Posted on 04/25/2022 6:27:13 AM PDT by poconopundit
Georgia voters may be the most gullible.
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We’re not being given a chance to vote on it. Ralston and the rest make sure of that.
I researched petitions and signature procedures to force a referendum on a state ballot here in Georgia. From what I could tell, that isn’t an option here in Georgia. I hope that I’m wrong, but I think I read it right.
Even California allows it......California adopted its proposition system over a century ago to empower citizens through direct democracy by allowing them to propose legislation, vote directly on policy initiatives, and even amend the state constitution.
According to the Statewide Initiative Guide, anyone eligible to vote in California is also eligible to propose three kinds of initiatives: initiative statutes, initiative constitutional amendments, and referendums.
Initiative statutes are proposed laws, initiative constitutional amendments are amendments to the state constitution, and referendums give voters the power to approve or reject bills already passed by the California State Legislature.
Ralston has to keep a tight grip on that leash.
And Collective Bargaining. Don’t forget about unions, unions wages, union work rules, OT, etc. All things that don’t have to be acknowledged here in Georgia.
And to think, the county commissioners in Walton, Newton and Morgan County are welcoming an electric car company to the area, owned by George Soros. And the corrupt POSs are telling everyone he won’t have any influence.
And lets not forget that Ralston stalled the bill concerning Religious Freedom and was instrumental in getting removed from last years election/voting bill, the banning of Mail In Voting and Drop Boxes.
100%
I remember when Massachusetts passed 1980 Massachusetts Proposition 2½ in the 1980s. It was a revolutionary citizen petition at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Massachusetts_Proposition_2%C2%BD
It said that you cannot pay more than 2.5 percent of your property value in local taxes. The only way it can be over-ridden is by citizen ballot.
When I lived in Newton, MA citizens voted one year for an override.
So even in highly liberal Massachusetts, you as a taxpayer were somewhat protected. And Prop 2 and 1/2 was probably instrumental in enabling Mass. to attract lots of high tech business.
Hey, rlmorel, what’s your assessment as a Mass. citizen on the ground?
So, some homeowner gets a break and they use the house for 5 days of filming. Homeowner gets paid. Homeowner has to report the income and pay taxes. Movie company writes off the business expense and pays no taxes on anything. Gets the tax money that the homeowner paid, back with the tax credit.
Great work if you can get it.
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Wow, that scenario opened my eyes. Another clever con-job by the Riddlers. No movie/TV mogul needs to own any property in Georgia whatsoever. Lease it for a few days and get completely compensated for the rental expense when you sell the credit back to a homeowner anywhere in the state.
A few weeks ago, you turned my onto investigating this fraud, qaz123. And as I began researching it, the sinister nature of its design became more and more obvious as I read stories and connected the dots.
The audit report is what really blew the lid off for me. But even auditors need to couch their language a bit. That’s why airing the dirty laundry on a forum like Free Republic is so necessary.
But ultimately we still need to educate Georgia citizens about what’s going on. Nothing changes until citizens stand up, raise their pitchforks, and throw the crooks out of office.
Hey, frog. Glad you like the piece.
I think your “money laundering” analogy is a good one.
Now, to clarify: the initial Hollywood expense to be reimbursed is NOT “tax monies otherwise due”.
My read is: the term “tax break” was deliberately conceived to mask how this program fully subsidizes workers from other states, a vast array of expenses — and yes, a few thousand actual Georgia jobs thrown into the pot to make this witches’ brew appear legitimate.
See qaz123’s more recent comment:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/4057713/posts?page=37#37
He gives a good example there of the “creative” accounting this fraudulent incentive program enables.
My dad was a plank owner in Citizens for Limited Taxation way back in the Seventies, something I am quite proud of, because that says a lot about my dad. He had been somewhat vilified on his school board and Selectman seat in town politics since he was a conservative, and specifically a fiscal conservative. Leftists hate it when someone who they expect to rubber stamp their spending actually digs in their heels on principle, not on the expectation of some corollary benefit, political or budgetary.
I cannot comment on the pointed impact of Proposition 2 1/2 on my taxes except to say I feel in my gut that if Proposition 2 1/2 weren’t there, we would be worse off from a tax perspective than we are now.
Proposition 2 1/2 has been the ONLY thing in my entire adult life (that I can recall) that has even ostensibly had the welfare of the taxpayer in mind in this state. But even saying that, they did what Leftist politicians do-they simply find ways around it, and never get called out on it. They take money from this fund or that which may be exempt in some way, the way a company may budget something out of operational funds versus a capital request, so the funds don’t have to travel the bumpy road of getting a capital request for money approved.
All that said, I freely admit this-I am conflicted in efforts by the state to attract business. On one hand, I am for the efforts of a state to attract business by manipulating tax agreements in some way to get a specific company to locate in the state and provide jobs.
On the other hand, why not make the overall tax environment favorable to all employers and companies including ones that didn’t get a special deal to move there?
What I hear in the state...
Kemp and Abrams seem to agree to cause trouble. Not many can out do Abrams on how far she will go to be governor...
Kemp appointed the woman, Loeffler, to the empty senate seat. That seat belonged to Doug Collins. All the calls and emails to Kemp did not change his mind.. and he gave that seat to the woman and that woman lost to the dem... which gave the US SENATE to the democratic party!!
Loeffler had a young man working for her... he was the boyfriend of one of Kemp’s daughter. He was killed in an auto accident that literally blew up the car.. suspicions yes.
Kemp made a huge mistake when he let Abrams influence his decisions and he made a huge mistake when he gave that seat to Loeffler..
Kemp was a promising young man BEFORE he became governor of GA. He is MUD now. He would not help uncover the cheating in the election... He would not do what the law required him to do. He simply went the way of the democrats and let us all down. His dislike of Trump sets him way below par... he can’t do that and stay in politics.
Trump is the head of our Republican party... Kemp went another way... joining the dems and the left. He cannot regain anything.
A young fellow came to my door with Kemp’s name attached to his jacket.. I did not need to hear anything. I said I would not vote for him ..he let us down when he should not have.. to dis Trump was a huge mistake... the young man said he hears that a lot! Yes I bet he does...
The chapter discusses the history. How Bill Weld got involved and it rippled to support Fidelity Investments.
I believe the principle should be to NOT favor any particular industry or company except in rare cases -- and in minor investments. And the reason is you are tampering with the free enterprise system with its built in checks and balances.
Everybody in business needs to have SKIN in the GAME. The rewards should go to those who take the risk themselves. And you must also pay the penalty of failure. "That's the breaks of Naval Air" as the airdales used to say.
Trump was right when he said: if you ship jobs overseas, then you will pay a tax penalty if you try to bring those goods or services back to the U.S. It's a similar proposition to this and it's where Bernie intersects with Trump.
Elizabeth Warren is actually right when she says the public helped rich people succeed because the public built the roads and infrastructure.
There's a moral responsibility for a company to pay its fair share of taxes. Home owners, plus small and medium sized businesses do, so why should large corporations be exempt or pay a smaller share. Amazon and Walmart are killing small shop-owners and they are getting the biggest tax breaks.
* * * * * *
Now one of the next steps, I think, is to explain the the key principles in some visual form -- something that's easy to read.
It's one thing for a FReeper to understand this stuff. But what about your average Joe Six-Pack and Jill Wine-Cooler? They are not political junkies and never will be.
H. L. Mencken discusses this huge problem of a republic in a Chicago Sunday Tribune article in September 1926:
Are they interested only in crime? I don't think so. What they are interested in is drama. The thing presented to them must take the form of combat, and it must be a very simple combat, with one side clearly right and the other clearly wrong . They can no more imagine neutrality than they can imagine the fourth dimension. And when they see drama, they want to see it moving.
... The journalism of the future, that is, the mob journalism -- will move in the direction that I have indicated.
Now at the time, Mencken was talking about the value of tabloid magazines such as today's New York Post.
But the tabloid of today is clearly Facebook. That was created for the masses. So now, with Twitter being acquired by somebody who believes in free speech, perhaps the next opportunity for Twitter is to expand free speech content into electronic tabloid space like Facebook has done.
Good perspective, frnewsjunkie. Kemp has many allies, particularly in the Athens area where he grew up.
But like you say, his name is MUD today given his track record. He needs to pay the price of his decisions.
People need to be held accountable for their disloyalty and for enabling corruption. I’m hoping a new generation of honest legislators and governors emerges and is voted in within the next few years.
There’s much work to be done simply dismantling the damaging programs enacted by the current generation of Georgia politicians.
Agreed, so long as there are politicians and commercial money involved in a public proposition there is room for concern.
IMO, no such proposition should reach the formal stage until an apolitical group of experts, economists, etc. demonstrate a financial gain for the taxpayers.
The Film Act discussed in this thread clearly appears at midpoint of its life to date to have been just the opposite.
You and qaz123 have done a good job trying to unravel what could be a fraud against GA taxpayers.
It appears, as of Jan 2021, that GA requires production companies that apply for a tax credit to submit to an audit conducted by a GA certified CPA, and that may resolve one of the many issues.
What triggered me, of course, was the potential fraud that arises downstream with a qualified holder who sells to an "unqualifed" GA taxpaying credit user. That also appears resolved by the current version of Title 48 which provides a credit buyer shall have only such rights and claims to use the credit that were available to seller at the time of the transfer. One would think that in practice that credit buyer would have to be a film production company.
The Audit Report you linked to dated January, 2020 may have prompted the current state of the law, it appears the final state of both was reached during the same time frame.
Spot on! (I did feel compelled to add the unions to that...:)
Sadly, that addition was quite appropriate.
Yes, I too believe the 2020 audit by the state auditors prompted the new law.
However, as with the Election Integrity law passed last year, it doesn’t go far enough.
The new law only audits film programs up to a certain amount the first year, leaving a big wide window.
Projects over and above the limit are not audited the first year, which means all the crazy stuff can still get through by moving the questionable transactions to a project not eligible for audit.
But to the pubic at large, the government did “something” and therefore a lot of people walk away saying, “well, I guess the problem is solved.”
I think in terms of film or movie incentives, quite so. I know how those people are.
Instead of 10% for the big guy, it is probably more like 50% for the “big guy”.
A cut in taxes is not a cost to taxpayers.
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Yes, but it’s not really a “cut” in taxes. That’s the deep deceit in the way this incentives program is presented.
The law creates an opportunity for massive spending that is way beyond the total wages of all film/video employees living in Georgia - with another $800 million on top for expenses.
The program is fully funded by money from the Georgia treasury. And when those receipts are submitted and the credits are issued, the Hollywood firm simply sells the credit for 80 to 90 cents on the dollar to someone who has property in Georgia.
So it turns out to be a way to reward both Hollywood and all the Georgia insiders in on the scheme.
Why can’t the tax credits be sold back to the treasury so ALL Georgia taxpayers collectively get a tax break, instead of an anonymous group?
qaz123’s follow-on comment explains this with an example:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/4057713/posts?page=37#37
Quite a racket.
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