Feet.
Sean Hannity is off the air in Kansas City. He has been for months. The local station dropped him after his last contract expired. He was replaced with Michael Savage. I believe Savage may have two or three listeners.
Due to Hannity’s absence, you may not have heard the news. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said conservatives weren’t wanted in New York (Hannity lives on Long Island.)
Hannity soon received offers to relocate by the governors of Florida and Texas.
Sean Hannity Becomes Another High-Profile Tax Refugee
The TV host can save as much as $1 million a year just by escaping New York’s tax regime.
Now we can add Sean Hannity to the growing list of celebrities to abandon their New York residencies in favor of states with better economic climates.
The popular TV and radio host has long been a New York resident with second and third homes in both Florida and Texas, two of the brightest stars in our nation’s economic constellation.
But on his primetime Fox News show, he recently told Florida Sen. Marco Rubio: “You’re soon going to be my senator.” He will split his time between a home in Naples, Fla., and a small ranch in Texas and end his New York residency, which means he’ll no longer be taxed by the Empire State.
Why this move after so many years as a New Yorker?
Well, in January of this year, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo created a firestorm when he contended that conservatives have “no place” in his state. In response, both Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Texas Gov. Rick Perry invited Hannity to consider a move to their states — invitations Hannity has gladly accepted.
It’s quite obvious why Hannity would not want to live in a state where his party is vilified by the governor. Yet there are many compelling financial reasons that favor Florida and Texas.
For one, neither Florida nor Texas levies a personal income tax — quite appealing considering that New York’s marginal income-tax rate for top earners like Hannity is over 13%. For New Yorkers making over $1 million a year, a move to Florida and Texas will let these top earners take home at least $130,000 more after taxes.
Hannity no doubt pulls down an income that will save as much as $1 million a year by saying so long to New York.
He isn’t alone in choosing sunny economic climates over New York’s shakedown tax system. Between 1992 and 2011 (according to data from the Internal Revenue Service), New York lost $71.36 billion in net adjusted gross income (AGI). By comparison, Texas gained $27.34 billion, while Florida gained a whopping $100.53 billion.
With population growth outpacing New York’s nearly 3-to-1, Florida has now passed the Empire State as the nation’s third-most populous.
The annual state report by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation confirms that Hannity is making a wise financial decision. Its 2014 State Business Tax Climate Index places New York dead last on the list as a result of high income, corporate, sales and property taxes.
The article continues onto a second page, here.
Hannity’s operation pays a significant amount of taxes to New York and well as to the local government. Now Cuomo’s bombast has lost the state and Long Island. Hannity could save as much as $130,000 a year by some estimates. A drop in the bucket, perhaps, for New York—if Hannity’s decision was the only one involved. However, it isn’t. Hannity isn’t along leaving New York. Rush Limbaugh moved out several years ago after a series of harassing tax audits that netted New York nothing.
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Photo-ID. Last Tuesday was the primary election in Mississippi. The media was focused on the race between Chris McDaniel and Thad Cochran. They conveniently overlooked another significant event in the election—the requirement for a photo-ID to vote.
The Biggest Non-Story in Tuesday’s Elections? Mississippi Voter ID Implemented With No Problems
It wasn’t the biggest story following Tuesday’s elections in various states, but it was the biggest and most-ignored non-story.
Mississippi’s new voter ID law got its first run in the June 3 primary, and the sky did not fall. Despite the tiresome and disproven claims by opponents that such laws cause wholesale voter disenfranchisement and are intended to suppress votes, Mississippi “sailed through” its first test of the new ID requirements, according to The Clarion Ledger, the newspaper of Jackson, Miss.
Aside from being able to use any form of government-issued photo ID, like every other state with ID requirements, Mississippi provides a free ID for anyone who does not already have a government-issued photo ID. Contrary to the claims of those who say large numbers of Americans don’t have an ID, Mississippi estimated that only 0.8 percent of Mississippians lacked an ID. In fact, even that may have been an overestimate since the state had to issue only about 1,000 voter ID cards. All those who forgot their ID on Tuesday also could vote by an affidavit as long as they returned and showed an ID within five days.
The Clarion Ledger reported how few problems there were in the implementation of the new requirement. Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said the state “devoted countless hours of time and training to election officials across the state” and the result was that there were hardly any complaints. There was only one reported case of a man mistakenly being turned away for lack of an ID, at which point an election commissioner was sent to solve the problem. But this was one of the few reported problems across the entire state in which almost 400,000 voters turned out to cast their ballots in the primary elections, including in the fiercely contested Republican U.S. Senate primary where incumbent Thad Cochran faced off against challenger Chris McDaniel in a razor-thin election.
As Sid Salter from the Clarion Ledger put it, the voter ID law was a “non-event” and “voters expressed little, if any, inconvenience at the polls due to the new law.” So how is the new law being covered by the media? Instead of reporting that the voter ID law is “sailing through,” the mainstream media has instead elected to remain silent. As Hosemann said, “No news is good news.”
An interview of Sharyl Atkission, formerly of CNN and under attack by Media Matters, slams the current crop of journalists as being tools, easily manipulated by Obama and the liberal establishment. Atkission left CBS because of the restrictions by CBS on her reporting. She was immediately attacked by CBS and Media Matters for her claims of liberal bias in the news.
