A sampling of editorials from around New York

A devastating new report by a task force of major fiscal experts has confirmed what should be no secret: New York is at the top of the tax-and-spend heap.

Which probably explains why a separate ranking of America’s best states for business puts New York just 26th out of 50.

The State Budget Crisis Task Force, headed by ex-Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, found that New York — among six top states — is spending the most per-capita on government while, not surprisingly, taxing the most as a percent of personal income.

Moreover, it confirmed, New York spends more on Medicaid than Florida, Texas and Pennsylvania combined.

Which is largely why New York did so poorly in CNBC’s annual ranking of the states’ business climates.

And this state only came in as high as it did because of its inherent advantages, like the number of higher-education facilities and its access to venture capital.

In fact, New York actually slipped two places from its 2010 overall ranking.

Moreover, it came in 48th out of 50 in the total cost of doing business, 49th in the quality and education of its workforce, 45th in the cost of living for workers and 36th in business friendliness.

New York’s biggest one-year slippage came in assessing its overall economy: basic indicators of economic health, including projected budget gaps.

There, New York went from second nationally in 2010 all the way down to 20th.

Why? Taxes remain sky-high. Corrupt unions drive up the cost of doing business — and the overall cost of living. (New York ranked a dismal 45th in that category, down two notches from last year.)

The Legislature is dysfunctional and in thrall to an array of special interests — few of which care about the state’s economy.

Nationally, it’s no accident that the highest-rated states are heavily red politically. Or that nine of the 10 most improved states have Republican governors — several elected in the 2010 GOP landslide.

New York, though, is not so fortunate.

It’s a state that remains downright inhospitable to business. And it looks to remain so for the foreseeable future.

___

http://www.nypost.com

The Register-Star of Hudson on new state legislation to help New York’s craft breweries.

July 24.

We toast Gov. Andrew Cuomo for signing new legislation that will now help strengthen craft breweries and help them grow.

“In addition to producing some of the finest beer in the world, New York’s craft breweries are creating jobs, supporting our state’s farmers and hops growers, as well as bringing in tourism dollars in local communities across New York,” Cuomo said last week.

The new legislation will help breweries keep their costs down and help them expand.

“It was very important,” Hutch Kugeman, brewmaster of Athens-based Crossroads Brewing Company, said of the measure. “(Allowing the fees to remain) would have been a crippling blow for our business.”

Breweries producing less than 60 million gallons of beer now will receive a tax credit on each gallon produced. The credit is worth 14 cents per gallon for the first 500,000 gallons produced in New York, and 4.5 cents per gallon for the next 15 million gallons produced in the state.

Breweries that produce brands of 1,500 barrels or less annually are now exempt from the $150 annual brand label fee. This could potentially save breweries thousands of dollars.

“When you’re a small business, every dollar counts,” Tom Cromwell of Chatham Brewing, LLC, said. “Having additional fees imposed just makes it that much harder to expand, hire new employees (and) put more investment into the business.”

Another important aspect to the new legislation is the creation of a farm brewery license. This basically allows breweries to operate in a similar fashion to wineries.

The farm brewery license allows breweries to sell their products at retail outlets, conduct product tasting at their facilities, and at inns, restaurants and other businesses a brewery owns on or adjacent to its site. It also lets breweries sell brewing equipment, supplies, food and other souvenirs on-site.

This is exciting news for Harvest Spirits in Valatie. Now it is able to produce and sell hard ciders, including those made elsewhere, like those produced at Hudson-Chatham Winery in Ghent.

With the buy local and eat local movements going strong and gaining momentum every day, it stands to reason that we should be drinking locally as well. This new legislation helps eliminate the roadblocks that stand in craft breweries’ way of helping boost the local economy.

___

http://www.registerstar.com

The Watertown Daily Times on language used by government agencies.

July 21.

Asking government agencies to write in plain English is a reasonable request. But it is not easy to arrange such a task, according to the Center for Plain Language.

Last year a law was passed with the intent of compelling government entities to write in language that people can understand. The Plain Writing Act required agencies to communicate clearly in documents that provide information to the public. That effort was supposed to start last October.

The center has evaluated the results in a “report card,” the Associated Press reports. Progress is mixed.

The Agriculture Department scored the highest of a dozen agencies, earning an A for fulfilling the law’s basic requirements and a B for training staff to write clear prose.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is another story, failing in both endeavors.

Each agency is supposed to have a senior officer responsible for encouraging plain language and a corner of the agency website dedicated to the effort. A process to communicate more effectively with the public is supposed to be under way in each case, whether it is the Defense Department, Environmental Protection Agency or Social Security Administration.

Sponsor of the law to achieve clarity, Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, concluded that “we still have a long way to go to make government forms and documents simpler and easier for taxpayers to understand.”

Annetta Cheek, chairwoman of the center, has seen improvements, but “it’s very spotty.”

An example of what to avoid: The Defense Department once provided a 26-page cookie recipe that covered “flow rates of thermoplastics by extrusion plastometer” and instructed cooks that the ingredients “shall be examined organoleptically.”

Perfectly clear.

___

http://wdt.net/

The Daily Freeman of Kingston on the shootings at a movie theater in Colorado.

July 24.

So, it’s happened again: Another mass killing by firearms by another deranged individual.

James Holmes is accused of planning and executing a murderous rampage at a midnight movie showing last Friday in Aurora, Colo. Twelve people were killed and 58 were injured, some critically.

And, again, the nation is left to grapple with numerous questions about the tragedy, including why this happened and what, if anything, might deter recurrence.

We don’t know what led Holmes allegedly to commit this atrocity. So far, inquiries into his background haven’t yielded much.

But it’s likely that a committed individual, whatever his motivation, in at least some instances could find a way to kill at least some people regardless of the obstacles.

And, over the last four years, the U.S. Supreme Court has significantly limited the ability of government — federal, state or local — to restrict the possession of firearms.

But it is absurd to conclude that we are helpless to do anything at all about it.

Witness the war against al-Qaeda, which, against significant odds, including the obstacles posed to homeland security by other cherished American liberties, has managed to forestall any additional deaths on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001.

The trick is in striking a reasonable balance between rights and public safety.

Even the most recent Supreme Court rulings have acknowledged that the right to bear arms is not entirely incompatible with some measure of gun control, which we have had since the founding of the republic.

We see no reason, for instance, why a semiautomatic assault rifle, a modern weapon designed for offensive military action, should be legally possessed by anyone outside the military and law enforcement.

Same goes for an ammunition drum with a 100-round capacity. Why? Because it’s fun at a firing range? Against the background of periodic carnage, that’s not good enough.

It’s also hard to justify Internet sales of weapons and ammunition, when time and time again we have seen that the best deterrent to terrorism of all kinds is the common sense intervention of average citizens when their warning bells go off that something just isn’t right.

Investigators say Holmes had some 40 packages delivered to his address in two months; none would have required face-to-face contact.

Finally, there’s the question of body armor. Holmes allegedly was fully wrapped in all manner of it, presumably better to survive any return fire. We can understand that some people might feel the need to have a gun for protection, but who in civil society but law enforcement officers have a legitimate need to wear body armor?

That last one, at least, should be easy: No contortion of the Second Amendment can bring body armor within the protected meaning of “arms.”

___

http://www.dailyfreeman.com

The Times-Union of Albany on presidential candidates’ tax records.

July 19.

Why is a candidate so proud of his business success so shy about his tax record?

Mitt Romney says he has released all the tax returns he plans to. He says two years are enough. He says this is just a distraction. With all due respect, he’s wrong.

This is not about wanting to get a peek at a rich guy’s tax returns. It’s not about finding fodder to bash Mr. Romney for being successful. (Good for him!) It’s about some of the key issues in this election, all touching in one way or another on taxes.

These just might be the most relevant tax returns in an election in recent memory. Where tax documents usually tell voters pretty much the same story about every presidential candidate — they’re typically more affluent than the average American and give a respectable amount of money to charity — Mr. Romney’s could not only illuminate the story of the man but also shine a light on the question of how wealth flows to America’s elite, and how our tax laws enable that accumulation.

Mr. Romney and his fellow Republicans have been arguing for an extension of the Bush tax cuts not just for the middle class but for the upper two percent of Americans, those making more than $200,000 a year ($250,000 a year for couples). President Obama argues that more affluent people need to pay more to help close the federal deficit.

Some more years of Mr. Romney’s tax returns would offer a fuller picture of how fair, or unfair, or perhaps even generous the Bush tax cuts have been to someone in his income bracket. And then he could talk in more personal terms as he tries to persuade voters that tax breaks for the rich are good for America.

A deeper view of Mr. Romney’s taxes might offer some very personalized insight into how tax policy has or has not contributed to the growing income inequality in America. How did Mr. Romney fare in the Bush years? Did his income stagnate, as it did for so many in the middle class? Did the recession treat him as harshly — relatively speaking, of course — as it did average Americans? How does that inform his policy ideas?

A closer look at Mr. Romney’s finances might reveal what one of the “job creators” — a status that Republicans seem lately to confer on anyone in Mr. Romney’s tax bracket — does with his wealth.

There’s a matter of integrity and civic responsibility here, too. Just as a candidate’s military record, or lack of one, has long been subject to scrutiny, so should his record of paying the taxes that support the military and all the other things it takes to protect and run this nation. Avoiding taxes by sending assets to the Cayman Islands bears explaining as much as avoiding the draft by fleeing to Canada once did.

Too, there’s that pesky matter of just when Mr. Romney left Bain Capital and whether he was at the helm while the firm was sending American jobs overseas, a charge Mr. Romney denies but which some official documents support. Mr. Romney’s tax returns might settle that.

Mr. Romney says he’s “not enthusiastic” about giving Mr. Obama’s campaign “hundreds or thousands of more pages to pick through, distort and lie about.”

Noted. But with all the legitimate reasons to release those returns, we can’t help but wonder if his lack of enthusiasm isn’t for what his opponent will make of them, but what voters will.

http://www.timesunion.com