"A lot of people are concerned about the increase in spending, especially when you tell them it's about 40 percent," Brown said over coffee Wednesday morning.
"Nobody wants to raise taxes to pay for this new spending."
What Brown - a fine man, I hear - fails to mention is that no one actually raised taxes to cover the largely one-time spending increases, neither the state legislature nor his gubernatorial opponent, Brian Schweitzer. In fact, we got a tax rebate. Indeed nobody wants to increase taxes.
Brown - a fine man, I hear - also said that state residents "have expressed concern over their property taxes" and want a solution to "escalating property taxes." As if on cue, Kalispell's John McMenian has written a proposal for a ballot initiative to cap property tax increases at 1.5 percent a year.
Perlstein uses the term to describe the effect of depleted government funding on the FDA's ability to protect Americans from bad food, which is a representation for the larger effect of the last generation of Republican slash-n-burn tax cuts and cuts of vital government funding. Like for bridge inspection and repair, say.
The truth about rising property taxes is this: property tax increases are often levied by local government polities in order to make up the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy that have depleted their school budgets. That's also why you've seen so many increases in college tuition.
But Brown - a fine man, I hear - and his e. coli pals want to cut, cut, cut. Never mind that we're facing some heavy infrastructure needs like, say, Missoula's aging schools, let along that pesky court mandate to adequately fund the state's schools. Never mind that most Montanans realize the reality of taxes: they actually pay for stuff we want, and need.
So, it's probably wise that she's courting rural voters (pdf), right? Okay, so it's just a lunch. And it's not exactly located in a rural area - it's in Washington D.C. Oh, and it's taking place at a lobbyist firm. At Troutman Sanders Public Affairs, to be specific, the lobbying firm for?er?Monsanto, the agri-biotech multinational.
Yes, that Monsanto. The firm that tried topatent the pig, the firm that's responsible for more than 50 Superfund sites, the firm that dumped tons of pesticides and PCBs into our environment, that sued milk manufactures for labeling their products "hormone free," producer of apertame, bovine growth hormones, "terminator" crops, PCBs, etc & co. One of the sleaziest corporations in a world filled with sleazy corporations.
Holding an agri-summit in the plush halls of the lobbyists for Monsanto doesn't sound like the kind of "rural Americans" a presidential candidate would necessarily want to be photographed with.
Particularly if Clinton's two primary opponents -- former Sen. John Edwards, D-NC, and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. -- don't take money from lobbyists and are trying to depict the frontrunner as too much a part of the corrupt Washington system, lobbyists, corporate America, et al?.
But then again, it doesn't say Clinton will attend this luncheon -- just senior staffers and congressional endorsers! (Is that better or worse?)
Compare Clinton's luncheon with today's cover (pdf) of Raleigh's The News & Observer.
Anyone doubt now that Clinton won't go over too well with Montanans?
Things look bleak for the six men trapped in the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah. The latest attempts to get listening equipment into the mine have hit complications. The men been trapped since the mine collapsed on August 6.
The sins of Crandall Canyon Mine owner, Robert Murray, are well documented. According to a Salt Lake Tribune report, the mine had "received hundreds of citations in the past three years for breaching federal standards," which apparently is still considered a "good safety record" by federal authorities. Of course, that pales in comparison with an Illinois mine owned by Murray:
Murray's Galatia mine in southern Illinois racked up at least 2,787 violations and more than $2.4 million in proposed fines from the Mine Safety and Health Administration over a two-year span, according to government records. That includes more than $1.4 million in proposed fines already this year.
According to a consultant, the Crandall Canyon Mine experienced a similar collapse in the same part of the mine of the current cave in, which led some experts to question the mine's decision to continue work in that unstable area.
On live television Tuesday morning, Murray turned an update on the Utah mine collapse into a platform for promoting the coal industry and his views of how it should operate. He specifically attacked the United Mine Workers union and mine safety advocates Davitt McAteer and Tony Oppegard, all of whom had told reporters of the dangers of "retreat mining" that the Crandall Canyon Mine employed.
To anyone who follows the coal industry closely, Murray's performance came as no surprise.
Murray has developed a reputation for taking on unions and battling environmentalists. He's become known for donating big money to Republican politicians, and for occasionally using his political ties to try to bully government regulators.
Murray's apparent indifference to the miners trapped in his mine combined with his arrogant anti-environmentalist screed has made him the perfect example of just why there are environmental regulations and why the government shouldn't be politicized: miners' lives are at risk, and we can't trust the mine industry to regulate itself.
But now the federal government will be investigating the Utah mine accident. Good news, right? Maybe we'll see a little justice and a little more attention paid to mine safety across the country, right?
The man who will oversee the federal government's investigation into the disaster that has trapped six workers in a Utah coal mine for over a week was twice rejected for his current job by senators concerned about his own safety record when he managed mines in the private sector.
Just as Hurricane Katrina forced Americans to look at the face of lingering poverty and racism, this mining tragedy should focus everyone on another forgotten, mistreated corner of society. The...mine disaster is far more than a story of cruel miscommunication. The dozen dead miners deserve to be memorialized with fresh scrutiny of the state of mine safety regulation.
Great comment. Only thing is, this was written in January 2006 in the wake of the Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia, which cost 12 men their lives.
Can you think of a more damning indictment of this administration and its ideological backers?
Jon at the Montana Main Street Blog is shocked -- shocked! - that Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, poo-pooed Fortune magazine and considers his rhetoric reflecing "a dangerous animosity to free enterprise and economic growth."
The "animosity" is well earned -- not towards "free enterprise" and "economic growth," which, in this context, is relevant only for a tiny subset of Americans -- but towards corporatism, which has a real and negative effect on millions of Americans.
Jon also trashes Edwards for being wealthy and advocating for the working poor:
...does anyone else find it hilarious that a multi-millionaire who lives in a massive North Carolina mansion thinks he doesn't quite fit on a cover of a magazine entitled "Fortune?"
Why is this any less hypocritical than someone making middle-class wages advocating big business interests? Like, say, manning a blog that advocates policies that exclusively benefit the super-wealthy? Fair's fair: shouldn't that logic bite both ways?
Update: Jon misconstrued this post, assuming I was calling him a hypocrite, too. I wasn't. My point is that folks from all walks of life are entitled to their beliefs. I'm not a big fan of "class loyalty."
I can understand why businesses want to pay less taxes. I do. After all, most business decisions - especially with the bigger companies - are aimed solely at the bottom line. There's no room for sentiment, such as education, health, or safety. That stuff has to be regulated by the government. Business doesn't give a rat's *ss about those things, even though its very existence depends on it.
Still, it's amusing watching local business advocates twist themselves into knots explaining why Montana business taxes are too high.
Take this article by the Big Sky Business Journal called, "Shadow Economy Keeps Business Off the Books," in which it's revealed that Montana businesses stiff Montana taxpayers at twice the rate of other states:
A recent article reported that " the Montana Department of Revenue in 2005 conducted a tax gap analysis for both individual income and corporate license taxes ? According to the DOR estimates, Montana's fiscal 2005 tax gap was $145 million to $195 million for individual income and $33 million to $45 million for corporate license taxes. The overall noncompliance rate was estimated at 18 percent to 22 percent for individual income and 26 percent to 33 percent for corporate license tax. That was much higher than the other states found and was a source of concern."
While the concern here was about the loss of tax revenues to state government, the underlying assumption is that easily a fourth of the state's economy could be "off the books." The state's gross domestic product - the amount of new products and services generated -- might easily be a billion dollars more than officially calculated.
The report implies that this "underground economy" is generally composed of babysitters and independent contractors, individual folks working and paying under the table, ignoring the fact that the majority of unpaid Montana taxes are from corporations, not your next-door neighbor.
What's equally amusing is the Business Journal's claimed reason for our growing underground economy:
According to many economists, it is the existence of underground economies that props up many third world countries. Those same economists theorize that underground economies grow in direct proportion to the size and oppressiveness of government. Without the functioning of underground economies the standards of living in these countries would be considerably worse than it often is. Even in the US, much of the underground economic activity stems from newcomers attempting to enter markets for which regulatory barriers are otherwise difficult, if not impossible, to overcome.
Forgetting for a moment that we don't actually live in an authoritarian regime (yet) and that we live in one of the most business-friendly countries on the planet (Cayman Islands aside), with the quick pace of deregulation under the Bush administration, you'd expect these underground economies to be shrinking, according to this theory. They're not.
The more likely explanation for the growing underground economy is two-fold: the increase of corporate cheats abetted by the recent administration's pro-corporate tax policies, and the increasing difficulty of starting up small businesses thanks to health insurance costs, lack of regulation ensuring fair competition, etc. (Think the deregulation of radio, for example.) More folks are taking odd jobs.
The Big Sky Business Journal's implicit solution - to lower taxes - obviously isn't the answer. As is readily apparent, those industries slipping through tax loopholes won't stop using the exits if tax rates go down. There's no incentive to pay their fair share, and every incentive to keep circumnavigating the system.
Personally I think we need to simplify the system, give real breaks to small businesses (universal health care!), and increase punitive efforts, especially against big businesses.
So Montana Main St. takes a look at Forbes magazine's list of "Best States for Business" and reflects on Montana's poor placing -- a measly 42nd. Despite Montana's current booming economy, MMS is right about its fragility:
Looking at Montana's economy is like looking at its landscape: tall mountains and deep valleys. Much of the state's economic good fortune has come as a result of natural resource industries and agriculture - part of Montana's traditional economy. We can still grow those industries. We can also try and set up a state where high tech, value-added and manufacturing companies look at Montana as a good place to set up shop. But, we are a long way away from making Montana competitive with regional states.
Another take would be that this rating appears -- based on the different categories (see below) -- to be about whether big business wants to invest here. Montana has a thriving small business community, and most jobs in my field -- software tech -- are with small, independent start-up businesses. That is, the economy is doing well despite the absence of big corporate offices.
The weird thing is that MMS seems to be blaming taxes for Montana's woes:
Statistics can tell you a lot, but they can't tell you everything. For example, a COST ranking of tax systems around the country put Montana in the top ten for best business tax climate. If you talk to business people who operate in multiple states, however, they will laugh in your face if you told them our tax system was 8th best in the country. Still, the Forbes study puts Montana WAY behind other state in our region, which should make us consider why that is.
But look at the rankings -- emphasis mine on the places where Montana ranks the lowest:
The rankings took into account a variety of factors: in business costs we were 24th (cost of labor, energy and taxes), in labor rank we were 21st (measures educational attainment, net migration and projected population growth), in regulatory environment we were 47th (measures regulatory and tort climate, incentives, transportation, and bond ratings), in economic climate we were 13th (reflects job, income and gross state product growth as well as unemployment and presence of big companies), in growth prospects we were 48th (reflects projected job, income and gross state product growth as well as business openings/closings and venture capital investments), and in quality of life we were 42nd (index of schools, health, crime, cost of living and poverty rates). This gave us the overall ranking of 42nd in the country.
Get it? Most of our woes are due to problems with infrastructure, especially the "quality of life rating." You want to know why high-tech companies don't move to Montana? Lack of access, and lack of skilled employees. That seems to imply that if the state spends more on infrastructure development instead of cutting taxes for businesses, we'd be better off.
Two years ago, when companies received a big tax break to bring home their offshore profits, the president and Congress justified it as a one-time tax amnesty that would create American jobs.
Drug makers were the biggest beneficiaries of the amnesty program, repatriating about $100 billion in foreign profits and paying only minimal taxes. But the companies did not create many jobs in return. Instead, since 2005 the American drug industry has laid off tens of thousands of workers in this country.
And now drug companies are once again using complex strategies, many of them demonstrably legal, to shelter billions of dollars in profits in international tax havens, according to their financial statements and independent tax experts.
Let's be fair to Congress for a moment, shall we? They weren't duped by corporate drug makers. They knew exactly that this was a public handout to the industry.
Nice reporting by the New York Times to follow up on the tax cut.
Can we put to rest the anti-tax crowd claims that tax cuts do anything other than put money into corporate CEO pockets? They do not, as so often claimed, necessarily create jobs, improve the economy, or provide any other societal benefit other than boost profit for these companies. Period.
And let's not kid ourselves that implementing a lower tax scale for corporations will increase compliance and bring more actual revenue than what we're getting now, where most big businesses pay less than 10 percent in income tax. What's clear from this report is that, even while offered an olive branch, corporations will take their handout and continue to bend the US government and everyday Americans over a table.
Meanwhile our country sinks into debt. Unfortunately middle-class homeowners don't have a powerful lobbying group, and our tax rates are as high or higher as some of the richest people in the country. And you can bet they'll get higher as Congress implements more and higher fee-type taxes, like toll roads and park fees, which will affect us disproportionately.
And we can't even get a break with universal health care.
In all the hubbub around the SCOTUS' decision to again enforce school segregation (and citing Brown v Board of Education in doing so!), another case got overlooked: a decision that overturns a 96-year-old ban on price floors:
Striking down an antitrust rule nearly a century old, the Supreme Court ruled today that it is no longer automatically unlawful for manufacturers and distributors to agree on setting minimum retail prices.
Price fixing! Legalized price fixing! So much for open competition! I can't wait to see those milk prices go up!
