This is a proposal coming up for vote on May 5th.
The proposal calls for an increase in the state sales tax from 6 percent to 7 percent.
The primary reason for the increase is to supply monies to fund road repair.
There are additional items in this proposal regarding funding for education and monies to local governments.
We could go into great detail explaining how the roads in Michigan are in such poor shape/condition but in a nutshell the roads are bad because we have not been spending any money to maintain them.
We did find money to give tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy including an elimination of personal property taxes which the public voted in favor of recently. (Fooled you!)
These breaks were paid for by increased taxes on the working poor and seniors. The working poor saw a seventy (70) percent decrease in their earned income credits and the seniors saw, for the first time, a tax on their pensions and elimination or a decrease in their property tax credits.
These breaks for the wealthy and additional taxes on the rest of us were said to provide increased employment in our state. Current data suggests this has not come to be.
Now Snyder and his cohorts are asking the working class to dip into their pockets again to bail out their dismal financial management of the state. (Projected 2015 deficit ~ $500 million)
Many groups normally opposed to Snyder are coming out in support of this proposal, they seem to believe they will be sharing in the largesse.
To those people I have to share this old cliché.
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
randomthoughts 