Can I honestly say what I believe to be true about Earl Ehrhart?

He makes things up.

MD

EE has answered that in this thread and others as merely being a human or inhuman seismograph recording the minute changes in public opinion.

This is case, the GREAT plan, he’s measured the hatred the public has for property taxes. He assumes the public will like paying taxes if those taxes are renamed as sales taxes.

The third way in which to view the duty and the role of candidates and elected officials was described by Kennedy in 1955 as not a delegate or a free agent but as a trustee.

That trustee, as paraphrased by Kennedy, came to Washington

Like when you insinuated that all bloggers have 24 hours a day to sit in front of a computer because they don’t have jobs.

Or, when you insinuated that your dirty laundry was a proper topic for discussion, not Chris’s personal thoughts on a possibly life changing legislative proposal.

As to your hyper critical remarks about my credibility, I’m an ass but I still have more credibility than a politician with a bad personal attitude.

Any questions, comments?

Mad Dog

If you acted like a proper representative of the people without the crude Eric Johnson impersonation, you wouldn’t have to whine and cry like a baby evertime someone took exception to your manner.

Give me a proper source to back up your big mouth as I have given exact figures and the sources of those figures.

Don’t run and hide behind “I have better things to do” when the heat is on.

You wanna talk the talk, then walk the walk.

Mad Dog

The ignorant.

I’ve kinda followed the history of your posting in regards to this issue, and it’s been like “f*** you” to everyone who disagrees. It seems like you guys are gonna vote for it no matter what your constituents say. That attitude is exactly why you should never be trusted with funding our county governments.

Your in public service. Note the “service” part of that equation. You just come across as arrogrant and rude. I’m not saying that is how you are, but it darn sure is how you seem. I think that is extremely misplaced and misguided. I expect to be listened to by my elected officials, not lectured.

The fact is that Cobb and other large counties send more money to the state to be redistributed for education. In Cobb it is over 100 million dollars of their revenues on an fte basis when compared to all other systems.

So yes on a per student basis Cobb is subsidizing the education in the districts you describe. FACT

How about reading what we are proposing and then reading the language we will put into the statute about the statutory guarantee of the same amount of money plus growth to the schools. I know this does not help your argument, but it is again a FACT.

Just because you ignore it does not make it untrue.

Oh and by the way I work for a living so I cant sit in front of the computer all day.

Not even the ‘honorable’ Representative Earl Ehrhart?

Loose your tongue, Earl?

Saving your breath for when you have to explain to your Cobb County constituents that their school system is $356 million dollars short in revenue?

So how much money is the General Assembly planning on cutting from Cobb County’s $800 million dollar school budget when the GREAT thingie gets done?

Well, Earl?

After bragging about Cobb County and the money he spends to educate ‘my kids,’ he should have had the good manners to have stayed for the duration.

Let’s start looking at revelant facts. Not just facts. That’s always the problem with the ‘honorable’ members of the GOP assembly. They don’t know the difference between facts and relevant facts.

“It seems, Mad Dog that you actually collect that from me and other Cobb taxpayers, as Cobb County sends over 100 million into the redistributive pot to subsidize your kids education.

Hmmmmm do you do that for mine?”

As I’ve said, no matter how many children the ‘Honorable’ Earl sends to school, he’ll never get any smarter.

Cobb County school systems received a total of $356,678,891.12 in state revenues in 2006.

It would seem I’m doing more to send Earl’s kids to school than he is doing.

The information is from the Georgia Department of Education.

MD

I know of plenty of people that come to Chatham county from other counties so that they can shop at Sams. Once again, large counties would get revenue from outside their counties.

I am not opposed to a simple tax rate as a revenue source but dorian brings up an excellent point. If all tax revenues bypass the cities and counties and go straight to the state we have to rely on the state spending the money “wisely” and since there are a lot of politicians that answer to people like Federalist, I’m not sure they would be doing the best thing with our money.

In a consumption or income based system, we are only one recession away from drastic cuts in service or drastic increases in taxes.

Does anyone want to rely on the state legislature — either party — when the economy slows and revenue neutral becomes revenue lost?

I’m not trying to make a necessarily “moral” argument. I just don’t believe I should be taxed for owning something after I have paid state and federal tax on the income I used to pay for it. I also don’t believe that someone who owns property should lose it if/when their income drops due to sickness or old age.

In essence, property tax takes away ownership rights and makes the local government owner of all property. To me, that is wrong in principle.

That said, I don’t support the idea of sending sales tax to Atlanta to be re-distributed. I believe a common sense plan can be developed so that sales tax money is collected locally and stays home. The tax commissioner’s job would just have to change drastically.

If a county was losing revenue because their taxes are too high, you believe that they would RAISE the tax rate?

In any event, why would anyone travel 30 miles to save a percent or sales taxes? It’s like traveling acorss town and back to save 10 cents a gallon on fuel. You spend $5 on gas to save $1 on a $100 purchase, or spend $3 to save $1.50 on gas.

So, is there a solution to the problem? Since it is supposed to be revenue neutral how would it work if county and school property taxes were eliminated and then the county had a local sales tax that stayed in the county. Hmm, then connecting counties could supplement income by lowering their tax rate and attracting consumers from neighboring counties which would force them to increase their rates even more producing a never ending cycle.

Here, you have the elimination of property taxes tied to an idea of, in the case of my objection, consolidating power in the hands of the state government. They may be two completely different ideas, but they are linked even though there may be other alternatives to property taxes. My personal objection to the form of the alternative is anecodtal compared to my strenous objection to having Georgia turn into a ogliocracy in Atlanta.

The legislature can’t even agree on a budget, among themselves, in their own durn party, and we are seriously thinking handing over every cent of revenue for every level of government? The fact that people can debate this with a straight face just shows that the majority of the republicans in the house evolved from lemmings. If they want to follow Glenn over the cliff that is fine, but for the love of God, they ought not be able to take the whole state with them.

“Since Earl and Glenn further say that services won