Free Republic

As of 2008 we are now at 1000 posts for Mainestategop, the blog of those of us who are refugees of New England Socialism and the voice of the New Hampshire based New England Alliance for Liberty and Free Markets. We've come a long way I think and I am just ecstatic. Eight years of fighting liberalism and saving America from liberal failure. I love it. Thank you to all for your continued support.  Now, with that said I want to discuss political issues concerning elections in New England. There's not much to be said, we are voting straight GOP...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU__9f0kEb0&feature=gp-n-y&google_comment_id=z13ltx55tpb0jd4s322jgxtrzletuvjlg Hillary Clinton plans to raise taxes for the workers the affluent and middle class. Pay roll taxes and national sales taxes for workers, Higher income taxes for the rest with the middle class bearing the brunt of these taxes. With commentary by Mike Savage Also get a load of some of the people who are gonna benefit the most from these new taxes, yokels, alcoholics, potheads, anarchists, thugs and crazies!

As jobs continue to vanish in Democratic states with high living costs and taxes, low tax, low regulation small government states, the kind libtards claim is bad to live are thriving. Why? Because unlike most states like Maine New Jersey New York Massachusetts and Rhode Island which pass crushing regulations against new jobs and new business along with taxes that are usually forced on the consumer, states such as Texas, Kansas, Georgia and New Hampshire are gaining those lost jobs and skilled workers that flee over the borders. These states have low taxes and allow businesses to make their own...

Yesterday at monument square in Portland, liberal envirowackos from all over Maine rallied to shrill for lower standards of living for Maine residents in the name of the greenhouse myth, not to mention helping the government grow bigger and take away more of our hard earned money. The rally, which featured city council members, teamsters, America hating communists and others also circulated petitions calling for green energy in Maine, cap and trade and green jobs. The truth is that Maine is already strangled by environmental regulations against the economy. WE told you a year ago about a plan to build...

In recent surveys on economic and personal freedom, conservative states such as Texas, Kansas and so on have scored high marks while liberal states such as California, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York has scored low. New Hampshire scored big on both economic and personal liberty proving once again the power of private sector and low taxes against socialist oppression. California, that socialist paradise that liberals love ranked rock bottom on nearly all the surveys. Where does Maine stand? Not surprisingly Maine scored very low on economic liberty. Maine as you all remember is the worst state to set up a...

The following came from a blog called sperlings best places concerning a person who moved from Boston Taxachewsets to the communist dictatorship of Maine. Well... Get a load of what he had to say...The cost of living in Maine is very high. I moved to Biddeford from Boston so we could afford to buy our first home. We had just had a baby and felt it was important to ground the baby in a more permanent home environment and to build a life for her. We had a time constraint of finding and moving into home within a 2 month...

Enough with Obama's stealth taxing! Enough with bigger government! Enough with elite politicians who were voted by the people but behave like royalty! Enough with our Constitution being treated like toilet paper! Enough of the Media being in bed with Socialist! If you live in Maine and have had enough show up at a Maine Tax Day Tea Party. Time: April 15, 2009 from 2pm to 7pm Where: Capital Park City/Town: Augusta Time:2pm to 7pm If you want a rally closer to your home just organize one. If you wait until someone else does it for you , you could...

AUGUSTA, Maine — Lower than projected February tax collections show the negative effects of economic recession in Maine are accelerating, the state’s top tax agency analyst said Friday. The revenue slowdown, while still relatively modest, is expected to get worse and complicate state officials’ efforts to enact a two-year budget and keep it in balance, said Michael Allen, the director of econometric research at Maine Revenue Services.

Just when you thought that Maine had reached rock bottom with all the poverty and oppresion, and just when you think Maine's economy could not be taxed and regulated into oblivion any more, Our reelected General Secretary Baldacci has called for even more taxes as well as fake tax cuts that shift our burdens to even more vulnerable industries. The plan is not tax cuts which are badly needed in Maine, but tax shifts. In this case, cutting income taxes while shifting the burden on sales taxes. This burden would fall upon the tourist industry, one of Maine's last remaining...

State House: The income tax rate would fall and visitors would pay an additional $75 million annually under the plan. AUGUSTA — Democratic legislative leaders unveiled a tax reform package Thursday that would lower the state income tax rate while broadening the sales tax and increasing some other taxes. Proponents said the package would shift taxes to out-of-state visitors while decreasing the tax burden for Maine residents. Broadening the sales tax would help Maine survive ups and downs in the overall economy, and a lower income tax could help attract businesses to the state, they said.

Gov. John Baldacci wants to use $15 million made available through the federal stimulus package to help an estimated 8,000 unemployed Mainers maintain health care insurance. Under the proposal, eligible laid-off workers would receive vouchers to help pay for continued employer-based coverage through the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, known as COBRA. A subsidy would be made available to laid-off workers whose employers were too small – fewer than 20 employees – to fall under COBRA requirements. The assistance would be limited to nine months.

BANGOR, Maine — Bangor School Committee members on Thursday were presented with their first look at the 2010 fiscal year budget, which proposes an overall increase of 1.8 percent over 2009.

AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine’s finance chief brought a message back to Augusta from Washington about federal stimulus money: Be careful how you spend it. Finance Commissioner Ryan Low briefed the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee on Friday, a day after meetings in Washington with Vice President Joe Biden and other federal officials about Recovery and Reinvestment funding. Nearly all of the states were represented at those meetings.

AUGUSTA, Maine — Lawmakers will begin hearings this week on more than $1.3 billion worth of bond proposals to fund everything from land conservation and home weatherization to repairs of college buildings and historic meetinghouses. But with the country in the grips of a major recession and Mainers cutting their own budgets, legislators will have to carefully weigh how much debt voters will be willing to stomach when the bond proposals appear on the ballot. “These are not normal times and we can’t treat this as just another bond package,” said Sen. Kevin Raye from Perry, who is the Senate...

LEWISTON, Maine — As the recession deepens and more people lose their jobs, some workers in Maine have voluntarily given up part of their pay to keep their colleagues from being laid off. Tom Light, a sixth-grade teacher in West Paris, is among the more than 60 percent of the employees of School Administrative District 17 who agreed to sacrifice some income to make up for a budget shortfall and save seven jobs. About 380 of the system’s 600 employees offered to either take time off without pay, or work but give some money back. Each person decided on an...

Cost-cutting puts pressure on some CEO salaries, but packages can top $1 million With Maine’s economy spiraling downward and unemployment spiraling up, even hospitals — typically the cornerstones of employment security — are feeling the pain. In response to declining revenues, hospitals large and small have announced cost-trimming measures ranging from canceling magazine subscriptions and curtailing travel expenses to eliminating nonessential health services and even laying off staff. In this atmosphere, the issue of executive compensation can be a touchy one, especially considering that all but one of Maine’s hospitals are nonprofit institutions, accountable to the communities they serve and...

AUGUSTA, Maine — Members of two legislative committees are questioning proposals that would step up enforcement of certain tax laws and change the way Maine implements some taxes. Gov. John Baldacci’s administration made the proposals as part of the governor’s biennial budget plan. “These have been before us before, some just last year, and were rejected by the Legislature,” said Sen. Richard Nass, R-Acton, a member of the Taxation Committee. “I have a problem with these tax policy questions coming forward in the budget.” Lawmakers heard criticism of proposals to change the way some tobacco products are taxed, the way...

BAR HARBOR, Maine — The idea didn’t get far two years ago — or in its previous incarnations — but the concept of allowing municipalities to adopt local-option taxes is going back to the Legislature again. Rep. Elsie Flemings of Bar Harbor is working on a bill that would let Maine towns and cities impose an additional sales tax within their borders. Flemings said last week that the proposed bill is in draft form and has not yet been assigned a formal bill number for the Legislature to consider.

AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine’s share of the federal economic stimulus package will be about $900 million, but the figure is preliminary, state Finance Commissioner Ryan Low told lawmakers Friday. Low called the $900 million figure a “ballpark estimate” of Maine’s share of the $787 billion economic stimulus package as he addressed the Appropriations Committee. Low said the federal government has already determined how a large share of the funding will be used, with chunks allocated to areas such as tax cuts, added unemployment benefits and education. “The vast majority of these funds are going for very specific purposes,” said the...

HOULTON, Maine — James Hogan was a logger at Louisiana Pacific Corp. for 21 years when he was first laid off in 2004. He spent four years scrounging odd jobs and selling personal property to keep solvent before getting hired as a woodloader at Treeline Inc. of Lincoln in July 2008. The 46-year-old town man had almost recovered from that financial disaster, clearing $600 for a 55-hour workweek, when Treeline laid him off on Jan. 28. Since then, Hogan has searched for logging work from Fort Fairfield to Bangor without success.