Hi all...
Are you a musician?...part of a band?...a
poet?...a comedian?...(or know one?)...
Let us know asap if you can join us for our
Friday Night Real Majority Jams at Waryas Park in
Poughkeepsie (at the riverfront)..starting Fri.
July 8th 6:30 pm (and continuing through
August)!...
[...with potluck food-- including my Mom's famous
homemade veggie burgers deluxe par excellence!...]
What's the rationale for these so-called "Real
Majority Jams", you might ask?...
This-- that now more than ever we in the grass
roots need to organize together-- to stand up
proudly as the true Real Majority-- in
recognition of the fact that we ARE the real
majority-- as poll after poll after poll still
proves that the vast majority of Americans are
FOR progressive taxation, AGAINST massive budget
cuts, layoffs, and cuts to Planned Parenthood and
EPA, FOR our troops to come home from Afghanistan
and Iraq, FOR health care for all, FOR a $10/hour
minimum wage, FOR a constitutional amendment to
make it clear that corporations aren't people--
and FOR Clean Money Clean Elections campaign
finance reform...(scroll down below to again see
poll links that have proved this repeatedly)...
We need to stand up for this now (and make it fun
and easier to do this with music and food
together)-- because (if you didn't know-- but I
think you do)-- it's not just GOP and too many
Dems in power that ignore simple common sense
above-- mainstream progressive stands on all
those issues above...
[what's the alternative?...rolling over and
playing dead while political "center" moves even
more to right]
It's just too many pols in power-- but it's also
practically every large newspaper and TV/radio
station...
[quel surprise-- PoJo front page today again
promoting tax cap that will decimate Dutchess
County nonprofits, schools, libraries-- instead
of real (progressive) relief: circuitbreaker;
http://www.trendny.org ]
Now of course-- there is no guarantee that our
new "Real Majority Jams" won't fall flat on their
faces...
But I'm 47 years old folks-- and I don't want to
be 67 or 77 before I start seriously organizing
on all this...
[note, too-- please let us know asap if your
group/organization would like to co-sponsor these
too, k?...it's become all too clear that folks on
right know how to pull together; can we do this
as majority?!?]
Here's more inspiration, too...(these four: aside
from all the other polls I've been emailing you
all about):
[from "Vision: How to Make Media Reflect the
Popular Views of Americans, Not Those of Elites"
by Paul Rosenberg, AlterNet Posted on May 30, 2011, Printed on May 31, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151062/vision%3A_how_to_make_media_reflect_the_popular_views_of_americans%2C_not_those_of_elites
]
"Fact #1: 62 percent believe the government
should focus on creating jobs, even if it means
increasing the deficit in the short-term,
according to a Lake Research Partners poll in
March, 2011.
Fact #2: 76 percent believe cutting Medicare to
help reduce the budget deficit is mostly or
totally unacceptable, and 67 percent believe the
same about Medicaid, according to a Wall Street
Journal/NBC poll in February, 2011.
Fact #3: 68 percent believe that phasing out the
Bush tax cuts for families earning $250,000 per
year is mostly or totally acceptable to help
reduce the budget deficit, according to the same
poll.
Fact #4: 65 percent oppose changes to Social
Security as a way to reduce the budget deficit,
according to a Pew Research poll in March, 2011."
[thx again to 200+ already signed on to our new
Dutchess Progressive group on Facebook; see:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=151387038233489
-- join our new FDR Democratic Club of Dutchess
too:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_149905961729495
!]
And again-- besides those four just above, check
out these ten polls-- this is what democracy
looks like:
[and if we're going to challenge GOP/Dem power
structure and media power structure, let's make
it fun!]
Fact #1: ABC News/Washington Post poll in April--
72% of Americans for millionaires tax to solve
deficit; 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll in January
prove 61% of us prefer new taxes on rich to
budget cuts.
[see: http://www.thinkprogress.org/2011/04/20/paul-ryan-wealthy-tax-breaks/ ;
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7022AK20110103 ]
Fact #2: Marist/YNN, Siena, Quinnipiac, Hart
polls show most NY'ers (even GOP!) for
millionaires tax:
http://www.capitaltonight.com/2011/02/groups-band-together-to-push-millionaires-tax/
;
http://www.hungeractionnys.org/Poeple%20SOS%20release%202011.pdf ;
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=940073&category=state ;
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2010/08/16/100816ta_talk_surowiecki
Fact #3: NBC/Wall St. Journal/Quinnipiac Feb.
polls found most Americans FOR Planned Parenthood.
[see: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/node/15708 --
both Gibson and Hayworth voted Feb. 18 to cut $$$:
http://www.votesmart.org/voting_category.php?can_id=127041
; http://www.PlannedParenthood.org ]
Fact #4: USA Today poll 59% of Americans "U.S.
mission in Afghanistan done; troops come home."
[USA Today poll May 2011--
http://www.thinkprogress.org/2011/05/11/afghanistan-get-out-59-percent/
]
Fact #5: Harris poll in February finds 54%
Americans vs. GOP cuts to Environmental
Protection Agency.
[see: http://www.techcrunch.com/2011/02/16/harris-poll-epa-budget/ ]
Fact #6: 67% of Americans support support raising
the minimum wage to $10/hour to end the recession.
[see:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/06/americans-minimum-wage-poll_n_752921.html
]
Fact #7: CBS poll this Feb. found 55% of
Americans oppose GOP plan to cut funding from
Obamacare.
[CBS poll this Feb.--
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20032114-503544.html
]
Fact #8: A 2009 NYTimes/CBS News poll and 16
other polls since 2003 prove that the vast
majority of Americans support expanding Medicare
to cover all of us through a single-payer health
care system
[also CNN, AP-Yahoo, Quinnipiac, Washington
Post/ABC, Kaiser Family Foundation, Civil Society
Inst.]
[see: http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-payer_health_care ]
Fact #9: 70% of New Yorkers (Oct. 2000 Zogby
poll) support Clean Money Clean Elections reform.
[see: http://www.CitizenActionNY.org -- CMCE
reform already in Maine, North Carolina, New
Mexico]
Fact #10: 80% Americans oppose Supreme Court
ruling last year equating corporations w/people.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2010/02/in-supreme-court-ruling-on-campaign-finance-the-public-dissents.html
; http://www.freespeechforpeople.org/node/75 ;
70% New Yorkers for CMCE reform too!]
Recall what Michael Moore told ralliers recently
in Madison-- how "the richest 400 people in this
country have more wealth than half of all
Americans-- 150 million people" (
http://www.MichaelMoore.com ):
Fact: Even the Wall Street Journal reported Jan.
8th, 2007 that "The nation's top 1% of households
own more than half the nation's stocks, according
to the Federal Reserve. They also control more
than $16 trillion in wealth-- more than the
bottom 90%." (from Robert Frank's "Plutonomics")
[see: http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2007/01/08/plutonomics/ ]
Fact: "Citigroup's research department wrote
three memos for investors concluding that wealth
and power in the U.S. were increasingly
concentrated in the hands of the top 1%, stating
the top 1% of the population now have more
financial wealth than the bottom 95% combined."
[see:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/books-films/facts/capitalism-love-story
(Michael Moore's last film)]
Fact: Millionaires used to pay a 91% federal
income tax rate in '50's under Ike; they now pay
35%.
[sign: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ILikeIke ;
http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html
]
Fact: Even GOP state Senator John Bonacic has
come out with Assembly Dems for millionaires tax.
[see:
http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/61649/mcdonald-doesnt-slam-door-on-millionaires-tax
http://www.capitaltonight.com/2011/03/assembly-dems-may-make-millionaires-tax-just-that-bonacic-agrees/
]
Fact: The richest 1% of NYS households increased
their share of all income statewide from 10% in
1980 to 35% in 2007; we in the middle-class here
in NYS now pay over 11% of our income in state
and local taxes-- while millionaires pay only 8%
of their income in state and local taxes.
[ http://www.FiscalPolicy.org ;
http://www.ITEPnet.org/wp2009/ny_whopays_factsheet.pdf
]
Fact: Millionaires used to pay a 15 1/2% state
income tax rate in the 1970's under Rockefeller--
but now pay only 8.97% (see:
http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/taxhistory2.htm ).
Fact: "Top earners have seen a four percentage
point decrease in their federal income taxes,
thanks to the Bush Administration tax cuts
extended for two years by the Obama
Administration."
[see http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPI_NewYorkShouldContinueTheIncomeTax.pdf ]
Fact: All of the following members of the
statewide Growing Together NY/Better Choice
Budget Coalition stand in strong support of
extending the currenty tiny millionaires tax
surcharge-- NYS AFL-CIO, NYSUT, CSEA, PEF,
AFSCME, Working Families Party, NY Jobs with
Justice, Dutchess Outreach, NY Statewide Senior
Action Council, NYS Alliance for Retired
Americans, Interfaith Alliance of NYS, Interfaith
Impact of NYS, Environmental Advocates, Citizen
Action, NYS Community Action Association, Green
Party, Fiscal Policy Institute, Hunger Action
Network of NYS.
[see http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org ]
[...and of course, letters to editor to local
newspapers welcome/needed as well-- to
letterstoeditor@poughkeepsiejournal.com,
letters@freemanonline.com, newsplace@aol.com, and
editorial@thehudsonvalleynews.com; call Congress
at 866-338-1015; call Albany at 877-255-9417!...]
Pass it on...
Joel
444-0599/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
p.s. Don't forget folks-- it's not just GOP and
media power structures that need to be
challenged; if you haven't yet, check out "Why
the Democratic Party Has Abandoned the Middle
Class in Favor of the Rich" by Kevin Drum from
Mother Jones-- read, weep-- then stop mourning
and help us organize(!):
http://www.alternet.org/story/151108/why_the_democratic_party_has_abandoned_the_middle_class_in_favor_of_the_rich
...
p.p.s. Let us know asap if you'd like to own a
brand-new spiffy FDR Democratic Club of Dutchess
County t-shirt (see:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_149905961729495
)-- only $10!...
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[here below-- the whole Rosenberg piece]
"Vision: How to Make Media Reflect the Popular
Views of Americans, Not Those of Elites"
By Paul Rosenberg, AlterNet
Posted on May 30, 2011, Printed on May 31, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151062/vision%3A_how_to_make_media_reflect_the_popular_views_of_americans%2C_not_those_of_elites
"Liar! Liar!" "He's lying!" That's how Wisconsin
GOP Rep. Paul Ryan's constituents responded at a
town hall meeting in Kenosha a week after House
Republicans passed Ryan's draconian budget plan
to privatize Medicare and slash taxes for the
wealthy.
Ryan seemed genuinely shocked, totally unprepared
for the grassroots outrage and for good reason:
the gap between Washington elites and the
American people seems to have reached an all-time
high. While Ryan's plan was lauded as "brave" and
"visionary" inside the Beltway, poll after poll
showed that the American people wanted none of it.
62 percent believe the government should
focus on creating jobs, even if it means
increasing the deficit in the short-term,
according to a Lake Research Partners poll in
March, 2011.
76 percent believe cutting Medicare to help
reduce the budget deficit is mostly or totally
unacceptable, and 67 percent believe the same
about Medicaid, according to a Wall Street
Journal/NBC poll in February, 2011.
68 percent believe that phasing out the Bush
tax cuts for families earning $250,000 per year
is mostly or totally acceptable to help reduce
the budget deficit, according to the same poll.
65 percent oppose changes to Social Security
as a way to reduce the budget deficit, according
to a Pew Research poll in March, 2011.
Yet, despite similar results in dozens of polls
over the past few months, none of it seemed to
penetrate the Beltway bubble.
The American Majority Project, a coalition of
three groups, is spearheading an effort to change
that, and put the American people back into the
center of public debates about the future of our
country. In a statement published on Huffington
Post, Roger Hickey, co-director of Campaign for
America's Future (CAF) announced the partnership
with the Center for Economic Policy Research and
the media watchdog, Fairness and Accuracy in
Reporting.
Hickey wrote that CAF was "sending letters to all
the major media demanding that the views of the
American Majority be represented in the news
programs, print articles and opinion pages, and
the non-stop daily and Sunday talk shows in which
the debate about America's future is being
conducted as we move toward the showdown over the
budget. We are demanding representation in the
media proportional to the size of the American
Majority."
Hickey went on to say, "We are also supplying the
media with an extensive list of economists,
experts and advocates who share the majority view
that deficits are not now the major threat to US
prosperity, and that getting revenue back into
the budget is far less damaging (and more just)
than cutting spending and crippling important
programs for the poor and the elderly."
"Washington is preoccupied with draconian
spending cuts because the pundits, news shows and
politicians engage in group-think. And
billionaire financier Peter Peterson has taught
them what to think - that America has a deficit
crisis," Hickey told me later.
"But outside the beltway, the polls show the
American majority cares more about high
unemployment and the slow economy than the
deficit. And the American majority rejects most
of the budget cuts being pushed by the Washington
crowd. Strong majorities would rather reduce the
deficit by growing the economy, raising taxes for
the wealthy and corporations, and by cutting
military spending."
The polls cited above are but a few of the many
CAF collected to support this argument.
Perhaps the Beltway elites could be partially
excused if these popular views had suddenly
sprung out of nowhere, without rhyme or reason.
Or if the growth of government recently was
explosive, unprecedented or arbitrary. Or if
there wasn't a centuries-long history of elites
fighting the will of the people over progressive
taxation and enhanced social welfare. But none of
these is the case. In fact, it's taken a
tremendous effort by elites to block out three
well-established historical facts, which add
tremendous muscle to the effort CAF, CEPR and
FAIR are spearheading:
1) That government grows in size as economies
mature to meet the needs of the people. This is
known as "Wagner's Law," first articulated by
Adolph Wagner, perhaps the leading conservative
economist in Bismark's Germany.
2) That such government spending is
profoundly popular in America, not just with
liberals, but with self-described conservatives
as well. The recent polling opposed to the Ryan
Plan has decades of similar results behind it.
3) That there's a direct relationship between
democracy, progressive taxation and enhanced
social welfare on the one hand, and elite rule,
regressive taxation and reduced social welfare on
the other. This is why even today, blue states
are more prosperous than red states, even though
blue states tend to subsidize red states by
giving more to the federal government in taxes
than they get back in spending.
Let's look at each of these in turn.
Wagner's Law
"Wagner's Law" says there is a long-run tendency
for government expenditure to grow relative to
national income. Once economic development
becomes sufficiently advanced, increased
government activity is required to meet society's
needs that private enterprise cannot.
This has been demonstrated various different
ways. A particularly clearcut demonstration comes
from data collected by the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development. In 1955,
both the US and the OECD average total tax levels
were about 24 percent. From then till 1970, both
tax rates rose about 14.5 percent. Since then,
however, the US increased just 3.7 percent
compared to 30.5 percent for the OECD average.
Although Wagner's Law still applies to the U.S.,
the increase has slowed dramatically, and one
reason isn't hard to identify: The emergence of
Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy. Given an
either-or choice between clinging to symbolic
racial privilege or supporting continued
advancement of social spending a la Wagner's Law,
Nixon bet on racial divisiveness. But it only
slowed Wagner's Law. It did not abolish it or
make the desire for more social spending go away.
Decades of 'Big Government' Support
Let's consider how long the American Majority
views have been in place. One could go back to
1936, when the GOP thought it had a sure winner
by running against Social Security. As soon as
the government started taking money out of
workers' paychecks, FDR and the New Deal would be
doomed or so they thought. Instead, some of the
earliest polling ever conducted by George Gallup
showed overwhelming support, in the 80 percent
range. This was reflected by FDR's landslide 1936
victory, taking 60 percent of the vote and every
state except Maine and New Hampshire.
But detailed understanding did not emerge for
another 30 years. During the 1964 election,
Gallup fielded a comprehensive survey designed
and analyzed by two close friends and pioneers of
public opinion research, Lloyd Free and Hadley
Cantril. Their results were published three years
later as The Political Beliefs of Americans: A
Study of Public Opinion . They discovered an
overall ideological preference for free
enterprise and limited government, with 50
percent of respondents identified as conservative
based on a set of five questions, versus just 16
percent liberal.
But everything flipped when they turned to
questions about specific spending items. In what
they called "operational" terms, liberals
outnumbered conservatives by a whopping 65-14
percent. What's more, almost half (46 percent) of
ideological conservatives were operational
liberals, while another 28 percent were middle of
the road. Their conflicted views have played a
major part in our recent history. While they
represented 23 percent of the nation as a whole,
Free and Cantril pointed out that they made up 41
percent of the Southern states that voted for
Goldwater that year, the harbingers of what the
GOP has since become.
Another three decades later, political scientist
James Stimson called this divided state of mind
"almost schizoid" in his book Public Opinion in
America: Moods, Cycles, and Swings. Stimson
analyzed hundreds of public opinion survey items,
and determined that questions related to
operational liberalism formed the primary issue
dimension in American politics, with liberal
attitudes generally prevailing, even when the
electorate is in its most conservative mood.
An excellent source of such questions is the
General Social Survey (GSS), fielded every year
or two since 1972. There are a number of national
spending items in the GSS, about which people are
asked if we're spending too little, too much, or
about right. Even self-identified extreme
conservatives -- just three percent of all
respondents -- are more inclined to say we're
spending too little, rather than too much, on
everything from classic New Deal/Great Society
social spending items like Social Security, to
older and newer "liberal" priorities, such as
education and the environment, as well as
infrastructure items like "highways and bridges."
In short, the Ryan Plan for extreme spending cuts
isn't just cutting against the public mood of the
moment, it's cutting against the views of even
extreme conservative voters for at least four
decades now. But when I asked Stimson about the
Ryan Plan in a long-term perspective, he didn't
talk about poll numbers at all. He talked about
buying a car.
"Imagine that instead of taking out a loan for a
new car that you had instead put away money for
it on every payday, month after month, for say,
40 years," Stimson said. "And then on the day you
were finally ready to take home your purchase
someone had said 'We are spending too much on
cars, we need to change them in ways that will
save money' and so your long-sought new car was
downgraded to an economy model (and your 40-year
savings no longer covered the full price).
"How would you feel? Would you think yourself
greedy if you wanted the car you had actually
paid for? That is the story of Social Security
and Medicare. Tens of millions of people have
paid in on every payday of their lives and now
they want what they were promised when they paid."
The Racist Roots Of Libertarian Tax Policy
This bring us to the third fundamental historical
fact supporting the American Majority Project:
The direct relationship between democracy,
progressive taxation and enhanced social welfare
on the one hand, and elite rule, regressive
taxation and reduced social welfare on the other.
In America, overt racism in the 1960s and '70s
was key to submerging the progressive, democratic
forces that had advanced American social welfare
so dramatically since the dark days of the
Depression when the Democrats took power in 1933.
But by the 1980s, things had changed. From then
on, racial appeals appeared mostly in coded form.
Ronald Reagan campaigned against imaginary
"welfare queens," not against blacks in general.
Yet, as the anti-black racism grew more subtle,
the confederate ideology grew more bold --
"states' rights," "personal responsibility,"
"strict constructionism" -- all the excuses used
to keep blacks "in their place," first under
slavery, then under segregation, only grew more
prominent as overt racism receded. And the more
that overt racism receded, the more legitimate
these excuses so compatible with ideological
conservatism appeared to become as principles in
themselves.
None of this extinguished support for more
government spending. But it did severely cripple
the political ability of Democrats to deliver
what people wanted. This further empowered
Republicans to bring other issues to the fore,
particularly wedge issues focused on fragmenting
those who most supported the Democrats.
Both Clinton in 1993 and Obama in 2009 tried to
act in the spirit of Wagner's Law: expanding the
government role in health care to increase
efficiency and reduce overall costs. Their
proposals stopped well short of the optimal
universal programs found in Europe, Canada and
Australia, but their potential success threatened
the GOP's virtual strangulation of Wagner's Law.
So tremendous efforts were made to defeat both
proposals, and mobilize broader opposition which
brought Republicans sweeping national and
state-level gains in the following midterm
elections.
The GOP's most recent effort has featured the
emergence of the "Tea Party" narrative,
identifying opposition to Obama and Wagner's Law
with the Boston Tea Party. But this narrative is
profoundly false, as explained in Robin Einhorn's
2006 book, American Taxation, American Slavery.
"Americans are right to think that our antitax
and antigovernment attitudes have deep historical
roots," Einhorn wrote in an online essay
discussing her findings. "Their mistake is to dig
for them in Boston. We should be digging in
Virginia and South Carolina rather than in
Massachusetts or Pennsylvania, because the
origins of these attitudes have more to do with
the history of American slavery than the history
of American freedom. They have more to do with
protections for entrenched wealth than with
promises of opportunity, and more to do with the
demands of privileged elites than with the
strivings of the common man. Instead of
reflecting a heritage that valued liberty over
all other concerns, they are part of the
poisonous legacy we have inherited from the
slaveholders who forged much of our political
tradition.
In the book, Einhorn first sets the backdrop for
understanding colonial American taxation by
briefly examining Britain and France, both
dependent on schemes that primarily taxed the
poor. In contrast, Virginia, the leading Southern
colony, had a deeply corrupt and primitive tax
system compared to Massachusetts, so much so that
it was completely unprepared to finance its part
in the Revolutionary War. Thus, not only was the
Boston Tea Party a rebellion against taxation
without representation, rather than a rebellion
against taxes per se, it was a rebellion by
people who already paid much more taxes and more
progressive taxes than their counterparts in the
South. Indeed, the South was much more similar to
Britain and France in terms of having a corrupt
and regressive tax system, dominated by an
unproductive elite, actively hostile to the very
idea of the general welfare, much less spending
tax money on it.
'States Rights' Means Taxing the Poor
Today, Tea Party rhetoric also echoes the
"states' rights" rhetoric of Southern elites from
time immemorial. But this, too, turns out to be
deeply regressive. The illusion is that the
states, being closer to the people, are more
responsive to the people's needs and desires. In
some ways this is certainly true. But it's also
true that the people have a more level playing
field nationally, through broad institutions,
such as unions, defending their interests against
powerful elites. Nothing shows this more clearly
than the distribution of tax burdens.
While federal income taxes, which are generally
progressive, tend to dominate the national
dialogue on taxes, state taxes tend to be sharply
regressive, as laid out in detail in "Who Pays?"
a 50-state survey of state and local tax rates
from the Institute on Taxation and Economic
Policy, released in 2009. The introduction stated
in bold: "The study's main finding is that nearly
every state and local tax system takes a much
greater share of income from middle- and
low-income families than from the wealthy."
Specifically, the average for all states was an
11 percent tax rate for the lowest-income
quintile (20 percent) of the population,
declining steadily to 8.5 percent for the fourth
quintile, and just over 5 percent for the top 1
percent of taxpayers. So, those who could least
afford to pay taxes paid more than twice the
share of those who could most easily afford it.
Some states were much worse, such as Washington
State, which lacks an individual income tax. Its
ratio was six-to-one, rather than two-to-one.
Forward, To the Past
By cutting benefits and cutting taxes on the
wealthy and corporations, the Ryan Plan and
similar state-level efforts are seeking to take
us back to a past that Americans have struggled
against for centuries. Most people probably don't
realize this, of course. It's enough that they
feel like Stimson's anecdotal car-buyer: "Would
you think yourself greedy if you wanted the car
you had actually paid for? That is the story of
Social Security and Medicare. Tens of millions of
people have paid in on every payday of their
lives and now they want what they were promised
when they paid."
But those in the media have a responsibility to
know more, to tell the difference between history
and myth, to make it possible for the rest of us
to make informed decisions, and to have our
voices heard and taken account of. That is the
role of media in a democracy. It is why freedom
of the press is so vital for us. And it's why the
American Majority project is so vital for the
American majority.
"Watch the media and see if your views are
represented," Hickey said, in conclusion. "If
not, demand that the media cover the views of the
majority."
© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
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"Why the Democratic Party Has Abandoned the Middle Class in Favor of the Rich"
By Kevin Drum, Mother Jones
Posted on May 27, 2011, Printed on May 31, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151108/why_the_democratic_party_has_abandoned_the_middle_class_in_favor_of_the_rich
In 2008, a liberal Democrat was elected
president. Landslide votes gave Democrats huge
congressional majorities. Eight years of war and
scandal and George W. Bush had stigmatized the
Republican Party almost beyond redemption. A
global financial crisis had discredited the
disciples of free-market fundamentalism, and
Americans were ready for serious change.
Or so it seemed. But two years later, Wall Street
is back to earning record profits, and
conservatives are triumphant. To understand why
this happened, it's not enough to examine polls
and tea parties and the makeup of Barack Obama's
economic team. You have to understand how we fell
so short, and what we rightfully should have
expected from Obama's election. And you have to
understand two crucial things about American
politics.
The first is this: Income inequality has grown
dramatically since the mid-'70s-far more in the
US than in most advanced countries-and the gap is
only partly related to college grads
outperforming high-school grads. Rather, the bulk
of our growing inequality has been a product of
skyrocketing incomes among the richest 1 percent
and-even more dramatically-among the top 0.1
percent. It has, in other words, been CEOs and
Wall Street traders at the very tippy-top who are
hoovering up vast sums of money from everyone,
even those who by ordinary standards are pretty
well off.
Second, American politicians don't care much
about voters with moderate incomes. Princeton
political scientist Larry Bartels studied the
voting behavior of US senators in the early '90s
and discovered that they respond far more to the
desires of high-income groups than to anyone
else. By itself, that's not a surprise. He also
found that Republicans don't respond at all to
the desires of voters with modest incomes. Maybe
that's not a surprise, either. But this should
be: Bartels found that Democratic senators don't
respond to the desires of these voters, either.
At all.
It doesn't take a multivariate correlation to
conclude that these two things are tightly
related: If politicians care almost exclusively
about the concerns of the rich, it makes sense
that over the past decades they've enacted
policies that have ended up benefiting the rich.
And if you're not rich yourself, this is a
problem. First and foremost, it's an economic
problem because it's siphoned vast sums of money
from the pockets of most Americans into those of
the ultrawealthy. At the same time, relentless
concentration of wealth and power among the rich
is deeply corrosive in a democracy, and this
makes it a profoundly political problem as well.
How did we get here? In the past, after all,
liberal politicians did make it their business to
advocate for the working and middle classes, and
they worked that advocacy through the Democratic
Party. But they largely stopped doing this in the
'70s, leaving the interests of corporations and
the wealthy nearly unopposed. The story of how
this happened is the key to understanding why the
Obama era lasted less than two years.
About a year ago, the Pew Research Center looked
looked at the sources reporters used for stories
on the economy. The White House and members of
Congress were often quoted, of course. Business
leaders. Academics. Ordinary citizens. If you're
under 40, you may not notice anything amiss. Who
else is missing, then? Well: "Representatives of
organized labor unions," Pew found, "were sources
in a mere 2% of all the economy stories studied."
It wasn't always this way. Union leaders like
John L. Lewis, George Meany, and Walter Reuther
were routine sources for reporters from the '30s
through the '70s. And why not? They made news.
The contracts they signed were templates for
entire industries. They had the power to bring
commerce to a halt. They raised living standards
for millions, they made and broke presidents, and
they formed the backbone of one of America's two
great political parties.
They did far more than that, though. As historian
Kim Phillips-Fein puts it, "The strength of
unions in postwar America had a profound impact
on all people who worked for a living, even those
who did not belong to a union themselves."
(Emphasis mine.) Wages went up, even at nonunion
companies. Health benefits expanded, private
pensions rose, and vacations became more common.
It was unions that made the American economy work
for the middle class, and it was their later
decline that turned the economy upside-down and
made it into a playground for the business and
financial classes.
Technically, American labor began its ebb in the
early '50s. But as late as 1970, private-sector
union density was still more than 25 percent, and
the absolute number of union members was at its
highest point in history. American unions had
plenty of problems, ranging from unremitting
hostility in the South to unimaginative
leadership almost everywhere else, but it wasn't
until the rise of the New Left in the '60s that
these problems began to metastasize.
The problems were political, not economic.
Organized labor requires government support to
thrive-things like the right to organize
workplaces, rules that prevent retaliation
against union leaders, and requirements that
management negotiate in good faith-and in
America, that support traditionally came from the
Democratic Party. The relationship was symbiotic:
Unions provided money and ground game campaign
organization, and in return Democrats supported
economic policies like minimum-wage laws and
expanded health care that helped not just union
members per se-since they'd already won good
wages and benefits at the bargaining table-but
the interests of the working and middle classes
writ large.
But despite its roots in organized labor, the New
Left wasn't much interested in all this. As the
Port Huron Statement, the founding document of
Students for a Democratic Society, famously
noted, the students who formed the nucleus of the
movement had been "bred in at least modest
comfort." They were animated not by workplace
safety or the cost of living, but first by civil
rights and antiwar sentiment, and later by
feminism, the sexual revolution, and
environmentalism. They wore their hair long, they
used drugs, and they were loathed by the
mandarins of organized labor.
By the end of the '60s, the feeling was entirely
mutual. New Left activists derided union bosses
as just another tired bunch of white,
establishment Cold War fossils, and as a result,
the rupture of the Democratic Party that started
in Chicago in 1968 became irrevocable in Miami
Beach four years later. Labor leaders assumed
that the hippies, who had been no match for
either Richard Daley's cops or establishment
control of the nominating rules, posed no real
threat to their continued dominance of the party
machinery. But precisely because it seemed
impossible that this motley collection of shaggy
kids, newly assertive women, and goo-goo
academics could ever figure out how to wield real
political power, the bosses simply weren't ready
when it turned out they had miscalculated badly.
Thus George Meany's surprise when he got his
first look at the New York delegation at the 1972
Democratic convention. "What kind of delegation
is this?" he sneered. "They've got six open fags
and only three AFL-CIO people on that delegation!"
But that was just the start. New rules put in
place in 1968 led by almost geometric progression
to the nomination of George McGovern in 1972, and
despite McGovern's sterling pro-labor
credentials, the AFL-CIO refused to endorse him.
Not only were labor bosses enraged that the
hippies had thwarted the nomination of labor
favorite Hubert Humphrey, but amnesty, acid, and
abortion were simply too much for them. Besides,
Richard Nixon had been sweet-talking them for
four years, and though relations had recently
become strained, he seemed not entirely
unsympathetic to the labor cause. How bad could
it be if he won reelection?
Plenty bad, it turned out-though not because of
anything Nixon himself did. The real harm was the
eventual disaffection of the Democratic Party
from the labor cause. Two years after the debacle
in Miami, Nixon was gone and Democrats won a
landslide victory in the 1974 midterm election.
But the newly minted members of Congress, among
them former McGovern campaign manager Gary Hart,
weren't especially loyal to big labor. They'd
seen how labor had treated McGovern, despite his
lifetime of support for their issues.
The results were catastrophic. Business groups,
simultaneously alarmed at the expansion of
federal regulations during the '60s and newly
emboldened by the obvious fault lines on the
left, started hiring lobbyists and launching
political action committees at a torrid pace. At
the same time, corporations began to realize that
lobbying individually for their own parochial
interests (steel, sugar, finance, etc.) wasn't
enough: They needed to band together to push
aggressively for a broadly pro-business
legislative environment. In 1971, future Supreme
Court justice Lewis Powell wrote his now-famous
memo urging the business community to fight back:
"Strength lies in organization," he wrote, and
would rise and fall "through joint effort, and in
the political power available only through united
action and national organizations." Over the next
few years, the Chamber of Commerce morphed into
an aggressive and highly politicized advocate of
business interests, conservative think tanks
began to flourish, and more than 100 corporate
CEOs banded together to found a pro-market
supergroup, the Business Roundtable.
They didn't have to wait long for their first big
success. By 1978, a chastened union movement had
already given up on big-ticket legislation to
make it easier to organize workplaces. But they
still had every reason to think they could at
least win passage of a modest package to bolster
existing labor law and increase penalties for
flouting rulings of the National Labor Relations
Board. After all, a Democrat was president, and
Democrats held 61 seats in the Senate. So they
threw their support behind a compromise bill they
thought the business community would accept with
only a pro forma fight.
Instead, the Business Roundtable, the US Chamber
of Commerce, and other business groups declared
war. Organized labor fought back with all it
had-but that was no longer enough: The bill
failed in the Senate by two votes. It was, said
right-wing Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), "a starting
point for a new era of assertiveness by big
business in Washington." Business historian Kim
McQuaid put it more bluntly: 1978, he said, was
"Waterloo" for unions.
Organized labor, already in trouble thanks to
stagflation, globalization, and the decay of
manufacturing, now went into a death spiral. That
decline led to a decline in the power of the
Democratic Party, which in turn led to fewer
protections for unions. Rinse and repeat. By the
time both sides realized what had happened, it
was too late-union density had slumped below the
point of no return.
Why does this matter? Big unions have plenty of
pathologies of their own, after all, so maybe
it's just as well that we're rid of them. Maybe.
But in the real world, political parties need an
institutional base. Parties need money. And
parties need organizational muscle. The
Republican Party gets the former from corporate
sponsors and the latter from highly organized
church-based groups. The Democratic Party,
conversely, relied heavily on organized labor for
both in the postwar era. So as unions
increasingly withered beginning in the '70s, the
Democratic Party turned to the only other source
of money and influence available in large-enough
quantities to replace big labor: the business
community. The rise of neoliberalism in the '80s,
given concrete form by the Democratic Leadership
Council, was fundamentally an effort to make the
party more friendly to business. After all, what
choice did Democrats have? Without substantial
support from labor or business, no modern party
can thrive.
It's important to understand what happened here.
Entire forests have been felled explaining why
the working class abandoned the Democratic Party,
but that's not the real story. It's true that
Southern whites of all classes have increasingly
voted Republican over the past 30 years. But
working-class African Americans have been (and
remain) among the most reliable Democratic
voters, and as Larry Bartels has shown
convincingly, outside the South the white working
class has not dramatically changed its voting
behavior over the past half-century. About 50
percent of these moderate-income whites vote for
Democratic presidential candidates, and a bit
more than half self-identify as Democrats. These
numbers bounce up and down a bit (thus the
"Reagan Democrat" phenomenon of the early '80s),
but the overall trend has been virtually flat
since 1948.
In other words, it's not that the working class
has abandoned Democrats. It's just the opposite:
The Democratic Party has largely abandoned the
working class.
Here's why this is a big deal. Progressive change
in the United States has always come in short,
intense spurts: The Progressive Era lasted barely
a decade at the national level, the New Deal saw
virtually all of its legislative activity enacted
within the space of six years between 1933 and
1938, and the frenzy of federal action associated
with the '60s nearly all unfolded between 1964
and 1970. There have been exceptions, of course:
The FDA was created in 1906, the GI Bill was
passed in 1944, and the Americans with
Disabilities Act was passed in 1990. And the
courts have followed a schedule all their own.
Still, one striking fact remains: Liberal reform
is not a continuous movement powered by mere
enthusiasm. Reform eras last only a short time
and require extraordinarily intense levels of
cultural and political energy to get started. And
they require two other things to get started: a
Democratic president and a Democratic Congress.
In 2008, fully four decades after our last burst
of liberal change, we got that again. But instead
of five or six tumultuous years, the surge of
liberalism that started in 2008 lasted scarcely
18 months and produced only two legislative
changes really worthy of note: health care reform
and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. By the
summer of 2010 liberals were dispirited,
political energy had been co-opted almost
entirely by the tea party movement, and in
November, Republicans won a crushing victory.
Why? The answer, I think, is that there simply
wasn't an institutional base big enough to insist
on the kinds of political choices that would have
kept the momentum of 2008 alive. In the past,
blue-collar workers largely took their cues on
economic policy from meetings in union halls, and
in turn, labor leaders gave them a voice in
Washington.
This matters, as Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson
argue in one of last year's most important books,
Winner-Take-All Politics, because politicians
don't respond to the concerns of voters, they
respond to the organized muscle of institutions
that represent them. With labor in decline, both
parties now respond strongly to the interests of
the rich-whose institutional representation is
deep and energetic-and barely at all to the
interests of the working and middle classes.
This has produced three decades of commercial and
financial deregulation that started during the
administration of a Democrat, Jimmy Carter,
gained steam throughout the Reagan era, and
continued under Bill Clinton. There were a lot of
ways America could have responded to the twin
challenges of '70s-era stagflation and the
globalization of finance, but the policies we
chose almost invariably ignored the stagnating
wages of the middle class and instead catered to
the desires of the superrich: hefty tax cuts on
both high incomes and capital gains. Deregulation
of S&Ls (PDF) that led to extensive looting and
billions in taxpayer losses. Monetary policy
focused excessively on inflation instead of
employment levels. Tacit acceptance of asset
bubbles as a way of maintaining high economic
growth. An unwillingness to regulate financial
derivatives that led to enormous Wall Street
profits and contributed to the financial crisis
of 2008. At nearly every turn, corporations and
the financial industry used their institutional
muscle to get what they wanted, while the working
class sat by and watched, mostly unaware that any
of this was even happening.
It's impossible to wind back the clock and see
what would have happened if things had been
different, but we can take a pretty good guess.
Organized labor, for all its faults, acted as an
effective countervailing power for decades,
representing not just its own interests, but the
interests of virtually the entire wage-earning
class against the investor class. As veteran
Washington Post reporter David Broder wrote a few
years ago, labor in the postwar era "did not
confine itself to bread-and-butter issues for its
own members. It was at the forefront of battles
for aid to education, civil rights, housing
programs and a host of other social causes
important to the whole community. And because it
was muscular, it was heard and heeded." If unions
had been as strong in the '80s and '90s as they
were in the '50s and '60s, it's almost
inconceivable that they would have sat by and
accepted tax cuts and financial deregulation on
the scale that we got. They would have demanded
economic policies friendlier to middle-class
interests, they would have pressed for the
appointment of regulators less captured by the
financial industry, and they would have had the
muscle to get both.
And that means things would have been different
during the first two years of the Obama era, too.
Aside from the question of whether the crisis
would have been so acute in the first place, a
labor-oriented Democratic Party almost certainly
would have demanded a bigger stimulus in 2009. It
would have fought hard for "cramdown" legislation
to help distressed homeowners, instead of caving
in to the banks that wanted it killed. It would
have resisted the reappointment of Ben Bernanke
as Fed chairman. These and other choices would
have helped the economic recovery and produced a
surge of electoral energy far beyond Obama's
first few months. And since elections are won and
lost on economic performance, voter turnout, and
legislative accomplishments, Democrats probably
would have lost something like 10 or 20 seats
last November, not 63. Instead of petering out
after 18 months, the Obama era might still have
several years to run.
This is, of course, pie in the sky. Organized
labor has become a shell of its former self, and
the working class doesn't have any institutional
muscle in Washington. As a result, the Democratic
Party no longer has much real connection to
moderate-income voters. And that's hurt nearly
everyone.
If unions had remained strong and Democrats had
continued to vigorously press for more equitable
economic policies, middle-class wages over the
past three decades likely would have grown at
about the same rate as the overall economy-just
as they had in the postwar era. But they didn't,
and that meant that every year, the money that
would have gone to middle-class wage increases
instead went somewhere else. This created a vast
and steadily growing pool of money, and the chart
below gives you an idea of its size. It shows how
much money would have flowed to different groups
if their incomes had grown at the same rate as
the overall economy. The entire bottom 80 percent
now loses a collective $743 billion each year,
thanks to the cumulative effect of slow wage
growth. Conversely, the top 1 percent gains $673
billion. That's a pretty close match. Basically,
the money gained by the top 1 percent seems to
have come almost entirely from the bottom 80
percent.
And what about those in the 80th to 99th
percentile? They didn't score the huge payoffs of
the superrich, but they did okay, basically
keeping up with economic growth. Yet the
skyrocketing costs of things like housing and
higher education (PDF) make this less of a
success story than it seems. And there's been a
bigger cost as well: It turns out that today's
upper-middle-class families lead a much more
precarious existence than raw income figures
suggest.
Jacob Hacker demonstrated this persuasively in
The Great Risk Shift, which examined the ways in
which financial risk has increasingly been moved
from corporations and the government onto
individuals. Income volatility, for example, has
risen dramatically over the past 30 years. The
odds of experiencing a 50 percent drop in family
income have more than doubled since 1970, and
this volatility has increased for both high
school and college grads. At the same time,
traditional pensions have almost completely
disappeared, replaced by chronically underfunded
401(k) plans in which workers bear all the risk
of stock market gains and losses. Home
foreclosures are up (PDF), Americans are drowning
in debt, jobs are less secure, and personal
bankruptcies have soared (PDF). These
developments have been disastrous for workers at
all income levels.
This didn't all happen thanks to a sinister
30-year plan hatched in a smoke-filled room, and
it can't be reined in merely by exposing it to
the light. It's a story about power. It's about
the loss of a countervailing power robust enough
to stand up to the influence of business
interests and the rich on equal terms. With that
gone, the response to every new crisis and every
new change in the economic landscape has
inevitably pointed in the same direction. And
after three decades, the cumulative effect of all
those individual responses is an economy focused
almost exclusively on the demands of business and
finance. In theory, that's supposed to produce
rapid economic growth that serves us all, and 30
years of free-market evangelism have convinced
nearly everyone-even middle-class voters who keep
getting the short end of the economic stick-that
the policy preferences of the business community
are good for everyone. But in practice, the
benefits have gone almost entirely to the very
wealthy.
It's not clear how this will get turned around.
Unions, for better or worse, are history. Even
union leaders don't believe they'll ever regain
the power of their glory days. If private-sector
union density increased from 7 percent to 10
percent, that would be considered a huge victory.
But it wouldn't be anywhere near enough to
restore the power of the working and middle
classes.
And yet: The heart and soul of liberalism is
economic egalitarianism. Without it, Wall Street
will continue to extract ever vaster sums from
the American economy, the middle class will
continue to stagnate, and the left will continue
to lack the powerful political and cultural
energy necessary for a sustained period of
liberal reform. For this to change, America needs
a countervailing power as big, crude, and
uncompromising as organized labor used to be.
But what?
Over the past 40 years, the American left has
built an enormous institutional infrastructure
dedicated to mobilizing money, votes, and public
opinion on social issues, and this has paid off
with huge strides in civil rights, feminism, gay
rights, environmental policy, and more. But the
past two years have demonstrated that that isn't
enough. If the left ever wants to regain the
vigor that powered earlier eras of liberal
reform, it needs to rebuild the infrastructure of
economic populism that we've ignored for too
long. Figuring out how to do that is the central
task of the new decade.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
my eighth annual essay contest-- 500 words or less: deadline June 22nd!...
Hi Rhinebeck and Clinton folks!...
For the last eight years (since 2004) I've
sponsored a District #11 Essay Contest for
graduating high school seniors in Rhinebeck and
Clinton-- the challenge being an essay of five
hundred words or less on what they would do if
they were in my position (county legislator for
Clinton and Rhinebeck); over the years these
young men and women have come up with a number of
good ideas (and I've presented at least a dozen
$100 savings bonds at the annual commencement
exercises to winning graduates)...
The deadline has been extended this year-- to
June 22nd-- so get those essays in to us by then
at joeltyner@earthlink.net!...(or County
Legislature offices at 22 Market St.
Poughkeepsie, NY 12601)...
Recall graduating Rhinebeck High School senior
Rachel Neifeld's award-winning essay several
years back (see
http://www.petitiononline.com/teencntr-- effort
started by yours truly for local teen center with
folks like the late great John Honey; 12-mile walk-a-thon I
organized with Rachel and her family on this back
then):
Rachel then wrote: "I would put great effort into
creating a place for teenagers to associate after
nine o' clock. Instead of having to travel to
Kingston to find some night time entertainment,
there should be a casual setting for people to
reside in the center of town. A community center
in the heart of Rhinebeck would provide kids with
reasonably priced food and events during late
night hours when other options are limited. This
desperately needed social setting, dedicated to
the youth of the town, would be a great place to
grab a bite to eat after a movie, or just relax
with friends on a Friday night. With something to
do, kids may be less likely to have drinking
parties at friends' houses, and would not resort
to unhealthy recreational decisions."
But to the point-- read below recent
award-winning essays from Rhinebeck High School
graduating seniors Kayla Arsenault, Forrest
Hackenbrock, Alex Landa, and Scott McDonald-- and
contact us if you'd like to see their dreams and
visions actually become reality sooner than later
in Rhinebeck and Clinton!...(will try to post
more essay contest winners' work as well as time
goes on)...
[you just never know what might happen if we pull
together on these to make them happen!]
So one last time-- again-- spread the news to all
graduating Rhinebeck High School seniors you know:
The deadline has been extended this year-- to
June 22nd-- so get those essays in to us by then
at joeltyner@earthlink.net!...(or County
Legislature offices at 22 Market St.
Poughkeepsie, NY 12601)...
Joel
444-0599/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
[note: yes-- Millbrook High, FDR High, and Pine
Plains High school graduating seniors are
elibible for this too-- if they are residents of
Town of Clinton (or Rhinebeck)!]
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From Kayla Arsenault...
"Growing up in Rhinebeck I've come to notice the
Fairgrounds rarely used. Using the Fairgrounds
for events such as concerts that our local Hudson
Valley bands could play at, a local drive-in
movie theatre, family potluck days, and various
competitions would be an effective use of the
Fairgrounds space. The local bands would gather
the surrounding towns creating a stronger
community. Many people from around this area
would come spread or get inspiration from this
event. Local businesses will benefit greatly from
this because many people will stop and eat or
shop at Rhinebeck's local businesses. Also
another plus would be that teens would get into
less trouble because they would be attending
these events instead of having free time to do
whatever they please.
To make families closer it would be great to have
family field days. May through August would be
acceptable months to have this because it would
be after the car shows but before the fair.
Things such as cook-offs, go-cart racing, and
bull-riding would be fun and exciting for people
to attend. For these events we could invite local
business vendors to serve, display, or market
their business' food. By gathering the residents
of the community it would truly strengthen our
neighborhood.
Another way to use that space would be to have a
drive-in movie theatre. This would give a place
for kids to go at night and is also closer than
the Hyde Park drive-ins. Some ideas for this
would be classic movie night for the seniors and
late-night movies for teens and adults.
I'm hoping that you will take these ideas into
consideration considering the fast growth in
crime in Rhinebeck. Involving kids, teens, and
adults back into the community is the main
purpose of these ideas-- so if you make any of my
ideas reality, I'm positive that a lot of things
will change around Rhinebeck."
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From Alex Landa...
"Rhinebeck, New York- a rather beautiful town,
with an old-fashioned comfort that's rare these
days. It's become a famous place to raise the
young, and for the elderly to enjoy their wisdom
years. Where does the middle stand, the teens,
the young adults, and the working family? To be
honest, many teens and even adults find it
difficult to have a good time in town. This is a
fairly stale area in all honesty, which has many
people, teens and even adults resort to doing
hard drugs and drinking their time away. I've
lost friends due to this circumstance, and the
idea of an internet café could spark some
creativity through artistic means, as opposed to
resorting to artificial means.
This town lacks the creative side, as it's
focused on entertaining the elderly and wasting
too much time making artificial beauty to bring
in naïve spenders from large cities, primarily
New York City. Although the town has its fair
share of narrow-minded people, who take natural
beauty for granted, there are still the ones who
need a spot to be with other artistic people,
sharing their works, and having a mentally safe
environment. I propose to make an internet café,
of which is fairly self explanatory; a café with
Wi-Fi connection, but with more. I also propose
to include two separate venues to the side, one
being an art gallery of which could be updated
periodically. The second venue would be used for
different occasions each week, one week it could
be an open mike night, a battle of the bands,
poetry slam, karaoke, plays be performed, and
even setting up a projector and have a film
festival.
Not only could this generally bring a lot of
amusement to Rhinebeck, it could greatly improve
the economy. It would create new jobs; have
builders create the new building, people running
the café, setting up internet, creating the
events, and so on. It would bring more people to
Rhinebeck, as this idea doesn't seem too common
in Dutchess County, so it could potentially have
people bring their disposable income, which could
go to the school, and fixing up some less that
adequate roads and sidewalks throughout
Rhinebeck. It could easily relieve parental
worries; I'm sure they'd rather have their child
come home fatigued from creative stimuli rather
than narcotic stimuli.
Rhinebeck, New York- beauty, relaxation,
calmness, and low crime rate. Rhinebeck, New
York- stale, drug filled, and not the best place
for the middle range. This town needs spice, the
cinnamon on top of a well-made cappuccino.
Helping the economy, destroying boredom,
potentially lowering the drug problem, and bring
some more creative elements, I see, might not be
a bad thing. My purpose for said proposal is to
improve a town of which seems to dearly need
improving. Lest we not forget, in today's day and
age, living in a whirlwind of social demons, even
this small addition to Rhinebeck could serve as a
sanctuary to young, elderly, and middle range
alike."
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From Forrest Hackenbrock...
"If I were county Legislator I would focus on a
few things. First I would attempt to survey the
youth in the area, maybe by going to elementary
high schools and asking various groups to fill
out questionnaires. In the survey there should be
questions about what kids would like to see more
of in our area. I feel that in the town of
Rhinebeck and Clinton, there is a lack of
recreational resources for kids. The mini park is
mainly for toddlers and younger kids. The rec
park and Crystal Lake are the only other area in
town that kids can play sports or hang out. These
facilities are in good condition and provide
recreation but there could be more. There is a
quite large skateboarding community that is
oppressed by a lack of skate spots. If there was
even a small skate park, at the rec park or
somewhere near by town, I think a lot more kids
would be active and interested in such
activities. I believe kids in our community would
also benefit from a community center where they
could just hang out, play pool, etc. If there
were to be a stage where bands could perform I
know it would flourish. I know this is easier
said than done but with the right sponsors and
support it is a possibility.
Another thing I would concern myself with is
environmental issues. I feel that many people in
Rhinebeck and Clinton are involved with the green
movement while others may not be. There should be
public service announcements telling quick tips
or facts on how to reduce our destruction of the
environment. These could be billboards, or small
signs around town, or commercials on the radio or
TV. Our community must be aware of our carbon
emissions levels and take a stricter approach on
littering.
The town of Rhinebeck obviously caters to
tourists, especially from New York City. I enjoy
our town and find it very unique and interesting.
I like how the only corporation is CVS. Corporate
involvement should be kept to a minimum in our
town. As I walk through town I notice all the new
establishments are upscale, and do not represent
locals' needs. There should be more stores with
practical items and prices, along with
restaurants.
I moved here in 2000, and did not like it very
much. However, as I grew up, Rhinebeck grew on
me, and I am now very happy and privileged to be
living here. I think we are living on a high
standard and should maintain that. The
suggestions I made are the only improvements I
can think of, because Rhinebeck is a very well
established town. As long as the town can
communicate with the community, the harmony that
exists will continue to live on."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From Scott McDonald...
"In a town like Rhinebeck where poverty and crime
are almost nonexistent, other subjects come to
mind when I consider what could be changed to
better our community. Our community as well as
our country as a whole misuses resources, create
ridiculous amounts of waste, and operate in an
inefficient manner. I feel it is appropriate and
necessary for me to use Rhinebeck High School,
the institution with which I am most familiar
under our local government, to demonstrate these
observations as well as provide alternative modes
of action.
Everyday Rhinebeck High School deposits hundreds
of sets of styrofoam trays and plastic silverware
in the trash. To me, this waste is inexcusable.
It would not only be cost efficient, but it would
relieve a huge environmental burden if our school
would just decide to buy real plates with real
silverware and wash and reuse them each day.
Also, Rhinebeck High School continues to feed the
kids processed, canned garbage from some large
food processing company located in the middle of
nowhere when they could be providing healthy
produce and supporting local agriculture at the
same time. The school could also set aside a
piece of land for growing fresh fruits and
vegetables and use it as an opportunity to teach
kids agriculture and nutrition as well as provide
community service opportunities.
The school district also tends to use artificial
light instead of natural sunlight by keeping the
window shades closed and turning the lights on,
frequently to keep kids from being distracted by
the outside world. This is wasteful in terms of
electricity and energy, not to mention artificial
light has been shown to be less stimulating to
students in a learning environment. For the times
when artificial light is necessary, the school
should have full spectrum light bulbs installed
as it is proven to be more likely to keep
students alert, healthier for the body
chemically, and cost effective in the long run.
If I were county legislator for Rhinebeck and
Clinton, I would try to impact the school system
for several reasons. Not only is the system run
poorly, but if done correctly, instilling values
of conservation and local agriculture in the
youth now would go on to prove very beneficial to
both our town and the world in the future."
For the last eight years (since 2004) I've
sponsored a District #11 Essay Contest for
graduating high school seniors in Rhinebeck and
Clinton-- the challenge being an essay of five
hundred words or less on what they would do if
they were in my position (county legislator for
Clinton and Rhinebeck); over the years these
young men and women have come up with a number of
good ideas (and I've presented at least a dozen
$100 savings bonds at the annual commencement
exercises to winning graduates)...
The deadline has been extended this year-- to
June 22nd-- so get those essays in to us by then
at joeltyner@earthlink.net!...(or County
Legislature offices at 22 Market St.
Poughkeepsie, NY 12601)...
Recall graduating Rhinebeck High School senior
Rachel Neifeld's award-winning essay several
years back (see
http://www.petitiononline.com/teencntr-- effort
started by yours truly for local teen center with
folks like the late great John Honey; 12-mile walk-a-thon I
organized with Rachel and her family on this back
then):
Rachel then wrote: "I would put great effort into
creating a place for teenagers to associate after
nine o' clock. Instead of having to travel to
Kingston to find some night time entertainment,
there should be a casual setting for people to
reside in the center of town. A community center
in the heart of Rhinebeck would provide kids with
reasonably priced food and events during late
night hours when other options are limited. This
desperately needed social setting, dedicated to
the youth of the town, would be a great place to
grab a bite to eat after a movie, or just relax
with friends on a Friday night. With something to
do, kids may be less likely to have drinking
parties at friends' houses, and would not resort
to unhealthy recreational decisions."
But to the point-- read below recent
award-winning essays from Rhinebeck High School
graduating seniors Kayla Arsenault, Forrest
Hackenbrock, Alex Landa, and Scott McDonald-- and
contact us if you'd like to see their dreams and
visions actually become reality sooner than later
in Rhinebeck and Clinton!...(will try to post
more essay contest winners' work as well as time
goes on)...
[you just never know what might happen if we pull
together on these to make them happen!]
So one last time-- again-- spread the news to all
graduating Rhinebeck High School seniors you know:
The deadline has been extended this year-- to
June 22nd-- so get those essays in to us by then
at joeltyner@earthlink.net!...(or County
Legislature offices at 22 Market St.
Poughkeepsie, NY 12601)...
Joel
444-0599/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
[note: yes-- Millbrook High, FDR High, and Pine
Plains High school graduating seniors are
elibible for this too-- if they are residents of
Town of Clinton (or Rhinebeck)!]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From Kayla Arsenault...
"Growing up in Rhinebeck I've come to notice the
Fairgrounds rarely used. Using the Fairgrounds
for events such as concerts that our local Hudson
Valley bands could play at, a local drive-in
movie theatre, family potluck days, and various
competitions would be an effective use of the
Fairgrounds space. The local bands would gather
the surrounding towns creating a stronger
community. Many people from around this area
would come spread or get inspiration from this
event. Local businesses will benefit greatly from
this because many people will stop and eat or
shop at Rhinebeck's local businesses. Also
another plus would be that teens would get into
less trouble because they would be attending
these events instead of having free time to do
whatever they please.
To make families closer it would be great to have
family field days. May through August would be
acceptable months to have this because it would
be after the car shows but before the fair.
Things such as cook-offs, go-cart racing, and
bull-riding would be fun and exciting for people
to attend. For these events we could invite local
business vendors to serve, display, or market
their business' food. By gathering the residents
of the community it would truly strengthen our
neighborhood.
Another way to use that space would be to have a
drive-in movie theatre. This would give a place
for kids to go at night and is also closer than
the Hyde Park drive-ins. Some ideas for this
would be classic movie night for the seniors and
late-night movies for teens and adults.
I'm hoping that you will take these ideas into
consideration considering the fast growth in
crime in Rhinebeck. Involving kids, teens, and
adults back into the community is the main
purpose of these ideas-- so if you make any of my
ideas reality, I'm positive that a lot of things
will change around Rhinebeck."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From Alex Landa...
"Rhinebeck, New York- a rather beautiful town,
with an old-fashioned comfort that's rare these
days. It's become a famous place to raise the
young, and for the elderly to enjoy their wisdom
years. Where does the middle stand, the teens,
the young adults, and the working family? To be
honest, many teens and even adults find it
difficult to have a good time in town. This is a
fairly stale area in all honesty, which has many
people, teens and even adults resort to doing
hard drugs and drinking their time away. I've
lost friends due to this circumstance, and the
idea of an internet café could spark some
creativity through artistic means, as opposed to
resorting to artificial means.
This town lacks the creative side, as it's
focused on entertaining the elderly and wasting
too much time making artificial beauty to bring
in naïve spenders from large cities, primarily
New York City. Although the town has its fair
share of narrow-minded people, who take natural
beauty for granted, there are still the ones who
need a spot to be with other artistic people,
sharing their works, and having a mentally safe
environment. I propose to make an internet café,
of which is fairly self explanatory; a café with
Wi-Fi connection, but with more. I also propose
to include two separate venues to the side, one
being an art gallery of which could be updated
periodically. The second venue would be used for
different occasions each week, one week it could
be an open mike night, a battle of the bands,
poetry slam, karaoke, plays be performed, and
even setting up a projector and have a film
festival.
Not only could this generally bring a lot of
amusement to Rhinebeck, it could greatly improve
the economy. It would create new jobs; have
builders create the new building, people running
the café, setting up internet, creating the
events, and so on. It would bring more people to
Rhinebeck, as this idea doesn't seem too common
in Dutchess County, so it could potentially have
people bring their disposable income, which could
go to the school, and fixing up some less that
adequate roads and sidewalks throughout
Rhinebeck. It could easily relieve parental
worries; I'm sure they'd rather have their child
come home fatigued from creative stimuli rather
than narcotic stimuli.
Rhinebeck, New York- beauty, relaxation,
calmness, and low crime rate. Rhinebeck, New
York- stale, drug filled, and not the best place
for the middle range. This town needs spice, the
cinnamon on top of a well-made cappuccino.
Helping the economy, destroying boredom,
potentially lowering the drug problem, and bring
some more creative elements, I see, might not be
a bad thing. My purpose for said proposal is to
improve a town of which seems to dearly need
improving. Lest we not forget, in today's day and
age, living in a whirlwind of social demons, even
this small addition to Rhinebeck could serve as a
sanctuary to young, elderly, and middle range
alike."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From Forrest Hackenbrock...
"If I were county Legislator I would focus on a
few things. First I would attempt to survey the
youth in the area, maybe by going to elementary
high schools and asking various groups to fill
out questionnaires. In the survey there should be
questions about what kids would like to see more
of in our area. I feel that in the town of
Rhinebeck and Clinton, there is a lack of
recreational resources for kids. The mini park is
mainly for toddlers and younger kids. The rec
park and Crystal Lake are the only other area in
town that kids can play sports or hang out. These
facilities are in good condition and provide
recreation but there could be more. There is a
quite large skateboarding community that is
oppressed by a lack of skate spots. If there was
even a small skate park, at the rec park or
somewhere near by town, I think a lot more kids
would be active and interested in such
activities. I believe kids in our community would
also benefit from a community center where they
could just hang out, play pool, etc. If there
were to be a stage where bands could perform I
know it would flourish. I know this is easier
said than done but with the right sponsors and
support it is a possibility.
Another thing I would concern myself with is
environmental issues. I feel that many people in
Rhinebeck and Clinton are involved with the green
movement while others may not be. There should be
public service announcements telling quick tips
or facts on how to reduce our destruction of the
environment. These could be billboards, or small
signs around town, or commercials on the radio or
TV. Our community must be aware of our carbon
emissions levels and take a stricter approach on
littering.
The town of Rhinebeck obviously caters to
tourists, especially from New York City. I enjoy
our town and find it very unique and interesting.
I like how the only corporation is CVS. Corporate
involvement should be kept to a minimum in our
town. As I walk through town I notice all the new
establishments are upscale, and do not represent
locals' needs. There should be more stores with
practical items and prices, along with
restaurants.
I moved here in 2000, and did not like it very
much. However, as I grew up, Rhinebeck grew on
me, and I am now very happy and privileged to be
living here. I think we are living on a high
standard and should maintain that. The
suggestions I made are the only improvements I
can think of, because Rhinebeck is a very well
established town. As long as the town can
communicate with the community, the harmony that
exists will continue to live on."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From Scott McDonald...
"In a town like Rhinebeck where poverty and crime
are almost nonexistent, other subjects come to
mind when I consider what could be changed to
better our community. Our community as well as
our country as a whole misuses resources, create
ridiculous amounts of waste, and operate in an
inefficient manner. I feel it is appropriate and
necessary for me to use Rhinebeck High School,
the institution with which I am most familiar
under our local government, to demonstrate these
observations as well as provide alternative modes
of action.
Everyday Rhinebeck High School deposits hundreds
of sets of styrofoam trays and plastic silverware
in the trash. To me, this waste is inexcusable.
It would not only be cost efficient, but it would
relieve a huge environmental burden if our school
would just decide to buy real plates with real
silverware and wash and reuse them each day.
Also, Rhinebeck High School continues to feed the
kids processed, canned garbage from some large
food processing company located in the middle of
nowhere when they could be providing healthy
produce and supporting local agriculture at the
same time. The school could also set aside a
piece of land for growing fresh fruits and
vegetables and use it as an opportunity to teach
kids agriculture and nutrition as well as provide
community service opportunities.
The school district also tends to use artificial
light instead of natural sunlight by keeping the
window shades closed and turning the lights on,
frequently to keep kids from being distracted by
the outside world. This is wasteful in terms of
electricity and energy, not to mention artificial
light has been shown to be less stimulating to
students in a learning environment. For the times
when artificial light is necessary, the school
should have full spectrum light bulbs installed
as it is proven to be more likely to keep
students alert, healthier for the body
chemically, and cost effective in the long run.
If I were county legislator for Rhinebeck and
Clinton, I would try to impact the school system
for several reasons. Not only is the system run
poorly, but if done correctly, instilling values
of conservation and local agriculture in the
youth now would go on to prove very beneficial to
both our town and the world in the future."
Monday, May 30, 2011
re: Memorial Day-- veterans now waiting twice as long to get claims processed-- why?...
[just sent this letter below to my 24 colleagues in our County Legislature-- follow up with your letters to 'em-- at countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us-- if you care!...(and call Congress on this too-- at (866) 338-1015)...pass it on!...Joel]
#########################################################
From: Joel Tyner
To: countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us
Subject: Colleagues-- re: Memorial Day-- check out this from http://www.MarineCorpsTimes.com ...
Date: May 30, 2011 3:41 AM
Hi all...
Please let me know if you'd be interested in co-signing a letter or co-sponsoring a resolution pushing Congress to end the current veterans' disability claims backlog; also-- see below-- initiative to make sure veterans' disability benefits have COLA's...
Happy Memorial Day...
Joel
444-0599
[recall Feb. 19th Poughkeepsie Journal editorial on this-- "Keep Pushing VA to Handle Backlog"]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2011/04/usat-backlog-buries-veterans-claims-040711w/ :
VA backlog buries veterans' claims
By Gregg Zoroya - USA Today
Posted : Thursday Apr 7, 2011 6:23:51 EDT
WASHINGTON - The number of veterans' disability claims taking more than four months to complete has doubled, prompting criticism from veterans and Congress that the Veterans Affairs Department failed to prepare for a rise in cases it knew was coming.
"Without question, I believe that the VA disability claims system is broken," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., chairwoman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, said Wednesday.
The number of claims that take more than 125 days to decide has gone from 200,000 a year ago to 450,000 today, according to administration budget documents. As a result, veterans must wait even longer to receive payments for disabilities.
VA says the delays are due in part to a generation of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with more complex claims, and a decision two years ago to expand compensation for Agent Orange-related illnesses. Claims also increase in a poor economy.
But veterans groups and Murray said VA was aware that claims would rise.
"The explosion in the claims backlog is another predictable, preventable insult to thousands of veterans of all generations," said Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
It now takes VA six months on average to process each compensation demand for illnesses or injuries. And the delay will reach an eight-month average next year, according to documents.
VA said it has added staff and expanded automated record-keeping but is dealing with an unprecedented amount of work.
"I think the disability determination system does not deliver decisions in as timely and uncomplicated a manner as people would like," said Tom Pamperin, a VA undersecretary for policy.
An increase was predicted by VA Secretary Eric Shinseki in 2009, when he expanded the number of illnesses which could be linked to Agent Orange.
The number of pending claims for compensation has grown from 448,000 last April to 756,000 today.
"The VA knew that more Agent Orange claims would be coming in ... but the claims have still overwhelmed the new caseworkers that Congress provided funding to hire," Murray said during a confirmation hearing for a new VA benefits chief.
VA added 3,000 claims processors last year, for a total of 14,000. But Pamperin said the work has been more labor-intensive than expected.
"We are working with a relatively inexperienced workforce. They make mistakes," he said.
Murray described a visit to a Seattle claims office where it took nine months to process a claim from a terminally ill veteran. He died three days before the case was resolved, she said.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
http://www.wvsocialsecuritydisabilityblog.com/2011/05/west-virginia-senator-backs-increase-of-veterans-benefits.shtml
West Virginia Senator backs increase of veterans' benefits
On behalf of Jan Dils, Attorneys at Law posted in Veteran's & Military Benefits on Thursday, May 19, 2011
People who receive Social Security benefits are entitled to a Cost-of-Living Adjustment, or COLA, to their benefits when there is a rise in the Consumer Price Index. The purpose of the adjustment is to make certain that benefits keep up with the pace of inflation. Although Social Security beneficiaries did not see a COLA for 2011 or 2010, if there is an increase in the Consumer Price Index, they could see an increase in their benefits for 2012.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for veterans who receive disabled veterans' benefits. Presently, veteran's benefits do not automatically increase to keep up with the consumer price index. However, several key lawmakers in the U.S. Senate are introducing legislation that could change that.
Senator Patty Murray introduced Senate Bill 3107 earlier this month. Fourteen other Senators, including West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller, joined Senator Murray as cosponsors of the bill. Senate Bill 3107, also known as Veterans' Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2010, would require an automatic COLA to benefits for disabled veterans as well as a COLA dependency and indemnity benefits to surviving spouses and children of deceased veterans.
The COLA for veterans' benefits would be tied to the same formula that is used to determine adjustments for Social Security beneficiaries. If Senate Bill 3107 is passed by the Senate and the House and then signed by President Obama, it would go into effect on December 1 of this year.
According to Senator Murray, the Veterans' Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2010 could help as many as 3.5 million disabled veterans and surviving family members in 2012.
Source: GovernmentExecutive.com, "Senators seek cost-of-living raise for disabled vets," Emily Long, 5/6/2011
#########################################################
From: Joel Tyner
To: countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us
Subject: Colleagues-- re: Memorial Day-- check out this from http://www.MarineCorpsTimes.com ...
Date: May 30, 2011 3:41 AM
Hi all...
Please let me know if you'd be interested in co-signing a letter or co-sponsoring a resolution pushing Congress to end the current veterans' disability claims backlog; also-- see below-- initiative to make sure veterans' disability benefits have COLA's...
Happy Memorial Day...
Joel
444-0599
[recall Feb. 19th Poughkeepsie Journal editorial on this-- "Keep Pushing VA to Handle Backlog"]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2011/04/usat-backlog-buries-veterans-claims-040711w/ :
VA backlog buries veterans' claims
By Gregg Zoroya - USA Today
Posted : Thursday Apr 7, 2011 6:23:51 EDT
WASHINGTON - The number of veterans' disability claims taking more than four months to complete has doubled, prompting criticism from veterans and Congress that the Veterans Affairs Department failed to prepare for a rise in cases it knew was coming.
"Without question, I believe that the VA disability claims system is broken," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., chairwoman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, said Wednesday.
The number of claims that take more than 125 days to decide has gone from 200,000 a year ago to 450,000 today, according to administration budget documents. As a result, veterans must wait even longer to receive payments for disabilities.
VA says the delays are due in part to a generation of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with more complex claims, and a decision two years ago to expand compensation for Agent Orange-related illnesses. Claims also increase in a poor economy.
But veterans groups and Murray said VA was aware that claims would rise.
"The explosion in the claims backlog is another predictable, preventable insult to thousands of veterans of all generations," said Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
It now takes VA six months on average to process each compensation demand for illnesses or injuries. And the delay will reach an eight-month average next year, according to documents.
VA said it has added staff and expanded automated record-keeping but is dealing with an unprecedented amount of work.
"I think the disability determination system does not deliver decisions in as timely and uncomplicated a manner as people would like," said Tom Pamperin, a VA undersecretary for policy.
An increase was predicted by VA Secretary Eric Shinseki in 2009, when he expanded the number of illnesses which could be linked to Agent Orange.
The number of pending claims for compensation has grown from 448,000 last April to 756,000 today.
"The VA knew that more Agent Orange claims would be coming in ... but the claims have still overwhelmed the new caseworkers that Congress provided funding to hire," Murray said during a confirmation hearing for a new VA benefits chief.
VA added 3,000 claims processors last year, for a total of 14,000. But Pamperin said the work has been more labor-intensive than expected.
"We are working with a relatively inexperienced workforce. They make mistakes," he said.
Murray described a visit to a Seattle claims office where it took nine months to process a claim from a terminally ill veteran. He died three days before the case was resolved, she said.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
http://www.wvsocialsecuritydisabilityblog.com/2011/05/west-virginia-senator-backs-increase-of-veterans-benefits.shtml
West Virginia Senator backs increase of veterans' benefits
On behalf of Jan Dils, Attorneys at Law posted in Veteran's & Military Benefits on Thursday, May 19, 2011
People who receive Social Security benefits are entitled to a Cost-of-Living Adjustment, or COLA, to their benefits when there is a rise in the Consumer Price Index. The purpose of the adjustment is to make certain that benefits keep up with the pace of inflation. Although Social Security beneficiaries did not see a COLA for 2011 or 2010, if there is an increase in the Consumer Price Index, they could see an increase in their benefits for 2012.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for veterans who receive disabled veterans' benefits. Presently, veteran's benefits do not automatically increase to keep up with the consumer price index. However, several key lawmakers in the U.S. Senate are introducing legislation that could change that.
Senator Patty Murray introduced Senate Bill 3107 earlier this month. Fourteen other Senators, including West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller, joined Senator Murray as cosponsors of the bill. Senate Bill 3107, also known as Veterans' Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2010, would require an automatic COLA to benefits for disabled veterans as well as a COLA dependency and indemnity benefits to surviving spouses and children of deceased veterans.
The COLA for veterans' benefits would be tied to the same formula that is used to determine adjustments for Social Security beneficiaries. If Senate Bill 3107 is passed by the Senate and the House and then signed by President Obama, it would go into effect on December 1 of this year.
According to Senator Murray, the Veterans' Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2010 could help as many as 3.5 million disabled veterans and surviving family members in 2012.
Source: GovernmentExecutive.com, "Senators seek cost-of-living raise for disabled vets," Emily Long, 5/6/2011
Friday, May 20, 2011
real property tax relief-- expanding middle-class circuitbreaker-- not destructive tax cap!...
Hi all...
Each one reach one-- come out to this very special forum hosted by yours truly tomorrow (Saturday, May 21st) at 11 am with nationally known NYS tax/budget expert Frank Mauro, Executive Director of the Fiscal Policy Institute ( http://www.FiscalPolicy.org )-- with Ulster County Legislator Susan Zimet (of http://www.OmnibusTaxSolution.org ), Gioia Shebar of http://www.TaxNightmare.org -- for our "Real Property Tax Relief: Circuitbreaker Expansion-- Not Destructive Tax Cap"-- at Rhinebeck Village Hall at 76 East Market St. there!...(you do NOT want to miss this opportunity to see/hear these experts)...
[thx too to Rhinebeck Village Boardmember extraordinaire Terry Gipson (also Dem candidate for state Senate-- see http://www.TerryGipsonNY.com )-- yay-- Terry's made it clear he supports circuitbreaker!)]
[note-- Frank Mauro, Sue Zimet, and Gioia Shebar are also cofounders of the Omnibus Consortium-- see http://www.OmnibusTaxSolution.org for much more on tax reform Cuomo SHOULD be pushing!]
Assemblyman Kevin Cahill has demonstrated true leadership on this-- bipartisan legislation here-- (A.5542A/S.912A): http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?bn=A5542A ; link here for Senate companion bill-- http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=%0D%0At&bn=S912A&term=&Summary=Y ...
[see below-- Co. Leg.'s Dan Kuffner, Alison MacAvery, and Jim Doxsey co-sponsoring my resol. on this;
email countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us to build support for it; call Albany too-- at 877-255-9417!]
[thx: Robert McKeon / http://www.TrendNY.org ; Robert has demonstrated leadership on this issue too!]
Fact: I got resolutions passed in our own County Legislature here in Dutchess (with bipartisan support, even) in '08 and '09 for property tax circuitbreaker, Omnibus bill; even started petition back then inspired by info @ http://www.TrendNY.org ; recall http://www.petitiononline.com/taxcut see http://www.OmnibusTaxSolution.org -- not pandering.
Click here for Mar. 1st testimony from FPI's Frank Mauro on all this too
http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPI_Testimony_CapOnRealPropertyTax_20110301.pdf .
Check out this must-read on all this from Ron Deutsch of http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org :
"Circuit Breaker the Best Way to Limit Property Tax Impact" (Albany TimesUnion 8/2/08)
http://www.trendny.org/Timesunion.com_Aug_08.pdf !
Also-- recall this from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities May 25th last year:
"Hidden Consequences: Lessons from Massachusetts for States Considering a Property Tax Cap"
by Phil Oliff and Iris J. Lav-- http://www.cbpp.org/5-21-08sfp.htm !
Remember, too-- March 25th press release last year from Robert McKeon, Sue Zimet, Ron Deutsch:
http://www.trendny.org/Press_Release-omnibus.pdf .
And let's not forget this gem released April last year from the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy:
"Property Tax Relief: The Case for Circuitbreakers"
by Daphne Kenyon, Adam Langley, and Bethany Paquin (from April 2010 "Land Lines")
https://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/dl/1772_991_3%20Circuit%20Breakers.pdf !
Great that vast majority of school budgets locally were passed Tuesday night (not Pine Plains tho)...
But don't forget-- even with budgets approved, massive job cuts(!)...
"Local school districts are cutting nearly 280 jobs in the 2011-12 budgets voters will be asked to approve Tuesday."
[from Sunday's Pok. Journal-- "School districts propose job cuts, tax-levy hikes" by John Davis:
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20110515/NEWS02/105150366/School-districts-propose-job-cuts-tax-levy-hikes ]
"School districts in the region plan to eliminate a total of 213 jobs as state aid declines for a third consecutive year."
[from Sunday's Daily Freeman-- "Area school district budgets put 213 jobs in jeopardy" by Kyle Wind:
http://www.dailyfreeman.com/articles/2011/05/15/news/doc4dcf339a95a03011796144.txt ]
So-- hope to see you all there tomorrow!...(we don't need more massive layoffs in midst of recession)...
But if you can't make it, call Cuomo and state legislators at (877) 255-9417-- and don't forget-- Co. Leg.'s Dan Kuffner, Alison MacAvery, and Jim Doxsey have agreed to co-sponsor my resolution on this;
email countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us to build support for it now so it can pass asap, folks!...
[pass it on-- unless you truly love high property taxes while hundreds of teachers are laid off locally]
WAKE UP, FOLKS!!!!.....
Joel
444-0599/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
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[here below-- resolution from yours truly co-sponsored by Kuffner, MacAvery, and Doxsey for June]
[here below-- newer/newly edited/informed version of resolution for middle-class circuitbreaker; even some local GOP state legislators are co-sponsoring legislation with Cahill on this-- A.5542A; http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?bn=A5542A ; link here for Senate companion bill-- http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=%0D%0At&bn=S912A&term=&Summary=Y ; here are links for Bonacic circuitbreaker bill-- http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=%0D%0A&bn=A7673&term=&Summary=Y ; http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=%0D%0A&bn=S4171&term=&Summary=Y ]
WHEREAS, the Fiscal Policy Institute has found that a property tax cap won't make government services cost less, and claims that caps will produce large savings through "efficiencies" are overblown, and
WHEREAS, property tax caps can be particularly harmful if adopted during a weak economy, and state aid can't be relied upon to fill the gap, and
WHEREAS, changes in school enrollment can have a big impact, and without effectively targeted state aid, low-income communitieswill fall even further behind, and
WHEREAS, wealthier communities will override a property tax cap more frequently than poorer ones, and middle-income communities might end up bearing the brunt of a property tax cap, and
WHEREAS, after a property tax cap was recently implemented in Massachusetts, a number of communities have been forced to lay off teachers, police officers, firefighters, and other public employees; close fire stations; shut libraries, senior centers, and recreation centers or sharply reduce their hours; and scale back public school programs, and one town even turned off its street lights to save money, and
WHEREAS, Republican state Senator John Bonacic and Democratic Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee are co-sponsoring bipartisan legislation (A.7673/S.41471) for an expanded property tax circuitbreaker to give real relief to homeowners across the state; Assemblymember Kevin Cahill is also co-sponsoring bipartisan legislation for this (A.5542A/S.912A) with many other legislators across the state, and therefore be it
RESOLVED, that the Dutchess County Legislature strongly urges that our state legislature pass and our governor sign into law bipartisan Bonacic/Jaffee or Cahill legislation for expanded property tax circuitbreaker relief for the middle class, and be it further
RESOLVED, that a copy of this resolution be sent to our governor and our county's delegation of state legislators.
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From http://www.FiscalPolicy.org ...
New York Shouldn't Look to Massachusetts as a Model for Property Tax Reform
With the Commission on Property Tax Relief poised to recommend that the state impose a rigid cap on property taxes for education based on Massachusetts' Proposition 2 ?, a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (May 21, 2008) describes the problems the law has created in Massachusetts and explains that the impact in New York could be even more severe.
[see: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=301 !]
Among the key lessons:
-- A tax cap won't make government services cost less.
-- Claims that caps will produce large savings through "efficiencies" are overblown.
-- Tax caps can be particularly harmful if adopted during a weak economy.
-- State aid can't be relied upon to fill the gap.
-- Changes in school enrollment can have a big impact.
-- Without effectively targeted state aid, low-income communities will fall even further behind.
-- Wealthier communities will override a tax cap more frequently than poorer ones.
-- Middle-income communities might end up bearing the brunt of a cap.
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From http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=301 ...
Hidden Consequences: Lessons From Massachusetts for States Considering a Property Tax Cap
By Phil Oliff and Iris J. Lav
Revised May 25, 2010
Executive Summary
Advocates of reducing property taxes often cite Proposition 2 ?, the strict property tax cap Massachusetts adopted in 1980, as a model for reform. Most recently, New Jersey Governor Christie has proposed a cap similar to Proposition 2 ?, which limits property tax revenues in Massachusetts to 2.5 percent of a community's assessed value and caps annual growth in a community's property tax revenue at 2.5 percent. Unfortunately, proponents typically overlook Proposition 2 ?'s harmful impact on Massachusetts, as well as the reasons why similar measures could prove even more damaging in other states.
Over the two and a half decades Proposition 2 ? has been in effect, Massachusetts' level of property taxation has declined. Between 1980 and 1985, property taxes as a percentage of income fell from 76 percent above the national average to 13 percent above the national average, where it stands today.[i] (Massachusetts localities rely more on the property tax than localities in much of the rest of the country because they are not permitted to levy sales or income taxes or various other forms of taxes. (See Figure 1.)
State aid has helped fill in some of the gaps in local funding the law created, but not all of them and not reliably over time. Furthermore, the local "overspending" that proponents claimed Proposition 2 ? could curb did not exist in the imagined quantities, and necessary public services have been jeopardized.
By limiting Massachusetts localities' only major source of revenue, Proposition 2 ? has exacted a considerable cost - one that highlights the shortcomings of property tax revenue caps as a policy approach. The law has:
* arbitrarily constrained local governments' ability to raise revenues without any consideration of the actual cost of providing services;
* made local governments heavily dependent on state aid, which tends to fluctuate with economic cycles and state policies (a particular problem in an economic downturn when state aid usually declines but the need for local services such as education and fire and police protection does not decline);
* exacerbated disparities between wealthier communities and poorer ones in access to quality local services, as many of the former have voted to override Proposition 2 ?'s revenue cap while the latter have generally had to adhere to it; and
* resulted in cuts to valued services rather than simply calling forth greater efficiency from local governments.
Across Massachusetts, a number of communities have been forced to lay off teachers, police officers, firefighters, and other public employees; close fire stations; shut libraries, senior centers, and recreation centers or sharply reduce their hours; and scale back public school programs. One town even turned off its street lights to save money.
The Massachusetts experience can provide lessons about the potential effects of a property tax cap for other states that are considering similar measures. This report looks at the Massachusetts experience and gleans the following lessons.
* A tax cap won't make government services cost less. A cap does not prevent employee health insurance costs, special education costs, or other costs beyond localities' control from rising much faster than the cap allows. Nor does it hold down the cost of heating buildings, buying gas for police and fire vehicles, and operating schools buses when the world price of oil is skyrocketing. When these things occur, as they have in Massachusetts, other services have to be cut to fit total expenditures under the cap.
* Claims that caps will produce large savings through "efficiencies" are overblown. There are fewer efficiencies to realize from squeezing down revenues than cap proponents generally suggest. One person's "efficiency savings," such as the elimination of a police or fire station, may represent the loss of a critical service for another person. Ultimately, a property tax cap is highly likely to lead to reductions in basic community services and a deterioration in the quality of life in many communities - particularly in communities that cannot routinely override it.
* Tax caps can be particularly harmful if adopted during a weak economy. Proposition 2 took effect during a period of extraordinary economic growth - the "Massachusetts Miracle." State revenues were rising, which allowed the state to boost aid to compensate for constrained property taxes, and construction was expanding, which allowed communities to raise their property tax revenue by more than 2.5 percent per year.
If a state were to adopt a property tax cap during an economic slowdown or a period of weak state revenue growth, a major sustained infusion of state aid would not be possible and property tax revenue growth would be more constrained. As a result, schools and other services dependent on the property tax would have to be cut much more severely than in Massachusetts.
* State aid can't be relied upon to fill the gap. Even when state policymakers fully intend to expand state aid to fill local funding gaps created by a cap, a recession or fiscal crisis will usually derail this plan. State aid to localities in Massachusetts has fluctuated greatly with the business cycle and with state policy decisions. In any other state that might implement a cap, local government and school budgets are likely to become more volatile.
* Changes in school enrollment can have a big impact. The adoption of Proposition 2 coincided with a decline in Massachusetts' K-12 enrollment, allowing schools to operate with less revenue.
If another state adopted a property tax cap during a period of steady or rising enrollment, it would be forced to impose much more extensive cutbacks in teachers, classes, and programs than those seen in Massachusetts.
* Without effectively targeted state aid, low-income communities will fall even further behind. Massachusetts has a highly targeted system of aiding local governments. The influx of state aid seems to have shielded low-income communities somewhat from Proposition 2 ?'s tendency to exacerbate differences in services between high- and low-income communities. But when state aid has receded as a result of economic downturns or state policy decisions, the poorest communities have had to make the largest budget cuts.
In states that do not have a system of school aid that is targeted as effectively as Massachusetts', students in low-income communities are likely to fall increasingly behind students in schools that have greater resources.
* Wealthier communities will override a tax cap more frequently than poorer ones. This has contributed to a growing spending gap between local governments in high-income communities and all other communities, despite Massachusetts' progressive system of state aid. This is likely to occur in other states that implement a cap.
* Middle-income communities might end up bearing the brunt of a cap. In Massachusetts, budgets in middle-income communities grew more slowly than budgets in either low-income or high-income communities because they did not receive as much state aid as the former or override Proposition 2 as often as the latter.
Proposition 2 is a structurally flawed policy that has significantly eroded local services in Massachusetts despite a number of factors that have mitigated its impact. Massachusetts had the benefit of an unusually strong economy, declining school enrollment, and a system of effectively targeted school aid. Proposition 2 ? nevertheless has had negative results for the provision of quality public services in Massachusetts. Other states that attempt to impose a similar tax cap without the benefit of Massachusetts' mitigating factors are likely to face even worse consequences.
The Basics of Proposition 2
Proposition 2 sets two kinds of restrictions on the amount of property taxes that a local government can collect: a levy ceiling and a levy limit.
Levy Ceiling: The levy ceiling limits property tax collections to 2.5 percent of the assessed value of a community's property.[1]
Levy Limit: Proposition 2 ? set a property tax limit for each community in fiscal year 1982 equal to the lesser of a community's actual property taxes or 2.5 percent of the community's assessed value.[2] This "levy limit" grows by 2.5 percent per year.
Proposition 2 ? allows communities to adjust their levy limit upward to account for "new growth": increases in the tax base that are not the result of revaluation. Such increases can result from the development of new properties, changes in assessed value that result from the renovation or expansion of existing properties, reclassification of properties that were previously exempt from taxation, or the conversion of existing properties into condominiums or new subdivisions.
A community taxing below its levy limit can increase its property tax collections to the limit at any time. The levy limit cannot exceed the levy ceiling.
A community's residents can chose to permanently increase, or override, their levy limit through a majority vote.
Capital Outlay and Debt Exclusions: A community may vote to temporarily exceed its levy limit or levy ceiling for the payment of certain capital expenditures or debt service costs.[3]
[1] "Levy Limits: A Primer on Proposition 2 ?," Massachusetts Department of Revenue, Division of Local Services, Revised June 2005, p. 4.
[2]David M. Cutler, Douglas W. Elmendorf, and Richard Zeckhauser, "Restraining the Leviathan: Property Tax Limitation in Massachusetts," National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, August 1997, pp 4-5.
[3] "Levy Limits: A Primer on Proposition 2 ?."
End Notes:
[i] State & Local Government Finance Data Query System, Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center; data from U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances, Government Finances (Volume 4) and Census of Governments (1977-2005), http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/slf-dqs/pages.cfm, accessed 23-Apr-08 02:38 PM.
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From http://www.TrendNY.org ...
Siena Poll - Circuit Breaker Tops Property Tax Cap
July 22, 2008
TREND's Results bring call for Siena to re-do polling
After our organization's state-wide poll last month indicated that New Yorkers prefer an income-based circuit breaker over a tax cap, Siena university bowed to pressure to conduct a similar survey. Last month, the university released results that suggested New Yorkers want a property tax cap - the result of responses to a leading and vague question.
Yesterday's poll, however, separated out for New Yorkers the two mechanisms. The conclusion is the same as our first in the state poll indicated - the majority of New Yorkers prefer the Circuit breaker. The wording of the questions relating to the different property tax relief options varies slightly, but the results are similar.
Poll Says New Yorkers Prefer Circuit Breaker over Cap
June 22, 2008
A poll conducted and paid for by tax policy group TREND NY over the weekend shows that New Yorkers overwhelmingly support legislation that would limit a taxpayer's total property taxes over a cap on local contributions toward school funding. The random automated phone survey polled over 500 registered voters across the state asking them if they supported a measure known as a circuit breaker; which would limit an individual's total property taxes to a small percentage of their income.
By greater than a two to one margin (272/126 ) respondents preferred an income based cap on their taxes over a cap on local school levies. When given the specific choice of a 4% school tax cap or a limit of 5% of their income for their total property tax bill, as exists in Vermont, voters favored the circuit breaker by a 5 to 1 margin, 66% to 13% with 21% undecided. Respondents indicated their primary motivation was to limit taxes and not to curb school funding by an 82% to 18% margin.
"In the past, poorly worded polls that didn't explain the different types of caps have led the public into thinking that the only way overburdened New Yorkers can be helped would be to limit school levies. " said TREND Director Robert McKeon. "The truth is that a traditional tax cap will at best curb future increases, while a circuit breaker would provide immediate relief to many taxpayers and insure New Yorkers against unreasonable levels in the future. Taxpayers want a more equitable system of taxation, not just controlled spending. A circuit breaker could accomplish that. "
McKeon added that the survey results confirm the testimony given to the Governor's Commission during the course of the many hearings. "There was almost unanimous support for circuit breaker and very few calling on them to propose a cap. That's why it was disappointing to see that they would prioritize something that would not protect individuals, many of whom are overburdened."
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From http://www.trendny.org/Timesunion.com_Aug_08.pdf ...
Albany, N.Y.: Timesunion.com - 8/2/08 1:31 PM
"Taxing Issue"
COUNTERPOINT: Circuit breaker the best way to limit property tax impact
By RON DEUTSCH
First published: Sunday, July 20, 2008
When New York state lawmakers talk about their proposed property tax cap, they paint a rosy picture
about its effects. It's an election year, and unfortunately they're using a glib sound bite for a complex
problem. They hear the frustration from constituents about how the cost of living is rising and, in
response, they are offering a bad option that would seriously set back the progress our schools and
students are making.
The politicians are seeking to limit the amount of support that any community can show for its schools in
school budget votes. Instead, they mandate setting an Albany-determined cap. They offer no solutions to meeting the rising costs in feeding students, fueling buses and heating and maintaining schools.
While their proposal is short on details, its effects would be clear. It would set the stage for an erosion of
much of the progress seen in New York's schools the past few years, as districts would be forced to
choose from a menu of bad choices. The menu of cuts could include athletics, Advanced Placement
courses, vocational education, art, music, and/or staff.
If these politicians would take the time to examine what has happened in other states, they would see
that undermining school resources produces predictable and unappetizing results.
California's Proposition 13, passed in 1978 was more extreme than what is proposed for New York. It
created revenue problems for cities, counties and, especially, schools.
Once a beacon of public education, California now has constant crises over education funding. Schools in wealthy districts are succeeding, as well-to-do parents can afford to funnel private donations into local educational foundations, while middle-class and high-needs districts cannot match their funding and have cut all nonessential programs.
This two-tier system of school funding blurs the line between public and private schools. It certainly goes against the spirit and letter of New York's law, which attempts to appropriate school funding fairly so all children can succeed, no matter their hometown or school district.
While Massachusetts enacted a less Draconian property tax cap, it still created unfortunate backward
movement in some schools. Some experts have reported a decline in test scores in many high-needs
districts, the kinds of schools that need more, not less, state support.
Other academic studies have shown that the lack of resources has forced many school districts to
sacrifice arts and athletic programs. That created another unintended consequence, as some parents
began moving their children to districts that provided adequate funding to their schools, abandoning
districts with fewer resources to help students succeed. Their property tax cap has deepened the
achievement chasm between some well-off and high-needs districts.
New York has a much better option. We can reduce taxes for those who really need tax relief: seniors and lower- and middle-class earners. The Legislature should establish a property tax "circuit-breaker" formula for them and limit the total property taxes to a percentage of their household income. That will help keep our schools and communities strong, make our taxes more equitable and give tax relief to those who really need it.
A recent Siena College poll found that when voters are asked to choose between the governor's arbitrary tax cap and a "real" cap on their own taxes called a circuit breaker, the majority support the
circuit-breaker approach.
The circuit breaker is the only solution that will provide real and immediate property-tax relief for residents struggling to pay their property-tax bill. The governor's proposed tax cap will slow the rate of growth, but do nothing to help people who can't pay their property taxes right now.
New York is setting the standard nationally for academic success. We don't need an election-year scheme that would potentially diminish property values across the state and hurt generations of students.
We can provide "circuit breaker" tax relief and our children can have good schools and a brighter future. If we cut revenue like California and Massachusetts did, we will create schools desperate for resources, low in results and dependent on parent contributions for survival.
Let's have real property tax relief without jeopardizing our schools' successes. The experience in other
states shows us there's a price to capping property taxes and it's the state's children who pay it.
Ron Deutsch is executive director of New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness, which coordinates the Better Choice Budget Campaign involving a coalition of more than 100 faith-based, human service, labor and
community-based organizations in the state ( http://www.abetterchoiceforny.org ).
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From http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/propertytaxresources.html ...
Frank Mauro, head of the labor-backed Fiscal Policy Institute in New York, said a cap would perpetuate current funding inequities among school districts. "When you apply a percentage cap to change, you institutionalize the disparities and you make them worse," Mauro said. He said a circuit-breaker system would provide relief to the most overburdened homeowners.
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More from http://www.TrendnNY.org ...
Wall Street can help Main Street
March 26, 2010
The Omnibus Consortium -- a statewide coalition of property tax reform groups, fiscal watchdogs, education advocates and unions -- is urging members of the Senate and Assembly to provide urgently needed property tax relief.
Wall Street should help fund this relief (property tax reform proposals can be found at www .omnibustaxsolution.org). The Consortium members contend that we can no longer continue to subsidize W all Street at the present levels while we leave people on Main Street struggling with record foreclosures and high unemployment.
The consortium members believe that there are many ways in which Wall Street can help in solving New York's property tax and budget crisis. For example, simply lowering the rebate level of the Stock Transfer Tax from 100% to 80% would produce revenue of $3.2 Billion, sufficient to gradually phase in a meaningful property tax circuit breaker while reducing the massive cuts to local governments and schools that are being debated in Albany and which would place additional pressure on our local taxes.
[see: http://www.trendny.org/Press_Release-omnibus.pdf ]
Press Release March 25, 2010
Ron Deutsch, New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness (518) 469-6769
Gioia Shebar, Tax Nightmare.org (845) 256-0082
Susan Zimet, Ulster County Legislator, (845) 527-5309
John Whiteley, NYS Property Tax Reform Coalition, (518) 585-6837
Robert McKeon, Tax Reform Effort of Northern Dutchess (TREND) (845) 399-4582
Main Street Needs Help From Wall Street
Property Tax Groups Urge State to Stop Wall Street Giveaways
The Omnibus Consortium -- a statewide coalition of property tax reform groups, fiscal watchdogs,
education advocates and unions -- is urging members of the Senate and Assembly to provide
urgently needed property tax relief and to ask Wall Street to help fund it (property tax reform
proposals can be found at www.omnibustaxsolution.org). The Consortium members contend that
we can no longer continue to subsidize Wall Street at the present levels while we leave people on
Main Street struggling with record foreclosures and high unemployment.
Revenue collected by New York State from the Stock Transfer Tax has risen
dramatically in recent years and remained at near record levels for 2009 (approximately $16 Billion).
Unfortunately, in 1981 New York State made an agreement to rebate the entire annual amount of
the tax -- which rightfully belongs to the people of our state -- back to the brokers, basically as an
inducement to ensure the Stock Exchange's continued presence in New York City. While Wall
Street is obviously important to the state's financial health, we believe that, just as the people of our
state helped rescue Wall Street from its financial crisis, New York State should now ask Wall
Street to forgo a modest portion of the stock transfer tax rebate to fund property tax relief for
residents experiencing unsustainable property tax burdens made even worse by the state's continued
financial crisis and cuts to schools, healthcare and localities.
The consortium members believe that there are many ways in which Wall Street can help in solving
New York's property tax and budget crisis. For example, simply lowering the rebate level of the
Stock Transfer Tax from 100% to 80% would produce revenue of $3.2 Billion, sufficient to
gradually phase in a meaningful property tax circuit breaker while reducing the massive cuts to local
governments and schools that are being debated in Albany and which would place additional
pressure on our local taxes.
· The Great Recession was, in large part, caused by finance sector excesses.
· Wall Street's record 2009 profits resulted largely from taxpayer bailouts and favorable federal
monetary policies that privilege the finance sector.
· Wall Street is looking at record profits: $58 billion in 2009 (3 times higher than the previous
record set in 2006 according to Mayor Bloomberg) and cash bonuses exceeding $20 billion (which
does not count tens of billions in stock options that were given as bonuses as well)
· While Wall Street may have recovered, New York's Main Street economy remains mired in the
Great Recession.
· Widespread economic distress (lost jobs, lost health care, lost homes through foreclosures, lost
retirement savings, lost opportunities) will continue for the foreseeable future.
The Consortium also acknowledges the fact that when the state pulls back on its funding
commitments to education and aid to municipalities the inevitable result is an increase in taxes at
the local level to make up the difference.
Senate Leaders Poised to Advance Circuit Breaker
Competing Legislation Mirrors our Coalition's Omnibus
Just three weeks after Legislative leaders committed to doing something in this session on property tax reform, Senators Klein and Krueger are promoting the multi-year phasing in of the circuit breaker from our coalition's relief and reform bill - the Omnibus. Krueger's may have more political and fiscal viability as it addresses the issue of renters and the cost to the State is initially lower.
Click here for the complete text of the bill.
Full press release from Sen. Krueger here.
COUNTERPOINT: Circuit breaker the best
From the TimesUnion, Sunday, July 20, 2008:
New York has a much better option. We can reduce taxes for those who really need tax relief: seniors and lower- and middle-class earners. The Legislature should establish a property tax "circuit-breaker" formula for them and limit the total property taxes to a percentage of their household income. That will help keep our schools and communities strong, make our taxes more equitable and give tax relief to those who really need it.
Poughkeepsie Journal - Circuit Breaker tops
Polls come and go, but the results of a recent one by Siena Research Institute are pretty impressive. They show while New York property owners are hopping mad about taxes, they don't necessarily think a cap is the best answer.
Showing a level of sophistication and apparently paying attention to recent legislative debates, 75 percent of those polled said they would be in favor of a "circuit breaker,'' a proposal to give most homeowners a rebate if their property tax bill is more than a certain percentage of their income.
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[recall below sent out to this list Feb. 23rd as well-- still pertinent!]
Funny, isn't it?...how Cuomo loves to wax poetic on how supposedly NYS is "functionally bankrupt"...
[see: http://www.economiccollapse.net/cuomo-declares-new-york-state-functionally-bankrupt ;
http://www.businessinsider.com/functionally-bankrupt-but-honest-about-it-2011-2 ]
...while Cuomo rakes in more money from his wealthy buddies at a $15,000/plate dinner last Thursday night at Top of the Rock in NYC-- besides $15 million he and "Committee To Save NY" have now(!)...
[ http://www.blog.timesunion.com/capitol/ ; http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/nyregion/10unions.htm ]
[kudos to our brothers & sisters @ Community Voices Heard for holding Cuomo's feet to fire on all this]
[see below-- priceless blog on all this from this past Friday from Albany Times-Union's Jimmy Vielkind!]
...while ignoring fact that millionaires used to pay a 15 1/2% state income tax rate in the 1970's under Rockefeller-- but now pay only 8.97% (see: http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/taxhistory2.htm )...
[Pataki-- and before him Andrew's father Mario-- pushed massive budget cuts-- after tax cuts for rich!]
[am I the only person who heard on WAMC how February Qunninipiac survey shows Cuomo was polling slightly better among Republicans than Democrats?...wake up-- call Albany: (877) 255-9417!]
[update-- poll I just heard today (May 10) confirming that GOP STILL support Cuomo more than Dems!]
...while ignoring fact that "New Yorkers making between $33,000 and $95,000, analysts Chloe Tribich, Sunshine Ludder and Ron Deutsch pointed out last week, pay 11 percent of their incomes in state and local tax. New York's richest 1 percent -- taxpayers making over $633,000 -- only see 7 percent of their incomes go to state and local taxes"...
[from "Democratic Governors in California & New York Looking to Put Final Squeeze on Middle Class"
by Sam Pizzigati, Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality Posted on January 24, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/149613/ ; http://www.ITEPnet.org/wp2009/ny_whopays_factsheet.pdf ]
...while ignoring recent Marist, Siena, Quinnipiac, & Hart polls all showing NY'ers for millionaires tax(!)...
[see: http://www.capitaltonight.com/2011/02/groups-band-together-to-push-millionaires-tax/ ;
http://www.hungeractionnys.org/Poeple%20SOS%20release%202011.pdf ;
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=940073&category=state ;
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2010/08/16/100816ta_talk_surowiecki
(Quinnipiac poll last summer found even rank-and-file GOP registered voters for millionaire tax!)]
...while ignoring fact that "the richest one percent of households increased their share of all income statewide from 10 percent in 1980 to 35 percent in 2007" (Dec. 13th from http://www.FiscalPolicy.org )...
...while ignoring fact that letting current tiny state income tax surcharge on millionaires sunset at the end of this year, as Cuomo and GOP are bent on doing, would literally give five billion dollars a year to the richest 3% [source: Ron Deutsch/New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness: http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org ].
...while ignoring fact that "top earners have seen a four percentage point decrease in their federal income taxes, thanks to the Bush Administration tax cuts extended for two years by the Obama Administration" (see http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPI_NewYorkShouldContinueTheIncomeTax.pdf )...
...while ignoring fact that, according to the Citizens Budget Commission, businesses operating in upstate NY actually have a lower tax burden here compared to CA, CT, TX, NJ, MA, or FL...
[see: http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPIBudgetBriefingBook_2011.pdf ]
...while ignoring fact that, "After a surcharge was placed on NY's top personal income tax in 2002 to address revenue shortfalls brought about by the early 2000's recession, the number of filers in the top bracket increased by nearly 80% between 2003 and 2008, the peak of the business cycle-- exactly opposite from what Pataki had claimed"...
[see: http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPIBudgetBriefingBook_2011.pdf ]
...while ignoring fact that a 2003 Fiscal Policy Institute study found that temporary income tax surcharge on wealthy saved 61,400 jobs-- by avoiding proposed $1.84 billion cut in state aid to local schools...
[see: http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPIBudgetBriefingBook_2011.pdf ]
...while ignoring fact that Cuomo's proposed $2.8 billion cut to Medicaid will mean 44,000 more jobs cut from the employment rolls across the state ( http://www.FamiliesUSA.org )...
[see: http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPIBudgetBriefingBook_2011.pdf ]
...while ignoring fact that 44,000 state and local government jobs here in NYS have been cut over just the last two years as it is already (from Dec. '08 to Dec. '10-- a 3.1% cut compared to 1.9% nationally)...
[see: http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPIBudgetBriefingBook_2011.pdf ]
...while ignoring fact that back in 1988, NYS had 214,000 state employees; now there are only 162,000 state employees in New York...
[see: http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPIBudgetBriefingBook_2011.pdf ]
...while ignoring fact that "state and local government employees suffer a wage penalty of 4% compared to workers in the private sector, when considering age and education"...
[see: http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPIBudgetBriefingBook_2011.pdf ]
Can you say "our state's going to hell in a handbasket unless we all wake up"?....(I knew you could)....
Don't forget...
Fact: All of the following members of the Better Choice Budget Coalition stand in strong support for a new tiny millionaires tax (and at least partial re-implementation of a stock transfer tax on Wall Street as well)-- NYS Coalition Against Domestic Violence, NYS AFL-CIO, NYSUT, CSEA, PEF, AFSCME, NY Jobs with Justice, Dutchess Outreach, NY Statewide Senior Action Council, NYS Alliance for Retired Americans, Interfaith Alliance of NYS, Interfaith Impact of NYS, Environmental Advocates, Citizen Action, NYS Community Action Association, and many more-- see http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org .
[thx especially to Hunger Action Network of NYS, New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness, Fiscal Policy Institute; and Green Party of NYS-- Howie Hawkins WAS right (as many of us were saying last fall) on all of this; even Working Families Party quoted in recent NY Times as against Cuomo letting tax on rich sunset]
Take a look at that coalition, folks-- it's massive-- WE JUST NEED TO PULL TOGETHER!!!...
[ain't no power like the power of the people-- 'cause the power of the people don't stop-- pass it on]
Each one reach one-- come out to this very special forum hosted by yours truly tomorrow (Saturday, May 21st) at 11 am with nationally known NYS tax/budget expert Frank Mauro, Executive Director of the Fiscal Policy Institute ( http://www.FiscalPolicy.org )-- with Ulster County Legislator Susan Zimet (of http://www.OmnibusTaxSolution.org ), Gioia Shebar of http://www.TaxNightmare.org -- for our "Real Property Tax Relief: Circuitbreaker Expansion-- Not Destructive Tax Cap"-- at Rhinebeck Village Hall at 76 East Market St. there!...(you do NOT want to miss this opportunity to see/hear these experts)...
[thx too to Rhinebeck Village Boardmember extraordinaire Terry Gipson (also Dem candidate for state Senate-- see http://www.TerryGipsonNY.com )-- yay-- Terry's made it clear he supports circuitbreaker!)]
[note-- Frank Mauro, Sue Zimet, and Gioia Shebar are also cofounders of the Omnibus Consortium-- see http://www.OmnibusTaxSolution.org for much more on tax reform Cuomo SHOULD be pushing!]
Assemblyman Kevin Cahill has demonstrated true leadership on this-- bipartisan legislation here-- (A.5542A/S.912A): http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?bn=A5542A ; link here for Senate companion bill-- http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=%0D%0At&bn=S912A&term=&Summary=Y ...
[see below-- Co. Leg.'s Dan Kuffner, Alison MacAvery, and Jim Doxsey co-sponsoring my resol. on this;
email countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us to build support for it; call Albany too-- at 877-255-9417!]
[thx: Robert McKeon / http://www.TrendNY.org ; Robert has demonstrated leadership on this issue too!]
Fact: I got resolutions passed in our own County Legislature here in Dutchess (with bipartisan support, even) in '08 and '09 for property tax circuitbreaker, Omnibus bill; even started petition back then inspired by info @ http://www.TrendNY.org ; recall http://www.petitiononline.com/taxcut see http://www.OmnibusTaxSolution.org -- not pandering.
Click here for Mar. 1st testimony from FPI's Frank Mauro on all this too
http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPI_Testimony_CapOnRealPropertyTax_20110301.pdf .
Check out this must-read on all this from Ron Deutsch of http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org :
"Circuit Breaker the Best Way to Limit Property Tax Impact" (Albany TimesUnion 8/2/08)
http://www.trendny.org/Timesunion.com_Aug_08.pdf !
Also-- recall this from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities May 25th last year:
"Hidden Consequences: Lessons from Massachusetts for States Considering a Property Tax Cap"
by Phil Oliff and Iris J. Lav-- http://www.cbpp.org/5-21-08sfp.htm !
Remember, too-- March 25th press release last year from Robert McKeon, Sue Zimet, Ron Deutsch:
http://www.trendny.org/Press_Release-omnibus.pdf .
And let's not forget this gem released April last year from the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy:
"Property Tax Relief: The Case for Circuitbreakers"
by Daphne Kenyon, Adam Langley, and Bethany Paquin (from April 2010 "Land Lines")
https://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/dl/1772_991_3%20Circuit%20Breakers.pdf !
Great that vast majority of school budgets locally were passed Tuesday night (not Pine Plains tho)...
But don't forget-- even with budgets approved, massive job cuts(!)...
"Local school districts are cutting nearly 280 jobs in the 2011-12 budgets voters will be asked to approve Tuesday."
[from Sunday's Pok. Journal-- "School districts propose job cuts, tax-levy hikes" by John Davis:
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20110515/NEWS02/105150366/School-districts-propose-job-cuts-tax-levy-hikes ]
"School districts in the region plan to eliminate a total of 213 jobs as state aid declines for a third consecutive year."
[from Sunday's Daily Freeman-- "Area school district budgets put 213 jobs in jeopardy" by Kyle Wind:
http://www.dailyfreeman.com/articles/2011/05/15/news/doc4dcf339a95a03011796144.txt ]
So-- hope to see you all there tomorrow!...(we don't need more massive layoffs in midst of recession)...
But if you can't make it, call Cuomo and state legislators at (877) 255-9417-- and don't forget-- Co. Leg.'s Dan Kuffner, Alison MacAvery, and Jim Doxsey have agreed to co-sponsor my resolution on this;
email countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us to build support for it now so it can pass asap, folks!...
[pass it on-- unless you truly love high property taxes while hundreds of teachers are laid off locally]
WAKE UP, FOLKS!!!!.....
Joel
444-0599/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
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[here below-- resolution from yours truly co-sponsored by Kuffner, MacAvery, and Doxsey for June]
[here below-- newer/newly edited/informed version of resolution for middle-class circuitbreaker; even some local GOP state legislators are co-sponsoring legislation with Cahill on this-- A.5542A; http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?bn=A5542A ; link here for Senate companion bill-- http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=%0D%0At&bn=S912A&term=&Summary=Y ; here are links for Bonacic circuitbreaker bill-- http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=%0D%0A&bn=A7673&term=&Summary=Y ; http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=%0D%0A&bn=S4171&term=&Summary=Y ]
WHEREAS, the Fiscal Policy Institute has found that a property tax cap won't make government services cost less, and claims that caps will produce large savings through "efficiencies" are overblown, and
WHEREAS, property tax caps can be particularly harmful if adopted during a weak economy, and state aid can't be relied upon to fill the gap, and
WHEREAS, changes in school enrollment can have a big impact, and without effectively targeted state aid, low-income communitieswill fall even further behind, and
WHEREAS, wealthier communities will override a property tax cap more frequently than poorer ones, and middle-income communities might end up bearing the brunt of a property tax cap, and
WHEREAS, after a property tax cap was recently implemented in Massachusetts, a number of communities have been forced to lay off teachers, police officers, firefighters, and other public employees; close fire stations; shut libraries, senior centers, and recreation centers or sharply reduce their hours; and scale back public school programs, and one town even turned off its street lights to save money, and
WHEREAS, Republican state Senator John Bonacic and Democratic Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee are co-sponsoring bipartisan legislation (A.7673/S.41471) for an expanded property tax circuitbreaker to give real relief to homeowners across the state; Assemblymember Kevin Cahill is also co-sponsoring bipartisan legislation for this (A.5542A/S.912A) with many other legislators across the state, and therefore be it
RESOLVED, that the Dutchess County Legislature strongly urges that our state legislature pass and our governor sign into law bipartisan Bonacic/Jaffee or Cahill legislation for expanded property tax circuitbreaker relief for the middle class, and be it further
RESOLVED, that a copy of this resolution be sent to our governor and our county's delegation of state legislators.
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From http://www.FiscalPolicy.org ...
New York Shouldn't Look to Massachusetts as a Model for Property Tax Reform
With the Commission on Property Tax Relief poised to recommend that the state impose a rigid cap on property taxes for education based on Massachusetts' Proposition 2 ?, a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (May 21, 2008) describes the problems the law has created in Massachusetts and explains that the impact in New York could be even more severe.
[see: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=301 !]
Among the key lessons:
-- A tax cap won't make government services cost less.
-- Claims that caps will produce large savings through "efficiencies" are overblown.
-- Tax caps can be particularly harmful if adopted during a weak economy.
-- State aid can't be relied upon to fill the gap.
-- Changes in school enrollment can have a big impact.
-- Without effectively targeted state aid, low-income communities will fall even further behind.
-- Wealthier communities will override a tax cap more frequently than poorer ones.
-- Middle-income communities might end up bearing the brunt of a cap.
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From http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=301 ...
Hidden Consequences: Lessons From Massachusetts for States Considering a Property Tax Cap
By Phil Oliff and Iris J. Lav
Revised May 25, 2010
Executive Summary
Advocates of reducing property taxes often cite Proposition 2 ?, the strict property tax cap Massachusetts adopted in 1980, as a model for reform. Most recently, New Jersey Governor Christie has proposed a cap similar to Proposition 2 ?, which limits property tax revenues in Massachusetts to 2.5 percent of a community's assessed value and caps annual growth in a community's property tax revenue at 2.5 percent. Unfortunately, proponents typically overlook Proposition 2 ?'s harmful impact on Massachusetts, as well as the reasons why similar measures could prove even more damaging in other states.
Over the two and a half decades Proposition 2 ? has been in effect, Massachusetts' level of property taxation has declined. Between 1980 and 1985, property taxes as a percentage of income fell from 76 percent above the national average to 13 percent above the national average, where it stands today.[i] (Massachusetts localities rely more on the property tax than localities in much of the rest of the country because they are not permitted to levy sales or income taxes or various other forms of taxes. (See Figure 1.)
State aid has helped fill in some of the gaps in local funding the law created, but not all of them and not reliably over time. Furthermore, the local "overspending" that proponents claimed Proposition 2 ? could curb did not exist in the imagined quantities, and necessary public services have been jeopardized.
By limiting Massachusetts localities' only major source of revenue, Proposition 2 ? has exacted a considerable cost - one that highlights the shortcomings of property tax revenue caps as a policy approach. The law has:
* arbitrarily constrained local governments' ability to raise revenues without any consideration of the actual cost of providing services;
* made local governments heavily dependent on state aid, which tends to fluctuate with economic cycles and state policies (a particular problem in an economic downturn when state aid usually declines but the need for local services such as education and fire and police protection does not decline);
* exacerbated disparities between wealthier communities and poorer ones in access to quality local services, as many of the former have voted to override Proposition 2 ?'s revenue cap while the latter have generally had to adhere to it; and
* resulted in cuts to valued services rather than simply calling forth greater efficiency from local governments.
Across Massachusetts, a number of communities have been forced to lay off teachers, police officers, firefighters, and other public employees; close fire stations; shut libraries, senior centers, and recreation centers or sharply reduce their hours; and scale back public school programs. One town even turned off its street lights to save money.
The Massachusetts experience can provide lessons about the potential effects of a property tax cap for other states that are considering similar measures. This report looks at the Massachusetts experience and gleans the following lessons.
* A tax cap won't make government services cost less. A cap does not prevent employee health insurance costs, special education costs, or other costs beyond localities' control from rising much faster than the cap allows. Nor does it hold down the cost of heating buildings, buying gas for police and fire vehicles, and operating schools buses when the world price of oil is skyrocketing. When these things occur, as they have in Massachusetts, other services have to be cut to fit total expenditures under the cap.
* Claims that caps will produce large savings through "efficiencies" are overblown. There are fewer efficiencies to realize from squeezing down revenues than cap proponents generally suggest. One person's "efficiency savings," such as the elimination of a police or fire station, may represent the loss of a critical service for another person. Ultimately, a property tax cap is highly likely to lead to reductions in basic community services and a deterioration in the quality of life in many communities - particularly in communities that cannot routinely override it.
* Tax caps can be particularly harmful if adopted during a weak economy. Proposition 2 took effect during a period of extraordinary economic growth - the "Massachusetts Miracle." State revenues were rising, which allowed the state to boost aid to compensate for constrained property taxes, and construction was expanding, which allowed communities to raise their property tax revenue by more than 2.5 percent per year.
If a state were to adopt a property tax cap during an economic slowdown or a period of weak state revenue growth, a major sustained infusion of state aid would not be possible and property tax revenue growth would be more constrained. As a result, schools and other services dependent on the property tax would have to be cut much more severely than in Massachusetts.
* State aid can't be relied upon to fill the gap. Even when state policymakers fully intend to expand state aid to fill local funding gaps created by a cap, a recession or fiscal crisis will usually derail this plan. State aid to localities in Massachusetts has fluctuated greatly with the business cycle and with state policy decisions. In any other state that might implement a cap, local government and school budgets are likely to become more volatile.
* Changes in school enrollment can have a big impact. The adoption of Proposition 2 coincided with a decline in Massachusetts' K-12 enrollment, allowing schools to operate with less revenue.
If another state adopted a property tax cap during a period of steady or rising enrollment, it would be forced to impose much more extensive cutbacks in teachers, classes, and programs than those seen in Massachusetts.
* Without effectively targeted state aid, low-income communities will fall even further behind. Massachusetts has a highly targeted system of aiding local governments. The influx of state aid seems to have shielded low-income communities somewhat from Proposition 2 ?'s tendency to exacerbate differences in services between high- and low-income communities. But when state aid has receded as a result of economic downturns or state policy decisions, the poorest communities have had to make the largest budget cuts.
In states that do not have a system of school aid that is targeted as effectively as Massachusetts', students in low-income communities are likely to fall increasingly behind students in schools that have greater resources.
* Wealthier communities will override a tax cap more frequently than poorer ones. This has contributed to a growing spending gap between local governments in high-income communities and all other communities, despite Massachusetts' progressive system of state aid. This is likely to occur in other states that implement a cap.
* Middle-income communities might end up bearing the brunt of a cap. In Massachusetts, budgets in middle-income communities grew more slowly than budgets in either low-income or high-income communities because they did not receive as much state aid as the former or override Proposition 2 as often as the latter.
Proposition 2 is a structurally flawed policy that has significantly eroded local services in Massachusetts despite a number of factors that have mitigated its impact. Massachusetts had the benefit of an unusually strong economy, declining school enrollment, and a system of effectively targeted school aid. Proposition 2 ? nevertheless has had negative results for the provision of quality public services in Massachusetts. Other states that attempt to impose a similar tax cap without the benefit of Massachusetts' mitigating factors are likely to face even worse consequences.
The Basics of Proposition 2
Proposition 2 sets two kinds of restrictions on the amount of property taxes that a local government can collect: a levy ceiling and a levy limit.
Levy Ceiling: The levy ceiling limits property tax collections to 2.5 percent of the assessed value of a community's property.[1]
Levy Limit: Proposition 2 ? set a property tax limit for each community in fiscal year 1982 equal to the lesser of a community's actual property taxes or 2.5 percent of the community's assessed value.[2] This "levy limit" grows by 2.5 percent per year.
Proposition 2 ? allows communities to adjust their levy limit upward to account for "new growth": increases in the tax base that are not the result of revaluation. Such increases can result from the development of new properties, changes in assessed value that result from the renovation or expansion of existing properties, reclassification of properties that were previously exempt from taxation, or the conversion of existing properties into condominiums or new subdivisions.
A community taxing below its levy limit can increase its property tax collections to the limit at any time. The levy limit cannot exceed the levy ceiling.
A community's residents can chose to permanently increase, or override, their levy limit through a majority vote.
Capital Outlay and Debt Exclusions: A community may vote to temporarily exceed its levy limit or levy ceiling for the payment of certain capital expenditures or debt service costs.[3]
[1] "Levy Limits: A Primer on Proposition 2 ?," Massachusetts Department of Revenue, Division of Local Services, Revised June 2005, p. 4.
[2]David M. Cutler, Douglas W. Elmendorf, and Richard Zeckhauser, "Restraining the Leviathan: Property Tax Limitation in Massachusetts," National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, August 1997, pp 4-5.
[3] "Levy Limits: A Primer on Proposition 2 ?."
End Notes:
[i] State & Local Government Finance Data Query System, Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center; data from U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances, Government Finances (Volume 4) and Census of Governments (1977-2005), http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/slf-dqs/pages.cfm, accessed 23-Apr-08 02:38 PM.
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From http://www.TrendNY.org ...
Siena Poll - Circuit Breaker Tops Property Tax Cap
July 22, 2008
TREND's Results bring call for Siena to re-do polling
After our organization's state-wide poll last month indicated that New Yorkers prefer an income-based circuit breaker over a tax cap, Siena university bowed to pressure to conduct a similar survey. Last month, the university released results that suggested New Yorkers want a property tax cap - the result of responses to a leading and vague question.
Yesterday's poll, however, separated out for New Yorkers the two mechanisms. The conclusion is the same as our first in the state poll indicated - the majority of New Yorkers prefer the Circuit breaker. The wording of the questions relating to the different property tax relief options varies slightly, but the results are similar.
Poll Says New Yorkers Prefer Circuit Breaker over Cap
June 22, 2008
A poll conducted and paid for by tax policy group TREND NY over the weekend shows that New Yorkers overwhelmingly support legislation that would limit a taxpayer's total property taxes over a cap on local contributions toward school funding. The random automated phone survey polled over 500 registered voters across the state asking them if they supported a measure known as a circuit breaker; which would limit an individual's total property taxes to a small percentage of their income.
By greater than a two to one margin (272/126 ) respondents preferred an income based cap on their taxes over a cap on local school levies. When given the specific choice of a 4% school tax cap or a limit of 5% of their income for their total property tax bill, as exists in Vermont, voters favored the circuit breaker by a 5 to 1 margin, 66% to 13% with 21% undecided. Respondents indicated their primary motivation was to limit taxes and not to curb school funding by an 82% to 18% margin.
"In the past, poorly worded polls that didn't explain the different types of caps have led the public into thinking that the only way overburdened New Yorkers can be helped would be to limit school levies. " said TREND Director Robert McKeon. "The truth is that a traditional tax cap will at best curb future increases, while a circuit breaker would provide immediate relief to many taxpayers and insure New Yorkers against unreasonable levels in the future. Taxpayers want a more equitable system of taxation, not just controlled spending. A circuit breaker could accomplish that. "
McKeon added that the survey results confirm the testimony given to the Governor's Commission during the course of the many hearings. "There was almost unanimous support for circuit breaker and very few calling on them to propose a cap. That's why it was disappointing to see that they would prioritize something that would not protect individuals, many of whom are overburdened."
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From http://www.trendny.org/Timesunion.com_Aug_08.pdf ...
Albany, N.Y.: Timesunion.com - 8/2/08 1:31 PM
"Taxing Issue"
COUNTERPOINT: Circuit breaker the best way to limit property tax impact
By RON DEUTSCH
First published: Sunday, July 20, 2008
When New York state lawmakers talk about their proposed property tax cap, they paint a rosy picture
about its effects. It's an election year, and unfortunately they're using a glib sound bite for a complex
problem. They hear the frustration from constituents about how the cost of living is rising and, in
response, they are offering a bad option that would seriously set back the progress our schools and
students are making.
The politicians are seeking to limit the amount of support that any community can show for its schools in
school budget votes. Instead, they mandate setting an Albany-determined cap. They offer no solutions to meeting the rising costs in feeding students, fueling buses and heating and maintaining schools.
While their proposal is short on details, its effects would be clear. It would set the stage for an erosion of
much of the progress seen in New York's schools the past few years, as districts would be forced to
choose from a menu of bad choices. The menu of cuts could include athletics, Advanced Placement
courses, vocational education, art, music, and/or staff.
If these politicians would take the time to examine what has happened in other states, they would see
that undermining school resources produces predictable and unappetizing results.
California's Proposition 13, passed in 1978 was more extreme than what is proposed for New York. It
created revenue problems for cities, counties and, especially, schools.
Once a beacon of public education, California now has constant crises over education funding. Schools in wealthy districts are succeeding, as well-to-do parents can afford to funnel private donations into local educational foundations, while middle-class and high-needs districts cannot match their funding and have cut all nonessential programs.
This two-tier system of school funding blurs the line between public and private schools. It certainly goes against the spirit and letter of New York's law, which attempts to appropriate school funding fairly so all children can succeed, no matter their hometown or school district.
While Massachusetts enacted a less Draconian property tax cap, it still created unfortunate backward
movement in some schools. Some experts have reported a decline in test scores in many high-needs
districts, the kinds of schools that need more, not less, state support.
Other academic studies have shown that the lack of resources has forced many school districts to
sacrifice arts and athletic programs. That created another unintended consequence, as some parents
began moving their children to districts that provided adequate funding to their schools, abandoning
districts with fewer resources to help students succeed. Their property tax cap has deepened the
achievement chasm between some well-off and high-needs districts.
New York has a much better option. We can reduce taxes for those who really need tax relief: seniors and lower- and middle-class earners. The Legislature should establish a property tax "circuit-breaker" formula for them and limit the total property taxes to a percentage of their household income. That will help keep our schools and communities strong, make our taxes more equitable and give tax relief to those who really need it.
A recent Siena College poll found that when voters are asked to choose between the governor's arbitrary tax cap and a "real" cap on their own taxes called a circuit breaker, the majority support the
circuit-breaker approach.
The circuit breaker is the only solution that will provide real and immediate property-tax relief for residents struggling to pay their property-tax bill. The governor's proposed tax cap will slow the rate of growth, but do nothing to help people who can't pay their property taxes right now.
New York is setting the standard nationally for academic success. We don't need an election-year scheme that would potentially diminish property values across the state and hurt generations of students.
We can provide "circuit breaker" tax relief and our children can have good schools and a brighter future. If we cut revenue like California and Massachusetts did, we will create schools desperate for resources, low in results and dependent on parent contributions for survival.
Let's have real property tax relief without jeopardizing our schools' successes. The experience in other
states shows us there's a price to capping property taxes and it's the state's children who pay it.
Ron Deutsch is executive director of New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness, which coordinates the Better Choice Budget Campaign involving a coalition of more than 100 faith-based, human service, labor and
community-based organizations in the state ( http://www.abetterchoiceforny.org ).
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From http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/propertytaxresources.html ...
Frank Mauro, head of the labor-backed Fiscal Policy Institute in New York, said a cap would perpetuate current funding inequities among school districts. "When you apply a percentage cap to change, you institutionalize the disparities and you make them worse," Mauro said. He said a circuit-breaker system would provide relief to the most overburdened homeowners.
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More from http://www.TrendnNY.org ...
Wall Street can help Main Street
March 26, 2010
The Omnibus Consortium -- a statewide coalition of property tax reform groups, fiscal watchdogs, education advocates and unions -- is urging members of the Senate and Assembly to provide urgently needed property tax relief.
Wall Street should help fund this relief (property tax reform proposals can be found at www .omnibustaxsolution.org). The Consortium members contend that we can no longer continue to subsidize W all Street at the present levels while we leave people on Main Street struggling with record foreclosures and high unemployment.
The consortium members believe that there are many ways in which Wall Street can help in solving New York's property tax and budget crisis. For example, simply lowering the rebate level of the Stock Transfer Tax from 100% to 80% would produce revenue of $3.2 Billion, sufficient to gradually phase in a meaningful property tax circuit breaker while reducing the massive cuts to local governments and schools that are being debated in Albany and which would place additional pressure on our local taxes.
[see: http://www.trendny.org/Press_Release-omnibus.pdf ]
Press Release March 25, 2010
Ron Deutsch, New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness (518) 469-6769
Gioia Shebar, Tax Nightmare.org (845) 256-0082
Susan Zimet, Ulster County Legislator, (845) 527-5309
John Whiteley, NYS Property Tax Reform Coalition, (518) 585-6837
Robert McKeon, Tax Reform Effort of Northern Dutchess (TREND) (845) 399-4582
Main Street Needs Help From Wall Street
Property Tax Groups Urge State to Stop Wall Street Giveaways
The Omnibus Consortium -- a statewide coalition of property tax reform groups, fiscal watchdogs,
education advocates and unions -- is urging members of the Senate and Assembly to provide
urgently needed property tax relief and to ask Wall Street to help fund it (property tax reform
proposals can be found at www.omnibustaxsolution.org). The Consortium members contend that
we can no longer continue to subsidize Wall Street at the present levels while we leave people on
Main Street struggling with record foreclosures and high unemployment.
Revenue collected by New York State from the Stock Transfer Tax has risen
dramatically in recent years and remained at near record levels for 2009 (approximately $16 Billion).
Unfortunately, in 1981 New York State made an agreement to rebate the entire annual amount of
the tax -- which rightfully belongs to the people of our state -- back to the brokers, basically as an
inducement to ensure the Stock Exchange's continued presence in New York City. While Wall
Street is obviously important to the state's financial health, we believe that, just as the people of our
state helped rescue Wall Street from its financial crisis, New York State should now ask Wall
Street to forgo a modest portion of the stock transfer tax rebate to fund property tax relief for
residents experiencing unsustainable property tax burdens made even worse by the state's continued
financial crisis and cuts to schools, healthcare and localities.
The consortium members believe that there are many ways in which Wall Street can help in solving
New York's property tax and budget crisis. For example, simply lowering the rebate level of the
Stock Transfer Tax from 100% to 80% would produce revenue of $3.2 Billion, sufficient to
gradually phase in a meaningful property tax circuit breaker while reducing the massive cuts to local
governments and schools that are being debated in Albany and which would place additional
pressure on our local taxes.
· The Great Recession was, in large part, caused by finance sector excesses.
· Wall Street's record 2009 profits resulted largely from taxpayer bailouts and favorable federal
monetary policies that privilege the finance sector.
· Wall Street is looking at record profits: $58 billion in 2009 (3 times higher than the previous
record set in 2006 according to Mayor Bloomberg) and cash bonuses exceeding $20 billion (which
does not count tens of billions in stock options that were given as bonuses as well)
· While Wall Street may have recovered, New York's Main Street economy remains mired in the
Great Recession.
· Widespread economic distress (lost jobs, lost health care, lost homes through foreclosures, lost
retirement savings, lost opportunities) will continue for the foreseeable future.
The Consortium also acknowledges the fact that when the state pulls back on its funding
commitments to education and aid to municipalities the inevitable result is an increase in taxes at
the local level to make up the difference.
Senate Leaders Poised to Advance Circuit Breaker
Competing Legislation Mirrors our Coalition's Omnibus
Just three weeks after Legislative leaders committed to doing something in this session on property tax reform, Senators Klein and Krueger are promoting the multi-year phasing in of the circuit breaker from our coalition's relief and reform bill - the Omnibus. Krueger's may have more political and fiscal viability as it addresses the issue of renters and the cost to the State is initially lower.
Click here for the complete text of the bill.
Full press release from Sen. Krueger here.
COUNTERPOINT: Circuit breaker the best
From the TimesUnion, Sunday, July 20, 2008:
New York has a much better option. We can reduce taxes for those who really need tax relief: seniors and lower- and middle-class earners. The Legislature should establish a property tax "circuit-breaker" formula for them and limit the total property taxes to a percentage of their household income. That will help keep our schools and communities strong, make our taxes more equitable and give tax relief to those who really need it.
Poughkeepsie Journal - Circuit Breaker tops
Polls come and go, but the results of a recent one by Siena Research Institute are pretty impressive. They show while New York property owners are hopping mad about taxes, they don't necessarily think a cap is the best answer.
Showing a level of sophistication and apparently paying attention to recent legislative debates, 75 percent of those polled said they would be in favor of a "circuit breaker,'' a proposal to give most homeowners a rebate if their property tax bill is more than a certain percentage of their income.
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[recall below sent out to this list Feb. 23rd as well-- still pertinent!]
Funny, isn't it?...how Cuomo loves to wax poetic on how supposedly NYS is "functionally bankrupt"...
[see: http://www.economiccollapse.net/cuomo-declares-new-york-state-functionally-bankrupt ;
http://www.businessinsider.com/functionally-bankrupt-but-honest-about-it-2011-2 ]
...while Cuomo rakes in more money from his wealthy buddies at a $15,000/plate dinner last Thursday night at Top of the Rock in NYC-- besides $15 million he and "Committee To Save NY" have now(!)...
[ http://www.blog.timesunion.com/capitol/ ; http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/nyregion/10unions.htm ]
[kudos to our brothers & sisters @ Community Voices Heard for holding Cuomo's feet to fire on all this]
[see below-- priceless blog on all this from this past Friday from Albany Times-Union's Jimmy Vielkind!]
...while ignoring fact that millionaires used to pay a 15 1/2% state income tax rate in the 1970's under Rockefeller-- but now pay only 8.97% (see: http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/taxhistory2.htm )...
[Pataki-- and before him Andrew's father Mario-- pushed massive budget cuts-- after tax cuts for rich!]
[am I the only person who heard on WAMC how February Qunninipiac survey shows Cuomo was polling slightly better among Republicans than Democrats?...wake up-- call Albany: (877) 255-9417!]
[update-- poll I just heard today (May 10) confirming that GOP STILL support Cuomo more than Dems!]
...while ignoring fact that "New Yorkers making between $33,000 and $95,000, analysts Chloe Tribich, Sunshine Ludder and Ron Deutsch pointed out last week, pay 11 percent of their incomes in state and local tax. New York's richest 1 percent -- taxpayers making over $633,000 -- only see 7 percent of their incomes go to state and local taxes"...
[from "Democratic Governors in California & New York Looking to Put Final Squeeze on Middle Class"
by Sam Pizzigati, Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality Posted on January 24, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/149613/ ; http://www.ITEPnet.org/wp2009/ny_whopays_factsheet.pdf ]
...while ignoring recent Marist, Siena, Quinnipiac, & Hart polls all showing NY'ers for millionaires tax(!)...
[see: http://www.capitaltonight.com/2011/02/groups-band-together-to-push-millionaires-tax/ ;
http://www.hungeractionnys.org/Poeple%20SOS%20release%202011.pdf ;
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=940073&category=state ;
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2010/08/16/100816ta_talk_surowiecki
(Quinnipiac poll last summer found even rank-and-file GOP registered voters for millionaire tax!)]
...while ignoring fact that "the richest one percent of households increased their share of all income statewide from 10 percent in 1980 to 35 percent in 2007" (Dec. 13th from http://www.FiscalPolicy.org )...
...while ignoring fact that letting current tiny state income tax surcharge on millionaires sunset at the end of this year, as Cuomo and GOP are bent on doing, would literally give five billion dollars a year to the richest 3% [source: Ron Deutsch/New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness: http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org ].
...while ignoring fact that "top earners have seen a four percentage point decrease in their federal income taxes, thanks to the Bush Administration tax cuts extended for two years by the Obama Administration" (see http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPI_NewYorkShouldContinueTheIncomeTax.pdf )...
...while ignoring fact that, according to the Citizens Budget Commission, businesses operating in upstate NY actually have a lower tax burden here compared to CA, CT, TX, NJ, MA, or FL...
[see: http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPIBudgetBriefingBook_2011.pdf ]
...while ignoring fact that, "After a surcharge was placed on NY's top personal income tax in 2002 to address revenue shortfalls brought about by the early 2000's recession, the number of filers in the top bracket increased by nearly 80% between 2003 and 2008, the peak of the business cycle-- exactly opposite from what Pataki had claimed"...
[see: http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPIBudgetBriefingBook_2011.pdf ]
...while ignoring fact that a 2003 Fiscal Policy Institute study found that temporary income tax surcharge on wealthy saved 61,400 jobs-- by avoiding proposed $1.84 billion cut in state aid to local schools...
[see: http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPIBudgetBriefingBook_2011.pdf ]
...while ignoring fact that Cuomo's proposed $2.8 billion cut to Medicaid will mean 44,000 more jobs cut from the employment rolls across the state ( http://www.FamiliesUSA.org )...
[see: http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPIBudgetBriefingBook_2011.pdf ]
...while ignoring fact that 44,000 state and local government jobs here in NYS have been cut over just the last two years as it is already (from Dec. '08 to Dec. '10-- a 3.1% cut compared to 1.9% nationally)...
[see: http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPIBudgetBriefingBook_2011.pdf ]
...while ignoring fact that back in 1988, NYS had 214,000 state employees; now there are only 162,000 state employees in New York...
[see: http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPIBudgetBriefingBook_2011.pdf ]
...while ignoring fact that "state and local government employees suffer a wage penalty of 4% compared to workers in the private sector, when considering age and education"...
[see: http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPIBudgetBriefingBook_2011.pdf ]
Can you say "our state's going to hell in a handbasket unless we all wake up"?....(I knew you could)....
Don't forget...
Fact: All of the following members of the Better Choice Budget Coalition stand in strong support for a new tiny millionaires tax (and at least partial re-implementation of a stock transfer tax on Wall Street as well)-- NYS Coalition Against Domestic Violence, NYS AFL-CIO, NYSUT, CSEA, PEF, AFSCME, NY Jobs with Justice, Dutchess Outreach, NY Statewide Senior Action Council, NYS Alliance for Retired Americans, Interfaith Alliance of NYS, Interfaith Impact of NYS, Environmental Advocates, Citizen Action, NYS Community Action Association, and many more-- see http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org .
[thx especially to Hunger Action Network of NYS, New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness, Fiscal Policy Institute; and Green Party of NYS-- Howie Hawkins WAS right (as many of us were saying last fall) on all of this; even Working Families Party quoted in recent NY Times as against Cuomo letting tax on rich sunset]
Take a look at that coalition, folks-- it's massive-- WE JUST NEED TO PULL TOGETHER!!!...
[ain't no power like the power of the people-- 'cause the power of the people don't stop-- pass it on]
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