2/2006 50 Governors SUSA

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I don't know why some people continue to think Sanford is a shoe-in for re-election as Governor.  We continue to have a slugguish economy here compared to the rest of the nation, and then there's the political wildcard of the effort to "reform" property tax.

We're going to see at least one constitutional amendment on the ballot concerning the issue and it's going to be interesting to see what happens with it.  The current proposal involves shifting our tax structure so as to demphasize property tax and replace the revenues by increasing the sales tax.  Not only that, but they're planning on mucking around with the assessment procedure. When a tax measure attracts criticism form the Chamber of Commerce, it hard to see it generating much Republican enthusiasm and the Dems should be solidly aginst any effort to switch property tax to the sales tax.  Meanwhile, we're not bothering to increase our cigarette tax even tho we could triple it and still have the lowest cigarette tax in the nation.  Basically, we've got the GOP pandering to a vocal part of its base on taxes here, which will help Sanford and some Representatives win their primary fights, but I don't think this will be a winning issue in the general election.  We're not an overtaxed state, and indeed an argument can be made that we're undertaxed, since there are Federal grants we don't apply for since we don't have the matching funds that would be required to get them.