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Darla’s Back …

By fitsnews • on July 21, 2008

… AND HALF-RIGHT FOR A CHANGE

FITSNews - July 21, 2008 - South Carolina’s hottest billionaire is back in the news this week, appropriately criticizing the ill-conceived “property tax relief” bill that state legislators passed two years ago - shortly before the bottom fell out of the American housing market.

Darla Moore - whose left-leaning Palmetto Institute continues to view South Carolina’s tax code from a decidedly liberal, big government perspective - nonetheless deserves credit for piping up on the utter failure of state lawmakers’ most recent reactionary tax shift.

The 2006 Property Tax Relief act is indeed another example of the short-sighted, knee-jerk pandering of our General Assembly - a callous effort to avoid comprehensive reform and stimulative tax cuts that would actually grow the state’s economy for a change. Instead of scrapping our broken system and starting over, however, lawmakers continue to tinker around the edges whenever they deem it politically expedient, shifting incoming revenue from one taxpayer pocket to the other and refusing to even calculate the dynamic effect of tax cuts as they bow before the liberal altar of “revenue neutrality.”

Fact is, the only thing more screwed up in South Carolina than the way we tax is the way we spend - an equally short-sighted, knee-jerk process that keeps our state beholden to the same old status quo special interests that have been holding us back all these years.

Unfortunately, in spite of all her success as a businesswoman, Moore only grasps the first part of that equation.

She knows something is dreadfully wrong (as does anyone familiar with our anemic income growth, paltry capital investment and high unemployment), yet she and her liberal think tank have failed to grasp the fundamental reality that it’s going to take more than a status-quo sponsored “Taxation Realignment Commission” to get the job done.

In fact, all you need to know about this so-called “realignment” is that its chief legislative advocate is none other than Darla’s Florence County buddy Hugh Leatherman, the biggest tax-and-spend Democrat in South Carolina history.

Our state doesn’t need another tax “realignment,” it needs a comprehensive tax reduction plan that will create jobs, spur capital investment and raise income levels across the state.

It also needs a spending cap with built-in taxpayer rebates so that government never grows faster than the average taxpayers’ ability to pay for it.

Of course both of these long-overdue notions are anathema to Moore, Leatherman and their followers, who continue to believe that it’s government’s responsibility to grow the economy, despite the fact that all government ever ends up growing is itself - invariably at the expense of the economy.

Anyway, we’re glad Darla is chirping out against the legislature’s chronic failure to fundamentally reform our state’s antiquated, anti-competitive tax code, but as has always been the case with her, we’re not entirely sure we want to hear her “solution.”

UPDATE - Irrespective of our views on her flawed tax philosophy, we do have to say that Darla is still looking pretty good in her LBD …