Saturday, April 11, 2009

Bragging Rights: My Taxes Are More Than Yours

New York is the tax capital of the country.

Not that anyone is surprised, but our acting Governor Sheldon Silver has been wanting to soak private sector wage earners for years. He calls it the "millionaires' tax", except that it hits those who make $300,000 per annum. Further, it is called a "temporary tax" because it is supposed to expire after three years. Are we suckers or what? Remember, we elected these hacks.

In the past, only George Pataki and Joe Bruno prevented Shelly from the cash grab. Now Shelly has free reign because the other 2 "men in the room", accidental Governor David Paterson and invisible Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, are ineffectual doofuses.

Silver has the backing of the Working Families Party, a group comprised of community organizers and labor unions which advocates the redistribution of wealth and a bunch of other principles that tend to favor a big centralized government operating at the expense of the private sector. These people really know how to kill economic growth. Two of the state senators that tipped the control of the NYS Senate to Democrats, Craig Johnson in Long Island and Darrel Aubertine in the North Country, were bankrolled by the WFP. With no opposing bulwark in place, Shelly runs roughshod over Smith and Paterson. It's Shelly's world, we're just living in it.

...it isn't just high earners who get smacked. The new budget raises another $2 billion or so on top of the $4 billion in income taxes with some 100 new taxes, fees, fines, surcharges and penalties to be paid by all New York residents. There are new charges for cell phone usage, fishing permits, health insurance (the "sick tax"), electric bills, and on bottled water, cigars, beer and wine. A New York Post analysis found that a typical family of four with an income below $100,000 would pay more than $800 a year in higher taxes and fees.

This is advertised as a plan of "shared sacrifice," but the group that is most responsible for New York's budget woes, the all-powerful public employee unions, somehow walk out of this with a 3% pay increase. The state is receiving an estimated $10 billion in federal stimulus money, and Democrats are spending every cent while raising the state budget by 9%. Then they insist with a straight face that taxes are the only way to close the budget deficit.

Here's the article.

I love the part where Shelly holds New Jersey up as a model. New Jersey!?!?!?!?

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