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June 26, 2006

Gold-plated Brickbats

First Ringer hammers Growth for Justice...

...on the facts...:

While individuals earning $300,000 would be hit for at least an additional $6,000, that’s not overly destructive or dramatic.

Of course, Minnesota’s tax rate is currently 7.85%, meaning earners at $300,000 are already paying $23,550. Add $6,000 and that’s nearly $30,000 in Minnesota taxes. And of course, Federal taxes over individuals earning slightly over $300,000 are $97,000, bringing the grand taxation total to roughly $127,000 per year. Oh, and that’s not including various city, county and school board taxes. But hey, anything under 40% of one’s gross income certainly isn’t their “fair share” is it?

...and the concept:
Bravo. Really, take another curtain call. Sure, most people hate when rich people—and I mean super rich people—complain about how tough times can be, but all of us at KvM are sure most Minnesotans love having the wealthy endorse raising taxes, include their own...I’m sure your proposal won’t be a “bracket breaker” for Minnesota’s top wage earners, encouraging more to establish residency in other states. And I’m sure that waves of your fellow Democrats are giddy with anticipation over getting asked how they feel about raising taxes on households at $45,000 and above. I know that Mike Hatch and Amy Klobuchar would love to discuss the topic at length. Probably even Matt Entenza, given that his wife signed the ad.

So thank you, Mr. Kramer. Thank you. If you ever need a favor, don’t hesitate to write. In the meantime, we’ll be anxiously awaiting your 2006 campaign efforts.

Ringer is right. We must not look gift horses in their foot-stuffed mouths.

Posted by Mitch at June 26, 2006 06:55 AM | TrackBack
Comments


It’s a little more insidious than that. If you run the names of each of the signatories through Google and OpenSecrets.org, you’ll find that a lot of the signatories are either (a) ex-DFL candidates for office, (b) plaintiffs attorneys who oppose tort reform and/or have a good working relationship with the AG’s office under Humphrey and Hatch, or (c) executives from “non-profit” organizations that receive public funding. About the only exception I’ve found is Jim Pohlad who doesn’t run a non-profit but rather a for profit sports team who just had the cost of his largest capital expenditure (Twins stadium) subsidized by the taxpayer.

Basically what we’ve got here then are people who feed at the public trough and would probably benefit more from having a larger trough than they would have to pay in additional taxes.

I’m thinking about going through each of the signatories (who they are, how they earn their money, who they contribute money to) on my own (rarely) updated site. It could be pretty time-intensive but I’m a sucker for this kind of story. If you’re gong to do it, let me know so I don’t duplicate efforts.

Posted by: Thorley Winston at June 26, 2006 12:09 PM

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the 3 year average median household income in Minnesota for 2002-2004 was $56,000 (rounded). That means half the households in Minnesota are well over the $45,000 threshold for increased taxes. Given the $11,000 gap and a typical household income distribution, it is a fairly safe guess that close to 60% of households fall above the threshold.

Using the reasonable assumption that it is more likely that there will be 2 or more adults in those households over the limit than those under the limit, you increase even further the percentage of potential voters negatively affected by the proposed tax increase.

I welcome the DFL backing a proposal to increase taxes for considerably more than half of Minnesota voters. It shows their willingness to not only to hamstring the Minnesota economy but to penalize the working middle class in the interest of growing the nanny state.

Posted by: Nordeaster at June 26, 2006 12:13 PM

Who has proposed raising taxes on all people above $45K?

I've spoken with Kramer about the G&J in the past and increasing the rateat the high end of the range is to equalize the % of tax paid be individuals in the different deciles. i.e income in the deciles that earn between $34K and $112K pay roughly 11.2 to 11.8% of their income in state and local taxes (payroll, income, property, sales, etc.) whereas the top 1% (more than $411K) pays 9.9% of their income in total taxes.

The fundamental question is why the rate should be lower at the top of the income ladder than those below. If you want to argue that the overall tax rate should be lower for those making more than $300K than those making
$150K that is fine. But the argument is not about people making $45K.

Posted by: Nick at June 26, 2006 12:36 PM

Nick

Please provide links to where you cite your numbers from. If you are simply parroting what the DFL stooge (Kramer) says...not only are you wrong, you are a 1st degree lemming.

If you are correct (and I doubt any of your numbers are backed up by FACT), I will retract my comments.

Pony-up. Give us the links.

Posted by: Dave at June 26, 2006 12:45 PM

“I welcome the DFL backing a proposal to increase taxes for considerably more than half of Minnesota voters. It shows their willingness to not only to hamstring the Minnesota economy but to penalize the working middle class in the interest of growing the nanny state.”

I wonder if anyone has asked Lt Governor Candidate Judi Dutcher who is listed as an advisor for this group (click on my name for the link) if she agrees with their proposed tax increase. Should be interesting to see how her answer comports with Mike Hatch’s who has said he’s against raising taxes.

Posted by: Thorley Winston at June 26, 2006 12:47 PM

Oh, and the next time people want to think Joel Kramer is some non-partison lover of Minnesota, take a peek at his FEC donation report:

DSCC 2,000
Mn DFL 200
Mark Dayton 1,750
Paul Wellstone 2,000
Democracy for America 500
John Kerry 2,000
Amy Klobuchar 1,000
Patty Wetterling 500
Walter Mondale 1,000

These are all his contributions. Again, this group is nothing but a front group for the DFL, who doesn't have the GUTS to actually RUN on a campaign platform of raising taxes. So...they organize a shadow group.

Minnesotans are NOT fooled. And they are NOT stupid enough to believe these rich fat-cat DFLers.

Posted by: Dave at June 26, 2006 12:54 PM

Nick asks:

“Who has proposed raising taxes on all people above $45K?”


Answer: a group of DFL public trough feeders calling itself “Growth & Justice”:


"State taxes for anyone making less than $45,000 would not increase and the RATES WOULD VARY FOR EVERYONE IN BETWEEN."


Source:
http://www.startribune.com/462/story/507891.html

Posted by: Thorley Winston at June 26, 2006 12:59 PM

Dave,

The numbers come from the MN Department of Revenue. G&J has the document linked on its website.

http://www.taxes.state.mn.us/taxes/legal_policy/other_supporting_content/05_incidence_report.pdf

I made an error the top percent in income pays 8.4% not 9.9% (9.9% is the top 5% in income)
Look at page 57.

Also notice that the lowest earners pay a whopping 16.7% of their income in taxes.

Posted by: Nick at June 26, 2006 01:10 PM

Thorley - I started doing an Open Secrets search on some of the signatories over the weekend. If you would like to split up the list we could certainly make a quicker go of it.

Posted by: The Lady Logician at June 26, 2006 01:12 PM

LL and Thorley,

What say we all kick off a blogswarm?

We can throw open the gates to people taking some of the names, and publish and/or link to their results.

Whatdya think?

Posted by: mitch at June 26, 2006 01:21 PM

Sounds good to me Mitch! Let's get busy!!!!!

Posted by: The Lady Logician at June 26, 2006 01:25 PM

Sorry, Nick. You can't use the Total State Taxes column as your DFL fat-cat buddies are NOT talking about sales taxes, property taxes, etc. Your DFL fat-cats are talking about increasing taxes based SOLELY on income. Based upon that, the lowest decile pays only 1.1% compared to 6.8% in the top decile. The Fat-Cat clan is not talking about scrapping all the taxes for some flat tax or other idea. ONLY increasing taxes based SOLELY on your income.

Thanks for the info, though. If you throw in all the federal taxes etal...I bet you get another different picture. But those are not relevant to the issue of income taxes either.

Posted by: Dave at June 26, 2006 01:37 PM

Dave,

I stated above that I was referring to "state and local taxes (payroll, income, property, sales, etc.)" Please read before you make accusations.

Furthermore, the policy recommendation relates to increasing the income tax on that group because that is the only mechanism available to address the descrepancy of total state and local taxes a percentage of income without affecting people who have not reached that level of income attainment. In other words there is no way to increase the property tax or sales tax only on indiviuals whom earn more than $300-$400K.

Again the issue is that MN has had a relatively flat OVERALL tax burden through its mix of income, payroll, sales, and property taxes but that the high earners pay a lower percentage of their income in OVERALL state taxes v. the middle income earners.

Posted by: Nick at June 26, 2006 01:51 PM

Dave, Put another way. Would you be open to a flat tax that has the exact same results as the G&J proposal simply because its a flat tax? For example get rid of all other taxes and set the income tax at 11% or so. This would have the same impact on those top earners, is it now okay?

Posted by: Nick at June 26, 2006 02:00 PM

Nick:

Using the overall tax information is cherry-picking the information. But if you want to do that, to present a FAIR overall comparison, you need to include the federal burdens too. Including things like capital gains, estate taxes, income....etc.

Also, removing all taxes in favor of a single flat tax would never work. Some of the taxes are specifically designed to hit people from out of town, like sales taxes, gas taxes, or hotel/entertainment taxes.

Lastly, you (and the idiot fat-cat DFLers in the ad) equate some magic to income. Take a good look at the list, then go look at the FEC reports. Many of these people are RETIRED. I gots news for ya...retired people usually are in that lowest tax bracket. They are spending reserves or making next to nothing in income, with the exception of investments. Its nice to know they want to jam taxes on people and avoid paying the freight.

Posted by: Dave at June 26, 2006 02:22 PM

Mitch encouraged: "What say we all kick off a blogswarm?"

Log Lady enthused: "Sounds good to me Mitch! Let's get busy!!!!!"

Hey, wingnuts, let's put on a show! Yay!

Posted by: angryclown at June 26, 2006 02:29 PM

Angryclown,

Please shut up.

Posted by: Dan Rather at June 26, 2006 02:59 PM

"Your DFL fat-cats are talking... "

"Lastly, you (and the idiot fat-cat DFLers in the ad) equate some magic to income."
Where did I say I support the proposal?

I'm not a DFLer and I don't support the proposal. I tend to think that facts are useful for discussions, even if they aren't convenient. So please stop making crap up about me.

Posted by: Nick at June 26, 2006 03:02 PM

Lady Logician and Mitch,

That sounds like a great idea. I would like to do more than just list their campaign contributions though, I think it might be instructive to see who these folks are (e.g. some of them are executives, many appear to be attorneys, others are ex-candidates), so I would suggest providing a link to any public profiles to go with each person along with a short description which includes the name of their organization and their title.

The reason I would like to include a profile is that I suspect that Jim Pohlad isn’t the only signator who is supporting higher taxes for bigger government because he appears to be feeding at the public trough. After we get done gathering this basic information, we can use it to compile our own statistical claim (e.g. how many are plaintiff’s attorneys, who many are working for an organization that gets State-funding, etc.).

Also as far as looking for campaign contributions, as good as opensecrets,org is, I think NewsMeat.com is a better site because you can look at ALL of their contributions at once rather than having to look at two or three campaigns at a time (just be sure to double check that it isn’t someone else with the same or similar name). It also makes linking easier because you can link to one or two contribution profiles at a time rather than several.

As far as dividing up the work amongst the three of us, I would be willing to take Bob Anderson through Tom Joyce. Lady Logician you can take Arnold Kaplan through Peter Quinn and Mitch can take Akshay R Rao through Julie Zelle. I gave Mitch the shortest bunch because he’s fisking the claims in the letter and this would give him time to do both.

Does that work for everyone?

Posted by: Thorley Winston at June 26, 2006 03:06 PM

Dave makes a good point about the fact that many of the signatories are retired. We should note that fact on our profiles.

Posted by: Thorley Winston at June 26, 2006 03:09 PM

Excellent methodology, Thorley! I look forward to your analysis of possible benefits the opponents of the tax stand to gain. Oops, forgot, this is a smear. Good luck with that! Guess the parties no longer pay 23-year-olds to gin up that kind of "research" for them these days.

Posted by: angryclown at June 26, 2006 03:24 PM

Thorley - that all sounds good to me...

A/C...did you say something?????

Posted by: The Lady Logician at June 26, 2006 03:27 PM

Lady Logician and Mitch,

Here’s what I suggest we each include (so that we’re consistent):

Basic Profile Info

1) Name - If there is a website with a profile (candidate, employer’s site) of the person, please provide a link to it. Wikipedia works as well.

2) Occupation (job title, note if they are currently retired)

3) Employer (name of the organization INCLUDING non-profit organizations, provide a link to the organization site preferably one that goes directly to their profile) – I would be interested to see how many of these people work for the same organizations

4) Offices they have held and/or recently ran for

5) Affiliations with any “civic” or lobbying groups


Campaign Contribution Information (use NewsMeat.com as it is the most comprehensive and provide a link), the information that I think we should include is:

1) Total Dollar Amounts contributed (be sure to check, sometimes these sites double-count contributions and we should be as accurate as possible, when in doubt undercount). Go back as far as Newsmeat records (which I believe is 1996).

2) Note the percentage contributed to DFL versus GOP (some of the signatories may be former corporate executives who contributed to both parties)

3) Note any amounts for candidates who are running in 2006 even if for different offices (be sure to list any Republicans as well as DFLers) and provide the amounts to the candidate and their names

4) Also note if they contributed money to candidates running for office in other States

Posted by: Thorley Winston at June 26, 2006 03:31 PM

Not to you, Log Lady. For you, the greatest possible eloquence comes from my big red clown a55. (')

Posted by: angryclown at June 26, 2006 03:32 PM

COMMENTER 1: That sounds like a good plan. Let's do it.

ANGRYCLOWN: Ha Ha! Yeah, you wingnuts do that. Ha Ha! Now look at me!

COMMENTER 2: Here's how I propose we go about this plan.

ANGRYCLOWN: Why aren't you paying attention to me! Stop planning and getting things done and listen to me!

COMMENTER 3: Good idea, Commenter 2, I would also add this to the plan.

ANGRYCLOWN: Can't you see I'm posting here?! Pay attention to me. Me! Look at my big red clown a55! (')

COMMENTER 1: Then it's agreed. We'll do this. Thanks for the civil and thoughtful commentary all.

ANGRYCLOWN: (') (') (') (') (') (') (') (') (') (') (') (') (') (') (') (') (') (') (') (') !!!!!!

Posted by: Ryan at June 26, 2006 03:42 PM

A couple of other words of caution. Since we are basically critiquing this group we need to be particularly careful about how we go about it and take greater pains at being factual and accurate than some of our counterparts in the port side of the blogosphere or the MSM do. When in doubt, present the facts in the way that is most favorable to the people we’re critiquing.

When you run their names through Newsmeat.com, be especially careful if there is more than one person listed with that same name. We wouldn’t want to overstate their campaign contributions. Also be sure to check for any contributions to Republicans and note them as well.

Be careful when constructing a profile as there may be several people in Minnesota with the same name (some of the people are former big names in DFL politics but not all). I advise checking the occupation listed on Newsmeat against the one you find a profile for (usually they’ll match). If we run into any we’re not sure of, we should email each other (my email is listed just remove the extra “yahoo”) to double-check.

Finally some of these may be spouses of (former) candidates for office such as Ann Ciresi (wife of Mike Ciresi) or Lois Quam (wife of Matt Entenza). We should probably note that information as well just as we if do if the signator ran for office themselves.


Posted by: Thorley Winston at June 26, 2006 04:21 PM

A panicked Thorley Winston, simultaneously coming realizing he's the only "blogswarmer" who actually uses his real name while recalling the elements of a cause of action for defamation, counseled: "Since we are basically critiquing this group we need to be particularly careful about how we go about it and take greater pains at being factual and accurate than some of our counterparts in the port side of the blogosphere or the MSM do. When in doubt, present the facts in the way that is most favorable to the people we’re critiquing."

Heehee! Let me know how that "fairness" thing works out for ya, Thorley!

Posted by: angryclown at June 26, 2006 05:00 PM

No AC - Thorley is simply reminding everyone that this needs to remain factual and minus sarcasm, sniping and snarking....something a certain self-admitted ruby haunched clown seems incapable of doing or understanding....

Posted by: The Lady Logician at June 27, 2006 07:43 AM

Angryclown doubts the ability of pseudonymous, self-confessed wingnuts to produce a fair product, Log Lady. Angryclown awaits the results.

Posted by: angryclown at June 27, 2006 07:46 AM

And yet trusts the "Objective" mainstream media to produce a fair product.
You're a sad little clown.

Posted by: Kermit at June 27, 2006 10:37 AM

Ah, you attribute so many opinions to the Clown with no support whatever, my Ping-Pong-ball-eyed friend. How long before you learn that Angryclown is here solely to sow doubt and dissent?

A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down *your* pants.

Posted by: angryclown at June 27, 2006 10:46 AM

You got me. I assumed you had principles and core beliefs. There I go projecting again.

Posted by: Kermit at June 27, 2006 11:08 AM

"How long before you learn that Angryclown is here solely to sow doubt and dissent?"

That's why we love you AC.....your ability to be happy being this blogs stereotypical angry liberal......

Posted by: The Lady Logician at June 27, 2006 11:19 AM

Oh I gots plenty Kerm. I just don't parade 'em around these parts. Pearls before wingnuts, dontcha know. Besides, the first step to being right is admitting you're wrong. Angryclown is here to help you achieve that first step on the path to recovery.

Posted by: angryclown at June 27, 2006 11:20 AM

Actually, Angryclown is here because this is the only venue he can find wherein people even remotely acknowledge his existence.

Posted by: Ryan at June 27, 2006 11:56 AM

"Angryclown is here solely to sow doubt and dissent"
"Oh I gots plenty Kerm. I just don't parade 'em around these parts"
"A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down *your* pants"

Well, golly! I'm convinced. Sign me up and hand me some tinfoil.


Posted by: Kermit at June 27, 2006 12:44 PM

Kerm affirmed: "Well, golly! I'm convinced."

Hallelujah, brother! And thus did the scales fall from Kermit's eyes, the tinfoil from his head and that photo of Condi in knee-high boots from his left hand.

Posted by: angryclown at June 27, 2006 01:03 PM

Well you certainly left some clues as to whom you think controls the media in this country. Though I'm not sure whether you think it's the Pope, the Jews or the Trilateral Commission.

Posted by: angryclown at June 27, 2006 01:46 PM

The spreadsheet the worksformn.org website uses to explain their new tax plan shows that 70% of MN tax filers (those showing an adjusted joint income of $30K-$125k) will have their taxes increased by an average of 4.55%. This is a middle-class tax increase being hyped by the worksformn signers as a new tax on the wealthiest citizens of Minnesota.
A typical ploy by the dems. Whenever they manage to "raise taxes on the richest and most fortunate" the working man pays more, gets less.

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