From today’s editorial in The Huntsville Times about dire Alabama budget projections:

But while this is no time to be cutting taxes, neither is it a time to be raising them. The higher cost of gasoline, food and other essentials is putting a strain on a lot of families. The time to raise taxes is when the economy is booming, not when it’s stagnant.

On Tuesday last week they printed an editorial that included this paragraph about the state’s sales tax holiday:

Alabama’s third annual sales-tax holiday weekend begins Friday, and for the average family - beset by higher prices for food, gasoline and many other essentials - the tax break couldn’t come at a better time.

Just last month John Ehinger wrote a column supporting the repeal of the state’s sales tax on groceries, although that plan was actually a net tax increase of $25 million because it removed the federal income tax deduction.

On May 28th the same editorial board advocated raising the sales tax in Madison County - just one of many, many columns written by them advocating for such a tax increase.

They certainly are all over the map.  On one hand they recognize the debilitating effect of raising taxes while economic times are soft.  More specifically they are acutely sensitive to the impact of the sales tax on the poor and that lower taxes help citizens struggling to make ends meet.  And yet they have constantly beaten the drum for raising sales taxes in Madison County for probably two plus years now - taxes that would raise the price of groceries for all, including the poor.  And despite stating quite directly that it is not the time to be raising taxes they support a net tax increase of $25 million.

I call it cognitive dissonance.

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This entry was posted by Brian on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 8:53 pm and is filed under Huntsville, Media, Taxes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.