{"id":2155,"date":"2008-02-22T05:49:49","date_gmt":"2008-02-22T10:49:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2155"},"modified":"2008-02-22T08:33:35","modified_gmt":"2008-02-22T13:33:35","slug":"the-spite-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2155","title":{"rendered":"The Spite Tax?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Wednesday, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2149\">I related a rumor<\/a> that the Coleman administration planned to institute a supplemental sales tax <em>during the week of the GOP Convention<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>My City Council representative in the Fourth Ward is Russ Stark.  I agree with him, as I did with his predecessor Jay Benanav, about .003% of the time on actual issues &#8211; but I&#8217;ll give credit where it&#8217;s due; I emailed him yesterday morning about the rumor of the Spite Tax, and I got a reply from his staffer within two hours, and from Stark himself an hour or two later.  Whatever my disagreements with Stark on policy, I&#8217;ll give him points for constituent service so far (as, to be fair &#8211; to me &#8211; I did in turn with Benanav, whose staff was unfailingly courteous, even knowing as they did that I was a pretty harsh critic of their boss).<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As I haven&#8217;t heard any specifics of such a proposal, only rumors, I&#8217;m<br \/>\ngoing to inquire further about this.  I can&#8217;t see how you could<br \/>\ntemporarily raise the tax rate for these items even if you wanted to.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>While the idea of a Spite Tax against Republican conventiongoers doesn&#8217;t seem entirely out of character for an administration and council that is dominated by ultra-liberals that actually <a href=\"http:\/\/wcco.com\/local\/local_story_095104418.html\">passed a resolution welcoming demonstrators<\/a>, the rumor doesn&#8217;t <em>entirely <\/em>pass the stink test, either.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll keep you posted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Wednesday, I related a rumor that the Coleman administration planned to institute a supplemental sales tax during the week of the GOP Convention. My City Council representative in the Fourth Ward is Russ Stark. I agree with him, as I did with his predecessor Jay Benanav, about .003% of the time on actual issues [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}