Please read and if possible make a donation to CLT cltg.org/contribution.htm . We need them to keep fighting for lower taxes. Although, smal in numbers and budget, they have a tremendous impact. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Chip Ford To: CLT Updates the Citizens Economic Research Foundation Post Office Box 1147 ● Marblehead, Massachusetts 01945 ● (508) 915-3665 “Every Tax is a Pay Cut ... A Tax Cut is a Pay Raise” 40 years as “The Voice of Massachusetts Taxpayers” — and their Institutional Memory — CLT UPDATE Wednesday, November 12, 2014 Help save yourself from the taxman! adobe-reader-2 CLT information and membership application adobe-reader-2 What CLT saves you in the auto excise tax alone join-us-button paypal-credit_cards Ask your friends to join too Facebook_Button Visit CLT on Facebook November Agenda Below is a copy of CLT’s belated fall fundraising letter, a part of the package which was delivered to the printer on Monday. Now all we need to do is come up with the money for the cost of postage and mailing. The letter explains CLTs circumstances in detail. Please take the time to read it and, hopefully, respond with a contribution. If we cant afford to get the package out in the mail, that will spell the end of CLT. November, 2014 Dear Citizen for Limited Taxation; Campaign season and the elections are over; the results are generally positive. We didn’t get everything we wanted from it – but we made considerable progress. Taxpayer champion Charlie Baker was elected as our next governor. A much younger Charlie worked with a much younger CLT back in the early-‘80s on Proposition 2½; while communications director for the Massachusetts High Tech Council he helped us successfully defend against the Dukakis attack on it. He has ruled out higher taxes as any sort of fiscal solution – a vast improvement over Deval Patrick’s reign of taxpayer terror. House Republicans picked up an additional six seats bringing their total in the next session (beginning in January) to 35, up from 29. Senate Republicans added two more to their minimalist ranks, bringing their total in the next session to six. While Republicans are still overwhelmingly outnumbered in the Legislature, at least this election grew the number of taxpayer-friendly legislators. Question One – repeal of automatic gas tax increases – won by 53-47 percent of the vote. This is big: If it had not been repealed, we feared that automatic increases would be attached to income and property taxes too. Rep. Geoff Diehl (R-Whitman) and the Tank the Automatic Gas Tax ballot committee did a great job battling the massive opposition of AAA, Big Asphalt, and the Department of Transportations collective hackarama horde. Question Two – expansion of the beverage bottle deposit – also regularly adjusted upward for inflation – was defeated by a vote of 73.5-26.5 percent. More good news: The Secretary of Administration & Finance just announced that the income tax rate will likely be reduced again in January, from 5.2 to 5.15 percent – dropping it closer to the historic 5 percent we voters overwhelmingly demanded on the CLT-sponsored ballot question in 2000. You recall that, over CLT’s strenuous objection, the Legislature in 2002 froze’ the rollback, but at least substituted a slower reduction, based on an economic formula. The 1989 temporary Dukakis income tax hike from that 5% is now 25-years old and still ticking. And yet, with a pro-economic growth governor, we may yet live to see our 5%! The bad news: State Senator Stanley Rosenberg (D-Amherst) is about to be crowned the next Senate President, and along with his intense dislike of tax limitation initiative petitions, he has long lusted for a Graduated Income Tax. The State House News Service just reported: Sen. Stanley Rosenberg, a proponent of the graduated income tax, is poised to be elected the next Senate president in January. ‘I will be discussing it with my colleagues,’ Rosenberg told the News Service in March after a special Tax Fairness Commission, co-chaired by Rep. Jay Kaufman and Sen. Michael Rodrigues, included the graduated income tax among its recommendations. To impose a Grad Tax requires a constitutional amendment, and that must be put on the ballot for the voters to decide. So far, voters have defeated it five times over three decades; The Springfield Republican (newspaper) recently noted about CLT and Barbara: In 1994 Anderson was the face of the successful effort that beat back the last attempt to institute a state graduated income tax. Anderson, along with allies from Massachusetts High Tech Council and the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation representing the Boston business community, defeated what was then known as Question 6 by more than 800,000 votes. We well may have to do it again. CLT was formed to fight the Grad Tax in 1974. That battle needs a grassroots primary presence, reminding voters that they would be picked off one tax bracket at a time. We hope CLT will still be here to stop this, again. We missed CLT’s usual fall mailing, which in the past carries us through the fall and into the winter. Fortunately CLT members were very generous in response to the spring/summer mailing, so with so many others raising money for candidates and ballot questions, we decided to hold off until after the election. One of those other groups was CLT’s Prop 2½ PAC, which raised enough to support some very good candidates; sixteen of them won! However, for us skipping a mailing may have been a disastrous mistake. CLT runs on a very low and tight budget, pretty much hand-to-mouth. As I write this, there is nothing in the hand. Barbara keeps enough aside to pay taxes, but aside from that, we are out of money. Right now CLT cannot pay our December healthcare bill, due soon, or pay any salaries – or even reimburse our personal out-of-pocket expenses. Unlike the government, we won’t go into debt. So, we desperately need your IMMEDIATE support if we are to continue fighting for you. We don’t want to shut down, for that would be forever. We three staffers at CLT are hanging on only by sheer determination for as long as we possibly can. We’re counting on you and your continued support. Without it the demise of CLT is approaching quickly. And without CLT, individual taxpayers will be on their own for the first time in forty years. Massachusetts always needs a taxpayer group, to help even a friendly governor prevent new taxes; Charlie Baker unfortunately doesn’t have enough Republican legislators to sustain his veto. Help jump-start CLT, get it back up and running, keep it alive and fighting for you, defending Proposition 2½ and the income tax rollback. Please make your most generous contribution as quickly as possible. Sincerely, CFord-Sig2 Chip Ford Director of Operations Barbara’s column, “One for the win column” (Nov. 6) will appear as page 4 in the fundraising package, following the above 3-page letter. I sent it to you last night as a CLT Update. You can make a contribution immediately by credit card through Paypal here Or mail your check to: CLT PO Box 1147 Marblehead, MA 01945-5147 ― HOW TO EASILY UNSUBSCRIBE YOURSELF FROM THIS LIST ― To stop receiving these CLT Updates, simply do the following: From the e-mail address you want to unsubscribe -- Send a message to: [email protected] Type the word: unsubscribe in the body of your message with NO other information Leave the subject field BLANK Do NOT respond to this message: If you do, your message will only bounce -- it will not be delivered. Every tax is a pay cut . . . A tax cut is a pay raise Visit the CLT website Citizens for Limited Taxation ▪ PO Box 1147 ▪ Marblehead, MA 01945 ▪ 508-915-3665 -- @t (C) 508-479-0895
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 22:12:15 +0000