Chief edible tourism bourbonist Greg Fischer is "praying" that restaurant meals will be taxed higher because that's "easiest" for him and his oligarch friends.

Is he daft?

Fischer Says Restaurant Tax ‘Easiest’ Option For Covering Pension Obligation, by Amina Elahi (WFPL)

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said budget talks are already underway and will pick up in earnest in the new year. City leaders will again need to contend with a large pension bill that is expected to grow another $10 million in the fiscal year starting in July. The question is whether they will turn to cuts for a second year in a row, or successfully raise taxes instead.

The easiest option would be a 3% restaurant tax, which could cover most of the city’s pension costs for the next few years, Fischer said in a year-end interview with WFPL. That move would require authorization by state legislators, which he said would be easy to do. It wouldn’t need a Constitutional amendment, and smaller cities already have the power to implement it.

“I pray for that,” Fischer said. “And we’ll, we’ll see if that happens.”

Short of that, he said the Metro Council may need to reconsider the insurance premium tax they voted down last spring. Fischer said it’s the only real option they have for increasing taxes without state approval. And he said public backlash to cuts that resulted from that vote may encourage Council members to reevaluate ...

"Reaganomics killed America's middle class," and "the old deal that held US society together started to unwind."

Photo credit.

Following are two topics raised during the Tuesday "Chew On This" discussion about what divides Americans.

Tuesday night, we chewed on THAT.

Starting the conversation here.

A return to Piketty: "Reaganomics killed America's middle class."

There’s nothing “normal” about having a middle class. Having a middle class is a choice that a society has to make, and it’s a choice we need to make again in this generation, if we want to stop the destruction of the remnants of the last generation’s middle class ...

... Capitalism is not an economic system that produces a middle class. In fact, if left to its own devices, capitalism tends towards vast levels of inequality and monopoly. The natural and most stable state of capitalism actually looks a lot like the Victorian England depicted in Charles Dickens’ novels.

Continuing it here.

Decline and fall: how American society unravelled, by George Packer (The Guardian)

Thirty Forty years ago, the old deal that held US society together started to unwind, with social cohesion sacrificed to greed. Was it an inevitable process – or was it engineered by self-interested elites?

 ... The large currents of the past generation – deindustrialisation, the flattening of average wages, the financialisation of the economy, income inequality, the growth of information technology, the flood of money into Washington, the rise of the political right – all had their origins in the late 70s. The US became more entrepreneurial and less bureaucratic, more individualistic and less communitarian, more free and less equal, more tolerant and less fair. Banking and technology, concentrated on the coasts, turned into engines of wealth, replacing the world of stuff with the world of bits, but without creating broad prosperity, while the heartland hollowed out. The institutions that had been the foundation of middle-class democracy, from public schools and secure jobs to flourishing newspapers and functioning legislatures, were set on the course of a long decline. It as a period that I call the Unwinding.

In one view, the Unwinding is just a return to the normal state of American life. By this deterministic analysis, the US has always been a wide-open, free-wheeling country, with a high tolerance for big winners and big losers as the price of equal opportunity in a dynamic society. If the US brand of capitalism has rougher edges than that of other democracies, it is worth the trade-off for growth and mobility. There is nothing unusual about the six surviving heirs to the Walmart fortune possessing between them the same wealth as the bottom 42% of Americans – that's the country's default setting. Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates are the reincarnation of Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie, Steven Cohen is another JP Morgan, Jay-Z is Jay Gatsby.

The rules and regulations of the Roosevelt Republic were aberrations brought on by accidents of history – depression, world war, the cold war – that induced Americans to surrender a degree of freedom in exchange for security. There would have been no Glass-Steagall Act, separating commercial from investment banking, without the bank failures of 1933; no great middle-class boom if the US economy had not been the only one left standing after the second world war; no bargain between business, labour and government without a shared sense of national interest in the face of foreign enemies; no social solidarity without the door to immigrants remaining closed through the middle of the century.

Once American pre-eminence was challenged by international competitors, and the economy hit rough seas in the 70s, and the sense of existential threat from abroad subsided, the deal was off. Globalisation, technology and immigration hurried the Unwinding along, as inexorable as winds and tides. It is sentimental at best, if not ahistorical, to imagine that the social contract could ever have survived – like wanting to hang on to a world of nuclear families and manual typewriters ...

A confusing Kentucky proposal to allow cities to support tourism by taxing restaurants.

Here in SoIn we already have a tax to support tourism. It's a hotel room tax, which of course can be better defended as coming from the pockets of visitors, to attract other visitors.

Meanwhile I'm in tune with the basic vibe of Marsha's case in opposition to what sounds like a poorly reasoned bill.

With national momentum gaining toward paying workers a living wage, and large cities continuing to enact mandates increasing the minimum wage (as they should!), small businesses — especially those in the hospitality category, which depend on optional household discretionary funds — are stretched to the breaking point. Both fledgling and established restaurants in Kentucky would suffer, and many would close, due to the effects of another added tax burden.

Restaurant profit margins are already as thin as the chimera that our restaurants are perched upon. All over the country, states and municipalities give massive tax breaks to large corporations with hope that they’ll create jobs in our cities. Proposed tax hikes such as HB 345 can and will actually destroy jobs at independent restaurants across the state, including in Louisville.

At the same time, this part confuses me. I've underlined the specific passage.

House Bill 345, sponsored by state Rep. Rob Rothenburger, R-Shelbyville, would allow cities to impose up to a 3 percent tax on restaurants, in addition to the 6 percent sales tax they already collect. If the bill passes, many restaurants will be forced to increase their menu prices or close their doors, because, even though 3 percent doesn’t sound like a lot, it’s actually dangerously close to the national common average restaurant profit margin of between 3 and 5 percent. Imagine being faced with half-to-all your profits being taxed away. You’d have little choice but to pass the costs to your customers.

But how many cities would impose such a tax? Phrased this way it's not obligatory.

Maybe that's a question for beloved pretend-progressive Greg "Budget Crisis" Fischer.

A sharp needle pointed at our restaurant bubble, by Marsha Lynch (LEO Weekly)

 ... The bill aims to inject this money into state tourism, distributing “at least 25 percent of revenues generated to the tourist and convention commission, the remainder to be used to create or support infrastructure supporting tourism.” And while there’s no denying that tourism is great for the state and great for the businesses within it, legislators need to understand that most local restaurant profits are driven by — you guessed it — locals: people who live in the city and return to their favorite spots time and again. It’s the repeat business from Marty and Janine down the street that keeps local restaurants afloat, not the biannual visit of your aunt and uncle from Wichita.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson calls historian Rutger Bregman a "tiny brain...moron," then gets all anatomical.

First the serious part.

Says Rutger Bregman, the hero of Davos: "No, wealth isn’t created at the top. It is merely devoured there."

Altruism, capitalism, charity and drinking before noon.

Now the hilarity.

Historian who confronted Davos billionaires leaks Tucker Carlson rant, by Sam Wolfson (The Guardian)

Historian who confronted Davos billionaires leaks Tucker Carlson rant

• Rutger Bregman clashes with Fox News host in unseen clip
• Visibly annoyed Carlson tells Bregman: ‘Go fuck yourself’

Rutger Bregman is the Dutch historian who became a global sensation after an appearance at this year’s Davos summit, where he accused attending billionaires of ignoring taxation. Now he has created another viral moment in an extremely uncomfortable interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson.

Bregman so riled Carson with his accusations of hypocrisy, critiques of Fox’s conservative agenda, and attacks on Donald Trump that the TV host called him a “moron” and angrily told him: “Go fuck yourself.”

According to Bregman, he recorded the interview with Carlson last week and it was scheduled to air later, but never did ...

Says Rutger Bregman, the hero of Davos: "No, wealth isn’t created at the top. It is merely devoured there."

And he's absolutely right.

Rutger Bregman at was a sensation at Davos, but the Dutch historian was repeating something we all should know: from the end of WWII through the advent of Ronald Ray-gun's presidency, the American economic system worked pretty damn well with a marginal tax rate higher than 70%. When Ray-gun instituted tax cuts under the banner of trickle-down economics, wealth instead flooded upward -- and these days, poultry workers chopping up chickens wear diapers because they're not allowed a bathroom break.

Bregman wrote the following for The Guardian in 2017. It's a long read but essential.

No, wealth isn’t created at the top. It is merely devoured there

Bankers, pharmaceutical giants, Google, Facebook ... a new breed of rentiers are at the very top of the pyramid and they’re sucking the rest of us dry

This piece is about one of the biggest taboos of our times. About a truth that is seldom acknowledged, and yet – on reflection – cannot be denied. The truth that we are living in an inverse welfare state.

These days, politicians from the left to the right assume that most wealth is created at the top. By the visionaries, by the job creators, and by the people who have “made it”. By the go-getters oozing talent and entrepreneurialism that are helping to advance the whole world.

Now, we may disagree about the extent to which success deserves to be rewarded – the philosophy of the left is that the strongest shoulders should bear the heaviest burden, while the right fears high taxes will blunt enterprise – but across the spectrum virtually all agree that wealth is created primarily at the top.

So entrenched is this assumption that it’s even embedded in our language. When economists talk about “productivity”, what they really mean is the size of your paycheck. And when we use terms like “welfare state”, “redistribution” and “solidarity”, we’re implicitly subscribing to the view that there are two strata: the makers and the takers, the producers and the couch potatoes, the hardworking citizens – and everybody else.

In reality, it is precisely the other way around. In reality, it is the waste collectors, the nurses, and the cleaners whose shoulders are supporting the apex of the pyramid. They are the true mechanism of social solidarity. Meanwhile, a growing share of those we hail as “successful” and “innovative” are earning their wealth at the expense of others. The people getting the biggest handouts are not down around the bottom, but at the very top. Yet their perilous dependence on others goes unseen. Almost no one talks about it. Even for politicians on the left, it’s a non-issue.

To understand why, we need to recognise that there are two ways of making money. The first is what most of us do: work. That means tapping into our knowledge and know-how (our “human capital” in economic terms) to create something new, whether that’s a takeout app, a wedding cake, a stylish updo, or a perfectly poured pint. To work is to create. Ergo, to work is to create new wealth.

But there is also a second way to make money. That’s the rentier way: by leveraging control over something that already exists, such as land, knowledge, or money, to increase your wealth. You produce nothing, yet profit nonetheless. By definition, the rentier makes his living at others’ expense, using his power to claim economic benefit.

For those who know their history, the term “rentier” conjures associations with heirs to estates, such as the 19th century’s large class of useless rentiers, well-described by the French economist Thomas Piketty. These days, that class is making a comeback. (Ironically, however, conservative politicians adamantly defend the rentier’s right to lounge around, deeming inheritance tax to be the height of unfairness.) But there are also other ways of rent-seeking. From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, from big pharma to the lobby machines in Washington and Westminster, zoom in and you’ll see rentiers everywhere ...

Airbnb in Nawbany: To tax or not to tax?

My Main Street neighbor Josh Pavey and councilman Al Knable provide talking points in the video, which you can view by following the link.

If the deity is to be thanked for small favors, here's one: Bob Caesar does not appear.

Since no one asked me, I'll offer this hint to those in favor of regulating and taxing Airbnb properties: You do not want Bob Caesar as your spokesman.

You're welcome and can buy me a beer some day.

New Albany officials weighing pros and cons of Airbnb regulations, by Chris Sutter (WDRB 41)

NEW ALBANY, Ind. (WDRB)-- Josh Pavey's grandmother just got done with a big facelift to her classic home on New Albany's mansion row.

"She just recently repainted the entire outside of her house, redid the facade, the woodwork," he said.

She's been able to do it because of the extra money she's bringing in after opening her doors to visitors. Her home is an Airbnb.

"It's been a huge asset to her," Pavey said about his grandmother.

She's part of a growing trend in New Albany. A new spot in the southern Indiana city seems to pop up on Airbnb.com daily. The winds of change don't go unnoticed by lawmakers. Talk is beginning about how to properly regulate the new businesses.

"I'd like for there to be discussion from the public, public input, about what they want their neighborhoods to look like," said City Councilman Al Knable.

He's decided to get the conversation started.

Our big fat Hibbardendum (3): City voters, take note, because just as in 2015, the NA-FC bond referendum is a "driving oriented, suburban school model."

Originally published on April 6, 2015. 

The "yes" arguments favoring the 2016 variant of the school corporation's bond referendum are essentially the same as before, when it was defeated by voters during the 2015 primary election. Perhaps unsurprisingly, so are the "no" arguments. Here is one of them. See also:

Our big fat Hibbardendum (1): Follow the PAC-besotted usual suspects' beak wetting in the $87 million schools referendum. 

Our big fat Hibbardendum (2): The more things stay the same, or our school bond referendum, 2016.

ON THE AVENUES: It’s our big fat Hibbardendum, and Jeff Gahan is carrying the superintendent across the threshold as Metro United Way tosses rice and One Southern Indiana steals all the liquor.

---

Unctuous, thy name is Bruce Hibbard.

Back in February, when the reigning superintendent of the NA-FC schools appeared at a city council work session along with Brad "Actually Earns HIS Pay" Snyder to tout the May referendum, at-large councilman John Gonder cut straight to the chase and said aloud what everyone in the room should have been thinking.

Gonder said school officials didn’t actively lobby the public in support of Silver Street Elementary School when it was on the chopping block.

Now the system is wanting to build larger facilities while a school that children once could walk to has been closed, Gonder added.

“I do think that the school corporation has a strong responsibility to neighborhoods in the city,” he said.

Of course, "neighborhoods in the city" have tended to be the last thing on the school corporation's mind, apart from demolishing houses near existing schools (does Dan Coffey get a cut of that CCE action, too?), but if we were expecting introspection from Hibbard, it wasn't happening.

The decision to close those schools — which was made almost five years ago — was in reaction to state funding cuts and other issues facing the system at the time, Hibbard said.

“When we closed those four schools, we didn’t need those four schools,” Hibbard said. “It was really about efficiency for the district so we could survive.”

In short: The school corporation, without which Hibbard's pay packet is rerouted to a tar paper-lined sewer ditch on West 9th Street, must live even if our neighborhoods die.

A subsequent suggestion that "efficiencies" in school administration might include periodic examinations of past policy failures and current golden parachutes was greeted with disingenuousness in the form of Hibbard's gurgling sounds and palpable condescension; apparently Snyder is quite accustomed to dual duty as primary plan presenter and bucket o'sawdust-bearing cleaner of his boss's puke piles.

As the referendum's primary slot draws nearer, let's fast forward to last week's NAC post about the built-in lies of America's transportation system.

Marohn on transportation funding: "Facing the Unknown with Courage."

... We’re locked into a transportation system that requires us to lie to ourselves about what we can know about the future and then spend huge amounts to support that lie. When we underestimate our needs, it confirms our bias for building more. When we overestimate, we can explain it away – if we are ever asked to, which we hardly ever are – by citing factors beyond our control (oil price, recession, fickle humans, etc…). This is a dumb system.

JeffG, from whom the link was borrowed, then used Marohn's main point as a mirror, and held it up to the school corporation.

(Marohn's point) pretty well sums up the upcoming school referendum, too, in which the school corporation seeks to solidify its commitment to a driving oriented, suburban school model for the foreseeable future.

NA-FC buses already drive enough to circle the globe multiple times in less than a week. We know that's extremely costly and not sustainable. We know that children, neighborhoods, and our biosphere do better with walkable, neighborhood schools. But, when I suggest refocusing efforts on such walkable schools, I'm told I'm rehashing previous decisions.

The truth is, the current $120 million plan is the one looking backward, extending and exacerbating the misguided trends of the 50s and 60s while ignoring current and future reality. We can't afford the vehicles, roads, and fuel usage we have now, so what's the school plan? To use what's being called a rare financial opportunity to make sure we keep it that way for as long as possible.

We've often made the argument that the single worst aspect of New Albany's archaic one-way street grid is the way it incessantly rows in the opposite direction, 24 hours each day, negating all expenditures and well-intentioned efforts to revitalize urban neighborhoods. The school corporation often functions in similar fashion. It would be easier to support this referendum if it might somehow be a part of a deal to bring Hibbard to the table, to improve the school corporation as a participating stakeholder in the process of civic improvement, rather than an entity seemingly always pursuing autonomous agendas. Pie in the sky, perhaps.

Meanwhile ...

From what can be seen on-line and in social media, pending corrections, the only two May primary candidates to make public their views on the referendum are Al Knable (at-large council) and Cliff Staten (6th district council), both in favor.

There doesn't seem to be an organized anti-referendum effort, although the comments appended to two posts from January in the Floyd County IN, GOP group at Facebook, most of them by former Floyd County Republican Party chairman Dave Matthews, amply summarize the opposition from a "no new taxes" perspective.

First one
Second one

The pro-referendum case is made on Facebook at Families for Floyd County (the group's web site is here).

A final link: Referendum tax rate slightly higher than estimated for NA-FC Schools (Jerod Clapp, News and Tribune).

 ... (Snyder) said the district’s reasoning with the .1937 rate was to anticipate some growth in the assessed valuation of properties across the county.

The DLGF came back and told them to avoid assuming any growth in the values and keep them essentially flat, slightly raising the estimated rate.

Let's avoid the TIF discussion for now, shall we? It's only Monday morning, and we're already exhausted.

NA-FC referendum: "A driving oriented, suburban school model."

Unctuous, thy name is Bruce Hibbard.

Back in February, when the reigning superintendent of the NA-FC schools appeared at a city council work session along with Brad "Actually Earns HIS Pay" Snyder to tout the May referendum, at-large councilman John Gonder cut straight to the chase and said aloud what everyone in the room should have been thinking.

Gonder said school officials didn’t actively lobby the public in support of Silver Street Elementary School when it was on the chopping block.

Now the system is wanting to build larger facilities while a school that children once could walk to has been closed, Gonder added.

“I do think that the school corporation has a strong responsibility to neighborhoods in the city,” he said.

Of course, "neighborhoods in the city" have tended to be the last thing on the school corporation's mind, apart from demolishing houses near existing schools (does Dan Coffey get a cut of that CCE action, too?), but if we were expecting introspection from Hibbard, it wasn't happening.

The decision to close those schools — which was made almost five years ago — was in reaction to state funding cuts and other issues facing the system at the time, Hibbard said.

“When we closed those four schools, we didn’t need those four schools,” Hibbard said. “It was really about efficiency for the district so we could survive.”

In short: The school corporation, without which Hibbard's pay packet is rerouted to a tar paper-lined sewer ditch on West 9th Street, must live even if our neighborhoods die.

A subsequent suggestion that "efficiencies" in school administration might include periodic examinations of past policy failures and current golden parachutes was greeted with disingenuousness in the form of Hibbard's gurgling sounds and palpable condescension; apparently Snyder is quite accustomed to dual duty as primary plan presenter and bucket o'sawdust-bearing cleaner of his boss's puke piles.

As the referendum's primary slot draws nearer, let's fast forward to last week's NAC post about the built-in lies of America's transportation system.

Marohn on transportation funding: "Facing the Unknown with Courage."

... We’re locked into a transportation system that requires us to lie to ourselves about what we can know about the future and then spend huge amounts to support that lie. When we underestimate our needs, it confirms our bias for building more. When we overestimate, we can explain it away – if we are ever asked to, which we hardly ever are – by citing factors beyond our control (oil price, recession, fickle humans, etc…). This is a dumb system.

JeffG, from whom the link was borrowed, then used Marohn's main point as a mirror, and held it up to the school corporation.

(Marohn's point) pretty well sums up the upcoming school referendum, too, in which the school corporation seeks to solidify its commitment to a driving oriented, suburban school model for the foreseeable future.

NA-FC buses already drive enough to circle the globe multiple times in less than a week. We know that's extremely costly and not sustainable. We know that children, neighborhoods, and our biosphere do better with walkable, neighborhood schools. But, when I suggest refocusing efforts on such walkable schools, I'm told I'm rehashing previous decisions.

The truth is, the current $120 million plan is the one looking backward, extending and exacerbating the misguided trends of the 50s and 60s while ignoring current and future reality. We can't afford the vehicles, roads, and fuel usage we have now, so what's the school plan? To use what's being called a rare financial opportunity to make sure we keep it that way for as long as possible.

We've often made the argument that the single worst aspect of New Albany's archaic one-way street grid is the way it incessantly rows in the opposite direction, 24 hours each day, negating all expenditures and well-intentioned efforts to revitalize urban neighborhoods. The school corporation often functions in similar fashion. It would be easier to support this referendum if it might somehow be a part of a deal to bring Hibbard to the table, to improve the school corporation as a participating stakeholder in the process of civic improvement, rather than an entity seemingly always pursuing autonomous agendas. Pie in the sky, perhaps.

Meanwhile ...

From what can be seen on-line and in social media, pending corrections, the only two May primary candidates to make public their views on the referendum are Al Knable (at-large council) and Cliff Staten (6th district council), both in favor.

There doesn't seem to be an organized anti-referendum effort, although the comments appended to two posts from January in the Floyd County IN, GOP group at Facebook, most of them by former Floyd County Republican Party chairman Dave Matthews, amply summarize the opposition from a "no new taxes" perspective.

First one
Second one

The pro-referendum case is made on Facebook at Families for Floyd County (the group's web site is here).

A final link: Referendum tax rate slightly higher than estimated for NA-FC Schools (Jerod Clapp, News and Tribune).

 ... (Snyder) said the district’s reasoning with the .1937 rate was to anticipate some growth in the assessed valuation of properties across the county.

The DLGF came back and told them to avoid assuming any growth in the values and keep them essentially flat, slightly raising the estimated rate.

Let's avoid the TIF discussion for now, shall we? It's only Monday morning, and we're already exhausted.

Airbnb: But of course hotels are opposed to inexpensive rooms in desirable locations.

Some cities are cracking down on the sharing economy.

One that isn't should come as no surprise.

Not all city authorities are reacting to Airbnb so negatively. In February Amsterdam became the first city to pass an "Airbnb-friendly law", when new legislation was created – with the sharing economy in mind – that permits residents to rent out their homes for up to two months of the year to up to four people at a time.

For our next two holiday trips, we've already booked four Airbnb stays in three countries. We're also considering renovating one of our rooms to share with others; there are a couple of listings in New Albany already.

Airbnb's legal troubles: what are the issues?, by Will Coldwell (Guardian)

As Airbnb finds itself under growing attack from city authorities around the world – this week receiving a €30,000 fine in Barcelona – we look at the controversy surrounding the holiday rental site

The two locations of Sam's Food & Spirits have reopened.

First, permit me to express sincere relief that Sam's Food & Spirits has reopened, and  also that the tax issues causing Sam Anderson's two restaurants to briefly close for two days this week are being resolved. Both Sam the person and Sam's as a restaurant are iconic institutions hereabouts. Which local eateries have been in business for 28 years under the same name and ownership?  Sam is the link between the Lancaster's and South Sides of old, and the explosion of new places today.

And, thanks to Grace Schneider for clearly explaining what happened, and how it's been addressed.

Sam's eateries in Floyd County reopen after 2-day shutdown, by Grace Schneider (Courier-Journal)

Both Sam's Food and Spirits restaurants in Floyd County reopened Friday for lunch after closing suddenly Tuesday afternoon. The Indiana Department of Revenue had temporarily shut them down because the company defaulted on payment of state taxes, owner Sam Anderson said Friday afternoon.

Taxation thread at Facebook, and a newspaper columnist vacancy.

It probably will not surprise you to learn that my attitude toward Facebook has been one of highly personalized agitprop. Yesterday, I linked to my Thursday column, and wrote this:

‎Jeff Gillenwater wants to bid secessionists farewell. I believe secessionists should follow their own advice (to me) and move elsewhere. In Europe, secessionists want out of their countries, but not the EU. Clearly, we're all secessionists now.

Every now and then, a good discussion breaks out, and such was the case yesterday. As sometimes occurs, the topic shifted, in this instance to taxation, tax rates and tax reform. The thread still is going as Friday breaks: http://www.facebook.com/roger.a.baylor/posts/293759810724531?comment_id=1344041&notif_t=share_comment

---

Speaking of columns, Debbie Harbeson has written her last essay for the News and Tribune.

Ending my current relationship with this paper does not mean I will stop writing though, particularly since writing helps me learn and grow. I will probably be writing for more specific audiences — people who already understand and share similar underlying philosophies.

Well, it's the perfect timing for a Beer Money (2009-2011) newspaper column comeback. Never have the troglodytes been more annoyed as during my tenure crafting weekly impenetrable satire. Coach K, too.

I'm tanned, rested, ready and completely rehabbed: No PEDs, EPOs and HGHs are to be found in my urine sample ... though IPA, well, that's another matter.

From Foxwoods to Horseshoe, and following the money.

Setting aside for a moment the ethical implications inherent in government taxing the addictions of its citizenry, which after all has been occurring since the dawn of human history, what happens when a government that is unwilling (or is not permitted) to tax its citizens directly becomes reliant on the revenue produced by indirect taxation such as that produced by legalized gambling – or gaming, as preferred by America’s casino industry?

Precedents in other areas of purported sinfulness are many. As Ken Burns’s “Prohibition” documentary series observes, prior to the introduction of the income tax, excise taxes on beverage alcohol constituted a huge portion of federal revenue.

Obviously, this is a form of addiction in itself, whether an indispensable fix for those state governments issuing the restricted permits, or local authorities seeking funding for governmental agencies as well as their outsourcing of educational and social services to extra-governmental agencies and non-profits, all of which queue accordingly for grants from entities like the Horseshoe Foundation here in Southern Indiana.

Thus, these functions are off-loaded, and subsequently rely only on the continued popularity of gaming (see the article linked below) and whatever mechanisms exist to divide the proceeds among applicants.

At the Horseshoe Foundation, a Board of Directors manages the foundation and allocates disbursements with the assistance of grant and investment committees, under the overall direction of an executive director. Elected officials occupy some seats on the board and committees, while others are occupied by people representing a cross-section of the community.

It’s interesting to contemplate the ever increasing extent to which the Horseshoe Foundation’s very existence helps governmental ends meet. It’s also fitting and proper to monitor the ulterior motives of whomsoever has his or her hand on the spigot, and to advocate maximum transparency, seeing as the lines separating political and non-political can get somewhat blurred at the local level.

As Ronald Reagan himself was fond of saying, “Trust, but verifiy”. He was a Republican, you know.

Foxwoods Is Fighting for Its Life, by Michael Sokolove (New York Times)

 ... It would be easy to look at what has occurred at Foxwoods and think, Here are people who fell into money and didn’t know how to handle it. Which happens to be true. But how the casino reached this point, and the challenges its owners and operators now confront, is part of a much larger story — one involving the gradual relaxation of moral prohibitions against gambling, a desperate search for new revenue by state governments and the proliferation of new casinos across America. Casino gambling has become a commodity, available within a day’s drive to the vast majority of U.S. residents. Some in the industry talk of there being an oversupply, as if their product were lumber or soybeans.

Letter: GOP chair Matthews and his grumbling about the "need to contribute.”

In the News and Tribune letter section today, GOP chairman Matthews receives a hiding. I've included a link to his most recent letter, as cited by Mrs. Ryan.

---

Democratic leader: GOP head not looking out for you

This April, my husband and I will again send in our tax forms with thanks that we live in the United States and pleased that our taxes provide good governance and multiple public services we have benefited from our entire lives. I have visited countries with minimal governance and no organized public services, and it is not a place you would want to live.

Dave Matthews, Floyd County GOP chair, recently shared his angst at “having to contribute” to pay for U.S. budgets. How sad that he sees this in such a negative light. More than most Americans, Matthews has benefited mightily from the U.S. government. Retired from military service, he enjoys unlimited free health care for the rest of his life. He benefits from the only truly socialized medical care in the United States.

However, as chair of the local Republican Party, he will work very hard to make sure none of us ever have such fabulous medical support. Matthews was trained as a pilot at a cost to the U.S. government of $1 million (source The Air Force News). Few of us will be able to receive $1 million worth of free education. As a Republican leader, he is sure to lead the charge against Pell grants and other support for low income students. Matthews now collects a comfortable pension that is guaranteed by the U.S. government. Yet, he will fight proposed regulations of Wall Street that would protect others from having their retirement incomes decimated by unscrupulous hedge fund managers.

Coming out of the service, Matthews was able to get a job as a pilot with UPS (thanks to the $1 million of government training). According to UPS, the average salary of their pilots was $174,830 in 2004. Of course, Matthews is a member of the pilot’s union and benefits significantly from that representation. As chair of the local Republican Party, you can be assured that he will work hard to make sure others do not have strong union representation.

Matthews is doing quite well. You think he would feel blessed and pleased to support a government that has provided so well for him and his family and not approach each tax season grumbling about the “need to contribute” so others can have a fair share.

— Susan Ryan, Floyd County Democratic precinct chair, Floyds Knobs

A Candidate’s Progress (13): There I go, reading again.

I am struck by the juxtaposition in these passages from two books. Both prefigure war, one a literary treatment of 1990’s Belgrade just before NATO air strikes on Serbia, and the other taken from the pages of pre-Civil War history in the state of Missouri, circa 1861.

The italics are mine.

Out in St. Louis, we visit the Forty-Eighters — reviled as the “Damned Dutch” by the Missouri secessionists — refugees from the failed revolution against the monarchs of the German Confederation, who discovered in the slaveholders “exactly what they had come here to escape: a swaggering clique of landed oligarchs, boorish aristocrats obstructing the forces of modernity and progress.”
-- Adam Goodheart

Just because I don’t understand something, replied Marko, doesn’t mean that some dark evil force is behind it, a mysterious organization in collusion with the government, army, police or who knows what. Such things, he said, happen only in American movies, in which, by the way, the entire plot is reduced to the struggle of conspirators to strip free and honest American citizens of their right to information, to knowledge that supposedly belongs to them, if for no other reason than that they regularly pay their taxes …
-- David Albahari

It's fascinating that in America on the verge of a bloody nervous breakdown 150 years ago, immigrants handily identify the source of the problem, while more recently, in the fractious and tragic Balkans, an ordinary citizen offhandedly links contemporary American conspiracies not to conniving Byzantine orders of the Illuminati, but to minor irritations spawned by the tax revolt.

Accordingly, it transpires that Umberto Eco and Dan Brown have wasted the bulk of their writing careers. The modern American, in the midst of the Information Age, and yet not unlike Dan Coffey and systematically deprived of crucial information, responds in Pavlovian fashion by refusing to pay his property taxes. He is duly appeased and enfolded within the loving arms of the Pander Bears, and civil society sinks ever more quickly into an unfunded morass that tea baggers barely notice amid shopping trips to Wal-Mart.

It’s enough to make one wish for the halcyon days of genuine big-ticket issues: Civil Rights, Communism vs. Fascism, the social responsibilities of capitalism (are there any?) and whether or not the Yankees should be broken up now or later – anything rather than the institutionalized selfishness symbolized by the “neither taxation nor human progress” clique spewing intemperance within the city limits of New Albany.

Why is it that while I’m a taxpayer like all the rest, the dimensions of conspiracy do not reveal themselves to me? But what actually is clear to me is that the GOP’s historic property tax caps have so far resulted in my taxes, as well as those of my business, increasing. Meanwhile, it’s obvious that someone, somewhere, is being pandered to via commensurate tax decreases, since all levels of local government are strapped and reduced to begging for scraps from St. Daniels and the Clere Channel fluffers.

Given that so much as mentioning the Local Option Income Tax (LOIT) aloud has become tantamount locally confessing to atheism, animal abuse and book reading – or all three – the only truly heroic utterance I’ve heard to date on the 2011 primary campaign trail came from Suellen Wilkinson.

In essence, at last Friday’s IUS campaign discussion, she refused to duck and cover, openly referred to the taboo concept of LOIT, and brazenly noted that all options should be on the table for consideration when it comes to funding local government and supporting the concept of a civil society.

In doing so, Suellen did something exceedingly rare hereabouts: Not only did she refrain from pandering to taxpayers, but as a taxpayer, she refused to pander to herself. To quote John Gonder, it was “a profile in courage”, and I agree.

Whether any of it matters in the materialist world of today is anyone’s guess, but at least it won't be long until Elector Day. On Tuesday, March 3, Drink and vote early, and often.

Higher taxation for blight?

There's an idea. But ya gotta be committed to collecting ...

Blighted buildings face higher taxes; Some dispute list's accuracy, by Dan Klepal (Courier-Journal)

Banks, hundreds of individuals and a high-ranking official in Louisville's housing department own some of the nearly 1,500 blighted properties facing stiff penalties from the city, according to a metro government list.

They are being targeted under a law intended to make it more expensive for people to neglect their run-down property, a situation that can affect home values and public safety.

The law allows cities to require owners to pay triple the amount of their normal property tax bill if buildings have been unoccupied for at least one year and are unsanitary, not properly boarded, vermin-infested or unfit for human habitation. They can also face the penalty if the buildings' taxes have been delinquent for three years.

Fire insurance marks, privatization and being careful which savior you wish for.

Welcome to the jungle, Matt.

New Albany fire chief wonders what no overtime in 2009 will bring, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune).

The City Council passed it, now New Albany Fire Department Chief Matt Juliot has to live with it.

No money is appropriated for overtime pay in the department beginning Jan. 1, the result of budget cuts approved by the council …

… Juliot said losing the option of overtime may mean cutting service.

“At this point in time, I don’t know what else to do,” he said.

I don’t, either, but perhaps it’s time to humor the Kool-Aid drinkers in the Norquist camp and privatize the lot -- a complete and all-encompassing imposition of user fees on all the services people expect from government but wish not to pay for ... if by "paying" we mean taxes, and running the insulting risk that my money might be used by someone I don't like very much.

Never mind that the reverse might be true. Hypocrisy needn't make sense.

It’s even worse now owing to the economic malaise, but even in better times, we've seen voters pleading poverty, both in terms of cash and in the larger sense of communal insensibility, and opting for devotion to candidates like 3rd district councilman Steve Price, who vows to drown all government in the bathtub, and whose legislative agenda achieves the desired end of starving local authority of the resources to function – all in the name of the downtrodden, who simply can't deal with reality without assistance.

The question remains whether Price and his ilk really are helping this segment of the population.

At any rate, because local government continues to be populated largely by elected officials whose ambitions are indiscernible from the ward heeler’s bare minimum, and who won’t or can’t comprehend the notion of supporting reasonable efforts to make the pie bigger for everyone through paying periodic attention to good ideas about economic development proposed by trained and educated pointy-heads who can't be trusted by people who don't customarily read past the funny pages, budget cuts are duly made amid a heroic cacophony of nickel-and-dime political grandstanding.

As correctly identified by Chief Juliot, the inevitable result of this endlessly corrosive cycle of mandated legislative impotence is the slashing of services, which leads us to that most delicious of junctures, as the people so loudly demanding ever smaller government now must explain the prioritizing of resources made necessary by their refusal to pay a few dollars more – and bitching until the cows come home when the ambulance doesn’t show up all time.

Have they considered the re-privatization of fire services, and the re-establishment of fire insurance marking? Wikipedia helpfully explains the way it used to be.

Fire Insurance Marks
Fire insurance marks were lead or copper plaques embossed with the sign of the insurance company, and placed on the front of the insured building as a guide to the insurance company's fire brigade. They are common in the older areas of Britain's and America's cities and larger towns. They were used on the eighteenth and nineteenth century in the days before municipal fire services were formed. The UK marks are called 'Fire insurance plaques' the first to use the mark was the Sun Fire Office before 1700.

American Fire Marks
Fire Insurance has over 200 years of history in America. Famous fires include the Chicago fire of 1871 and the San Francisco of 1906. The early fire marks of Benjamin Franklin's time can still be seen on some Philadelphia buildings as well as in other older American cities. Subscribers paid fire fighting companies in advance for fire protection and in exchange would receive a fire mark to attach to their building. The payments for the fire marks supported the fire fighting companies. If the protected building were to suffer a fire only their fire fighting company would attend the call to extinguish the fire. Even if competitor fire companies were closer to the fire they would not do anything to prevent further damage or extinguish the fire. This caused bad public relations for the fire mark system. Municipal and rural fire departments support by local taxation became a more logical solution.

Here and now, in the contemporary Norquistian era of rampant selfishness disguised as reasoned doctrine, and where no one wants to pay for anything except their half-dozen weekly trips to Wally World, it looks like we’re back to old way of doing things, Mafioso-cum-protection style, to wit:

Need a fire put out, or a cop to come take the gun away from your meth-crazed stepson? Well, we sure hope you're taken the necessary advance steps to procure service contracts and insurance. Otherwise, we can't help you ... and anyone who can remember what a civilized society resembled, you may wish to pack enough heat to keep the wolves at bay until the monthly check clears.

And guess who will be hurt the most by such a system of non-governance?

The very same downtrodden people who Steve Price says he’s trying to protect from the 21st century. In an irony-free zone, neither he nor they are likely ever to awaken and figure that part out.

Holiday reading: Tax history as fashioned by wingnuts.

Turns out that there was time for relaxation after the painting was through. An article by David Sirota (recommended by Randy Smith) was good enough ...

The Tax History Conservatives Want Us to Forget

... but within the comments section there was a link to something even better:

Feast of the Wingnuts: How economic crackpots devoured American politics, by Jonathan Chait, The New Republic (September 10, 2007).

Follow the link for the whole piece, which is too lengthy to reprint in its entirety.

Like most crank doctrines, supplyside economics has at its core a central insight that does have a ring of plausibility. The government can't simply raise tax rates as high as it wants without some adverse consequences. And there have been periods in American history when, nearly any contemporary economist would agree, top tax rates were too high, such as the several decades after World War II. And there are justifiable conservative arguments to be made on behalf of reducing tax rates and government spending. But what sets the supply-siders apart from sensible economists is their sheer monomania. You could plausibly argue that, say, Reagan's tax cuts contributed around the margins to the economic growth of the 1980s. But the supply-siders believe that, if it were not for Reagan's tax cuts, the economic malaise of the late '70s would have continued indefinitely. They believe that economic history is a function of tax rates--they insisted that Bill Clinton's upper-bracket tax hike must cause a recession (whoops), and they believe that the present economy is a boom not merely enhanced but brought about by the Bush tax cuts.