Theresa had the honor of being asked to open the session this afternoon of the SD legislature with ‘God Bless America’. Her and other muni-government officials are in Pierre today. SEE VIDEO HERE.
No surprise, every year this comes up, and every year their desire to stick it to the poor (and frankly anyone who eats food) is maintained;
The House Taxation Committee voted 11-3 Tuesday to defeat the bill. It would have increased the state’s 4.5 percent sales tax rate on other goods and services to remove the tax on food for home consumption.
Long a popular idea among Democratic lawmakers, such food sales tax bills have failed in the past. Democratic Rep. Ray Ring, the bill’s main sponsor, says the measure would help make South Dakota’s tax structure less regressive.
Business organizations, Republican lawmakers and the executive branch opposed the bill.
It is estimated that those on the lowest level of the income bracket in our state pay between 16-Â 20% of their income towards taxes, and the working class isn’t much better.
I’m against sales taxes to begin with, a horrible and regressive way to fund government, but taxing food and exempting stuff like advertising makes no sense at all. If we are going to tax food at the full 4.5% state tax rate, we should tax EVERYTHING at that rate, no exemptions.
The SD GOP proves once again what they think about the working stiffs of this state, you are dirt, oh, and please stop voting for measures that make us do our job ethically.
‘House of Lords’ is right.
Look for the pauses, blank looks, dumb stares and empty comments at the first 2017 Legislative Coffee in Sioux Falls on February 4 at the Ramada Inn. Wow, some of the answers to good questions were less than stellar. Granted it was less than 24 hours since the close of bill submission but why does everyone have to go to their computers to even know what had been submitted?
The next coffee is in one week, let’s see how quick the next group is when answering questions. This Sioux Falls area group hails from Districts 6, 9 and 11, all Republicans.
District 6 attendees: Isaac Latterell, Herman Otten, Ernie Otten
District 9 attendees: Michael Clark, Wayne Steinhauer
District 11 attendees: Chris Karr, Jim Stalzer, Mark Willadsen
Oh Isaak says some funny things sometimes or is it always? We were looking forward to a boring SD Legislative cracker barrel to finish up when we finally got our morsel of funny. Rep Isaac Latterell didn’t disappoint us. The end is always near when a starry-eyed follower of something decides to drive home a point about non-believers.
IM22 and the ethics of South Dakota are a hot topic this year. Somehow the legislative players are always right and never hoodwinked by power players, only the majority of South Dakota voters. In 2016 an out of state ethics group with an idea decided to follow the example of other out of state no-ethics groups to bring a measure for us to vote on. South Dakota voters thought about the shenanigans of the powerful and decided IM22 was better than the nothing we had.
Isaac decided to get the crowd going home on a boisterous high by calling out the voters as uneducated? Uninformed? Stupid for using an idea from an east coast group? What about being hoodwink attempt by the Georgia high interest credit group? How about the expensive and worrisome west coast amendment set to destroy our rights called Marsy’s law?
There is a reason South Dakota ranks so low in ethics laws, because of the way Isaac was talking. Oh brother…
Ellis says something I try to bang in people’s heads all the time, it’s your money, you are the boss;
Put aside the corruption issue. It’s a matter of good government. And good government is about understanding who the boss is. And the boss is you, the taxpayer.
YOU pay the money that gets secretly negotiated away in these confidential settlements to who knows who for who knows what. It’s YOU, the taxpayer, who pays the salaries of the public officials who negotiated the confidential settlements. They work for YOU, not the other way around. And besides the potential for abuse, confidential settlements also allow government officials to hide their incompetence from you, the employer. What if the government is negligent in some matter? They can hide it from the taxpayer with a confidential settlement.
You can bet that when Jamison’s bill gets its hearing, the defenders of this practice will argue that confidential settlements give local governments leverage to negotiate better deals. That they save taxpayer money.
They can say it all they want. But you know what they can’t do? Prove it.
That has been my argument for ages. They tell us it must be secret, but they can’t tell us why. Because if they did, a lot of them would be in jail.
l3wis