February 11, 2019 6:00 AM
Morning Reads for Monday, February 11, 2019
It’s Week 5 of the Legislative Session, but I swear we’ve been here longer. Just me? Ok.
Things you might have missed while you were living real life:
- Georgia House Democrats Mary Margaret Oliver, Shelly Hutcheson, Teri Anulewicz, Sandra Scott, and Derrick Jackson co-sponsored legislation that would remove protections for Confederate monuments on public property in the state of Georgia.
- Twitter is the absolute worst social media platform, but easily the most entertaining. My favorite is watching grown-ups throw jabs in 140 characters or less. President Trump and Sen. Amy Klobuchar did not disappoint.
- This was not Georgia College and State University’s week. The Theta Chi House burned to the ground on Saturday evening. Add in a death, a lawsuit, and 120 cases of food poisoning from dining services and I think that it’s safe to say it was “Hell Week.”
- Medicaid waivers are a hot topic at the Capitol and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
- The Board of Regents will see a pretty big shake-up in the near future.
- North Carolina Congressman Walter Jones died last week.
- “20 years, 700 victims”. Nope…I’m not talking about the Catholic Church or the Boy Scouts. These are numbers from a report about the Southern Baptist Church and sexual abuse. (Full disclosure, I’m a member of a Baptist Church.)
- A bi-partisan group of legislators are banning together to protect Georgia’s coast.
- Rep. Rob Woodall announced last week that he won’t run for reelection. So who’s considering it?
- The new-ish Hands Free Law is working.
About Author
Theresa Garcia Robertson
Wife. Mama. Foodie. Political Junkie. Southern Enthusiast. Taco Lover.
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In the world’s least surprising news, our old buddy Erick Erickson is endorsing Trump. Apparently he had a massive change of heart after being “Never Trump” for all of 2 weeks back in 2016.
Yeah, Erickson has been as sincere about his anti-Trump concerns as the NatRev crowd. They might admit in private that Trump is a dim and vulgar liar, and they don’t like his tariffs because FREE TRADE, but they’re down with everything else he’s done or tried to do.
He gets credit from me sticking with it since before the nomination unapologetically. It seems a strange time to flip, but Trump is ever more popular within the GOP, but that’s in part because the GOP is shrinking.
Beyond evangelicals, there are a few old-timey Republicans still kicking:
“In the long run, a third or so of the country cannot effectively govern the other two-thirds with an unpopular agenda and a Twitter account.”
“The most troubling — and from our point of view the most disappointing — development of the Trump era is not the president’s own election and subsequent behavior; it is the institutional corruption, weakness and self-betrayal of the Republican Party. The party has abandoned its core commitments to constitutional norms, to conservative principles and even to basic decency. It has allowed itself to be hijacked by a reality television star who is a pathological liar, emotionally unsteady and accountable only to himself. And it has embraced presidential conduct that, if engaged in by a Democrat, it would have been denounced as corrupt, incompetent and even treasonous.”
“In that sense, Mr. Trump’s presidency has become to the Republican Party what Vietnam was to President Lyndon Johnson. By 1965, Johnson saw Vietnam for the unwinnable quagmire that it was, but he feared and ultimately bowed to the short-term consequences of withdrawing. “It’s like being in an airplane and I have to choose between crashing the plane or jumping out,” he told his wife. “I do not have a parachute.” We know today that Johnson made the wrong decision.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/08/opinion/sunday/trump-impeachment-resignation-republicans.html
By Jonathan Rauch, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Except that Johnson’s sheparding the Civil Right Act to passage was momentous and required skill and leadership, compared to tax cuts for that rich to load debt on the country that is being used as an excuse while we can’t afford anything.
Supposedly some VA politician is going to try and impeach the Lt. Governor if he doesn’t resign. Pure theater. The Lt. Governor hasn’t committed a crime while in office. Will never happen. But smile for the cameras anyway.
Here is the chamblee54 weekly reader for last week. https://chamblee54.wordpress.com/2019/02/11/this-is-not-satire/
Georgia might tax Netflix and downloads
Link to the article from AJC
https://www.ajc.com/news/state–regional-govt–politics/watch-what-next-georgia-might-tax-netflix-and-downloads/4v12VCHoefdEWQJTmggvJI/
Here are the arguments
Rep. Jay Powell, the chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee, said, “A book purchased at a store is subject to sales taxes, but a downloaded e-book is tax-free.”
This is an old excuse which you will hear “we need to level the playing field” for brick and mortar stores. BUT a physical paper book requires infrastructure. Roads to truck the inventory into the state and to the store shelves. The stores themselves need infrastructure from roads to police and fire protection and all other government services associated with a retail operation. A digital book needs none of this.
The next argument is the fees are needed to expand high speed internet service to rural Georgia. Nice try but the history of Georgia using taxes and fees for the intended purpose is extremely poor. Examples are the used tire fee/TAX, the 911 tax are among the worst abuses.
This is why,
“The tax, combined with the repeal of existing taxes and fees, would generate $48 million in 2021 and reach $310 million by 2024, according to state estimates. Revenue would be split between state and local governments. The state portion would go into the general treasury, meaning there’s no guarantee it would go to help increase internet access in rural Georgia. The state can’t dedicate funding without changing the state Constitution.”
We can’t spend money for the purpose it was proposed but we can build 30 million dollar Go Fish” museum pork barrel projects.
Again, we have lobbyist trying to influence state politicians for corporate gain…
Nearly 60 lobbyists for cable, TV and cellphone companies including AT&T are making an argument that it’s only fair that every service be taxed equally. Currently, various taxes and fees cover cable TV and phones but not satellite TV and internet video. On the other hand, Dish, the satellite TV and internet provider, characterized the tax as a handout for “big cable.” Dish spokeswoman Karen Modlin said the company is the only statewide provider of video and broadband, without having to use local infrastructure.
For full disclosure Rep Powell received large campaign contributions from AT&T.
Source : https://votesmart.org/candidate/campaign-finance/105245/alfred-powell-jr#.XGGR76aouUk
Enjoy
And it is socialism if a Constitutional amendment were enacted directing the new and increased taxes be directed to rural broadband.
But it is not socialism to amend the constitution to make the law of the land to only use taxes passed for an intended purpose be only used for that purpose. Today all those special fees and taxes go into the general fund and never get allocated to the intended purpose. I call that a back-door tax increase.
Good to know that taxes that redistribute wealth to provide public services aren’t socialism.
No one likes taxes, but the best way to make sure the revenue is spent on rural Broadband, for instance, is to make the actual appropriation. In and out of the general fund. Just pass the expenditure at the same time as the tax. There could also be other oversight measures taken, but in this case, the proof may be best in the spending.
The other point I would take issue with is that digital commerce requires no infrastructure. Except even Amazon and Google and Netflix, etc. all have brick and mortars buildings for humans, as well as many data centers, and they all require equipment and tech services, etc., which all have their own infrastructures. Not to mention that whether its FCC or other regulatory bodies, it all still requires regulation which is a necessary government service which needs to be paid for. So, there are plenty of things in the flow of commerce which require both traditional infrastructure protection services, and digital infrastructure protection.
We’ll just have to put this one in the column to agree to disagree.
The used tire fee, the 911 phone tax, Joshua’s Law and many others go into the General fund yet no money has ever been allocated by the legislature for the purpose voters past these laws to do. So the general fund is not the place for these funds to go. Yes other measures could be taken. I support a change to the constitution to insure collected taxes and fees are used for the purpose where voters approved or those taxes and fees will be automatically repealed. Until then I vote NO on all of those taxes and do my best to convince other to do the same for the the reason I stated above.
As far as Amazon they collect sales taxes however many companies have data centers and to my knowledge most don’t have store fronts in order to attract customers yet they still pay property tax, business license fees and all other taxes and fees associated with business. Most of these “Brick and mortar small business store fronts have a presence on the internet yet they get away with not charging sales tax to out of state customers.
What you are talking about is a tax on the consumer not on the company.
Your aversion to trusting that fees would be spent on their stated dedicated purpose is understandable. I personally think it could be done with a law, and not a Constitutional amendment, though, if it could be made a matter of “non-discretionary” spending.
But, yes, it’s def a consumer tax. Even if they nominally say it’s on the business, it will be passed through.
I tend to think this kind of tax is inevitable, even if no one wants it. It’s just a function of the kind of products and services we buy.
A statement that appropriations haven’t matched tax revenue, in some instances and years very much so, is true.
“yet no money has ever been allocated by the legislature for the purpose voters past these laws to do” is patently false.
The only way to insure there’s an appropriation in following years is to sunset the tax with the appropriation. That’s too unreliable.
Sounds to me like they don’t have a clue about what they are taxing other than what lobbyists are feeding them. What if the audiobook or e-book is in the public domain? If the author and/or their estate have no more rights to it why should the state be able to tax it? What if I download electronic media from a free public library source? Anyone ever heard of VPN? The ways of circumventing this are many.
This is a potential clustering quagmire.
From my limited knowledge, I think it’s intended to be easier than all that. The tax would be upon digital subscription products.
Three senarios with respect to shutdown of the government Friday. One, there is no Congressional deal (despite GOP negotiator Georgia Congressman Tom Graves and House Budget Committee Chairman Democrat John Yarmouth saying yesterday on This Week there was a deal to be had if negotiations were left to negotiators). Two, Trump rejects the deal. Trump takes the deal and claims he got more of what he wanted while the Dems got less when that isn’t true—does anyone expect different of a serial liar?
My understanding Is that Dems, in return for a little more wall money, are requiring that ICE focus on detaining criminals that overstay visas by limiting detention space. Anyone surprised the Dealmaker doesn’t understand that reopening negotiations on a done deal that included $1.3B for a wall with a demand for more money requires something in return? Pelosi is schooling Trump that distributive bargaining, the approach of making demands and hoping the other side gives ground in a zero-sum situation, won’t fly outside the Republican sycophant cesspool.
If the three rugs near the Mexican border that Trump saw watching “Sicario” and the trucks Trump saw driving across a desert in “Beyond Thunderdome” are evidence of a national security emergency, climate change and a host of other matters qualify as national security emergencies. Another Republican lowering of bar is in the offing. They’ve been changing rules as needed. The wall being a national emergency will be the making up of rules as they go, since climate change as a national security emergency would be fought tooth and nail
I see your Mary Margaret Oliver bill and raise you a Jeff Mullis bill that protects them. SB 77.
Anybody take a look at SB 81? Increasing legislators base pay from $16,200 to $56,183 (2017 ACS). Pretty good addition to the cookie jar. Then if you add in SB 14 by the same group of Senators, they would be living high on the hog if that one passes as well. It is better to try and sneak these in on off election years because voters memory is short term.
First of all, I don’t have a problem with them getting a raise. Maybe it would keep some of them from trying to grift their way through their “service”.
Here’s the wording:
For each biennial session, each member of the General Assembly shall
13 receive an annual salary in an amount equal to the median annual household income for
14 citizens of the State of Georgia as calculated by the American Community Survey of
15 the United States Census for the year immediately preceding the beginning of each
16 biennial session as determined by the state auditor which take effect on the convening
17 of the General Assembly for such biennial session in each odd-numbered year
Let’s face it, as it is now I wouldn’t think anyone with a normal job can do that work. Who can afford to take off that amount of time for that measly pay?
Totally unexpected. 45 at 52! Washington’s heads must be cracking.
YouGov over the same time period has him at 41% with 53% disapproval.
Lest you think I’m just being selective with my poll of choice, 538’s running tally of his polling averages have Trump at 40.4% approval and 55% disapproval.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
Wasn’t 538 run by that Silver guy who still had Hillary winning at 10 pm on election night?
So what? Rasmussen had a “R+1 net final generic ballot score” on the 2018 midterms.