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1. A Tax Increase Brought to you by Special Interests
2. Aren’t Light Rail Riders Already Freeloaders?
3. It’s the Spending, Stupid
4. A Country of Dependents
5. $1 Billion in New Taxes, and Another Legislative Session Just around the Corner
1. A Tax Increase…Brought to you by Special Interests
Well, the ballots have been counted and show that special interest groups were able to convince voters to pay more taxes. Thanks to their $3.7 million vote yes campaign, we’ll all be paying higher sales taxes for the next 25 years. At a time when unemployment is growing, the stock market is falling, and consumer prices are rising, special interests somehow decided it was the right time to scare Minnesotans into voting yes to a tax increase, by leading them to believe our lakes, rivers, and drinking were threatened. And just as we predicted, they special interests are now lining up for their slice of the pie: MPR reports, “The groups that fought to pass the amendment want to have some say on who sits on that council.” We won’t have to wait long to see how these groups squander taxpayer money on useless programs and projects.
2. Aren’t Light Rail Riders Already Freeloaders?
Last week Fox9 News broadcasted a story on a Light Rail security gap which made it much easier for riders to ride without paying. Light Rail ridership is based on the honor system. Metro Transit police are supposed to randomly check passengers to make sure they have tickets. Fox9 investigators, however, found that police aren’t really doing their job of checking. Undercover passengers rode the train for 30 hours and only once was one of them checked for a ticket.
We’ll let you draw your own conclusions about why this is happening, but we’d like to point out once again that it’s not just passengers who don’t pay for a ticket who are freeloaders. All Light Rail passengers ride because of taxpayer subsidy; and that counts as freeloading too!
3. It’s the Spending, Stupid
If you watched TV at all during the past 2 months you know that taxes is a huge issue in this nation, and in this state. The reason candidates from both Parties were running ads slamming their opponents for wanting to raise taxes is because they know that voters are sick and tired of paying taxes. Even Barack Obama’s biggest pitch in the last weeks of the election was that he’d cut taxes for 95% of Americans (even though 40% of Americans don’t even pay income taxes…but that’s another story).
Still, Dane Smith from the pro-tax group Growth and Justice (we like to call them “Growth-in-government and tax-inJustice), continues to say that we have low taxes. He claims it’s pretty lame for both Parties to bashing that by which we finance our government. He then lists a few things financing our government include like fighting wars, social security, education, and infrastructure. The truth is that if these were the only things our government financed, we wouldn’t need more taxes! But no, our government takes on wasteful million dollar projects like the Twin Stadium, Ironworld, the Ordway, and now the arts, outdoors, and cultural heritage projects.
The old phrase goes, “It’s the Spending, Stupid!” And that’s the truth. We wouldn’t be in this mess, and Democrats wouldn’t have to lie about giving tax cuts to get elected, if the government wouldn’t squander money on pointless things!
4. A Country of Dependents
You can’t give one child a cookie and expect the other children to come running for one too. Now that the federal government decided to bailout Wall Street, it’s easy to believe that other failing industries are running to them for help. The latest examples: the auto industry and American Express. Carmakers are asking for $50 billion in loans because a lack of sales has caused them to be cash strapped. American Express can’t seem to sell their pools of credit card to debt, since investors don’t want to purchase it in these economic times.
Many economists agree that continuing to bailout these companies creates a domino effect – more and more companies will face difficulty and then will ask taxpayers to rescue them too. We’re creating a country of dependents by not letting these businesses fail and then start up again under a better business model. With the economy continuing to fall, and the new President-elect promising to be patriotic by redistributing the wealth, you can be sure these aren’t the last companies getting in line for more taxpayer money.
5. $1 Billion in New Taxes, and Another Legislative Session Just around the Corner
The tally on how much liberal tax-and-spenders can raise your taxes in just one year has now reached $1 billion per year. First, the legislature overrode the Governor’s veto to raise taxes by $697 million, then passed a business tax for $141 million. Now that the Constitutional Amendment has passed and another $276 million added to the list, your taxes are now $1 billion higher per year!
With the legislative session beginning January 6th and the DFL gaining seats in both bodies, you better hold onto your wallets, Minnesota!
Of course, the Taxpayers League will be working to fulfill our mission to protect your wallet. You can count on us that we’ll be there every day throughout the session fighting for you, the taxpayer. Stay tuned for more info so you can join us this coming session in fighting the liberal tax-and-spenders too!
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