Brat Pack to business: "We don't need your stinkin' jobs"
Two of Portland's more wigged-out Portland City Council members, Mitch Green and Angelita Morillo, are in the news today for turning the brightness up to 11 on the city's anti-business bat signal.
Two Portland city councilors are seeking to increase the city’s existing surtax on companies whose CEOs are making much more than their average employee, and at the same time increase the existing threshold so that fewer businesses overall would pay into the city’s Business License Tax.
The two changes, Councilors Angelita Morillo and Mitch Green said in a statement this week, would spare 18,000 small businesses from paying the BLT and at the same time hike the CEO surtax for about 400 larger businesses....
[T]he surtax would greatly increase under the proposal. For companies whose CEO makes between 50 and 75 times more than the average employee, the surtax would be 25%. That would equal a total BLT owed by the company of 3.25% on net income.
For a company whose CEO is paid 500 times or more of the average employee’s salary, the surtax would be 500%, resulting in a 15.6% total BLT on net income.
The proposal would generate an additional $72 million for the city’s general fund annually, the two councilors say.
I'm as outraged as the next guy about wealth inequality in this country. But I hate it when City Hall thinks it's okay to bust big business' chops, all by its lonesome self, at the expense of the local economy.
A 15.6 percent local income tax on your business? There isn't a CEO in the world who's stepping into that pile of kim chee.
For those of us who live here, it's been obvious for decades that if you have a life and a job, and especially if you own a car, the City of Portland doesn't want you. But I wish they wouldn't go screeching it at the top of their lungs, as these two owls and their fellow far-left colleagues are constantly doing.
We desperately need businesses of all sizes in Portland. Strutting around as the international economic morality police is not a good way to get them here.
I saw a suggestion yesterday, here, that the normal people of Portland need to band together, just as the socialist Don Quixotes have done, and get the council back on the rails. That's not a bad idea, but unfortunately, the author of the piece thinks that the mayor is the guy to bring the normies together. To me, Grandpa Keith doesn't have that kind of charisma.
Although I guess it's worth a try. Heaven knows, somebody needs to stand up when the Brat Pack sits down from their wild rants and say, "Actually, no, they don't have the votes for that, and there's no way that we're going to be doing that."
Wilson should probably take to heart the essay to which I just linked. Because if the dynamics on the City Council don't change as the result of the upcoming election, he may find himself back in the private sector in a couple of years. And Raymond Lee's bacon will be on a plate somewhere far south and east of here.
Local media recently mentioned that Portland’s downtown foot traffic had increased. They don’t report the crowds and constant traffic jams at Bridgeport Village, Washington Square, Tanasbourne and Cedar Hills.
ReplyDeleteI think there’s a message there.
I think the motivation for doing this proposal, at this time, is being lost in discussions about the proposal itself.
ReplyDeleteThey're trying to salvage Green's seat on the Council, after those old Tweets were revealed by Max Steele.
Green had written some ignorant & hateful things about Portland's local businesses, when they were getting slammed by the nightly protests, because they were asking for help from City govt. He essentially told them to f*ck-off & that the City shouldn't help them.
He's trying to look like he now actually gives a crap about small businesses, that's all this is.
(Your art here *totally* cracked-me-up!)
Exactly right.
DeleteYeah, stick it to the man! Even parasites know that killing the host is a really bad idea.
ReplyDeleteMitch even trotted out the old standby, "It's time they started paying their fair share." That from the guy who failed to pay his own property taxes in anything like a timely manner.
ReplyDeleteMitch and Angedlita are the result of the hyper-radical 25-percent threshold for getting elected. That mathematics won't change, probably for ten years. Moderates, if there are any left in Portland, were horrified by SSteele's dump--but the true believers and DSA types were ecstatic. He's their guy. Given the way rank-choice voting works, Mitch might help pull folks such as Angelita Lipstick over the line. They'll keep the class war humming until November. Then everyone will go back to sleep as the city circles the drain.
ReplyDelete