The New Media Militia

If Governor Lynch wanted to demonstrate visionary leadership in the course of revenue mining, he’d propose a significant cut in the cigarette tax.  I mean a significant cut.  A potential savings per pack of a dollar or more would translate into heavy traffic to border stores around the state.  The larger the cut the farther people would drive to benefit from it.  Consumers making the trip would spend that savings and more on lottery tickets, beer, liquor, soda, and a host of other items whose price advantage are much more attractive once they are already over the border.  That translates into increased visits for retailers, a larger average purchase per visit, and secondary and tertiary purchases for gas and other goods to the surrounding community.

Increased retail traffic has the fortunate side effect of creating an environment that attracts investment in the form of more retailers seeking to profit from that traffic.  This creates more choices for consumers, price competition, competition for the available wage pool, and wage growth to hire and maintain staff.  This attracts more residents, which leads to more purchases in a larger range of retail and secondary markets nearby, more profits all around, and more revenue for the state, all from lowering taxes.  

Saving ten dollars a carton is significant.  Smokers would travel from all across New England to by a case (or cases) of cigarettes to save some serious cash.  (You would think that being addicted to spending, democrats would get that.)  They would buy also gas, and other items to avoid a sales tax.  It’s actually very simple.  And if we cut taxes the entire New Hampshire border would look more and more like the western side of the Berlin Wall before they tore it down;  a bright shiny inviting slice of freedom visible from the other side–only this one from the oppression of poorly run governments that overtax everything only to tax it more when it fails to raise the funds promised.

So how about this.  Instead of a race to the bottom, where we simply continue to raise our taxes a little bit every time they do, why not take the high road and start a price war in the other direction?  Lower the tax so much that neighboring states have to rethink their own tax policy to compete with the one thing they will never completely control–human nature.

I don’t think they can do it.  Of course without new political leadership on this side of our border, neither can we.

Snowe and Collins flipped if we cut food stamp funds?  Does that sound odd to you?  It’s got that “executive order” to prevent federal funding of abortion feel to it.  That means, as usual, Snowe and Collins were just looking for a reason to vote with the democrats and a promise to cut pay as they go and cut “somewhere else” was all they needed.  Well that’s exactly what we wanted, but in a 4 trillion dollar budget with agency and department budget expansions three to four times pre-obama spending in just a year or two, the best they can come up with is ‘some democrat priorities” and cutting food stamp funding?

And it should not be lost on anyone that the party that objected to the deal that included cutting food stamp funding for what the liberals like to call “the neediest Americans” was not the democrat party.  This unfortunately is of little use since we all know the democrats have no intention of cutting anything as long as they control congress so the real issue is that they are lying again–there will be no cuts.

Back here in the Granite State we are stuck with Lynch and the upcoming post-stimulus, post medicaid, post sugar daddy ATM machine budgets of the future in which the term “difficult spending cuts” will take on a whole new meaning. Which lend itself to another discussion.

Can we “Blame Lynch” for the next decades worth of successive budget woes (or any other problems) created (or not) by his spineless inability to veto democrat spending; or due to his addiction to money from the federal government to cover his incompetence?  It sounds like a plan to me.

The only barrier to passing anything in the house is democrats.  No number of Republicans can stop anything at all, and Nancy Pelosi has gamed the House rules so that the GOP can barely even offer to amend anything, not that any amendment can or has survived the Borg-like opposition of the liberal majority.  So passage of anything the left values at all is guaranteed.   This begs at least one question–why introduce it now? Why suddenly the interest in the revolving door?

Next, we are nearing the end of an election year in which even the left is predicting losses, and what could well be one of the biggest swings in power between parties in history.  More democrats than ever are going to be out of office.  And what’s one of the most popular destinations for former congressman? …working as a lobbyist.  You can still live in DC, there’s the Georgetown mixers, you get to throw around other peoples money, and you get to play power politics.  It’s a lot like being in congress but you can make more money,  without having to listen to or appease those dumb ass, Country Class voters.  That makes it the perfect lateral move professionally for any democrat relieved from public office come November.

Yet given all this we are meant to take seriously representative Paul Hodes call to prohibit members of congress from entering their preferred post-public-service career move now, near the eve of what portends to be a massive democrat decruitment at the hands of the American Electorate?

Who is stupid enough to believe this is anything but legislative fluff? This is nothing more than a desperate deception and populist sandbagging.  It has as much sincerity as swearing off earmarks after all your appropriations requests have been filed.  (Who did that again?) 

Hodes is acting like the mean old man who starts acting good on his death bed because he thinks it will win him points and get him into heaven.  Except Hodes wants to get into the US Senate, and he knows full well this bill has no chance in hell of going any further than his press page, a recycled “look here” in the net roots, and a blurb in the local papers.

What’s next, a bill to repeal Obamacare?  You gonna defend the constitution instead of violate it?  Wait, you’ll meet with actual constituents instead of just a select group of democrats.  Or maybe you’ll return every dime of PAC money you’ve received from donors with connections to SEC violators like Goldman Sachs or the ethically challenged Charlie Rangel?

Oh look a flying pig!