Carr: Pols’ tax battle
not free for all
Friday, April 5, 2013
Howie Carr
Finally, some good news out of the State House — the Democratic Legislature and the Democratic governor are throwing roundhouses at one another.
As they used to say about the Iran-Iraq war, Isn’t there some way they can both lose?
Unfortunately, no. Here’s the dispute in a nutshell: Gov. Deval Patrick wants to extract $1.9 billion from the working classes. The legislative leadership says “only” $500 million will suffice. For now.
As the governor said yesterday of the general court’s tax hike: “Everybody pays more and gets less.”
Deval’s plan is that everybody pays more and more and more and gets less.
The governor and his hackerama are so desperate for more money that Deval immediately issued an empty threat to veto the legislation. Ask Mitt Romney how those work out.
Republican lawmakers proposed a no-new-taxes bailout of the transportation system. But the GOP plan has three chances — slim, fat and none.
“Today’s events on Beacon Hill,” said state Sen. Bruce Tarr (R-Gloucester), “clearly illustrate the situation we’re in.”
Yes, they do. In 12-step terms, Speaker DeLeo is a problem taxer. Deval is a full-blown taxaholic. Both of them need to go on the wagon.
This fight has been brewing for a while now, since DeLeo reportedly described Deval’s tax-’em-back-to-the-Stone-Age scheme as “fantasyland.” I’d say “hallucination-land” is more like it.
Among other things, Deval wants billions for worthless new rail lines, from Boston to Fall River and New Bedford and from Pittsfield to New York (you can’t make this stuff up).
Plus $350 million more for the department formerly run by a moonlighting, $200,000-a-year hack from New Haven whose minions couldn’t be bothered to check if sex offenders were living at the same addresses as day-care centers.
Deval immediately dusted off his pal Obama’s sequester playbook. The sky is falling, the sky is falling! Take hostages! Obama says, Give me the money or the cancer patients get it! Deval says, Give me the money or the T gets it!
DeLeo said, “Our plan is more responsive to the needs of the middle class.”
That’s exactly the problem, as far as Deval is concerned. He wants to raise the income tax, which is a burden on people who work, in order to cut the sales tax, which is paid even by Deval’s EBT-cardholders.
Three days ago, a Republican was elected to the House from Peabody for the first time since 1990. Leah Cole, a 24-year-old nurse, knocked on 3,000 doors in her campaign. I asked her what the No. 1 issue was among the voters she talked to.
“Taxes,” she said.
But that’s Peabody. Beacon Hill isn’t in Peabody, it’s in Boston.
Cruel founding fathers
This 8th amendment twist is a bit unusual Sun Apr 7, 2013...by Howie Carr
Add the name of Michelle Lynne (ne Robert) Kosilek to the list of modern phenomena the Founding Fathers would definitely not appreciate being blamed for.
Little did they know what havoc they would someday wreak by adding the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution to prohibit “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Now comes Kosilek, a convicted wife murderer doing life without parole. He/she is claiming that it would be cruel and unusual punishment to deny him/her a sex-change operation — excuse me, “gender-reassignment surgery.”
Not to get too graphic, but Kosilek is begging for elective amputation of a body part. Yes, that body part. Remember, the Eighth Amendment prohibits “inflicting” cruel and unusual punishment. An infliction is exactly the right word for what he/she is petitioning the court for.
As a lawyer for the state said last week, “This expands the Eighth Amendment to new heights.”
New heights? Surely he meant to say, new depths.
And it gets even more bizarre. A federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan has signed off on this infliction, and ordered payment of $724,000 to Kosilek’s pro-bono lawyers.
Odder still, the legal team desperately fighting to stop this latest slap in the face to common sense and the taxpayers works for a moonbat Democrat governor who began his own legal career filing frivolous lawsuits against prison officials in Maryland.
But it appears that Michelle Lynne Kosilek is a bridge too far even for ultra-Politically Correct Deval Patrick.
You may recall that back in the ’90s, wife-strangler Kosilek was “diagnosed” with a trendy new malady called gender identity disorder. Knowing full well the type of bleeding-heart crackpots who sit on the bench in Massachusetts, the Department of Correction signed off on psychotherapy, female hormone treatments, laser hair removal, etc.
Just not the ultimate cruel and unusual punishment. So Kosilek sued and prevailed in federal district court. Now the state is appealing to the First Circuit.
By the way, despite Kosilek’s alleged anguish and suffering, he/she has not tried to commit suicide.
Here is what Judge Mark Wolf wrote when ordering the sex-change operation, and if Ronald Reagan could read what his appointee wrote, James Madison wouldn’t be the only one turning over in his grave.
“There is no less intrusive means to correct the prolonged violation of Kosilek’s Eighth Amendment right to adequate medical care.”
After Kosilek gets the sex change, what’s to stop her (what other word can you use at that point?) from turning around and re-suing the DOC for violating her Eighth Amendment rights by allowing the operation? After all, didn’t the ACLU et al. go bonkers in Kansas when the legislature merely tried to impose chemical castration on convicted sex-offenders?
To top it all off, Judge Wolf issued a not-so-veiled threat to the state and Deval:
“Resistance at all costs could end up costing the taxpayers quite a lot. The defendant, up to the governor, should consider whether it’s in the public’s interest to do that.”
In other words, resistance is futile. And behind Kosilek a queue of other DOC inmates are reportedly lining up for their own one-way “gender reassignments” to MCI-Framingham. Thanks a lot, President Madison.