evidence yet of the approaching showdown. “We are the Private Sector. And we’ve had enough,’’ the ad proclaimed. It announced the launch of The Free Enterprise Nation, which describes itself as the first national organization intended to represent the interests of the majority of Americans who work in the private economy. Its message was blunt: “The private sector provides pay and benefits for public-sector workers that we cannot afford to provide for ourselves . . . We need to change public policy.’’
The Free Enterprise Nation is headed by James MacDougald, a successful Florida businessman who has invested more than $1 million in the organization. Already he has assembled a staff of 65, including 10 researchers. He foresees the day when the group will be as influential as the AFL-CIO, and when government officials never make a move without considering its impact on the private sector.
“We’re going to generate enough noise that government can’t ignore us,’’ he told me yesterday. “We aren’t going away.’’ Stay tuned.
--more--"Well, he does suffer from a bit of a blind spot via the private looting, but still a good companion piece.
Let's give him a hat trick:
"Abortion and the echo of eugenics" by Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | July 26, 2009
WHAT DO Richard Nixon and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have in common?
Not much linked the former president, who died in 1994, and the associate justice now in her 17th year on the Supreme Court. But each was in the news recently with a cringe-inducing comment about abortion. Those comments are a reminder of the ease with which educated elites can decide that some people’s lives have no value.
Related: Abortion: The Kosher Slaughter
Slow Saturday Special: American People Are Pro-Life
Nixon was meeting with an aide in the White House on Jan. 23, 1973, when the conversation - recorded on tapes newly released by the Nixon Presidential Library - turned to the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision the day before. Though generally against abortion, Nixon said it was “necessary’’ in some cases, such as interracial pregnancies. “There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,’’ he explained. “Or rape.’’
Ginsburg’s words were even creepier.
“Reproductive choice has to be straightened out,’’ she said in a recent New York Times interview. She was referring to the Hyde Amendment, which bars the use of Medicaid funds for abortions - a law the Supreme Court upheld in Harris v. McRae in 1980. “Frankly, I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. . . But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way.’’
Populations that we don’t want to have too many of - who would those be, exactly? Minorities? The poor? The handicapped?
Maybe this will explain it: Drugged-Out Justice
Ginsburg didn’t elaborate and the Times, unaccountably, didn’t ask. Perhaps Ginsburg was describing the opinion of others - but then why speak in the first person (“we’’)? Or maybe she was referring to views held 36 years ago - but then why speak in the present tense (“don’t want’’)?
Whatever Ginsburg’s view, her words recall the now-rarely-mentioned obsession with eugenics and the elimination of “undesirables’’ that animated so many supporters of legal abortion and the birth-control movement. Here, for instance, is Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing for the majority in the 1927 Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell, which upheld the right of state governments to forcibly sterilize “feebleminded’’ citizens:
“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. . . Three generations of imbeciles are enough.’’
Holmes considered such brutal thinking progressive and enlightened; it “gave me pleasure,’’ he told a friend, to pen a decision upholding compulsory sterilization.
Even more fixated on perfecting the human race through eugenics was Margaret Sanger, founder of the American Birth Control League - known today as Planned Parenthood. In her influential 1922 book, “The Pivot Of Civilization,’’ Sanger called for “immediate, stern, and definite’’ action to solve the “problem of the feeble-minded and the menace of the moron’’ - those she regarded as the “dead weight of human waste.’’ She opposed providing free medical care to “slum mothers,’’ since that “would facilitate . . . maternity among the very classes in which the absolute necessity is to discourage it.’’ Sanger was not a racist in her personal life, but there is no denying the racial aspect of her campaign. In 1939, for example, she launched a “Negro Project’’ aimed at curtailing black childbirth in the South.
Decades later, the eugenicist mindset lives on. Ron Weddington, co-counsel for the appellants in Roe, wrote an impassioned letter to President-elect Bill Clinton in January 1993, challenging him to “start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country’’ - not through “some sort of mass extinction,’’ but with massive birth control and abortion. “Condoms alone won’t do it . . . Government is also going to have to provide vasectomies, tubal ligations, and abortion . . . We don’t need more poor babies.’’
Which poor babies? Weddington wasn’t specific. But as Jonah Goldberg points out in his 2008 bestseller “Liberal Fascism,’’ abortion today “ends more black lives than heart disease, cancer, accidents, AIDS, and violent crime combined.’’ More than half of all black pregnancies in America end in abortion. Surely that wasn’t what Justice Ginsburg meant by “populations that we don’t want to have too many of.’’ Or was it?
Yeah, I think it was. The elite ****** racism showed through a bit there.
Related: Globe's Jacoby Takes on Globalists
Globe's Jacoby Takes on Globalists, Part II
The Question 1 "Debate"
The Other Global Warming Conference
Where's Global Warming, MSM?
Fresh Air Clears Out Fart Mist
Occupation Iraq: Bush Won Iraq
Oooh, that last one stunk!
Now if he would only pen a column about 9/11.
I wouldn't wait around.
