Posted on 11/09/2009 2:07:09 AM PST by PittsburghAfterDark
Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl plans to propose a 1 percent college-education privilege tax to council today, in a move that's likely to set off a fight with the city's schools of higher learning.
College and university representatives met with the mayor on Wednesday and argued against the tax, which would be assessed on a college student's tuition. It technically would not be a levy on the students or their schools, but rather on the privilege of getting a higher education in Pittsburgh.
"They weren't pleased to hear that this was an option we were pursuing," Mr. Ravenstahl said. But he said he is ready for "a fight, or a battle, if you will," if that's what it takes to plug a $15 million gap in his 2010 budget and help the struggling Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
"We don't believe that [1 percent] is too burdensome on college students," Mr. Ravenstahl said. "The city taxpayers are paying for the services that are provided to those college students," including police, building inspection and fire service, he said. "The students have a role to play."
(Excerpt) Read more at postgazette.com ...
Now that the seniors have graduated and discovered what hope and change mean in the real world what better lesson could Mayor Ravenstahl offer the "leaders of tomorrow" about what Democratic policies offer than to tax them right now?
Kudos to Mayor Ravenstahl! Show those kids precisely what being a Democrat is all about! Make them take out even larger student loans to finance your failing city! Nothing like financing your troubled city with yet more borrowed debt from those lease able to afford to do so!
Folks, I can think of nothing that will make a generation of constitutional conservatives faster than this.
It’s a ‘burgh thing. This is really pathetic.
College costs appoximately 9,000 dollars a year and they want to add another 90 dollars on to it. What are they thinking???? Of course when you are thinking 9,000 dollars, 90 dollars does seem like a small amount, but what will the percentage be next year 10 percent?
P.S. It will take a long time for ANY of those kids to become constitutional conservatives, if ever. I used to teach ‘em, and ought to know.
prisoner6
University of Pittsburgh (Out of state.) is $23,000-29,000 per year depending on your major.
Carnegie Mellon tuition is $40,300, $53,660 with room and board.
Duquesne is $24,000-36,600 depending on major.
Where you are finding any college for $9,000 per year really eludes me.
$9,000 is community college territory.
Most public universities are about $12k. And private schools run about $50k.
I wonder how that will go over with all those Obama voters in college?
One of my colleagues that went to MIT said “We should all pay more taxes. In fact, twice what we pay now.”
I said “Why don’t you and your liberal friends volunteer to pay double taxes. Oh wait, you can already do that! Its called charitable donations! Do you and Nancy Pelosi give away that much money?”
Again, its all about power.
FWIW after only one semester he said screw this and transferred to Edinboro. Pulled the transfer, financing and and everything together by himself.
prisoner6
There are some pretty decent universitites in the UNC system around $9k in-state for tuition, room and board.
The students should go after their Marxist professors who keep telling them how great communism is.
Luke, you could have been a contender.
Sadly you appear to have learned nothing and have jumped into the same abyss as many who have gone before.
Yes, and for their enthusiasm they are now saddled with a horrific increase in national debt, will be forced to buy health insurance at a cost above what they would have paid before the risk got ‘spread around’, are less safe because of our foreign policy blunders, and now are potentially facing tuition taxes. Oh, and they will have to keep paying that tuition because there aren't many jobs out there right now. But Obama is cool..
I would have no objections to increasing the taxes on the professors who brainwah their students with toxic ideas. I suspect that their hourly compensation is way out of line. If Obama can control executive salaries why not professor salaries. Lower professor salaries should lower the cost of higher education - just what the professors advocate.
I was in my third year of college in 1980 — 20 years old— when Ronald Reagan was elected the first time in a landslide. (It really was a landslide) Both my parents voted for Carter. I remember being uplifted by Reagan’s election, by his ideals, by his inauguration speech, by the “shining city on a hill.”
What is wrong with these kids? Can someone with kids please explain? What are they thinking of?
This is the first time I have really been disgusted at something Luke has done.
“It technically would not be a levy on the students or their schools...”
Well, who is going to pay it? It will ACTUALLY be a levy on that party.
My guess is that most of these kids were public school students who had 13 or more years of anti-US indoctrination drilled into their heads prior to coming to college to receive another 4 or more years of the same thing.
I am also guessing that when you were younger, schools may have been more pro-US.
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