Page 4 - Dinuba Sentinel E-edition 5-17-18

Opinion
A4 | Thursday, May 17, 2018
on an unprecedented expansion of MediCal to include people who are
not even legal residents? That's a question which is going to need asking because California Senate Democrats are proposing the additional spending for next year's budget. That's a little bit like breaking into your neighbor's house and expecting to be fed dinner! Once again, they will turn to the only source available for funding such adventures, and that would be the taxpayer.
Not to be outdone, an appointed, unelected board, The California Energy Commission has, by stipulation, mandated that by the year 2020 all homes constructed in California must have solar panels. This is to satisfy some arbitrary standard, set by the state, for an unreasonable, unattainable percentage of renewable energy being utilized.
Ask anyone and they will tell you that California is already in the middle of
a housing shortage which is becoming a crisis and we already have the most expensive housing in the nation.
Item one and item two are at complete odds with each other. By enacting number one—the additional health care—we add one more goody to the magnet that draws and encourages hundreds of thousands of illegals to enter the United States. That alone places greater strain on the housing situation and one winds up with the horrendous homeless camps in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco because these low—or no—income people can't afford housing here in
the Golden State to which they were lured because of so many government handouts. At the same time, thousands of California taxpayers are giving up on high housing costs, high cost of living, high taxes to support those the state deem worthy of care and have decided to move to a friendlier locale which is out of state.
Even with all the “climate change” and “global warming” we remain one of the most beautiful states in the union and our climate is genuinely delightful almost all year round. The tunnel vision politicians in Sacramento have heaped on regulations, restrictions
and taxes until the average earner has reached the point that they can no longer afford the overhead of living here. Ironically the under educated
Guest Column
Congress made it harder to give teachers raises
In just a few months, we’ve seen teachers in five states walk out of the classroom to protest their
abysmal pay.
Stingy state budgets are mostly to
blame for low teacher pay and poor school conditions, but there’s a federal tax connection, too. Unfortunately, last year’s Republican tax plan could make keeping good teachers in the classroom more difficult than ever.
Raising teacher pay requires money, which at some point requires new state tax revenue.
Now, most state taxpayers will tolerate tax increases when they know those taxes will fund education. But
in many places, state lawmakers have only so much room to raise taxes before voters express their displeasure come election time.
The jam state governments may
find themselves in is that Trump and his Republican friends in Congress effectively just increased state income and property taxes. A lot. Which means voters won’t be too keen to see another increase so soon.
How can Congress increase state taxes? By increasing the real cost of state taxes people already pay, that’s how.
From the enactment of the federal income tax in 1913 until last year, most higher-income state taxpayers could deduct their state income and property taxes on their federal returns.
In recent years, an affluent taxpayer would receive about $1 back, in the form of a federal income tax reduction, for every $3 of state income or property
tax paid. So a $3,000 state income
or property tax bill felt like a $2,000 expense.
The Trump-Republican tax plan changed all that.
The deduction hasn’t been eliminated entirely, but it’s now capped at only $10,000 in state income and property taxes. For the majority of Americans, who no longer claim itemized deductions, the itemized deduction for state income and property tax is now meaningless.
Which means that $3,000 state
Bob Lord
income or property tax bill now feels like a $3,000 expense. That’s the same as a 50 percent state tax increase — which will feel even worse if states pass modest tax increases to cover long overdue raises for teachers.
reasons wherever you were assigned. So feel good about yourself and what you did. It’s just the luck
of the draw where you ended up, and that’s the honest truth – You served at a time when you could have paid the ultimate price. The fact of volunteering to secure liberty in a foreign country is reason enough for all of our thanks.”
Meanwhile, another generation of veterans that did fight in the heat of the battle were welcomed home, at the time, by protesters and general opposition.
A discussion about just that experience left one Vietnam veteran with uncontrollable emotion. This veteran said that he had spent 20 years not even acknowledging to others that he had served his country because of how poorly he was treated after returning home from the Vietnam War.
Although some emotions inevitably flared, each veteran raved about what an amazing and positive experience it was. Some will tell you it ranks as one of the top highlights in their life.
Honor Flights are non-profit organizations and I am hopeful that many, many more Central Valley veterans
will get to have the experience. The flights are driven on donations – they had hoped to have two flights this fall, but are down to one they are still working to fund. The Los Baños FFA chapter delivered a $20,000 check thanks to a fundraiser dinner for the cause. It takes about $200,000 to make each trip possible.
If you are a veteran, or know of a veteran that should apply for the flight, or have interest in donating or know someone that might, please visit chhonorflight.org for more information. Another way to make a difference is by attending the hero’s welcome ceremony at Fresno Yosemite International Airport. Family, friends, and members of the public flood the airport lobby to cheer on the veterans and give them the welcome that many never had.
If you can’t make the trip to Washington D.C., remember that we are lucky to have one of these memorials right in our own backyard – the Vietnam Memorial Wall replica which is on display at the Dinuba Memorial Hall.
Jackson Moore is a news reporter for the Dinuba Sentinel who covered on the 16th Central Valley Honor Flight last week. His stories on the Honor Flight can be read in this week’s Sentinel, as well the Reedley Exponent and Sanger Herald.
Fred Hall
“milk and Honey” provided by our Democrat politicians.
By the way, talking about our high
taxes, what the hell happened to the last of many water bonds
Fred Hall - Publisher
In My Opinion
Where is the common sense in Hthis approach to governance?
ow can the state of California, with no skills or
in good faith, spend $1 training continue to billion in tax payer money arrive, drawn by the
we passed which was supposed to be used for increased storage capacity?
So far the only use of the money has been for useless studies and surveys as well as an airplane to fly over the snow pack in the Sierras. Bureaucrats seem to have meetings to plan meetings. While real needs continue to get short shrift, the size of California government continues its unrestricted growth. I'm pretty sure we've all reached the point where we realize the value of growing something that is already basically useless and counter productive.
This sorry state of circumstances only points out the apparent lack of the use of common sense by our state government officials. We continue to add to a lengthy list of freebies non- citizens can expect when they reach California, thereby encouraging them to come; then when they get here they are under educated and lacking skills required to add to our economy or make a decent living thereby adding to the dilemma faced by all Californians. That would be the ever increasing— generally governmentally sponsored— cost and availability of housing.
Everything costs more here, forcing many long time citizens and businesses to flee—yet California politicians have the lure out and seem to welcome and defend the burgeoning number of illegals who bring literally nothing to the table. Does “sanctuary cities” and “sanctuary state” ring a bell? Where
is the common sense in this approach to governance? It's hard to blame
the “undocumented” when they are encouraged and one sure as hell can't blame most of California's common sense citizens. Seems to me that the blame falls on the liberal coastal cities and the liberal politicians they elect who wind up in Sacramento with whom we are “blessed.”
But, as always, that's only one man's opinion.
Fred Hall is the publisher of the Sentinel.
Guest Column
LHonor Flight provides closure
aughter, tears, pride and guilt – What a wide that were, “more worthy” – a common variety of powerful emotions that took hold during theme for some veterans who did not see the roughly 60-hour experience that is Central combat.
Valley Honor Flight.
In some cases, nearly all of those emotions hit at once.
In one instance I witnessed both ends of the spectrum shower a veteran in the flash of an eye. As a Central Valley Vietnam veteran looked over the Vietnam Wall Memorial, with the Washington Monument standing tall in the distance behind him, he searched for the name of a fallen friend. His face lit up as he made his discovery. “Here he is!” he exclaimed, like a young kid who just found their favorite candy bar. Almost immediately he went stoic, and rapidly again he collapsed to his knees and began sobbing. I can’t tell you what happened next as my own eyes were drowning as well.
The 16th Central Valley Honor Flight ran like a well- oiled machine, maneuvering the busy Washington D.C. traffic with a police escort to memorial after memorial
– never late. Even though the organization has developed such a structured schedule, sending more than 1,000 veterans to Washington D.C since 2013, the experience is so amazingly personal to each and every veteran involved.
Some of my favorite stories are the ones that don’t quite make the lead news. At a barbecue dinner in Maryland, the veterans were welcomed by a pair of lovely ladies who planted “lipstick kisses” on both of each veteran's cheeks. Some of them tried to sneak in for seconds while others shouted, “Don’t tell my wife!” The veterans were led to the dinner by the “BWI Brownies,” a group of motorcyclists who received their name when a young Girl Scout mistook their motorcycle vests for Girl Scout Brownie uniforms.
These veterans, ages 66 to 97, later toured around Washington D.C. like rock stars, greeted with applause, handshakes and salutes. At the World War II Memorial, complete strangers approached the 22 WWII veterans to sit down and hear a first-hand account of the past, or to even just take a picture.
A “mail call” of letters and gifts from friends and family surprised the veterans on the flight home. The veteran in my aisle, a man in his 90s, was jovial and overwhelmed for hours with the towering stack of reading material that sat in his
lap. While many were overjoyed with their mail call, another broke down after seeing a letter addressed from an immediate family member that he hadn’t seen in almost a decade.
Regardless of which emotions hit which veterans hardest, one of the key missions of the Honor Flight is to provide closure, and this trip does exactly that. A team
of professionals is on staff to help when emotions get the best of a veteran, for some perhaps the first time they have actually talked through their trauma.
One veteran in his 90s said that he had declined previous invitations to apply for the trip because of others
Jackson Moore
Honor Flight organizer Al Perry connected home best when he said, “We talk about the heroics, but no, the majority served. They weren’t uniformed. It’s like you wrote a blank check with your name.
“When you went on active duty, you pledged you would go for all the right
Was there a good reason Republicans put state lawmakers
in such a bind? No — only a very bad one.
Congressional Republicans and Trump officials claimed that the deduction for state and local taxes was a subsidy to high tax states that burdened low tax states.
But they had it backwards. It’s the absence of a deduction that creates a subsidy, which burdens high tax states and benefits low tax states.
Suppose I pay an additional $300
in state income tax to pay teachers.
The teachers who receive that $300
will pay federal income tax on it, plus federal employment tax. And the state or county paying those teachers will pay federal employment tax as well.
When you do the math, the $300 going from my pocket, to the state treasury, to teachers would nearly break even for the IRS.
Which means the folks subsidizing deductions of state taxes are the teachers and other workers who pay federal taxes on their wages. But thanks to congressional Republicans, the state taxpayers no longer see a federal tax reduction.
Which means that the states that pay their teachers a decent wage are now subsidizing the states that pay their teachers poorly.
That’s probably what Trump and his Republican friends wanted all along. But it’s not what the people who educate our kids deserve.
Bob Lord is a Phoenix-based tax attorney and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Distributed by OtherWords.org.
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