Thursday, July 27, 2006

Pandering at its finest

Senator Bob, Pull my finger and I'll vote against your bill even though I'm for it, Menendez has proposed federal legislation that would grant homeowners who claim the standard deduction (meaning those who don't itemize) and extra $500 or $1000 deduction to compensate for rising property taxes. So reports Herb Jackson, Washington correspondent for The Record.

Obviously this is not a serious legislative effort, but a response to the polls that indicate that New Jersey residents have had enough of property taxes. And Mendendez has already demonstrated that he thinks the voters are stupid.

Why is this not serious?

1) The only people who could benefit from such a deduction are homeowners who do not have mortgage interest and or property taxes that exceed the standard deduction. That is a very small population.

2) The population gets even smaller when you eliminate taxpayers from states that don't have property taxes or have modest property taxes.

So basically, Baggage Bob is proposing legislation that he knows will never go anywhere and that he knows would make very little difference if it did, in order to give himself a better political position in the upcoming election.

To quote the fictional President Andrew Sheppard, "We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. ..." ..."Bob, your fifteen minutes are up."

Menendez is not a serious leader. He's a political hack only out for himself and his cronies.

1 comment:

Downtowner said...

I cannot see how Mr. Kean is any more serious about this position than Mr. Menendez.

I do not believe that Mr. Kean has the same kind of non-political work history or that his record of service as a public official is as good as Mr. Menendez's.

In this race, certainly Republicans are going to encourage other Republicans to vote for Mr. Kean, that is part of things. But I cannot see anything all that beneficial to the state by sending Mr. Kean to DC.

His father...I would vote for myself. He is an incredible statesman and that should go with saying. But, I don't think I'd vote for a relative from off the hip. This country is in enough problems voting for peoples' relatives.