Check out this story by WTVA on the Conservative Coalition:
Senator Simmons described the proposal as a “starting point” for negotiations.
MSCC members say, as far as they are concerned, Simmons’ “starting point” is a “non-starter.”
“Chairman Simmons’ proposal is clearly another attempt to increase government spending on the backs of Mississippi taxpayers and families,” said Coalition member Senator Will Longwitz. “We should be cutting government, not killing jobs by raising people’s gas prices.”
Simmons’ proposal would be the largest tax increase for Mississippi consumers since the early 1990’s.
The timing of the tax proposal in light of Mississippi’s uneasy economic recovery is also a concern.
“All of the items Senator Simmons would like to raise taxes on are aimed squarely at working Mississippians who are having a hard time making ends meet right now,” said Coalition Communications Director Senator Melanie Sojourner. “Removing exemptions for job creators in agriculture and manufacturing will force job cuts and increase unemployment. Raising gas prices and utility costs also have the added flaw of increasing the price of consumer goods, groceries, clothes, virtually everything will be affected.”
The coalition plans to look closely at the issue in the remaining months before the 2014 session by studying the transportation budget and maintenance planning in relation to the overall state budget and spending priorities.
“We must find efficient ways to maintain our state infrastructure without upsetting commerce with calls for more taxes and heavy-handed government controls,” said Coalition Chairman Senator Chris McDaniel. “Our spending priorities are clearly in question when we are increasing bond indebtedness on pet projects such as museums while our infrastructure is allegedly failing. Mississippians are spending more on basic needs than ever. They don’t need their state government making that worse.”
Communications Directors? Chairmen? What's next? Field Marshal for the Viceroy? Assistant Vice-President to the Senior Executive Vice-President? Does every member get a trophy? Or does everyone just get a title? Will there be an end of the season, oops, I meant end of the session party at the coache's, oops I screwed up again, chairman's house? I agree with many of their positions but they set themselves up for this one. ;-) However, if I do join, I want the position of chief assistant to head lettuce washer. They make the big bucks.
25 comments:
As is the case with Bennie Thompson, a large number (majority?) of Willie Simmons' constituents do not work.
Relying on gasoline taxes alone to fund highway infrastructure puts a disproportional tax burden on personal automobiles versus the 80,000# trucking industry...in particular, the forest products industry. For too long the Molpus/Mabus/Tatum/Hood/Burrage/White timber barons have ridden on the backs of the motoring public through successful lobbying for Forest-To-Lumber Mill construction and maintenance, aided and abetted by the Mississippi Association of Road Builders. It's time to look at toll roads, a subject that MDOT his kicked around for decades. It is only fair that a motorist in 4800# family-owned vehicle pay less toll use fee than that of an overloaded Jake-break-driven log truck. Does anyone remember when Governor Winter overrruled MDOT to allow 80,000# interstate trucks to traverse Mississippi, when engineers warned of the damage to the State highways. Whose hat was Winter wearing then? It certainly was not that of a MDOT hard hat engineer.
Let me quote Coalition Communications Director Senator Melanie Sojourner here: "Raising gas prices and utility costs also have the added flaw of increasing the price of consumer goods, groceries, clothes, virtually everything will be affected.”
Is not raising utility costs exactly what she and her Mississippi Republican comrades, to include in the MS Power Kemper cheerleading section former Governor Haley Barbour and present Republican Governor Phil Bryant, when practically every elected Republican office holder in the state legislature voted and cheered for raising all MS Power ratepayers electric bills to construct the Kemper County plant? I bet she even voted this past legislative session for the extra $1 billion dollar bond bill for the plant to be paid-back by the ratepayers? Liars liars, pants on fire MS Republican fake conservatives!
This argument of "we can never raises taxes no matter the reason" is going to hurt Republicans when the roads start crumbling and bridges start failing because they won't pay for them to be fixed. Ronald Reagan raised taxes numerous times as President, and he is still considered one of the greatest Presidents.
I don't think Senator Simmons plan is the way to go either though. Automobiles are using less gas every year because efficiency has consistently rose every year. Based on the increase in battery technology in 10 years it would be likely that many cars will run on batteries like the Tesla cars instead of gas. If that occurs the State will be back at the drawing board again to figure out how to fund road repairs. The State legislature should determine a way that we can continually raise money for road repair without having to rely on the sale of gas.
I did not know this. There IS already a 2013 law to accomplish a toll road system statewide.
http://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/documents/2013/html/HB/1200-1299/HB1202IN.htm
Ooops!
That WAS Simmons' Bill and it is DEAD On Arrival!
They took their cue of titular excess from the Democratic Thrust.
Let me quote 7:51am here: "Is not raising utility costs exactly what she and her Mississippi Republican comrades, to include in the MS Power Kemper cheerleading section former Governor Haley Barbour and present Republican Governor Phil Bryant, when practically every elected Republican office holder in the state legislature voted and cheered for raising all MS Power ratepayers electric bills to construct the Kemper County plant?"
That was one sentence. Did anyone understand it?
Duly noted that Warren Hood is a Member of the Board of The Southern Company.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU4eP_YQ3Xk
Yes, well...all Mississippi tax payers/rate payers regularly " invest" in " economic development". Those who see a " return" on that " investment" tend to be the business shareholders, deep pocket contributors and politicians.
Mississippi taxpayers paid for Grand Gulf with the promise of reduced rates once the costs were paid. Never happened.
We have excess electricity generated and sold from Grand Gulf but now taxpayers/rate payers are to build Kemper.
Since when is it conservatism or capitalism that a business gets start up costs for free from taxpayers and the shareholders get to reap the benefits while assuming zero risk? Once upon a time, the shareholders assumed the risk with the confidence that demand justified the increase in supply. The knew their dividends would be lower in the short term to see greater dividends in the long term.
With this new arrangement, we can get a Magnolia Venture Capital or Meat Packing fiasco where a few make alot of money and nothing is produced. The contractors and material suppliers etc. who build the building get paid and are usually off the hook in terms of responsibility. Even if they go to jail because their " contribution" to some politician looked too much like a bribe or their excesses in paying themselves were too obvious and some money is returned, those who lost money ( ie the taxpayers) see nothing.
The GOP has become so blindly pro-business that they can't recognize when they are being conned into giving away taxpayer money.
Can't blame the businessmen. If we are dumb enough to buy something that gives us nothing of value in return, that's on us!
I wouldn't mind so much if those who are supposed to represent our interests weren't the suckers and con men.
I'm like the blogger who posted he is a conservative that no longer has a party! Indeed, too many " Republicans" now are the same old Democrats doing the same old things under a different name...wolves in sheep's clothing!
Many of us watched (and still do) Hoy Road in Madison, as well as others, being torn up on a daily basis by the constant, never ending traffic of concrete trucks, loaded dump trucks, flat beds and low-boys loaded with everything from bulldozers to draglines on board. The infrastructure of a town can literally be torn slap up in the course of two years by this kind of traffic, never intended for municipal roadways, some being just overlaid paths. I have no clue what kind of recovery for this damage can be or is being done.
With Lost Rabbit construction and as many as twelve subdivisions being built-out, east of hwy 51 in Madison in the past five years, there's no way gas tax is going to repair all the damage.
All we can do is hope 'Clean Up Aisle Seven' will vote for some repairs ahead of building parks on the edge of Leake County.
“'Removing exemptions for job creators in agriculture and manufacturing will force job cuts and increase unemployment.'"
Why would a conservative support industry-specific exemptions to anything? Isn't that just the sort of "government picking winners and losers" conservatism opposes? These folks aren't conservatives. They just wanted to start a club.
Kingfish,
Why do you feel the need to nitpick the fact that this group of conservative legislators have a PR/Marketing major as their Communications chair? If you take issue with their anti tax position just say so.
Checkout the Bigger Pie Forum on the latest Snake Oil being peddled by Boss Hogg, Bill Clinton, and Tony Rodham. That good ole boy from Jackson that went to Harvard's gotta be in this up to his nose, too.
The SEC is investigating the connections that GreenTech has to the EB-5 program...a program that permits foreign investors--as a shortcut to a two year visa and untimately US citizenship-- to plop down $500,000 in a venture capital scheme to bring industrial jobs to economically distressed rural areas.
http://www.myfoxmemphis.com/story/23127771/sec-investigates-e-car-greentech-automotive
Since Obama got into office the price of filling up my car has gone up a lot. THis is no one's fault in MS, but MY elected officials in MS better not be raising the price of gas or car tags in MS. That is a one way ticket to being voted the hell out of office.
Chalk this up as a win for this Conservative Coalition. All this story does is mock. It doesn't disagree with the Coalition's points. Looks like they succeeded in taking back the momentum from Tate's Tax Grab and returning the discussion to fiscal sanity. Good work guys.
Senator Longwich is a joke. He maintained that he was called by God to be a County Judge. His whole life had been gears toward the "least of his children" then when he lost his calling, I guess God called him to use his name recognition from just having list a race to be Senator. If your true calling and representation was to be a County Judge to help children then why didn't you stick to that and when the opportunity presented itself to do it again run for that office. Oh, I guess the key word is opportunist.
Friend of Will's are ya 12:02?
Kingfish~
Seriously, can't you carve out a spot in this blog for video a weekly guest appearances by Enoch Sanders,complete with the upside down flag in the background, commenting on the political issues. Sort of like the SNL Weekend Update schtick with Jane Curtin and John Belushi?
Spoken like a true loser, 12:02.
Ditto to 7:04. In the spirit of more cowbell, more cowbell.....we need more Enoch, more Enoch....
10:11 - Tate's "tax grab"?? You think this group of 11 are there fighting a "tax grab"? Please explain what tax Tate was grabbing - certainly you are not including his refusal to pass the $400 million Jeff (Dem, turned Ind., turned reluctant Repub) Smith bond bill.
The true nature of this group is the "disgruntled" because its leaders supported Hewes and continued to support him after 'he lost'! So Tate didn't give them choice committee spots and doesn't include them in his inner circle. Nothing to see here - that's the way the Senate was run for decades, except of course during the preceding 8 years of Tuck/Bryant when the leadership of the Senate came out of the Sillers building. These miscontents thought are so wet behind the ears that they think the Bryant "leadership style" should have continued under Reeves. Maybe one of these days they will learn how to play together with their friends in the sandbox. In the meantime - who cares what they say or what titles their members have?
Again we hear about bond bills and we can't raise taxes. Again I remember that these bond bills are being passed under their terms. Pot calling the kettle black comes to mind here.
Also no one is offering any other idea on how to maintain roads. If we have lousy roads what company wants to come to our state?
If we have lousy roads what company wants to come to our state?
Railroads and waterways have brought more prosperity and industry to this State than the Molpus/Mabus forest-to-lumber Mill highway system. The State gains little from the InterState asphalt highway system that facilitates the exports of goods from Mexico, China and Central on their way to markets in the Mid-west and nation's eastern beltway. Industries moving to the Golden Triangle in NorthEast Mississippi were wooed in because of the Tenn-Tom Waterway and the Mobile & Ohio RR system. And,of course, all that "free" water from the Tuscaloosa aquifer.
Excuse My french. We are F'd. Democrats and republicans alike are equally butt raping us.
Post a Comment