Unpledged? Voters get duped
March 18, 2008
The Union Leader
THE GRANITE State Fair Tax Coalition is crowing about the passage, by roughly a two-to-one margin, of its anti-Pledge warrant article. When you stack the deck, though, your victory is nothing to boast about.
The article urged elected representatives to reject the state's famous no-broadbased taxes Pledge. It suggested that the Pledge was responsible for high property taxes, and rejecting it would lead to lower property taxes.
This is bunkum. History has shown very clearly that new broadbased taxes do not lower property taxes. The voters were sold a bill of goods.
Furthermore, the article offers no alternatives. It does not suggest a specific replacement for the property tax, such as a sales or income tax that voters could consider on its own merits. It intentionally offers only a vague, nice-sounding "revenue system that lowers property taxes."
Well, who is against that?
The real test of whether the people want a broadbased tax comes not from a warrant article carefully worded to get a positive response, but from the election returns whenever a candidate who has taken the Pledge faces one who hasn't. Those results speak for themselves, which is why the coalition has had to rig the race to get any results it can conceivably call a victory.
March 18, 2008
The Union Leader
THE GRANITE State Fair Tax Coalition is crowing about the passage, by roughly a two-to-one margin, of its anti-Pledge warrant article. When you stack the deck, though, your victory is nothing to boast about.
The article urged elected representatives to reject the state's famous no-broadbased taxes Pledge. It suggested that the Pledge was responsible for high property taxes, and rejecting it would lead to lower property taxes.
This is bunkum. History has shown very clearly that new broadbased taxes do not lower property taxes. The voters were sold a bill of goods.
Furthermore, the article offers no alternatives. It does not suggest a specific replacement for the property tax, such as a sales or income tax that voters could consider on its own merits. It intentionally offers only a vague, nice-sounding "revenue system that lowers property taxes."
Well, who is against that?
The real test of whether the people want a broadbased tax comes not from a warrant article carefully worded to get a positive response, but from the election returns whenever a candidate who has taken the Pledge faces one who hasn't. Those results speak for themselves, which is why the coalition has had to rig the race to get any results it can conceivably call a victory.