Massachusetts lawmakers play soak-the-taxpayers game

The hackerama trotted out the usual cornucopia of cliches Wednesday as they rubber-stamped the proposed state income tax hike onto the 2022 ballot.

The greed-crazed Legislature’s mad scheme is to raise the top marginal rate from 5 to 9% (but only on “millionaires,” and that’s a pinky promise).

It’s an investment, the payroll patriots claimed.

A $2 billion investment in, among other things, the future, in people living paycheck to paycheck, in gateway communities, in essential programs, in the “faith” community, in our most vulnerable residents blah blah blah …

But the key word here is “investment.”

The “I” word was used a total of eight times by the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Jason Lewis, a self-proclaimed professional “legislator,” and Rep. James O’Day, who lists his alleged occupation as “licensed social worker.”

According to the State House News Service, Lewis touted the need to “invest the proceeds … to help fund investments … public investments to recover from the pandemic … investments in a stronger education system and transportation infrastructure.”

O’Day babbled on about “investments in these common goals … an active investment in our communities … investments and lift our economy into equitable recovery by addressing the racial inequalities … a sustainable source of revenue to make the investments …”

“Investment” is a dog whistle for the Democrats’ non-working-class constituents. The layabouts hear the I-word and they think three words: “More free stuff!”

Working people hear the I-word and they start thinking three different words: “I’m outta here!”

The first five times the hacks put this soak-the-taxpayers grift on the ballot, it was defeated. The SJC slapped it down a sixth time. But now the Democrats think the electorate is sufficiently dumbed-down to pick their own pockets.

It’s a long 17 months to November 2022, but let’s go over a few of the claims that are already being floated by the payroll Charlies.

Here’s a mega-whopper from O’Day: “The MBTA struggles with inadequate funding every day.”

This is the same MBTA which was basically out of service for an entire year, but didn’t lay off any of their bloated workforce. Granted, at one point they tried, but the pols raised hell, because the T is less a transportation service than it is another lucrative welfare handout for the protected classes on its payroll.

Last year at one point, commuter rail ridership was down 90%, subways 60%, but nothing changed. Can you imagine a private sector company taking a 60-90% hit in revenue and not touching the payroll?

Then there’s the MBTA pension system. Remember they used to call the MBTA “Mr. Bulger’s Transit Authority,” as in Billy Bulger, the former senate president.

Also recall that, until recently, a T employee could retire with a full pension after 23 years. Billy Bulger’s son Patrick retired at age 43 in 2007 with a kiss of $55,546 a year. Billy’s nephew Mark Bulger went out at age 45 with a full T pension, and his niece’s husband was 52 when he started collecting at 100%.

This is insanity, and it’s why the hacks are desperate to push through his 80% hike in the income tax, first on “millionaires,” then on everybody else, once the supply of millionaires fails, as it will, instantly.

Even the beneficiaries of these grifts understand it’s a Ponzi scheme. Commonwealth Magazine is a lefty website, and earlier this week, James Rooney of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce penned a piece for them, headlined, “Millionaire tax doesn’t belong in the Mass. Constitution.”

For the record, Rooney finished his 23 years on the T in 1999, at the age of 41, and has since been collecting $62,541.24 a year.

Rooney, by the way, is a popular name on the MBTA pension rolls. There are at least three others, who retired at ages 48, 52 and 53. Then are the five Kineavys — three went out at age 44, the others at 51 and 52.

This is why you can’t retire early. Because you have to keep paying for all the Bulgers and the Rooneys and the Kineavys. You have to pay your fair share, to coin another phrase.

More from O’Day: “Yet 500 of our bridges are structurally deficient.”

The hacks have been pushing this flim-flam since the 1980s, when they were trying to keep the toll booths up on the Mass Pike. Since then they’ve, what, quadrupled the Pike tolls, but the bridge problem apparently remains intractable.

Every year, the Reason Foundation puts out a national survey of highway expenditures in all 50 states. Last year, as always, Massachusetts spent the second highest amount per mile among the 50 states, behind only New Jersey.

In an earlier Reason survey, the state was found to be spending $675,000 per mile of state highway, compared with a national average of $162,000. Administrative costs in Taxachusetts were $78,000 per mile, compared to $10,000 nationwide.

But somehow, it’s never enough. The “infrastructure” continues “crumbling.” The more money we give the hackerama, the more the state falls apart. Go figure.

Here’s one last one howler from O’Day, whose intelligence you can judge by the fact that he is still wearing a mask, or was Wednesday in the House chambers:

“You’re not going to leave a state that has beautiful beaches.”

Really? Florida doesn’t have beautiful beaches? And you can use them just about year-round.

But O’Day’s right about our beautiful beaches. I personally love Tenean Beach in Dorchester. That was one of the scenic locations where Billy Bulger’s serial-killing brother Whitey used to bury the bodies of gangsters and young women he’d murdered.

“I think we can all agree,” O’Day continued, “that Massachusetts is a great place to live.”

Unless a Democrat murders you, that is. But if they do, maybe the politicians will at least drop you into a shallow grave on a beautiful public beach. Like they’re planning to do with everybody in Massachusetts who has a real job.