Dueling Factions

Taxing
Rep. Janet Ancel, D-Calais, wanted House members to keep in mind all the taxes her committee considered but rejected as it deliberated how to raise the extra funding the House budget would require.

So she opened her presentation on the tax bill with a list of the rejected proposals: imposing taxes on heating fuel or break-open tickets, or raising the rate on capital gains or capping mortgage deductions.

Critics wanted to keep the spotlight on all the taxes the House Ways and Means Committee selected to raise $27 million in the next budget year.

The list includes changes in the income tax, additions to items subject to the sales tax, increases in the tax on tobacco products and a one-year increase in the tax on meals.

Ancel argued the package a majority of the Ways and Means Committee recommended was “fair and equitable.”

A majority, almost exclusively Democrats and Progressives, agreed and voted 85 to 55 to give the bill preliminary approval. (Burlington Free Press, 3/27/2013)

Vermont Progressives develop a new strategy for countering voter complaints about new taxes: "Yes, but look at all the things we are not taxing!"

To his credit, Governor Shumlin argued against the new taxes.


Paint By Numbers
The deputy mayor, Joseph J. Lhota, never went to see the painting. Just hearing about it was enough.

The eight-foot-tall portrait of the Virgin Mary, a semi-abstract collage hanging at the Brooklyn Museum, contained clumps of elephant dung and cutouts of female genitalia from pornographic magazines. Mr. Lhota, a Roman Catholic, was horrified. “As a concept,” he said in a recent interview, “it was offensive.”

In fall 1999, that personal revulsion turned into public policy. Overnight, he became the tip of an unbending Giuliani spear aimed at the museum, seeking to cajole, browbeat and threaten the 190-year-old organization into removing the work of art. (NYT, 3/27/2013)

In a profile of a NYC candidate for mayor, the New York Times replays Lhota's role in the Guiliani administration's attempt to get the Brooklyn Museum (funded by taxpayer dollars) to remove a vile and offensive painting. Clearly the Times viewed these attempts, then and now, as a grievous assault on free expression.

Of course, this is the same New York Times that published cartoons deemed offensive to Islam. Thus establishing their creds on the point that all religions should be able to tolerate artistic mocking. 

Oh, wait....the Times DIDN'T publish those cartoons?


In The Lobby
“You don’t doubt that the lobby supporting the enactment of same-sex marriage laws in different states is politically powerful, do you?” he asked the lawyer. (NYT, 3/27/2013)

Chief Justice John Roberts tries to redeem himself. 


The Marrying Kind
Our point is not to raise a parade of unlikely horribles. It is that for the Court to transform the definition of marriage for one group fundamentally restructures it for all groups and makes it harder for society through its representatives to rule out anything that adults want to call "marriage." (WSJ, 3/27/2013)

Those in favor of gay marriage make the rather absurd argument that it is a "right."  Says them. As Conservatives often point out, Liberals seek the moral highground - and attempt to avoid a substantive debate on topics dear to them - by declaring their position to be a fundamental right...legalized dope, abortion, gay marriage. All are "rights." The short excerpt above succinctly captures the essence of the rebuttal. 


Keyless
But a carbon tax/fee is the key to controlling climate change. (Gail Collins, NYT, 3/28/2013)

More proof (you didn't really need it, did you?) that Liberals believe that all problems in the world can be solved by more taxes.


Stamped Out
The Wall Street Journal today provides some frightening statistics on the percentage of people in the country and state-by-state that receive food stamps.

Nationwide the number is 15%. (This is not a misprint.) Wait it gets worse. In Vermont it is 16%. In Maine it is 19%. In Oregon it is 21%  And in the District of Columbia it is 23%. 

The numbers are staggering.