Progressive Pain in a Regre$$ive $ociety
You may have heard me in the past mention that in the Darwinian jungle that is highway driving in Ohio, I am the King of the Beasts, the undisputed apex predator, and that the left lane in this state is mine, by right of conquest.
It’s the Roundabout of Life
However, even the king can get in an occasional scrape, especially in a light, sporty two-seater, skittish as a dried leaf in a windstorm, which makes leeway so bad that, by comparison, Tokyo Drift is as slow as continental drift. All of which is by way of saying, years ago, I once totaled a car in a flat spin during rush hour. The car had been bought for daMrs by her ex, and it had been trying to kill me for years. But I survived completely unscathed each time, until Christine Jr. died a convenient death by guardrail.
There were many unfortunate legal and economic consequences, but “heavy lies the head,” eh? One which I believed was completely unfair, however, was that they sent me a bill for the guardrail.
Flash back to the 1900s: one of the ways that the GOP took over the last part of last century, leading eventually and inevitably to President Dunning J. Kruger, was with the whole tax revolution idea. Trickle-down Reaganomics, the Laffer Curve, pay the “job-creaters” – all that voodoo economics gave Grover Norquist his chance, and he ran around signing every Republican onto his “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” that they would cut, cut and cut some more, until suddenly unchained corporations would lavish their newly-boosted bottom lines on their long-suffering employees, whose higher salaries taxed at lower rates would replenish governments’ coffers in a never-ending spiral of prosperity.
Everyone can make it to the top!
But…
We live in a system where the right to profit trumps all others. The chimerical view of the enlightened oligarch sharing his wealth in a glorious trickle, rather than, say, moving it off-shore where even the anemic US tax laws can’t reach him… well, let’s just say that particular Utopia has yet to emerge.
The net effect has been to slowly starve government to the point where it can barely function anymore.
Beginning in the 90s, municipalities, counties and states had to go through a metamorphosis. With tax revenues cut WAY back by disingenuous – or just plain stupid – Republican office-holders and credulous – or just plain stupid – voters, our civil servants had to get smart about how they raised operating capital.
This is why a simple traffic ticket can cost hundreds of dollars. This is why, to fix our mismanaged roads, Governor Flying Monkey of Ohio just passed a 10-cent-a-gallon gas tax and will charge me an extra $100 a year for plates because my hybrid (who loves me, not like Christine, Jr) won’t use enough gas. This is why 40,000 bridges are just waiting for a full load and a stiff breeze to collapse suddenly, but not unexpectedly. This is why the guardrail people send a letter not saying “Glad you survived,” but rather “Here’s what you owe us.”
Mike DeWine says “Pay me or the dog gets it!”
My immediate response was “Didn’t I pay for that guardrail already, once, and for those roads and bridges? And won’t I pay for it, again, with my taxes?” And the answer is, not so much. Not anymore.
The justice system, especially, has felt the crunch. It costs a lot of money to administer the law in a country built on the rule of law. But now we have over-crowded for-profit prisons, exorbitant fees, costs and judgments, underpaid, overworked pro bono attorneys, and no hope at all that things will get better.
The school districts, too, have felt it. Instead of a guaranteed, steady stream of income that allows them to safely and effectively care for and teach our children, administrations have to make one dollar do the work of three, and won’t go to referendum for additional money until the buildings are almost literally falling down around their ears, and then they still might not win it on election day. So we have “temporary” trailer classrooms. Teachers buying their own supplies. No nurses. Inadequate heating or A/C. Nutrition programs: cut. Fine arts education: cut. Sports: cut. No wonder kids cut school: everyone else has!
School’s Out For Ever
The costs for all of these things used to be a shared burden in society, with everyone paying into the funds for the common good. But now, the user-fees and penalties assessed to pay for society are falling unequally onto the poor. The disingenuous, credulous and stupid will say “Well, the speeding ticket costs the same for everybody. That’s fair!”
But it doesn’t! It’s not! Yes, the new car payment and the higher insurance and the ticket and the guardrail set me back a bit. Yes, I’m still suffering the economic effects years later. But I’m doing okay. For somebody who makes tens of thousands of dollars a year less than I do (and yet is still laughably considered above the “poverty line”) all these fees and penalties have a much greater impact on their lives, to the point where they end up jailed, or evicted, or both, or worse.
Conversely, for the rich, for people making tens of thousands of dollars MORE than me, they can afford to avail themselves of attorneys, and actually get punished less than I do. Their wealth trickles back into society even SLOWER than it used to. The negative effects of no longer having a shared burden don’t accrue to the people who have all the funds they need to deal with life’s little vicissitudes. Something that can destroy a poor family is just minor blip on their balance sheet.
Oligarchs can buy highway guardrails all day long, but the guardrails that protect society as a whole from plunging into the third-world wealth-inequality abyss are gone. They can drop an extra 10 cents per gallon of gas without even noticing, but the fuel that powers our economy is sitting in off-shore accounts. They can buy lawyers to protect their ill-gotten gains from now until Doomsday, and then buy the private enclaves, islands and armies to let them ride Doomsday out.
Looking for any excuse to shoot….
America is a for-profit, pay-to-play society. And We the People can’t afford it.
Meanwhile the so called “elites” are still to ber trusted no matter how often of how badly they screw up.
Case in point Comey ex failed fbi hack and general scumbag.
Comey is an example of a self entitled moral coward.
First he lost control of his FBI office in New York when they were leaking like sieve to rudy guillaini about Hillary, notably while maintaining complete silence on investigation of demented donnie’s criminal and treasonous campaign recruitment of foreign actors to influence the election.
1A honest manager would at this point have gone accepted responsibility for his incompetence as a manager and gone public against security leaks of agents and shut down offending office until the criminal agents and actions wedded stopped revealed to the public and the whole weight of the law descended upon them like a ton of bricks.
So ignoring rules that state his superior (in every sense of the word) AG Loretta Lynch not the head of the FBI make public the status of cases and that no statement that could affect a campaign should be made in period before voting. Written DOJ rules.
But Comey neither being honest nor true to his oath decided rather to blatantly ignore established policy and show that no women, much less a women of color could, could enforce any policies upon him a white male fully accredited member of the Washington “elite” decided to ignore.
Besides endearing himself with thuglican lawmakers he at the same time sending a shot across another woman bow to reinforce a warning that she had an “untouchable” enemy in charge of the FBI who would cooperate with the thuglicans on every matter possible to cripple her presidency when, as he thought, won.
Comey is a coward, bigot and traitor who should have his citizenship stripped and set to gizmo.
But with doddering don and his contort of crooks, racists, frauds and low loafs won instead and like those who cheered the use of the guillotine became one of the first victims of the political horror he enabled.
Sounds like something George Carlin said years ago. He told it like it is. We are on a train headed into a dark tunnel. Hopefully there is the light at the end…
2A few years back while driving on I-40 in Arizona I noticed the rest stops now have corporate sponsors. GEICO seems to really be into that. Lately I’ve noticed that at least some Texas rest stops have sponsors, too. It’s kinda like when Texas invented the Adopt-a-Highway program – persuade someone to donate a service that the state used to provide and paid for through taxes. Now I’m wondering what’s next. State parks? Could happen.
3Well we have a winner .
4Buttigieg has decided that the problem is thAt D voters just don’t submit to troglyte knuckle draggers enough and that is why they lose elections.
So he is manuveuring to fill the jill stein ralph nader niche as a spoiler5 for his thuglicrat masters.
I refuse to accept that lowering the discussion and ethics to the lowest possible denominator of human behavior would be adequette to get these welfare kings and queens (i.e.farmers profiting off of government irrigation, price supports, fuel waivers and all so many undeserved subsidies to keep their deplorable leaders in power and money) to desert the thuglicans for a thuglican light.
K@1. Alex Jones, is that you?
5Well, let’s be fair about one aspect of this — auto & gas taxes.
As noted in the article, gas taxes haven’t been raised since 2005 while the costs of road construction/maintenance have continued to increase. In that light, ten cents a gallon doesn’t seem out of bounds. (A while back, I looked at the federal gas tax rates and found they haven’t changed in decades. Perhaps that accounts – at least in part – for the state of our interstates?)
As for hybrid and electric cars paying increased fees, that seems perfectly reasonable. They also rely on the road systems and don’t contribute a proportional amount for maintenance because of low/no gas usage. (Note: I write as the owner of a Prius.)
6@ Ormond #5
7Before throwing out baseless and unsupported insults one might try to use some reason and defend your thuglican apolagist rather the try to deride some one who points out the hypoctrisy of your boy’s inane diatribe against D voters.
After all he did blaim D voters for not embracing the fear, bigotry and ignorance of the knuckle draggers as the reason that d’s los elections.
Ignore gerrymandering, ignore voter suppression, ignore electoral criminality just blaim those voters who stood up for the principles w claim this country is suppose to support.
People here know of the mendicious tripe that jones spouts. You conspiciously are ignorant of that.
Jones doe not cite facts. I did when I cited his buttigieg’s ignorant rant against those whose support he claims to be courting.
Maybe buttigieg is counting on thuglicans flocking to him in open primary’s since the rnc is trying to preclude any challenge to demented donnie.
After all he is from fatboy rush territory and that was the strategy he was pushing the last 2 cycle.
Tax policy has been used to promote social benefits ( i.e. “sin” taxes on cigerettes and alcohol) so in this case to help save the planet all road maintence taxes should come from gas taxes until their numbers on the road have been reduced to less then 10%.
With the higher prices associated with hybrids and electric cars the up front taxes are enough of a penalty to charge the conscientious who are trying to reduce their carbon footprints.
So if gas taxes have to go up to $5 or $10 a gallon so be it. That hardly starts to pay for the damage that fossil fuels have inflicted upon the planet and those children weho are brought up in polluted environments.
( I am on second hybrid First was an 04 Pruis now I made the serious error of buying a c-max from ford and it is a piece of trash lousy service and customer reps who relish in lieing to my face)
8@Ormond #5
9Mea culpa for misreading which post of mine you slandered.
As for my comments about that trash comey who’se bigotry and arrogance was put on full display on the run up to the election.
Once Again I ask where am I inaccurate?
He lost control of leakers to guilanni in New york office – True?
He dfid nothing in public to admit his failure of management – True?
He ignored DoJ policy not to make politically charged comments in closing weeks of campaign -True?
He flaunted the authority of the AG, who was a woman of color, by ignoring policy and chain of command – True?
Rather then admit his failure to control his staff he sabautaged anothet womans campaign. – True?
He feels that purjurer poppa’s pardon printer should be given the benefit of the doubt even after barr wrote a letter endorseing the concept of a imperial and above the law thuglican presidentcy. – True?
Take your cheap and baseless insults to fatboy rushes show where you will be embraced.
As for me I quote (paraphrase) a great american comedian.
“Go away boy you’re bothering me.”
W.C. Field.
The way I understand it, at least in Texas, road tolls were temporary, until construction costs were paid. Now they’re permanent. I’m fortunate enough to be able to take advantage of them. Driving by folks stopped at traffic lights in the Houston area, because they can’t afford to, or don’t want to pay repeatedly for something their taxes already paid for.
10Also, Primo, thanks.
11This is the kind of big picture reality check that repugnantcans constantly distract from. Our current candidates need to be pounding heavily on this message, with the economic issues being talked about now being put in perspective. Symptoms of the main problem.
To expand a little. As I understand it, most toll roads now are built as partnerships of sorts between the government and private investors. With the private investors making gazillions in profits long-term.
12Transferring the initial cost the public pays from amounts that seem huge, to gianormously larger costs, spread out.
Forever.
@Primo Encarnación
I know this is a beef about a tiny point in very log post, but in the spirit of the Devil hiding in the details and because your writing punched one of my buttons,
I have lived 50+ years as a taxpayer in Texas. I have never once heard a school district cut “sports” to make its budget. Make an art teacher teach at two or three schools a week? Yes. End an extracurricular band program? Yes. Forbid a choir or band from traveling to a competition in ISD buses? Yes
The worst I’ve personally heard about sports, was my freshman year in HS and freshman football players had to take their uniforms home for laundering. ISD employees laundered the A-team’s uniforms at the football palace, then known as the field house.
The degree to which Texas school districts worship their football to the detriment of all academic programs, and athletics is most assuredly NOT an academic program, is shameful. Democrat, Republican, or other otherwise, school boards which build 100,000 square foot field houses and six story multi-million dollar stadiums and other athletic churches should not get another cent of taxpayer money for athletic programs for 200 years. And go to He77. Grrrrrrh
13Micr, agree 200%. Our [formerly] small ISD has always spent a disproportionate amount of tax dollars on sports, especially football [and boys]. The same at the college and university level.
But the real utterly wasted tax money gobbling welfare queens are the ‘pro’ sports teams in big, and small, towns everywhere– football, baseball, basketball, hockey, even soccer, etc.
These tax-sucking parasites, both their megabucks owners, and the help [players/coaches/mgmt], are all far beyond ‘well-paid’; and still manage to skim off billions of taxpayer dollars in dozens of schemes.
From fancy stadiums, to infrastructure, to the many sweetheart deals involved, their primary ‘sporting’ goal is to screw the taxpayers over 24/7 [and their idiot ‘fans’ just lap it up].
I go so far as to spend as little as absolutely possible money in local jurisdictions that ‘support’ such sports grifters [via primarily our obscene regressive sales taxes], IE: San Antonio, Houston. Even with big box store shopping, like Lowes , Home Depot, or restaurants, I’ll shop an outlying location, just so SA won’t get my sales tax dinero [some of which finds its way to the damned $purs, screw ’em all].
14Plus I try to shop online for as much as possible [tax free if possible, sorry Amazon].
@Sandridge
Gawd you can punch me up.
The pro teams who draft from HS and university athletic programs should have to compensate the HS and university for the YEARS of providing athletic facilities from which, ultimately, only they, the pro teams, benefit.
I’ve read somewhere that 1% of HS football players go on to university teams and only 1% of university team players go on to the pros. Parents who preparate their children for an athletic career, omitting academics, aesthetics, and altruistics along the way are on a fool’s mission and will reap a fool’s result.
15Well, not for nothin’ @Micr, but there are other states than Texas (gasp!) and other sports than football (double gasp!!). The first three results on Teh Google Machine were:
Budget cuts lead Jersey City schools to slash some sports programs
https://www.nj.com/hudson/2018/08/budget_cuts_lead_jersey_city_schools_to_slash_spor.html
Oakland, California School District Cuts 10 Sports, Including Swimming
https://swimswam.com/oakland-california-school-district-cuts-10-sports-including-swimming/
Hinsdale board votes to eliminate some sports, increase class sizes
https://abc7chicago.com/education/hinsdale-board-votes-to-eliminate-some-sports-increase-class-sizes/4923429/
That last one really got to me when I heard it, because I grew up two suburbs over and Hinsdale used to have some pretty impressive sports teams.
16@Primo Encarnación
I am a product of my Texas upbringing, for better or for worse. A school board trustee cutting football budget would likely face recall. If not, s/he would lose the next election by 2:1.
17Primo@16–I am shocked that Hinsdale eliminated swimming! When I was in high school, they were swim team rock stars! Some of the best swimmers in our school moved to Hinsdale for that very reason. Times are changing.
18Jo – Yes, I went to Fenwick, also known at the time for swimming, and Hinsdale was always tough, tough competition! They were to swimming what York was to Cross Country.
19@micr #15
20The idea of pro teams reimburseing schools was suggeste by Michener (author Hawaii, Centennial, Report of County Chairman etc) in his “Sports in America” 1976
So great minds do think alike.
I really love this one! From your lips to Gods ears! Privatize the profits and socialize the losses.
21Micr @15, Be careful what you wish for.
22If the ‘pros’ dug their clutches any deeper into the ‘amateur’ {MS, HS, U) sports, with an official sanction no less, the corruption of the whole system would go up astronomically.
I don’t know what the answer is, I just stay pissed about the tax angle.
Went along with the HS stuff as the girls were ‘band people’ and that involved more than just football games (neither plays a note now :[ ). Lots of road trips with a 2A-3A team, driving 120 miles for a Friday game, yeesh. My older kids were band -and- swim team too.
@Sandridge
Fore sure, I think corruption exists in any ISD with at least two high schools. All my kids graduated from the same northeast of Dallas ISD with 7 or 8 HS. Coaches from the “it” high school routinely acquired the very best footballers using the “choice of schools” process. The not “it” HS wound up with the rest. Plus the teams comprised their own district. One of that ISD’s HS went to the playoffs every year, apparently something that impressed those without much understanding of how ridiculously such a feat had become.
I figure since the HS and universities already serve the NFL, the NBA and to lesser degrees MLB and NHL, as a harassed taxpayer, I’d like to see a bit of money coming back on the investment in palatial athletic facilities my taxes have funded for many years.
23Micr, at the ISD my youngest went to [still live and pay taxes in it] the one small HS only had about 200 seniors back then in the area [my own private HS class numbered just 64].
24This district has since grown hugely [with the Eagle Ford Shale boom], and the ISD has been on a spending bender lately, all of the county local ISDs have been.
They’re even spending tax money on Xtian fundie schemes, you really don’t want to get me going on that stuff…My oldest were in a bigger ISD, but still only 1 HS back then; two or more now.