At this rate, Ruth Conniff may not last much longer as political editor of the Progressive magazine, a venerable left-wing periodical.
Last week, for example, while a guest on Ed Schultz's radio show, Conniff became quite possibly the only liberal in America willing to acknowledge the obvious -- that President Obama's much-ballyhooed executive order to raise the federal minimum wage in government contracts will affect a "handful of people". (Audio after the jump)
Schultz and Conniff were discussing GOP governor Scott Walker's tentative proposal to eliminate Wisconsin's income tax while raising its sales tax (audio) --
CONNIFF: It's hard for Walker to argue that he's been successful for Wisconsinites and, you know, he has a proposal now that would do away with our income tax and hike our sales tax, so folks live on the border with Minnesota and you have a 12 percent sales tax in Wisconsin, you can cross the border to Minnesota and buy your washing machine or your refrigerator, that's gonna be just a job killer for this state!
SCHULTZ: Yeah. Ruth Conniff, always a pleasure, good to have you with us.
After first hearing this, I caught my breath as its seismic significance sank in. What I heard was quite possibly the first and only time since the New Deal that any liberal has uttered the words "hike our sales tax" and "job killer" in the same sentence. I'd notify Ripley's Believe it or Not, but they'd almost certainly reject this as too implausible, regardless of the irrefutable audio evidence. Who is this person, Ripley's would ask, almost surely not an editor at the Progressive. Have you notified police?
While Conniff is certainly deserving of credit for venturing into the terrain of rational thought where few left wingers dare tread, she stopped short of stating an obvious logical conclusion to her assertion. Namely, that if raising the Wisconsin sales tax would kill jobs, eliminating the state income tax ... would create them.
If she'd make that leap, Conniff's days at the Progressive are truly numbered. And if this trend continues and Conniff suggests, oh, that raising the minimum wage would also kill jobs, don't be surprised shortly thereafter if you see her byline in National Review.
As for the specifics of Walker's proposal, they remain tentative. PolitiFact Wisconsin slammed a state lawmaker Democrat running for governor against Walker for her claim that Walker's proposal would hike Wisconsin's sales tax from 5.5 to 13.5 percent, which would make it the highest in the nation.
"Walker wants to explore the possibility of eliminating the state income tax, which likely would trigger some increase in the state sales tax," PolitiFact Wisconsin concluded in a Jan. 7 post. "But he has not advanced a plan to eliminate the income tax, nor to raise the sales tax to any particular amount."
