VERBATIM
Christmas is around the corner and the U.S. government is handing out
borrowed money like candy, with you as collateral. Some people do think
government is Santa Claus, and bureaucrats are all to happy to
perpetuate that myth. The United States government today is forcing you,
the tax payer, to pick up the tab for the wealthy in ways the Founders
never imagined.
Redistribution of wealth supposedly takes from the
wealthy and hands it over to the poor. But our government is
redistributing in strange and mysterious ways, hardly living up to the
Robin Hood mythology Obama likes to conjure up. In fact, the concept is
turned completely on its head in today’s upside-down world.
Recently,
a very well-off local doctor purchased 71 acres of land in our county.
This doctor sits on the board of a lands conservancy group. Well, what
do you know? He then donates the land to the conservancy group and lands
a nice, big, fat, tax deduction for his generous donation. What is
never brought to light is that you picked up the bill. He just moved the
property tax burden to the remainder of the county citizens for all of
the rest of land still being assessed taxes. Non-profit lands
conservancy groups do not pay property taxes. Not only that, the land in
question is taken out of any possible use for “perpetuity.” Yes. That
means “forever.” So what happened to the availability of land for
private use? It just became 71 acres more scarce. The theory of supply
and demand tells you that the price of land just went up due to this
scarcity. And you financed the whole transaction. How? By allowing this
doctor to transfer some of his tax burdens over to the rest of the
population and raise the property tax values at the same time, so you
can pay more.
The
tax deductions offered for this sort of transaction are many. Some are
for property taxes, some for income taxes at different levels, locally,
state, and federal. And here we are, in Gastonia, North Carolina and
Gaston County paying some pretty stiff property taxes. And wondering
why. Those of us still paying property taxes are making up the
difference for guys like the doctor cited.
But it gets even
better. We’ve gone from tax exempt status for non-profits to granting
them lots of money. And when you hear about public / private
partnerships, you might want to look into how many corporations have set
up non-profit foundations in order to jump in on the tax benefits for
the latest cause celeb. They are greasing all sides of the skids by
taking donations and giving donations,
and soaking the taxpayer
by getting government grant money. Nice work if you can get it, eh? And
even better, our government is colluding with them.
Another curious example happened this past year involving the
Carolina Thread Trail and the
Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden.
DSBG is owned by a private foundation and is supported by donations, as
well as, various activities DSBG sells, such as wedding receptions,
groups tours, a gift shop, etc. The land owned by DSBG, and incorporated
into the Garden, was not targeted for any kind of other development
that I could find in research. The DSBG Foundation is a non-profit and
already is afforded tax exempt status. Donations to DSBG are tax
deductible. The land is contained by the Foundation that owns it. Yet,
DSBG was all too happy to sell off part of its land to the Carolina
Thread Trail to supposedly turn 2.3 miles of it into a “nature trail.”
This was a transfer of land from one non-profit to another. And what
does that have to do with you? Taxpayers paid $1.5 million dollars to
purchase this “nature trail” from DSBG to hand over to the Carolina
Thread Trail. And that amounts to $652,000.00 per mile paid for a little
walk through the woods. I’m not sure you can even access this trail
without paying admission to the Garden. The $1.5 million grant came from
the NC Clean Water Management Trust Fund, supposedly to “protect” the
water from development. But again, this land was not targeted for
development anyway. (Caveat here: I am a founding member of DSBG and I
thought is was going to be continually a privately owned Foundation,
separate from government funding. As a private foundation, and as a
destination to enhance our county, I thought this would be a good thing,
never dreaming our taxes would be confiscated to support it. And, I did
not join DSBG for the purpose of tax deductions.) If that amount of
money were not enough, there were posts with names of donors at the
beginning of the trail when I walked it this past summer; donors who all
took tax deductions for their contributions. I have no idea how much
money they donated, but I recognized the names of several of them as
locals known to have lots of money. And when you figure into the rest,
that abstract unknown amount of money they took off their income taxes,
you can add that to the pool of revenue going into this little venture.
Ducky! Well, speaking of ducky, I have another one for you in Mt. Holly, North Carolina. This one is called the
Catawba River Greenway, previously known as the Mt. Holly Riverwalk. The city of Mt. Holly has
secured $800,000.00
from the State Transportation Improvement Program for this little gem. I
don’t know about you, but when I think of Transportation Improvements, I
think of filling pot holes or widening roads. After all, the
transportation budget gets money from our gas taxes. So one would think
that, if the users pay for roads, then the gas taxes would go to roads.
Instead, our gas taxes are being siphoned off for walking trails. Hmmmm,
I guess walking is transportation, especially in high density inner
cities where you really can’t afford to park a car. In fact the Smart
Growth and Sustainable Development crowd have made it mandatory that
certain percentages of transportation money go to walking trails, bike
trails and lanes, and light rail, which is so expensive that no one can
afford it.
The greenway people are very clever. They have managed
to put greenways in several different categories so they can draw grants
from many different departments of government. First they say it is for
protection of the environment, so that brings in EPA money. Then they
say it protects the water, so that comes under the State Clean Water
Management Fund. Then they say the trails are for recreation, so next
they can get money from Parks and Recreation funds. And then, if that
weren’t enough, they figured out if they call these trails
“transportation corridors,” they can tap into the transportation money
at the state and federal levels. I haven’t found this yet, but why not
put these trails under health and welfare, too? Might as well…and they
probably will.
The non-profits supporting these tax breaks are
closely related to the wealth management industry. Wonder why that is??
In fact, the last two directors of the Carolina Thread Trail came
straight out of the banking industry to take the job with Carolina
Thread Trail.
The guy that is the CEO for The Nature Conservancy came straight from Goldman Sachs.
“Mark
Tercek, President and CEO: Before joining The Nature Conservancy, Mark
was a managing director at Goldman Sachs, where he played a key role in
developing the firm’s environmental strategy. He headed the firm’s
Environmental Strategy Group and Center for Environmental Markets, which
worked to develop and promote market-based solutions to environmental
challenges.”
It is not a far stretch these days from
non-profit wealth management to protecting that Christmas stocking fund
for the rich. So Merry Christmas to the well-heeled! We paid a lot of
green for their new walking shoes and tax shelters and …..fa la la…la
la!
