A logging opponent I know moved to Tenakee Springs 40 years ago so angry about clearcutting in the region that she refused to use a chainsaw. She cut her firewood with a hand saw.
I imagine she eventually agreed to a power saw, maybe realizing that federal logging policy was more to blame for the degradation of the forest than the saw used to degrade it.
A chainsaw is neither good nor evil of itself. It’s only a tool used for efficiently felling trees. The same can be said of guns, which are tools for efficiently killing animals or people.
A tax also is only a tool, used for efficiently raising money for public needs.
An orchestrated brainwashing occurred in our nation in the past 40 years, a deliberate tactic used primarily by Republicans to destabilize then rob the middle class. The tactic was to eliminate the programs and policies that created middle-class America, in part by demonizing their source of funding – taxes.
It was a two-fer. By casting as evil the taxes that paid for services, the Republicans doomed the future of tax-funded programs like student loans and job training that built a bridge to the middle class, and while also gutting welfare programs that kept the poor from sliding into poverty.
Legions of Republicans came to power starting in the 1980s by promising to get the federal or state or local government “off our backs” by reducing or eliminating taxes. They didn’t eliminate “waste.” They eliminated programs that actually helped working-class Americans and gave the money to their rich friends in the form of tax breaks.
Now almost 50 years later, we’re realizing that progressive taxation served a purpose, including maintaining decent schools, roads and facilities and – by heavily taxing the rich – protecting regular folks against the rise of a permanent ruling class.
Taxes are a tool, no more evil than a gun or a chainsaw. Like guns and chainsaws, their value can be weighed fairly only by judging how they were used, and if the value of their return is greater than their cost. Few people objected to taxes that paid for the NASA program or for disaster relief or the interstate highway system.
But blasting taxes worked well for getting elected, so Republicans kept using it and are using it still.
In tomorrow’s election, I’m supporting the tax measures on the ballot not because I love taxes or that I swore allegiance to liberal cant, but because years of cuts by Republican administrations in Juneau and Washington, D.C. have left our town struggling.
There’s no money in the borough budget to help families with childcare. There’s no money in the budget for affordable housing. There’s no money that’s going to build a drive-down float for our gillnetters or even to get our delapidated firehall replaced. There’s no additional money for our schools, where jobs are so low-paying that we’ve hired as teachers five people who are not certified to teach.
You can vote against the tax measures on the Oct. 6 ballot, but you’re cutting your own throat, or you’re cutting the snowplowing on your own street or the open gym program or maybe the cop you call for at 2 a.m.
Getting things done takes money and taxes are the tools that provide the money. It’s pretty simple math.
If you want your street plowed and your child educated and your potholes filled, vote for forward-looking initiatives and candidates that might accomplish that.
And in the upcoming state and federal elections, vote against every Republican on the ballot. Those are the bastards who eliminated most other sources of funding for the programs and projects our town needs.