To the Editor:
On March 5th our Lt Governor, David Zuckerman, sent an article to constituents entitled “Taxes”. The article makes many inferences designed to fit the Marxist Ideology of victimhood. He states that “Wealthy and high-income individuals have seen their marginal tax rates drop precipitously, while working class people have been asked to shoulder more of the costs of funding a functional government”. I’ve heard this statement from Joe Biden and Nancy Pilosi who talk about “fair share” because they need all the taxes they can get from us to pay for student loan debt, building off shore wind farms, and other expensive programs. And now our Lt. Governor is on board.
Let’s set the record straight. The 2017 tax cut lowered the income tax rates of all taxpayers. An analysis of the IRS tax data shows that those filers in the lowest income tax bracket paid 3.1% of their adjusted gross income in 2018 compared to 5.5% in 2016. The highest earners paid 24.3% of their adjusted gross income compared to 28.1% in 2016.
The real story is the number of filers increased 2.3% in 2018 indicating increased job opportunities at higher levels of pay and that total individual taxes paid increased by $83 billion or 5.8% higher than in 2016. The top 1.1% of filers paid 40.6% of total income taxes and the top 2 highest income levels representing 5.6% of filers paid 62.1% of total individual income taxes. Looks like the progressive tax system is working. So why then is the Lt Governor inferring that the cost of government is being “shouldered by the working class”? I asked that question and did not obtain a response.
-Eric Salat, Manchester
In response to last week’s pro-HAMAS Guest Perspective in the News & Citizen:
Regardless of whatever historical narrative Mr. Valentine expressed in last week’s Guest Perspective, the fact that he would commend even one iota of support and sympathy for Hamas is absolutely despicable. Never in a million years could anyone but either an amoral person, or one completely ignorant about the unadulterated evil of the horrific rapings, beheadings, and demonic butchery committed by Hamas against innocent Israeli women, babies, and families, ever defend Hamas’ actions on October 7th. To refer to what they did as simply “just another attack” is as sick as saying that what the Nazis did when they starved, tortured, gassed, murdered, and performed their unconscionably perverted, sadistic “medical” experiments on innocent men, women, and children, was somehow justified.
Mr. Valentine’s blatantly anti-Jewish sentiments in support of Hamas, while in vogue among groups of some terribly misguided people right now, will find him on the wrong side of history and the most basic human decency. Throughout the ages, it has never gone well for any society or government which has cursed or otherwise treated the Jewish people badly. As the aphorism so well states, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
As we stand opposed to the words and thoughts Mr. Valentine expressed, we will do well to remember and apply the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was hanged in 1945 for standing against Hitler and in defense of the Jews:
“Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. Silence in the face of evil is itself evil.”
While I 100% support Mr. Valentine’s right to write and say the things he did as protected by the First Amendment, I will also employ this same liberty to 100% condemn what he said, and any similar thinking which informs a position as morally indefensible as his.
-Martin Greene. Morrisville