Melanie Levesque voted for an income tax. That public service reminder never grows old, even though it’s been 3 election cycles since her 2019 crime against NH. While it’s not an election year, I never miss an opportunity to remind everyone, ad nauseam. Melanie’s dear buddy old pal Rosenwald gave me that opportunity yesterday.
While waiting for the House to get to the last bill on their list, I went to the senate gallery because the budget was their big item of the day. For hours, the enemy camp kept introducing amendment after amendment and the Rs quashed them out, one at a time, but not without most of their usual theatrics, diatribes and howling at moon. The one anomaly was that Watters zoomed in on line and spared the body, its staff and the spectators countless hours of what I will call the antics of a senate version of Rep Horrigan. Maybe I’ll send him a thank you email.
Many of yesterday’s Dem amendments were just what one can and would expect. They were repeated lame attempts to insert or reinsert pork into the budget in the form of Bernie’s favorite fare, free stuff. We’ve all heard the words “man of the house,” but since this is the senate, I will call Senator Gray “Man of the Senate.” As Finance chair, he had to rise more than once to remind the body that we don’t have the money in the same manner that a responsible husband/father/breadwinner of a traditional nuclear family would say no to a spending request. However, the Dems were not going to to back off without a tantrum and many of them engaged in what’s called projection. A quick internet search turns up the following words:
“In psychology, projection is a defense mechanism where individuals attribute their own unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or impulses to others.”
Yeah, they accused the Rs of doing what they often do, have done, or want to do. They even tweeted some sound bytes, so maybe I’ll also send their social media staffer a thank you email for doing the legwork. There were several amendments in which Rosenwald and her ilk used projection in the same manner that their media personality kindred spirits have been doing at the federal level. They were/are implying that ending/reducing a freebie or creating a reasonable requirement or obstacle to acquiring the government handout is… (drum roll) …an income tax.
But here’s the thing, all of them would vote for a REAL income tax and two of them have(from their current seats)! Some of them committed that same crime from “the other side of the wall,” but it’s Rosenwald and Watters who get to be first in line to look in the mirror. No matter how much steam you see coming out of Melanie’s ears as she clenches her fists and grunts “family leave,” SB1 was a real income tax. To be clear, it was a tax on payroll income that they called a “premium” at the bottom of Page 2.
Do I get to say it’s “the pot calling the kettle black” without being called a racist? Probably not.
