Another Day With NH Democrats....Two More Taxes...or is it Six?

The Concord Monitor is reporting on a  plan by New Hampshire Democrat David Campbell (D- Nashua), that would eventually extract $115,000,000.00 million more dollars per year out of the pockets of struggling New Hampshire families.  He'd like to raise the gas tax and the increase the cost to register your vehicles every year.

His 'plan' would raise the price you pay for gas five cents a year for three years.  At the same time the cost of your vehicle registration would also increase five dollars a year for three years.  So you'd' see two separate tax increases every year for three years; is that two new taxes of six?

The promise, and given past experience this means nothing coming from a New Hampshire Democrat, is that they will use this additional tax money exclusively for road and bridge work.

We obviously need money for roads and bridges but I don't think we need any new taxes and fees--so I have a better idea.

Instead of raising our taxes why not redistribute some wealth...from the state employees wages, health benefits, and pensions?  New Hampshire taxpayers are already paying for a large portion of benefits on top of having to pay for their own as well.   That seems unjust to me.  Isn't it about time the state union employees started paying their fair share....of their own benefits.

Asking them to help bear the burdens placed on taxpayers who pay significantly more for their own benefits and retirements, even just a few percentage points across the board, would produce a revenue windfall for the state, without adding another $ 115,000,000.00 million dollar burden on the backs of taxpayers, and removing that money from our fragile state economy.

You (Democrats) said you were concerned about jobs and the economy?  I'm quite sure I heard you say it.  But state employees already have jobs.  And extracting another $115 million out of the economy into the government is only going to suppress growth and job creation in the places where tax dollars actually come from.  So instead of removing more money from the economy why not just redistribute existing tax dollars already allocated to state union employee benefits packages into the highway fund to help pay for roads and bridges?

I have to pay for my own retirement.  All of it.  Most of us have to give out large sums to cover the cost of health and dental insurance for our families, all while paying a large chunk of the same for state employees.  Isn't it time we leveled that playing field and asked them to take more responsibility for paying their fair share?

After all, they use roads and bridges too.

You are reading  "Another Day With NH Democrats….Two More Taxes…or is it Six?"   by  Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com (Home)

Steve has been recognized as the Americans For Prosperity Blogger of the month for December 2012

The Real "Third-Rail" For Commuter Rail

Any good liberal will tell you this.  Never talk about how much something really costs, or who will have to pay for it, until after you have convinced them it will be good for them.  You do this by creating an overwhelming desire for fairness, or appeal to some moral phantom named equality, or in the case of massive infrastructure projects with storied histories as terminally bankrupt taxpayer propped up boondoggles, convince them of the “Benefit.”

 

Such is the case for commuter rail in New Hampshire, a liberal fantasy that is a solution looking for a problem.  And apparently it’s found one but not the one it was hoping for.  A recent report has revealed some of the thinking behind the cost and revenue options available in forcing commuter rail down the throats of New Hampshire residents; and it’s filled with words and phrases and clauses that might just derail conjunction junction before it ever leaves the station.

 

John DiStaso reports in this morning’s Sunday News the details of costs and taxes proposed to prop up commuter rail in the Nashua-Manchester-Concord Corridor, along with an apology by Transportation commissioner George Campbell for releasing the report.  This is like apologizing to a family member for asking about a deceased relative when they didn’t even know they were dead.

 

The report lays out recommendations for funding the project by bumping up against the third rail of higher property taxes, more vehicle registration fee increases, and phrases like, “”(the) "concept of this business improvement tax was that if they were going to have a benefit, then we could tax them on that benefit,"”  this from Steve Williams a former executive director of the Nashua Regional Planning Commission.

 

Steve is wielding pure government knows best logic.  First you imagine a benefit, and then you tax people for the privilege of their having imagined it for you.  The unfortunate reality however is that commuter rail in America is just another unfunded welfare program, a public transit money pit that will forever need filling with taxpayer dollars.

Like...

[A] business improvement assessment" of $1.02 per $1,000, on top of existing local and statewide property taxes, could be levied on all properties in a mile-wide corridor along the track, a half-mile on each side.

 

They could also choose “…to add a 16 cents per $1,000 property tax surcharge on all properties in 27 communities in the Nashua-Manchester areas.”

 

Then there’s “a vehicle registration fee [which] "has actually been a pretty common approach across the country. You basically tax what you want people to avoid, if you will," Williams said He said that with 528,273 vehicles in the 27 communities in the region, a $15.82 charge would be needed to raise $8.3 million.

 

This all courtesy of Steve Williams.

 

After the details were made public, New Hampshire Commissioner of Transportation George Campbell says he committed “a major mistake” when he released the balance sheet detailing new taxes and fees as possible ways to help fund a passenger rail line for the southern part of the state.

 

The mistake was not the information, but the revelation, perhaps epiphany is a better word, separating reality from fantasy.  You have to pay for the privilege of commuter rail, even if it means taxing you out of your car to get you to pay to use the train you never actually needed or wanted.  It’s a boondoggle, and we owe Commissioner Campbell our thanks for his “major mistake.”  He has unveiled the third rail of commuter rail; that it will cost taxpayers a lot of money for something they’ve managed to live without, and some of them a lot more than others.