Pearce, business interests differ on special tax breaks for companies

6 comments:

• Rich posted at 9:09 am on Sat, Nov 13, 2010.

  Posts: 1864

  Capitalism works, until it overproduces, then there is too much stuff and too few consumers. Socialism works until there are too many consumers and too little stuff. (Trying to dumb it down for an Arizona audience). Let's say you have a bookstore. Education becomes a priority for you, because you need not only reading skills, but an appreciation of literature as an art form within your customer pool to be successful. So you need to create a tax balance that allows you a profit but doesn't shortchange the societal expenditures that provide it. An asphalt contractor needs different services from the government to prosper, and that includes maintenance of infrastructure. When you turn around and usurp functions of non-profit areas like charity and religion, such as Early Childhood development, health care, you wobble the system and a collapse is inevitable. When you go over and above the basic societal contributions for businesses selectively, as in subsidies, you wobble the system and collapse is inevitable. Businesses do not pay taxes, they collect them. Unless the business loses money, all the tax expense is paid by it's customers. When you tax a business, the consumer pays that tax when they buy from the business. The secret, like most things, is in the balance. Collect too much, do too much collapses the system as fast as collect too little, do too little, The problem here is that we don't choose our political leaders by their ability to find and maintain the balance we need for our prosperity but rather by nutball ideologies on both sides, which leaves us with arrogant, egotistical incompetents, who, if they do anything right, do it by accident.

  • Link

   

• miraclegro posted at 9:31 am on Sat, Nov 13, 2010.

  Posts: 26

  Sen. Pearce never met a lobbyist he didn't like. Look at his new found coziness with police unions and their lobbyists. The senator hated unions and now he calls them one of his biggest supporters. Pearce is just like any other politician, he'll do what he has to do to remain in office, even if it means sleeping with dogs and getting fleas. When the big money lobbyists come calling and needing favors for the businesses that need tax breaks and preferential treatment Pearce will pick the winners knowing the businesses he helps will help him win when he runs for re-election. Or for governor in 2014.

  • Link

   

• Dale Whiting posted at 1:02 pm on Sat, Nov 13, 2010.

  Posts: 3705

  Well put Rich. Once again, you've hit the nail squarely on the head!

  Miraclegro, nice to begin to make your aquaintance. I do not know that much about Russell Pearce other than what he has done on SB1070. And that was enough to tell me he is a looser of a person but a real winner as a politician. And your comments regarding lobbyists would apply to most all with Pearce's same background. He would not be making politics his career if he was not well connected. Russell appears to have been educated by the very best lobbyists money can buy.

  What ever happened to the part time politicians envisioned by our founding fathers? I include on my list Jay Tibshraney who just left the State Legislature for a second tour as Chandler Mayor. Glad to see Jay is coming back. I also include Harry Mitchell who served us as a school teacher, then in Tempe City government, then in Washington. Tempe was not smart enough to keep Harry on.

  Now, Mesa residents, to speak to Russell's next crazy idea. First it was SB 1070, then rewriting the 14th Amendment. Now its business tax incentives, "picking winners over loosers" as he puts it.

  Russell, you say it's "immoral to give government the power to pick winners over loosers!" Intel is a winnner. You are a looser. That is an easy choice!

  Russell, to add to what Rich has said, understand that we here in Chandler compete with such other states as Oregon and such overseas countries like Israel and India in attracting such notables as Intel to stay put. At one time 30 years ago, we were competing with Phoenix. At that time Intel had a north Phoenix campus. We here in Chandler won that competition against Phoenix! All it takes to pick winners over loosers is foresight. And we here in Chandler have foresight!

  Now we here in Arizona are struggling to compete in the Solar Industry! Yes Arizona is falling behind. We have next to no solar cell manufacturing facilities. California is way out in front. Even Germany's First Solar makes most of its goods in the midwest. Why? Tax incentives. The US Federal Congress slept on investment tax credits for the Solar Industry while the likes of Germany pressed forward. First Solar is a German company doing business in the good old USA. Russell you are all wet!!!!!!!!

  What does it take to compete? Those extra special tax incentives which you appear to wish to kill on grounds of their being immoral. You've got to be kiddins us, right? Why should the municipality of Chandler [and where competition is either interstate or international] the County and the State enter this competition? Well, ask the experts. Business makes our economy run. Tax breaks are necessary to attract that Business. This economic theory is well founded. It ain't like Reaganomics, full of seemingly good ideas but intellectually bankrupt! And we need to limit those incentives to the industries that have a real future!

  So Russell, don't dissappoint us again. SB 1070 was quite enough damage for one political career! Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us. Mess up again and it's out you go.

  Mesa residents, are you listening? Russell Pearce is your doing not us residents of Chandler! Turn him loose on business taxation and you can say good bye to all that lucrative industry at Falcon Field in East Mesa! Mesa residents, you all were just put on notice!

  Dale Whiting
  Treasurer, Chandler Industrial Development Authority
  Speaking individually and not in any representative capacity[beam]

  • Link

   

• Rich posted at 2:03 pm on Sat, Nov 13, 2010.

  Posts: 1864

  Just an idea. Tax people eighty cents a day for not smoking. We can tax one lifestyle, why not tax another? That would be fair, equitable, and provide equal protection and equitable distribution of the burden of taxation. Make people submit the tax coupons off their cigs, stogies, etc. and pay up eighty cents for every one they are short of 365, put it on the state income tax form. And, this is the cool part, non-smokers are in the majority, you get more money! No deficit, a ton of really neat programs you can keep. And since you've already established that it is perfectly alright to pile the taxes on a life style choice, just pick the right lifestyle. I mean not smoking is supposed to have all these benefits smokers don't get, so you're not asking that much, people are still coming out ahead. I mean talk about a win - win.

  • Link

   

• forkedlift1 posted at 1:32 pm on Sun, Nov 14, 2010.

  Posts: 447

  It was refreshing to read these thought provoking intelligent comments by intelligent and informed people on this article. Unfortunately, the 5th comment, as I recall also by "miraclegro," was deleted some time late this morning. Since Russell Pearce's stated philosophy is quoted throughout this article, miraclegro's comment was relevant: a brief 1999 Republic news article reporting that Pearce had been fired as director of the state Dept. of Motor Vehicles and the reasons he was fired, caught in the act of criminal wrongdoing in his official capacity as director.
  The comment's deletion points to a powerful politician who greatly fears exposure of truth concerning him.

  I noticed also that ALL of my recent posts, whether or not they concerned Pearce or his beliefs. have also been deleted.

  The webmaster of this site must be very busy.

  Worth reading is E.J. Montini's column in today's Arizona Republic. "Paid to put in client's 2 cents. Blog hecklers getting paid to comment on posts." It explains the inanity of so much of the "commentary" on this site because the site is so polluted and contaminated with these paid hecklers. Not exactly a career path for some who receive 5 cents per post and use 10 different fake identities, but their "side job" keeps them in beer money.

  • Link

   

• CooperG posted at 8:50 pm on Sun, Nov 14, 2010.

  Posts: 132

  Even though he lost, I liked what Andrew Sherwood was saying about job and economic development. He said "when it comes to industries like solar energy, our state government isn't "picking winners or losers," it's promoting our own unique competitive advantage. Maybe if Pearce spent some time working in the private sector a while, he'd know that competitive advantage can mean everything to winning in a global marketplace."

  He gets it way more than this 10-year incumbent does. Too bad he lost because now we're stuck with a business-repellant Senator who can't recognize advantage even when it is shown to him.

  • Link