The Nadler Definition of "Equity"

"The basic costs of life in the New York region are much steeper than in most parts the country.  The reality is that a dollar in New York isn't worth nearly as much as a dollar in Spokane or Knoxville or Topeka. It's time for our tax code to take reality into account when assessing someone's tax liability."  - Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Leftist Democrat from New York

In its ongoing war against the middle 3/4ths of the North American continent, i.e., "flyover country", the national Democrat Party now presents to you Jerrold Nadler, leftist Democrat congressman from Manhattan.  Mr. Nadler, along with an impressive array of fellow leftist nutjob Democrats in the congress, announced on Monday the introduction of what he and his cohorts shamefully call the Tax "Equity" Act, a bill that would require the Internal Revenue Service to adjust individual federal income tax rates based on the average cost of living in each state.

Thus, people living in states where leftist Democrats have reigned supreme for decades and taxed the bejeebers out of the public – creating the high costs of living endured by residents of traditional Democrat states like New York, California, Michigan, etc. – would see their federal income tax rates adjusted downwards as a reward for so stupidly voting for leftist Democrats for all those years.  Meanwhile, residents of states like Texas, who have chosen to elect more prudent stewards of the state coffers and tax rates over those same decades, resulting in a much lower cost of living, would see their federal income tax rates raised as a punishment for having the good sense to keep leftist nitwits out of statewide offices and their legislatures.

No, I'm not kidding here.  This is real.  This concept is typical of what Democrats in Washington these days refer to as "social justice", a philosophy wherein the federal government is used to punish Americans for sensible and prudent behavior, i.e., not voting for leftist Democrats.

In addition to his whining about "the basic costs of life in the New York region" being higher than much of the rest of the country, Mr. Nadler went on to express dismay over the fact that, in addition to having one of the highest state income taxes in the nation – New York City residents also must pay a City income tax on top of that – New York state also sports some of the highest property tax rates in the country.

Well, who is responsible for that?  The unarguable truth of the matter is that the Democrat Party has utterly dominated the political life of New York in modern times.  Oh, the Republicans will occasionally elect a governor and gain control of one house of the legislature every now and then, but over the long haul, there is simply no question that the state suffers the effects of decades of leftwing Democrat governance.  The same is true of other high-tax, high-cost-of-living states like California, Massachusetts, Washington, Minnesota, New Mexico and on, and on. 

The cost of living is higher in traditional Democrat states due to favorable treatment of unions that artificially raise the price of every good or service, liberal social regimes that must be paid for with steadily rising taxes, and a refusal to ever consider cutting spending when budget deficits inevitably occur.  California today finds itself on the verge of insolvency – the state has in reality been insolvent for several years now, avoiding the final fate only due to massive borrowing and federal bailouts – as the direct result of irresponsible governance by the Democrat Party and liberal Republicans like its current governator.  New York, Michigan and other traditionally liberal states are well on their way.

Meanwhile, New Jersey finds itself getting back on track towards solvency and economic recovery thanks to the determined efforts to control state government spending and taxing and force concessions from government unions by Republican Governor Chris Christie.  If Christie succeeds in bending the Democrat legislature and unions to his will, the long-term result of his fiscal restraint will inevitably a lower cost of living for the people of his state.  This is the kind of behavior by public officials that should be applauded.

Instead, Nadler and his fellow leftist nitwits seek to reward the irresponsible state and local officials in New York and other high tax, heavily-unionized states, as well as the irresponsible voters who put them into office.

If residents in New York and California suffer from high taxes and a high cost of living, they should be encouraged by federal officials to take a step back, examine what it is about their own selfish behavior that has led to that situation, and work to change that behavior.  The simple truth of the matter is that consistent voting for leftist nitwits to state and local offices leads inevitably to high taxes and higher costs of living. 

Rewarding voters for such stupid, self-destructive behavior will only make their situation worse, but then, such self-destructive behavior is the life's blood of the perpetuation of the Liberal Zoo that America has become.

The 6 Step Cycle of Leftist Rationalization

In a column last week, E.J. Dionne, our favorite whiney, slobbering leftist nitwit columnist, complained that the Obama/Pelosi fake stimulus bill was “if anything, too small”. This is invariably the final rationalization of those on the left when their programs turn out to be unmitigated disasters for the nation – they would have been successful had they just been larger, and if anything, they were just too small.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal? If anything, just too small. Thus, over the decades, Democrat-dominated congresses enacted constant expansions of the benefits of Social Security without enacting corresponding expansions of worker contributions, leaving the system today basically bankrupt.

Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society? If anything, just too small. Trillions of wasted dollars later, the poverty rate today is higher than it was in 1965, the African American family has been decimated by the perverse incentives contained in Great Society programs, and liberals continue to contend it all would have worked if only we’d have spent more.

Johnson looked at John F. Kennedy’s minimal interventionist policy in Vietnam and said it was “if anything, just too small.” Out of that keen observation, the U.S. presence in that country soon grew from a few hundred advisors to more than half a million handcuffed-by-political-considerations troops, and the mother of all quagmires was born.

FDR, at Yalta, looked at Stalin’s plans for annexing much of Eastern Europe into his growing communist bloc and said it was “if anything, just too small.” Ok, he really didn’t do that, but he might as well have, as Stalin got everything he wanted out of that conference, ensuring communist domination of Eastern Europe for half a century.

Last year’s $100 billion 2-year increase in the budget of the soviet-style Department of Education? If anything, just too small. The result of this and the other enormous increases in the baseline budgets of a vast array of wasteful socialist federal programs is that the nation now faces a structural annual deficit in excess of $1 trillion as far as the eye can see.

A cap and trade bill that would waste $2 trillion taxpayer dollars over the next decade to marginally decrease man-made carbon dioxide emissions? If anything, just too small. With the failure of this human atrocity of an idea, the Obama Administration now pursues the wrecking of the U.S. economy by seeking soviet-style command-and-control regulation of “greenhouse gases” by the Environmental Protection Agency under the auspices of the Clean Air Act.

A bill to socialize the finest system of healthcare delivery in the world? If anything, just too small. Most of those on the political left will tell you that the bills currently before congress are too timid, and achieve their goal of a federal takeover of 1/6th of the economy over too long a period of time. They’d much prefer that their Democrat heroes in congress and the President commit outright political suicide by passing an outright, immediate single payer system into law and telling an adamantly opposed public to shut up and take it.

Harry Truman at least was correct when he looked at the bombs that were used in the fire-bombing of Dresden and said “if anything, they’re just too small.” Hiroshima and Nagasaki followed shortly thereafter, and a world war was ended. Then again, Truman may have been a Democrat, but he wasn’t a leftist.

We could go on and on here, but the point is obvious: liberals will never admit to the failure of their consistently failed policy ideas. In their minds, the only reason for the failure of their socialist experiments is that they just weren’t well-funded enough. In other words, if anything, they were just too small.

And so, we invariably end up with the same 6-step cycle of rationalization we have seen from President Obama and his lapdogs in the media like Mr. Dionne.

Step 1: Pass a hideously ill-considered, shamefully wasteful program into law. This step is known as Abject Stupidity. Step 2: Stand idly by as the program utterly and completely fails to produce the results you misled the public into believing it would produce. This step is known as Inevitability of Outcome. Step 3: Look on as the people slowly wake up to the reality of what is happening in Step 2, and public opinion turns radically against you. This step is known as Uh-Ohhhh. Step 4: Begin the process of pointing fingers of blame at anyone else who happens to be standing nearby in order to deflect attention away from yourself. This step is known as Desperate Responsibility Avoidance. Step 5: When Step 4 doesn’t work, team up with your fellow liberals to develop a common set of lies to try to convince the public that they simply misunderstood what the program was intended to do, and that it is really producing exactly the intended results. This step is known as Joe Biden Will Say Literally Anything.

Step 6: Finally, when all else fails, and your party is now facing an enormous repudiation of everything it stands for at the polls next November, try to shift blame to the Republicans, painting them as obstructionists and blaming them for making your program, “if anything, just too small.” This step is known as The Last Refuge of a Leftist Nitwit, and is ably personified by E.J. Dionne.

So, to summarize, here is the 6-Step Cycle of Leftist Rationalization:

Step 1: Abject Stupidity

Step 2: Inevitability of Outcome

Step 3: Uh-Ohhhhh

Step 4: Desperate Responsibility Avoidance

Step 5: Joe Biden Will Say Literally Anything

Step 6: The Last Refuge of a Leftist Nitwit

A sincere word of thanks to Mr. Dionne for playing the role of this week’s Poster Child for the slow-motion suicide of the tired, dying, dinosaur leftist news media.