Deval Patrick’s problem with promises
So there Deval Patrick was, Thursday morning at dawn, back on television after all these years, electrifying a nation with his long unawaited announcement that he’s running for president.
“This time,” he intoned, “is about whether the day after the election, America will keep her promises.”
Promises? Promises? Deval Patrick is promising to keep a… promise.
Suddenly I recalled an earlier… promise… that Deval Patrick made, back in 2006. Actually, it was the centerpiece of his first campaign for governor. TOP ARTICLES1/5READ MORE‘SCANDALOUS’ SURE TO SATISFY ENQUIRING MINDS
Deval was going to cut everyone’s property taxes. Now do you remember?
Here’s a few of his promises from that first campaign in 2006:
June 3: “The tax to cut is the property tax.”
Sept. 13: “The tax to cut is the property tax. That’s the one squeezing people.”
You can see why he won. So what if he had no power to cut any municipal taxes — it sounded great, in fact too good to be true. Which it was, but no matter — he won the election. Now it’s 2007, and he keeps promising pie in the sky.
Feb. 22 press release: “(Deval) plans to fund property tax relief by closing corporate tax loopholes.”
March 2007 at a rally at Boston Latin: “You want property tax relief? Come and get it! You want it? Come and get it!”
That one I remember, because afterwards I publicly asked him for the address where I could come and get it. I wanted to put the address into my GPS and get right over there to get my property tax relief. At the time, I was paying in both the city of Boston and the town of Wellesley — I could have used some “relief,” big time.
Fast forward to April 2010. Deval was running for re-election, so he made a brief appearance on my radio show. You know what my first question to him was.
“It’s coming!” Deval shouted. “It’s coming.”
No, it wasn’t. What came instead was what he called a “modest” increase in the meals tax, and a very immodest 25 percent increase in the sales tax. Then he signed off on an automatic annual gasoline tax increase and a sales tax on alcohol, which already has an excise tax on it — in other words, a tax on a tax.
Those last two Deval taxes were so odious that the voters repealed them at the ballot box. Do you know how outrageous a tax has to be for the modern, dumbed-down Massachusetts electorate to rise up in rebellion and strike it down? Twice.
The one thing we never, ever got was the property tax cut Deval promised.
Of course the Globe tried to cover up for him. He is, after all, a Democrat. A couple of weeks after he promised me, on air, that my tax cut was coming, the bow-tied bum kissers ran a story about his lie, I mean deferred promise, with this headline:
“Relief for homeowners stalled amid recession.”
And it still is, in the hottest U.S. economy ever. But of course it wasn’t Deval’s fault, it couldn’t be. Bush did it! Bush was the ultimate bogeyman, at least until Trump came along.
Thursday, Deval was of course counting on everyone having forgotten, which we all had. But then he goes out and throws the p-word in our faces again, and guess what — it all comes back.
How dumb does he think the voters are? Well, we elected him twice, after all. Not to mention his buddy, Barry Obama.
Actually, in 2008 Obama picked up where his li’l buddy left off. Remember? He guaranteed he would never, ever raise taxes on anyone making under $250,000 a year.
And he kept his promise — for two weeks. Then he jacked up the federal cigarette tax, but hey, no problem, because we all know cigarettes are only smoked by millionaires, right?
But Obama’s biggest Deval pinky promise was the “Affordable Care Act.”
“If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health plan, you can keep your health care.”
And don’t forget, Obamacare will cut your health-care premiums $2,500 a year.
Still waiting on those promises, too.
So now, all these years later, Deval runs for president and says it’s about whether the day after the election America will keep her promises.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
(Check out Howie’s latest podcasts at howiecarrshow.com.)
