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Taxpayers League of Minnesota eUpdate
1. Taxpayers League Live! with David Strom.
2. Hours and hours and hours spent...
3. All you need to know about Minnesota’s income tax.
4. Family Night at the Movies: How Minnesota Taxes Business.
5. CFACT presents one of the MSMs few shining lights: John Stossel.
1. Taxpayers League Live! with David Strom.
Tune in this Saturday to AM 1280 The Patriot from 9 – 11 am when David will be joined by David Gainor. Gainor, Director of the Business & Media Institute (the business and economic division of the Media Research Center), is a veteran editor with two decades’ experience in print and online media. He has served as an editor at several newspapers including the Washington Times and the Baltimore News-American. Gainor will be discussing BMIs latest release, Media Amnesia Strikes on AMT Reform.
Also, be sure to tune in at 10:05 am for the Capitol report with Phil Krinkie. Up this week, a review of the latest legislative snammery and what we may be able to expect from the last 30 days of the legislative session.
2. At least they earned their dubious per diem increases this week.
Seemingly oblivious to the message 7,000 taxpayers sent to their legislators from the front steps of the Capitol last Saturday, (by the way, there are still a few of the Liberalism 101 lawn signs left here at the office if you’re interested), state lawmakers met (literally) around the clock this week to sort out a half-dozen omnibus funding bills whose next stop will be a House-Senate conference committee (for a good round up of the week that was, click here). The main event, however, kicks off on Monday with the (scheduled) introduction (in the House Taxes committee) of the Tax Omnibus bill. So buckle down, people. In three short days we’ll finally find out if the House Democrats actually have the stones to introduce a tax increase for nearly every letter of the alphabet. In the meantime, check out this video and ponder the true meaning of the phrase, “campaign promise.”
3. Maybe this can be the first installment of “What Kind of Crazy is in Mark’s Mailbag Today?”
Many furious emails have hit my desk in the last week since the release of our “Ready for as much as $5 billion in New Taxes?”/Liberal Math flyer. While a few of them contained specific instructions for the suppositorial insertion of my “filthy-lucre worshipping ideology,” most contained semi-thoughtful questions along the lines of, “how can you live with yourself advocating ‘tax cuts for the rich’ while the poor starve in the street?” Well first, while tax cuts (for everyone) would be great, that’s not what we’re going after here. Let’s start with “no new taxes” and go from there, yeah? Think about it, when the bathtub is overflowing you don’t just start bailing out the water, do you? No, you shut off the tap and try and limit the flooding. In this case, the tap is $5 billion dollars in proposed tax increases. Second, all you really need to know about Minnesota’s income tax is that the top 1% of earners already pays 24.3% of the income tax. 24.3%! Let’s not straddle our job providers with another reason to hold off on a new round of hirings or making calling U-Haul that much easier. 24.3% is enough, and a $34 billion budget should certainly be enough.
4. (and how you end up paying the bill, hidden in the price of the products and services you buy.)
So how does Minnesota tax businesses? Not well. Businesses don’t pay taxes. They simply collect the extra money from us and pass it on to the government. It is a dysfunctional system that is expertly analyzed in a new publication by the National Association of Industrial & Office Properties (NAIOP) and the Minnesota Taxpayers Association, “Family Night at the Movies: How Minnesota Taxes Business.”
And thanks to the generosity of the NAIOP, the Taxpayers League has a number of copies of this easy-to-read report available for you. To get yours, reply to this email with your name and address and we’ll pass one along.
5. His specials are way better than those “To Catch a Predator” car wrecks.
Our intrepid friends at Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow present John Stossel at the Northrup Auditorium on Tuesday, April 24th at 7pm. This lecture, entitled “Freedom and Its Enemies,” is free and open to the public. Stossel, author of Give Me A Break and Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity, is one of America’s foremost libertarians and consumer advocates [ed. think Ralph Nader, but without the vanity and more than an academic understanding of what a smile is]. For more information, including directions, click here.
The Taxpayers League of Minnesota's E Update is written by Mark Giga
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