… for young people who think like this:
I am a conservative. I value truly limited government, the rule of law, fiscal responsibility, free markets, civil liberties, and a humble, no-nation-building foreign policy, and I first assumed, as many still do, that the Republican Party best fit my convictions. But I’ve discovered that there’s no difference between the Republican and Democratic parties.
The GOP enacts liberal policies and today is composed of big-government sell-outs, progressive imperialists, militant Christians and far left neo-cons who have hijacked the party, Washington and the media.
Emphasis mine. And this …
Perhaps, like me, you voted for George W. Bush because you wanted to shrink government, not triple its size. Maybe you supported George W. Bush because you believed in a foreign policy of non-intervention, only to be told that we must “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.” This is a far cry from George Washington’s warning about entangling ourselves in the affairs with other nations.
The GOP today is not conservative.Thus, true conservatives have but two options: reform our party or leave it.
Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo are the only GOP presidential hopefuls who haven’t sold out. And Paul is the only candidate who is pro-life, a strict constitutionalist who is a proven advocate of slashing the size of government. He’s also against the Iraq war, and has been since the beginning. But if genuine conservatives fail to succeed in electing Ron Paul, our only option will be to leave the GOP and form our own party, one that will truly stand by our conservative principles.
Mark Nickolas makes a fairly common mistake in a recent blog posting in which he blasts Kentucky Senate President David Williams for supporting a “new tax on Kentuckians — bridge and road tolls.”
Well, it’s not a tax. It’s a fee. The distinction is more than semantic.
First of all, the fee is on drivers, not Kentuckians. I would wager to say that half or more of the people who cross the Ohio River into and out of Kentucky do not, in fact, live in Kentucky. The cost is borne only by those who choose to use the bridge. To the extent that the toll is used to support only that bridge, it’s all to the good. The users of the bridge pay for the maintenance while drivers, voters and taxpayers who do not use the bridge are better off. They don’t pay for something they don’t use.
Second, supporters of transparent government - Mark says he is one - favor fees over taxes just about any ol’ day of the week. Agencies funded through fees know that raising those fees might invite questions from fee payers of how efficiently the operation runs. Fee-for-service transactions make clear to consumers of those fee-based services just how much they’re paying and what they’re getting for the money. That’s the best a good kind of T&A: transparency and accountability.
Taxpayers usually don’t have that luxury. They just pay money into a pool (the General Fund) and lawmakers pull money out of the pool to pay for stuff. Taxpayers are none the wiser about what they’re getting and what they’re paying to get it. That kind of system invites the big troublesome three: waste, fraud and abuse.
Whether or not the tolls end up paying to support only the relevant projects is an open question. It would be stupid to charge a fee on a bridge in Paducah to pay for one in Louisville. If that’s what Williams and his allies have in mind, then that’s a problem.
As to Fletcher removing tolls on a few roads, if he did so to shift the cost of road maintenance onto taxpayers, then maybe his political ambitions have once again gotten the best of him.
Indiana is examining the possibility of eliminating property taxes:
The state could eliminate property taxes if lawmakers increased the sales tax from 6 percent to 9.5 percent and raised the income tax from 3.4 percent to 6 percent, a state agency says.
Increases at those levels would raise the estimated $6.2 billion needed to replace the money that schools and local governments receive this year from property taxes, according to data that the Legislative Services Agency provided yesterday to the Commission on State Tax and Financing Policy.
Indiana may consider doing it in this way:
- Increasing the individual income tax from 3.4 percent to 9 percent, a 165 percent increase. For a family with a taxable income of $75,000, that would be an increase of $4,200 annually. An individual with taxable income of $25,000 would pay $1,400 more.
- Increasing the state sales tax from 6 percent to 13.2 percent, a 120 percent increase. It would mean a pair of $30 jeans would cost $2.16 more. A $15,000 vehicle would cost an extra $1,080.
- Increasing the sales-tax rate to 11.1 percent and expanding it to cover all services except medical costs. That would add a $2.22 tax to the price of a $20 haircut or add $555 to a $5,000 legal bill.
