With the elections coming up educating yourself before any vote is your most important weapon against further tax increases and protecting your hard earned dollars for your own retirement and children's college education. Today we would like to highlight New Hampshire Citizen.org
as a source of information for protecting your hard earned dollars.
There is no such thing as a good tax. - Winston Churchill
The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward. - John Maynard Keynes
Taxation with representation ain't so hot either. ~Gerald Barzan
America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation. ~Laurence J. Peter
Did you ever notice that when you put the words "The" and "IRS" together, it spells "THEIRS?" ~Author Unknown
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him. - Robert A. Heinlein
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Friday, February 29, 2008
'Donor towns' are part of new education bill
The following article appeared in the Union Leader.
This is socialism, if our legislators cared about the education of our children they would not be pandering to the government school employees. Education tax dollars should follow the child not the institution and education control should be kept at the local level not the state level where educrats only have to go to one source (the legislators) instead of the people of their community to request more dollars to satisfy their greed. Public schools are government schools and just like the government their is massive corruption and waste of our tax dollars.
For another source about this bill visit nhcitizen.org
'Donor towns' are part of new education bill
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Friday, Feb. 29, 2008
CONCORD – A $914 million school funding plan was unveiled Thursday that also would create a new, separate aid program for the poorest towns to mitigate aid losses under the new formula.
The property-poor towns could share another $50 million to $60 million. Details on the distribution are still being worked out, but many would lose aid otherwise, said state Sen. Iris Estabrook, the plan's prime sponsor.
"This is not adequacy aid and will be to the discretion of the Legislature where the rest is not," Senate Majority Leader Joseph Foster, a co-sponsor, said of the new aid program.
Estabrook based the basic school aid plan largely on recommendations by the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Costing an Adequate Education that tied funding to education policy, not a community's property wealth as current law does. A hearing on the plan is Tuesday.
Property wealth was left out of the committee's deliberations, but now will become part of the debate over whether the plan does what it is supposed to do - help communities provide an adequate education.
Besides costing poor towns money, the basic distribution formula would require more than three dozen property wealthy communities to send $16 million to the state for redistribution. Wealthy towns have fought just as hard against being "donor" towns over the years as poor towns have fought to get more aid.
The plan is the latest in a long series of attempts to comply with a state Supreme Court mandate. The court has repeatedly ruled that the state must define an adequate education, determine its cost, pay for it and hold school districts accountable for delivering it.
The Legislature defined adequacy last spring and the joint committee worked for months on determining its cost. The committee released its report Feb. 1, but did not come up with a final cost.
Estabrook's plan would distribute $3,450 in base per pupil aid to every town - about $675 million of the $914 million. The rest would be distributed as targeted aid to the poorest schools and for non-English speaking students and those with disabilities.
The plan sets the base per pupil aid amount by using average salaries for teachers, principals, guidance counselors, administrative assistants, library media specialists, technology coordinators and custodians. It assigns a dollar value for each based on class, school or district size. A dollar value also was added for specialty teachers for programs such as art and music.
A dollar value also was added for instructional materials, computers, professional development, facilities and maintenance, and transportation.
It would use a series of thresholds to determine which schools had the highest concentration of poor kids to qualify for additional aid. The aid would be distributed based on the school's total population instead of just extra money for every poor child. The plan provides up to double the base aid amount to schools and basing poverty on the number who sign up for free or reduced price school lunches.
The plan also would distribute $675 per non-English speaking pupil. Schools would get $1,798 in additional aid for disabled students getting extra help but who remain in the classroom. They would get $3,610 more for disabled students taught in self-contained classrooms.
The plan requires that the needy schools spend the extra aid on state-approved services, such as full-day kindergarten, reduced class size or after-school homework help.
The aid plan would not take effect until the 2009-2010 school year.
Another Senate bill would give school districts an extra year before requiring them to offer kindergarten. The Legislature included public kindergarten as a requirement for all schools in the definition of an adequate education. The law gives the 11 districts without kindergarten until September 2008 to offer programs. The bill includes money for temporary classrooms for three years.
The Senate has a March 20 deadline to send bills to the House. If the Senate passes it, the House would have until May 15 to act on it. Lawmakers hope to adjourn on June. 5.
Meanwhile, the Senate last week sent the House a proposed constitutional change that would mean yet another rewrite of the school aid system if voters approved it. The amendment would let the state single out the neediest towns for school aid. Gov. John Lynch has lobbied hard for the amendment.
Lynch and amendment supporters believe the state should send all or most aid to the poorest towns -- which means towns in the middle and upper end of the property wealth spectrum would get little or no money.
"To put in place the best possible education policy, the state must be able to consider the fiscal capacity of communities when distributing state education aid. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has said we cannot do that. The result is a plan like this one, which takes aid from the most needy school districts," Lynch said of Estabrook's plan.In repeated rulings, the court has said the state can't do that. The court said the state must pay for what it determines an adequate education costs. The court also said the state can provide more aid on top of adequacy.Total state aid has remained unchanged for a decade despite rising school costs. The state currently distributes $897 million in aid with the state property tax contributing 40 percent.
This is socialism, if our legislators cared about the education of our children they would not be pandering to the government school employees. Education tax dollars should follow the child not the institution and education control should be kept at the local level not the state level where educrats only have to go to one source (the legislators) instead of the people of their community to request more dollars to satisfy their greed. Public schools are government schools and just like the government their is massive corruption and waste of our tax dollars.
For another source about this bill visit nhcitizen.org
'Donor towns' are part of new education bill
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Friday, Feb. 29, 2008
CONCORD – A $914 million school funding plan was unveiled Thursday that also would create a new, separate aid program for the poorest towns to mitigate aid losses under the new formula.
The property-poor towns could share another $50 million to $60 million. Details on the distribution are still being worked out, but many would lose aid otherwise, said state Sen. Iris Estabrook, the plan's prime sponsor.
"This is not adequacy aid and will be to the discretion of the Legislature where the rest is not," Senate Majority Leader Joseph Foster, a co-sponsor, said of the new aid program.
Estabrook based the basic school aid plan largely on recommendations by the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Costing an Adequate Education that tied funding to education policy, not a community's property wealth as current law does. A hearing on the plan is Tuesday.
Property wealth was left out of the committee's deliberations, but now will become part of the debate over whether the plan does what it is supposed to do - help communities provide an adequate education.
Besides costing poor towns money, the basic distribution formula would require more than three dozen property wealthy communities to send $16 million to the state for redistribution. Wealthy towns have fought just as hard against being "donor" towns over the years as poor towns have fought to get more aid.
The plan is the latest in a long series of attempts to comply with a state Supreme Court mandate. The court has repeatedly ruled that the state must define an adequate education, determine its cost, pay for it and hold school districts accountable for delivering it.
The Legislature defined adequacy last spring and the joint committee worked for months on determining its cost. The committee released its report Feb. 1, but did not come up with a final cost.
Estabrook's plan would distribute $3,450 in base per pupil aid to every town - about $675 million of the $914 million. The rest would be distributed as targeted aid to the poorest schools and for non-English speaking students and those with disabilities.
The plan sets the base per pupil aid amount by using average salaries for teachers, principals, guidance counselors, administrative assistants, library media specialists, technology coordinators and custodians. It assigns a dollar value for each based on class, school or district size. A dollar value also was added for specialty teachers for programs such as art and music.
A dollar value also was added for instructional materials, computers, professional development, facilities and maintenance, and transportation.
It would use a series of thresholds to determine which schools had the highest concentration of poor kids to qualify for additional aid. The aid would be distributed based on the school's total population instead of just extra money for every poor child. The plan provides up to double the base aid amount to schools and basing poverty on the number who sign up for free or reduced price school lunches.
The plan also would distribute $675 per non-English speaking pupil. Schools would get $1,798 in additional aid for disabled students getting extra help but who remain in the classroom. They would get $3,610 more for disabled students taught in self-contained classrooms.
The plan requires that the needy schools spend the extra aid on state-approved services, such as full-day kindergarten, reduced class size or after-school homework help.
The aid plan would not take effect until the 2009-2010 school year.
Another Senate bill would give school districts an extra year before requiring them to offer kindergarten. The Legislature included public kindergarten as a requirement for all schools in the definition of an adequate education. The law gives the 11 districts without kindergarten until September 2008 to offer programs. The bill includes money for temporary classrooms for three years.
The Senate has a March 20 deadline to send bills to the House. If the Senate passes it, the House would have until May 15 to act on it. Lawmakers hope to adjourn on June. 5.
Meanwhile, the Senate last week sent the House a proposed constitutional change that would mean yet another rewrite of the school aid system if voters approved it. The amendment would let the state single out the neediest towns for school aid. Gov. John Lynch has lobbied hard for the amendment.
Lynch and amendment supporters believe the state should send all or most aid to the poorest towns -- which means towns in the middle and upper end of the property wealth spectrum would get little or no money.
"To put in place the best possible education policy, the state must be able to consider the fiscal capacity of communities when distributing state education aid. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has said we cannot do that. The result is a plan like this one, which takes aid from the most needy school districts," Lynch said of Estabrook's plan.In repeated rulings, the court has said the state can't do that. The court said the state must pay for what it determines an adequate education costs. The court also said the state can provide more aid on top of adequacy.Total state aid has remained unchanged for a decade despite rising school costs. The state currently distributes $897 million in aid with the state property tax contributing 40 percent.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Tax Eaters on the Move
The comrades at Granite State Forced Tax Coalition want us to believe that the public supports an income or sales tax, and that they don't want officials to sign the pledge.
Do they think we're stupid?
Politicians want to get elected, so they sign the pledge. Lo and behold, they get elected. If politicians didn't think people wanted them to sign the pledge, they certainly wouldn't do so.
These posts also show that we're not dumb enough to fall for the line about reduced property taxes. You don't need to look far in New England to see states that fell for this line and are now paying the price.
Granite State "Fair" Tax Coalition - take your socialist dogma and lies and find another state!
In the article below it would be great to point out who is actually behind the Granite State Fair Tax Coalition. Would an expose find that those behind the Granite State Fair Tax Coalition are actually organizations that would benefit from more taxes like education organizations, state employees and contractors doing business with the state, just to name a few.
The following article appeared in the Union Leader.
That pesky Pledge: It is getting in the taxers' way
A SMALL group that wants a big state tax for New Hampshire is back again with an article on various New Hampshire town-meeting warrants. It asks voters to urge officials to reject the Pledge against broadbased taxes.
This is so bad and so phoney in so many regards, it is hard to know where to begin. It ought to be rejected by voters everywhere.
It is being peddled by the last Democrat to lose the governor's race. He lost precisely because he rejected the Pledge and promoted an income tax. And yet Mark Fernald and his pals in the Granite State Fair Tax Coalition swear, with apparently straight faces, that they aren't advocating such a tax.
They also distort the Pledge, which is not surprising. There is only one real Pledge, that taken by candidates for governor. It says, simply, that the candidate pledges he or she will veto any broadbased sales or income tax that ever gets passed by the Legislature.
It would no doubt be good to know if your local or state representative supports that Pledge and subscribes to the philosophy behind it.
That philosophy was summed up well by the late Meldrim Thomson Jr., who popularized the Pledge to veto such taxes. Thomson said that low taxes were the result of low government spending, period. If government spends too much, taxes go up, and no amount of shifting them around from one form of tax to another will prevent this.
This "fair tax" bunch says the Pledge prevents legislators from finding solutions.
"What we're trying to do is free up the Legislature and the governor so that they can work on this issue without having their hands tied by a feeling that people don't want them to do anything," said Paul Henle, the coalition's executive director.
Sure, the governor and Legislature have "a feeling" that people don't want them to do anything about taxes and spending because the people oppose broadbased taxes. That's it!
"We call on our state representatives, our state senators and our governor to reject the Pledge, have an open discussion covering all options and adopt a revenue system that lowers property taxes," reads the petition.
And that "system" would be where? In states with sales or income taxes? Hardly. Florida is just the latest state where, despite a big sales tax, people voted this month to cap skyrocketing property taxes.
Ah, but the group here wants to be "considering everything," which could be a sales tax, an income tax, a carbon tax or any solution that lowers the property tax burden.
"There might be ways nobody's thought of yet because they're too busy taking the Pledge," Henle said.
This bunch has no doubt thought of plenty of ways to spend the taxpayers' money. If they could only get rid of that pesky Pledge!
Do they think we're stupid?
Politicians want to get elected, so they sign the pledge. Lo and behold, they get elected. If politicians didn't think people wanted them to sign the pledge, they certainly wouldn't do so.
These posts also show that we're not dumb enough to fall for the line about reduced property taxes. You don't need to look far in New England to see states that fell for this line and are now paying the price.
Granite State "Fair" Tax Coalition - take your socialist dogma and lies and find another state!
In the article below it would be great to point out who is actually behind the Granite State Fair Tax Coalition. Would an expose find that those behind the Granite State Fair Tax Coalition are actually organizations that would benefit from more taxes like education organizations, state employees and contractors doing business with the state, just to name a few.
The following article appeared in the Union Leader.
That pesky Pledge: It is getting in the taxers' way
A SMALL group that wants a big state tax for New Hampshire is back again with an article on various New Hampshire town-meeting warrants. It asks voters to urge officials to reject the Pledge against broadbased taxes.
This is so bad and so phoney in so many regards, it is hard to know where to begin. It ought to be rejected by voters everywhere.
It is being peddled by the last Democrat to lose the governor's race. He lost precisely because he rejected the Pledge and promoted an income tax. And yet Mark Fernald and his pals in the Granite State Fair Tax Coalition swear, with apparently straight faces, that they aren't advocating such a tax.
They also distort the Pledge, which is not surprising. There is only one real Pledge, that taken by candidates for governor. It says, simply, that the candidate pledges he or she will veto any broadbased sales or income tax that ever gets passed by the Legislature.
It would no doubt be good to know if your local or state representative supports that Pledge and subscribes to the philosophy behind it.
That philosophy was summed up well by the late Meldrim Thomson Jr., who popularized the Pledge to veto such taxes. Thomson said that low taxes were the result of low government spending, period. If government spends too much, taxes go up, and no amount of shifting them around from one form of tax to another will prevent this.
This "fair tax" bunch says the Pledge prevents legislators from finding solutions.
"What we're trying to do is free up the Legislature and the governor so that they can work on this issue without having their hands tied by a feeling that people don't want them to do anything," said Paul Henle, the coalition's executive director.
Sure, the governor and Legislature have "a feeling" that people don't want them to do anything about taxes and spending because the people oppose broadbased taxes. That's it!
"We call on our state representatives, our state senators and our governor to reject the Pledge, have an open discussion covering all options and adopt a revenue system that lowers property taxes," reads the petition.
And that "system" would be where? In states with sales or income taxes? Hardly. Florida is just the latest state where, despite a big sales tax, people voted this month to cap skyrocketing property taxes.
Ah, but the group here wants to be "considering everything," which could be a sales tax, an income tax, a carbon tax or any solution that lowers the property tax burden.
"There might be ways nobody's thought of yet because they're too busy taking the Pledge," Henle said.
This bunch has no doubt thought of plenty of ways to spend the taxpayers' money. If they could only get rid of that pesky Pledge!
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