Hawkins Advice For Cuomo: Tax The Rich

Dear Andrew: Tax The Rich
Green Party Gubernatorial Candidate Howie Hawkins, whose debate performance and campaign gave him the needed 52,000 votes in order for the party to appear on the ballot next time, is offering Democratic winner Andrew Cuomo some advice. Namely, Hawkins says Cuomo should enact a progressive agenda of taxing the super rich by reintroducing a stock-transfer tax and reforming the Income Tax. In his “Open Letter” to the Governor-elect, Hawkins, a Syracuse resident, said Health Care costs...

Laffing All the Way to the Bank
And the moral, boys and girls, is that taxes are evil and shame on the liberals for chasing away the multimillionaires and Billionaires. So saith Fox Business News and Art Laffer. For those of you who don’t live in Oregon and had never heard of Measure 66 and its little sister, Measure 67, here’s a newspaper article from last August to give you the rundown. And even though the Tax Cuts were extended by another two years, right wingers are still pouncing on Oregon as a bellwether of w...

Sales tax holiday costs state $20M
Shoppers saved an estimated $19.9 million in taxes during the state’s two-day Sales Tax holiday in August, according to calculations by the Department of Revenue. The figure reflects eligible taxable sales of $318 million during the sixth event, which gave consumers relief from paying the state’s 6.25 percent Sales Tax on most items costing $2,500 or less. “It made for a very strong overall month in 2010 compared to what may have been the worst Retail Sales month i...

Hawkins Advice For Cuomo: Tax The Rich
Green Party Candidate for Governor Howie Hawkins is urging Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo not to make steep Budget cuts, and instead increase taxes on the rich (Read more...) ...

Rising e-commerce could force watershed sales tax debate
Connecticut and most other states have watched for much of the past decade as Internet retail transactions increasingly have cut into their Sales Tax collections. Though consumers here always have been required to pay tax on their online purchases, political pressures, a lack of direction from the Federal Government and even Legal Challenges from Internet retail giants have stalled efforts to collect that Money. But with a record-setting, $3.67 billion Budget Deficit looming just six months aw...

Wrong
Ecoomist Simon Johnson, writing at Bloomberg, takes us through the all-too-familiar steps leading to the next collapse and concludes: At this point, we will have only two choices: Raise taxes or cut spending. Given that the Obama administration is unprepared for this scenario, and has no sensible tax-reform plans under way, this gives an opportunity to Republicans intent on big Spending Cuts. For anyone hoping to “starve the beast,” this will be a historic opportunity. But there’s a pro

Census shows states with low taxes have higher growth
Since the official 2010 Census numbers were released last week, political number crunchers have compiled all sorts of stats about who the big winners and losers have been. One conclusion that is basically impossible to escape is that Americans seem to be voting with their feet when it comes to taxes. Prior to the Census results we had anecdotal evidence that this was the case in recent years such as the miserable failure of “Millionaire taxes” in Maryland and Washington, now we have ...

East Hartford mayor to take over DMV
East Hartford Mayor Melody A. Currey, Gov.-elect Dan Malloy's choice to head the State Department of Motor Vehicles, said Thursday she is taking over with the goal of making the much-maligned agency more streamlined and efficient. "My marching orders are very direct: Make sure the customer is taken care of and make sure we do it in an efficient and effective manner and as fiscally conservative as possible," Currey said after Malloy announced her appointment. Malloy said he would like Currey to...

Ida Chong running ads to counter recall campaign
Last updated Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2010 9:45PM EST B.C. Universities Minister Ida Chong, the target of a recall campaign by opponents of the harmonized Sales Tax, is urging voters in her riding to report any “suspected violations” of the law that allows citizens to fire their elected representative. In newspaper ads set to run on Wednesday, voters are warned of serious consequences for offences – including voters who sign the petition seeking her removal more than once. Under a red...

Nonprofit in name only
More than 50 percent of Boston’s property is held by nonprofits, and therefore tax exempt thanks to a 1830s law. The mayor is asking that they pay only 25 percent of what for-profit companies pay (“City to nonprofits: Pay up,” Dec. 23). Nonprofit is a misnomer as many of these institutions are Multimillion Dollar operations. Their CEOs, whose salaries are well into six digits, usually live in the suburbs where they willingly pay very high property taxes. Because of generous pr...

Tax breaks may boost your paycheck
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Your paycheck will either shrink by a few dollars or grow by nearly $40 per week in 2011, thanks to the tax Compromise lawmakers passed earlier this month. Slated to take effect in the first few weeks of 2011, a central component of the tax package included dropping the amount individuals paid in Social Security taxes from 6.2% to 4.2%. Email Print Comment This reduction, intended to stimulate The Economy, takes the place an expiring Tax Break, known as Making Work Pay, ...

Migration and Contamination
You've probably heard about the phenomenon of city dwellers, or residents of older suburbs, moving way out to the far-flung suburbs to escape traffc congestion, high taxes, and lousy schools.  Often, they've made this move so they can buy more house for the money and have a bigger yard, while paying much less in property taxes.  But the more of them that do that, the greater the likelihood they will transform their new destination into something resembling their former place ...

Possibly Fatal Budget Sickness in Nassau County
See if you don't lose your lunch by this story by David Halbfinger in the New York Times about the extreme Budget problems in Nassau County, New York. In case you're not familiar with it, Nassau County is the first county you enter when you leave Queens and drive east to Long Island. I can tell you from personal experience and observation that it's a county with a population that is exceptionally wealthily. When I grew up in Brooklyn, you always wanted to date a girl from one of the five towns b...

Why We Won't Get Along
In the wake of the most productive lame-duck congressional session in years—the crux of which was a grand bargain between Mitch McConnell and Barack Obama, who until recently seemed as if they could cooperate on absolutely nothing—devotees of Bipartisanship have renewed their flagging hopes. These seem to include the president himself, who commented: “If there’s any lesson to draw from these past few weeks, it’s that we’re not doomedto endlessgridlock.”...

Why We Won't Get Along
This item is cross-posted from The New Republic. In the wake of the most productive lame-duck congressional session in years--the crux of which was a grand bargain between Mitch McConnell and Barack Obama, who until recently seemed as if they could cooperate on absolutely nothing--devotees of Bipartisanship have renewed their flagging hopes. These seem to include the president himself, who commented: "If there's any lesson to draw from these past few weeks, it's that we're not doomed to endle...

Mass. shoppers saved $19.9M during tax holiday
BOSTON - Massachusetts shoppers saved nearly $20 million during this summer’s two-day state Sales Tax holiday. State Revenue Commissioner Navjeet Bal said the state failed to collect an estimated $19.9 million in taxes on August 14 and 15. Bal said the loss of revenue should reduce the amount of Tax Dollars going to the state’s school construction fund by $3.2 million and transportation fund by $1.2 million. Most of the rest of the Tax Dollars would have gone into th...

Mass. shoppers saved $19.9M during tax holiday
BOSTON - Massachusetts shoppers saved nearly $20 million during this summer’s two-day state Sales Tax holiday. State Revenue Commissioner Navjeet Bal said the state failed to collect an estimated $19.9 million in taxes on August 14 and 15. Bal said the loss of revenue should reduce the amount of Tax Dollars going to the state’s school construction fund by $3.2 million and transportation fund by $1.2 million. Most of the rest of the Tax Dollars would have gone into th...

Hamtramck, MI continues to plead for permission to declare bankruptcy
For the record, Hamtramck is basically Detroit as Detroit essentially surrounds the city but for a tiny part of the border. It has the same problem Detroit does - one that is becoming emblematic of government on all levels. That is - governments in general are degenerating into Pension and healthcare management entities that perform services on the side, and poorly at that, and at a loss. They are beholden to unionized government employees rather than the Taxpayers that are being bilked for gen...

Go north, young man
Other states may be grappling with massive Budget Deficits, but North Dakota is sitting pretty, thanks to the Bakken-Three Forks shale oil deposit. “Imagine a Tupperware container tightly packed with sand, then soaked with water representing oil deposits, sealed and then tucked away for an extended period of time,” explained the Bismarck Tribune in its “Bakken Breakout 2010” special edition. “For the first time in our state’s history, The Associated Press cite...

Jamie Radtke: Dishonest or Disingenuous?
In the Faux "News" "interview" above (in quotes, because the guy doing the "news" "interview" admits he knows Radtke personally, "spoke for you guys in Richmond," and thinks she "run[s] and incredible operation, perhaps one of the best Tea Party operations in the country" - how unprofessional and un-journalistic can you possibly be?!?), Jamie Radtke claims that the Tea Party is "mainstream" not "Right Wing." Radtke references an op-ed she wrote, in which she argues that if the Tea Party is "righ...

Greece Stumbles
Greece risks Mediterranean isolation as government Debt accumulates and international confidence weakens -- especially now that Moody's Investors Service is reviewing a possible downgrade of its current Ba1 Credit Rating. With Debt levels rising to 127 percent of GDP, Moody's noted that the "review will focus on the factors, namely nominal growth and fiscal consolidation, that will drive the country's Debt dynamics over the next few years." Translation: the leadership of Greece's near...

Whats at Stake in Tax-Cut Deal
More than two weeks after President Barack Obama announced his decision to make a tax-cut deal with Republican leaders, the shock waves continue to buffet many Democrats and others who are stunned by the grim implications. While the president used political muscle to push the measure through Congress, realization grew that the momentous impacts will span the realms of tax fairness, the social compact and American politics. All year, the White House had maintained a solid case for insisting that ...

The New Watchdogs
"My committee's lane is waste Fraud and abuse in government," Issa told reporters following a meeting at the White House November 30. "And certainly, with $700 billion in the stimulus, this is a great opportunity to see if we can track where the money has gone accurately." Issa will chair the Oversight and Government Reform Committee which is expected to play a key role in holding the administration accountable--not so much through investigations of wrongdoing, but rather in oversight of bad or ...

The Right Way to Balance the Budget
The federal Debt is at its highest level since the aftermath of World War II—and it's projected to rise further. Simply stabilizing Debt levels would require an immediate and permanent 23% increase in all federal Tax Revenues or equivalent cuts in government expenditures, according to Congressional Budget Office forecasts. What's clear is that to avoid a crisis, the Federal Government must undergo a significant retrenchment, or fiscal consolidation. The question is whether to do so b...

2010: A Year of Fall and Decline
The fall and decline of an empire can take many years, but certain “benchmarks” (as imperial courts have been known to call them) can measure the progress in one year alone.  Take, for example, the year 2010. This year opened with the United States Supreme Court claiming further power to rewrite the U.S. Constitution, specifically by further opening up Elections to the highest bidder.  The year closed with congressional Elections that cost more than before and in which mone...