Tag: Taxes

Dug up fresh, daily. TRANSPARENCY: This time it's a problem in Longmont, with the city council. The rule is pretty basic but apparently hard to...

Nick Gillespie, editor in chief at Reason magazine, a libertarian guide to life and politics, posted a comic example of media carpet-bagging yesterday when he blogged on how he'd like to move to Colorado because of the amazing job Taxpayers' Bill of Rights has done in saving our state from the ravages of the recession.

In the first of many expected "tea party" buzz kills today, a new Gallup Poll finds that 48 percent of Americans say the amount of income tax they pay is "about right" edging out those that complain the rate is too high. The pollster's annual Tax Day survey notes a radical departure in this year's report — taxpayers have the most rosy view of paying their fair share of government revenue since 1956.

Teabagging just isn't what it used to be. And with new revelations that the much anticipated April 15 anti-tax protests are being co-opted by establishment Republican groups and Washington, D.C.-based corporate lobbyists, the term "teabaggery" may well join "douchebaggery" in the pantheon of political recriminations.

The government transparency mavens at the Sunlight Foundation point to a new report documenting how multinational corporations got a staggering 22,000 percent return on the money spent to hire lobbyists to push for a one-time 85 percent IRS tax break on worldwide income. The bill the corporate giants fought so hard for? The inaptly named American Jobs Creation Act of 2004.

Jeff Gross, author of a budget-gutting ballot initiative, has refused to address any questions posed by state reviewers, including how its proposed tax amounts could even pay for the cost of collecting them. With the final version of the initiative unchanged, the riddle will be left for voters to contemplate on Election Day -- should it be approved for the ballot.

Responding yesterday to the escalating AIG bonus story, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer proposed the government take the advice of a blog commenter called "Joe Buck," who proposed in a comment thread at Salon that we retrieve through taxes, if all else failed, the millions of dollars in executive bonuses paid by the global incompetent insurance company now owned by the American people.

According to firebrand former Colorado lobbyist Freda Poundstone, "People voted for [Barack] Obama because they're desperate and want change." And to Poundstone, the change Colorado needs comes in the form of a ballot initiative she's co-sponsoring that would drastically limit state revenue by slashing taxes and fees. The plan, which is making its way through the review process on its way to the 2010 ballot, stands in stark opposition to the stimulus-spending mantra coming out of Washington, D.C.

While Congressional Republicans caterwaul about budget deficits and cutting taxes, Zach Carter at The Media Consortium Economic News Ladder connects the dots on the Obama Adminstration's rope-a-dope strategy.

While some Western Slope politicians are eagerly eying their slice of the federal stimulus package pie expected from the Obama administration early next year, other lawmakers are already starting to craft a long-term funding fix for crumbling infrastructure at the state level.