6/12/2009 2:27:02 PM

ibtl

6/12/2009 2:28:18 PM

taxes...to bury the axis?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ69X1qt4sQ

6/12/2009 2:39:21 PM

yays!

6/15/2009 2:17:38 PM

Yes, we need more taxes. And make them cheaper. Can't believe it cost me $40 to get from the airport to Raleigh. And what's up with yellow taxes? Makes me feel like I'm in elementary school. And whatever happened to Christopher Lloyd? Never really acted in anything good outside of Taxe and Back to the Future.

6/15/2009 2:38:32 PM

hey he was judge doom in "who framed roger rabbit"

you know

the movie about how oil companies bought and tore up all the internal mass transportation rail infrastructure so that a highly subsidized federal interstate system could eventually be built, thereby upping our reliance on fossil-fueled vehicles?

6/15/2009 2:44:58 PM

apparently the allegory was missed on me when i watched the movie back in grade school.

6/15/2009 3:42:14 PM

Quote :

"Doom reveals his plans: as the sole stockholder in Cloverleaf Industries, he plans to buy Toontown, the Acme Company, and Maroon Studios, and then raze them to make way for a freeway for Los Angeles."

6/15/2009 4:01:23 PM

poor toons!

6/15/2009 4:32:43 PM

shave and a hair-cut

6/16/2009 1:55:30 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yKdGWXTUG4

I'm sorry, but this song simply must be in every tax thread!

6/16/2009 2:00:54 AM

Just heard Bev's speech on raising taxes to make up a deficit of 1.5 billion. The only thing she kept repeating was that they couldn't cut teacher's positions, increase class size, blah, blah.

I guess education takes up 90% of NC's budget. Otherwise I'd be inclined to ask why they couldn't cut other projects and why they champion education as their answer to why they can't cut spending. Oh, and health care. The public probably doesn't want to cut health care either, so that can go on the list of reasons why cuts can't be made.

6/17/2009 7:19:22 PM

How is it that North Carolina throws most of its budget at education, but still sucks on a national ranking?

6/17/2009 7:37:47 PM

^ Shitty administration and a lack of programs for students from troubled backgrounds/bad schools to help keep them in school and help them catch up with what they missed while they were in some of our worst schools?

I've got a family member who worked at a school and basically saw some of the teachers who had worked there for a while tell some of those students (the ones that supposedly don't know and can't do the material) that they were stupid and can't do the material. So the kid would sit there with an unhappy look on his face and nobody would tell him what they were doing or how to do it. If that's even as widespread as just one teacher out of every hundred teachers I could see that being a huge problem.

I think the problem is that our state is getting a federal government attitude to spending. They keep expanding the budget and how much money they throw at a problem without figuring out whether or not throwing money at the problem would actually fix the problem. There's a lot of inefficiency in places (at least at the Bookstore and throughout the DOT) due to nepotism, the buddy system, and just a general lack of strong managers and accountability. I never saw somebody get fired in the DOT, not even if they were a worthless fool (not naming names, just a guy from UNC: Charlotte who was at my first internship). I hope to God somebody realizes that they can't just keep raising taxes and expect growth in this state to remain high.

6/17/2009 7:59:49 PM

[Edited on June 17, 2009 at 8:07 PM. Reason : tww blows]

6/17/2009 8:01:47 PM

as far as the school's end... class sizes are too big... it begins and ends there

and on the private side

parents have become less and less involved

6/17/2009 8:06:55 PM

^^^but what if the kids are stupid and incapable of learning the subject material? is it really necessary to sit there and try to drag them through a subject matter that is beyond their comprehension just for the sake of giving them a high school education?

6/17/2009 10:19:00 PM

These same kids were then shown how to do said material by my family member and were able to continue on with the assignment.

If you think it's justifiable that basic arithmetic taught in elementary school is subject matter above and beyond children with average IQ's then I'd have to disagree. We aren't talking about Forrest Gump here. I'm saying there is zero reason for a teacher to give up on a kid and insult their intelligence daily when the teacher hasn't bothered to even attempt to explain the material to them just once.

Also, if you've sat in on a "regular" high school science or math class you'd know damn well that even a person of the most base intellect could learn said material.

[Edited on June 17, 2009 at 10:49 PM. Reason : ]

6/17/2009 10:48:38 PM

Quote :

"a lack of programs for students from troubled backgrounds/bad schools to help keep them in school"

Haha. No. If there's a problem regarding this, it's in the opposite direction. We're singularly focused on dragging this demographic through school whether they want to or not. I received an email from my superintentant a couple weeks ago informing all teachers that "if we fail a student, we've failed that student."

And to claim that North Carolina's teachers are worse than average is ludicrous. Non-union. Period.


My school just lost some pretty talented teachers to the budget cuts, and our class sizes will be up next semester.

[Edited on June 17, 2009 at 10:52 PM. Reason : ]

6/17/2009 10:50:22 PM

I'm speaking more directly about the shitty teachers I saw at my middle school and high school.

I've had teachers that just screamed directly at a class full of 8th graders and called them idiots several times a week (when i was in accelerated math with the older kids) and was generally just a bitch. In high school we were "baby sat" numerous times in several of my "advanced" classes by a teacher teaching a "regular" class (regular is just what they call remedial at that school) and got to watch the abysmal failure of a curriculum being presented to those kids. In each of these 3 different classes with 3 different teachers the routine was pretty similar. There'd be worksheets handed out, a completed worksheet would be put up on the overhead, then the entire class would be copying down one or two dozen words or maybe six to ten definitions while the teacher sat and screwed around on the computer. The teacher never engaged the kids or made any attempt to present any material, there was never any attempt to keep the kids in line (they talked the entire time and were pretty disrespectful, which would've pretty much gotten us in "deep shit" if we did it in our advanced classes), and the material they were learning was just a rehash of scientific concepts I was taught in middle school.

This is what I mean when I say the schools don't do shit for these kids. They're put into classes that treat them like morons and don't bother attempting to administer any form of discipline or order in the class except for tests or quizzes. There was probably something deeper at work here, but it's completely different from all the courses I was taking that most of the kids in the school were taking. Most of the teachers I had were fantastic (after middle school), but it was amazing how terrible the teachers and curricula were once you went down to the "regular" level.

[Edited on June 17, 2009 at 11:16 PM. Reason : ]

6/17/2009 11:16:34 PM

That's because AP is the new honors and honors is the new regular.

Regular classes are in such a sorry state because teachers are mostly helpless to do anything about it. NC laws are ridiculous in this regard; they literally want a 100% graduation rate. Think about what effect laws designed to achieve a 100% retention rate would have on the day-to-day operation of schools

6/18/2009 9:43:00 AM

Quote :

"Lawmakers may slap sales tax on services Text Size: tool nameclose tool goes here North Carolina lawmakers are considering taxing a broad variety of everyday services. You could pay more for a haircut, a pedicure, a clutch replacement or getting your yard mowed. But the services of accountants, lawyers and other white-collar workers would be exempt. To help patch the $4.7 billion hole in the budget, the legislature has proposed expanding the sales tax to cover things such as repairs at Al's Garage in Chapel Hill. That doesn't please Al Townsend, the owner. With the garage charging $75 an hour for labor, a sales tax of at least 4 percent could cost consumers dozens of dollars more for routine maintenance. "It's certainly not going to help this industry's recovery," Townsend said. A 4.5 percent state sales tax already applies to all goods and about 30 different types of services, including equipment rental and printing, among others. Both the House and the Senate have proposed expanding the tax to about 50 services including storage, entertainment, personal services, installations, repairs and maintenance. Lawmakers have also proposed taxing a variety of other items, including digital purchases and electricity. In total, the Senate's most recent plan would raise about $1 billion in the next fiscal year and $1.4 billion the following year. Dallas Woodhouse, state director of Americans for Prosperity, an advocacy group that pushes for limited government, said his organization would support a sales tax on services if it were applied across the board and as part of larger tax reform. 'Blue-collar services' "But this is just a way to raise taxes," he said, noting that the tax doesn't apply to all services. "My real concern is that they've developed a blue-collar service tax." Sen. Dan Clodfelter, co-chairman of the Senate committee that deals with taxes, said white-collar professional services were excluded because most of their costs are tied up in health care and real estate, and the higher taxes would raise those industries' costs substantially. "Those are probably not things we want to do right now," he said. Clodfelter, a Charlotte Democrat, said the Senate chose services similar to those already taxed, instead of applying the tax across the board. "We didn't want to reach out into all these new categories," he said. Budget negotiations will continue this week. The Senate wants to reduce the sales tax rate from 4.5 percent to 4 percent, but tax more services. Meanwhile, the House would tax fewer services but increase the rate by a quarter cent. A service-based economy For decades, the state's economy has been shifting from retail goods and manufacturing toward service industries. Proponents of tax reform say tax codes that do not include services are outdated. "States put these systems together when the country was a predominantly goods-based economy," said Bert Waisanen, a fiscal analyst for the National Council of State Legislatures. "We are now a service-based economy." Across the country, a wide variety of services are taxed. Some states -- including Hawaii, New Mexico and Washington -- tax more than 150 different services. Others tax substantially fewer, with Oregon taxing none. Advertising and professional services are the least-taxed services in the country, Waisanen said. Leases and rentals are the most commonly taxed. For the owners of service businesses, the expanded sales tax means more paperwork and potentially fewer customers. "It's going to make my life a lot more miserable," said Clint Mitchell of Raleigh Appliance, Heating and Air Conditioning Repair. "It will dramatically increase how much work I have to do." Will consumers notice? Though service industries are not happy with the possible increase, some business owners say the cost is ultimately passed on to consumers. "I don't think most people know there's no sales tax on services," said Shawne Cook, who was getting her hair styled last week at her parents' salon, The Hair Associates in North Raleigh. "If you're paying $100 for a haircut, are you really going to care if it's $6 more?" Several customers at the salon said the idea doesn't make sense. "Of course you shouldn't tax services," said Linda Hartman, who was getting a manicure. "I've been getting my hair done here for years and I've never even considered a sales tax. Services are already expensive enough." "

http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/1579697.html?pageNum=2&mi_pluck_action=page_nav#Comments_Container

6/23/2009 9:01:15 AM

Quote :

"Just heard Bev's speech on raising taxes to make up a deficit of 1.5 billion. The only thing she kept repeating was that they couldn't cut teacher's positions, increase class size, blah, blah. I guess education takes up 90% of NC's budget. Otherwise I'd be inclined to ask why they couldn't cut other projects and why they champion education as their answer to why they can't cut spending. Oh, and health care. The public probably doesn't want to cut health care either, so that can go on the list of reasons why cuts can't be made."

I'd ask that bitch why they just repaved the only section of Wade Avenue that didn't need to be repaved, instead of the part that did. (as an example of how fucking dumb our gov't is).

6/23/2009 11:24:23 AM