Tax policy

But it does bear repeating:

Let me suggest two areas in which it would make a lot of sense to raise taxes in earnest, not just return them to pre-Bush levels: taxes on very high incomes and taxes on financial transactions.

Taxing investment gains at the same rate as wages and salaries would also be a welcome improvement. It's obscene that we have disparity in tax rates for these two sources of income.

“In every other aspect of our lives, there’s opportunities for people to donate - except this one,” Folwell said. “It empowers people. It pushes the power away from this town, and back down to the people who truly feel the urge that, if they’re not taxed enough, that they can donate more.”

Does that mean we can "donate" less when we don't like where our money is going? Can we unfund the circus known as the North Carolina General Assembly? Give us that option, Mr. Folwell, and you'll find yourself out of a job in two seconds flat. Fucking hypocrite.

Those poor little multi-state corporations need protection from the mean old tax collectors:

The state Senate and the business lobby want to take away a big stick that the state's tax collector says it needs to punish big businesses that dodge their taxes.

The issue is up for debate in budget negotiations under way between the state House and Senate. The Senate's version includes a provision that would prevent the N.C. Department of Revenue from assessing a penalty on businesses it thinks are hiding income.

Want to know why we're in the toilet when it comes to the state budget? It's not because we're spending too much. It's because we're not paying enough taxes.

Federal, state and local taxes — including income, property, sales and other taxes — consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. That rate is far below the historic average of 12% for the last half-century.

For all those elected officials who want to go back to the good old days, the fabulous era of growth and prosperity ushered in by the baby boom, get on the stick and reset tax rates on high income earners. It's a no brainer.

There has been a great wailing and gnashing of teeth over the past day or so as those who follow the healthcare debate react to the Stupak/Some Creepy Republican Guy Amendment.

The Amendment, which is apparently intended to respond to conservative Democrats’ concerns that too many women were voting for the Party in recent elections, was attached to the House’s version of healthcare reform legislation that was voted out of the House this weekend.

The goal is to limit women’s access to reproductive medicine services, particularly abortions; this based on the concept that citizens of good conscience shouldn’t have their tax dollars used to fund activities they find morally repugnant.

At first blush, I was on the mild end of the wailing and gnashing spectrum myself…but having taken a day to mull the thing over, I’m starting to think that maybe we should take a look at the thinking behind this…and I’m also starting to think that, properly applied, Stupak’s logic deserves a more important place in our own vision of how a progressive government might work.

It’s Political Judo Day today, Gentle Reader, and by the time we’re done here it’s entirely possible that you’ll see Stupak’s logic in a whole new light.

I think I'll start this diary off with a little primer on the recession for the General Assembly, because it appears as if they don't quite grasp what happened: Lending institutions and homebuilders finally consummated their years of flirtatious infatuation with an orgy of poorly vetted, ticking time-bomb loans for overpriced houses and, when the inevitable foreclosures resulted, the money wizards who gambled our future on those loans sucked down tequila at Cabo san Lucas and tried to ignore the incessant chirping of their cell phones.

Don't you just love it when a multimillion dollar enterprise whose very existence depends on tax-deductible contributions goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on about the evils of taxation?

It’s not that we believe there should be no taxes. Government is a necessary institution for the preservation of our liberty. By its very nature, government is compulsory and will tax us. But the taxing power should be used only according to constitutional principles, to fund the limited, constitutional functions that private individuals and voluntary associations cannot do for themselves.

You'll see these two threads in everything the Show has to say: First, government is compulsory. And second, taxing power should be used according to a certain set of constitutional principles that only they understand. Government is not compulsory by its very nature. Government is a choice. We the People created it from less than nothing in order to bring a small semblance of order to the chaos of our own human behavior.

And as for constitutional principles? Go ahead and read all about it.