Taxing the Middle Class and Poor

Arizona’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Katie Hobbs has vetoed a bill that would have barred cities and municipalities from taxing food purchases. Hobbs’ rationalization went like this:

The bill, originally unveiled as a way to mitigate inflation, does not take effect for more than two years. What’s more, it does nothing for the more than 800,000 Arizonans who use SNAP and WIC benefits for their groceries, as these constituents are already exempt from the tax.

Hobbs’ first beef might seem like a reasonable objection, and one easily corrected. However, it’s reasonable, also, to give those cities and municipalities whose budgets currently use those food taxes time to adjust their budgets.

Hobbs’ second beef, though, is just…silly. It wholly ignores those who aren’t on food stamps, the upper reaches of Arizona’s second income quintile, the third quintile, and into the fourth—the rest of the poor, and the middle class. And those Arizonans who are Evilly Rich and have more money than the Progressive-Democrats think they should have.

Just—pay up, suckers.

Evidence!?

Internationally famed Ersatz Doctor Xavier Becerra, Health and Human Services Secretary, is being called on by Senator Jim Risch (R, ID) to produce the evidence that supports “Dr.” Becerra’s and his HHS’ encouragement for actual doctors to perform “gender affirming care”—like hormone therapies and sex-change surgeries—on minors with gender dysphoria.

In a letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, Risch and nine of his Republican colleagues from the House and Senate said “HHS has a moral responsibility to ensure its recommendations are evidence-based and not driven by a contentious ideology,” and alleged that HHS is encouraging medical providers to perform “gender affirming care.”
“We are increasingly alarmed that HHS’ advocacy has led health professionals to prescribe dangerous and experimental drugs and surgeries to troubled children—in many cases covered with taxpayer dollars,” the lawmakers wrote.
“‘Gender affirming care’ is far from proper health care given the treatments include experimental hormonal and surgical interventions on children’s bodies that cause permanent damage,” they wrote.

Apart from the medical disasters this sort of child abuse inflicts, there is the intrinsic contradiction in the meaning of “minor,” a contradiction that even Becerra must know: the idea that adolescents—and younger(!)—are capable of consenting to their own major medical and other significant life decisions when they are not capable of consenting, for instance, to having sex (see: statutory rape). Never mind the question of whether or how well an adolescent’s troubled mind can give consent, informed or other.

My prediction of Becerra’s response, should he deign make one: weasel words to the effect of “We ain’t got no evidence. We don’t need no stinking evidence.”