Happy Tax Day!

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April is the cruelest month, said T.S. Eliot. And that was before the government moved Tax Day from March to April 15.

I try not to look back. But one thing I wish I had done was loosen the thumb screws the government puts into me from taxes. I should have bought a house back when they were a lot cheaper in California. Better yet, I never should have come to California.

If you live somewhere more sensible, you will be shocked the middle class here pays a 10.4% state income tax. That’s not for rich people. They pay 14.4%.

That 10.4% is levied even those in the lower middle-class, such as myself. If I lived in a civilized state, such as Texas, Florida and Tennessee, which have no state income tax and much lower property prices, I’d be about in the middle of the middle class. Not here. The state is so badly managed I pay $2,450 a month for a tiny efficiency in Irvine, plus $84 a month “fees.” I stay here only because of my friends, the Latin Mass approved by my bishop I usually go to and, yes, the weather. Otherwise – outta here.

If I had children, I would have departed long ago. Most of my friends with young children have done so, and others are planning to, just to escape the horrible government schools. To avoid them, you have to earn even more money to send your kids to private or parochial schools. That means an income of $250,000 – not a typo – just to raise your kids here if you want a shotgun shack with a mortgage.

Even then, some of your kids’ playmates will be attending those government schools. And recently the far-left Democrat Legislature turned down a Republican proposal to notify parents if their child – their child, not the government’s! – maybe has “gender dysphoria” – that is, in the demented eyes of government “psychologists,” is showing “trans” tendencies, even though there’s no “trans” because there’s only two sexes, not “genders,” a grammatical term, and you can’t switch between them like you can allegiance to a sportsball team.

That’s what my immense state taxes fund. On top of immense federal taxes. Gangs of pickpockets.

Sticking with this Delusional State, our governor is lusting for the Oval Office. And what a piece of work he is. Having blown the state budget with wild overspending, a year ago he increased my lower middle-class taxes to that 10.4% from 9.3%. Even as he moved into a $9.3 million mansion in the Bay Area, meaning a chauffeured ride to Sacramento every time he deigns to actually do his job.

I worked for a couple of years as state Sen. John Moorlach’s press secretary. He remembered how he now and then would see Gov. Jerry Brown wandering around the Capitol, chatting with legislators and citizens. But Moorlach never saw Newsom, at the time the lieutenant governor, even though Newsom’s office was a floor directly below Moorlach’s. Newsom was, and remains, a cypher. Which is odd in a politician, a species commonly known to be gregarious. Newsom lives for his own power delusions, which begin with draining as much as possible from the taxpayers.

Although I’m against all tariffs, including Trump’s, if he can trade those for cutting my income tax, it might be a net reduction. Then again, it might not be. I’ve long referred to tariffs as tariff-taxes, which they are. That seems to have caught on among Democrats, who for the first time in my lifetime have found a tax increase they don’t like. Wonder of wonders!

Well, enough for today. Please subscribe to my writings here, see below. Just $5 a month. I need it to pay my taxes.