Compliments of Chuck A.

Sleep is precious. You can go much longer without food than you can without sleep. So of course Democrats want to tax it.

From Maryland:

Democrats pushed through HB 858—a bill that establishes a mattress stewardship program under the guise of promoting safe disposal and recycling. This is another tax on Marylanders as the state sinks into financial turmoil and elevated credit downgrade risks. The new 6% tax on mattresses is on top of the existing 6% sales tax.

How can taxpayers object? It’s for the environment.

The money will be thrown into the maw of a leftist state government that faces a $3.3 billion budget shortfall. By now we know from experience that seizing more money will not close the gap between what Democrats confiscate and what they spend. Rather, it will inspire them to spend even more irresponsibly.

Republican Delegate Mark Fisher wonders what’s next after “mattress stewardship”:

We could have seen this coming back when the Beatles were singing,

(If you drive a car)
I’ll tax the street
(If you try to sit)
I’ll tax your seat
(If you get too cold)
I’ll tax the heat
(If you take a walk)
I’ll tax your feet

And they’ll tax your mattress if you try to sleep.

On tips from Franco and R F.

New York Democrats enraged over Trump reigning in the federal Leviathan are falling back on their favorite standby — namely, taxation:

Gov. Kathy Hochul and US Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand warned that the possible Department of Education eradication President Trump has alluded to will cause property taxes to spike across the state. …

“This is $5.5 billion that the State receives annually from the Department of Education — $3.2 billion goes directly into our budget, $2.3 billion goes to localities. If that money is jeopardized, what I can tell you will happen, localities lose that money, they will have to raise taxes,” Hochul said.

You mean New Yorkers might have to pay to have their children corrupted and indoctrinated rather than educated instead of the rest of the country being forced to finance it? The horror!

Of course, New Yorkers would no longer have to finance the ruining of children’s minds in other parts of the country. But then, other parts of the country might not go along with the Department of Education’s leftist agenda after the federal Swamp has relinquished control of education. That’s what has Hochul so mad.

On tips from Wiggins and WDS 2.0.

The illegal immigration crisis is worse than some realize. Citing data from the Center for Migration Services, a report from Kathy Hochul’s administration acknowledges 470,100 undocumented workers in New York alone, accounting for nearly one in six employees — and that’s just the illegal aliens who have jobs. We are told that the deportations Trump promised will send the state’s economy into a tailspin by depleting manpower.

Few people in the country illegally are involved in high-skilled trades. Says Hochul,

“Most of them work as construction workers, maids/housekeepers, cooks, home and personal care aides, janitors, and delivery drivers, among other occupations.”

Yet for unspecified reasons they cannot be replaced by Americans currently on welfare.

Exacerbating the problem,

Hochul’s report also noted that remote work has contributed to an exodus of New York residents to lower cost states.

Seems like only yesterday Hochul was sneering that New York Republicans should move to Florida — as many have.

Since New York Democrats are worried about the economy, they must be planning to stop spending so much. Or maybe not. Consider the fiscal year 2026 budget:

The budget is a whopping $252 billion, up about $9 billion from the year before, as Hochul advocates for even more government spending and more “redistribution” — a euphemism for confiscating income and giving it to someone who didn’t earn it.

A formerly temporary tax increase will be extended.

These higher tax rates are a key reason why New York is hemorrhaging people at an alarming rate — the fastest rate, in fact, of any state.

At least New York has plenty of clean-burning natural gas it can extract to generate revenue. But I’m forgetting: that would offend the climate.

Meanwhile,

Hochul’s proposed budget also costs taxpayers more than $1 billion in failed “green” energy “investments” that have negative real returns.

Once a city has entered the Democrat Death Spiral — whereby Democrat policies drive out productive citizens, resulting in an ever more Democrat electorate — it is as doomed as formerly wealthy Detroit. As New York has shown, the same applies at the state level.

On tips from Wiggins and Jack D.

Reasons to avoid the electric vehicles Democrats want to force us into continue to accrue. As of yesterday in Wisconsin:

The Wisconsin Department of Revenue says an excise tax of 3 cents per kilowatt-hour will be due on the electricity delivered or placed into the battery or other energy storage device of an EV by a Level 3 charter, or a Level 1 or Level 2 charger installed after March 22, 2024 of an EV charging station, as stipulated by 2023 Wisconsin Act 121.

Anyone with a charging station must register with the Wisconsin Department of Confiscation I mean Revenue.

The registration and excise tax [apply] regardless of whether the charging station is available for public use and whether there is a charge to the consumer for the electricity from the EV charging station.

So as with EV subsidies, wealthy liberals’ enviromoonbat posturing will be subsidized by others.

[T]he tax does not apply to residential EV charging stations.

Until such time as insatiably greedy Big Government wants more money.

On a tip from Steve T.

Detroit was once the wealthiest city in the USA. Then came moonbattery. The Paris of the Midwest succumbed to the Democrat Death Spiral, whereby liberal policies drive out productive citizens and investment, leaving behind an ever more toxic concentration of government-dependent losers who vote for ever more pernicious left-wing politicians. Rather than learning a lesson from this tragedy, we have allowed the cancer to spread. Now whole states are succumbing. Kevin O’Leary a.k.a. Mr. Wonderful has tried to warn us:

In a March 2023 clip that went viral this week, investor and “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary sharply criticized Democratic economic policies and called blue states “uninvestable” during an CNN appearance.

“I don’t put companies here in New York anymore,” O’Leary then told “CNN This Morning” cohosts Kaitlan Collins, Poppy Harlow, and Don Lemon. “Or in Massachusetts, or in New Jersey, or in California. Those states are uninvestable.”

It isn’t just the greedy levels of taxation. As O’Leary observes,

“The regulatory environment is punitive.”

Democrats may kid themselves that after they consolidate control of the federal government, the whole country will be New York, so there will be no red states to escape to. However:

“I had a project in upstate New York behind the grid in Niagara Falls for electricity, a global data center we were building. Eventually, it got so bad with the politicians in the local region and the state policy, we moved it to Norway. … Norway has it now. Thousands of jobs.”

Leave liberals in control and they will do to the entire USA what they did to Detroit.

On a tip from MrRightWingDave.

Whether it’s California, New York, or once great Britain, the story is the same. Leftists take over, they loot with abandon, those who can afford to leave:

Wealthy individuals and entrepreneurs are already fleeing Britain as fears grow over a raft of tax rises…

An exodus is being reported by bankers, financial advisers and business chiefs with experts warning that the Chancellor risks ruining hopes of faster economic growth with a widely expected increase in capital gains tax (CGT).

It comes after Sir Keir Starmer warned last week that those with the “broadest shoulders” would carry the burden of fixing Britain’s ailing public finances.

From each according to his ability…

Ceri Vokes, a partner at law firm Withers Worldwide, who works with entrepreneurs and private equity executives, said a number of her wealthy clients had already moved overseas this year, with the election “the main driver”.

They may not appreciate being left to pick up the gargantuan tab for importing the Third World.

David Lesperance, of Lesperance and Associates, an advisory firm, said Britain’s wealthiest were “getting out while the going is good”.

When a formerly wealthy city like Detroit is destroyed by leftism, it does not come back. The same could hold for whole countries:

Industry leaders warned that it will be hard to win back wealth creators who abandon Britain, adding that the country would risk missing out on thousands of new jobs as a result.

Government is an essential aspect of a healthy civilization. But when leftists gain control, government becomes the enemy. Criminals are allowed to run riot under the two-tier justice system while productive citizens are enslaved through excessive taxation.

On a tip from Bluto.

Three weeks ago, Kamala Harris was no more popular than Joe Biden, whose administration has been a conspicuous failure. If the media is able to keep her in the White House, this will signify a major step in the consolidation of power by leftists. Soft tyranny will transition to hard.

The groundwork has been laid. Consider the IRS following the discordantly named Inflation Reduction Act. As Forbes reported in 2022,

The Schumer-Manchin tax bill … raises taxes and will give the IRS billions to go into what the Wall Street Journal called “beast mode.”

The bill did nothing to reduce the inflation Democrats have caused, but it did hand an extra $80 billion of our money to the IRS.

That $80 billion is more than six times the current annual IRS budget of $12.6 billion.

How can the IRS spend all of that? You guessed it, the bill says a whopping $45.6 billion will be for enforcement, and make no mistake, enforcement is the main directive from Democrats to the IRS.

Enforcement entails weapons:

An official report published by the Government Accountability Office said that at the end of 2017, the IRS had 4,487 guns and 5,062,006 rounds of ammunition in its weapons inventory.

That was before the Democrats gave them another $80 billion to spend.

Ronaldus Magnus said the most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” That applied to a soft tyranny.

After benevolent pretenses have been dispensed with, the scariest words will be, “I’m from the government and I’m here to take your money.”

On a tip from Mr. Freemarket.

There is nothing insatiably greedy leftists won’t tax — including even farts:

Denmark farmers will soon have to pay an extra tax for their livestock’s farts — making it the first country to implement such a measure to target global warming-inducing methane emissions.

Leftist bureauweenies literally expect people to believe that the weather will be nicer if they drive up food prices to punish farmers for their cows farting. Their contempt for those they rule over is infinite.

The gassy tax will apply to cows, sheep and pigs starting in 2030.

Before long the tax will apply to all creatures that fart, including people. According to moonbat doctrine, the main culprit in climate change is CO2, so any creature that breathes will be taxed for that too.

On tips from Wiggins and R F.

On a tip from Jester.

Criminal justice is not the only fundamental aspect of government to be corrupted by the racist ideology of America’s leftist rulers. Another is taxes.

Consider a report from the US Treasury entitled “Advancing Equity Through Tax Reform: Effects of the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2025 Revenue Proposals on Racial Wealth Inequality.” Comments Roger Kimball:

Beginning with its title, this report bristles with loaded buzzwords —“equity,” “racial wealth inequality.” Behind those abstractions, however, is a malevolent plan to destroy middle-class prosperity by brandishing the chief shibboleth of the age: race.

The intent is to manipulate the tax code so as to reward blacks and punish whites. An example of how the Biden Regime plans to do this is by dramatically increasing capital gains taxes. This achieves “racial justice” because whites are more likely to invest.

For a people to live as despised second class citizens in the country they created and maintain is intolerable. What does it take to get the worm to turn?

On tips from R F.