Massachusetts Democrats to the People: “What’s Ours is Ours and What’s Yours is Ours”

This is what a one-party state looks like.

On Thursday, the Massachusetts House voted 128-26 to gut a law passed by the voters that provided tax relief to the working classes on those rare occasions when the Commonwealth collected too much money.

Last year, the taxpayers – not to be confused with Democrats – were refunded $3 billion of their own money under the provisions of the law, known as 62F.

The hackerama was outraged, that people who worked would get back some of their own money. They were determined to get rid of 62F. It was priority number one once the state Republican party committed mass suicide last year.

How many Democrats, you ask, voted to abide by the will of the people and uphold the referendum question that passed easily in 1986 with a 54 percent majority?

Two. Exactly two Democrats voted to continue giving taxpayers a break — Reps. Colleen Garry of Dracut and Jeff Turco of Winthrop.

When it comes to the subject of working people and their money, the Democrats on Beacon Hill now embrace the same philosophy as the old Mafia:

“What’s ours is ours and what’s yours is ours.”

With all Republican opposition eliminated (thanks Jim Lyons and Geoff DoorDash Diehl!), the ascendant Democrats have split into factions.

The more pragmatic Democrats seek to drive out society’s productive classes more… slowly. You can compare them to the cook who wants to drop the frog into a pot of room-temperature water, and then turn up the heat slowly, so that the frog doesn’t notice he’s being boiled alive until it’s too late to jump out.

The other faction – the “progressives” – want to get the cauldron boiling, and then toss the frog in. The problem is, sometimes the frog jumps out and escapes, kind of like everyone stuck in Massachusetts now who has a real job, as opposed to some phony-baloney position in academia, or a non-profit, or God help us, “advocacy.”

At present, the slow-boil Democrats seem to have the upper hand. To cover up their cold-blooded murder of 62F, they attached a fig leaf, tinkering with the death and capital-gains taxes, as if anyone who has any real money is sticking around the Commonwealth to be beggared by the welfare-industrial complex.

Those people are already gone, or are on their way out the door.

The insanity of this new one-party state was clear in the House debate Thursday afternoon. This is what far-left Cambridge Rep. Mike Connolly said about the tax nightmare, as quoted by the State House News Service:

“There was a time when they called it Taxachusetts. That was a long time ago.”

This is how unhinged they have become.

“The story of taxes in Massachusetts throughout my adult life has been a story of tax cuts – for the rich, for big corporations.”

No, in fact it’s been a story of tax cuts passed by the voters being gutted by Democrats. And Thursday’s 128-26 vote to kill 62F was the latest example.

The leftists objected to even the modest tax cuts the leadership offered, because it would deprive them of some of the billion-plus dollars that they’re determined to grab after jacking up the top income tax rate in the state by 80 percent.

The local Reds called that obscene hike “Fair Share.” Because to Democrats, what could be fairer than stealing someone else’s hard-earned money and giving it to layabouts who don’t work?

With the teachers’ unions spending $23 million on the campaign, the graduated income tax was narrowly approved by the voters last year, 52-48 percent, a narrower margin than 62F won with in 1986.

Even hapless Republican House leader Brad Jones discerned the double standard here.

“This was approved by the voters,” he said of 62F. “There are arguments that we need to respect the voters on ‘Fair Share.’ Why not respect the voters on 62F?”

Because, to repeat the Democrats’ mantra: What’s ours is ours and what’s yours is ours.

Another thing the Democrats despised about 62F – the money was returned in the same proportions as it had been taken. In other words, if you paid a lot in taxes, you got back more. If you paid nothing – again, like most Democrats – you didn’t get back anything.

In other words, it was a graduated return of money. The Democrats hated the flat income tax and wanted everyone to pay their “fair share.” So after making sure 62F could never be used again – the threshold to trigger a refund was raised to an unreasonably high level – the powers that be also changed the way the returns are calculated.

Henceforward, the money would go back at a flat rate – not only will Democrats on welfare get “refunds” of taxes they didn’t pay, so will illegal aliens.

“We’re simply changing how it gets distributed,” explained ancient Newton state rep Ruth Balser. “What we’re doing today, consistent with everything in the bill, we’re trying to make it fairer, trying to make it more equitable.”

Ah yes, equity.

So let me get this straight – a flat income tax rate is somehow unfair and must be repealed and replaced by a graduated system to punish people who have real jobs. But returning over collections of taxes under that same graduated formula – that’s unfair, and must be replaced with the same flat rate that the Democrats loathed in the income tax rate.

What could be fairer than that? Taking a tax refund away from someone who works, and giving it to someone who doesn’t.

It was left to GOP Rep. Peter Durant of Spencer to point out a final inconvenient truth.

“Here are some facts to remember – 1100 people per week leave this state. Eleven hundred people, over 50,000 people a year, leave the state citing the high cost of living, the high taxes they pay, the difficulty of making ends meet here.

“Think about that, 1100 people a week. A recent poll said 40 percent of all residents in Massachusetts were considering leaving – 40 percent.”

How soon until the Democrats make Prop. 21/2 “fairer?” How soon until the property-tax cap becomes Prop. 41/2?

This is what a one-party state looks like.

Will the last American leaving Massachusetts please turn out the lights?