Since attaining supermajority status in Montpelier, the Democrats’ education policy can be explained as “give the government school monopoly (the VTNEA, superintendents association, etc.) whatever they want!”

This included universal “free” school meals, expanded pre-k spending and control over birth to five care, and a new pupil weighting system guaranteeing more spending on certain classes of students. This cocktail exploded in their – OUR – faces in the form of an anticipated 20 percent plus property tax increase.

Now, they are desperate to paper over this colossal political screw-up, and their plan to do so is not to spend within our means but rather to raise more taxes to feed into the education fund to “buy down” the impact on property taxes. In other words, continue to take more and more money from taxpayers to give to their political cronies, just out of different pockets, in the hopes we can be fooled into thinking we’re somehow getting a deal.

It’s not a new strategy. The Education Fund is currently fed by the property tax, 1/3 of the sales & use tax, ¼ of the meals & rooms tax, the state lottery, and a handful of other minor sources. My friend John McClaughry dubbed the public-school special interests “The Blob” after the 1950 horror movie monster that grew ever larger by subsuming – killing and destroying — everything in its path. It’s an apt description, and The Blob is on the move again!

The House Ways & Means Committee is currently debating what other new revenue sources can be thrown into the expanding path of The Blob. Here are the top candidates:

• Higher and/or expanded sales taxes. Vermont’s sales tax is currently 6 percent, with some communities adding a local option tax on top of that. It raises $607 million.

According to the Joint Fiscal Office, each 0.1 percent increase in the sales tax would raise approximately $9.3 million. Of course, this would make Vermont even less competitive with neighbors New Hampshire, which has no sales tax, and New York, which has a 4 percent sales tax. It was also pointed out that the sales tax is a regressive tax hitting lower-income people harder than those with higher incomes.

Expanding the sales tax base – the things subject to the sales tax – could squeeze as much as $271 million by including groceries, medical products, residential energy, clothing, and footwear. These things are currently exempt from the sales tax because, well, people need them to survive. Taxing them would be cruel and unusual. But, you know, if the VTNEA wants the money….

• An Excise Tax on Sweetened Beverages.

The JFO ran the numbers on taxing just “sugar-sweetened” beverages – soda, sports drinks, energy drinks, ready-to-drink teas, and coffees, etc. —  at either 1 cent or 2 cents per ounce (so 12 to 24 cents per twelve-ounce can/bottle, but it also applies to syrups and powders to which water is added). This would extract an estimated $15.2 to $29.8 million from thirsty Vermonters. However, Rep. Peter Anthony (D-Barre) floated the idea of taxing ALL sweetened beverages, an idea the chair Emily Kornheiser said she could potentially get on board with, regardless of what the sweetener was. This would roughly double the take. Hey, why not? The VTNEA wants the money.

Of note, no other state has a sugar or otherwise sweetened beverage tax, although a handful of municipalities do. So, look for “Vermont will lead the way!” propaganda to come if this takes off.

• A “Cloud” Tax on Pre-Written Software Accessed Remotely.

Democrats in the legislature have been salivating about the Cloud Tax on software as a service for over a decade, and this might just be the year! (Because the VTNEA wants the money.) For the most part Vermont does not tax services (more on that in a moment). This tax, which would cost Vermonters roughly $20 million per year, would hit things like your Microsoft Office or Google Apps subscriptions, Quickbooks, Mailchimp, Toast or Square, Force, Amazon Web Services, and with cruel irony, TurboTax, so you’ll get to pay a tax to pay your taxes.

While this has implications for everybody, it will be particularly painful for small businesses that need these software services to operate competitively.

• Expanding the Sales Tax to Services.

Although a general expansion of the 6 percent sales tax on goods to include services – everything from school tuition, legal advice, hair salons, personal trainers, lawncare, etc. – was not part of the JFO presentation, it was raised by members of the committee. The JFO presenter referred them to the Rand Study done in 2023 to determine new revenue streams to fund expanded government-run pre-k. That study showed that expanding the sales tax to services at the 6 percent rate would extract $105 to $143 million, depending upon what and how many exemptions are allowed.

• Tax candy

Currently, candy is considered a grocery and is exempt from the sales tax. Taxing it at 6 percent would only raise $3.7 million, but as long as you’re stealing, you might as well do so from babies. The VTNEA wants the money!

The tragedy of all this taxing and spending – or perhaps the intent – was pointed out by Representative Scott Beck (R-St. Johnsbury). “Given how we define education spending and calculate the yield, this would be worse because you’d get all of the taxes and not get property taxes down at all.” Asked to elaborate, Beck went on, “If you pour all of this money into the system, the districts are going to spend it up because it’s cheap money. I mean, we’ve added in the last – with Wayfair [v. South Dakota sales tax SCOTUS decision] We’ve added $100 million in sales tax to the Education Fund, and look what’s happened to property taxes. The money’s cheap to the districts, and so they spend it.”

Just like The Blob monster that it is.

 

Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics, including three years of service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free-market think tank. He is also a regular contributor to VermontGrok.

The post The Democrat Solution to High Property Taxes Is… More Higher Taxes! appeared first on Granite Grok.

It’s appropriate that the 28th annual meeting of the United Nations Climate Summit is called the “Conference of Parties.” Each year, they have a party destroying the liberty of the American people.

Most Americans remain ignorant that the U.S. delegates are among the cheerleaders clapping for the tyranny of the global domination goals to regiment the whole world with environmental controls.

President Biden immediately reversed the Trump Administration policies that slowed this process down. For at least 28 years, the globalist left has consistently put America at the forefront of promoting audacious controls. Do you realize that this past December, throughout COP28, in Dubai, UAE, the U.S. and Western governments pledged suicidal energy policies? All the communists, socialists, and Islamic nations celebrate how naive American delegates are at this Conference of Parties. This action to make America first will economically destroy us.

This action reminds me of a similar scenario going on in the 1937 Soviet Union. Standing in the crowd after listening to an impassioned speech praising Joe Stalin by his deputy, Alexander Solzhenitsyn stood among the fear and terror written on each man’s face, clapping long and loud for one of history’s most prolific and evil mass murderers. Fake enthusiasm, intimidated souls mimicking one another, fearing not to stop. Eleven dreadful long minutes passed. Finally, the director of the paper factory boldly sat down, and all the rest followed, ending the applause. That night, this man was arrested and, after interrogation, given ten years in prison. Their final warning to him: “Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding.” In today’s America, it is concerning that the Democratic left and RINOs do not fake their enthusiasm for these liberty-destroying policies. They never stop applauding.

We want to thank Russ Payne for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Steve@GraniteGrok.com.
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It is obvious that the goal of President Biden’s policies is not to put America’s interest first. He signed unconstitutional Executive Orders to destroy the energy independence achieved under President Trump. Alex Newman’s TNA 1/29/24 article points out how our delegation to the COP28 Climate Summit puts America last: “Ironically, those coal-fired plants being built across China are powering the very factories producing the economical and environmentally devastating solar panels and windmills subsidized by struggling Western taxpayers — systems that will end up imposing even higher costs on American consumers.” What Hypocrisy? Communist, socialist, and Islamic regimes make oil deals at the UN Climate Summit to phase out fossil fuels, but America must be first!

The New American asks Senators Lisa Murkowski (R – Alaska) and Tom Carper (D-Del) a similar question, “Why does the U.S. government commit economic suicide to “save the climate” even as the regime ruling Communist China keeps building coal-fired power plants at an unprecedented rate?” Of the few answers given, they: “… simply insisted that Beijing should follow suit after the United States jumps off the cliff into economic oblivion.”

Something is terribly wrong when our government, elected by “we the people,” pledges its loyalties to the UNCOP28 plans without the permission of Congress. The silent majority must wake up and speak out when Congress ignores American interests. Contact state and federal representation — Senators and Representatives – with phone calls, emails, and snail mail — to warn them to stop representing the UN’s Agenda 2130 and COP28 pledges. Check out the facts at the Voice of Freedom: https://thenewamerican.com/print/phasing-out-oil-or-america/

The post Never Stop Applauding … Or Else! appeared first on Granite Grok.

Within weeks of the Biden Administration embedding itself in the Oval Office (Like a tick), it announced that the Houthi rebels in Yemen were not, as the Trump administration had declared, terrorists. Except they were.

The Houthi movement, which is officially called Ansarallah (or Ansar Allah, for “supporters of God”), brags a slogan which reads: “God is great, death to the U.S., death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory for Islam.” …

The obvious presumption was that the Bidenistas were tossing Iran’s Proxy and, therefore, Iran a bone, claiming it was about ensuring humanitarian relief. And why not? The Bidenistas hate America and Israel, so it was a better fit than OJ’s glove.

In exchange, the Houthis continued to recruit child soldiers, bomb airports, and kill civilians – they even raided the US Embassy in Yemen before the year was out.

Not much had changed in the intervening years until someone decided to report on the years of “almost peaceful protesting” as if it were something new. Forever wars, distraction from Team Biden failures during a presidential election year, corn pop? Any guess is as good as the next, but the US started bombing Yemen as a matter of policy (so much for the humanitarian aid), and Biden Inc. has had a change of heart on the Houthi. They are to  be rebranded as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist.”

This decision comes after the group has repeatedly attacked United States interests, including commercial ships in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. National Security Official Jake Sullivan stated that this move is aimed at impeding terrorist funding to the Houthis.

This fits (hand-and-glove?) with the Deep State theatrical presentation: we’re mad at Iran for something that reeks of some sort of John Kerry visiting the Mullah co-production stage play. Democrats love Iran and have longed for a shift in regional power away from Saudi Arabia. The distraction is an excuse to increase inflation by throwing billions at weapons makers (who love anyone that gives them money), while the depopulation left gets something the like. Wars kill a lot of people. Sure, they release a lot of carbon into the atmosphere, but someone did some math in case anyone asks.

The number of people killed offsets the CO2 released to kill them or something like that.

War is now a planetary good, so we should expect more of it, but you have to have an antagonist. In Ukraine it’s Russia, in Israel it’s both sides, and in Yemen it is now the Houthi, who Iran may have given up for the sake or perception. Trump winning is bad for Iran and the Democrats, so what’s a few martyrs? They can also find more.

 

The post Biden and the Houthis – Live Shows Daily! appeared first on Granite Grok.

And so another week begins.

Take heart – there will be both a Wednesday and Friday Edition.  Last week’s Friday Edition.

Remember, ridicule and mockery are effective weapons:

1. Ridicule cannot easily be fought
2. Ridicule makes the enemy angry, and angry people make mistakes
3. For those in the “squishy middle” a Thought Splinter (and Part II and Part III and Part IV) can often be hidden inside humor.

Now, let the mockery and mayhem begin.

 

*** Warning, a few possibly off-color ones, in case tender eyes are about ***

 

 

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Genocide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Same applies to property taxes.  It’s essentially rent paid to the state for the land they can confiscate if you don’t pay it.

 

 

 

 

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PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA

 

 

This is an incredibly important point.  As Mark Steyn said, demographics is destiny.

All these illegals are going to be dependent on FedGov for years (assuming we don’t collapse Cloward-Piven style, which IMHO is the whole point of the exercise).

 

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Links (some mine, some my Jarhead friend):

 

Study: Psychological Interventions Do Not Work on Climate Skeptics – Watts Up With That?

So, basically, by force.

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Moonbattery Trans Baby Molester Goes Free as Libs Target Dissidents – Moonbattery

I want off this planet.  Stat.

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Bayou Renaissance Man: China’s Communist Party gets even more protectionist

China is, IMHO, an economic house of cards.  And not just China:

Soaring debt pushing wealthy nations to ‘fiscal death’ – The Burning Platform

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A Bad Day for America :: SteynOnline

Another nail in the coffin for free speech.  More:

To HELL With Free Speech: Democrat Senator Warner Pushes For More Censorship, Big Tech-Government Collusion To Silence Americans ⋆ Conservative Firing Line

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Steve Kirsch: CDC FORGOT to warn the public that COVID-19 vaccines cause DEMENTIA * 100PercentFedUp.com * by Noah

That would explain why a lot of Covidians I know, who have been Jabbed multiple times, seem less sharp than before.  Related:

Embalmers Continue to See White, Fibrous Blood Clots in the Bodies of Vaccine Recipients › American Greatness (amgreatness.com)

The Covid-19 “vaccine” (and probably the “boosters” as well), are still causing massive blood clots, according to morticians and embalmers.

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The “Far Right” Pounces | Power Line (powerlineblog.com)

If the far right consists of those who are horrified by gang rapes of 13 year old girls, count me in.

Me too.

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The Feral Irishman: So, Basically, We Are On Our Own… It’s Only A Matter Time…

A sheriff from Ohio lays out that attacks on our country “are not a matter if, but when”, and that when it happens, we are on our own, so prep accordingly.  The video is about 25 minutes and worth listening to.

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The Obama ‘Nudge Unit’ Rides Again – American Thinker

The government is “nudging” us again (not that they ever really stopped).  And my own essay on nudging:

The Fly on the Urinal – Urban Scoop

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Mail-In Ballot Fraud Study Finds Trump ‘Almost Certainly’ Won In 2020 | ZeroHedge

A new study has shown massive fraud in the 2020 mail-in ballots (up to 25%) and that means that yes, Trump DID win 2020, and was cheated out of the election by fraud.  The question is this:  Who will actually bring this to bear LEGALLY, and hold the fraudsters (and everyone who covered it up) accountable?  Added: What judge has the stones knowing the kind of firestorm they’d be stepping into?

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Major News Outlets Continue Losing Millions Amid Anti-Trump Coverage (conservativebrief.com)

In the “What did you expect” department, major news outlets and publications are going under, because people aren’t watching them anymore.  Gee, I wonder why?  Maybe because you sold your souls to the Marxist left and the “news” you publish is nothing but pure propaganda?

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Squatters Taking Over Homes All Over The US On An Industrial Scale And Turning Them Into Dens Of Crime – The Lid (lidblog.com)

As people are forced to leave their homes due to foreclosure, more and more homes are being taken over by squatters & used for crime.

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Twitter video: The Great Set-Up

This is a fascinating video, entitled The Great Set-up, Part 1 that ties together the set-up of the Covid-19 “plandemic” and how this was all planned out 15 or more years ago.  But the information was covered up, definitions changed, and laws flat out ignored to push this on the entire world.  Also, the evidence this Doctor uncovered was shown to many people who had the power to do something about it.  But instead, they SQUASHED it.  It’s a little over 34 minutes, but really worth your time, as you need to realize that the world powers (including our own government) are willing to literally MURDER us for profit and/or power.

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Horrifying Mid-Flight Emergency: Passenger Dies After ‘Liters of Blood Comes Out of His Mouth and Nose’ – Vigilant News Network

From a good friend of mine comes a link to an article about a man who is VERY sick, but is allowed to board and fly on an international flight.  Midway through the flight, he starting having blood coming out his nose and mouth, and eventually died.  The really strange thing is this:  No one from the flight was quarantined after this happened!  You have to ask yourself WHY NOT?  Do they want a sickness like this to spread?  Well, maybe they do.

 

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Pick of the post:

 

 

 

Two early 20th century cartoons.  Could be talking about today.

 

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Palate Cleansers:

 

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Come back Wednesday for another edition.  Same Meme Time.  Same Meme channel.

Please do consider buying me a coffee.

Buy Me a Coffee

 

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