Archive for July, 2008
The end is here. The Legislature and governor are now confronted with the inevitable stark reality, on their watch: The dissolution of state government. Due to their malfeasance and decades of incompetence, mismanagement, and arrogant overspending year after year that preceded them, the situation has reached critical mass. The state is imploding under the weight of overspending and debt. The preferred method, taxing their way out of self-imposed fiscal crisis after crisis, is virtually off the table this time. The public mood is angry. Very angry. Across the board, in every demographic. By huge margins. [See the WBZ/Survey USA poll results]
With Question One, outright repeal of the income tax, hanging over their collective head like Damocles’ sword, the pols dare not make the wrong move — and they know it. As the Eagle-Tribune editorial [Jul. 20 - Big Dig debt means state must say 'No' to other plans] reiterates, the Patrick administration “insists new taxes or tolls are off the table right now.” You bet they are, “right now.” If Question One should fail, it won’t be “right now” any longer — it’ll be back to “Party time!” and business-as-usual with the pols for as long as they can get away with it. That’ll require a massive tax increase quickly, to stretch the gravy train ride a bit longer.
This governor and this Legislature are the last ones standing in the game of political musical chairs — the losers. There was always going to be some administration and some Legislature left holding the bag for decades of refusing to address the critically mounting crisis of overspending, and these are the ones it falls on. The bill they’ve run up is due, and taxpayers are about to cut up the Beacon Hill credit card.
The end is here. This was always the only way it could end, the only way it would. For decades, if our money was available they spent it; if they didn’t take enough from us they simply took more under any guise or pretense. With the foxes guarding the hen house, making the self-serving election rules and legislating obscene incumbent advantages, they virtually insured their permanent seats on Beacon Hill for as long as they wanted them — until a better, richer-paying opportunity opened in the public sector. They lived and “performed” for their fat pensions and retirement benefits when the game was over for them.
It’s over now. Passage of Question One assures that. Oh sure, they might exert one last futile act of desperation and ignore the repeal to keep the gravy train from running off the tracks, but the public at last has had enough. This won’t end with citizen apathy this time — each voter’s personal situation financially will see to that. Just think, as voters go to the polls in November they’ll also be confronted by the winter season’s first home heating bills, expected to double over last year’s. They’ll be in no mood for being suckered again to keep the carefree Beacon Hill fat cat lifestyle rolling. It’ll get ugly this time — real ugly. Political career-ending ugly.
Legislators know this too, for “right now.” Join us in celebrating The End of State Government As We Know It. Be part of bringing down this multi-tiered system of corruption, this long-evolved culture of cronyism, of government of, by, and for the insiders. Vote YES on Question 1 and repeal the income tax — and vote against every tax-borrow-and-spend incumbent on the ballot who brought us to this point and the state to its knees.
Tags: fiscal crisis, income tax, Question 1, Question One, state budget
July 21st, 2008
The day of reckoning has arrived. At last, “The Best Legislature Money Can Buy,” after decades of mal- and mis- and nonfeasance, has managed to plunge the state into near if not outright bankruptcy.
Massachusetts has the highest per-capita debt burden of any state in the nation, and it’s about to assume even more. Lot’s more. And we haven’t even yet gotten to the “Ticking Time Bomb” explosion of unfunded public employee pensions and benefits!
Not only are the inmates running the asylum — they’re preparing to burn it down!
Count on the so-called Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation — front for Fat Cat Big Business and Banking — to come up with its usual solution: Tax the average citizens even more! The voice of the amen chorus, the Boston Globe editorial elites, as would be expected are right there seconding the motion loudly.
Last year’s state revenue tax take was $1.152 billion more than fiscal 2007, a 5.8 percent increase. The Legislature spent every cent and then some. The budget it and Governor Patrick just approved for this new fiscal year totals $28.11 billion, a 4.86 percent increase over last year’s spending. It even raided the “rainy day fund” to spend more. Still not enough. So it passed another $800 million in new taxes. Still not enough. The “fulltime” Legislature is expected to approve $10 billion in borrowing before it goes home on vacation until after the November election — three months away
And now we learn even all that is still not enough: The Legislature plans to back another $2.5 billion of borrowing in our name to bail out the Mass Pike/Big Dig gross mismanagement fiasco.
We thought the most recent price tag of $15 billion for the Big Dig was ridiculous — especially since it was promised to come in under $5 billion when it was sold to the public in the mid-80s by the Dukakis administration. It was that same administration which also burdened taxpayers with the “temporary” income tax hike we’re still paying 19 years later. Back then the federal government, we were promised, would be picking up 90 percent of the cost. Initially it picked up a significant portion — until the feds recognized the state’s gross mismanagement and cut back, then cut off any additional funding. That stuck the remainder of the bill on the state to fund/finance, stuck it on taxpayers and tollpayers.
Of course the state has no money that doesn’t come out of our pockets, mine and yours and everyone else’s who works for a living.
It’s all over but for shutting off the lights. This irresponsible and unaccountable spending frenzy is now so ingrained on Bacon Hill that the pols no longer have a chance of stopping it or themselves. It’s become simply what they do.
We can no longer trust those running the state to do anything but worsen our plight. They simply don’t care to reform themselves, have no desire to recover from their spending addiction. They’ve hit bottom and are still digging the hole deeper and dragging us down into it.
Now more than ever, we citizens, we taxpayers, we voters — WE must take matters into our hands if we’re to survive as more than passive cash cows existing only for the ruling elite to milk. We must stand together and send a resounding NO MORE! We must vote YES with one voice on Question 1 in November and repeal the income tax. Not only are we saying “Not one cent more,” but “That’s it, the game is over!”
And while we’re at it, throw out every bumbling, profligate, tax-borrow-and-spend incumbent who has a challenger on the ballot.
Doing anything less than both is the act of a cash cow mooing as it’s led into the slaughterhouse.
Tags: Bankruptcy, Cash cows, Yes on Question 1
July 19th, 2008
Welcome to the new Citizens for Limited Taxation blog. We hope you’ll visit here often and leave your comments from time to time.
CLT members receive regular updates via e-mail keeping them informed of what’s going on at the State House, what government in general is doing to them or planning to do. A day or two after members receive their copies, the Update gets posted on the CLT website, www.cltg.org, where the public is invited to read it and past Updates.
The most recent Update, sent to members on July 9, is available there now: “Small victories today, larger ones to come when income tax is repealed.”
The Committee for Small Government led by Carla Howell collected more than enough signatures to put the question of repealing the state income tax on the November ballot. Yesterday Secretary of State William Galvin assigned it ballot question #1.
This will be a great opportunity for taxpayers of the Commonwealth to at last tell the Bacon Hill pols what we think of their tax-borrow-and-spend agenda, and hopefully to end their reign of unaccountable profligacy squandering our hard-earned money.
In 2000, CLT and Gov. Cellucci put a question on the ballot to simply roll back the “temporary” income tax increase of 1989 to its traditional 5 percent. It was passed overwhelmingly (59-41 percent) by the voters; opposed by the very same cabal of public trough special interests that are now swarming to defeat Carla Howell’s Question One.
Two years later, in 2002 the Legislature — our alleged “representatives” — trampled that democratic outcome under their boots, gave the middle-finger Beacon Hill salute to the voters, and “froze” the citizens’ income tax rollback at 5.3 percent where it still stands today. The Dukakis “temporary” income tax hike of 1989 is now 19 years old.
The Legislature substituted a convoluted formula by which their “freeze” would be thawed by a minuscule fraction of a percentage point, bringing the income tax back down to five percent over a decade or more if perfect conditions were met every year. They called this their “trigger.” That trigger point was met last year with a revenue surplus. Where’s even that minuscule reduction? Another broken promise, but the suckers who keep electing them should be used to the boot to their backsides by now.
If the majority of State House pols can’t be trusted to respect the outcome of a fair election and their constituents’ mandate — or even their own alternative “trigger” scheme — then it’s time to take all our money paid through the income tax off the table and out of their hands — after all, every cent they have to spend comes from us.
Your chance arrives on Nov. 4. Vote YES on Question One. Remind them who they work for. Tell them who’s in charge. And let them know we’re fed up with bloated and far too expensive state government and with politicians who have no respect for taxpaying citizens and voters.
And while you’re at it on election day, vote against any tax-borrow-and-spend incumbent who fits that category of blatant disrespect for his or her employers, us.
Chip Ford –
Director of Operations
Citizens for Limited Taxation
Tags: Carla Howell, Chip Ford, Citizens For Limited Taxation, CLT Update, Income Tax Repeal, Question 1
July 11th, 2008
An alert CLT member has sent me a page of MTA Today, the Mass Teachers Association newsletter, opposing Carla Howell’s ballot question for repeal of the state income tax — and MY NAME is taken in vain! It states:
Even Barbara Anderson, director of Citizens for Limited Taxation and the state’s most famous anti-tax activist, recently agreed that the current fiscal situation is dire for cities and towns. She told Commonwealth magazine last fall: “[It’s] not just the usual ‘the sky is falling’ that you hear all the time. This time I think the sky really is going to fall.”
So far, accurately quoted. However, the MTA for some reason neglected to continue my thought.
Commonwealth writes, “Anderson sees it as a spending problem, with communities unable or unwilling to get a handle on things like public employee salaries and benefits”.
I would add today: maybe a yes vote on Carla’s income tax repeal will help communities, and Beacon Hill, get that handle. Without it, duck, here comes the sky.
Tags: Barbara Anderson, Carla Howell, Citizens For Limited Taxation, Massachusetts Teachers Association
July 8th, 2008
This is our first post on the new Citizens for Limited Taxation blog, hosted by Hub Politics. Please feel free to visit our regular web page here.
Keep visiting for future posts.
Tags: Announcements, Citizens For Limited Taxation, Hub Politics
July 7th, 2008
