Mark's Views, Perhaps — from behind my eyeballs
I see this morning that yesterday’s health tax ballot here in Oregon passed handily.
I don’t know if the yea voters did so in a fit of largesse at the public trough. Or if they poked the Yes key (is there such a thing?) out of consistency with their well-practiced personal pocketbook expressions of compassion for the needy.
Whatever the motivator, they approved a pile of new tax dollars for hospitals: Read it all
I like my title — All Welcome (Except on Christmas) — better than the one used by Yahoo! News for this Reuters story:
Some senior German politicians have caused a stir by suggesting that only citizens who pay church tax should be allowed to attend Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.
Worried that regular churchgoers cannot find a seat due to the popularity of the traditional Christmas service….
What’s the rate of this church tax, ten percent?
And how are the collected monies disbursed?
Martin Lindner, a member of the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) in Berlin, also expressed alarm at the lack of places in church and told Bild that parish members should get tickets entitling them to the best seats.
I wonder where their best seats are?
Where are the best seats in your meeting house? And what makes them so?
Germany’s Catholic and Protestant churches get most of their funding from revenues collected by the tax office.
😯
So most people don’t tithe or give offerings?!
This the land of the free fee.
Oh, quit fussing, Mark! The fees are a small price to pay to be free. If you lived in a fee-free state, the fees might be free, but likely not thee.
Oh.
OK.
(If you want more than that fine print, click the graphic for more of the story.)
Whether or not you’re for the huge bailout that went into law yesterday, I suppose you should know this:
| An Oregon arrow maker suffers slings of outrage
An Oregon company selling a 30-cent shaft for children’s arrows became a bull’s-eye for critics of congressional pork nationwide Friday, when lawmakers eliminated an arcane tax as part of their $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. […] The critics gathered force, and the tiny company based in southern Oregon’s Myrtle Point found itself the surprising flash point for public venting against a bailout package with costs too vast for most citizens to grasp. […] As of Friday, Dishion received more than 100 phone calls, 40 e-mails and hate mail from people across the country, not to mention phone calls from the BBC and mentions on the Bill O’Reilly talk show. […] The flap reveals the misinformation circulating about what the 43-cent tax repeal is really about, according to Jay McAninch, president of the Archery Trade Association. […] The tax became a problem for Rose City and a handful of other companies in 2004, when lawmakers, while trying to correct another problem with the arrow tax, changed a 12 percent tax on all arrows to a flat 43-cent tax on arrow shafts. The tax, which got tacked on to every arrow shaft, goes to fund educational programs put on by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. […] Rose City Archery’s wooden arrow shafts sell for 30 cents. |
Wait a minute. How does that work?
A 43-cent tax on a 30-cent shaft? 😯
“The 43-cent tax took a huge toll on its youth archery business” the above article goes on to say.
No kidding.
Oregon tax activist says she deserves to pay more
| “I deserve to be taxed, and if you give the wealthy a tax benefit, you’re going to be giving it to me — and I don’t need it,” she says. |
Ma’am, here are my two helpful suggestions:
Thank you for considering this. 8)
Taxes trigger big drop in U.S. smoking
| Higher state taxes on smoking are producing sharp declines in tobacco consumption in the United States, just as Congress considers a huge federal cigarette tax hike, USA Today reported in its Friday editions.
The newspaper, conducting its own analysis of taxation and consumption figures, said the degree of decline in smoking appears to be tied directly to the size of the tax increase. |
We know taxing smokes isn’t about legislating morality. So taxing abortion wouldn’t be either.
We know that consistency demands that “pro-choicers” should oppose someone deciding to smoke just as much as they should oppose someone deciding to have an abortion.
And what would be done with the money generated by state and federal taxes on abortions?
Well, I take you back to the story for my answer:
| The Senate last week approved a $35 billion tobacco tax increase as a way to pay for expanded government health care for children. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives has proposed its own plan to provide health care to children through higher tobacco taxes |
Abortion taxes for the children!
Makes sense to me.