Most of your commentary reveals a belief in the politics of envy. Which branch of conservatism did you say you represent?
It is important to remain civil and I will do my best, but you sound like you’ve gotten into the wrong tent and are rattling around disruptively.
Since we don’t agree at all on the concept of flat versus “progressive” income taxes, is there common ground on cutting the size and cost of government? Christie has paid lip service in the form of “waste and corruption”. Was there an actual plan in there somewhere, or was his “across the board” cutting, unsustainable in an unchanged expense environment, mere rhetoric as I suspect, or code words for taxes on something else you don’t currently expect or call taxes?
I don’t expect you to speak authoritatively for Christie, so perhaps you could provide a link?
As a follow up, it is just one tax that has been talked about here, but the major tax burdening NJ residents is a property tax that is probably the highest in the nation. The income tax was supposed to relieve a portion of that in support of education and has not done so. The sales tax was also supposedly enacted to help education but has also just been absorbed into the general funds.
Lonegan’s plan addresses both these issues by apportioning the income tax equally to all school districts, thus relieving 20% of the property tax. That’s an across the board reduction with some gravitas. Moreover, that real reduction is in place of a hokey “rebate” that is NOT a rebate, but merely a separately borrowed sum that is distributed each year around election time to get the governor’s name in front of voters.
If a company is found to be paying a dividend without the income/free cash flow to support it, and in fact is paying the dividend with borrowed money, the BOD will be tossed. If a mutual fund is paying dividends not justified by its NAV, it’s called fraud. So if NJ keeps paying a “rebate” that is borrowed at some interest, AND is not justified by the state’s real income, what else is there to call it but a gimmick? It could be called fraud, and Jon Corzine and Chris Christie support it.