Do The Right Thing - Observations from Mark Block

The Wisconsin Department of Revenue recently sent over 1,000 letters to people that buy cigarettes on the Internet and told them to cough up the tax owed.

I predicted last year that raising the tax on a pack of cigarettes would decrease the total amount of taxes the state collected due to people buying on the Internet and the dramatic increase in smuggled products to escape paying the absurb tax that hits the poorest of people.

(side bar: I have a very biased opinion cause I smoke)

I hope to write in the next couple months how much tax revenues went down because of the tax increase. Perhaps our legislature will actually repeal the tax increase - right

What group is next to get letters from the State Department of Revenue??? Do you buy anything over the Internet??

p.s. If you don’t think that smuggling is taking place - here is a good article from the Wall Street Journal.

Editorial - Don’t be bluffed by budget fear - Go ahead., make the taxpayers’ day.

Beloit Daily News, 5 5 2008

ACCORDING TO THE Doyle administration, unless Wisconsin decision-makers come up with a plan to fill the $527 million budget hole soon, there will be no choice but to cut state payments for schools, municipalities, construction projects and more.

OK. So what?

Not that we’re supportive of the dilly-dallying taking place in Madison, mind you. Those full-time elected legislators - you know, the ones who only spent about four weeks in session last year - have few responsibilities more pressing than establishing the state’s budget.  The failure, again, to manage the state’s finances in a timely and responsible way just adds to the mounting evidence that the people have been poorly served.

THE POINT is that if it becomes necessary to cut … then cut!

That’s what responsible budget managers do, from coast-to-coast, in the private sector, which does not have the luxury of coercively adding revenue (read: raising taxes) or resorting to the kind of accounting legerdemain that is a staple of government.

One need look no further than last week’s announcement that General Motors is shelving the second shift in Janesville, putting some 750 workers out on the street. That is a painful process that will reverberate across the Stateline Area. Does anyone think General Motors’ managers wanted to make that truly tough choice?

By comparison, state government’s challenge is modest.

WE’VE SAID IT before, we’ll say it again. So long as every government employee - state workers, school teachers, city staffers and so on - can expect job security, annual raises and the kind of benefit packages that are rare as snowballs in Miami, stop trying to tell taxpayers how hard decisions are being made.

They’re not. And government does nothing for its sinking credibility by claiming otherwise. The answer is smaller government, coupled with an attitude adjustment by the people.

The Founders did not intend for government to meet every need or touch every corner of citizens’ lives. In fact, the Founders surely would be mortified by today’s bloated bureaucracies and endless demands on the people’s purse.

I have been travelling the state in past couple weeks and have heard quite a few stories of people that want to do the right thing and some stories of people that think they want to do the right thing - but seem to be totally clueless.

Case in point - Representative Kagen from the Green Bay area. Seems he told a group of loggers that are in serious financial hardships for a variety of reasons that he needed to check with his friends with butterfly collections on the impact to their hobby before commenting on restrictive policies of the federal government on the logging industry.

I heard this story sitting a restaurant in the early morning in the most northern part of Wisconsin. The restaurant - usually empty at this time of day - was packed with loggers that didn’t have work to do because of the extreme actions of the environmentalist.

What a perfect commercial - Congressman Kagen checking with his friends on the impact of their butterflys while the north woods of Wisconsin sees jobs lost - businesses closed - families unable to make ends meet - while his friends are trying to determine the impact of their butterfly collection. 

In my opinion Kagen has no clue on Doing The Right Thing.