Beat Me: I Live in Massachusetts
I never thought I’d have to say this, but a state full of blondes is smarter than we eggheads here in Massachusetts:
Of the six propositions offered, only one passed — the one to freeze pay raises for legislators when the state’s running a deficit — despite Arnold and his allies having outspent critics 10 to 1 in pushing the initiatives. To paraphrase a hip-hop classic, California knows how to tea-party:
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was dealt a crushing defeat as voters rejected a series of ballot initiatives designed to help plug the state’s spiraling budget deficit…
Schwarzenegger had warned that failure of the proposals would leave California grappling with a budget shortfall of around 21.3 billion dollars.
But weary voters were unwilling to heed Schwarzenegger’s deficit warnings and came out broadly against the ballot proposals, by margins of around 60-70 percent to 40-30 percent, local media reported.
That margin, 70-30, marks the exact same margin by which we recently defeated (sob!) a ballot measure to abolish the state income tax. We, too, were tortured with apocalyptic visions if the measure passed, and the pro-tax gargantuas massively outspent the anti-tax lilliputians.
But Californians said “consider that a divorce” to their State House, while we said “thank you sir may I have another” to ours.
The state Senate voted last night to increase the sales tax, lift the sales tax exemption on alcohol, and allow cities and towns to raise meals and hotel taxes, brushing aside criticism that higher taxes would hurt Massachusetts businesses by driving consumers over the border, particularly to tax-free New Hampshire.
The Senate plan, which cleared the House in April, would push the sales tax from 5 percent to 6.25 percent, while generating an estimated $633 million to offset deep cuts in services for the poor, elderly, and disabled.
If Democrats didn’t have the poor, the elderly, and the disabled, they’d have to invent them. Otherwise, the Boston Glob would have to report more fully and fairly (or report at all) on state pension abuses, which cost millions of dollars; hack jobs in government, where unheard-of departments have half a dozen or more state workers pulling down more than $100,000 a year; friends and relations of hack workers getting subordinate hack jobs for $50-75,000 per; fraud and abuse in every “social services” program (Wave from your public housing apartment, Auntie Zeituni!); and outright thievery in most of them (”A wealthy Brookline couple who swindled taxpayers for family health insurance pleaded guilty to fraud and larceny today and face thousands in fines. Joseph Youshaei and his wife, Jila, who are worth an estimated $2 million in homes and commercial buildings, claimed to only have an income of $475 per week, which allowed them to obtain $53,000 in MassHealth benefits over six years.”); and cunning invention of yet others undreamed of anywhere else (welfare Cadillacs). Even so-called successful programs, like MassHealth (our mandatory health insurance program) is a “success” only by virtue of going way, way, way over budget.
Not to mention the strange tendency of our legislative leaders to be forced from office in scandal.
And we just go right on reelecting the same overwhelmingly Democratic state legislature that abuses us so degradingly.
If we have any of those 1970s bumper sticker left over, we can amend them to read: “Beat me: I live in Massachusetts”.
Otherwise, it’s just California dreaming.