Down in Flames

Richardson's tax scheme failed. Dems hung together. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. He can kiss the governor's office good-bye.

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174 Ways to Leave Your Lover

If you're in love with the mess the Georgia GOP is making, that is. Speaker Richardson's wants 174 brand new taxes, imposing a tax on virtually every service. As a small business owner, I can tell you that if this passes, not only will consumers pay the tax, but businesses will also incur a new layer of administrative costs associated with collecting, reporting and transmitting this money to the state. Guess who will end up covering that cost? You, that's who. And, if you have a service sector business, and you have a choice about locating in say, Georgia or Alabama, why would you choose to come to Georgia?

Of course, since we're experimenting, we want to choose schools as the first subject. What else is new? We need stable, adequate funding for our schools, and local communities shouldn't have to rely on a politician elected by a few thousand voters in some far away district to determine how much money is needed for our local schools.

And the state will have to develop a whole new enforcement department to make sure your lawn guy is collecting sales tax from you and then sending it to the state.

So, let's summarize: more taxes, more government, less stable funding, higher consumer cost, not business friendly.

Doesn't seem very conservative to me.

Here's my prediction. If this passes, it will be the demise of the Georgia GOP. They will be out of power within two cycles.

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Death By 200 Taxes

Want to pay tax on your ATM fees? I mean ,really, the government wants to tax your ability to access your own money??? According to the DPG, Richardson's tax plan may be worse than anyone imagined. Hidden in HR 900 are more than 200 brand new taxes on everything from your wedding to your funeral.

Talk about a "death tax." Glenn may have written his own political obit.

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No Surprise

Part of the Speaker's tax plan will first be introduced in the senate. By targeting schools, Richardson has created and ally in Eric Johnson. We have our work cut out for us, but since this is a constitutional amendment, if senate democrats will hang together Richardson will not be able to get the numbers he needs to pass the bill. It's up to us.

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Hide Your Children and Your Silver: Richardson is at it Again

Glenn Richardson is perfectly happy to make your child into a lab rat. If the experiment doesn't work out so well, not to worry, he promises not to make your city and county follow suit. He won't be able to fix things for your child, but it's all for a good cause-shifting more of the tax burden to the middle class and giving Atlanta politicians control of funding for our neighborhood schools while creating a statewide voucher system for private schools. It's really a cool idea. Rich kids in private schools will get vouchers, and middle class families will pay for it.

Almost exactly as predicted, Glenn Richardson has narrowed his tax plan to target public funding of education, letting municipalities and counties off the hook-for now. He is also leaving medical services off the list of newly taxable items, thus possibly gutting well-funded opposition to the Glenntax. He is still imposing a sales tax on food and other services. Including private school tuition, Glenn?

Here's my favorite line from Galloway's article in today's AJC: "If there's not enough money we won't go on to the next level." Uhm, Glenn, how will you fix the mess you're about to create for schools? This is a constitutional amendment, actually, two constitutional amendments. You can't just twitter your little rat nose and change it back to the way it was.

This republican-led legislature has zero credibility on school funding. Why should we in Macon, for example, send our school tax money up the road to Atlanta and trust them to send it back? Where is the cost savings in that formula? I thought republicans were supposed to be all about local control, yet they now want to centralize education funding for all of Georgia in Atlanta. I don't know about you, but personally, I like the idea that the people who set the school budget live in my community and their children attend the public schools. There's a different kind of accountability that comes along with running into your constituents at the grocery or at the Little League game. I like the fact that they have to deal with all of us directly. They have to look us in the eye. Atlanta politicians, not so much.

I'm hearing that the cities and the counties are not yet abandoning the schools systems, but that the Georgia Chamber has gone quiet. This is going to be an expensive, difficult, high stakes fight, and I question whether the education lobby is up to the challenge. The agenda is to centralize education funding in Atlanta, so that a statewide voucher system is possible, and simultaneously reduce the tax burden for the richest Georgians.

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Georgia Democrats Set to Lead

Georgia democrats have a unique opportunity to lead this legislative session. Georgia is facing a severe drought-that threatens business. Georgia is facing a tax scheme-that threatens business. As Porter points out today in the AJC, Georgia democrats are in a unique position to be the voice of reason in an atmosphere of political extremism.

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Richardson Shows His Hand

It's no accident that Glenn Richardson has been long on rhetoric and short on details of his "GREAT" tax plan. This man may be a lot of things, but dumb is not on the list. When it comes to triangulation, he's about to make Bill Clinton looks like an amateur. I've thought for a long time that his sweeping tax proposal was a red herring. Now, Richardson is beginning to show his hand. Here's what I think Glenn Richardson is really up to.

• By waiting to finalize the plan, he is giving the opposition less time to organize an effective response. Smart.
• His "shotgun" approach-targeting every service industry and every local taxing authority-has created a lot of enemies and a whole lot of people who will be perfectly happy to trade silence for the opportunity to protect their own interest.
• In Macon last week, faced with increasing opposition from municipalities and county governments, Richardson began to show his hand.
• Now, Richardson says that he may just focus on taken tax authority away from school boards.
• That's both brilliant and evil. Brilliant because he's likely to win that battle. Evil because if he wins, public schools are DOA.
• That's fine with him. Richardson has repeatedly expressed his dislike for local boards of education, even questioning the value of their existence.
• By letting city and county governments off the hook, Richardson is betting they will stay out the his fight with school boards-and he's probably making a good bet. The "public schools lobby" will fight alone.
• Richardson and his cohorts have repeatedly spanked the "public schools lobby." We've lost battle after battle with the republican-led General Assembly. Think about it: we lost the 65% "solution" battle, the Charter Schools/Charter Systems battle, the SB 10 battle. Yep, they've pretty much beaten us at every turn.
• By focusing on school boards, he tosses red meat to republicans-Cagle and Perdue will have a hard time opposing this scaled-back plan. Why?
• Because the only way to implement a true state-wide voucher system is for all the education funding to be centralized in Atlanta.
• The goal is not to just disempower school boards, but to dismantle public schools.

This is going to be an expensive battle for public school advocates, one that we will not win unless we fight differently than we have in the past. An organized, well-funded plan is needed to defeat this legislation and keep the Glenntax off the 2008 ballot.

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Oh, Good. That's Just Peachy.

The AJC points out today that the tax proposal everyone loves to hate may benefit at least one group: lobbyists. And, they're right. Everybody and their brother will be hiring lobbyists to try to make sure that their niche is protected. The problem is, the poor and middle class Georgians the Speaker wishes to shift the tax burden to-they don't have lobbyists. Yet another reason they can expect to get the shaft in this debate. The only people paid to be there to protect their interests will be legislators. Like I said....

Seriously, though, could this horrid tax plan be a red herring? I've thought for some time that there was such fierce opposition to this tax plan that it surely had no chance of success. Even the Governor and the Lt. Governor have signaled their opposition. And, the experts say the numbers just don't work. But, here's what the proposal could do. It could keep the focus of the legislative session on Richardson, something he might want if he's going to run for governor. Also, with all the lobbyists busy fighting the good fight on this issue, any number of peculiarly heinous pieces of legislation could slip by without the scrutiny they deserve. After all, there are only so many issues you can fight at once. And, if the proposal fails to get the votes needed to be on the ballot next November, then Glenn gets to campaign on "they wouldn't even let you vote on it...they didn't trust voters to decide." Just peachy.

Oh, by the way, who are the lobbyists going to hire to keep lobbyist services from being taxable? And, all those perks they give legislators, will they be able to keep the tickets and trips off the tax books?

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Stick a Fork in Glenn's Tax

Over the vehement opposition of almost everyone except a few colleagues to whom he can toss plumb committee assignments-or not, Speaker Richardson continues to push his not-so-great tax on everything-a plan that's changing faster than Richardson's moods. But, his latest desperate addition is the death knell for this hair-brained proposal. Stick a fork in it. It's all over but the shouting.

On Thursday, Georgia State released a report on the plan that showing what Alan Essig with the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute told us in January: the plan simply won't produce enough revenue. It's way short-like billions short, unless Richardson includes sales tax on business-to-business services, which he now, predictably says he will do.

The problem is, the experts, like the folks at Georgia State or Georgia Budget and Policy, never even considered that Richardson would propose taxing business-to-business transactions because doing so makes zero economic sense. Essig said that taxing business-to-business transactions would hurt the state's economy and that taxes should be charged only when a product is sold to a consumer. This new wrinkle will add cost at every step of the production process-cost that will ultimately be passed on to consumers (read: "you and me").

So, not only will we be paying increased sales tax, including a brand spankin' new tax on services, the goods we purchase will cost more because of increased cost to business to produce the products. In short, the cost of everything goes up, even before the new sales tax is applied.

Don't spend too much time thinking about it. I'm sure that Richardson will continue his dog and pony show, but the Glenntax is D.O.A.

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