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Howie column ping
Get those signatures and give yourself a pay raise
By Howie Carr | Wednesday, June 18, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

How’d you like to give yourself a 5.3 percent pay increase?

It’s not too late yet, but the deadline is today at 5 p.m. If you want to at least put a question on the November ballot on whether to abolish the state’s 5.3 percent income tax, you need to get the signatures to your city or town hall before the close of business.

Oh sure, there is an underfunded anti-tax group out there rounding up the 11,000 needed signatures, and they seem confident. But you never know - look at what happened to Jim Ogonowski, the would-be Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate against Liveshot Kerry. He fell 30 signatures short - that’s right, 30 - of making the ballot.

So if you haven’t signed the petition to abolish the income tax, all you have to do is go online to the Web site smallgovernmentact.org, download a petition (both sides) and sign it. Then get your spouse to sign it, and your neighbors. You have to get it down to the clerk’s office at City Hall, or Town Hall before 5 p.m.

If somebody you work with lives in a different town, print out a second petition, and get him to sign. He’ll have to drop his off at his town hall on his way home.

I know what you’re thinking. The Legislature will never go along with a $12 billion reduction in the money to hire their friends and relatives, not to mention hand out an extra billion or so in corporate welfare to assorted biotech bandidos.

Maybe. But at the very least, this will make it hot for them. If this abolish-the-income-tax question makes the ballot, the hacks and their pinky-ring unions are going to have to spend millions to make sure their gravy train isn’t derailed by working people. Let’s make ’em spend it all.

Remember Paul Guzzi, a charter member of the forgotten-but-not-gone brigade, a guy who last won an election in 1974. Guzzi now runs the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. Here is his take on the people’s attempt to remove government’s sticky fingers from their wallets:

“It is irresponsible, and it goes too far, and reasonable people understand that.”

So, if you make $50,000 a year, and the 5.3 percent income tax suddenly goes away, you’ll be getting an extra $2,650 a year. An additional $50 or so a week. How irresponsible of you to want to keep that 50 bucks in your pocket, when the “needs” are so great.

How will they come up with that $16,457.16 a month for Billy Bulger’s pension?

Who will pay the salary for Sen. Marzilli?

How will we be able to pay to give every hack in Suffolk County Bunker Hill Day off?

What if there’s not enough money left to pay the state cops to run speed traps? What will happen if state judges have to actually show up for work more than 35 weeks a year?

How will Newton be able to afford its new $200 million high school? And what about Wellesley’s new plan to keep up with the Joneses, with its new $160 million high school?

Who will pay for Deval’s Cadillac?

Hasn’t the governor tightened his belt enough? What about all the community advocates he hasn’t hired yet, to . . . advocate . . . for the community? Who will coordinate the outreach to the outreach coordinators, if he has to keep the increase in his office budget next year to under 80 percent?

Billy Bulger, he of the $16,457.16 gross monthly state pension, used to brag that he could slap a tax on a galloping horse. Well, the galloping horse that is the Massachusetts taxpayer is now hobbling toward the glue factory. There’s nothing left, the needle is on empty, and the native criminal class on Beacon Hill says it’s “irresponsible” to finally put an end to the highway robbery.

We can bring their free ride to a long overdue halt. Turn in the petitions today, even if they’ve only got a couple of signatures on them, just to make sure. Ruin the hacks’ summers. Make it hot for them.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1101526