printGovernment taxes you indirectly, through spending, borrowing and inflating the money supply. The upshot is that your money’s purchasing power is drastically reduced overtime. That you can take to the bank.
Every Bill the overlords pass, moreover, “requires” more hirees and more salaries in perpetuity, that is if you take into account the generous overtime payments, pensions and other benefits the oink sector awards itself. Government is a tax-increasing scheme. This is why when the Republican presidential hopefuls make a song and a dance out of pledging to Americans for Tax Reform not to raise taxes on the American people; they do so with impunity. They are, nevertheless, full of it. Besides, didn’t they make similar pledges during the previous election cycle? Or was it the midterm prior?
Chris Christie Wednesday became the latest Republican to sign a pledge to “oppose and veto any and all efforts to increase taxes.”
Americans for Tax Reform has been urging presidential candidates to sign the pledge. In 2012, all Republicans except one, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, did.
Christie, the governor of New Jersey, is the ninth of the 17 prominent 2016 Republican candidates to agree to no tax increases. Also making the commitment are Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rick Perry, former governor of Texas, former business executive Carly Fiorina, former Sen. Rick Santorum, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, and Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas.
Christie’s fiscal record has also come in for criticism from some conservatives. The Club for Growth Tuesday didn’t list Christie as one of its acceptable 2016 candidates.
“The Club for Growth praised the governor for winning concessions from public employee unions and withdrawing from a multistate compact designed to curb emissions contributing to climate change,” reported NJ.com. But, the group added, “there are enough warning signs in Christie’s record to give fiscal conservatives pause,” such as his decision to expand Medicaid coverage as part of the Affordable Care Act.
Optics, that’s all this is.
Speaking of the season for dopey pledges, I agree with Rachel Maddow, for once, that Trump signing the GOP pledge not to run as a third-party candidate is “a giant screwup.” Trump may have lost “a lot of leverage.” Bernie Sanders, who serves as an independent in U.S. Congress, but caucuses with the Democratic Party—he has not felt the need to sign any pledge to adhere to the Democratic Party’s do’s and don’ts.