That’s not just a marketing cliché crafted by a high-price advertising agency; it’s a business philosophy by which proprietor Michael Tullar lives.“It’s been built out of love and wanting to share things with other people,” said Tullar, whose mother Patti was the matriarch of Grand Rivers’ most renowned destination. “Everything is different here. This place is not like a normal restaurant at all, except it serves food.”
And serve food it does. Patti’s offers a diverse menu highlighted by its signature two-inch-thick pork chop, flower-pot bread and strawberry butter.Gives a basic overview of Stone carving tools and demonstrates their use. While many might expect a western Kentucky restaurant to adopt a Southern barbecue style, Patti’s actually embraces the Tullars’ past.Recipes at the restaurant use elements and flair from Native American, Hawaiian and Mexican influences, symbolic of the family’s time in the West. Patti and Bill, Michael’s parents, met in Arizona during World War II, and they spent six years living in Hawaii. The plan seems to be working.
Since opening as a 20-seat hamburger stand in 1977, Patti’s has evolved into a world-class restaurant. But the Settlement has much more to offer than just culinary treats.Visitors to the Patti’s complex also find 12 acres of gardens and animals, as well as a variety of shops, each with its own specialty and many of them named after Patti’s grandchildren. Ashley’s Boutique peddles ladies’ wear, while Reflections sells items for the home and garden.
Families can also find entertainment at Ariel’s miniature golf course and Adam’s remote-controlled boat stand.“We’re a destination,” said Beverly Edwards, media and event director. “You can be here most of the day shopping, playing and, of course, eating.”
The massive campaign is meant to persuade – or dissuade – a few wavering Missouri lawmakers who will decide in September whether to override the governor's veto of the state's first income tax rate cut in nearly a century.The Missouri battle is one of the most the intense yet in what has become a nationwide offensive by conservatives in state capitols to slice the income taxes that for decades have formed the financial foundation for government services ranging from public schools to prisons. They contend the tax cuts are the path to economic prosperity. Others forecast financial ruin.
About a dozen states already have cut income taxes this year, including sweeping changes to tax codes in Kansas and North Carolina and a ratcheting down of rates in Arkansas, Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin. Conservative lawmakers who gathered at a conference this month in Chicago received a how-to pep talk meant to spread the tax-cutting movement even further in 2014.
"This is a national agenda – there's a lot of other people that have interest in trying to create jobs in America," said Travis Brown, a St. Louis-based lobbyist and convention speaker who has traveled to 29 states this year promoting lower income taxes.
One of Brown's biggest benefactors, retired investment firm executive Rex Sinquefield, has poured about $2.4 million into an advertising campaign meant to encourage Missouri's Republican-led Legislature to override Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon' veto of the tax cut. The campaign includes the state's biggest businesses associations and conservative activist groups such as the Missouri Club for Growth, which has threatened to drop support of any lawmaker who opposes the tax cut.
The tax-cut plan even has gotten the attention of Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a potential 2016 presidential candidate who seized upon Nixon's veto to target Missouri with TV and radio ads recruiting businesses to Texas. Perry is to headline an event Thursday in suburban St. Louis sponsored by a coalition pushing for a veto override.
Opponents of the tax cut have responded with mass mailings and phone calls targeting residents in 15 House districts whose Republican legislators seemed susceptible to being swayed. They have been aided by public school boards warning the tax-cut would undermine the economy, jeopardize education funding and potentially lead to crowded classrooms and lower graduation rates.
Nixon added leverage to his veto by withholding $400 million from education,Choose your favorite China Granite Countertops paintings from thousands of available designs. building projects and other services because of concerns that the tax cut would bust a hole in the budget. The governor said he would release the money only if lawmakers sustain his veto. During the past six weeks, Nixon has held roughly 30 public events to rally support for his veto.
"We've worked very hard over the last four years to hold the line on taxes; we're one of the lowest taxation states in the country," Nixon said recently. But "this bill is not the right way to go about it.Shop for wholesale Granite countertops from China!"
The Missouri measure would gradually cut the corporate income tax rate nearly in half and lower the top individual tax rate from 6 percent to 5.5 percent over the next decade, but only if state revenues rise by at least $100 million annually. It also would phase in a 50 percent tax deduction for business income reported on individual tax returns and increase deductions for low-income individuals. It would trigger even more income tax cuts if Congress passes a measure making it easier for states to tax online sales.Missouri's tax plan was prompted largely by a desire to keep pace with neighboring Kansas, where Republican Gov. Sam Brownback signed tax cut measures each of the past two years.
There's no definitive evidence yet whether the Kansas tax cut will boost or deplete state finances. Kansas tax revenues rose 2.7 percent during the fiscal year that ended in June, which included six months under the new tax cuts. Missouri revenues grew 10 percent during the same period.Yet Kansas was presented as a shining example during a recent conference of the American Legislative Exchange Council, an association of conservative lawmakers and businesses that crafts model legislation for states.
"The opposition was looking at (the tax cut) and saying these are draconian cuts – you'll not be able to support your school system, the education system, the core services of government," said Kansas Rep. Richard Carlson, a Republican who is chairman of the House Taxation Committee. "I maintain we cannot support those core services of government unless we grow the private sector."
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