The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Quin Hillyer Argues the Alabama Governor’s Race IN ALL CAPS!

Posted on | February 15, 2010 | 13 Comments

On Friday I began my American Spectator column this way:

Tim James was Tea Party before Tea Party was cool. Before the federal bailouts, before most Americans had heard of Barack Obama, before Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck became household names, James helped lead the 2003 effort to stop a tax increase proposed by Alabama’s Republican Gov. Bob Riley.
The battle over Amendment One, as Riley’s $1.3 billion tax measure was known, was a defining moment for the state’s conservatives. James, who had challenged Riley in the 2002 Republican gubernatorial primary, sided with the anti-tax activists who organized an opposition campaign that became known as the “Alabama Tea Party.”
Alabama voters rejected the proposal by more than a 2-to-1 margin in a September 2003 referendum and, if politics were logical, James would be the front-runner in this year’s GOP gubernatorial contest. Instead, one recent poll showed that the early leader is Bradley Byrne who, as a state senator in 2003, voted for Riley’s tax-hike plan. . . .

You can read the whole thing, if you haven’t already. My friend Qun Hillyer promised Friday to reply to that column, and has done so at the American Spectator today:

Anyway, overall, Riley’s tax plan raised far more money IN THE SHORT TERM than it would have “cost.” But it did so in the context of one of the smallest combined state-and-local government spending records in the country. Tim James’ father had cut the state budget to the bone, and then Democrat Don Siegelman’s spending hikes were largely taken back through a process called “proration” when the economy temporarily went bad. Meanwhile, among states that have property taxes, Alabama’s property taxes were something like the second-smallest in the nation. Its sales tax rates, though, were absurdly high, and its exemption threshold for paying income taxes started at an absurdly low $5,000 (well below the national average of about $16,000). Plus, huge swaths of land were effectively off the books because of what amounted to a huge exemption on taxes for lands used for timber — even if the timberland wasn’t actually being used in commerce, but just allowed to sit there as a nice big, untaxed private preserve.
What all this meant was that Alabama’s tax system was literally regressive — not regressive in the modern liberal sense of not being “progressive” enough for liberal tastes, but actually more burdensome on the poor than on the rich. . . .
But overall, in the short term, the Riley Plan raised more than a net $1 billion overall, mostly by raising the incredibly low property tax rates . . .
And this was exactly when the second round, i.e., the larger and more supply-side round, of the Bush tax cuts were going into effect, so that EVEN FOR THOSE WHOSE STATE/LOCAL TAXES WOULD GO UP OVERALL UNDER THE RILEY PLAN, THEIR COMBINED LOCAL/STATE AND FEDERAL TAX LOAD WOULD BE SMALLER THAN IT HAD BEEN JUST TWO YEARS BEFORE. In short, even for the 30% who would have been moderately “hurt” by the Riley plan, their overall financial situation, in terms of taxes, would be better than it had been in 2001. . . .

You can read the whole thing. The basic problem here seems to be this: In 2003, Quin committed himself as an advocate of the Riley Plan. Alabama voters rejected that plan by a 2-to-1 margin. And seven years later, Quin is still trying to win the argument.

Or WIN THE ARGUMENT, as it were.

Re-hashing the arguments of 2003 — the “regressive” nature of Alabama’s tax system, the putative benefits of the Riley plan, etc. — is a futile exercise, politically. The voters of Alabama rejected those arguments seven years ago, and I doubt they’re in a mood to hear them again now. If Quin Hillyer thinks Bradley Byrne can win the Republican primary by defending his vote for the Billion-Dollar Bob tax . . . well, good luck with that.

Or perhaps I should say, GOOD LUCK WITH THAT.

P.S.: How is having “huge swaths of land . . . effectively off the books” a bad thing?

I’m in favor of having the private sector “off the books” as much as possible. That’s why, even when I pay my restaurant bill with a credit card, I always leave the tip in cash. I have never advocated tax evasion (such advocacy can be prosecuted a federal crime), but if the waitress doesn’t report 100% of her cash income to the IRS, that’s none of my business.

Category: Alabama, Election, Taxes

Comments

13 Responses to “Quin Hillyer Argues the Alabama Governor’s Race IN ALL CAPS!”

  1. Mike Harmon
    February 15th, 2010 @ 3:16 pm

    I finally decided to write a comment on your blog. I just wanted to say good job. I really enjoy reading your posts.

  2. Mike Harmon
    February 15th, 2010 @ 10:16 am

    I finally decided to write a comment on your blog. I just wanted to say good job. I really enjoy reading your posts.

  3. Ui2
    February 15th, 2010 @ 3:52 pm

    The Bush tax cuts were intended to have a nationwide, positive effect. They were not intended to give the states room to raise their own taxes.

    When the Dems allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, the “COMBINED STATE/FEDERAL TAX LOAD” argument implodes.

  4. Ui2
    February 15th, 2010 @ 10:52 am

    The Bush tax cuts were intended to have a nationwide, positive effect. They were not intended to give the states room to raise their own taxes.

    When the Dems allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, the “COMBINED STATE/FEDERAL TAX LOAD” argument implodes.

  5. Danby
    February 15th, 2010 @ 6:18 pm

    Shorter version:
    Less is more. Black is white. The Party tells you so, and you can trust The Party.

  6. Danby
    February 15th, 2010 @ 1:18 pm

    Shorter version:
    Less is more. Black is white. The Party tells you so, and you can trust The Party.

  7. Steve in TN
    February 15th, 2010 @ 10:30 pm

    Be Fair. You decided not to or forgot to quote this:
    “Here was the deal: Alabama faced huge deficits and has a balanced-budget requirement. Riley already had cut, largely through administrative measures, about a whopping $350 million from the budget in half a year, with more cuts proposed legislatively. But he desperately needed a short-term bridge to balance the budget.”

    Funny how you didn’t mention anything about how Riley was doing basically the same thing Reagan did as CA guv…

    As I commented in the previous post you made on A1, I voted against it as a Mobile resident. I saw the “low” property taxes as a boon for Bama folks. However, the point about the timber lands being used as a dodge by corporations is correct. They were/are under taxed.

    Another point that needs discussion is the sales tax. IIRC, it was around %8.5 depending on one’s county/municipal residency in 2003. That’s with a Bama income tax. That’s about the same as Texas and Tennessee, two other states where I have lived over the last several decades that do NOT have income taxes.

    And for the emailer who chided me for speaking up on Bama politics when I no longer live there, I still own a home in Mobile on which I pay (rising) property taxes. I think that gives me a small right…

  8. Steve in TN
    February 15th, 2010 @ 5:30 pm

    Be Fair. You decided not to or forgot to quote this:
    “Here was the deal: Alabama faced huge deficits and has a balanced-budget requirement. Riley already had cut, largely through administrative measures, about a whopping $350 million from the budget in half a year, with more cuts proposed legislatively. But he desperately needed a short-term bridge to balance the budget.”

    Funny how you didn’t mention anything about how Riley was doing basically the same thing Reagan did as CA guv…

    As I commented in the previous post you made on A1, I voted against it as a Mobile resident. I saw the “low” property taxes as a boon for Bama folks. However, the point about the timber lands being used as a dodge by corporations is correct. They were/are under taxed.

    Another point that needs discussion is the sales tax. IIRC, it was around %8.5 depending on one’s county/municipal residency in 2003. That’s with a Bama income tax. That’s about the same as Texas and Tennessee, two other states where I have lived over the last several decades that do NOT have income taxes.

    And for the emailer who chided me for speaking up on Bama politics when I no longer live there, I still own a home in Mobile on which I pay (rising) property taxes. I think that gives me a small right…

  9. Obi's Sister
    February 15th, 2010 @ 11:31 pm

    CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

    hee

  10. Obi's Sister
    February 15th, 2010 @ 6:31 pm

    CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

    hee

  11. Tim James for Governor | Press-Register’s quote of the week (and other stories)
    February 15th, 2010 @ 8:26 pm

    […] However, the debate is now hitting the blogosphere. Feel free to jump into the argument here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. We went through this in 2003 and we […]

  12. George of the Jungle
    February 16th, 2010 @ 2:21 am

    Robert Stacy McCain don’t take no crap from nobody, especially the Bradley Byrne crowd, the Alabama version of Keystone Kops. Let Quin play that bunch of knuckleheads. By the? way, how does Bradley explain to Quin all that gambling and PAC money he’s taking? What a reformer!!!

  13. George of the Jungle
    February 15th, 2010 @ 9:21 pm

    Robert Stacy McCain don’t take no crap from nobody, especially the Bradley Byrne crowd, the Alabama version of Keystone Kops. Let Quin play that bunch of knuckleheads. By the? way, how does Bradley explain to Quin all that gambling and PAC money he’s taking? What a reformer!!!