Friday, February 29, 2008

Minnesota: raise income taxes!

Hello, Governor Pawlenty. Hello, Cook County. Hello, Minnesota legislators!

Stop taxing the poor! New gas taxes, new sales taxes, new fees, but NEVER new income taxes! Y'all are shifting the tax burden from the richest to the poorest.
Can you say, REGRESSIVE TAXES?
Minnesota used to be all about graduated taxes, all about ability to pay. No more. Cook County and Grand Marais are hollering for a new one percent sales tax, claiming that it is borne by tourists. Hello, hello? WE are the ones who live here, who pay the tax every single day on every single thing we buy.
The legislature passed a new gas tax without even asking what anybody thinks about that. This happens even as gas prices break all records. Us po' folks can hardly manage to buy gas to get to work. Our food, our heat, our rents and mortgages, not to mention our health care have all shot through the roof. How much blood can you squeeze out of a stone? How much poorer will we have to be before the big D word is spoken aloud?
As for property taxes, nobody seems yet to have caught on: we are being taxed on inflated property values!!! We can no longer sell our homes for their inflated values but we still have to pay taxes on them. Property taxes are also regressive, but necessary at the local level, WHICH is why Minnesota used to offer lots of aid to local governments as well as homeowners. Back in the day when Minnesota government meant something good for people, before the Repugnants took over.
As for the No New Bridges governor, who keeps sending my "tax bill" spiraling by increasing all those fees like license tabs in the name of "no new taxes" meaning no new FAIR income taxes, well I hope you will be soundly defeated by an old-fashioned Minnesota DFL progressive next round.
True

No comments: