Tweet This ! http://goo.gl/yAnl4c
In the latest plan being put forth by the board of the Maine Development Corporation, (The Maine legislature) there is a significant change in language. The qualifier for the sector of the economy targeted for subsidization has changed from the sector of the economy providing " above average income" to the sector of the economy which is "highly compensated"Maine House speaker pushes job training legislation
The 'Put ME to Work' bill would create new funding to help connect students with jobs in high-demand industries. article in Portland Press Herald by Steve Mistler
AUGUSTA — House Speaker Mark Eves is backing a bill designed to invest $5 million over the next five years in job training programs that create public-private partnerships to develop a trained workforce in high-demand fields such as logging, health care and machining.
In a 2007 tax policy publication put out by the Maine Development Foundation (Corporation) , itself being an unconstitutionally chartered corporation and therefore NOT representing the consent of the governed, we are told:
Taxes are a means of collecting the revenue needed to pay for public services desired by Maine peopleThat same publication goes on to describe the purpose of taxation being for " working roads, good schools and emergency services" , an odd statement to be found published by a tax payer funded corporation chartered for the purpose of centrally managing the economy:
§916. Establishment
The Maine Development Foundation is hereby established to foster, support and assist economic growth and revitalization in Maine. The foundation shall carry out its purposes in complement to and in coordination with the economic development activities of the private sector, community and regional agencies and State Government. [1977, c. 548, §1 (NEW).]
The foundation shall exist as a not-for-profit corporation with a public purpose, and the exercise by the foundation of the powers conferred by this chapter shall be deemed and held to be an essential governmental function. [1977, c. 548, §1 (NEW).]SECTION HISTORYThe reason why The Maine Development Foundation omitted its own founding purpose in its list of the purposes of taxation in this tax and fiscal policy report may have something to do with the fact that the report is a sales pitch for lowering income taxes and increasing sales taxes. The omission reflects the general method used by the corporate state to sell its agenda to the public with a carefully edited selection of the relevant facts. This sales pitch attempts to shift taxation to the retail sector, a sector not served by the Maine Development Foundation-and it's sister corporation, DECD INC, in other words, it attempts to shift taxation to the sector not represented by its services and thus the entire function for which this corporation was chartered by the Maine legislature is occluded from the lists of purposes of taxation- that of centrally managing the economy:
1977, c. 548, §1 (NEW).
Chapter 383: ECONOMIC AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
Article 2: BUSINESS ASSISTANCE REFERRAL AND FACILITATION PROGRAM: PROGRAM RESPONSIBILITIES AND DELIVERY §13063-C. Job Retention Program (1) The business is not engaged in retail operations; or, if it is engaged in retail operations, less than 50% of its total annual revenues from state-based operations are derived from sales taxable in this State or the business can demonstrate to the commissioner by a preponderance of the evidence that any increased sales will not include sales tax revenues derived from a transferring or shifting of retail sales from other businesses in this State; and
2015 State Business Tax Climate IndexMaine fell five rankings overall, from 28th to 33rd, primarily due to a sales tax rate increase but also partly due to improvements in the relative rankings of North Carolina and Nebraska. The Tax Foundation
The services for which wealth is being redistributed by the corporate state, spawned in the wake of the unconstitutional charter of the Maine Development Foundation has never been validated as "desired by the Maine people". That would require a constitutional amendment proclaiming that central management of the economy is a justifiable exception to Article IV Part Third Section 14 and that special interest legislation and redistribution of wealth from the people's pockets to private corporate bank accounts serves the "common good " as is the defined object of government found in the Maine constitution. Or perhaps the Constitution could just be amended to say that the object of government is to serve special interests. How difficult would it be to get the public consent to that ?- all that would be required would be some creative word parsing designed to conceal the real meaning from a public which hasn't been paying much attention and has been easily sold on the perpetual transfer of wealth to the wealthy by simply using such handy phrases such as "job creation" and "public-private relationships", never thinking beyond the rhetorical surface of such slogans.
In Per Capita Personal Income by State, 1990 to 2012 published by Bureau of Business and Economic Research, University of New Mexico the medium household income for Maine in is listed at 39,481 for the year 2012
In the tax payer subsidized Pine Tree Zone, workers are much more highly compensated as stated in the 2013 congressional testimony of Mr Douglas' Ray's, the tax payer funded lobbyist for the DECD corporation"
Of the 390 or so businesses participating in the Pine Tree Development Zone Program a vast majority,more than 300 are manufacturers, that's roughly 80%. These businesses have pledged almost a billion dollars in investment and anticipated payroll of nearly $850 million and 74 hundred jobs
Mr Douglas Ray testimony before THE JOINT STANDING COMMITTEE ON LABOR, COMMERCE, RESEARCH AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT March 19 2013
An average pay per year of $114864.00 !!! Do the math ! That makes the average pay for Maine's tax payer subsidized economy almost three times that of the medium for the state whose taxpayers are subsidizing the tax payer subsidized economy!
With the measure of the top one percent in the Maine economy being $274,000 annually and the medium income being 39,481, the difference between those sums being 234519; the medium of the difference between the medium income in Maine and the top 1% in Maine is 117259 meaning that the average pay in the Pine Tree Corporate Welfare Zone in 2013 had almost reached the medium of the top half of Maine's economy (top quarter). This is 2015, with each job in corporate welfare zones being required to provide a higher than average income for that area in order to qualify for corporate welfare benefits, the average pay for corporate welfare jobs must now have surpassed the medium pay for the upper half of Maine's economy- and so we see the reason why there is a necessary language shift required to reflect the new corporate welfare income target.
That shift is already changing "providing jobs that pay above average income" to "highly compensated". Those highly compensated jobs are being developed in corporate welfare zones, which are geographically concentrated in state-governed municipalities with misleading identifiers as regional development authorities, when in fact they are unconstitutionally chartered muncipalites serving as instrumentalities of the state (now The Maine Development Corporation ) and the taxpayer money these state courtdoms collect is used for development within their own municipal boundaries.
In the world view of the corporate board of the Maine Development Corporation (still going under cover as the State Maine legislature and administration). Maine has a serious problem as specified in the words of the Bangor Daily News Maine has some of the nation’s poorest rich people ! It only takes $274,000 annually to qualify as Maine's top 1% so at an income of 114864.00 annually, Maine's tax payer subsidized economy is more than halfway there ! If the goal of the Maine Development Corporation is to develop a more profitable class of inhabitants who will deliver a higher stream of income via income taxes to the corporation, then the ultimate goal must be to raise the income level of the top one percent. The targeted sector has now shifted from the upper half of the economy to the upper half of the upper half of the economy bringing the corporation closer to it's ultimate goal in competing with other states in terms of the top 1 %'s earned income. With the rate at which all of the corporate welfare programs are escalating- the limit for the Seed Capital Tax Refundable Tax Credit expanded eight fold in 2013. and at a whopping 60%, the limit for the New Markets Refundable Tax Credit up for being doubled in response to the Cate Street scandal in 2015, why not just leap frog over the barriers and make the target for corporate welfare be that to receive corporate welfare benefits, a company has to offer an income that is higher than that of the existing 1%?
The remaining states in which the top 1 percent captured half or more of income growth between 2009 and 2012 include Alabama (where 98.9 percent of all income growth was captured by the top 1 percent), Illinois (97.2 percent), Texas (86.8 percent), Arkansas (83.7 percent), Michigan (82.0 percent), New Jersey (80.5 percent), Maryland (80.5 percent), Nebraska (74.9 percent), Kansas (74.4 percent), Ohio (71.9 percent), Wisconsin (69.6 percent), Oklahoma (69.2 percent), Tennessee (68.5 percent), Iowa (65.0 percent), Georgia (63.6 percent), New Hampshire (59.5 percent), Arizona (59.0 percent), Maine (58.3 percent), Oregon (57.3 percent), Utah (56.6 percent), Minnesota (56.0 percent), and South Dakota (53.4 percent).That says that Maine's 1% is already capturing 58% if income growth for which the Development Corporation Of Maine takes credit and uses to justify its unconstitutional existence ! You! the taxpayers through your involuntary support of the corporations redistribution of wealth policies delivered that robust level of growth for the the top 1%. !
Also note that one of the industries identified for training costs subsidization in the new bill being backed by House Speaker Mark Eves is health care so not only is the taxpayer mandated to finance the job training costs of the health care industry but as a result it will make health care even more expensive ! That will likely result in a condition in which only workers in tax payer subsidized industries will be able to afford health care that is not taxpayer subsidized- regardless of the inappropriately named affordable health care act. Whether health care is paid for with tax subsidization or privately- if the health care industry is "highly compensated" and becoming more so- that means that health care costs are going up.
Subsidizing individual health care costs falls into the category of general welfare which means rationing. As the general taxpayer is mandated by the board of the Maine Development Corporation, the most powerful public-private relationship in the former state of Maine, to subsidize the highly compensated economy. the general economy sinks to the bottom and needs to be subsidized itself .
The more highly compensated taxpayer subsidized sector of the economy will be able to afford private health care- the rest of the economy will get rationed health care. Thanks for subsidizing our high compensations you fools !
In the thinking coming out of Maine;s corporate state, jobs providing a special interest group very high pay justifies all. The Community college system was created by the legislature in 2007.
2007 Chapter 428-C: JOB CREATION THROUGH EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY PROGRAM §12542. Program established 1. Program created; goals. The Job Creation Through Educational Opportunity Program, referred to in this chapter as "the program," is created to provide an educational opportunity tax credit to Maine residents who obtain an associate degree or a bachelor's degree in this State, and live, work and pay taxes in this State thereafter.
The bill providing Maine taxpayers to subsidize 50% of the job training costs for businesses that deliver high compensation pay is presented in the usual way- isolated from any context, as if that were the only cost that taxpayers are paying in regards to training a specific corporation's employees.
An examination of the Community College charter reveals that students educational costs are also being subsidized by taxpayers, concealed once again through the implementation of a refundable tax credit.
§5217-D. Credit for educational opportunity
The Employer can take on the loan
The employer may claim a credit for the amount that the qualified employee could have claimed during any months when the qualified employee was employed, had the qualified employee made the partial or full loan payments instead, under conditions where the qualified employee had sufficient income to claim the full credit for the taxable year. If the qualified employee is employed only on a part-time basis, the employer may claim a credit only up to half of the total that the qualified employee could have claimed had the qualified employee made all payments and earned sufficient income to claim the full credit for the taxable yearhttp://legislature.maine.gov/legis/statutes/36/title36sec5217-D.html, but the amount the employer claims must still be based on amounts actually paid.
FULL TIME DEFINED AS FOUR DAY WORK WEEK (allowing for day five to be a taxpayer subsidized job training day)
C. "Full time" employment means employment with a normal workweek of 32 hours or more. [2007, c. 469, Pt. B, §1 (NEW).]
D. “Part time” employment means employment with a normal workweek of between 16 and 32 hours. [2007, c. 469, Pt. B, §1 (NEW).]
D-1. "Principal cap" means:
(1) For an individual graduating from an accredited Maine community college, college or university before January 1, 2015, the amount calculated by the State Tax Assessor under Title 20-A, section 12542, former subsection 2-A;
(2) For an individual obtaining a bachelor's degree and graduating from an accredited Maine community college, college or university on or after January 1, 2015, the average in-state tuition and mandatory fees for attendance at the University of Maine System for the academic year ending during the calendar year prior to the year of graduation multiplied by 4; and ( THE ENTIRE EDUCATIONAL COSTS OF A FOUR YEAR DEGREE )
(3) For an individual obtaining an associate degree and graduating from an accredited Maine community college, college or university on or after January 1, 2015, the average in-state tuition and mandatory fees for attendance at the Maine Community College System for the academic year ending during the calendar year prior to the year of graduation multiplied by 2. [2013, c. 525, §15 (NEW).]( THE ENTIRE EDUCATIONAL COSTS OF A FOUR YEAR DEGREE )
Which are SAME AS REQUIRED FOR ELIGIBILITY FOR CORPORATE WELFARE PROGRAMS SUCH AS THE PINE TREE ZONE which provides up to 100% corporate and personal income tax exemption and an up to 80% tax credit on Maine payroll taxes to be transferred as a burden on labor and on the bottom half of the economy.
The student is required to be employed to get the loan for further job training so that the student can be more highly compensated by the employer. The employer can cover the cost of the loan for the student, especially if that employer is already partaking in the full package of Maine's corporate welfare system- making the employer tax exempt meaning that the general taxpayer picks up the cost for job training needed by the employee to become "highly compensated". (via a "REFUNDABLE tax credit"- which means if no taxes are owed, the tax payers owe the corporation a cash payout- which reverses the roles in taxation between the public and private sectors) The sector of the economy that finances the job training are either the laborers in the corporate welfare system or those businesses in the bottom half of the economy- NOT providing the highly compensated jobs which would qualify them for the ever expanding package of gifts associated with being in Maine's "public -private" hegemony which is another name for Maine's corporate welfare sector.
C. Except as provided in subsection 3, the credit under this section may not reduce the tax otherwise due under this Part to less than zero. [2013, c. 525,§15 (AMD).]
3. Calculation of the credit; qualified individuals. Subject to subsection 2 and except as provided in this subsection, the credit with respect to a qualified individual is equal to the amount determined under paragraph A or paragraph B, whichever is less, multiplied by the proration factor:
A. The benchmark loan payment multiplied by the number of months during the taxable year in which the taxpayer made loan payments; or [2013, c. 525, §15 (AMD).]B. The monthly loan payment amount multiplied by the number of months during the taxable year in which the taxpayer made loan payments . [2013, c. 525, §15 (AMD).]C. [2009, c. 553, Pt. B, §5 (AFF); 2009, c. 553, Pt. B, §4 (RP).]
Notwithstanding subsection 2, paragraph C, the credit under this subsection is refundable to the extent the credit is based on loans included in the financial aid package acquired to obtain a bachelor's degree or associate degree in science, technology, engineering or mathematics.
.......For purposes of this subsection, the proration factor is the amount derived by dividing the total number of academic credit hours earned for a bachelor's or associate degree after December 31, 2007 by the total number of academic credit hours earned for the bachelor's or associate degree.
Why should we fund this new corporate welfare job training bill for the upper quarter of our economy? Because the state wants to attract youth ! So we offer them a free education with a promise that when they graduate, they will instantly become earners in the top quarter of the Maine economy ! They are entitled to that pay and one can only imagine the cultural character that will develop as a result of that system - with those who have had their job training financed by people of lesser means likely to then consider themselves superior to the lower half of the economy, the beast of burden used to deliver their highly compensation jobs !
Since pay cannot be "above average" or "highly compensated" unless most of the populous is making less, that means that people making average or less than average income will be taxed more to cover the cost of subsidizing the creation of the wealthier class of "tax paying" citizens that the legislature covets to increase the capitalization of the Maine Development Corporation.. The high paying jobs deliver a high yield in personal income tax revenue for the state, while the owners of the means of production get a tax free ride and taxpayer refunds on the capitalization of their business. And the rest of Maine inhabitants will eventually be forced out in search of the greener pastures of a free enterprise system that allows them a chance to grow by virtue of hard work and talent.
Put ME To Work Bill: Part Two & Three
Create jobs for who, more progressive workers to administer the program? The Democrats have talked about creating jobs for the past 30yrs, where are the private sector jobs, I see government jobs growing.
ReplyDelete