Here is a map provided by the Center for Disease Control that shows the most distinctive cause of death in each state. Guess what ours is caused by? "Legal Intervention." That means death at the hands of the police. Nevada is in the same boat. Click on the map to make it bigger.
Well meaning Bio Park supporters have decided that the poor should pay for the rich in supporting these great local facilities. They are starting a referendum effort to raise the gross receipts tax to fund the Bio Park. Of course this is the most regressive tax around and will hit the poor much harder than the rich. We can blame this situation on the fact that Mayor Marty Chavez started taking the city's share of the property tax for operational purposes instead of using it to fund capital improvements through bond issues. And of course Mayor Berry just continues to be an ineffectual leader in fixing anything. I would vote for a bond issue to do this, but give a big thumbs down on a gross receipts tax, especially after the Bernalillo County Commissioners raised it because of their incompetence at being financially responsible. We must stop making the poor pay for everything.
I don't mind paying taxes at all. I just want the rich to pay a progressive tax.
P.S. The new Max Max movie is the best of all of them!
5 comments:
That's pretty chilling, about the leading cause of death here. I'm sure the journal will be all over it.
Oh wait, they won't. Their special section on the problems at the police department -- the one about the epidemic of police killings, the US Justice Department investigation, the consent decree -- has quietly disappeared from their web site, and the problems at the police department are still there.
Thanks for keeping us up on the latest attempt to stick the people with another regressive tax. These usually remain invisible, which is why they try to do them.
This should be seen in the context of the massive shifting of the tax burden, i.e. the burden of paying for government, since Reagan, to the working class, which is a big part of the massive redistribution of wealth upward during that time, that's still ongoing.
Actually death by law enforcement is not the leading cause of death in NM, it's the "most distinctive." This seems like a trivial distinction, but there's a big difference. Still pretty chilling.
See: http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/index.htm
Utah should be in the same category
New Jersey- Syphilis
Florida- Human Immunodeficiency Virus
Arizona- Discharge of Firearm w/Undetermined Intent
Alabama- Accidental Discharge of Firearm
Colorado- the flu
Alaska- Air, Land, & Space Accidents
California- Prostate Cancer
Kkrattiger
A political consultant friend of mine told me that he's hiring signature gatherers for the Biopark gross receipts tax initiative at a buck a signature. Is this another unplanned consequence of the city having its own election code under the home rule charter? IIRC, the state banned the practice in 2005!
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