Silly Jackie, pledges are for politicians with backbones…and conviction - Granite Grok

Silly Jackie, pledges are for politicians with backbones…and conviction

Silly Jackie

Using the oh-so-clever “we need to keep an open mind” excuse, former state senator and current Democrat gubernatorial candidate Jackie Cilley has pledged not to pledge to veto any broad-based taxes in New Hampshire, should she ascend to the post in November.

Calling them “simplistic”, Cilley declared earlier this year that “I won’t play pledge politics with the future of our state.”  We can only assume that if pushed by her base, or by the State Employees Association (SEA, affiliated with SEIU), she’ll jump on command to support a state sales and/or income tax.

Smart move, Jackie.  Keep ’em coming.

It’s a safe bet that her no-pledge stance is a progressive semaphore for backdoor support of new taxes, because later in the same interview she insisted that she would “not compromise in her defense of worker’s collective bargaining power, abortion rights, or the state’s same-sex marriage law.”

Sounds like three solid pledges in a row, right there, don’t you think?

Jackie, who supported the infamous midnight LLC tax before she opposed it (she was “misled” by Governor Lynch), further justifies my theory, when we look back at her tax related votes in the Senate (here, here).  Once she figured out that she was “misled” by Lynch (can you say “checks and balances”?), she offered some alternative taxes; one on insurers and the other on the Seabrook power plant – a “risk” mitigation tax.  Combined, these taxes would have brought in more than the lost LLC revenue.  By the way: she tried to justify the tax on life, property, casualty, fire, and title insurance, reminding us that “every state in New England, except Connecticut and New Hampshire have kept this tax at 2%“.  By that logic, then, it makes perfect sense to raise it here, right?  So much for maintaining the New Hampshire advantage.

So, Jackie, let’s try to be a little more creative and a lot less obvious as you go through the campaign process.  After suffering four years of Obama’s masterful double-speak, we have become experts in spotting an Orwellian tapestry in the making – and we see right through you.  I’m betting even some Democrats and Independents will too, on primary day.

>