MUST READ!!! KANSAS CITY NEWSMAN AND BLOGGER JIMMYCSAYS ARGUES AGAINST MISSOURI TRANSPORTATION TAX!!!
While Kansas City dead tree media is making it a point to push the TRAGIC KANSAS CITY TAX AND SPEND AGENDA OF CITY HALL this weekend, it's nice to see the local Internets offer a bit of alternative opinion and relevant facts.
To wit take a look at this EPIC local blogger op/ed. . .
JIMMYCSAYS: The proposed 3/4 cent state sales-tax increase for transportation is a bum deal for taxpayers
Here are some essential and important points made by the Kansas City newsman opposing the measure . . .
"Even with the “streetcar shuffle” this 3/4 cent sales-tax increase looks like a terrible deal for the average taxpayer.
Consider, first, that the main beneficiaries would be:
– The trucking industry, which is most responsible for tearing up the highways and roads
– The heavy construction industry, which excavates the dirt and rock, grades the land and builds the roads
– Engineering firms, which design and engineer the projects
– Material supply companies, like those that provide cement and asphalt
– The law firms that represent all the industries mentioned the above.
"Under the name of a committee called Missourian for Safe Transportation and New Jobs, those special interests are going to pour several million dollars into their effort to pull the wool over the eyes of Missouri voters and convince them that a general sales tax is the best and only way to get better (and more) roads and bridges in Missouri.
"It’s utter balderdash, I tell you."
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Read the post in its entirety and realize that the Internets is probably the only place where Kansas City residents can find an alternative from mostly elitist media coverage of this horrible insider deal on the road to being rammed down the throats of Missouri voters.
Voting No On It just because the streetcar is turning it into a cash stash - feeding trough to loot and gorge on instead of what it's intended for.
ReplyDeleteStreetcar is the only reason I might vote for it.
DeleteThe state should fund public transportation, or highways and roads need to be funded 100% through user fees.
You can't have your cake and it too, silly suburbanite.
Transportation taxes funded almost exclusively by KC and STL should be for transportation infrastructure primarily in KC and StL. And public transit IS transit infrastructure.
20% for transit is a truly modest amount for you suburban crybabies to be shrieking and howling about.
S'LIE said we're catching up to the rest of the world with the toy train because he read a report saying toy trains are the reason their is development in the June 26 business session.
ReplyDeleteOMG. This guy was on Seinfeld.
ReplyDeleteJimmy likes Elaine.
Jimmy is down.
Jimmy is okay, just has his facts wrong. The state transportation tax does NOT apply to groceries, prescription medicines and gasoline, which makes it a lot less regressive than it might appear. He probably just doesn't know that, and is therefore a little inaccurate by not telling the whole story.
ReplyDeleteAgree 7:29, but less regressive is still regressive, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteSo I go into Bank of America on about 110th and State Line yesterday. There are 23 pictures of human beings on posters throughout the bank.
ReplyDelete17 are minorities and of those 10 are black. Go look at it.
Who gives a fuck about a tax? Every penny the middle class makes is going to be processed through the Democratic sieve that arrogates the lion's share of ALL public money will go to the "Protected Class."
EBT/Snap, welfare, section 8 and the list, the never ending list of hard earned dollars going to either illegals or Blacks has, is and will cripple you and your family in the very near future.
As long as we are sweating taxes, lets get an overview.
ReplyDelete● Corporate and business income taxes. These tax your income because producers raise consumer prices to offset their business income taxes;
● Capital gains taxes. The income you use to buy capital assets has already been taxed once, but yet any asset gain is again taxed;
● Sales taxes. Likewise, the income you use to buy stuff has already been taxed once, but yet it's taxed again when you buy the stuff;
● Property taxes. These are also additional taxes on goods you've bought with already taxed income;
● Excise taxes (e.g., fuel, telephone, hotel, etc). These too are additional taxes on stuff you buy with already taxed income;
● Tariff taxes. Same as above, but only for imported stuff you buy;
● Inheritance taxes. The dead already paid taxes on the income which was the source of whatever they leave to the living;
● Payroll taxes. These still tax your income -- even if you might have someday gotten something back were your government not robbing the Social Security Trust Fund to blow your retirement "safety net" on things like paying people not to work, bailing out big banks, sending Michelle and the kids to Riverdance, buying booze for the State Department, and making lobbyists multimillionaires;
● Licenses, permits, tolls, transfer taxes, and all other user fees. These also reduce your income -- and for services you might have expected our government to have otherwise funded from the income taxes you've already paid;
● Regulatory tax. Regulation increases the cost of all goods and service you buy with income government has already taxed. Indeed, this increases the cost of the stuff we buy by about $1.9 trillion annually (or about $15,000 a year for each household); and
● Inflation tax. This reduces the purchasing power of any past income -- already taxed in the serial ways above -- which any of us might ever have managed to save. It's a consequence of the fiat money which allows government (let alone banks) to increase the means of exchanging production faster than production itself increases. Simplistically, you may regard governmental deficit spending (now close to $1 trillion in the Federal Government) as functionally taxing the purchasing power of all your past, present, and future income. This makes, for example, the stuff you could have bought for $100 in 1980 cost you almost $300 when you buy it now. And the cumulative inflation rate since 1913 (when the Federal Reserve System began) now approaches 2,300%.
This is just another straw on the camel's back that can barely be heard over the sound of the Federal Printing Presses cranking out 85 billion a month for future generations of Americans to pay for while politicians fiddle and America burns.
Looking for a good paying job? Well, look no further.
ReplyDeleteNo, really, stop looking. In 35 states, welfare benefits pay more than a minimum wage job, according to a new study by the libertarian Cato Institute, and in 13 states welfare pays more than $15 per hour.
“One of the single best ways to climb out of poverty is taking a job, but as long as welfare provides a better standard of living than an entry-level job, recipients will continue to choose it over work,” said Michael Tanner, senior policy analyst and co-author of the study.
The study is an updated version of one Tanner put out in 1995 that estimated the full value of welfare benefits packages across the states. The 1995 study found that such tax-free welfare benefits greatly exceeded the poverty level and “their dollar value was greater than the amount of take-home income a worker would receive from an entry-level job.”
Despite efforts to curb welfare spending, many welfare programs and benefits have continued to outpace the income that many workers can receive for working an entry-level job, which disincentivizes work, according to the study.
“The current welfare system provides such a high level of benefits that it acts as a disincentive for work,” reads the study. “Welfare currently pays more than a minimum-wage job in 35 states, even after accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit, and in 13 states it pays more than $15 per hour.”
According to the study, the federal government funds 126 separate programs designed to support low-income earners. Seventy-two of these programs provide cash or in-kind benefits to recipients. This is on top of additional welfare programs operated by state and local governments.
Welfare recipients in Hawaii get the most benefits, according to Tanner, at $29.13 per hour — or $60,590 pre-tax income annually. However, the state’s minimum wage is only $7.25 per hour, according to the Labor Department. Hawaiians on welfare also earn 167 percent of the median salary in the state, which is only $36,275.
The District of Columbia, Massachusetts and Connecticut have the next more generous welfare benefits.
D.C. welfare recipients can earn $24.43 per hour. In Massachusetts they can get $24.30 per hour. In Connecticut welfare recipients can receive $21.33 per hour.
Thanks for the faux facts, pat. Know why you only get 13 hits a month on the show me bullshit blog? Because everyone with a half an education or who's not a whiny whiny white man know you and Cato are fucking liars.
DeleteAnd lets not forget all the political special interests around the state that get exempted from these taxes. If that high rise, luxury, "won't get done without taxpayer help", plaza apartment complex gets exempted from more and more taxes, someone has to make up the difference.....long time residents and home owners.
ReplyDeleteWell, if a blogger says so.,,
ReplyDeleteDon't forget the EPA. Thats right, the Environmental Protection Agency.
ReplyDeleteThis week’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announcement introducing a new “rule” allowing the agency to garnish the wages of individuals to collect debts — without a court order — portends something quite serious.
It is certainly cause for alarm. After all, here we have a federal agency that has decided to give itself the power to garnish an individual’s wages, based on fines it levies on its own authority — all while removing your right to due process.
This declaration that an agency can do as it pleases is yet another, but unfortunately familiar, step in the direction of an entire bureaucracy that thinks it’s above the law.
Here are the specifics of the new EPA rule: “In a FederalRegister.gov notice on July 2 titled ‘Administrative Wage Garnishment,’ the EPA stated that by the authority of the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996 it issued a proposed rule that ‘will allow the EPA to garnish non-federal wages to collect delinquent nontax debts owed the United States without first obtaining a court order.’”
Like good executive branch bureaucrats, they decided that, in addition to creating regulations without the benefit of congressional involvement, they would also declare themselves authorized to take your money without the pesky involvement of the courts.
Jimmy C looks like he has been trading food and sex for toothbrushes !
ReplyDeleteBalderdash ... cool word, dude!
ReplyDeleteNeeds to be part of the local lingo.
Yo! Balderdash, muthafucka.
Balderdashoondoggle TOY BRIdGES TOY RoADs to nowhere that no one will use that kill little children playing that unjustly undue burden the poor east aside ppl I suddenly care about plus slie and Russ is really fucking smart and that's baaaaaaad
ReplyDeleteSue burke wants to know if she will get 2 votes in the election since she own a business. If not she's going to move filter queen to somewhere whet businesses get a vote but don't pay taxes unjust undue
ReplyDeleteSherry want to know if she owns a hous partially built on a street if she can make the street illegal to use
Pat want to know if his beard is trimmed right for uncle Rexroth
Dan wants to know how come no one in his neighborhood agrees with his crackpot tea party ideas
Bushnell wants to know why we don't spend the money spying on all the Mexicans who've moved into northeast
Bryan want to write an awesome cartoon of himself as gandolf with the caption "this shall not pass"
Looks like Mensa boy's up and at it (9:12-9:26) but too tired to check for typos.
ReplyDeleteYou are late to the party, coffeycakes. Not everyone who disagrees with you is Russ Johnson. In fact most of us are your neighbors...
DeleteLike you, I don't live in the TDD (south of 55th myself, but on the same side of loose as you). Unlike you (and Patrick and Sue and Sherry) I have the decency to let the people who will be paying the taxes decide for themselves.
Everybody in midtown and east KC knows where you guys are from, and an increasing number are finding out just why you guys are involved. They also all know that you guys never ever before gave a shit about midtown or the east side, that you don't now, and that you never will.
But we all get to decide the transportation tax and whether there will even be a TDD, Mensa boy, so lighten up and stop pretending to care about the east side. You never did before.
ReplyDeleteAnd most of us are involved because we know paying for the streetcar, like the Power & Light District and a host of other eco devo projects, will become the entire city's responsibility long after you guys have moved on to greener pastures.
If the TDD passes in August and the people in the TDD vote for the streetcar, what happens if the federal government doesn't come up with any matching funds?
ReplyDelete