Because Vermonter's have insisted on electing Democrats that are way out of touch to the needs of Vermonters; we're springing to action to warn you!
The Vermont Democrats have sponsored a bill that taxes the consumer 17 centsPER PLASTIC BAG when making a purchase. We're with you, we know it's tough and very expensive to be a college student these days. So please, for your sake... ask for a paper bag, and absolutely under no circumstances ask for a double-bag!
On, Thursday, January 31st House Republicans made another attempt to adjourn the legislature one month early, saving $1 million. This money would be used to help low income Vermonters with their heating bills this winter. An amendment, offered by Rep. Patti Komline that would have accomplished this, was voted down largely on party lines. Every Democrat and Progressive voted against it. They need that extra month to do important things…
…Like tax your grocery bags and sandwich wrappers.
Yes, this past week saw the introduction of H.743, A Tax on Plastic Bags. This bill reads in part:
There shall be paid by the purchaser or recipient a tax of $0.17 on each plastic bag purchased or received in a retail transaction in this state or purchased or received for use in this state…. "Plastic bag" in this section shall mean a bag or wrapping provided by a wholesale or retail seller… (For details, CLICK HERE)
As the bill is written, this would mean that a Vermonter purchasing a box of two hundred fifty Ziploc sandwich bags would pay $42.50 in additional taxes on the purchase (plus 17 cents more if he or she "would like a bag for that").
No doubt this is not what the writers of the bill intended. But they never intend for the painful and expensive UNintended consequences of their foolish attempts to govern every single aspect of our lives.
So, are we ready to send them home early yet?
No wonder college students are fleeing the state. Gotta love the ideas that these Democrats come up with!
Have you ever been interested in working on a campaign? Well here's your shot! Coming up, the Champlain College Republicans will host a Field School for Vermont College Republican members. Alden Guptill and Jeffrey Bartley of the Vermont Republican Party will be teaching attendees the basics in grassroot organization development, voter id, Get Out the Vote, and volunteer recruitment.
When: February 16, 2008 Where: Champlain College, Ireland 217 RSVP: E-mail Jeffrey Bartley at Jbartley@vtgop.org
Once again, Montpelier Democrats have shown that they have a severe lack of understanding of fiscal responsibility. Check out this op-ed written by Jack McMullen published in the Burlington Free Press this week:
VPIRG has become a special-interest advocate
The U. S. Supreme Court says elimination of "corruption or the appearance of corruption" is the only legitimate reason for a state to abridge the First Amendment rights of its citizens through campaign finance legislation. Using this standard, the court struck down in June 2006 a 1997 law promoted by the Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG).
In 2007, VPIRG was back with another campaign finance bill -- different but with comparably strict contribution limits.The Legislature, controlled by Democrats, passed the new law despite expert testimony from the ACLU and the attorney who won the last round of lawsuits that the new bill was likely unconstitutional as well. As the voice of common sense, and probably saving Vermont taxpayers from having to foot the bill for another multimillion-dollar Supreme Court battle, Gov. Douglas vetoed VPIRG's campaign finance law.
Now, VPIRG and its Democratic allies are back again. Why is VPIRG so determined to try to pass a campaign finance law of the type just declared unconstitutional? And why is the Democratic Party so willing to go along with what is an obviously bad bill that unnecessarily puts Vermont taxpayers in legal jeopardy?
Time was when public interest research groups like VPIRG really did serve the public interest. We have such groups to thank for much safer cars, much cleaner air and water, and the ability to know what's in the food we buy.
But in recent years VPIRG has been, in reality, little more than a lobbying enterprise for special interests which, in large measure, fund it -- primarily corporate wind power and alternative energy interests. Ironically, these are heavily taxpayer-subsidized corporate projects of the type public interest groups used to advocate against.
In this role, VPIRG appears to have the Democratic Party firmly under its thumb. It comes, then, as no surprise that that party's agenda is tightly linked, not to the most pressing concerns of the people of Vermont, but to the personal agendas of VPIRG's board of directors.
For instance, David Bittersdorf and Mathew Rubin, two men with active wind power enterprises in Vermont , are trustees of VPIRG, as is Dave Rapaport, who worked for five years for Mathew Rubin's East Mountain Wind Tower Co. Trustee Leigh Seddon founded Solar Works Inc., a renewable-energy design and contracting firm. VPIRG's five registered lobbyists work the state Legislature tirelessly for more taxpayer funding for renewable energy. VPIRG also spends a lot of time demonizing major competitors of its supporters -- lobbying to close Vermont Yankee, a carbon-neutral power source, and to classify Hydro-Quebec as a nonrenewable energy source.
This brings us back to the campaign finance bill. The chief reason for this bill appears to be to handicap in future elections the political opponents of the policy agenda of VPIRG. VPIRG's activities, many of them indirectly in support of candidates of the Democratic Party, would be immune from the campaign contribution and spending limits the new law would impose on political parties and others active in directly backing candidates. VPIRG can raise as much money as it likes from its allies and doesn't even have to disclose who they are on required annual reports. Nor does it need to let voters know how it is being used.
The campaign finance bill in question was sponsored by Democratic state Sen. Ed Flanagan, who is also a member VPIRG's board of directors. In addition, Scudder Parker, who ran for governor as a Democrat last time around and has served as the Democratic Party chairman, is now a hired lobbyist for VPIRG. Senate leader Peter Shumlin has been referred to only half-jokingly as the senator from VPIRG. And the current Democratic chairman, Ian Carleton , has also worked with VPIRG. If the Legislature is looking for corruption or the appearance of corruption to fix, it should start by looking at VPIRG and its relationship to the Vermont Democratic Party.
Jack McMullen, a strategy consultant to Fortune 500 and technology-oriented companies, lives in Burlington. He was the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in 2004.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
The Vermont College Republicans and Champlain College Republicans would like to send our thoughts and prayers to the family and friends of Representative Cola Hudson.
Representative Hudson died unexpectedly this afternoon; presumably of heart complications. He was the longest serving member of the Vermont State House of Representatives (elected in 1973), a very well respected friend of the Republican Party, and a dedicated Vermonter. He was 81.
"If one possesses geese that lay golden eggs, its best to develop a taste for eggs and not for goose meat." These were the wise words of panelist Christopher Ellis at the Vermont Tiger symposium, Entrepreneurs or Entitlements. "Unfortunately," he went on, "Vermont has a habit of fattening up its geese to a certain point and then slaughtering them."
Ellis, of course, was warning us that if we allow our government’s appetite for tax dollars to consistently kill off, chase away, or dry up those individuals and businesses, large and small, who pay our bills, we will end up with nothing. We will have neither goose, nor eggs. If this happens, our ability to maintain Vermont as the unique, safe and secure place we know and love will become an impossible and unsustainable proposition.
We are rapidly approaching that point. As Democrat Senate leader Peter Shumlin forcefully pointed out at the beginning of the last legislative session, "there is no more tax capacity left in Vermont. There is no more money in the bank." (Rutland Herald, 2/1/07). "It's just not there," he said. "We are tapped out." (Brattleboro Reformer, 2/20/07). Over the summer, Democrat Chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Susan Bartlett observed, "Then, poof! The revenue just stopped." (Burlington Free Press, 7/13/07).
The revenue didn’t really stop. It’s just that Vermont – the state already with the highest per-capita demand for tax dollars in the country – is spending money faster than its citizens can earn it. Montpelier is eating more eggs than we can produce and the frightening part here is that Shumlin, Bartlett, Speaker Symington and the dominant political culture in Vermont have lost control of the situation. With these folks in charge, we are all potential goose meat.
Citizens in Essex Junction just learned this the hard way. Their local golden goose, IBM, frustrated by Vermont’s increasingly high-tax, over-regulated economic environment, decided several years ago to stop investing in its Essex plant and, instead, sent billions of dollars to Fishkill, New York. As a result, IBM’s property value in Essex dropped 30 percent, and when the town reassessed this year, average taxpayers in Essex Junction found themselves staring down the barrel of a 34 percent property tax increase, amounting to about $1,000 for an average home valued at $266,000. After all, the government didn’t curtail its appetite for money by 30 percent. The big goose was gone, and the little geese had to be slaughtered to pick up IBM’s tab.
Obviously, demanding that ordinary middle class taxpayers shoulder the financial burdens formerly paid by the IBMs, Omyas, MetroGroups, Dirigo Papers, Capital City Presses, etc, is not a direction Vermont can continue in for very long. It is both undesirable and unsustainable.
Yet, as more productive individuals and businesses migrate away or become extinct in the face of the Montpelier meat cleavers, Vermont will be forced to rely increasingly on a shrinking group taxpayers to pay all of our state’s bills. The more this becomes the case, the more we risk losing our current education system (the third most expensive in the nation), our health care safety net (supporting one in four Vermonters), our ability to support the government and non-profit jobs (nearly 4 out of every 10 jobs in Vermont according to Ellis) that are either directly or indirectly funded by tax revenues. We won’t be able to afford the kind of environmental policies we need to remain a global leader on the issue, or to protect our precious environment here at home. Nobody wants this.
To hold on to the security we deserve in our homes, our jobs, and our communities, Vermont’s number one legislative priority in 2008 must be to regain control and to save our economic environment.
Montpelier must lead an economic environmental movement equal to and in partnership with Vermont’s natural environmental movement. First and foremost, we need to Save the Geese.
To preserve sustainable economic security, it means our legislators must give singular focus to policies that will reduce Vermont’s overall tax burden, control the real cost of health care, and make our regulatory process -- though still tough -- transparent, predictable, and swift. We need to provide a professional work force with affordable housing, affordable property tax bills, and long term career prospects. We need to cultivate, nurture and grow a tax base big enough and sustainable enough to afford the other programs that make Vermont the place we love.
But, just as a commitment to sustaining our natural environment required a political/cultural change, so too will a commitment to sustain Vermont’s economic environment. Montpelier can no longer continue to consume our state’s fiscal resources like an SUV burning fossil fuels. We can no longer afford a political culture that sees the solution to every problem as another tax increase rather than a commitment to economic conservation.
There are many positive reasons to live and work in Vermont today. It is the best place in the world. But, to keep it this way will require work. Work that satisfies the soul, yes, but also work that pays the bills. Please, let’s Save the Geese.
And to those in Iowa - battling it out for supporters; here's a quick laugh for you from "The West Wing."
Need an internship for class credit next semester? Well we have the perfect idea for you!
The Vermont Republican Party is accepting applications for internships starting next February and running through the 2008 elections. Shoot us a quick e-mail and we'll be sure you receive a copy of the application today!
ChamplainRepublicans@gmail.com
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There will NOT be a Champlain College Republican meeting on November 20th for Champlain College is on Turkey Day Vacation!
