AJ DiCintio

Max, Tax & Principles
January 4, 2010

Even though Max Baucus is a VIP in the plot to stab America in the back with the dagger euphemistically named the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” he hasn’t achieved the kind of fame attained by other Democratic leaders of the conspiracy.

But we shouldn’t be surprised by this anonymity; for Max isn’t a tenth as famous as Harry Reid, who holds two royally rotten titles:

King of Bribes (While it may not be true that Harry has bribed more people than Satan, it is an incontrovertible truth that he earned his title by consummating a myriad of deals with the human devils called politicians.)

Gangster King (Even Al Capone and others of his ilk didn’t have the stomach to set up every member of their families in the filthily lucrative lobbying business.)

Neither is Max half as well known as Dick Durbin, the Prince of Perversion who, prior to representing himself as an honest healthcare reformer, boasted that he was the nation’s most learned historian and most ardent patriot — citing as evidence his condemnation of American troops for abusing prisoners with methods that make torture-pikers of the Nazis, the Soviets, and the Khmer Rouge.

Nor is Max even close to being as recognizable as the dirty-handed fixer Chris Dodd, the like father, like son Connecticut Yankee in King Harry’s Court who could teach Wall Street’s most unscrupulous mavens a thing or two thousand about financial deals that reek of corruption and stupidity.

Now, despite the fact that Max significantly raised his public awareness numbers when he recently delivered a speech in which he "assailed” not "the seasons” but the Senate’s Republican minority — speaking in the persona of Miniver Cheevy, the archetype of the chronically tipsy, excuse-slurring American complainer — he desperately needs more publicity.

Here, then, with the hope that it earns Max the fame he deserves, are a few observations about something the Senator from Montana didn’t mention when he and other Democratic gang leaders added insult to injury by carrying out their ugly act on Christmas Eve.

The Baucus healthcare "reform” bill sucks power into Washington with the force of a 3,000 mile wide F5 tornado but blows back billions in new tax burdens on the states (except those, such as Louisiana and Nebraska, in which King Harry’s bribes force every citizen to become a welfare fraud).

For example, Politico reports that Max’s Medicaid requirements will cost California "an additional $3 or $4 billion annually,” possibly damning to bankruptcy a state whose ’09 deficit totaled an astounding $22.2 billion.

New York’s Governor David Paterson may well have played lowball when he said Max’s "reform” will cost his state an additional $1 billion a year. But whatever the final colossal number, it will, according to Politico, be piled on top of New York’s stunning "$6.8 billion budget shortfall heading into the 2010 fiscal year.”

An onerous, ever-increasing annual burden will also fall on 27 other states and DC, all of which suffered from budget deficits in 2009.

(If you want to see how much your state was in the red last year, steady yourself and then go to www.swivel.com/data_sets/spreadsheet/1016947.)

You say you live in a state that managed to avoid a deficit? Fine. But there’s not a smidgen of a reason for you to be smug about Max’s bill.

For proof, let’s see whether or not you regard the situation faced by Pennsylvanians as a metaphor for your own.

In ’09 the PA legislature had to battle for 100 days before defeating Democratic proposals that called for a number of new taxes, including a shocking, "temporary”16% increase in the state’s income tax championed by Governor Ed "What, Me Worry About Hard Times?” Rendell. 

Moreover, Pennsylvania faces big-time tax increases in the future, given that, instead of cost cutting, its politicians are placing an Obama-sized portion of hope in the ephemeral cushion that is one-time stimulus money and the overblown balloon that is amazing new revenues huffed and puffed by economic recovery.

On top of that dark reality, Max’s healthcare bill will cost the state "an estimated $1.5 billion [annually]” in increased Medicaid costs. (Michael J. Nerozzi of Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Foundation)

That ought to strike fear into the hearts of the 60% of the Keystone State residents who actually pay the commonwealth’s income tax (the 60% figure derived from a perverse boast made by the Alfred E. Neuman of Harrisburg).

But if it doesn’t, the following news about a titanic, new indirect tax will.

[Under the Baucus bill] health insurance premiums [in PA] would increase dramatically — by as much as 54 percent for families and individuals, according to a Blue Cross-Blue Shield report.

A Commonwealth Foundation study indicates that [the bill] will cost [every Pennsylvanian] an additional $4,000-plus a year. (Both quotes from the PA Commonwealth Foundation)

Now that the brazen tax insidiousness of healthcare "reform” has been brought into the light, we can see that Max and his fellow cowards in Congress are planning to backdoor de facto tax increases across the nation, levies so huge they would never stand a chance of being approved by a state’s legislature.

(By the way, Max and Friends have the same tactic in mind regarding energy — and not just with respect to utility bills but everything citizens purchase.)

Finally, there is the most important reality regarding Max’s bill:

Its tax implications pale in comparison to the fact that a Federal Government takeover of 16% of the economy represents one of the greatest threats to the principles on which this nation was founded.

Yes, they pale, because principle trumps money every time, a truth Thoreau captured when he mused as follows after having witnessed a massive war between red and black ants:

"There was not one hireling there.  I have no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea.”

And yet it is centralized government’s "three-penny tax” that always goes hand in hand with its destruction of the principles "our ancestors fought for.” 

(Thoreau knew that truth as well, evidenced by this line from "Civil Disobedience.” When I meet a government which says to me, "Your money or your life,” why should I be in haste to give it my money?)

As bad as the foregoing news is, it has not even mentioned the effect Max’s plan for healthcare "reform” will have on healthcare itself.

However, this discussion about principles and taxes is sufficient to prompt the following question:

"What will we, the heirs of the legacy bequeathed us by the simple farmers of Thoreau’s beloved "Concord Fight,” do about the abomination?”

The hope here is that we will continue the battle against Max, his taxes, and his grasp for power, fighting, at the very least, with the unshrinking resolve as well as the "patriotism and heroism” Thoreau witnessed at his woodpile 150 years ago.