Pat Harrison's Slumlord Uprising of 2008, 6/6: "Endangered Slumlord Protection Act? Local rental property mogul and realtor cites a 'pitiful' absence of tax breaks."

Eight years later, and it's déjà vu all over again as Pat Harrison prepares to defend our downtrodden slumlords against the Gestapo.

The following was originally published here on August 22, 2007.

1/6
2/6
3/6
4/6
5/6

---

Endangered Slumlord Protection Act? Local rental property mogul and realtor cites a “pitiful” absence of tax breaks.

Back on August 12, the Tribune’s Chris Morris heeded the squeaky realtor’s wheel and considered the outer limits of the “American dream” (unlimited-horizon-free, New Albany-style):

Rental property owners in Clark, Floyd counties say enough is enough.

The idea sounds like a winner. You buy property, fix it up, find someone to rent it, and then sit back and collect the monthly check.

However, it’s not quite that simple, according to local Realtor Pat Harrison. In fact, she said what used to be the American dream of owning property has turned into a nightmare for many. The reason, she said, is property owners are being taxed to death.

“This state is not giving any kind of tax break on commercial and investment property. It’s pitiful,” Harrison said.

Chris didn't intend to be insightful, but his line, "sit back and collect the monthly check," is a classic.

Why do we get the sneaking suspicion that the next grinding trench warfare phase of trying to bring New Albany’s enduring “slumlord protection program” into line with the dictates of the 21st century will inevitably revolve around fanatical opposition (vigilance with Bics in hand, just itching to flick) to absolutely necessary rental inspection reform, on the spurious grounds that extreme poverty caused by Harrison’s “pitiful” absence of tax breaks should absolve owners of adhering to community standards?

We can hear the tune already, and it is discordant -- and dysfunctional -- as ever.

One Southern Indiana does not speak for me or this local business. Repeat.

It is true that I didn't vote for Todd Young, although it didn't stop me from having a beer with him last year. The important thing about it is that I voted. There was an election, and he won. So be it.

Young: We have the leverage to push tax reform; Congressman says blocking health care funds won’t stop law, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune)

NEW ALBANY — U.S. Rep. Todd Young believes the public has the appetite to deal with the kind of debates that led to deadline fiscal deals in the past if it brings about change in Washington.

Young, R-Ind., met with local business owners at One Southern Indiana on Wednesday about tax reform. He said it’s an issue the House and Republican lawmakers could hold leverage over the White House on with a Sept. 30 federal government funding deadline approaching.

When I read this article, it took me a moment to grasp the part of it that galled me so tremendously. In retrospect, it can be narrowed down to the final three sentences.

As for tax reform, 1si CEO Wendy Dant Chesser said the Chamber’s members were especially interested in simplifying the tax code.

Local businesses also support changes in the tax code as a way to boost economic growth, she continued.

“I sensed an optimism as [Young] gave his presentation and they pitched their questions,” Chesser said.

Yeah, THAT's it, for sure. Let's be blunt.

The non-elected oligarch's benevolent society otherwise known as One Southern Indiana does not speak for local business in the broader sense, and it does not speak for NABC in any sense at all -- whether on the topic of managed health care, or tax reform, or the unconscionable boondoggle of the Ohio River Bridges Project.

I'll take dissonance from Todd Young, because whether I voted for him or not, at least there was an election. But I don't and won't accept it from Wendy Dant Chesser, who was selected by a cadre of elites, not elected by persons or businesses.

The problem? It isn't so much her as the ones doing the selecting.

REWIND ... From Norquist to Torquemada to Brambleberry: Pathologies of tax "reform."

This piece is the second of two being republished today, and it goes out to our community's "small government" adherents. It was originally published on August 13, 2006, and has reappeared from time to time when I feel like taunting the exurbs.

Here's the other: REWIND: Bile, loathing and a civil society.

----

Grover Norquist, who famously seeks to reduce government to a size that can be conveniently drowned in William Howard Taft’s supersized bathtub, and who once compared the morality of the estate tax to that of the Holocaust, founded the Americans for Tax Reform organization during the administration of President Ronald Reagan.

If the sum of words written about ATR since that time were calculated in dollars, it probably would be equivalent to several times Bill Gates’s elongated fortune, but it seems to me that the organization’s own oft-repeated credo should suffice to tell us most of what we need to know about it.

“ATR opposes all tax increases as a matter of principle.”

Speaking personally, I interpret this as the fervent desire to take a blue pencil to the Constitution, substituting “I the individual” for “we the people.”

And I find it unacceptable in a civil society. In fact, I oppose ATR as a matter of principle.

----

Turning to the dictionary …

pa·thol·o·gyn. pl. pa·thol·o·gies

1. The scientific study of the nature of disease and its causes, processes, development, and consequences. Also called pathobiology.

2. The anatomic or functional manifestations of a disease: the pathology of cancer.

3. A departure or deviation from a normal condition: “Neighborhoods plagued by a self-perpetuating pathology of joblessness, welfare dependency, crime” (Time).

----

What, then, is the pathology of tax reform?

What is it that leads to the single-minded obsession, to the snarling condescension, and to the anti-communal narcissism so obviously inherent in the genre?

Finding an answer is important to me, because I’ve decided that I’m a taxpayer advocate, too, and furthermore, I’m no longer willing to permit my “anti-everything” crusading brethren to define the terms of taxpayer advocacy without a struggle.

Of course none of us actively seeks to pay more tax than we feel is justified, but apparently we differ significantly with regard to the tipping point that compels us to paint our faces, converge on Boston harbor to dump tea into the drink, and vote for Norquist-sanctioned candidates.

Moreover, I believe that taxation is not something that can be defined in the numerological sense – in dry, neutral, technocratic terms, although economists undoubtedly try their best.

Rather, it’s an intrinsically political issue with implications pertaining to power and financial decision-making that are pursued not in a detached laboratory, but in the real world of human society. One’s views on taxation undoubtedly bear a close relationship to one’s views on politics, society and even religion.

Although I’ve no intention of contesting that Norquist and his ATR claim allegiance from people across the political spectrum, it remains the case that the hardest core of the movement’s hardcore support comes from self-identified conservatives … and if one stalks the dark corridors of the right wing with a consistently stated aim of starving a “beast” into submission, it logically follows that this beastly straw man targeted in the anti-tax crosshairs stands somewhere to the left.

After all, if the beast is not an “enemy,” then why bother starving it in the first place?

Moreover, most people don’t propose to kill their own – only the “others.”

----

I believe that the existence of people living and working together in the evolving construct of human society is a state of being implicit in the art and practice of politics, which itself is necessary to negotiate matters of power, and insofar as we are human beings voluntarily living in communities with one another and deriving benefits from shared expenditures, I’m an unrepentant advocate of taxation as the necessary underpinning of a truly civil and functional society.

By writing these words in a public forum, I fully expect to be lashed by those local Torquemadas, particularly those of the Brambleberry “those who cannot do, prevent others from doing, too” persuasion, whose viewpoints with respect to strictly local taxes and fees mirrors the rabidity of Grover Norquist’s.

So be it. I simply don’t believe that our local government as presently constituted is a beast begging for euthanizing. Imperfect, perhaps, and as such reflecting the imperfections of its inhabitants and of the citizenry as a whole … but not a beast.

In fact, I believe it should be even more pervasive, and that we should pay our share to make it so.

----

Since you’ve asked, permit me to add that from my point of view, when Norquist’s hopping mad adherents speak specifically of taxation-related issues, I believe they’re actually speaking of just one component, albeit it vital, that ultimately is tied to the many planks of the conservative movement’s overall rightward march in America.

That zealous mission was elegantly summarized by the inimitable William Greider in a 2003 article in The Nation entitled “Rolling Back the 20th Century.”

Here are excerpts.

The movement's grand ambition--one can no longer say grandiose--is to roll back the twentieth century, quite literally. That is, defenestrate the federal government and reduce its scale and powers to a level well below what it was before the New Deal's centralization. With that accomplished, movement conservatives envision a restored society in which the prevailing values and power relationships resemble the America that existed around 1900, when William McKinley was President. Governing authority and resources are dispersed from Washington, returned to local levels and also to individuals and private institutions, most notably corporations and religious organizations. The primacy of private property rights is re-established over the shared public priorities expressed in government regulation. Above all, private wealth--both enterprises and individuals with higher incomes--are permanently insulated from the progressive claims of the graduated income tax.

These broad objectives may sound reactionary and destructive (in historical terms they are), but hard-right conservatives see themselves as liberating reformers, not destroyers, who are rescuing old American virtues of self-reliance and individual autonomy from the clutches of collective action and "statist" left-wingers. They do not expect any of these far-reaching goals to be fulfilled during Bush's tenure, but they do assume that history is on their side and that the next wave will come along soon (not an unreasonable expectation, given their great gains during the past thirty years). Right-wingers--who once seemed frothy and fratricidal--now understand that three steps forward, two steps back still adds up to forward progress. It's a long march, they say.

We all know the planks of the platform, as enumerated by Greider.

Gradually phase out the pension-fund retirement system as we know it.

Eliminate federal taxation of private capital, as the essential predicate for dismantling the progressive income tax.

Withdraw the federal government from a direct role in housing, healthcare, assistance to the poor and many other long-established social priorities.

Withdraw the federal government from a direct role in housing, healthcare, assistance to the poor and many other long-established social priorities.

Restore churches, families and private education to a more influential role in the nation's cultural life by giving them a significant new base of income--public money.

Strengthen the hand of business enterprise against burdensome regulatory obligations, especially environmental protection, by introducing voluntary goals and "market-driven" solutions.

Smash organized labor.

----

If this Federal beast is to be drowned, then there is no alternative to supporting a higher degree of decision making at local levels, but it should be obvious that starving the Federal “beast” translates directly and inescapably into starving ourselves, which in turn suggests that to some degree, we’ll have to pay more to maintain our standard of living, our infrastructure, and some semblance of a civil society, right here at home.

Speaking personally, I’d like to see this trend of beast eradication extended to my having the option to withhold federal tax revenue from wars that I believe to be unjust, illegal, or figments of George W. Bush’s restive imagination, but that improbability aside, how do we propose to pave and stripe the streets, keep the alleys clean, remunerate the police and fire departments, and perform the tasks that we take for granted as necessary components of local self-rule, when we simultaneously insist on voting for politicians who’ve consumed copious quantities of Norquist’s fascist Kool-Aid, and refuse to pay what it takes for local services when the same politician obeys his handler and denies us funding?

What are we supposed to do, beg funds from the local mega-church according to the principle of faith-based reverse Caesar – which I could have sworn was either a salad dressing or a pro wrestling hold?

----

Me?

I’m willing to pay my share to save my neighborhood and to ensure New Albany has a future. That’s more than can be said for the many “whatever it is, we’re against it” grandparents hereabouts, who continue to insist that Norquist’s starvation diet provides the perfect platform for the future interests of their grandchildren, something that is counterintuitive at best and purely insane at worst -- hence our bizarre and so characteristically New Albanian phenomenon of the Coup d’Geriatrique, an ongoing cabal conducted by so-called Democrats. It is directed not against Republicans, but deploys the Norquist playbook to savage the capable of all political and religious persuasions.

My 3rd District councilman – who insists against all prevailing evidence that he’s a Democrat, but whose right-wing pathologies are never hidden from view – is the prime example of this reaction against modernity even if he’s two decades younger than most other participants. Steve Price joyfully espouses the ATR party line, shrieking like a goosed banshee that errant nickels, misspent dimes and the perpetual tightening of belts will magically produce the revenue necessary to offset those monies being lost each time we gleefully vote for a pledged Norquistian, and incessantly associating the majority of governmental expenditures with frivolity and those aspects of human life with which he disagrees, misunderstands, detests and wishes to eradicate.

----

Progress, not regress. Progressive, not regressive. Forward, not backward.

That’s all I have to say on the matter, although there’s a chance that some of you will disagree.

Hit it ...

"We already get taxed different rates depending on where we choose to live..."

Earlier in the week, NAC post Distance Education led to a lively discussion of school transportation methodology and who should bear the brunt of financing it.

Regular reader Brandon W. Smith offered an astute question in the comments section:

We already get taxed different rates depending on where we choose to live (well, at least where we choose to own property). If it turns out that county folks are having a disproportionate impact on school resources, then why shouldn’t the school corporation tax rates be able to reflect that?


The "who should pay" or "why should we pay" question is one we seem to ask quite often, but usually in regard to services for low income populations for whom choices are limited. That makes it all the more intriguing then, that the same type of question never seems to come up in the context of services for those who generally can afford to pay but choose more expensive outcomes.

Indeed, if distance is a major contributor to the cost of government service delivery, why then is it not calculated in the price of those services?

Will not think for food.

A recent discussion with friends concerning local food production and distribution-- or, more specifically, the lack thereof-- got me wondering about the economic impact of non-local food sales.

To wit, I was able to reference a 2005 study completed by IU Southeast faculty members Jon Bingham, M.A. and Dagney Faulk, Ph.D. and published in the Indiana Business Review, for information about local food expenditures.

By using the low-cost plan from Official USDA Food Plans: Cost of Food at Home at Four Levels, U.S. Average, December 2004 and adjusting it to Midwest pricing, Bingham and Faulk were able to determine that average monthly food costs for variously configured families of two or more in our region range from $353 to $599.

The 2000 census shows 21,057 households in Floyd County with two or more people. Obviously, there are 12 months in a year.

$353 x 21,057 x 12 = $89,197,452

$599 X 21,057 X 12 = $151,357,716

Assuming that all food is prepared in-house, our annual county expenditure on home cooked meals is between $89.2 million and $151.4 million, not including the over 6,000 single person households.

In fairness, some of the money spent undoubtedly goes toward local wages to the extent our mostly chain grocery stores provide employment. The trouble is that those typically low-paying jobs are one of the few mechanisms we have for local food dollar retention.

I admittedly know very little about the food retail business but, if profit from such operations in Floyd County is calculated using the study numbers and the 6% net profit rate reported by large grocery chains a few years ago, it amounts to between $5.4 million and $9.1 million annually, the large majority of which is removed from our local economy and transferred to out-of-state corporate entities along with the jobs and tax revenues those dollars generate.

According to the Louisville Independent Business Alliance, independent local businesses do a much better job of keeping our dollars in the community via a multiplier effect, that is, by hiring other local firms to provide services like accounting, construction, signage, legal representation, and insurance. For every $100 spent at a community-based business, $45 goes back into the local economy. A typical corporate chain only returns $13 per $100.

On the low end of our annual food expenditures, $89.2 million spent with local food merchants would return approximately $40.1 million to our local economy. The same amount spent at a chain would retain only $11.6 million. If we purchase from out-of-state corporations, our grocery buying habits cost the local and state economy $28.5 million per year in Floyd County alone and it's only one of 92 counties in the state.

Not satisfied with that self-flagellation, we sometimes compound our losses by offering tax abatements to non-local grocery chains as an enticement to locate here. Doing so not only makes our economy and tax base less sustainable, but also encourages significant additional shipping with associated cost increases in traffic congestion, infrastructure maintenance, and negative environmental impact. Moreover, it ties food costs more closely to fuel costs. When we demand more fuel to ship all of our food, we ultimately pay more for both.

As our food purchasing model is replicated from county to county and state to state, those costs increase exponentially, leaving us holding the bag- a grocery bag in this case, with much less in it.

There are lots of ways to starve ourselves. It's unfortunate that we've figured out how to make buying food one of them.

REWIND ... From Norquist to Torquemada to Brambleberry: Pathologies of tax "reform."

This piece is the second of two being republished tonight, and it goes out to Daniel in the "small government" exurb. It was originally published on August 13, 2006.

Here's the other: REWIND: Bile, loathing and a civil society.

----

Grover Norquist, who famously seeks to reduce government to a size that can be conveniently drowned in William Howard Taft’s supersized bathtub, and who once compared the morality of the estate tax to that of the Holocaust, founded the Americans for Tax Reform organization during the administration of President Ronald Reagan.

If the sum of words written about ATR since that time were calculated in dollars, it probably would be equivalent to several times Bill Gates’s elongated fortune, but it seems to me that the organization’s own oft-repeated credo should suffice to tell us most of what we need to know about it.

“ATR opposes all tax increases as a matter of principle.”

Speaking personally, I interpret this as the fervent desire to take a blue pencil to the Constitution, substituting “I the individual” for “we the people.”

And I find it unacceptable in a civil society. In fact, I oppose ATR as a matter of principle.

----

Turning to the dictionary …

pa·thol·o·gyn. pl. pa·thol·o·gies

1. The scientific study of the nature of disease and its causes, processes, development, and consequences. Also called pathobiology.

2. The anatomic or functional manifestations of a disease: the pathology of cancer.

3. A departure or deviation from a normal condition: “Neighborhoods plagued by a self-perpetuating pathology of joblessness, welfare dependency, crime” (Time).

----

What, then, is the pathology of tax reform?

What is it that leads to the single-minded obsession, to the snarling condescension, and to the anti-communal narcissism so obviously inherent in the genre?

Finding an answer is important to me, because I’ve decided that I’m a taxpayer advocate, too, and furthermore, I’m no longer willing to permit my “anti-everything” crusading brethren to define the terms of taxpayer advocacy without a struggle.

Of course none of us actively seeks to pay more tax than we feel is justified, but apparently we differ significantly with regard to the tipping point that compels us to paint our faces, converge on Boston harbor to dump tea into the drink, and vote for Norquist-sanctioned candidates.

Moreover, I believe that taxation is not something that can be defined in the numerological sense – in dry, neutral, technocratic terms, although economists undoubtedly try their best.

Rather, it’s an intrinsically political issue with implications pertaining to power and financial decision-making that are pursued not in a detached laboratory, but in the real world of human society. One’s views on taxation undoubtedly bear a close relationship to one’s views on politics, society and even religion.

Although I’ve no intention of contesting that Norquist and his ATR claim allegiance from people across the political spectrum, it remains the case that the hardest core of the movement’s hardcore support comes from self-identified conservatives … and if one stalks the dark corridors of the right wing with a consistently stated aim of starving a “beast” into submission, it logically follows that this beastly straw man targeted in the anti-tax crosshairs stands somewhere to the left.

After all, if the beast is not an “enemy,” then why bother starving it in the first place?

Moreover, most people don’t propose to kill their own – only the “others.”

----

I believe that the existence of people living and working together in the evolving construct of human society is a state of being implicit in the art and practice of politics, which itself is necessary to negotiate matters of power, and insofar as we are human beings voluntarily living in communities with one another and deriving benefits from shared expenditures, I’m an unrepentant advocate of taxation as the necessary underpinning of a truly civil and functional society.

By writing these words in a public forum, I fully expect to be lashed by those local Torquemadas, particularly those of the Brambleberry “those who cannot do, prevent others from doing, too” persuasion, whose viewpoints with respect to strictly local taxes and fees mirrors the rabidity of Grover Norquist’s.

So be it. I simply don’t believe that our local government as presently constituted is a beast begging for euthanizing. Imperfect, perhaps, and as such reflecting the imperfections of its inhabitants and of the citizenry as a whole … but not a beast.

In fact, I believe it should be even more pervasive, and that we should pay our share to make it so.

----

Since you’ve asked, permit me to add that from my point of view, when Norquist’s hopping mad adherents speak specifically of taxation-related issues, I believe they’re actually speaking of just one component, albeit it vital, that ultimately is tied to the many planks of the conservative movement’s overall rightward march in America.

That zealous mission was elegantly summarized by the inimitable William Greider in a 2003 article in The Nation entitled “Rolling Back the 20th Century.”

Here are excerpts.

The movement's grand ambition--one can no longer say grandiose--is to roll back the twentieth century, quite literally. That is, defenestrate the federal government and reduce its scale and powers to a level well below what it was before the New Deal's centralization. With that accomplished, movement conservatives envision a restored society in which the prevailing values and power relationships resemble the America that existed around 1900, when William McKinley was President. Governing authority and resources are dispersed from Washington, returned to local levels and also to individuals and private institutions, most notably corporations and religious organizations. The primacy of private property rights is re-established over the shared public priorities expressed in government regulation. Above all, private wealth--both enterprises and individuals with higher incomes--are permanently insulated from the progressive claims of the graduated income tax.

These broad objectives may sound reactionary and destructive (in historical terms they are), but hard-right conservatives see themselves as liberating reformers, not destroyers, who are rescuing old American virtues of self-reliance and individual autonomy from the clutches of collective action and "statist" left-wingers. They do not expect any of these far-reaching goals to be fulfilled during Bush's tenure, but they do assume that history is on their side and that the next wave will come along soon (not an unreasonable expectation, given their great gains during the past thirty years). Right-wingers--who once seemed frothy and fratricidal--now understand that three steps forward, two steps back still adds up to forward progress. It's a long march, they say.

We all know the planks of the platform, as enumerated by Greider.

Gradually phase out the pension-fund retirement system as we know it.

Eliminate federal taxation of private capital, as the essential predicate for dismantling the progressive income tax.

Withdraw the federal government from a direct role in housing, healthcare, assistance to the poor and many other long-established social priorities.

Withdraw the federal government from a direct role in housing, healthcare, assistance to the poor and many other long-established social priorities.

Restore churches, families and private education to a more influential role in the nation's cultural life by giving them a significant new base of income--public money.

Strengthen the hand of business enterprise against burdensome regulatory obligations, especially environmental protection, by introducing voluntary goals and "market-driven" solutions.

Smash organized labor.

----

If this Federal beast is to be drowned, then there is no alternative to supporting a higher degree of decision making at local levels, but it should be obvious that starving the Federal “beast” translates directly and inescapably into starving ourselves, which in turn suggests that to some degree, we’ll have to pay more to maintain our standard of living, our infrastructure, and some semblance of a civil society, right here at home.

Speaking personally, I’d like to see this trend of beast eradication extended to my having the option to withhold federal tax revenue from wars that I believe to be unjust, illegal, or figments of George W. Bush’s restive imagination, but that improbability aside, how do we propose to pave and stripe the streets, keep the alleys clean, remunerate the police and fire departments, and perform the tasks that we take for granted as necessary components of local self-rule, when we simultaneously insist on voting for politicians who’ve consumed copious quantities of Norquist’s fascist Kool-Aid, and refuse to pay what it takes for local services when the same politician obeys his handler and denies us funding?

What are we supposed to do, beg funds from the local mega-church according to the principle of faith-based reverse Caesar – which I could have sworn was either a salad dressing or a pro wrestling hold?

----

Me?

I’m willing to pay my share to save my neighborhood and to ensure New Albany has a future. That’s more than can be said for the many “whatever it is, we’re against it” grandparents hereabouts, who continue to insist that Norquist’s starvation diet provides the perfect platform for the future interests of their grandchildren, something that is counterintuitive at best and purely insane at worst -- hence our bizarre and so characteristically New Albanian phenomenon of the Coup d’Geriatrique, an ongoing cabal conducted by so-called Democrats. It is directed not against Republicans, but deploys the Norquist playbook to savage the capable of all political and religious persuasions.

My 3rd District councilman – who insists against all prevailing evidence that he’s a Democrat, but whose right-wing pathologies are never hidden from view – is the prime example of this reaction against modernity even if he’s two decades younger than most other participants. Steve Price joyfully espouses the ATR party line, shrieking like a goosed banshee that errant nickels, misspent dimes and the perpetual tightening of belts will magically produce the revenue necessary to offset those monies being lost each time we gleefully vote for a pledged Norquistian, and incessantly associating the majority of governmental expenditures with frivolity and those aspects of human life with which he disagrees, misunderstands, detests and wishes to eradicate.

----

Progress, not regress. Progressive, not regressive. Forward, not backward.

That’s all I have to say on the matter, although there’s a chance that some of you will disagree.

Hit it ...

Endangered Slumlord Protection Act? Local rental property mogul and realtor cites a “pitiful” absence of tax breaks.

Back on August 12, the Tribune’s Chris Morris heeded the squeaky realtor’s wheel and considered the outer limits of the “American dream” (unlimited-horizon-free, New Albany-style):

Rental property owners in Clark, Floyd counties say enough is enough.

The idea sounds like a winner. You buy property, fix it up, find someone to rent it, and then sit back and collect the monthly check.

However, it’s not quite that simple, according to local Realtor Pat Harrison. In fact, she said what used to be the American dream of owning property has turned into a nightmare for many. The reason, she said, is property owners are being taxed to death.

“This state is not giving any kind of tax break on commercial and investment property. It’s pitiful,” Harrison said.

Chris didn't intend to be insightful, but his line, "sit back and collect the monthly check," is a classic.

Why do we get the sneaking suspicion that the next grinding trench warfare phase of trying to bring New Albany’s enduring “slumlord protection program” into line with the dictates of the 21st century will inevitably revolve around fanatical opposition (vigilance with Bics in hand, just itching to flick) to absolutely necessary rental inspection reform, on the spurious grounds that extreme poverty caused by Harrison’s “pitiful” absence of tax breaks should absolve owners of adhering to community standards?

We can hear the tune already, and it is discordant -- and dysfunctional -- as ever.

REWIND ... From Norquist to Torquemada to Brambleberry: Pathologies of tax "reform."

Written by the senior editor, and originally published on August 13, 2006.

----

Grover Norquist, who famously seeks to reduce government to a size that can be conveniently drowned in William Howard Taft’s supersized bathtub, and who once compared the morality of the estate tax to that of the Holocaust, founded the Americans for Tax Reform organization during the administration of President Ronald Reagan.

If the sum of words written about ATR since that time were calculated in dollars, it probably would be equivalent to several times Bill Gates’s elongated fortune, but it seems to me that the organization’s own oft-repeated credo should suffice to tell us most of what we need to know about it.

“ATR opposes all tax increases as a matter of principle.”

Speaking personally, I interpret this as the fervent desire to take a blue pencil to the Constitution, substituting “I the individual” for “we the people.”

And I find it unacceptable in a civil society. In fact, I oppose ATR as a matter of principle.

----

Turning to the dictionary …

pa·thol·o·gyn. pl. pa·thol·o·gies

1. The scientific study of the nature of disease and its causes, processes, development, and consequences. Also called pathobiology.

2. The anatomic or functional manifestations of a disease: the pathology of cancer.

3. A departure or deviation from a normal condition: “Neighborhoods plagued by a self-perpetuating pathology of joblessness, welfare dependency, crime” (Time).

----

What, then, is the pathology of tax reform?

What is it that leads to the single-minded obsession, to the snarling condescension, and to the anti-communal narcissism so obviously inherent in the genre?

Finding an answer is important to me, because I’ve decided that I’m a taxpayer advocate, too, and furthermore, I’m no longer willing to permit my “anti-everything” crusading brethren to define the terms of taxpayer advocacy without a struggle.

Of course none of us actively seeks to pay more tax than we feel is justified, but apparently we differ significantly with regard to the tipping point that compels us to paint our faces, converge on Boston harbor to dump tea into the drink, and vote for Norquist-sanctioned candidates.

Moreover, I believe that taxation is not something that can be defined in the numerological sense – in dry, neutral, technocratic terms, although economists undoubtedly try their best.

Rather, it’s an intrinsically political issue with implications pertaining to power and financial decision-making that are pursued not in a detached laboratory, but in the real world of human society. One’s views on taxation undoubtedly bear a close relationship to one’s views on politics, society and even religion.

Although I’ve no intention of contesting that Norquist and his ATR claim allegiance from people across the political spectrum, it remains the case that the hardest core of the movement’s hardcore support comes from self-identified conservatives … and if one stalks the dark corridors of the right wing with a consistently stated aim of starving a “beast” into submission, it logically follows that this beastly straw man targeted in the anti-tax crosshairs stands somewhere to the left.

After all, if the beast is not an “enemy,” then why bother starving it in the first place?

Moreover, most people don’t propose to kill their own – only the “others.”

----

I believe that the existence of people living and working together in the evolving construct of human society is a state of being implicit in the art and practice of politics, which itself is necessary to negotiate matters of power, and insofar as we are human beings voluntarily living in communities with one another and deriving benefits from shared expenditures, I’m an unrepentant advocate of taxation as the necessary underpinning of a truly civil and functional society.

By writing these words in a public forum, I fully expect to be lashed by those local Torquemadas, particularly those of the Brambleberry “those who cannot do, prevent others from doing, too” persuasion, whose viewpoints with respect to strictly local taxes and fees mirrors the rabidity of Grover Norquist’s.

So be it. I simply don’t believe that our local government as presently constituted is a beast begging for euthanizing. Imperfect, perhaps, and as such reflecting the imperfections of its inhabitants and of the citizenry as a whole … but not a beast.

In fact, I believe it should be even more pervasive, and that we should pay our share to make it so.

----

Since you’ve asked, permit me to add that from my point of view, when Norquist’s hopping mad adherents speak specifically of taxation-related issues, I believe they’re actually speaking of just one component, albeit it vital, that ultimately is tied to the many planks of the conservative movement’s overall rightward march in America.

That zealous mission was elegantly summarized by the inimitable William Greider in a 2003 article in The Nation entitled “Rolling Back the 20th Century.”

Here are excerpts.

The movement's grand ambition--one can no longer say grandiose--is to roll back the twentieth century, quite literally. That is, defenestrate the federal government and reduce its scale and powers to a level well below what it was before the New Deal's centralization. With that accomplished, movement conservatives envision a restored society in which the prevailing values and power relationships resemble the America that existed around 1900, when William McKinley was President. Governing authority and resources are dispersed from Washington, returned to local levels and also to individuals and private institutions, most notably corporations and religious organizations. The primacy of private property rights is re-established over the shared public priorities expressed in government regulation. Above all, private wealth--both enterprises and individuals with higher incomes--are permanently insulated from the progressive claims of the graduated income tax.

These broad objectives may sound reactionary and destructive (in historical terms they are), but hard-right conservatives see themselves as liberating reformers, not destroyers, who are rescuing old American virtues of self-reliance and individual autonomy from the clutches of collective action and "statist" left-wingers. They do not expect any of these far-reaching goals to be fulfilled during Bush's tenure, but they do assume that history is on their side and that the next wave will come along soon (not an unreasonable expectation, given their great gains during the past thirty years). Right-wingers--who once seemed frothy and fratricidal--now understand that three steps forward, two steps back still adds up to forward progress. It's a long march, they say.

We all know the planks of the platform, as enumerated by Greider.

Gradually phase out the pension-fund retirement system as we know it.

Eliminate federal taxation of private capital, as the essential predicate for dismantling the progressive income tax.

Withdraw the federal government from a direct role in housing, healthcare, assistance to the poor and many other long-established social priorities.

Withdraw the federal government from a direct role in housing, healthcare, assistance to the poor and many other long-established social priorities.

Restore churches, families and private education to a more influential role in the nation's cultural life by giving them a significant new base of income--public money.

Strengthen the hand of business enterprise against burdensome regulatory obligations, especially environmental protection, by introducing voluntary goals and "market-driven" solutions.

Smash organized labor.

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If this Federal beast is to be drowned, then there is no alternative to supporting a higher degree of decision making at local levels, but it should be obvious that starving the Federal “beast” translates directly and inescapably into starving ourselves, which in turn suggests that to some degree, we’ll have to pay more to maintain our standard of living, our infrastructure, and some semblance of a civil society, right here at home.

Speaking personally, I’d like to see this trend of beast eradication extended to my having the option to withhold federal tax revenue from wars that I believe to be unjust, illegal, or figments of George W. Bush’s restive imagination, but that improbability aside, how do we propose to pave and stripe the streets, keep the alleys clean, remunerate the police and fire departments, and perform the tasks that we take for granted as necessary components of local self-rule, when we simultaneously insist on voting for politicians who’ve consumed copious quantities of Norquist’s fascist Kool-Aid, and refuse to pay what it takes for local services when the same politician obeys his handler and denies us funding?

What are we supposed to do, beg funds from the local mega-church according to the principle of faith-based reverse Caesar – which I could have sworn was either a salad dressing or a pro wrestling hold?

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Me?

I’m willing to pay my share to save my neighborhood and to ensure New Albany has a future. That’s more than can be said for the many “whatever it is, we’re against it” grandparents hereabouts, who continue to insist that Norquist’s starvation diet provides the perfect platform for the future interests of their grandchildren, something that is counterintuitive at best and purely insane at worst -- hence our bizarre and so characteristically New Albanian phenomenon of the Coup d’Geriatrique, an ongoing cabal conducted by so-called Democrats. It is directed not against Republicans, but deploys the Norquist playbook to savage the capable of all political and religious persuasions.

My 3rd District councilman – who insists against all prevailing evidence that he’s a Democrat, but whose right-wing pathologies are never hidden from view – is the prime example of this reaction against modernity even if he’s two decades younger than most other participants. Steve Price joyfully espouses the ATR party line, shrieking like a goosed banshee that errant nickels, misspent dimes and the perpetual tightening of belts will magically produce the revenue necessary to offset those monies being lost each time we gleefully vote for a pledged Norquistian, and incessantly associating the majority of governmental expenditures with frivolity and those aspects of human life with which he disagrees, misunderstands, detests and wishes to eradicate.

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Progress, not regress. Progressive, not regressive. Forward, not backward.

That’s all I have to say on the matter, although there’s a chance that some of you will disagree.

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