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Annotations & Elucidations

Calling Mr. Ripley 

It’s more Tea Party mania as Tax Day fast approaches. Groups are seeking Tea Party support in potential opposition to President Obama’s next choice to the U.S. Supreme Court; liberal activists are trying to infiltrate Tea Parties with the purpose of embarrassing them (as we’ve known all along, and which the mainstream media finally has picked up on, see Aleksandra Kulczuga at The Daily Caller as well as the AP); and in Virginia, Tea Party activists have won two western GOP unit chair elections in recent days.

Meanwhile, nationally, and speaking of Tea Parties, support for the health care law is plummeting faster than a Soprano victim in the Elizabeth River, and more Americans than pay income tax think we’re over taxed! That should tell you something, and Scott Rasmussen and Richard Olivastro do in Analysis and Commentary, respectively.

Think the Virginia Health Care Freedom Act is nervy, standing up to the big, bad federales? William Green of the Tenth Amendment Center has an idea that will knock your boots off. Also in that vein, and speaking of New Jersey (The Soprano’s), many here patted themselves on the back after Governor McDonnell and the General Assembly balanced our budget without a general tax increase and reduced spending to $70 billion (over two years), a figure last seen in 2006. Very nice. But, as Norman Leahy notes at Tertium Quids, the other new governor, Chris Christie of New Jersey, is fighting for, and winning, real reforms, not to mention that even though it is larger than Virginia, it’s annual budget is $29.3 billion. Even more impressive: The N.J. deficit is $10 billion; our two-year deficit was $4 billion. New Jersey more frugal than Virginia? Call Mr. Ripley.

News

Morrissey, Style Weekly settle $10 million libel lawsuit (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

Griffith reaping GOP support (Roanoke Times)

Boyer elected head of Bedford GOP unit (Lynchburg News & Advance)

National News

Groups look for Tea Party support on nomination (AP/GOPUSA.com)

Foes of Tea Party movement to infiltrate rallies (AP/GOPUSA.com)

Census: No evidence of a conservative boycott (AP/GOPUSA.com)

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee on gay adoption: Kids ‘aren’t puppies’ (New York Daily News)

Analysis

Support for Repeal of Health Care Plan Up To 58% (Scott Rasmussen/Rasmussen Reports)

66% Say America Is Overtaxed (Scott Rasmussen/Rasmussen Reports)

Florida Senate GOP Primary: Rubio 57%, Crist 28% (Scott Rasmussen/Rasmussen Reports)

Christie may be the real GOP model (Norman Leahy/Tertium Quids Blog)

Media Research Center: Coverage of Tea Parties is disparaging and biased (Aleksandra Kulczuga/The Daily Caller Blog)

Commentary

Next it will be government crashing the Tea Party (Richard Viguerie & Mark Fitzgibbons/Washington Examiner)

Ending the Fed From the Bottom Up (William Green/Tenth Amendment Center)

Stupak’s Final Retreat (Editorial/Washington Times)

Good Riddance (Thomas Sowell/GOPUSA.com)

Democrats Manipulate CBO (David Limbaugh/GOPUSA.com)

Can You Afford More Taxes? (Richard Olivastro/GOPUSA.com)

A V-Shaped Boom Is Coming (Larry Kudlow/GOPUSA.com)

Is Romney Grasping at Straws? (Aaron Goldstein/The American Spectator)

Now that we know — as if we needed confirmation — that Governor Tim Kaine will outline a tax increase for his transportation plan come Monday, it puts a certain former governor with a, shall we say, shady history on the issue of taxes, in a bit of a bind.

Will former Governor Mark Warner embrace the plan? If he does, it will explode his already gaping tax credentials hole into a crater. If he doesn’t, he gives the low-tax General Assembly Republicans all sorts of cover and undermines his hand-picked successor. What will it be: His natural appetite for taking away hard-earned money from Virginia’s families? Or, will will he throw his pal, in what seems to be the trend this Democrat political season, under the bus? Most likely, he’ll use the time-tested political dodge. But he won’t get away with it.

Look at his record of broken promises and reversals of position, which is piling up faster than dead bodies during whack frenzy last-season of The Soprano’s:  

• Promise: Finish the car tax elimination. Result: Didn’t even try.

• Promise: End the death tax. Result: Vetoed it.

• Promise: No tax increase. Result: Largest tax increase in Virginia history despite a surplus.

Which brings about another question: Since we didn’t get into the “transportation crisis” overnight, who didn’t get the job done before Governor Kaine? I mean, who was the governor between 2002-2006? Oh yeah, the same Mark Warner who wants raise our federal taxes as well (after months of denying it, he went on record yesterday saying he wants to let the Bush tax cuts expire). 

Not that these are tax issues, but adding to the skepticism of his veracity and trustworthyness, Mr. Warner now says he’s not for a date certain for withdrawal from Iraq. Really? This is what he said at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in February:

“And come January, 2009, we need to start to bring our brave troops home from Iraq. . . .” Sounds pretty certain to me.

He also vetoed a Virginia energy plan agreeing to off-shore drilling if the feds ever granted such permission. But at the Shad Planking April 16, he said:

“I’ve said in terms of offshore, we ought to take a look.”

Who can trust this guy? Tim Kaine better hope he can or his plan will end up in the same place those Soprano’s characters did. We continue to hope.