Mississippi’s leaders are determined to prove how dumb they are
They cut all manner of taxes in recent years and now as they find they are unable to pay the bills they refuse to bring back the taxes but instead propose ‘user fees’ like fuel higher fuel taxes to pay for road and bridge repair. Oh well, 40% of Mississippi’s budget is federal hand outs.
"I have a big problem with the Legislature cutting $800 million in corporate taxes over the past six or seven years, then coming back and saying, ‘We need more revenue, let’s get it from user taxes that are regressive,’
Jessie Jackson called it ham and egg taxes, Taxes on the rich are like a chicken giving up an egg, taxes on the poor, like ones that have to pay more tax to drive is like a pig giving up a ham.
Cutting taxes is currently trending in this state @Barkydog, and Mississippi is all about jumping on trends with both feet in a big hurry. Our state’s “Yellow Dog Democrats” have for the most part walked across the aisle to become “Yellow Dog Republicans” and they’ll go the extra mile down a dirt road to prove it.
I am unsure what exactly you are trying to say.
When I was young this state was virtually a single party (Democrat) state. It was said that voters in this state would vote for a yellow dog if it was Democrat running against a Republican. Politics took a hard turn about 35 years ago and today the voters would overwhelmingly choose a Republican yellow dog over a Democrat.
Politics stayed the same, Blacks gave up on Republicans representing them, moved to the Democratic party, which made Whites switch to Republican. The Civil War had to be unlearned; Republicans had to stop being the party of Lincoln.
This is similar to Illinois tax system. Road tolls collected from every highway user plus some of the highest tax rates in the US.
High tax Dem state and low tax Repub states, doing the same thing. I disagree with both because these taxes are regressive.
Highly regressive taxes are the way even the nearly 100% Democrat gov’t here in so-called “liberal” California is doing business these days too. Parcel taxes – a property tax of the same $$$ amount for every parcel, irrespective of the parcel’s assessed value or acreage – used typically for funding local water & school systems are now very common. Even a condo is a parcel. Middle class condo owners pay the same parcel tax amount for their condo as the 40 acre shopping mall down the street.
The gov’t is getting a little kickback on this when it comes to applications for building rental units. A 100 unit apartment house is just one parcel so only pays one parcel tax. But it adds 100 families and their kids to the school systems. The schools of course, needing to figure out a way to afford to educate the new bevy of students, respond to this influx of students with more parcel taxes. And the condo and middle class property owners don’t like this scheme to place the entire cost burden on them at all, as you might expect.
Well you have to keep in mind that there are several ways to produce more money for the budget. One is to raise the rate, and another is to generate more activity called growth. You can only raise rates so high before it discourages growth and people move out like NY, California, and others. The other thing is that people are more willing to pay when they see actual results from their taxes. Minnesota has a billion or so surplus but no thanks to the current administration who is trying their best to find a place to put it. One of the ideas is to give every kid born in St. Paul a $50 bonus for their college fund. Regardless that $50 with 20 years of growth will hardly pay for one book, but why one city compared to all the other births around the state? 'Cause the sponsor works for St. Paul. It just never ends. Now tell me again how the “War on Poverty” turned out as another great program making more people dependent? People that are given free stuff from other people tend to support the people giving out free stuff. Then gotta ask why do we stereotype blacks as all voting one way when we don’t think whites all vote one way, or Irish, or Germans? It might help answer who is pandering with our money to buy votes.
Things must be different there. In Maryland, the Lt Gov. is in charge of his navel, only the Governor is in charge of state government. Also, he can talk a good game, but the state legislature creates laws. I doubt the executive branch can institute or cut taxes on their own. That same thinking expressed by the Lt Governor has hurt Mississippi’s grade schools, too.
Mississippi excels in ignorance and corruption and not much else. We do seem to have a great desire to appear grand but after a century of being too poor to paint and too proud to white-wash many politicians have found federal money to fund tacking on cheap plastic siding. Appearance is everything dontchaknow.
lol … good way to put it. 
That expression goes back over 100 years @George_San_Jose1
I added the plastic siding to bring it up to date so to speak. The siding here has become such an obvious cover for a crumbling old house that missed several paint jobs. It’s somewhat like pouring Renew in an uncared for engine to sell it like a fresh off of lease model.
Yes looking at houses I always wonder what is under the plastic siding.