-By Lisa Volpe
As the Illinois legislature continues to meet in Springfield with no state budget on the books, there are some who want to implement a new tax on satellite television customers. This is a discriminatory tax that’s perpetually suggested. The bottom line is that the cable industry wants to impose a satellite tax to make it less attractive for consumers.
The idea proponents are floating is to place a new 5 percent tax on every subscriber’s bill for no other reason than to suppress the satellite industry’s efforts to compete with cable.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle see this tax increase for what it is and have repeatedly rejected it. Since 2009, the cable industry has tried to pass satellite tax bills 53 times in 28 states – and state legislatures across the country have debated and rejected these new consumer taxes time and again. The reason is simple: satellite taxes discriminate against consumers who chose a wireless alternative to cable for their television.
Cable companies in Illinois pay rent – known as a “franchise fee” – to cities and towns for digging up public roads and for hanging wires. The cable industry somehow thinks satellite consumers should pay a tax simply for providing a competing service.
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Springfield Needs to Stop This Unfair Satellite Tax”
As California looks to initiate a “no waste” policy, a look at the statistics of landfills in and around the San Bernadino area shows that many have either seriously slowed their garbage intake for burial or only increased it slightly. That is, all except the landfills operated by Athens Services, all of which seem to have exceedingly high growth in landfill use. Now some residents are worrying that, unlike the other waste disposal companies, the Athens landfills are burying items that could otherwise be recycled in accordance with state and local laws.
On Friday a group of left-wing “ministers” in some little-known “social justice” organization was given the platform of The New York Times to flog their ideas on how to ban guns. Their idea was to use the “buying power” the US government ostensibly has to force gun manufacturers to toe the gun banning line or face a reduction in federal guns and ammo purchases. Essentially, these purported ministers want to use the federal government’s buying status as a way to make an end run around the courts and the Constitution.
Let’s face it, Donald Trump has tapped into a very serious concern that most Americans have and that is illegal immigration. But the fact that he’s become a rising star in this GOP primary race at this time isn’t because he’s so great. It’s because the GOP is so damn bad on the issue. For Trump’s current success, the whole thing is Jeb Bush, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell’s fault.
Five Republican Governors are cooperating in a 10th Amendment-styled, states rights bid to defeat Obama’s un-Constitutional global warming power grab. The five are saying that they may simply ignore his edicts and refuse to implement his rules. Is your governor joining them? If not, why not?
As he exited the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was supposed to have told a bystander that the founders had given us a Republic, “if we could keep it.” Well this week’s latest Obamacare decision by the U.S. Supreme Court proves that we ultimately couldn’t keep it, Mr. Franklin. America is now a dead letter.
Last month I noted that the Illinois state legislature is still pushing yet another tax to bedevil its already over taxed citizenry with the plan to push a tax on satellite TV providers. That plan has not abated.Unfortunately, it is just another example of Illinois burdening it citizens because of the failure of the politicians.
I must admit that I have some mixed emotions about this story of a woman who saw that other women didn’t have their own auto repair shops, so she decided to start one. There are several ways to think about the tale, granted, but none of them seem to rise to the need for a big splashy national news story on her business proposal.
So now our first Muslim president is canceling our own national celebrations in order not to upset Muslims, so we’ve got that going for us… which is nice. This week we’ve discovered that Obama’s crew staffing the U.S. embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia cancelled its celebration of Independence Day on July 4th so it won’t make Indonesians mad at us.
Why, didn’t you know, America, that the Founders were so far reaching that they put global warming funding right in the U.S. Constitution? Well, that is what Bill Nye the not-so-sciencey guy is claiming, anyway.
Once again wallowing in the hypocrisy that is liberalism, the same unions that went to the mat to support the new $15 per hour minimum wage law in Los Angeles are now demanding that the city exempt unionized companies from being forced to pay a minimum wage of $15 per hour.
In an idiotic act of PCism run amuck, The Houston Rockets NBA team has fired its social media director because he dared to posted two emoticons (or emojis) of a horse being shot by a gun after the Mavericks lost to the Rockets on Wednesday. The media guy’s bosses said that the gun emoji “wasn’t appropriate” and so fired him over it.
Jim Clifton, the CEO of the Gallup polling group, recently published a huge slam on Obama’s fake economic recover that he sharply titled, “
It has been discovered that all the businesses that race-baiter and MSNBC talking head Al Sharpton has started has been closed because of non-payment of taxes.
On Wednesday Obama’s Attorney General Nominee Loretta Lynch said that all illegals should be allowed to work in the USA despite the fact that they are breaking our immigration laws and are essentially criminals in this country.
One of the things that the far left always says to excuse lawbreaking illegal immigrants is that they just want to be “like Americans” and attain the American dream just like immigrants to the US always have. This, however, is a lie. Many immigrants no longer have any desire to become Americans and just want our money so they can send it back home.
A recent survey of the wealth of members of Congress revealed that, on average, it would take the combined wealth of 18 American households to equal the wealth of a single member of Congress. While this is an averaged statistic and individual cases vary, a review of the wealth of members of the Illinois delegation to Washington proves the rule rather than the exception.
The folks at the Grabien video service has taken the time to track all Obama’s promises made during his past State of the Union speeches and found that 112 of his promises have gone unkept.
Comparing the wholly American and sensible demands issued by the real civil rights movement during the event that saw Martin Luther King deliver his “Dream” speech in August of 1963 to the mishmash of self aggrandizing nonsense belched forth by today’s “BlackLivesMatter “movement” reveals a startling difference and exposes today’s protesters to be disjointed, illogical, filled and with race-hate not to mention insensate and childish.
What are the best jobs on average in California? Apparently being a government worker. Infuriatingly, government workers live far better, have higher salaries, retire earlier and have better benefits than most in the private sector even though, like leeches, these same government workers live off the taxpayer.
Shep Smith is at it again, this time he was heard on his Fox News show lamenting how America will “ruin” Cuba now that Obama is opening up diplomatic relations with that island nation. No, seriously. That is exactly what he said. This idiot really needs to go work for the commies at MSNBC.
The New nine-month budget bill called the CR/Omnibus spending bill is a $1.01 trillion spending bill that is over one thousand pages thick. But it takes care of spending for most of 2015 and one has to wonder why the Republicans pushed a spending bill that will prevent them from affecting spending for most of the entire first year they will be in control?
Unions are having a tough time of it in Wisconsin of late. Since Governor Scott Walker saved the state budget with his new union rules and since he gave workers a choice, Wisconsin’s teachers unions have been in steep decline and this year’s certification vote was further proof that workers don’t want unions.