HOWARD PEARL VOTED FOR A PAINT TAX. He was also the 5th R vote, therefore arguably the one responsible for its advancement because 8+5=13. Read that again if he’s YOUR senator. I put those words in all caps because he’s MY senator and I am adding today’s HB451 roll call to Howard’s senatorial rap sheet. He needs to be primaried, and saying Howard voted for a paint tax sounds similar to saying Melanie voted for an income tax. However, a paint tax is really a SALES TAX.
As revolting as it is to acknowledge, Melanie was my senator when she voted for an income tax. Stay with me here because most people already know that, but did you know that Melanie and Tim Lang are birds of a feather?
When Denise asked Tim right after recess and before the roll call if HB451 is a tax, Tim answered that it’s a user fee, his way of denying that it’s a sales tax. There’s an old Edith Tucker sound byte of a similar nature. When anyone engages Melanie for a discussion about 2019’s SB1, which is an INCOME TAX, she denies having voted for one because she calls it family leave. Anyone can use pretzel logic and free speech to call anything something by the name of something else, which is what Tiny Tim and Melanie have done and presumably will keep doing.
Howard Pearl needs to be primaried, as do the 4 other rogues who voted the wrong way. They are Rochefort, McConkey, Denise, and obviously Tim Lang. I encourage their constituents to recruit someone to primary them as they all have a variety of reasons to be primaried, not just their votes on HB451, and I would be happy to assist anyone who volunteers to primary any of them as they put together rap sheets for their incumbent senators. I suggest ordering some bold yellow signs with black letters and the same font as the “Melanie Levesque voted for an income tax” signs that are well known in District 12.
Lastly, let’s praise the 11 Rs that voted correctly and give some individual recognition to 3 of them who participated in the floor discussion. Daryl Abbas gave a well-spoken statement in opposition to the bill. Victoria Sullivan asked clarifying questions in the chamber and spoke against the bill in the Ways & Means committee executive session. Senator Murphy introduced an amendment to delay the effective date of the bill, clearly noting that he’s still against the bill, yet Tim Lang aggressively pushed back against the amendment. Perhaps his zeal for doing so was in passing the bill in its unamended form straight to the Corner Office thus avoiding a Committee of Conference. Senator Murphy made an excellent 3-minute speech against the bill in the Senate chamber, in addition to speaking against it in committee. He gets the HB451 MVP award. Now let’s give Kelly Ayotte a fat red Sharpie to put this Dem bill out of its misery!
