I will be talking about taxation this week but today I want to remind that the New World Order these Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons eliminate all of our Constitutional rights as citizens and take us back before the age of Magna Carta. The Magna Carta is what makes the Western nations free and democratic-----
People need to know that your rights as citizen are being dismantled ------global corporate pols and their desires for global corporate tribunal rule seeks to end our national sovereignty and with that our Constitutional rights as citizens and Rule of Law for all. Rule of Law and Equal Protection as citizens is central to our Constitution. Before Magna Carta autocratic rulers could do anything with impunity----SOUND FAMILIAR? THAT'S WHERE THESE GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS ARE TAKING THE US.
'Adherence to the rule of law is now believed to demand more than due legal process in preference to arbitrary rule. It now (for example) demands the equal subjection of all people – whatever their rank or position – to the ordinary law of the land; the appreciation and protection of individual rights and liberties and the ultimate ability of all citizens to be able to conduct themselves freely in a system guided by law and legal principle'.
Magna Carta at 800: We are Still Enjoying the Freedoms Won
June 15th, 2015
in econ_news
by John Stanton, The Conversation
Around 20 miles from central London, where modern-day government and democracy shape the lives of citizens throughout the United Kingdom, the Thames meanders peacefully through nondescript English countryside. This is just another part of the green and pleasant land that has come to define much of these shores.
Follow up:
Except that there’s something rather different about this rural corner of England. These riverside fields at Runnymede are reputed to be the setting for one of the most significant moments in UK democratic and constitutional history. The National Trust labels it “the birthplace of modern democracy”, while an impressive monument commemorates a “symbol of freedom under law”. It was here, of course, that the Magna Carta is said to have been sealed on June 15 1215 under the title of the “Great Charter”.
Bad King John The catalyst for Magna Carta was the tyrannical rule of King John and, in particular, his imposition of arbitrary taxes upon the barons. The sealing of Magna Carta marked the first time that the notion that an unelected sovereign should be restrained under law was officially recognised. From then on, the idea that citizens should not be subjected to the arbitrary rule of a tyrannical monarch but instead be ruled and governed upon foundations of accepted legal process and law had a legal foundation.
This was, in essence, an evolution of the Aristotlean idea of the supremacy of law in preference to the supremacy of man. Such a concept is today known as the rule of law and Magna Carta is widely accepted as being the birth of such rule in the UK constitution. So, a big moment.
King John.
Of course, understandings of the rule of law have altered and developed from that determined by King John’s subjection. Theorists and academics have, over the centuries, debated and set out contrasting views as to what Magna Carta means in practice.
Adherence to the rule of law is now believed to demand more than due legal process in preference to arbitrary rule. It now (for example) demands the equal subjection of all people – whatever their rank or position – to the ordinary law of the land; the appreciation and protection of individual rights and liberties and the ultimate ability of all citizens to be able to conduct themselves freely in a system guided by law and legal principle.
Modern Magna Carta To say that the modern UK constitution is one that adheres to the basic principles of the rule of law is to state the obvious.
That said, the UK constitutional system is markedly different from that which prevailed in the early 13th century. Monarchical legal power is virtually, if not completely, non-existent. Legislative and executive functions are in a sense fused through an institution built upon democracy and universal adult suffrage. The needs of citizens are fundamentally more diverse and complex than they were 800 years ago.
One of four known surviving 1215 exemplars of Magna Carta.
Consequently, the system involves a great deal more discretionary authority than traditional rule of law theorists might find acceptable. As well as this, competing interests and concerns of the state often demand difficult balances and compromises to be struck between pressing political matters and concerns on the one hand, and individual liberties and core values of due process on the other. Even these occurrences are carefully regulated and debated as part of a constitutional system that, while highly peculiar, is adaptable and flexible to the constantly shifting needs and concerns of society.
The core values set out by the Magna Carta, therefore – due legal process over arbitrary power and the freedom to act within a system guided by legal principle – are still very much at the heart of our constitution, even if that system has evolved and changed beyond all recognition.
Over the centuries most of the Great Charter’s clauses have been repealed. Only three of the original 63 clauses remain in force: those providing for the freedom of the Church of England; the protection of the liberties and free customs of the City of London; and the protection of individuals from imprisonment or punishment without due process.
But the legacy of Magna Carta runs much deeper. The establishment of the rule of law at Runnymede 800 years ago went on to inspire and shape the development of the UK constitution and, indeed, the constitutions of democratic systems the world over.
John Stanton is Lecturer, City Law School at City University London.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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The Clinton neo-liberals and Republicans play on the working and middle-class as to lowering taxes when they have no intentions of doing this at all. It is a progressive bone folks----and if you understand national and global public policy---as a citizen who votes must in order to make an intelligent vote----you know the history of global corporate characters from the past and what these global corporate characters have as an intention. The statement below should make Republican voters rebel as much as progressive labor and justice. As you see it was the arbitrary and abusive taxation practices that sparked the European and American revolutions. When Reagan/Clinton sold voters on government and social programs as the driver of higher taxes on the working and middle-class-----their only intention was to lower corporate and wealth tax rates and raise control of government revenue towards corporate subsidy. Taxes will never go down -----they simply go to benefit the social society or they become corporate profits for billion dollars businesses. Global corporations and their
'WIN AT ALL COST PROFIT MAXIMIZATION' WILL NEVER ALLOW SMALL BUSINESSES TO TAKE MARKET SHARE---THEY WILL ONLY USE THEM AS THEY ARE NOW IN LEGISLATING AWAY ALL OF THE PUBLIC SECTOR AND DEREGULATING.
'The catalyst for Magna Carta was the tyrannical rule of King John and, in particular, his imposition of arbitrary taxes upon the barons'.
FDR pushed for his aggressive taxation of the rich and corporations as a way to recover what was then the same massive frauds that brought the
Great Depression. It was a moral imperative to redistribute that fraud back into the economy. Obama ran on progressive redistribution of wealth when he never intended to do anything but continue wealth maximization for the rich.
REPUBLICAN AND CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRATS MUST STOP ALLOWING THE RICH TO PULL THE CHAIN OF LOWER TAXES-----
When Income Was Taxed at 94%: How FDR Tackled Debt and Reckless Republicans
FlaglerLive | August 14, 2011
FDR in Florida in 1926. (FDR Library)
How much can a U.S. president committed to greater equality hope to accomplish when lawmakers devoted to helping the rich hold the upper hand?
Advocacy for equality must take a backseat, Obama administration insiders insist, when fanatical friends of the fortunate in Congress recklessly endanger our nation.
But in 1943, a U.S. president confronted a debt ceiling crisis just like Obama’s — and came up with a different answer. Facing rabid lawmakers every bit as opposed to taxing the rich as ours today, Franklin D. Roosevelt didn’t let up on the struggle for a more equal America. He doubled down.
Roosevelt’s debt ceiling battle actually began right after Pearl Harbor. The nation needed a revenue boost to wage and win the war.
FDR and his New Dealers wanted to finance the war equitably, with stiff tax rates on high incomes. How stiff? FDR proposed a 100 percent top tax rate. At a time of “grave national danger,” Roosevelt told Congress in April 1942, “no American citizen ought to have a net income, after he has paid his taxes, of more than $25,000 a year.” That would be about $350,000 in today’s dollars.
The year before, steel exec Eugene Grace had grabbed $522,537, over $8 million today, in 1941 salary.
But conservative lawmakers would quickly reject FDR’s plan. Four months later, Roosevelt tried again. He repeated his $25,000 “supertax” income cap call in his Labor Day message.
Sam Pizzigati
The Live Commentary
Congress shrugged that request off, too. FDR still didn’t back down. In early October, he issued an executive order that limited top corporate salaries to $25,000 after taxes. The move would “provide for greater equality in contributing to the war effort,” Roosevelt declared.
Infuriated conservatives saw red, literally. The “only logical stopping place for this movement,” fumed Princeton economist Harley Lutz, would be “a completely communistic equalization of incomes.”
Rich-people-friendly lawmakers vowed to kill FDR’s executive order by any legislative means necessary. They ended up attaching a rider repealing the order to a bill that would give the wartime debt ceiling a desperately needed lift. FDR tried and failed to get that rider axed, then let the bill with it become law without his signature. He had no choice. Our troops needed financing.
Roosevelt had definitely lost the debt ceiling battle over the salary cap, as he no doubt knew he would. But sometimes a leader can win by “losing.” FDR didn’t prevail on the cap. He did prevail in his far broader struggle to shape the wartime finance debate.
Roosevelt’s relentless campaign to cap top incomes kept that debate focused on taxing the rich. Conservatives didn’t want to do that taxing. They wanted a national sales tax, as do many conservatives today. But FDR’s aggressive advocacy for equity never let that regressive sales tax notion get traction.
The war revenue debate would be fought on Roosevelt’s terms — not on whether to tax the rich, but on how much. And, in the end, that “how much” would turn out to be quite a great deal. By the war’s end, America’s wealthy would be paying taxes on income over $200,000 at a 94 percent statutory rate.
Americans making over $250,000 in 1944 — over $3.2 million today — paid 69 percent of their total incomes in federal income taxes, after exploiting every loophole they could find. In 2007, by contrast, America’s 400 highest earners paid just 18.1 percent of their total incomes, after loopholes, in federal taxes.
The debt ceiling “solution” that White House and congressional leaders bargained does not ask these top 400 — or any other rich Americans — to pay a penny more in taxes than they do now. In the 2011 debt ceiling struggle, inequality has clearly triumphed.
So what does FDR’s debt ceiling battle teach us? Maybe this: We really can have a more equal America. We just need to fight for it.
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Strong progressive taxation on the rich and corporations is a tool for fraud recovery that pays down the national, state, and local debt created by that fraud. THAT WAS WHAT FDR'S PROGRESSIVE TAX RATE WAS MAINLY ABOUT. That is what the same progressive tax rate would be about today. We wouldn't need tax extremes on wealth if they did not loot on a constant basis. We need to think about progressive tax reform as not only an equalizer----but as a tool for justice as FDR did. Republicans and conservative Democrats who see taxes of all kinds as bad and who see no evil when corporate fraud goes wild will only see their own taxes rise as corporations come for more and more wealth and use the American people as an ATM which is where we are now.
We have millionaires and billionaires today that need to pay more taxes because they get their wealth from corporations that use public services and infrastructure a million times more than an individual. The argument that the rich pay individual taxes and should not be taxed as shareholders is a scam. They don't pay twice----they pay their fair share.
In Baltimore we have new office buildings being built with complete tax free arrangements all under the guise of needing to attract jobs----the citizens of Baltimore see their tax revenue used to build all of the new infrastructure for those buildings----all of the maintenance, policing, all of the education of citizens who will work there----being subsidized by the citizens in the name of jobs. We have businesses leaving Baltimore having not paid a million dollars in water bills while we have people losing houses because of a few hundred in water bills. The social and civic costs of a large corporate highrise ARE THE REASONS CORPORATIONS PAY MORE----AND SHOULD PAY LOTS MORE. Do small businesses need pay that much---of course not---that is what progressive taxation is about.
I knew that Clinton neo-liberals running with progressive taxation were posing because neo-liberals use taxes to increase wealth for corporations. So, they will never lower taxes on working and middle-class----they will only use tax revenue to subsidize corporate profit.
The Great Debate The lost promise of progressive taxes
By Ajay K. Mehrotra April 15, 2014
By midnight on April 15, roughly 140 million Americans will have filed their federal income tax returns and breathed a sigh of relief. Politicians from both parties, however, will spend most of the day criticizing our current tax system.
Conservatives bemoan that not enough people are paying taxes. They insist that a minority of “job creators” and “makers” are underwriting the social benefits that go to the “takers.” Liberals cite the growing concentration of wealth and lament that the rich don’t pay their fair share. In this new Gilded Age, they say, the 1 percent should be paying far more of their annual earnings.
Yet neither party seems willing to reform our tax system dramatically. Both avoid talking about the vital link between taxes and government spending. This was not always the case.
More than a century ago, during the first Gilded Age, lawmakers embraced progressive taxation. Responding to the massive inequalities between plutocrats and workers, policymakers used graduated taxes to rebalance the tax burden, reminding Americans about their shared duties to each other.
As the nation struggles through another period of rising inequality and social dislocation, history shows there are effective ways to address these issues.
The reformers’ goal then was to reallocate the burden of financing a bourgeoning modern industrial state. They were not seeking to radically redistribute wealth, as some Tea Party conservatives claim or as some on the left may hope. The Progressives wanted to replace tariffs and excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco — the existing system of indirect, regressive and hidden taxes — with a direct, graduated and transparent tax system. They wanted to create a new fiscal order.
By taxing individual incomes, business profits and wealth transfers instead of ordinary consumption goods, activists were trying to force those segments of society that had the greatest taxpaying ability — the wealthy individuals and corporations, then largely in the Northeast — to share the burden of underwriting a modern democratic state. Progressives a century ago, like their liberal counterparts today, believed citizens owed a debt to society in relation to their “ability to pay.”
This curt yet crucial phrase captured the idea that people who had greater economic power also had a greater social obligation to contribute to the public good — to contribute not just proportionally but also progressively more. Influential thinkers and political leaders — including Francis A. Walker, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic presidential nominee — used the term “ability to pay” to illustrate the widening circle of social responsibilities in a modern society.
The Progressive Era was, after all, a time when the social dimensions of American democracy were paramount. “The identification with the common lot,” as the influential social reformer Jane Addams noted, was “the essential idea of democracy.”
Creating a new tax regime based on the ability to pay had significant consequences. Not only did it provide sorely needed revenue while addressing growing inequality, it also fostered greater social solidarity and bolstered faith in government — a lesson lost on many lawmakers today.
Progressive Era politicians knew that adopting graduated taxes to counterbalance the existing regressive tariff and excise tax was one way to show that all Americans were contributing to the greater collective good. Graduated taxes reflected the importance of shared sacrifice.
Reformers believed progressive taxes could be used to reconfigure the relationship between citizens and the state to renegotiate a new social contract and forge a new sense of fiscal citizenship.
Activists also contended that a lawmaker’s duty, as part of this new social contract, was to ensure that the tax burden would be shared fairly by all Americans. If policymakers held up their end of the bargain, reformers argued, citizens would come to trust, even welcome, the growing powers of the modern state.
Americans would come to see how the public sector could enhance their private lives, creating the basis for economic development and prosperity, while also providing assistance in times of stress and crisis. They would view government not as an enemy, but as an ethical agency “whose positive aid,” Richard T. Ely, the progressive economist, explained, “is an indispensable condition of human progress.”
Indeed, making sure that the wealthy contributed their fair share was one of the key motivations for a progressive tax system. “I have no disposition to tax wealth unnecessarily or unjustly,” Tennessee Representative Cordell Hull, one of the chief architects of the 1913 progressive income tax, said: “but I do believe that the wealth of the country should bear its just share of the burden of taxation, and that is should not be permitted to shirk that duty.”
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Watching the Congressional neo-liberals and Obama look for every reason in the book to allow Bush's tax cuts for the rich reach its maximum in 2010 was painful ------they created every reason in the world that the Republicans made them give the rich a trillion dollars in tax breaks in 2010-----zero taxes across the board for the rich and they took advantage of this planned event. Then we watched as taxes on the rich went up a few percent-----when everyone was looking for an FDR moment where taxes on corporations and the rich went to 60% or more. The rich commit more tax fraud then a few percentage increase would ever cover.
CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS GAVE THE RICH JUST WHAT BUSH PLANNED IN 2010----THE LARGEST TAX BREAK IN HISTORY.
Obama was clear once elected----he was not going to redistribute wealth from the rich----he would continue the redistribution to the rich.
Congress had a super-majority when they came to office in 2009------they could have passed any tax law they wanted but waited until the Republicans ended that super-majority to move on tax reform.
REAL PROGRESSIVE CONGRESSIONAL POLS WOULD HAVE MADE PROGRESSIVE TAX REFORM THE FIRST ON THE LIST!
The reason for placing all the higher taxes on Medicare for the affluent is that Affordable Care Act seeks to end access to Medicare for all that are not affluent. They simply placed the burden of support for Medicare on the group that will be getting it.
The important thing to know as with Maryland public policy------IF YOU DO NOT ENFORCE TAX COLLECTION THEN YOU HAVEN'T RAISED TAX RATES ON CORPORATIONS OR THE RICH. Obama had record amounts of corporate tax fraud because his IRS failed to audit -----hundreds of billions of dollars lost each year of Obama's terms because he allowed the fraud. This is what happens in Maryland and THIRD WORLD NATIONS.
Taxing the rich: The record under Obama
By Jeanne Sahadi @CNNMoney
President Obama's budget proposals to tax the rich are usually DOA with Republicans. Nevertheless, the top 1% are now paying an average tax rate that's 6 percentage points higher than when Obama first took office. New year. Old strategy. The White House has already revealed many of President Obama's proposals to raise taxes on the rich that will be in his 2016 budget, due out Monday.
Among them: A plan to increase investment taxes and get rid of the so-called "trust fund loophole" in the estate tax.
The idea is to help pay for other measures aimed at helping low- and middle-income families. They may also be used to help pay for increased government spending.
Calling for higher taxes on the rich has been a feature of every one of Obama's budgets since 2009. Remember the Buffett Rule? That would have imposed a minimum 30% effective federal tax rate on the very wealthy.
That one and most others didn't get very far, but that doesn't mean Obama's push hasn't been effective.
Under Obama, the average federal tax rate paid by the top 1% of households has gone up more than 6 percentage points to an estimated 33.8% today, according to the Tax Policy Center.
Related: How Obama would close the 'trust fund loophole'
That's largely due to the following tax hikes that were part of the Affordable Care Act and the bipartisan fiscal cliff deal at the start of 2013.
Higher Medicare tax on top wages: It used to be that everyone paid 1.45% in Medicare taxes on all their wages (or 2.9% if self-employed). But the Affordable Care Act added an additional 0.9% tax on wages over $200,000 ($250,000 if married).
So the highest wage earners now pay 1.45% on their earned income up to that threshold and 2.35% on the earnings above it.
New Medicare tax on investment income: The ACA also imposed the Medicare tax on investment income at a rate of 3.8%.
In this context, investment income can come from capital gains, dividends, interest, rental income and annuities.
It's not a straightforward tax in that it wouldn't necessarily apply to 100% of one's investment income. It would apply to whichever is less -- your investment income or the amount that your modified adjusted gross income (AGI) exceeds the high-income threshold.
A higher top income tax rate: For those with taxable income over $400,000 ($450,000 if married), the fiscal cliff deal raised their top income tax rate to 39.6%, up from 35% previously.
Higher capital gains and dividend tax rates: For those with taxable income over $400,000 ($450,000 if married), their rate on dividends and long-term capital gains is now 20%, up from 15% previously.
In his 2016 budget proposal, Obama will call for the long-term capital gains and dividend tax rate for high-income households to be raised again -- this time to 24.2%.
So for taxpayers also subject to the 3.8% Medicare surtax, they would pay a top rate of 28% on at least some of their investment income.
Limits on tax breaks for high-income households: For people with adjusted gross incomes over $250,000 (or $300,000 for married couples), the fiscal cliff deal reinstated limitations or phase-outs that reduce the value of itemized deductions and personal exemptions.
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Looking at state elections below you see the Clinton neo-liberal posing progressive-----Heather Mizeur. She was pretending to support progressive issues that she knew would never happen because as a Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberal -----global corporations do not allow progressive issues that cost money. Trans Pacific Trade Pact will end all these issues Mizeur supported and Mizeur is a great big global corporate TPP supporter.
Minimum wage increase by 2022? REALLY? TPP is due to be installed by then allowing all wage laws be ignored as Mizeur knows. Her support on taxing the rich? A few percentage points with no brackets. Maryland has huge tax fraud of the rich and corporations which would negate any of what she supported. Mizeur never mentioned the fraud or had any intent to install oversight and accountability----
THAT IS HOW YOU KNOW A CANDIDATE IS POSING PROGRESSIVE-----THEY ARE LYING WHEN THEY DO NOT SHOUT OUT ABOUT THESE BIG PICTURE PROBLEMS.
Look below to see who called Mizeur progressive-----The editorial board of the Sun is the most neo-liberal/neo-conservative media board around. There is not a progressive opinion columnist in the Baltimore Sun. Dresser only allows Clinton neo-liberal views in his articles. EMILY's LIST is a Hillary Clinton neo-liberal group so you know when they support a candidate---they are neo-liberal. Center Maryland is an O'Malley media group for goodness sake! Please look at what is being said and look at what these candidates support broadly----not simply one progressive issue. Mizeur was a Wall Street leveraging, public partnership privatizing, global market neo-liberal throwing out a few progressive issues.
What They're Saying Editorial Board, The Baltimore Sun:
"A supporter of higher taxes on the rich, a minimum wage of $16.70 (by 2022) and full legalization of marijuana, [Mizeur] is running the most purely liberal campaign the state has seen in at least a generation."
Stephanie Schriock, EMILY's List President: "Heather Mizeur is a progressive powerhouse who will fight for the rights of Maryland’s women and working families from day one. Heather is poised to be the first elected openly gay governor in the country and the first woman to serve as governor in the Free State. The EMILY's List community—now three million members strong--is excited about this glass-ceiling breaker."
Patricia Murphy, The Daily Beast: "The former Hill staffer, aide to John Kerry, and welder’s daughter has been called 'audacious,' 'canny,' and 'hard-charging,' and her run for Maryland governor is all of those things."
Michael Dresser, The Baltimore Sun: "So far, Mizeur has focused on detailed policy proposals and avoided the bitter attacks that have characterized the campaigns of her two rivals for the Democratic nomination."
Josh Kurtz, Center Maryland: "Mizeur is one of the canniest politicians in Maryland today. She doesn’t run from her beliefs or her natural constituencies. Instead, she offsets them – or more to the point, she augments them – by working other issues with appeal in different parts of the state."
Todd Eberly, Political Scientist at St. Mary's College: "I consider [Mizeur] to be the most exciting candidate in the race--and in a primary, excitement matters."
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Meanwhile here is a good assessment of Mizeur as a progressive. This person looked at what was said and then looked further at why these things didn't make sense. Supporting the research of fracking in Maryland and not shouting out against it because there is already plenty of fracking research is a stance that shows flipping is on the way. Her millionaire tax was straight from the Clinton neo-liberal file where millionaires get to pay a few percentage points more than their secretaries.
I knew Heather was a poser and that is why I ran for Governor of Maryland.
PLEASE BECOME ENGAGED IN POLITICS -----BE THE REAL LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATE----AS A VOTER LOOK BEYOND THE TALKING POINTS TO SEE WHO THESE CANDIDATES ARE.
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Heather Mizeur: the real thing or a deception?
Posted on February 2, 2014 by interestingblogger
I’ve been hearing so much about current Delegate Heather Mizeur who is running for Governor against Democratic establishment challengers. She was even profiled by the Baltimore City Paper in their article titled ‘The Quiet Revolution.’ However, I looked into her positions and campaign itself to see if she was the real deal.
Lets start with her campaign website. On a page titled ‘Issues,’ it describes her stated positions on numerous topics ranging from natural gas to marijuana policy. On this page, she says (important parts are bolded):
I believe that government should work for all Maryland families, leaving no one to settle for the status quo. We are one community, and we will succeed when we work together. Together, we will accomplish great things, like building a long term sustainable economy, ensuring the best education for all our children, and protecting the natural resources across the state. We face great challenges as a state, and also incredible opportunities. If we roll up our sleeves and get to work out in all of our communities, we will make great strides. We will learn from each other’s challenges and struggles, but also from each other’s successes and solutions.
I looked in depth into all of her positions to see if she upheld this in earnest. On a page detailing her positions on jobs and the economy, she outlined a ‘ten-point plan‘ which called for the reinstating of a tax on millionaires, a living wage of $16.70 in Maryland by 2022 (which seems a far way away), giving tax relief to small businesses, strengthening job training, making sure sick leave is available to all Maryland workers, rebuilding schools in Maryland, growing Maryland’s ‘innovation economy,’ invest in public infrastructure, making regulations streamlined and increase ‘clean energy’ jobs.
While most of her ideas seem progressive, first off the idea of increasing the innovation economy is deeply troubling. Her full jobs plan, which is 24 pages long, says Maryland should “commercialize academic research,” expand cyber security in the state, and focus more on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) even though ‘soft’ sciences are already being downgraded nationwide. This is disturbing. Then, the idea of increasing ‘clean energy’ jobs sounds good, but as the term has been defined by the Obama administration, clean energy includes nuclear power and natural gas. If Mizeur doesn’t agree to this definition, then she should specify it. The mention of streamlining regulations sounds eerily like neoliberal language, which is NOT good:
Businesses thrive on certainty and an understanding of the rules of engagement. Our business community is entitled to a clear, swift and easy-to-navigate regulatory system.
However, a sigh of relief comes when one reads what her position on education is. The reason for this is that is she is critical of standardized testing, which follows what many teachers and education advocates are calling for on a nationwide basis, but in their specific localities. She also wants to be more committed to public education funding, expand afterschool and summer programs, and making Pre-K available to more kids.
From here, it is important to move to her issues concerning the environment. She takes a strong stand against fracking, wanting to have a moratorium until studies are completed. However, it is not clear what position she will take once the studies are completed. She seems to support more alternative energy in the state, opposes Keystone XL, and wants strong rules that try to prevent more stormwater runoff. As for Cove Point, she opposes the expansion of the current LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) facility there, saying that there are better alternatives that use ‘clean energy.’
Then, there’s her position on marijuana policy. Seemingly, she wants to follow the model in numerous states that have legalized marijuana, meaning that she wants it taxed and regulated by the government. She says that for Maryland, this approach would increase revenue, public safety and result in “additional benefits.”
After this is her push to end the power of money in Maryland politics. She proposes to enact a public campaign financing system in Maryland and improve campaign finance transparency. Still, she says nothing on this page or elsewhere about increasing taxes on corporations in the state while lowering them for the majority of Marylanders, or looking to repeal laws that have resulted in deregulation of the energy industry which was likely a result of this.
Then there’s her position on other issues such as gay marriage, and Obamacare. On the first, she supports what she calls ‘marriage equality’ which a false term for many reasons, but is common among liberals. As for Obamacare, the page on her website focuses on proposed ‘fixes’ she would make to the Maryland Health Connection system in order to make sure all are covered. This would be a perfect place to say she is for single-payer healthcare, but she does not include this.
From here, there are a number of important points that must be made. Mizeur worked on corporatist John Kerry’s campaign and backed Obama in 2008 after it was clear he was going to win, saying “It’s time for everyone to rally around our nominee. I intend to pledge my support for Barack Obama. I am going to extremely enthusiastically support him.” This is deeply troubling that she would back such corporatist and neoliberal politicians. Also, she seems in with the national Democratic establishment, being appointed to the executive committee of the DNC by Obama (not sure if she’s still on it) and having an unknown relationship with the Maryland Democratic Party. Here bio on the website put out by the Maryland State archives gives a bit more. That’s not all. In an editorial about gambling in 2012 in the Washington Post, she outlined some positions that are deeply troubling:
“…we significantly lag our peers in turning these innovative ideas into marketable products. We have to improve on that with a long-term commitment to commercialization and loosening government regulations that are barriers to economic growth…Our economy works best when everyone plays by the same rules. We can boost the bottom line for small businesses while ending shell games for corporate titans…Maryland must give a boost to our dwindling state transportation trust fund. And no revenue option should be off the table to make this happen…I have proposed a new kind of public-private partnership, tested in North Carolina and elsewhere, that uses creative financing options to fund sweeping transformations of our school systems. A partnership with private pension funds, which invest billions of dollars annually, can provide the seed money to get this program up and running. If organized labor gets involved, we could guarantee that these new jobs come with good union wages and benefits.”
Partnering with business in such a way, loosening certain government regulations and having any revenue option just doesn’t seem to be a good combination.
Then, using the Maryland Campaign Reporting System, one can find out if these positions really stand out in reality. [1] From this, I found that Mizeur’s major contributors (groups, organizations, unions, etc…, not including her many, many individual contributors) were the following [2]:
While none of these organizations are big in the state, they do put a question into your mind: who does Heather Mizeur really work for? (meaning: who will she represent?)
I can say I am unsure and critical of Mizeur, and I am not currently in support. In the end, you can decide if Heather Mizeur is right for Maryland, because it seems like the Democratic establishment candidates in Maryland don’t give a damn about Marylanders, only caring about the fat cats and dough that is stuffed into their big pockets.
Notes:
[1] How did I find out this information? I used the Maryland Campaign Reporting Information System. You can search it here. To do more with the Maryland State Board of Elections Database, go here. Here’s a screenshot of the search I used:
[2] As for True Q LLC and Fantastic Products, Inc., nothing was found about them in an internet search. These contributors were picked from individual contributions that were more than $4,000, not cumulative. This means that if an organization had different contributions that would add up to $4,000, this would not be on the list. Here’s the 475 pages of contributions given to Mizeur, via the MD State of Board of Elections. If you need more clarification, please comment below this article.
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Looking at taxation at the local level we look at Baltimore and Maryland at large to see what a Clinton neo-liberal does while pretending to protect the middle-class and wants to hold banks accountable -----O'Malley's credit bond leverage as a Bain's Capital government bankruptcy tool. The citizens of Baltimore have been taxed to death and have the highest property tax in the state because so much of the city's revenue is lost to fraud. IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO GROW JOHNS HOPKINS INTO A GLOBAL CORPORATION! Take policy in Baltimore is also used to force working and middle-class homeowners out of communities Hopkins wants to develop.
The last election for Mayor of Baltimore and Baltimore City Council had the usual progressive posing from politicians who work for the very neo-conservative Hopkins. It's even harder to pose progressive from the far-right!
Each of the candidates for Mayor of Baltimore pushed the lower property tax issue even as they knew O'Malley had tied bond leverage to property taxes and that the bond market crash was coming soon. There was no way property taxes were going down when all the bond default would bring property taxes in Baltimore far higher.
Now, giving credit to Maryland Assembly pols from Baltimore----they did push property tax breaks for a few ------I will look at all this through the week. Needless to say, the exposure to such a level of bond debt at the time of a bond market crash will have property taxes high for everyone......EXCEPT CORPORATIONS AND THE RICH.
REMEMBER, DEMOCRATS DO NOT SET PEOPLE UP FOR THESE KINDS OF LOSSES ALL GEARED TO MAXIMIZE PROFIT FOR WALL STREET. ALSO, THESE POLICIES ARE ILLEGAL-----NO MATTER WHAT THEY SAY-----IT WAS PRE-MEDITATED, DELIBERATE DEFRAUDING OF THE CITIZENS OF MARYLAND.
Posted at 7:17 PM ET, 01/28/2011
Maryland may need 56-percent property tax hike to cover state debt, report says
By Aaron C. Davis
Maryland lawmakers will either have to raise property taxes by 56 percent over the next five years, or take away $1.1 billion from classrooms, police, and other core state services to cover record state borrowing, budget analysts said Friday.
The dire predictions come from a combination of bills coming due on Maryland's long-term debt, plus falling property tax revenues, which have traditionally covered the costs.
The approach Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) took to blunt years of recessionary budget problems is partly responsible, according to a report released Friday afternoon by the state's nonpartisan budget analysts.
In the last three years, O'Malley has accelerated a decade-long practice in Annapolis of shifting expenses once paid entirely with cash to the state's capital budget, which is funded with bond money repaid with interest over 15 years.
The approach allowed Maryland to increase spending on school construction, as well as to continue robust funding for Chesapeake Bay restoration, open-space and other environmental programs during the worst years of the downturn. But it will come at a cost, the report said.
Over the next five years, principal and interest payments on state debt will rise from $835 million annually to over $1.1 billion in 2016.
During the same time, state property taxes and other revenues set aside for debt are expected to shrink, from $954 million to $715 million annually, according to the report.
Save tax increases, the budget lawmakers are now preparing will be last in years in which existing property tax rates and other special revenues would cover Maryland's annual debt costs, the report said.
Beginning in 2013, $132 million from the state's general fund will be needed to cover the debt payments. The yearly cost would rise to $398 million by 2016.
Those costs would eat away at Maryland's $13-billion general fund, which pays for education, Medicaid, public safety and other costs, and is already projected to suffer from major shortfalls for most of the rest of the decade.
The report by the Department of Legislative Services said that to keep the state's operating budget whole, Maryland's current property tax rate of 11.2 cents would need to increase annually, to 17.5 cents by 2016. The rate is set on $100 of assessable base.
Maryland's increasing debt costs raise the specter that O'Malley, who in last fall's election railed against his predecessor, former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) for supporting a previous property tax increase, could be forced to make a similar move.
O'Malley spokesman Shaun Adamec said in an e-mail that he doubted the governor would go in that direction.
"Funds are allocated each year to keep the property tax rate where it is and I don't suspect we would discontinue doing so going forward."
O'Malley this year has already proposed reducing the overall size of the state's capital budget to $925 million from $1.1 billion after a commission said Maryland was too close to its state's debt limit of 8 percent of revenues.
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Below you see how these Clinton neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons work as the pretend to cut taxes for the middle/working class------Rawlings-Blake never intended to give these property tax breaks because she knew the corporate subsidy and bond credit leverage was too high. She did make the cuts to the people and services----which is how you know a pol is not a Democrat----
Again, Rawlings-Blake never intended to lower property taxes---she just said what the people wanted to hear. We knew there would be no reduction because of the degree of corporate subsidy and bond leverage. Global corporate pols are locking into all this state and local bond debt to create a complete corporate capture of government under the guise of insolvency. Look as well at the Baltimore Sun------back in 2013 when Rawlings-Blake and others were making those claims----not one word on the crashing bond market.
WE HAVE NOT HEARD A WORD ON THE CRASHING BOND MARKET FROM MEDIA.
The media will come back and criticize when its all over----but it will not hold power accountable before so citizens can make informed decisions in voting.
Backsliding on Baltimore's property tax If SRB stops cutting taxes when times are good, what will happen when things go bad?
Last year, the economic recovery in Maryland and particularly in Baltimore was sputtering, due in no small part to federal government cutbacks. Still, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake managed to introduce a city budget that included no new taxes or fees, no cuts to services, a 2 percent raise for city workers, investments in some key priorities like street repair and Recreation and Parks — plus a 2-cent reduction in the property tax rate.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's $3.2 billion combined operating and capital budget for next fiscal year is 4.4 percent smaller than this year's. The plan includes no new taxes or fees, but no property tax cuts, either.--Luke Broadwater
This year, the economic recovery looks much more solid. The employment picture is improving, and Baltimore's real estate market is booming. The city recently reported that it was running a surplus in the current fiscal year, thanks in no small part to the biggest jump in property values in the state. Consequently, the mayor's budget includes no new taxes or fees, no cuts to services, a 2 percent raise for city workers and investments in some key priorities like school construction.
What's missing here? Oh yes, the property tax rate. The one Mayor Rawlings-Blake made a big to-do about a couple of years ago in her "Change to Grow" plan, which advocated all manner of tough medicine to reduce the cost of city services and set the stage for a substantial reduction in the single levy that makes Baltimore most uncompetitive with surrounding counties. In 2013, she promised to reduce the rate by 22 percent for homeowners over the course of the next decade — that would be 50 cents per $100 in assessed value.
The tough medicine, we've gotten. The mayor has instituted a variety of small taxes and fees, she's changed the shift schedules for police and firefighters in an effort to control overtime, she's cut employee health benefits, reduced the number of city workers and closed or privatized rec centers. There's no backsliding on that.
But in just the third year of the 10-year plan, she's showing that the tax cuts aren't really such a high priority. Her administration claims this pause in the reduction is no big deal because it is ahead of the pace to achieve the promised reduction, but the only way to make that math work out is to revert to a goal she set in 2011 to reduce the rate 20 cents by 2020 and to forget about the "Change to Grow" goal in whose name she has made all those painful cuts.
To get 50 cents in 10 years would require an average annual reduction of 5 cents. Even if we count the reductions she made before setting the 50-cent goal, she'll only have managed 13.8 cents by year three. That sounds behind the pace to us. Keeping up would have required finding space for just another 1.2-cent reduction this year, which would cost the city about $2.3 million. We find it hard to believe that if she was really determined she could not have found that in a $2.5 billion budget.
It's not that another 1.2 cents off the rate would do much to change the lives of average Baltimoreans. On a house valued at $150,000, it amounts to $18 a year. What's more important is the signal it would send. Not only does the steady effort to reduce taxes help ordinary residents stomach some of the tax breaks the city has doled out for big real estate projects, but by signaling a commitment to the broader goal, it also makes Baltimore a more attractive place for people to invest, whether that means a new apartment tower or a new rooftop deck.
The mayor is blaming weak revenue from the Horseshoe Casino for her inability to cut property taxes this year. Baloney. The city was originally expecting about $14 million from the casino in the next fiscal year, but now that's been downgraded to $8.3 million. Meanwhile, though, property tax revenues are expected to increase by $72 million next year. (Do we think this jump in the tax base is unrelated to the recent rate cuts? No.)
Budget Director Andrew Kleine says the city is also coping with assorted expenses that it did not anticipate in its 10-year plan, and he points to more and larger cuts planned in the years ahead, particularly if the city adopts a municipal trash collection fee that has so far proved a non-starter in the City Council.
Ultimately it's a question of priorities. If reducing the property tax rate is really a central goal of this mayor, she could find a way to do it. But Mayor Rawlings-Blake is showing that she's willing to walk away from her streak of rate cuts when times are good. What should make us confident that she'll resume when doing it gets tougher — if she's even still around to see her plan through?
People need to know that your rights as citizen are being dismantled ------global corporate pols and their desires for global corporate tribunal rule seeks to end our national sovereignty and with that our Constitutional rights as citizens and Rule of Law for all. Rule of Law and Equal Protection as citizens is central to our Constitution. Before Magna Carta autocratic rulers could do anything with impunity----SOUND FAMILIAR? THAT'S WHERE THESE GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS ARE TAKING THE US.
'Adherence to the rule of law is now believed to demand more than due legal process in preference to arbitrary rule. It now (for example) demands the equal subjection of all people – whatever their rank or position – to the ordinary law of the land; the appreciation and protection of individual rights and liberties and the ultimate ability of all citizens to be able to conduct themselves freely in a system guided by law and legal principle'.
Magna Carta at 800: We are Still Enjoying the Freedoms Won
June 15th, 2015
in econ_news
by John Stanton, The Conversation
Around 20 miles from central London, where modern-day government and democracy shape the lives of citizens throughout the United Kingdom, the Thames meanders peacefully through nondescript English countryside. This is just another part of the green and pleasant land that has come to define much of these shores.
Follow up:
Except that there’s something rather different about this rural corner of England. These riverside fields at Runnymede are reputed to be the setting for one of the most significant moments in UK democratic and constitutional history. The National Trust labels it “the birthplace of modern democracy”, while an impressive monument commemorates a “symbol of freedom under law”. It was here, of course, that the Magna Carta is said to have been sealed on June 15 1215 under the title of the “Great Charter”.
Bad King John The catalyst for Magna Carta was the tyrannical rule of King John and, in particular, his imposition of arbitrary taxes upon the barons. The sealing of Magna Carta marked the first time that the notion that an unelected sovereign should be restrained under law was officially recognised. From then on, the idea that citizens should not be subjected to the arbitrary rule of a tyrannical monarch but instead be ruled and governed upon foundations of accepted legal process and law had a legal foundation.
This was, in essence, an evolution of the Aristotlean idea of the supremacy of law in preference to the supremacy of man. Such a concept is today known as the rule of law and Magna Carta is widely accepted as being the birth of such rule in the UK constitution. So, a big moment.
King John.
Of course, understandings of the rule of law have altered and developed from that determined by King John’s subjection. Theorists and academics have, over the centuries, debated and set out contrasting views as to what Magna Carta means in practice.
Adherence to the rule of law is now believed to demand more than due legal process in preference to arbitrary rule. It now (for example) demands the equal subjection of all people – whatever their rank or position – to the ordinary law of the land; the appreciation and protection of individual rights and liberties and the ultimate ability of all citizens to be able to conduct themselves freely in a system guided by law and legal principle.
Modern Magna Carta To say that the modern UK constitution is one that adheres to the basic principles of the rule of law is to state the obvious.
That said, the UK constitutional system is markedly different from that which prevailed in the early 13th century. Monarchical legal power is virtually, if not completely, non-existent. Legislative and executive functions are in a sense fused through an institution built upon democracy and universal adult suffrage. The needs of citizens are fundamentally more diverse and complex than they were 800 years ago.
One of four known surviving 1215 exemplars of Magna Carta.
Consequently, the system involves a great deal more discretionary authority than traditional rule of law theorists might find acceptable. As well as this, competing interests and concerns of the state often demand difficult balances and compromises to be struck between pressing political matters and concerns on the one hand, and individual liberties and core values of due process on the other. Even these occurrences are carefully regulated and debated as part of a constitutional system that, while highly peculiar, is adaptable and flexible to the constantly shifting needs and concerns of society.
The core values set out by the Magna Carta, therefore – due legal process over arbitrary power and the freedom to act within a system guided by legal principle – are still very much at the heart of our constitution, even if that system has evolved and changed beyond all recognition.
Over the centuries most of the Great Charter’s clauses have been repealed. Only three of the original 63 clauses remain in force: those providing for the freedom of the Church of England; the protection of the liberties and free customs of the City of London; and the protection of individuals from imprisonment or punishment without due process.
But the legacy of Magna Carta runs much deeper. The establishment of the rule of law at Runnymede 800 years ago went on to inspire and shape the development of the UK constitution and, indeed, the constitutions of democratic systems the world over.
John Stanton is Lecturer, City Law School at City University London.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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The Clinton neo-liberals and Republicans play on the working and middle-class as to lowering taxes when they have no intentions of doing this at all. It is a progressive bone folks----and if you understand national and global public policy---as a citizen who votes must in order to make an intelligent vote----you know the history of global corporate characters from the past and what these global corporate characters have as an intention. The statement below should make Republican voters rebel as much as progressive labor and justice. As you see it was the arbitrary and abusive taxation practices that sparked the European and American revolutions. When Reagan/Clinton sold voters on government and social programs as the driver of higher taxes on the working and middle-class-----their only intention was to lower corporate and wealth tax rates and raise control of government revenue towards corporate subsidy. Taxes will never go down -----they simply go to benefit the social society or they become corporate profits for billion dollars businesses. Global corporations and their
'WIN AT ALL COST PROFIT MAXIMIZATION' WILL NEVER ALLOW SMALL BUSINESSES TO TAKE MARKET SHARE---THEY WILL ONLY USE THEM AS THEY ARE NOW IN LEGISLATING AWAY ALL OF THE PUBLIC SECTOR AND DEREGULATING.
'The catalyst for Magna Carta was the tyrannical rule of King John and, in particular, his imposition of arbitrary taxes upon the barons'.
FDR pushed for his aggressive taxation of the rich and corporations as a way to recover what was then the same massive frauds that brought the
Great Depression. It was a moral imperative to redistribute that fraud back into the economy. Obama ran on progressive redistribution of wealth when he never intended to do anything but continue wealth maximization for the rich.
REPUBLICAN AND CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRATS MUST STOP ALLOWING THE RICH TO PULL THE CHAIN OF LOWER TAXES-----
When Income Was Taxed at 94%: How FDR Tackled Debt and Reckless Republicans
FlaglerLive | August 14, 2011
FDR in Florida in 1926. (FDR Library)
How much can a U.S. president committed to greater equality hope to accomplish when lawmakers devoted to helping the rich hold the upper hand?
Advocacy for equality must take a backseat, Obama administration insiders insist, when fanatical friends of the fortunate in Congress recklessly endanger our nation.
But in 1943, a U.S. president confronted a debt ceiling crisis just like Obama’s — and came up with a different answer. Facing rabid lawmakers every bit as opposed to taxing the rich as ours today, Franklin D. Roosevelt didn’t let up on the struggle for a more equal America. He doubled down.
Roosevelt’s debt ceiling battle actually began right after Pearl Harbor. The nation needed a revenue boost to wage and win the war.
FDR and his New Dealers wanted to finance the war equitably, with stiff tax rates on high incomes. How stiff? FDR proposed a 100 percent top tax rate. At a time of “grave national danger,” Roosevelt told Congress in April 1942, “no American citizen ought to have a net income, after he has paid his taxes, of more than $25,000 a year.” That would be about $350,000 in today’s dollars.
The year before, steel exec Eugene Grace had grabbed $522,537, over $8 million today, in 1941 salary.
But conservative lawmakers would quickly reject FDR’s plan. Four months later, Roosevelt tried again. He repeated his $25,000 “supertax” income cap call in his Labor Day message.
Sam Pizzigati
The Live Commentary
Congress shrugged that request off, too. FDR still didn’t back down. In early October, he issued an executive order that limited top corporate salaries to $25,000 after taxes. The move would “provide for greater equality in contributing to the war effort,” Roosevelt declared.
Infuriated conservatives saw red, literally. The “only logical stopping place for this movement,” fumed Princeton economist Harley Lutz, would be “a completely communistic equalization of incomes.”
Rich-people-friendly lawmakers vowed to kill FDR’s executive order by any legislative means necessary. They ended up attaching a rider repealing the order to a bill that would give the wartime debt ceiling a desperately needed lift. FDR tried and failed to get that rider axed, then let the bill with it become law without his signature. He had no choice. Our troops needed financing.
Roosevelt had definitely lost the debt ceiling battle over the salary cap, as he no doubt knew he would. But sometimes a leader can win by “losing.” FDR didn’t prevail on the cap. He did prevail in his far broader struggle to shape the wartime finance debate.
Roosevelt’s relentless campaign to cap top incomes kept that debate focused on taxing the rich. Conservatives didn’t want to do that taxing. They wanted a national sales tax, as do many conservatives today. But FDR’s aggressive advocacy for equity never let that regressive sales tax notion get traction.
The war revenue debate would be fought on Roosevelt’s terms — not on whether to tax the rich, but on how much. And, in the end, that “how much” would turn out to be quite a great deal. By the war’s end, America’s wealthy would be paying taxes on income over $200,000 at a 94 percent statutory rate.
Americans making over $250,000 in 1944 — over $3.2 million today — paid 69 percent of their total incomes in federal income taxes, after exploiting every loophole they could find. In 2007, by contrast, America’s 400 highest earners paid just 18.1 percent of their total incomes, after loopholes, in federal taxes.
The debt ceiling “solution” that White House and congressional leaders bargained does not ask these top 400 — or any other rich Americans — to pay a penny more in taxes than they do now. In the 2011 debt ceiling struggle, inequality has clearly triumphed.
So what does FDR’s debt ceiling battle teach us? Maybe this: We really can have a more equal America. We just need to fight for it.
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Strong progressive taxation on the rich and corporations is a tool for fraud recovery that pays down the national, state, and local debt created by that fraud. THAT WAS WHAT FDR'S PROGRESSIVE TAX RATE WAS MAINLY ABOUT. That is what the same progressive tax rate would be about today. We wouldn't need tax extremes on wealth if they did not loot on a constant basis. We need to think about progressive tax reform as not only an equalizer----but as a tool for justice as FDR did. Republicans and conservative Democrats who see taxes of all kinds as bad and who see no evil when corporate fraud goes wild will only see their own taxes rise as corporations come for more and more wealth and use the American people as an ATM which is where we are now.
We have millionaires and billionaires today that need to pay more taxes because they get their wealth from corporations that use public services and infrastructure a million times more than an individual. The argument that the rich pay individual taxes and should not be taxed as shareholders is a scam. They don't pay twice----they pay their fair share.
In Baltimore we have new office buildings being built with complete tax free arrangements all under the guise of needing to attract jobs----the citizens of Baltimore see their tax revenue used to build all of the new infrastructure for those buildings----all of the maintenance, policing, all of the education of citizens who will work there----being subsidized by the citizens in the name of jobs. We have businesses leaving Baltimore having not paid a million dollars in water bills while we have people losing houses because of a few hundred in water bills. The social and civic costs of a large corporate highrise ARE THE REASONS CORPORATIONS PAY MORE----AND SHOULD PAY LOTS MORE. Do small businesses need pay that much---of course not---that is what progressive taxation is about.
I knew that Clinton neo-liberals running with progressive taxation were posing because neo-liberals use taxes to increase wealth for corporations. So, they will never lower taxes on working and middle-class----they will only use tax revenue to subsidize corporate profit.
The Great Debate The lost promise of progressive taxes
By Ajay K. Mehrotra April 15, 2014
By midnight on April 15, roughly 140 million Americans will have filed their federal income tax returns and breathed a sigh of relief. Politicians from both parties, however, will spend most of the day criticizing our current tax system.
Conservatives bemoan that not enough people are paying taxes. They insist that a minority of “job creators” and “makers” are underwriting the social benefits that go to the “takers.” Liberals cite the growing concentration of wealth and lament that the rich don’t pay their fair share. In this new Gilded Age, they say, the 1 percent should be paying far more of their annual earnings.
Yet neither party seems willing to reform our tax system dramatically. Both avoid talking about the vital link between taxes and government spending. This was not always the case.
More than a century ago, during the first Gilded Age, lawmakers embraced progressive taxation. Responding to the massive inequalities between plutocrats and workers, policymakers used graduated taxes to rebalance the tax burden, reminding Americans about their shared duties to each other.
As the nation struggles through another period of rising inequality and social dislocation, history shows there are effective ways to address these issues.
The reformers’ goal then was to reallocate the burden of financing a bourgeoning modern industrial state. They were not seeking to radically redistribute wealth, as some Tea Party conservatives claim or as some on the left may hope. The Progressives wanted to replace tariffs and excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco — the existing system of indirect, regressive and hidden taxes — with a direct, graduated and transparent tax system. They wanted to create a new fiscal order.
By taxing individual incomes, business profits and wealth transfers instead of ordinary consumption goods, activists were trying to force those segments of society that had the greatest taxpaying ability — the wealthy individuals and corporations, then largely in the Northeast — to share the burden of underwriting a modern democratic state. Progressives a century ago, like their liberal counterparts today, believed citizens owed a debt to society in relation to their “ability to pay.”
This curt yet crucial phrase captured the idea that people who had greater economic power also had a greater social obligation to contribute to the public good — to contribute not just proportionally but also progressively more. Influential thinkers and political leaders — including Francis A. Walker, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic presidential nominee — used the term “ability to pay” to illustrate the widening circle of social responsibilities in a modern society.
The Progressive Era was, after all, a time when the social dimensions of American democracy were paramount. “The identification with the common lot,” as the influential social reformer Jane Addams noted, was “the essential idea of democracy.”
Creating a new tax regime based on the ability to pay had significant consequences. Not only did it provide sorely needed revenue while addressing growing inequality, it also fostered greater social solidarity and bolstered faith in government — a lesson lost on many lawmakers today.
Progressive Era politicians knew that adopting graduated taxes to counterbalance the existing regressive tariff and excise tax was one way to show that all Americans were contributing to the greater collective good. Graduated taxes reflected the importance of shared sacrifice.
Reformers believed progressive taxes could be used to reconfigure the relationship between citizens and the state to renegotiate a new social contract and forge a new sense of fiscal citizenship.
Activists also contended that a lawmaker’s duty, as part of this new social contract, was to ensure that the tax burden would be shared fairly by all Americans. If policymakers held up their end of the bargain, reformers argued, citizens would come to trust, even welcome, the growing powers of the modern state.
Americans would come to see how the public sector could enhance their private lives, creating the basis for economic development and prosperity, while also providing assistance in times of stress and crisis. They would view government not as an enemy, but as an ethical agency “whose positive aid,” Richard T. Ely, the progressive economist, explained, “is an indispensable condition of human progress.”
Indeed, making sure that the wealthy contributed their fair share was one of the key motivations for a progressive tax system. “I have no disposition to tax wealth unnecessarily or unjustly,” Tennessee Representative Cordell Hull, one of the chief architects of the 1913 progressive income tax, said: “but I do believe that the wealth of the country should bear its just share of the burden of taxation, and that is should not be permitted to shirk that duty.”
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Watching the Congressional neo-liberals and Obama look for every reason in the book to allow Bush's tax cuts for the rich reach its maximum in 2010 was painful ------they created every reason in the world that the Republicans made them give the rich a trillion dollars in tax breaks in 2010-----zero taxes across the board for the rich and they took advantage of this planned event. Then we watched as taxes on the rich went up a few percent-----when everyone was looking for an FDR moment where taxes on corporations and the rich went to 60% or more. The rich commit more tax fraud then a few percentage increase would ever cover.
CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS GAVE THE RICH JUST WHAT BUSH PLANNED IN 2010----THE LARGEST TAX BREAK IN HISTORY.
Obama was clear once elected----he was not going to redistribute wealth from the rich----he would continue the redistribution to the rich.
Congress had a super-majority when they came to office in 2009------they could have passed any tax law they wanted but waited until the Republicans ended that super-majority to move on tax reform.
REAL PROGRESSIVE CONGRESSIONAL POLS WOULD HAVE MADE PROGRESSIVE TAX REFORM THE FIRST ON THE LIST!
The reason for placing all the higher taxes on Medicare for the affluent is that Affordable Care Act seeks to end access to Medicare for all that are not affluent. They simply placed the burden of support for Medicare on the group that will be getting it.
The important thing to know as with Maryland public policy------IF YOU DO NOT ENFORCE TAX COLLECTION THEN YOU HAVEN'T RAISED TAX RATES ON CORPORATIONS OR THE RICH. Obama had record amounts of corporate tax fraud because his IRS failed to audit -----hundreds of billions of dollars lost each year of Obama's terms because he allowed the fraud. This is what happens in Maryland and THIRD WORLD NATIONS.
Taxing the rich: The record under Obama
By Jeanne Sahadi @CNNMoney
President Obama's budget proposals to tax the rich are usually DOA with Republicans. Nevertheless, the top 1% are now paying an average tax rate that's 6 percentage points higher than when Obama first took office. New year. Old strategy. The White House has already revealed many of President Obama's proposals to raise taxes on the rich that will be in his 2016 budget, due out Monday.
Among them: A plan to increase investment taxes and get rid of the so-called "trust fund loophole" in the estate tax.
The idea is to help pay for other measures aimed at helping low- and middle-income families. They may also be used to help pay for increased government spending.
Calling for higher taxes on the rich has been a feature of every one of Obama's budgets since 2009. Remember the Buffett Rule? That would have imposed a minimum 30% effective federal tax rate on the very wealthy.
That one and most others didn't get very far, but that doesn't mean Obama's push hasn't been effective.
Under Obama, the average federal tax rate paid by the top 1% of households has gone up more than 6 percentage points to an estimated 33.8% today, according to the Tax Policy Center.
Related: How Obama would close the 'trust fund loophole'
That's largely due to the following tax hikes that were part of the Affordable Care Act and the bipartisan fiscal cliff deal at the start of 2013.
Higher Medicare tax on top wages: It used to be that everyone paid 1.45% in Medicare taxes on all their wages (or 2.9% if self-employed). But the Affordable Care Act added an additional 0.9% tax on wages over $200,000 ($250,000 if married).
So the highest wage earners now pay 1.45% on their earned income up to that threshold and 2.35% on the earnings above it.
New Medicare tax on investment income: The ACA also imposed the Medicare tax on investment income at a rate of 3.8%.
In this context, investment income can come from capital gains, dividends, interest, rental income and annuities.
It's not a straightforward tax in that it wouldn't necessarily apply to 100% of one's investment income. It would apply to whichever is less -- your investment income or the amount that your modified adjusted gross income (AGI) exceeds the high-income threshold.
A higher top income tax rate: For those with taxable income over $400,000 ($450,000 if married), the fiscal cliff deal raised their top income tax rate to 39.6%, up from 35% previously.
Higher capital gains and dividend tax rates: For those with taxable income over $400,000 ($450,000 if married), their rate on dividends and long-term capital gains is now 20%, up from 15% previously.
In his 2016 budget proposal, Obama will call for the long-term capital gains and dividend tax rate for high-income households to be raised again -- this time to 24.2%.
So for taxpayers also subject to the 3.8% Medicare surtax, they would pay a top rate of 28% on at least some of their investment income.
Limits on tax breaks for high-income households: For people with adjusted gross incomes over $250,000 (or $300,000 for married couples), the fiscal cliff deal reinstated limitations or phase-outs that reduce the value of itemized deductions and personal exemptions.
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Looking at state elections below you see the Clinton neo-liberal posing progressive-----Heather Mizeur. She was pretending to support progressive issues that she knew would never happen because as a Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberal -----global corporations do not allow progressive issues that cost money. Trans Pacific Trade Pact will end all these issues Mizeur supported and Mizeur is a great big global corporate TPP supporter.
Minimum wage increase by 2022? REALLY? TPP is due to be installed by then allowing all wage laws be ignored as Mizeur knows. Her support on taxing the rich? A few percentage points with no brackets. Maryland has huge tax fraud of the rich and corporations which would negate any of what she supported. Mizeur never mentioned the fraud or had any intent to install oversight and accountability----
THAT IS HOW YOU KNOW A CANDIDATE IS POSING PROGRESSIVE-----THEY ARE LYING WHEN THEY DO NOT SHOUT OUT ABOUT THESE BIG PICTURE PROBLEMS.
Look below to see who called Mizeur progressive-----The editorial board of the Sun is the most neo-liberal/neo-conservative media board around. There is not a progressive opinion columnist in the Baltimore Sun. Dresser only allows Clinton neo-liberal views in his articles. EMILY's LIST is a Hillary Clinton neo-liberal group so you know when they support a candidate---they are neo-liberal. Center Maryland is an O'Malley media group for goodness sake! Please look at what is being said and look at what these candidates support broadly----not simply one progressive issue. Mizeur was a Wall Street leveraging, public partnership privatizing, global market neo-liberal throwing out a few progressive issues.
What They're Saying Editorial Board, The Baltimore Sun:
"A supporter of higher taxes on the rich, a minimum wage of $16.70 (by 2022) and full legalization of marijuana, [Mizeur] is running the most purely liberal campaign the state has seen in at least a generation."
Stephanie Schriock, EMILY's List President: "Heather Mizeur is a progressive powerhouse who will fight for the rights of Maryland’s women and working families from day one. Heather is poised to be the first elected openly gay governor in the country and the first woman to serve as governor in the Free State. The EMILY's List community—now three million members strong--is excited about this glass-ceiling breaker."
Patricia Murphy, The Daily Beast: "The former Hill staffer, aide to John Kerry, and welder’s daughter has been called 'audacious,' 'canny,' and 'hard-charging,' and her run for Maryland governor is all of those things."
Michael Dresser, The Baltimore Sun: "So far, Mizeur has focused on detailed policy proposals and avoided the bitter attacks that have characterized the campaigns of her two rivals for the Democratic nomination."
Josh Kurtz, Center Maryland: "Mizeur is one of the canniest politicians in Maryland today. She doesn’t run from her beliefs or her natural constituencies. Instead, she offsets them – or more to the point, she augments them – by working other issues with appeal in different parts of the state."
Todd Eberly, Political Scientist at St. Mary's College: "I consider [Mizeur] to be the most exciting candidate in the race--and in a primary, excitement matters."
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Meanwhile here is a good assessment of Mizeur as a progressive. This person looked at what was said and then looked further at why these things didn't make sense. Supporting the research of fracking in Maryland and not shouting out against it because there is already plenty of fracking research is a stance that shows flipping is on the way. Her millionaire tax was straight from the Clinton neo-liberal file where millionaires get to pay a few percentage points more than their secretaries.
I knew Heather was a poser and that is why I ran for Governor of Maryland.
PLEASE BECOME ENGAGED IN POLITICS -----BE THE REAL LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATE----AS A VOTER LOOK BEYOND THE TALKING POINTS TO SEE WHO THESE CANDIDATES ARE.
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Heather Mizeur: the real thing or a deception?
Posted on February 2, 2014 by interestingblogger
I’ve been hearing so much about current Delegate Heather Mizeur who is running for Governor against Democratic establishment challengers. She was even profiled by the Baltimore City Paper in their article titled ‘The Quiet Revolution.’ However, I looked into her positions and campaign itself to see if she was the real deal.
Lets start with her campaign website. On a page titled ‘Issues,’ it describes her stated positions on numerous topics ranging from natural gas to marijuana policy. On this page, she says (important parts are bolded):
I believe that government should work for all Maryland families, leaving no one to settle for the status quo. We are one community, and we will succeed when we work together. Together, we will accomplish great things, like building a long term sustainable economy, ensuring the best education for all our children, and protecting the natural resources across the state. We face great challenges as a state, and also incredible opportunities. If we roll up our sleeves and get to work out in all of our communities, we will make great strides. We will learn from each other’s challenges and struggles, but also from each other’s successes and solutions.
I looked in depth into all of her positions to see if she upheld this in earnest. On a page detailing her positions on jobs and the economy, she outlined a ‘ten-point plan‘ which called for the reinstating of a tax on millionaires, a living wage of $16.70 in Maryland by 2022 (which seems a far way away), giving tax relief to small businesses, strengthening job training, making sure sick leave is available to all Maryland workers, rebuilding schools in Maryland, growing Maryland’s ‘innovation economy,’ invest in public infrastructure, making regulations streamlined and increase ‘clean energy’ jobs.
While most of her ideas seem progressive, first off the idea of increasing the innovation economy is deeply troubling. Her full jobs plan, which is 24 pages long, says Maryland should “commercialize academic research,” expand cyber security in the state, and focus more on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) even though ‘soft’ sciences are already being downgraded nationwide. This is disturbing. Then, the idea of increasing ‘clean energy’ jobs sounds good, but as the term has been defined by the Obama administration, clean energy includes nuclear power and natural gas. If Mizeur doesn’t agree to this definition, then she should specify it. The mention of streamlining regulations sounds eerily like neoliberal language, which is NOT good:
Businesses thrive on certainty and an understanding of the rules of engagement. Our business community is entitled to a clear, swift and easy-to-navigate regulatory system.
However, a sigh of relief comes when one reads what her position on education is. The reason for this is that is she is critical of standardized testing, which follows what many teachers and education advocates are calling for on a nationwide basis, but in their specific localities. She also wants to be more committed to public education funding, expand afterschool and summer programs, and making Pre-K available to more kids.
From here, it is important to move to her issues concerning the environment. She takes a strong stand against fracking, wanting to have a moratorium until studies are completed. However, it is not clear what position she will take once the studies are completed. She seems to support more alternative energy in the state, opposes Keystone XL, and wants strong rules that try to prevent more stormwater runoff. As for Cove Point, she opposes the expansion of the current LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) facility there, saying that there are better alternatives that use ‘clean energy.’
Then, there’s her position on marijuana policy. Seemingly, she wants to follow the model in numerous states that have legalized marijuana, meaning that she wants it taxed and regulated by the government. She says that for Maryland, this approach would increase revenue, public safety and result in “additional benefits.”
After this is her push to end the power of money in Maryland politics. She proposes to enact a public campaign financing system in Maryland and improve campaign finance transparency. Still, she says nothing on this page or elsewhere about increasing taxes on corporations in the state while lowering them for the majority of Marylanders, or looking to repeal laws that have resulted in deregulation of the energy industry which was likely a result of this.
Then there’s her position on other issues such as gay marriage, and Obamacare. On the first, she supports what she calls ‘marriage equality’ which a false term for many reasons, but is common among liberals. As for Obamacare, the page on her website focuses on proposed ‘fixes’ she would make to the Maryland Health Connection system in order to make sure all are covered. This would be a perfect place to say she is for single-payer healthcare, but she does not include this.
From here, there are a number of important points that must be made. Mizeur worked on corporatist John Kerry’s campaign and backed Obama in 2008 after it was clear he was going to win, saying “It’s time for everyone to rally around our nominee. I intend to pledge my support for Barack Obama. I am going to extremely enthusiastically support him.” This is deeply troubling that she would back such corporatist and neoliberal politicians. Also, she seems in with the national Democratic establishment, being appointed to the executive committee of the DNC by Obama (not sure if she’s still on it) and having an unknown relationship with the Maryland Democratic Party. Here bio on the website put out by the Maryland State archives gives a bit more. That’s not all. In an editorial about gambling in 2012 in the Washington Post, she outlined some positions that are deeply troubling:
“…we significantly lag our peers in turning these innovative ideas into marketable products. We have to improve on that with a long-term commitment to commercialization and loosening government regulations that are barriers to economic growth…Our economy works best when everyone plays by the same rules. We can boost the bottom line for small businesses while ending shell games for corporate titans…Maryland must give a boost to our dwindling state transportation trust fund. And no revenue option should be off the table to make this happen…I have proposed a new kind of public-private partnership, tested in North Carolina and elsewhere, that uses creative financing options to fund sweeping transformations of our school systems. A partnership with private pension funds, which invest billions of dollars annually, can provide the seed money to get this program up and running. If organized labor gets involved, we could guarantee that these new jobs come with good union wages and benefits.”
Partnering with business in such a way, loosening certain government regulations and having any revenue option just doesn’t seem to be a good combination.
Then, using the Maryland Campaign Reporting System, one can find out if these positions really stand out in reality. [1] From this, I found that Mizeur’s major contributors (groups, organizations, unions, etc…, not including her many, many individual contributors) were the following [2]:
- The Mizeur Group [it defines itself as “innovators in health care and energy policy.” For information on who it gives money to, go here]
- Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care [it defines itself as a “non-profit federation of affiliate state health organizations, together representing more than 11,000 non-profit and for-profit nursing facility, assisted living, developmentally-disabled, and subacute care providers that care for approximately one million elderly and disabled individuals each day.”]
- Current Communications Group LLC [now this organization is owned by Ormazabal. This company defines itself in its mission as “a company specialized in the electric sector focused on innovation.”]
- Joslin Orthopedic Gear [this company defines itself as “the originator and manufacturer of the ergonomically designed stretch arm slings.”]
- Montgomery County Career Firefighters Association [“the Montgomery County Career Fire Fighters Association represents over 1100 fire fighter/paramedics employed by the Montgomery County Government. Our organization is the exclusive bargaining agent for uniformed personnel at the rank of FF I thru Capt.” as its facebook page defines it]
- Coale Cooley Lietz [FindLaw defines them as “Professional Corporation Attorneys”]
- XLHealth Corporation [It is now owned by healthcare provider, UnitedHealthcare. It defines itself on its old website as being a company that pushed for “innovative chronic care solutions for Medicare beneficiaries and providers that encourage management of chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart failure.”]
- Maryland Community Health System, LLP [This seems to apply to health centers who are Maryland Community Health System, as noted on the PPMCO website]
- Sun Healthcare PAC [The group is now owned by Genesis HealthCare. The group defines itself as “one of the nation’s largest skilled nursing and rehabilitation therapy providers.”]
While none of these organizations are big in the state, they do put a question into your mind: who does Heather Mizeur really work for? (meaning: who will she represent?)
I can say I am unsure and critical of Mizeur, and I am not currently in support. In the end, you can decide if Heather Mizeur is right for Maryland, because it seems like the Democratic establishment candidates in Maryland don’t give a damn about Marylanders, only caring about the fat cats and dough that is stuffed into their big pockets.
Notes:
[1] How did I find out this information? I used the Maryland Campaign Reporting Information System. You can search it here. To do more with the Maryland State Board of Elections Database, go here. Here’s a screenshot of the search I used:
[2] As for True Q LLC and Fantastic Products, Inc., nothing was found about them in an internet search. These contributors were picked from individual contributions that were more than $4,000, not cumulative. This means that if an organization had different contributions that would add up to $4,000, this would not be on the list. Here’s the 475 pages of contributions given to Mizeur, via the MD State of Board of Elections. If you need more clarification, please comment below this article.
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Looking at taxation at the local level we look at Baltimore and Maryland at large to see what a Clinton neo-liberal does while pretending to protect the middle-class and wants to hold banks accountable -----O'Malley's credit bond leverage as a Bain's Capital government bankruptcy tool. The citizens of Baltimore have been taxed to death and have the highest property tax in the state because so much of the city's revenue is lost to fraud. IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO GROW JOHNS HOPKINS INTO A GLOBAL CORPORATION! Take policy in Baltimore is also used to force working and middle-class homeowners out of communities Hopkins wants to develop.
The last election for Mayor of Baltimore and Baltimore City Council had the usual progressive posing from politicians who work for the very neo-conservative Hopkins. It's even harder to pose progressive from the far-right!
Each of the candidates for Mayor of Baltimore pushed the lower property tax issue even as they knew O'Malley had tied bond leverage to property taxes and that the bond market crash was coming soon. There was no way property taxes were going down when all the bond default would bring property taxes in Baltimore far higher.
Now, giving credit to Maryland Assembly pols from Baltimore----they did push property tax breaks for a few ------I will look at all this through the week. Needless to say, the exposure to such a level of bond debt at the time of a bond market crash will have property taxes high for everyone......EXCEPT CORPORATIONS AND THE RICH.
REMEMBER, DEMOCRATS DO NOT SET PEOPLE UP FOR THESE KINDS OF LOSSES ALL GEARED TO MAXIMIZE PROFIT FOR WALL STREET. ALSO, THESE POLICIES ARE ILLEGAL-----NO MATTER WHAT THEY SAY-----IT WAS PRE-MEDITATED, DELIBERATE DEFRAUDING OF THE CITIZENS OF MARYLAND.
Posted at 7:17 PM ET, 01/28/2011
Maryland may need 56-percent property tax hike to cover state debt, report says
By Aaron C. Davis
Maryland lawmakers will either have to raise property taxes by 56 percent over the next five years, or take away $1.1 billion from classrooms, police, and other core state services to cover record state borrowing, budget analysts said Friday.
The dire predictions come from a combination of bills coming due on Maryland's long-term debt, plus falling property tax revenues, which have traditionally covered the costs.
The approach Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) took to blunt years of recessionary budget problems is partly responsible, according to a report released Friday afternoon by the state's nonpartisan budget analysts.
In the last three years, O'Malley has accelerated a decade-long practice in Annapolis of shifting expenses once paid entirely with cash to the state's capital budget, which is funded with bond money repaid with interest over 15 years.
The approach allowed Maryland to increase spending on school construction, as well as to continue robust funding for Chesapeake Bay restoration, open-space and other environmental programs during the worst years of the downturn. But it will come at a cost, the report said.
Over the next five years, principal and interest payments on state debt will rise from $835 million annually to over $1.1 billion in 2016.
During the same time, state property taxes and other revenues set aside for debt are expected to shrink, from $954 million to $715 million annually, according to the report.
Save tax increases, the budget lawmakers are now preparing will be last in years in which existing property tax rates and other special revenues would cover Maryland's annual debt costs, the report said.
Beginning in 2013, $132 million from the state's general fund will be needed to cover the debt payments. The yearly cost would rise to $398 million by 2016.
Those costs would eat away at Maryland's $13-billion general fund, which pays for education, Medicaid, public safety and other costs, and is already projected to suffer from major shortfalls for most of the rest of the decade.
The report by the Department of Legislative Services said that to keep the state's operating budget whole, Maryland's current property tax rate of 11.2 cents would need to increase annually, to 17.5 cents by 2016. The rate is set on $100 of assessable base.
Maryland's increasing debt costs raise the specter that O'Malley, who in last fall's election railed against his predecessor, former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) for supporting a previous property tax increase, could be forced to make a similar move.
O'Malley spokesman Shaun Adamec said in an e-mail that he doubted the governor would go in that direction.
"Funds are allocated each year to keep the property tax rate where it is and I don't suspect we would discontinue doing so going forward."
O'Malley this year has already proposed reducing the overall size of the state's capital budget to $925 million from $1.1 billion after a commission said Maryland was too close to its state's debt limit of 8 percent of revenues.
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Below you see how these Clinton neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons work as the pretend to cut taxes for the middle/working class------Rawlings-Blake never intended to give these property tax breaks because she knew the corporate subsidy and bond credit leverage was too high. She did make the cuts to the people and services----which is how you know a pol is not a Democrat----
Again, Rawlings-Blake never intended to lower property taxes---she just said what the people wanted to hear. We knew there would be no reduction because of the degree of corporate subsidy and bond leverage. Global corporate pols are locking into all this state and local bond debt to create a complete corporate capture of government under the guise of insolvency. Look as well at the Baltimore Sun------back in 2013 when Rawlings-Blake and others were making those claims----not one word on the crashing bond market.
WE HAVE NOT HEARD A WORD ON THE CRASHING BOND MARKET FROM MEDIA.
The media will come back and criticize when its all over----but it will not hold power accountable before so citizens can make informed decisions in voting.
Backsliding on Baltimore's property tax If SRB stops cutting taxes when times are good, what will happen when things go bad?
Last year, the economic recovery in Maryland and particularly in Baltimore was sputtering, due in no small part to federal government cutbacks. Still, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake managed to introduce a city budget that included no new taxes or fees, no cuts to services, a 2 percent raise for city workers, investments in some key priorities like street repair and Recreation and Parks — plus a 2-cent reduction in the property tax rate.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's $3.2 billion combined operating and capital budget for next fiscal year is 4.4 percent smaller than this year's. The plan includes no new taxes or fees, but no property tax cuts, either.--Luke Broadwater
This year, the economic recovery looks much more solid. The employment picture is improving, and Baltimore's real estate market is booming. The city recently reported that it was running a surplus in the current fiscal year, thanks in no small part to the biggest jump in property values in the state. Consequently, the mayor's budget includes no new taxes or fees, no cuts to services, a 2 percent raise for city workers and investments in some key priorities like school construction.
What's missing here? Oh yes, the property tax rate. The one Mayor Rawlings-Blake made a big to-do about a couple of years ago in her "Change to Grow" plan, which advocated all manner of tough medicine to reduce the cost of city services and set the stage for a substantial reduction in the single levy that makes Baltimore most uncompetitive with surrounding counties. In 2013, she promised to reduce the rate by 22 percent for homeowners over the course of the next decade — that would be 50 cents per $100 in assessed value.
The tough medicine, we've gotten. The mayor has instituted a variety of small taxes and fees, she's changed the shift schedules for police and firefighters in an effort to control overtime, she's cut employee health benefits, reduced the number of city workers and closed or privatized rec centers. There's no backsliding on that.
But in just the third year of the 10-year plan, she's showing that the tax cuts aren't really such a high priority. Her administration claims this pause in the reduction is no big deal because it is ahead of the pace to achieve the promised reduction, but the only way to make that math work out is to revert to a goal she set in 2011 to reduce the rate 20 cents by 2020 and to forget about the "Change to Grow" goal in whose name she has made all those painful cuts.
To get 50 cents in 10 years would require an average annual reduction of 5 cents. Even if we count the reductions she made before setting the 50-cent goal, she'll only have managed 13.8 cents by year three. That sounds behind the pace to us. Keeping up would have required finding space for just another 1.2-cent reduction this year, which would cost the city about $2.3 million. We find it hard to believe that if she was really determined she could not have found that in a $2.5 billion budget.
It's not that another 1.2 cents off the rate would do much to change the lives of average Baltimoreans. On a house valued at $150,000, it amounts to $18 a year. What's more important is the signal it would send. Not only does the steady effort to reduce taxes help ordinary residents stomach some of the tax breaks the city has doled out for big real estate projects, but by signaling a commitment to the broader goal, it also makes Baltimore a more attractive place for people to invest, whether that means a new apartment tower or a new rooftop deck.
The mayor is blaming weak revenue from the Horseshoe Casino for her inability to cut property taxes this year. Baloney. The city was originally expecting about $14 million from the casino in the next fiscal year, but now that's been downgraded to $8.3 million. Meanwhile, though, property tax revenues are expected to increase by $72 million next year. (Do we think this jump in the tax base is unrelated to the recent rate cuts? No.)
Budget Director Andrew Kleine says the city is also coping with assorted expenses that it did not anticipate in its 10-year plan, and he points to more and larger cuts planned in the years ahead, particularly if the city adopts a municipal trash collection fee that has so far proved a non-starter in the City Council.
Ultimately it's a question of priorities. If reducing the property tax rate is really a central goal of this mayor, she could find a way to do it. But Mayor Rawlings-Blake is showing that she's willing to walk away from her streak of rate cuts when times are good. What should make us confident that she'll resume when doing it gets tougher — if she's even still around to see her plan through?
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