Casinos + Cigarette Tax Increase = ???
You wouldn't know it from reading the Lexington Herald-Leader or the Louisville Courier-Journal, but a couple of issues Kentucky will face in 2008 are hitting Indiana now.
We would save ourselves a little time if we paid attention.
Indiana already has casinos, but they just raised cigarette taxes another 44 cents per pack to expand health insurance coverage.
This is happening while gubernatorial candidate Steve Beshear is promising to expand government-paid health insurance and several other initiatives with new casinos alone.
Beshear's scam might get him elected, but his questionable proposals have done little to inspire confidence that anything more will come of that than putting Democrats back in charge of abusing the merit system.
posted by Kentucky Progress @ 9/16/2007 06:39:00 PM
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“than putting Democrats back in charge of abusing the merit system.”
Therein lies the rub. What they have done for the past thirty years (previous to Fletcher) doesn't matter. The dems simply want to hold anything Republican or otherwise to a different standard. Its the old “double-standard Kentucky politics.”
The hypocrisy of today's politicos on both sides of the isle is the underlying problem of voter apathy. The approval ratings speak volumes. Voter turnout this day and age is more about voting against someone than for another. And that my friends is a very sad state of affairs.
Remember, Wilkinson sold the lottery as a way to finance education. 3 or 4 years later, we were handed the largest tax increase in Ky. history to finance education.
Now we are being told that we need casinos to finance education. Hmmmmmm.
Regardless of the casino issue, I'd be for a cigarette tax increase. In Ohio a pack of name-brand smokes goes for around $4 a pack. We ought to survey the states around us and choose a rate that is between 25 and 50 cents lower than the lowest neighboring state rate (excluding Virginia). That way our tax revenues would go up, it would be more expensive to smoke and thus more might quit, and those cigarette stores on the south side of the Ohio Ocean would still make a fortune off those addicted Buckeyes.
Raising cigarette taxes only to make people quit is one thing, but planning on increased revenue and then dedicating that revenue to an open-ended spending project is how we keep going deeper in the hole and "needing" still more revenue sources.
Fellow Kentuckians:
We are about to get BeSheared !!
Wallace Wilkinson's lies all over again. Will the sheeple ever learn?
"Its the old “double-standard Kentucky politics.”
It's double standard all across the country as well. Demonrats are never held to the same standard as anyone else because the mainstream media is demonrat, PERIOD! And the sheeple bleat...
It is never about making people quit their sin, but rather is always about taxing ths sin. Hence the built in immorality of government.
FREEOURPOWS
This is just another liberal spin on "It is for the Children". I am so sick of hearing this and other statements, I just want to scream.
Until the Republican Party gets back to the conservative ideas that most Americans adhere to, it will only be viewed as the "Democratic Light Party"
When the tax dollars dry up from a certain sin tax, those that have come up with this grand scheme will look for revenues else where. Guess where that is going to come from. Bingo, the rest of us.
Pollster Date Tested Beshear (D) Fletcher (R) Spread
AVERAGE 54.3% 36.1% Beshear +18.2%
Herald-Leader/WTVQ Sep 10-13 600 LV 56% 39% Beshear +17%
Survey USA Sep 8-10 553 LV 58% 39% Beshear +19%
Survey USA Aug 4-6 613 LV 58% 37% Beshear +21%
Preston-Osborne Jul25-Aug2 600 LV 49% 31% Beshear +18%
Survey USA Jul 14-16 560 LV 59% 36% Beshear +23%
IA/MO Jul 8-9 693 RV 41% 38% Beshear +3%
Rasmussen May 24-25 500 LV 51% 35% Beshear +16%
Survey USA May 23-24 609 LV 62% 34% Beshear +28%
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