Under Norelli's Rule

Yesterday Terie Norelli celebrated my Birthday by taking to the pages of the Keene Sentinel to talk about what a great job the New Hampshire democrat party has been doing with the state.  One of the things she’d like you to believe is that they have created (or saved?) a job friendly environment that has allowed the Granite State to recover more quickly than other states.  But is that really true, and do democrats have anything at all to do with it?

It is a matter of fact that under the left New Hampshire has grown the size of state government and its regulatory nature.  They have increased taxes and fees.  While Ms. Norelli opines all the additional regulations they have added to inspire growth in the job market—and thus the economy—this is like someone handing you a tiny cup of water to put out a raging fire they started and then expecting you to thank them.

About the only thing they can claim is having inherited an ages old State formula that used to create jobs and growth.  One they have tinkered with to the point of destruction.  And things are not--as Norelli would like you to believe-- heading in the right direction.

Back in March of 2010 the unemployment percentage took a turn for the better, but because of how that number is calculated , it does not mean that the job situation did.  According to the state, using numbers she must certainly have access to, In March the labor force was estimated at 748,140.  In the most recent report, (June) that number was 741,850.  That is a loss of 6,290 working Granite Staters.  Is this surprising?

Historical data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows a steady rise in the states labor force--the number of people working or looking for work--from January of 2002 to January of 2007 (ending roughly when democrats took over government at every level in the state and took control of congress.) After January 2007 that number slowed--plateaued--and has begun to slip locally.

From March to June 2010 in New Hampshire the actual number of employed persons rose by 2200, but when you take out the decrease in work force population the net result is a loss of almost 4100 workers.  So while the state is reporting unemployment around 5.8 or 5.9%, it is actually 6.5% or higher, and some 4100 fewer people are looking or available for work.  They either gave up or sought employment outside the state.

And the state actually calculates the percentage of underutilized workers--those who stopped looking, look occasionally, are marginally attached, or are taking any work--part time or otherwise well blow their skill set at over 12%.  While that's a bit broad, to suggest New Hampshire democrats have improved the situation at all is a hard sell.

But it gets worse for local democrats.

The Union leader is reporting this morning that thanks to almost one billion in recovery dollars New Hampshire has added (or saved) roughly 8000 jobs, just over 2700 in the last three months alone.  But how can you claim to have saved anything in the past three months when the workforce population actually declined by almost 6300 workers?  No one saved anything and the 2700 eclipses the 2200 reported by the state.

If we go so far as to assume that the recovery money added 2734 new jobs, we exceed the three month employment growth figure by 534.   Unless Norelli and company would like to dispute the stimulus figures, all the NH dems have done is cash checks from the feds to hide whatever real damage they have done, and tried to sell an influx of federal money as their own handiwork, while apparently scaring thousands of job seekers out of the state.

Put that on your campaign sign.

What we are left with is the potential for a slowly declining workforce in a limited growth scenario where any reduction in federal dollars would reveal the true nature of what the left has done to New Hampshire.  That is to say, they have sold the state out to the federal government to hide their destructive policies, with money that does not even exist, and which will need to be paid back by future generations of Granite State families--not just to the state (to merely sustain the stagnating situation we are in now), but also to the federal government in even higher taxes. So moving forward we'll have higher taxes and even less capital in state to allocate on our own, forcing us to become even more reliant on the feds.

So we've seen more spending, more taxes, more government, a bigger deficit, fewer jobs, and less growth.

If Norelli and the Left would like to run on that platform I invite them to do so.

Cross Posted at Granite Grok

The Halloran - Horrigan Round Up

This all happened rather quickly, but throughout the process I wrote a seriss of posts over at Granite Grok about it as it unfolded and rather than repost them all after the fact, (I should have jsut posted them in both placed to begin with) I've provided the links, in order.

Got Hate?  The Keith Halloran Edition

Secret Squirrel Goes Public--Palin More Dangerous Dead

Horrigan Resigns

It Doesn't Pay To Defend A Democrat

Let's Just Call Her "McLuster"

Ann McLane Kuster, aside from having another one of those pretentious feminist names like Carol Seiu-Porter, has demonstrated to us that she is just another shill for the left wing narrative.  The road map to shill-dom (the most current public version at the very least) was printed in this morning’s Union Leader under the headline “Yes, The Bush tax cuts did harm our economy” in the Another View section of the editorial page.  Yes, it is another view, and while I'm no fan of GWB, her view just happens to be a biased view that is also wrong. 

But before I explain why, let me get this out of the way.  I am not writing ‘Ann McLane Kuster’ anymore. It is annoying, and it takes far too long to write, so I’m just going to shorten it to "McLuster".    McLuster works. And she should thank me.  Combining names is so “all the rage.”  Just think Brangalina! 

McLuster is also the first of a two–word phrase often used by McDonald’s mangers when everything suddenly comes off the rails. And based on the way she “sees it,” it’s a short stumble from her rhetorical notion of economics to another full-blown federally-mandated McLuster- %$#@!

McLuster Point One. Can we call them Tax cuts for the rich?  She says yes, mostly because toxins in her BDS hate gland have permanently altered her DNA, kind of like how Bruce Banner turns into the Hulk when he gets angry.  She, like most pretentious left wing feminists, as well as every other progressive across the entire expanse of the liberal gender manifold, just get dumber when you say "Bush"--and some of them turn into big green ugly monsters. So numbers don't matter, particularly when they happen to contradict your rhetoric.

Several realities arise to meet McLuster’s charge.  First, the indexed percentage of taxes cut on the lower and middle class were larger as a percentage of real taxes paid.  (Example: cut from 15% to 10%, that's a 1/3rd reduction).  The total income tax paid by the top 40% rose 4.6% under the Bush Tax Cuts while the bottom 40% paid 4% less.  The rich actually started paying more total taxes after the tax cuts.  The total tax burden on the nation dropped 3% while gross revenue to the Treasury (most of it paid by those rich bastards at the top, and the economic activity they were creating) rose around 274 Billion in 2005 and 2006.  This could be a problem for McLuster and the democrats; it proves that the deficit Bush did leave behind—aside from being as much a product of democrat rule after 2006—was a result of the government spending even more than we were taking in, which is why our economy sucks right now.

McLuster Point Two. Did these cuts go to the middle class?  If you made $50,000.00 you saved $700.00 on the tax bill, claims McLuster,  which I assume we are meant to scorn as pitiful.  But she ignores the fact that families who made that much paid no taxes at all in most cases after the cuts and actually earned some or all of that money as a subsidy.

McLuster Point Three.  Unemployment was at 4.3% in March of 2001 and never made it back there again.  Did the cuts help the economy at all.  She says no, but she is basing it on a percentage without bothering to tell you “of what.”  In March of 2003 unemployment was 4.3%.  It rose, particularly after 9-11, but it went back down, to 4.4% and landed around 4.6% by December of 2007.  But that percentage is reflective of the number of people looking for work related to those who have not found it, not how many people are actually not working.  In reality between March of 2001 and December of 2007 the Bush economy added 3.5 million jobs according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  One might argue that having 3.5 million more people not just working, but collecting a weekly pay check and that paltry extra $700.00 every year from lower taxes is preferable to the democrats solution of adding trillions in new debt to prop up union jobs while the economy loses millions of jobs.

And look! McLuster loses her economy argument everywhere else as well making her third point ridiculously partisan, if not an outright lie.  After the second wave of 2003 tax cuts GDP grew faster than before, rebounding after the post 9/11 economic decline.  Private investment in the economy—post tax cuts--went from -0.6% to + 9.8%.  The S & P 500 grew almost 50%.  The actual number of people working rose as indicated above, and while wage growth was never great, people were working, the private sector was growing and the tax cuts actually increased the flow of revenue to the US treasury as a result of more private economic activity.  I’m sorry Ms McLuster, but I’d call that "better" than where we were in March of 2001.  Let me rephrase that.  You are wrong.

But the democrats in CD-2 are welcome to nominate McLuster if they want; but if they think she can win on rhetoric like this, they might want to Swett this one out with a different candidate.

Reference:

http://forum.belmont.edu/cornwall/archives/000984.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703977004575393882112674598.html?mod=wsj_share_facebook

http://bls.gov/cps/cpsatabs.htm 

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/lying_about_bushs_tax_cuts.html

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Commentary/2006/07/Bushs-2003-Tax-Cuts-Wildly-Successful

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Commentary/2007/02/Top-10-Myths-About-the-Bush-Tax-Cuts

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/06/The-Three-Biggest-Myths-About-Tax-Cuts-and-the-Budget-Deficit

Cross Posted at Granite Grok

It's All About What They Want

Erik Erickson offers up an interesting article on pursuing a constitutional convention, (here) but what caught my attention was the Rasmussen figuers on the differences in perception between the Hodesheaporters of the world and the rest of us.

Consider the Rasmussen surveys of late:

86% of voters believe there should b “limits on what the federal government can do.”54% of the political class¹
disagrees.

84% of mainstream voters think the country is headed in the wrong direction.67% of the political class think the country is headed in the right direction.

75% of mainstream voters believe the free market works better than government at regulating the economy.44% of the political class prefer government control.

56% of mainstream voters want Obamacare repealed.97% of the political class want it kept.

52% of mainstream voters believe increased government spending is bad for the economy.A majority of the political class disagrees.

Even on it's face the distinction is huge but also beneficial.  By looking at where our elected officials fit into the survey based on how they vote and behave, we can clearly demonstrate that our congressional delegation is part of the political class of center left elites who rule by their will and not ours.

This survey represents just a sliver of the large disparities that exist on most other issues.  Possible every issue. The DC cultural elites in Washington and even closer to home, really do beleive they know better, and that they can best dictate our lives from places like Concord or the shores of the Potomac.

That needs to change.

Crossposted at GraniteGrok

Told You So

Democrats raised the cigarette tax to raise revenue in their race to the bottom with neighboring states.  And back in April I pointed out what every conservative already knows; that raising the tax will cost the state money.

Raising cigarette taxes will reduce overall revenue from that tax, decrease visits, lower average purchases per visit, provide no secondary or tertiary retail advantages, and give people fewer reasons to visit our state to buy other items.   This will just exacerbate the deficit problem by eroding revenues further, just like the scores of the other tax and fee increases we’ve enjoyed under the tenure of the Lynch administration

In this mornings Nashua Telegraph, in one of those "not worth a whole article" News digest blurbs , we learn that the good people of Maine are smoking more and buying their cigarettes in New Hampshire less.  The theory goes that the increase in the New Hampshire cigarette tax has reduced the price benefit to the point where it is no longer worth making a special trip.  There's no way to know exactly how much it will cost New Hampshire but according to the blurb Maine sales are up 20%. (TWENTY PERCENT!)

Here's what else I said back in April...

If Governor Lynch wanted to demonstrate visionary leadership in the course of revenue mining, he’d propose a significant cut in the cigarette tax.  I mean a significant cut.  A potential savings per pack of a dollar or more would translate into heavy traffic to border stores around the state.  The larger the cut the farther people would drive to benefit from it.  Consumers making the trip would spend that savings and more on lottery tickets, beer, liquor, soda, and a host of other items whose price advantage are much more attractive once they are already over the border.  That translates into increased visits for retailers, a larger average purchase per visit, and secondary and tertiary purchases for gas and other goods to the surrounding community. 

Increased retail traffic has the fortunate side effect of creating an environment that attracts investment in the form of more retailers seeking to profit from that traffic.  This creates more choices for consumers, price competition, competition for the available wage pool, and wage growth to hire and maintain staff.  This attracts more residents, which leads to more purchases in a larger range of retail and secondary markets nearby, more profits all around, and more revenue for the state, all from lowering taxes.  

Saving ten dollars a carton is significant.  Smokers would travel from all accross New England to by a case (or cases) of cigarettes to save some serious cash.  (You would think that being addicted to spending, democrats would get that.)  They would buy also gas, and other items to avoid a sales tax.  It's actually very simple.  And if we cut taxes the entire New Hampshire border would look more and more like the western side of the Berlin Wall before they tore it down;  a bright shiny inviting slice of freedom visible from the other side--only this one from the oppression of poorly run governments that overtax everything only to tax it more when it fails to raise the funds promised.

So how about this.  Instead of a race to the bottom, where we simply continue to raise our taxes a little bit everytime they do, why not take the high road and start a price war in the other direction?  Lower the tax so much that neighboring states have to rethink their own tax policy to compete with the one thing they will never completely control--human nature.

I don't think they can do it.  Of course without new political leadership on this side of our border, neither can we.

Crossposted from GraniteGrok