Category Archives: Taxes

Apparently, the government had a really, really HARD time taking a dollar from Nikki

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Alert reader J brings our attention to this AP story, which shows that not only can Nikki, the accounting whiz (just ask her; she’ll tell you), not pay her personal taxes on time, but neither could the business for which she acted as bookkeeper:

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A business owned by the family of South Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley has been penalized for failing to pay taxes three times since 2003, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.

Haley has frequently cited her experience as an accountant for her family’s clothing store, saying the state needs such business knowledge at its helm.

Records show the store’s taxes were at least 19 months past due each time the state filed a lien.

Two of the tax liens were for failing to pay corporate income taxes and one was for not turning over taxes withheld from employee checks. The company paid nearly $4,000 to remove the liens.

In response, Haley’s campaign said Thurday she is running for governor in part because she wants to cut red tape and taxes that are too burdensome. Her campaign declined to discuss the specifics of the liens.

“As a family, we saw how hard it was to make a dollar and how easy it was for government to take it,” Haley, a state House member, said in a statement. “I’m committed to making government friendlier to the people and businesses it serves.”

A key part of Haley’s economic plan is to eliminate corporate income taxes, an idea the Legislature rejected earlier this year….

Run that nonsense by us again, Nikki:

“As a family, we saw how hard it was to make a dollar and how easy it was for government to take it…”

Yeah, right! Where, precisely, did y’all SEE that? Obviously, in the case of your family business, the gummint had a heckuva hard time taking it.

And this is, apparently, what Nikki means when she says she wants to run government like her business.

A closer look at Nikki’s idea of fiscal responsibility

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Turning from Nikki Haley’s foot-dragging on transparency regarding her taxpayer-issued computer and e-mails, let’s take another look at her problems with paying her taxes on time.

This is particularly relevant because of her oft-stated wish that government be run like a business, and her touting of her proven skills as an accountant.

Let’s take a look at Cindi Scoppe’s column Sunday. Cindi, a meticulous reporter if ever I’ve met one, didn’t think much one way or the other about Nikki’s failure to pay her taxes on time until she looked into it further herself. Here’s an excerpt from what she found, going well beyond what had been previously reported:

The problem wasn’t that the Haleys sought and received extensions. It is in fact quite common for people to get a six-month extension to file their tax returns. But as the IRS makes clear, the extension applies only to the return, not to the tax payment itself. Taxes are always due by April 15 — at the latest. The Haleys have not paid their taxes by April 15 in any of the past five years…
Even more significantly, the extension gives people only until Oct. 15 to file. The Haleys filed their 2005 tax returns on July 30, 2007 — eight months after the extended deadline. They filed their 2006 tax returns on July 23, 2008 — also eight months after the extended deadline. Their 2007 returns were filed Nov. 5, 2008, just a few days after the extended deadline. (Their 2004, 2008 and 2009 returns were filed after April 15, but before Oct. 15, so the IRS doesn’t consider them late.)
Now, in my book, anytime you have to pay the government a penalty, you’ve done something wrong, and the Haleys have paid the IRS $4,452 in penalties in the past five years — $2,853 for filing late, and $1,599 for paying late…
Still, the idea that paying your taxes late, and waiting eight months after the extended deadline to file a return, is doing “nothing wrong” is more of a stretch.
But the biggest stretch is the way Ms. Haley has sought to spin her income tax problem into a virtue. She talks about how she and her husband fell upon tough economic times and cut back on their spending and learned to live within their means, which she says demonstrates what a fiscally responsible governor she would be. It seems to me that her actions demonstrate just the opposite.
The Haleys didn’t pay their taxes late once or twice, when things were bad; they paid their taxes late in every one of the past five years — not just in 2006, when their income dropped by half, but also in 2005 when it was going up, and in 2007, 2008 and 2009, when it was going up substantially, topping out at nearly $200,000 last year….
… the fact is that part of her strategy was to avoid paying her bills on time, by essentially giving herself a loan from those of us who paid our taxes on time. A bailout if you will, albeit temporary, for the candidate who deplores federal bailouts. And since she failed to pay her taxes on time five years in a row, it raises questions about her stewardship of money….
I questioned Ms. Haley’s campaign several times to make absolutely sure that the Haleys had not somehow managed to get an additional extension, and her spokesman never attempted to give any sort of justification for their missing the extended deadlines. I’m not sure what the repeated delinquent tax filings suggest: Poor organizational skills? Inability to delegate authority — or, if delegated, to choose trustworthy people to whom to delegate? A disregard for the laws the rest of us have to obey? What I am sure of is that if it were me, I wouldn’t be bragging about it.

SC Democrats give sarcasm a try with new TV ad

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This just in from SC Democrats:

COLUMBIA- South Carolina Democrats fired the opening shot of election season with a television ad criticizing Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley for her tax hypocrisies. The ad, titled “Thanks Nikki,” will begin airing today in Columbia.

In the ad Mark Sanford’s disciple, who voted for a two percent rise in the sales tax and against a sales-tax exemption for groceries, is “thanked” by her constituents for failing to vote for South Carolina interests. Video may be also viewed on the ad’s companion site, http://thanksnikki.com.

South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Carol Fowler said today that the ad will inform voters about Haley’s real legislative record.

“Voters deserve to know the truth about Nikki Haley and her record of broken promises,” said Fowler. “This ad only skims the surface of Haley’s hypocrisy and highlights the stark contrast between her campaign promises and her actions in the legislature. Voters are already starting to realize that Nikki Haley’s candidacy is all smoke and mirrors. South Carolinians are ready to move forward with real leadership.”

Nikki certainly asks for sarcasm, by running on transparency while dragging her heels on being transparent, and by touting her accounting abilities while failing repeatedly to do what most of us do every year (file our taxes on time).

But whether this approach will work remains to be seen. For one thing, it’s too focused on taxes, rather than the items that she’s really begging for sarcasm on. And yeah, Nikki voted for the execrable Act 388, which is a big reason why the Chamber is backing Vincent Sheheen. And while that act foolishly and carelessly raised the sales tax, it did so in order to (equally foolishly and carelessly) drastically reduce property taxes on owner-occupied homes. And if I’m a Haley supporter, I’d protest vociferously the use of a house (for the “through the roof” metaphor) to illustrate the point that she raised sales taxes, thereby subliminally giving the erroneous impression that she raised homeowner property taxes.

Of course, she DID raise property taxes — on businesses and rental property (thereby raising rents on those who can’t yet afford to buy) — by pushing the burden from those whiny people with houses on the lake to other categories of property tax. But this doesn’t make that point, at least not overtly.

There are two main problems with this ad. First, that it oversimplifies. Nikki is definitely guilty of voting for very bad ideas in the realm of taxation. She is one of the reasons why we so desperately need comprehensive tax reform, because she has so thoughtlessly participated in fouling up the system, making it less logical, less fair and less effective.

Second, this sidesteps the two things Nikki is most vulnerable about in order to go after her on taxes. This is no doubt based in an assumption (possibly backed by polling or focus groups, but I have no idea) that voters care more about taxes than about the fact that Nikki is such a hypocrite on her signature issues. It’s a risky move, trying to out-anti-tax a Republican in a general election. (Also, if you’re a Democrat, do you really want to call your opponent a “tax and spend…” anything?) But I guess they figure, what do they have to lose?

You’ll say that this calculation and oversimplification is just the way the game is played. Yep. And that’s a shame. Because there are very good reasons why no one should vote for Nikki Haley, and this ad only skirts them.

Why are there tanning parlors in our world?

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Reading about the new federal tax on artificial tanning, both in national and local media, and I find myself wondering: How come things like tanning beds and tanning parlors exist, anyway? In the 21st century and all.

I’m not saying we outlaw them or anything — taxing them heavily seems like a great way to produce needed revenue, as long as they exist — but how is it that anyone would ever pay money to do something so pointless — something that no one in the world needs, ever, and so likely to lead directly to cancer?

Aside from the fact that I just don’t think deep tans are becoming on white people. If you doubt me, look at Larry Marchant on the Jon Stewart video. Looks weird, doesn’t it? Unnatural? Like, what’s wrong with Larry?

Anyway, that’s how it strikes me — as something that exists with no rational underlying explanation. Another of life’s mysteries.

Want to see a REAL cigarette tax increase?

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Just so you know what a real, honest-to-goodness, serious cigarette tax increase looks like, check this out:

Cigarette taxes in New York would jump by $1.60 a pack under a tentative deal reached between Gov. David A. Paterson and legislative leaders, which would give New York the nation’s highest state cigarette taxes.

The proposal, which officials said Mr. Paterson would include in an emergency budget bill due for a vote on Monday, would also raise wholesale taxes on other tobacco products like chewing tobacco, bringing the tax on those products closer in line with those of cigarettes.

In New York City, which levies steep taxes of its own on tobacco products, a pack of cigarettes would come with a tax of $5.85, making it the nation’s first city to break $5, antismoking advocates said. That would bring the overall cost of a pack of premium cigarettes above $10 in many stores in the city.

And we’ve been patting ourselves on the backs about the one big achievement of the 2010 legislative session — a whopping 50-cent increase from our lowest-in-the-nation 7-cent tax, which we had to wait about a decade for.

That means our TOTAL state cigarette tax, after our increase, is just over ONE-THIRD of the INCREASE that New York just did in one little hop. And the tax on a pack of cigarettes in New York City is MORE THAN TEN TIMES the new tax here in SC.

Yeah, I know; you have to crawl before you can walk. But still.

Mind you, I can’t really point to anything else our lawmakers tried to do this year to catch us up to the rest of the country in any regard. We just have this one tiny bit of progress. I was suitably proud of us for it. At least it meant we had done ONE of the things that was on my list of “South Carolina’s unfinished business” I wrote about when I left the paper. Sure, it was one of the two really easy ones I tacked onto the end of the column, as suggestions for something to warm up on before we really got down to work. But it was the first actual, measurable progress I had seen on anything in years — probably since Mark Sanford became governor.

So New York goes and makes our accomplishment look ridiculous. This is humiliating.

You suppose they did it on purpose? Those Yankees do like to mock us…

Lawmakers will uphold most of Sanford’s vetoes

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Governor threatened to veto entire budget again

It took me all afternoon, but I finally balanced my checkbook. Having done that, it is with a great sense of self-sacrifice that I know turn back to the state budget. Oh, my head!

Anyway, you’ll recall that I mentioned the e-mail exchange that a reader had had with House Majority Leader Kenny Bingham, which to me raised questions. That reader later wrote to me again to relate a phone conversation that he’d had subsequently with Kenny. That caused me to send Kenny an e-mail asking him the following:

Kenny, I’ve got a question for my blog… is this correct? Did the governor threaten to veto the whole budget again? And did y’all promise to uphold his vetoes if he didn’t?
If so, why in the world didn’t you just tell him to veto the whole budget if that’s what he wanted to do, and then override him, just as you did before?
I’m just not following this…
— Brad

Kenny responded last night by calling me at home and taking a long time to explain to me what had happened. The two startling things I learned are reflected above in my headline and subhead, to repeat:

  • In all the wrestling back and forth over the budget at the end of the session, at one critical moment the governor threatened again to do the outrageous thing he did in 2006 — veto the entire budget. Rather than call that bluff, the GOP leadership (the group led in the House by Speaker Bobby Harrell, Ways & Means chair Dan Cooper and Kenny) made a deal to uphold most of his line-item vetoes. Why did they not just let him veto the whole budget and override him as they did in 2006? Because between the Democrats, who were voting as a bloc against every move the GOP leaders made, and the Republicans who could be counted on to vote with Sanford, the leaders didn’t think they COULD override a veto of the entire budget. And the leadership didn’t want to see the government shut down.
  • To avoid that, the leadership agreed to sustain most of the governor’s vetoes. I can’t give you numbers, because frankly I’m not sure of them, and Kenny wasn’t giving me precise numbers anyway. We’re talking about roughly $70 million in vetoes that will be sustained. That’s nowhere near the $414 million that the 107 vetoes total up to. But about half of that is a special pot of money created to deal with a special, stimulus-related, higher Medicaid match that Congress hasn’t yet extended, and the governor says they won’t and lawmakers think it will, and even if it doesn’t there’s enough money to last in the program through next February or April, and… well, it gets REALLY complicated. That disputed Medicaid match is isolated in a section of the budget called Part Four. Most of the vetoes lawmakers will be sweating over are in Part One. (Part Two is where you find provisos, and I never even bothered asking about Part Three, if there is a Part Three…)

And yes, the parts they’re likely to sustain include some of the things that folks are most upset about being cut, such as the State Museum. So does that mean the Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, for instance, will shut down?

Kenny says no, because the Budget and Control Board has reserves that will keep the museum and other drastically cut programs

Kenny Bingham -- 2006 file photo/Brad Warthen

going. But there he is relying on the governor SAYING those reserves are available to bail out those programs. And the e-mail campaign against these vetoes that I’ve seen says the governor is wrong about that. I asked, how do you know the governor’s right? And he doesn’t know. I asked, what does Frank Fusco (head of the B&C Board) say? Kenny said he hadn’t talked to Frank yet. Presumably he will before the voting on Tuesday.

Bottom line, Kenny doesn’t know exactly what will happen Tuesday on all those vetoes, because there are a number of things that haven’t been worked out yet. And THAT’S what’s different about this situation. In the past, at this point he would have said with confidence that no one should worry; the vetoes would be overridden. That’s what we’ve seen year after year: Sanford makes his symbolic gesture, and the Legislature keeps the government running.

But this is the first time I’ve seen the GOP leadership this flummoxed over the Sanford vetoes. And as Kenny tells it a lot of it arises from the fact that the leaders just don’t think they have the votes. They blame the Democrats (no surprise there, huh?) for voting against them on a number of key budget votes. He said every single Democrat, with the occasional exception of Herb Kirsh, voted against them. Add to that the minority bloc of Republicans that can be relied upon to vote the Sanford way, and the leadership barely had the votes to pass a budget at all, much less come up with the two-thirds to override the governor.

As an example of the things they fought over… the leadership came up with a plan to raise court fees and license fees to help keep the courts running and pay for the next class of state troopers. The Sanford loyalists wouldn’t go for it, and the Democrats said Republicans should raise a general tax rather than paying for the added expenses with new fees.

I need to talk with somebody with the Democratic leadership this week to get their side of it, but Kenny’s account of the Democratic position sounds pretty credible: Basically, they’re saying that the Republicans got themselves into this mess with their tax cuts and such, and the Democrats aren’t inclined to help them out of it.

Anyway, what I got out of all this was this time, we might actually see some of the more headline grabbing consequences of the governor’s vetoes actually happen: shutting down the State Museum and the Arts Commission, for instance. Might not happen, but there’s a bigger probability this time than ever.

And in spite what I’ve been hearing about how the governor has tried to be more reasonable in dealing with lawmakers since his personal troubles began, it appears that he’s up to his old shenanigans, engaging in the same kind of ideological brinksmanship that we saw at the height of his arrogance.

It’s going to be very interesting to see what happens Tuesday. And those who care about the State Museum or ETV or the arts in SC have every reason to be in suspense.

Senate easily overrides on cigarette tax

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While I was at a long lunch for the Azerbaijani journalists sponsored by the Columbia World Affairs Council, I got the following two e-mails in quick succession:

SC Senate GOP scsenategop

Senate overrides cig tax veto. about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck

PhilBaileySC

33 to 13. Cig Tax Veto overridden about 3 hours ago via UberTwitter

That good news was coming from the spokesman for the Republicans in the Senate and his Democratic counterpart. And while they passed it on without comment, it was an occasion for rejoicing across party barriers.

This is a rare moment when the SC Legislature actually overcomes barriers and its own inertia to do the right thing. It happens so seldom that we should celebrate it.

Sure, there are plenty of ways to denigrate this accomplishment, and I’m familiar with all of them. A few:

It took only what, a decade? In spite of the fact that we’ve known for years that three-fourths of South Carolinians favored it?

In fact, 70 percent have indicated in polls that they would have gone all the way to the national average — an increase of twice this much — but the Legislature never even seriously considered doing that at any time.

Far too much of the discussion over the years has been over how to spend the money, even though that was irrelevant to whether the tax should be raised. The point in raising it was to price cigarettes beyond the reach of teen, and experience in other states has indicated that raising the price via taxes is a very effective way of accomplishing that.

Probably more than a few legislators voted this way, in defiance of their own inclinations, just for the pleasure of stuffing it down Mark Sanford’s throat.

But let’s set all that aside. The fact is that we no longer have the shameful distinction of being the one state that does the most to make sure kids have access to cheap cigarettes. And some lawmakers understood the importance of this opportunity to do the right thing for once. For instance, I share this other Tweet from Phil Bailey:

PhilBaileySC

Sen. John Matthews just arrived. Been out with a back injury for a month. Cig Tax vote is that important to him. about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck

Let’s savor that accomplishment, and then march forward to address some of the other things we should have done years ago in South Carolina.

Cigarette tax override effort under way

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This would be just a tiny glimpse into the efforts going on out there to override the governor’s veto of the measly 50-cent cigarette tax increase, but I provide it as an example:

As you are probably aware by now, Governor Sanford has vetoed the Cigarette Tax Bill which would increase South Carolina’s lowest in the Nation Cigarette Tax by 50 cents.  The House and Senate may consider the veto as early as TODAY.
If you are so inclined, I would ask you as a favor to me to call your Representative and Senator and urge them to override the Governor’s veto on this important Bill.  I am working with the American Cancer Society on this, and this increase will deter teenagers from beginning to smoke and encourage current smokers to quit.  The increase in funds prevent further cuts to much needed health care programs.
Please take a moment and call your Representative and Senator and urge them to override the Governor.  Then please forward this message to anyone else you believe may be willing to contact their Representative or Senator.
If you don’t know who you elected officials are, you can click here to find out — http://www.scstatehouse.gov/cgi-bin/zipcodesearch.exe
To find House of Representative phone number, please click here — http://www.scstatehouse.gov/html-pages/housemembers.html
To find Senate phone numbers, please click here — http://www.scstatehouse.gov/html-pages/senatemembers.html
Thanks for your help!
Mary M. Greene

Mary Green is a longtime lobbyist. I first came to know her when she worked for the S.C. Education Association.

USA Today: Tax bills in 2009 lowest since 1950

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Jim Clyburn’s office made sure I didn’t miss this, and I’m making sure that YOU — especially our Tea Party friends out there — don’t miss it either:

Tax bills in 2009 at lowest level since 1950

By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
Amid complaints about high taxes and calls for a smaller government, Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman’s presidency, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data found.

Some conservative political movements such as the “Tea Party” have criticized federal spending as being out of control. While spending is up, taxes have fallen to exceptionally low levels.

Federal, state and local taxes — including income, property, sales and other taxes — consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. That rate is far below the historic average of 12% for the last half-century. The overall tax burden hit bottom in December at 8.8.% of income before rising slightly in the first three months of 2010.

“The idea that taxes are high right now is pretty much nuts,” says Michael Ettlinger, head of economic policy at the liberal Center for American Progress….

Of course, the very next sentence was from the “It is NOT nuts!” crowd:

The real problem is spending,counters Adam Brandon of FreedomWorks, which organizes Tea Party groups. “The money we borrow is going to be paid back through taxation in the future,” he says.

And so forth, yadda-yadda.

By the way, for you boys and girls out there (those who don’t have grandchildren) — the Truman administration was, like, a really long time ago.  You’ve seen “Mad Men”? Well, like that, only like a decade earlier, and the clothes weren’t as sharp looking. In fact, President Truman himself wore bow ties. Which are sharp-looking; don’t get me wrong. Just not “Mad Men” sharp, unless you’re Bert Cooper. And they’re way butch, too — Harry dropped two atom bombs on another country because they messed with us, so don’t get me started on bow ties.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Our taxes were lower in 2009 than at any time since before I was born. So quit yer whining. Especially you, governor.

Yeah, what Vincent said (on cigarette tax)…

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Dang, I wish I hadn’t posted that Sheheen video earlier, because now that I have a good comment from him on Sanford’s veto of the cigarette tax increase (the increase that only goes half as far as 70 percent of South Carolinians want it to go, but at least is better than the 30-cent we almost had to settle for), it looks like this blog is all Sheheen, all the time.

Anyway, here it is:

“Gov. Sanford’s veto of the cigarette tax is absolutely indefensible,” said Sheheen. He continued:

“I don’t know what world the governor is living in, but here in South Carolina, we’re facing unprecedented budget shortfalls — cutting vital medical services for many South Carolinians and laying off teachers, including my own child’s third grade teacher. Increasing our state’s lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax will qualify our state for millions of dollars in federal matching funds for health care while reducing teen smoking and smoking-related health care costs. It’s the responsible thing to do.

It’s time for us to elect a governor who will be committed to the people of this state rather than committed to an unbending political ideology that ignores the basic needs of everyday South Carolinians.

Yeah, what he said. And yeah, this does illustrate why South Carolinians need to be really, really careful for once about electing a governor. And it’s why we can’t even consider Nikki Haley, and increasingly — and I hate this, because as you know, I like to have a dog in every party’s fight — ALL of the Republicans seem determined to disqualify themselves from being considered by rational independents (I discussed that previously back here).

And as soon as I get a good comment — heck, any comment — coming over the transom from someone else, I’ll post that, too.

By the way, it just so happens that my office door these days actually does have a transom. I don’t think it opens any more, though…

The actual transom over the actual door of my actual office.

No “tea parties” for me, thanks; I’ll take coffee

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Something that occurs to me when I see notices like this one:

Larry invited you to “Tea Party Event ” on Sunday, September 27 at 1:30pm.

Larry says, “Please join me.”.

Event: Tea Party Event
“Come hear Senator Larry Grooms”
What: Informational Meeting
Start Time: Sunday, September 27 at 1:30pm End Time: Sunday, September 27 at 4:30pm
Where: Wannamaker County Park

… is this: Who wants tea? Certainly not me. I’m a coffee guy. All these people having “tea parties” seem kinda, you know, effete to me. Not very American.

I mean, when the British slapped that tax on tea, a few unsteady types went spare and committed an act of vandalism in Boston harbor. But the rest of us moved on and drank coffee instead. Preferably Starbucks coffee (he said, still hoping against hope for a major endorsement deal).

When the UnParty wants to whip up its base, it’s going to have Kaffeklatsches instead. We’ll sit around, talk, drink coffee — no big whoop.

Friedman plugs the Energy Party agenda

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We haven’t spoken much about the Energy Party lately, what with being obsessed with the economy and all (see, I told y’all this wouldn’t be fun before we started). Thank goodness, Tom Friedman took the time earlier this week to get us back on track by touting a key plank of the Party platform, in a piece headlined “Real men tax gas.” An excerpt:

But are we really that tough? If the metric is a willingness to send troops to Iraq and Afghanistan and consider the use of force against Iran, the answer is yes. And we should be eternally grateful to the Americans willing to go off and fight those fights. But in another way – when it comes to doing things that would actually weaken the people we are sending our boys and girls to fight – we are total wimps. We are, in fact, the wimps of the world. We are, in fact, so wimpy our politicians are afraid to even talk about how wimpy we are.

How so? France today generates nearly 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants, and it has managed to deal with all the radioactive waste issues without any problems or panics. And us? We get about 20 percent and have not been able or willing to build one new nuclear plant since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, even though that accident led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or neighbors. We’re too afraid to store nuclear waste deep in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain – totally safe – at a time when French mayors clamor to have reactors in their towns to create jobs. In short, the French stayed the course on clean nuclear power, despite Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and we ran for cover.

How about Denmark? Little Denmark, sweet, never-hurt-a-fly Denmark, was hit hard by the 1973 Arab oil embargo. In 1973, Denmark got all its oil from the Middle East. Today? Zero. Why? Because Denmark got tough. It imposed on itself a carbon tax, a roughly $5-a-gallon gasoline tax, made massive investments in energy efficiency and in systems to generate energy from waste, along with a discovery of North Sea oil (about 40 percent of its needs).

And us? When it comes to raising gasoline taxes or carbon taxes – at a perfect time like this when prices are already low – our politicians tell us it is simply “off the table.” So I repeat, who is the real tough guy here?

As Friedman correctly asserts, raising the gas tax would be a “win, win, win, win, win” that would make us “physically healthier, economically healthier and strategically healthier.” But none of our politicians, of either party, have the guts even to bring up the subject, because they can hear the voters screaming at them with all the mature outrage evinced in this unrelated, but hilarious, commercial (only instead of screaming, “I want those sweeties,” we’d be hollering, “We want our cheap gas!”)

Anyway, I posted something on Twitter about the Friedman column earlier this week, and Doug Ross responded on Facebook. I’ll share our exchange here just to get the blog discussion going:

Doug Ross

Real men must like double digit inflation, high food prices, and punishing low income Americans who need to drive to work
Brad Warthen

We love all that stuff. We just don’t like quiche.
Did you read the piece?
Doug Ross

I did read the article. He says he wants to take 10 cents of each dollar and give it to “the poor” to cushion the $1 per gallon cost. What about the people who aren’t “poor” who will see their fuel costs go up by several thousand dollars a year? and the increase in cost of every single item that is manufactured and transported. it’s a recipe … Read Morefor economic disaster. Some of Friedman’s ideas go beyond “ivory tower” to the point where the people in the ivory towers have to crane their necks to see him.
We have all the money we need to do what Friedman wants currently in the federal coffers. Our political “leaders” choose to do other things.
Brad Warthen

But raising the revenue isn’t the point; it’s just a side benefit.
The point is making ourselves more energy-independent so we stop underwriting the thugs of the world.
If France and Denmark can do it, so can we.
Doug Ross

Oh, if we could just be like Denmark and France!!! Apparently that’s the new American Dream
And yeah, for those who are confused — I was using that “irony” thing again when I said “we love all that stuff.” But I was serious about not liking quiche.

I’ll tell James, but I don’t see how it will help

Today I got this release from the S.C. Chamber of Commerce:

Urge Your House Member to Vote for Comprehensive Tax Reform
Debate Expected This Week!

Thank you for contacting your House members over the past few weeks urging them to move forward on comprehensive tax reform. Your calls have made a difference in the debate! The House is expected to take up the legislation either Tuesday or Wednesday of this week.

Today, please again contact your House member and ask them to:

  • Amend S.12/H.3415 to contain a comprehensive (holistic) approach to tax reform. A complete analysis of taxes should be performed and not looked at individually. The business community is fearful that if a comprehensive approach is not taken, a huge cost shift to the business community, similar to Act 388 (Residential Property Tax Relief), could occur again.
  • The approach needs to examine state and local taxes including: county, municipal, special purpose districts and schools.

Contact your House member today! Click here for contact information, or click here to find your legislator.

That’s all well and good, and I’m with the Chamber on this. The State‘s editorial Sunday did a good job of explaining just what a hash lawmakers have made of the chances for real tax reform. (Two big problems: They want the big tax swap of 2006 that was so awful that it prompted what momentum exists for reform to be off limits, and they don’t want to require a vote on the final product, which is essential.) But I’m ever hopeful, and if contacting my House member will help, I’m all for it.

One problem: The release went on to tell me my representative was James Smith. But I live in Ted Pitts’ district. I’ll be glad to speak to Capt. Smith, but I don’t see how it will help…

You don’t want to know what I think

Somebody wrote me an e-mail today saying,

Brad-

No blog post on yesterday’s tea parties?  Shame on you.

Tom Willett

Now that doesn’t give me much to go on, but I’m sort of guessing that Tom thought I’d have something NICE to say about these demonstrations. That’s usually the case with such nonspecific comments. Which brings to mind the old Bugs Bunny line, “He don’t know me very well, do he?”

And you know, I don’t want to say anything snide. I did say something snide at the actual event yesterday, and felt bad about it, because those folks were all pretty well behaved and probably sincere and it was a beautiful day, but sometimes you can’t help yourself. But I’m not going to repeat it. I mean, my rep’s bad enough already. In fact, when I ran into Andy Haworth from thestate.com, who was shooting video of the event, he joked (I think it was a joke) that he’d better get away from me lest he catch a stray bullet.

Ironically, he said that not far from the spot when the first editorialist for The State, N.G. Gonzales, was shot down in broad daylight by the lieutenant governor, James Tillman. Y’all know the story: Tillman shot him in cold blood in front of multiple witnesses, including a cop — and the Lexington County jury (there was a change of venue) acquited him, on the grounds that N.G. had written all sorts of mean, nasty ugly things about the killer, causing him to lose an election, and therefore had it coming. That was in 1903.

He got shot, and I only got laid off. So times are better for editorialists, although getting laid off lacks the romance of the way N.G. went out. He did it with style, too. Remember what he said as he fell? “Shoot again, you coward.” Editorialists had a lot of sand in those days.

Oh, but I was supposed to be writing about the anti-tax thing. Look, y’all know how I am about this subject. I’ve always thought the fuss that some whiny people make over what they call “Tax Day” is ridiculous, and a demonstration such as this just doesn’t connect with me. I don’t get it why people resent paying their taxes so much. But they do go on about it, don’t they? (When I see all these folks walking around with “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and such, on a beautiful day in the freest country in the history of the world, I wonder how they would react if they actually were oppressed? What if they lived in a country where you got shot or locked up for protesting? Would it matter enough to them to do so? What if they actually lived in a country that HAD no government to tax them — say, Somalia? Would they like that better? Or worse? I don’t know.)

Go on as they did, even they had a limit. I missed most of the rally because I had an appointment at noon. I arrived at about 1:30, expecting it to go until 2 as announced. But it ended at 1:41. I guess they didn’t have as much outrage as planned, or something.

I shot the above video with my phone. As you can see, what I captured was pretty vanilla stuff, not much to write home about. Maybe the parts I missed were more exciting. Probably not to me, but to someone.

The tax on stupidity

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I liked this analogy offered in a book review in The Wall Street Journal Thursday about why we so often call lotteries a "tax on stupidity:"

    'Imagine a standard NFL football field. Somewhere in the field, a student has placed a single, small, common variety of ant that she has marked with a spot of yellow paint. You walk onto the field, blindfolded, and push a pin into the ground. If your pin pierces the marked ant, you win. Otherwise you lose. Want to give it a go?"
    Thus did one mathematician describe the odds of winning a Powerball lottery. Is it any wonder that economists deride state-run lotteries as a tax on stupidity? Bad enough that the government is encouraging gambling; all the worse that it is encouraging such a bad bet.

You betcha.

‘That stupid ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX!’

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I just retreated up the stairs to my home "office" — one of the rooms my kids have moved out of over the years — because my wife was yelling about struggling to figure out "that stupid alternative minimum tax." She was telling me that if I wanted to do something useful, I could do something about that.

Mind you, this is about five minutes after we were having a conversation about how people are always coming to her with things they want ME to do something about, like the editorial page editor is in charge of the world or something. She said I have no idea how many things like that she deflects for me. I said I probably DO have an idea, because I get it all the time myself. It's weird. It's sort of like being the Godfather, with people coming to confide a problem, and you're saying in soothing tones, "What can I do for you, my old friend?…" It would be a big ego boost if I actually thought I had the power that some people seem to assume I have.

Anyway, five minutes after she's acknowledging how silly it is that people think I can do all of these things, she's asking me to do something about the alternative minimum tax. Hey, I don't even fully understand what it is. You know why? Because my wife does our taxes. Thank God.

Maybe, when things calm down a little downstairs, I should go down and think of something to do or say to express my appreciation for that, huh?

Maybe I'll tell her I gave that alternative minimum thing to one of the congressmen on the family payroll, and he's going to take care of it. That's what the Godfather would do…

Amen to letter debunking Reagan tax ‘reform’

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Just now remembered that I meant to say a big "Amen!" to the third of these letters that ran on Thursday:

Reagan tax policies began economic slide

I think that if I read one more letter praising Ronald Reagan’s tax policies I will be sick.

I
was in the tax business when his 1986 tax reform act was passed. This
act was revenue-neutral. The cut in the top brackets was accomplished
by cutting numerous deductions that the middle class enjoyed. My own
taxes increased more than $2,500.

The idea, of course, was that
those in the top brackets would create jobs and products. The problem
was the middle class had less money to purchase the products.

From
that point on, the discrepancy in accumulated wealth between the middle
and upper classes began to widen, and the government deficit began to
increase.

If you want real tax reform, I have a suggestion: Allow
those who take the standard deduction also to take their charitable
deductions. This would result in churches and other charities being
able to meet the increasing demands they are facing in this current
economy.

WILLIAM R. GEDDINGS JR.
West Columbia

The first year that tax "reform" took effect was my first year at The State. I had taken a big pay cut to come here from Wichita (I SO wanted to be close to all of y'all and I really, REALLY wanted to get the heck out of Kansas). I mean a big one, like 25 percent. Add to that the fact that I was the first (or at least, the only) editor ever hired from out of state (in our daily meetings, pretty much everyone was a USC grad except for the guy who was ostracized for having gone to Clemson), and there simply did not exist a procedure for compensating such new hires for their moving expenses. My boss fiddled the books (legally, acting within he rightful prerogatives) to give me an extra $1,000 in my first paycheck to help me out with that. I went with the cheapest deal with the movers I could get — we did all the packing, in our own boxes — and we drove a lot of stuff ourselves crammed into our two vehicles like the Clampetts heading for California. With needing to stop for the kids, it took us four days to get here. And the move still cost me $1,500 out of my own pocket, which cleaned out our savings account.

We rented because we couldn't afford to buy, and we kept putting food on the table by my wife taking in other kids to care for them along with our four (our fifth was born here the following year).

And THAT year, thanks to Ronald Reagan's tax "reform," was the first time I EVER had to pay more than had been deducted from my paycheck. In fact, I think it still stands as the ONLY time, but I'm not positive; I'd need to check.

So needless to say, I didn't think much of what the Gipper had done for me. Maybe somebody benefited — Gordon Gekko or somebody — but it was pretty painful for me and mine, hitting me in probably the worst year of my adult life for such an unexpected expense.

Not that we should make tax policy based on how it affects yours truly. I'll leave such arguments as that to my libertarian friends. I'm just saying Mr. Geddings' letter struck a chord with me.

One Democrat fed up with tax deadbeats

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So you think all this stuff about Geithner and Daschle and their taxes is a bunch of Republican spin? Well, maybe it is, but I got an earful about it from one ardent Democrat this morning.

Samuel Tenenbaum, key Energy Party think-tanker, dropped by my breakfast table this morning. This is always an occasion for me to find out what is at the top of his mind — which can range from his 55-mph speed limit plan to endowed chairs (which were also his idea) to, well, almost anything. Samuel reads a lot, and cares a lot, about a heap of stuff.

But today he was fed up with Obama over the tax deadbeats he's been choosing for his administration. He was going on about how this was not the Change he had believed in when he supported Obama. At first, I thought he was mad because the new POTUS wasn't cutting these people loose once the news broke about their failure to pay. But no, he blamed Obama for not having sufficiently vetted these guys to begin with.

Paying your taxes is basic and fundamental, he maintained, and there's just no excuse for nominating people who haven't done that.

Anyway, Samuel convinced me of one thing for sure — that I should at the least put up a post to give y'all a chance to sound off on the subject. Yeah, I'm a little late, since Daschle withdrew his name today, but hey, I was out on medical leave yesterday (nothing serious; routine testing).

Now, about that ‘zero Republican votes’ thing…

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The last time they did this, I had no doubts that the Republicans were wrong. When not one of them voted for Clinton's Deficit Reduction Act in 1993, it was about as pure an example as I can recall of partisan mule-headedness and populist demagoguery. Not to mention the fact that they were wrong on the issue. Argue cause and effect all you like, the passage of that legislation WAS followed by dramatic deficit reduction. And the way the GOP went to their home districts and told everybody about how those awful Democrats had raised their taxes was unconscionable. Especially when South Carolina Republicans said it — most people in S.C. did not see their taxes increase, unless you count the 4-cent rise in gasoline tax. And what importance can you honestly attach to 4 cents a gallon when monthly fluctuations in price are usually far more than that? (Of course, you know what I think about gas taxes.)

I remember actually watching TV news — something you know I don't often do — during that vote. Somebody had Al Gore on live, and Al was as stiff and awkward and priggish as only he can be as he talked about how wrong the Republicans were not to support it, with the roll call going on in the background (I'm thinking it was the Senate; in any case not one Republican in Congress voted for it). But he was right.

This time, I'm not as sure. I'd LIKE for our elected representatives to get together on anything as big as spending $819 billion, rather than splitting along partisan lines. I mean, if we're going to do it, let's do it together — doing it divided increases the chances that it the stimulus will fail. I say that because Phil Gramm had a point — so much of the economy is psychological. If the country sees this as THE plan that everyone agrees on, the country is more likely to have its confidence boosted. If it sees every member of one of the two major parties (for now) decry it as a waste doomed to fail, we could be looking at some self-fulfilled prophecy.

That said, I don't know but what a Republican — or UnPartisan, or anyone else — who says this plan isn't going to do the job doesn't have a point. After all, Paul Krugman says it won't, and he's no Republican.

On the other hand, their reason why this package isn't quite the thing is all bass-ackwards. They complain that only about a third of it is tax cuts. Well, I'm worried that a third of it IS tax cuts, and that those tax cuts will have zero effect on stimulating the economy. I haven't seen figures yet on exactly what the tax cuts will mean to the average American, but as I pointed out before, in an earlier version, the amount we're talking about would have given each worker only about $9 a week — which is just barely enough to go to a movie. By yourself. If you don't buy popcorn.

If you're going to have a stimulus package, either SPEND enough to really kick-start the economy (and this doesn't appear to be enough), or target tax cuts to where they are likely to stimulate some real activity. Unfortunately, in trying to provide something for everybody — and then going to woo the GOP in person — Obama may have produced a solution that doesn't do enough of anything. And then, after all that trouble, you fail to get the bipartisan support that you were trying to buy with that $300 billion in tax cuts.

As for what you will probably hear them yammer about most on TV news (and in the rest of the blogosphere) — what partisan political effect this vote will have — I don't have a dog in that fight. Whether the Republicans have cooked their own goose by voting against a plan that will work, or set themselves up to be blamed for it NOT working, or are poised to recapture the House because they were the only ones to see it wouldn't work, or whatever… I don't care. I'd like to see both parties suffer in the next election, just on general UnPartisan principles. Unfortunately, I might get my wish: The stimulus could fail, and both parties be blamed — but that be the least of the nation's worries. You know what I'd be worried about right now if I were a Republican? I'd worry that my caucus just invested its hopes in economic failure — just as Harry Reid et al. bet all their chips on our failing in Iraq. That's not a position you want to be in — your nation having to fail for you to be right. But that's their lookout, not mine.

For my part, I hope the stimulus works. Or that something we do soon works. And as long as it does, I don't care who gets the credit — even a political party.

Hope springs, even in S.C. politics

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By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
Last week’s column chronicled my rapid descent into a state of fuming impatience over the things that we simply refuse to do in South Carolina even though they would obviously, irrefutably make us healthier, wealthier and wiser. The proximate object of my frustration was our steadfast refusal to save young people’s lives by raising our lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax to the national average. But I could as well have fulminated about our fragmented, unaccountable governmental structure, or the crying need for comprehensive tax reform, or… well, there’s a long list.
    And if I wanted to shake my fist at our fate a bit more today, I would have no shortage of cause. I could, for instance, dwell on the discouraging hour or so I spent Wednesday listening to our governor talk about his 2009 agenda: Yes, he’ll back a cigarette tax increase — a third of the way to the average — but only if he gets the counterbalancing tax cut he wants. Otherwise, he’ll veto it, again, without compunction. And yeah, he agrees that consolidating some of our smaller and less efficient school districts would be worthwhile, but he won’t spend energy pushing for that; he prefers to waste what little capital he has in the education arena in another debilitating ideological battle over vouchers. And so forth.
    Depressing.
    But that’s not what I want to do today. Today, I want to offer hope, and I’ve got some on hand. This past week, we saw some remarkable instances in which things that just were not ever going to change in South Carolina — not no way, not nohow, as they might say in Oz — suddenly change, and for the better.
    Let’s start with the sudden emerging consensus to place the Department of Health and Environmental Control — one of our biggest and least answerable agencies — under the authority of the governor. Set aside what I just said about this particular governor. The governor — this one or any other — is the elected chief executive, and far more likely and able to see that the agency is run the way we the people want and expect it to be than a largely autonomous, unelected board is.
    This is painfully obvious to anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of how politics works, and has been ever since my colleagues and I started pushing for it with all our might back in 1991. At the time, though, we had few allies other than a few wonkish good-government types and the occasional governor who wanted the power, while almost everyone else in a position to do something about it or with a stake in the system was ready and able to resist the change.
    All sorts of people had all sorts of reasons to fight reform. Environmentalists, for instance, knew how to game the complicated system and lay roadblocks to polluters and other adversaries, and feared that a more “efficient” system — especially one run by a governor enamored of economic development at any cost — would make it harder to block permits they opposed.
    And in South Carolina, the status quo always has the upper hand in the Legislature. So I despaired of seeing reform.
    Then one day, just before Christmas I think it was, I ran into Sammy Fretwell — who along with fellow veteran reporter John Monk had been writing a hard-hitting series about DHEC’s failures to do its job well — and he told me a remarkable thing: A key environmental leader who had long opposed making DHEC a Cabinet agency had become a convert to accountability.
    That was wonderful, but it was just the beginning. Other conservationists started working for, rather than against, a bipartisan bill backed by longtime restructuring stalwart Sen. John Courson and Sen. Phil Leventis in the Senate, and a similar bill in the House. The stunner, the coup de grace to my lingering doubts, came in Thursday’s paper: Bo Aughtry, chairman of the DHEC board, the man at the very center of the status quo’s sanctum sanctorum, called for making it a Cabinet agency. And several former board chairs agreed with him.
    Folks, stuff like this doesn’t happen in South Carolina. But it did, and is continuing to happen. And if it happened on this issue, it can happen on others. Such as, say, transparency.
    Remember what happened at the end of 2008 to Nikki Haley and Nathan Ballentine, two young GOP lawmakers who were innocent enough — and guileless, idealistic and dumb enough — to confront the leadership openly and directly on the need to have roll-call votes on important action? They got crushed, as one would expect. They were handed their heads. Advocates of reform were appalled, but expected nothing different.
    Then, on Wednesday, the House voted, unanimously, to do pretty much what Ms. Haley wanted. And the Senate did much the same. And all of a sudden, it was touted on all hands — by the leadership as well as by the governor and the long-suffering reformers — as just what everyone had wanted all along. And Nikki Haley, rising like a phoenix, is the heroine of the hour.
    Stuff like this doesn’t happen, not like this, not out of nowhere, not out of the mere fact that it’s the right thing to do and there are no good reasons not to do it, not in South Carolina. But it did.
    So now I’m just seeing hope everywhere. Such as in a poll released Wednesday that showed that 74 percent of S.C. voters support raising our cigarette tax to the national average. Sixty percent favor it strongly.
    Here’s the thing about that: As I indicated in last week’s column, the arguments for going all the way to the national average are so strong, and the arguments not to do so are so weak, that only the most perverse sort of resistance to rational change can prevent it from happening.
    In the past, such perversity has been richly abundant in South Carolina. But last week, we seemed to suffer a sudden shortage of it on two surprising fronts.
    So take hope.

For more to be hopeful about, please go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.