jackiedoherty.org

We’ve stated our reasons (here, here and here) for voting ‘no’ on Question 1, the ballot referendum to eliminate the State Income Tax. Given Jackie’s recent post about being baffled by differing political opinions, a feeling that I have had as well with Libertarian family members, I’ve made an effort to understand the views of those who are planning to vote ‘yes’. To that end, I’ve been reading a mostly civil (and very long) discourse by citizens planning to vote for and against the question. I can understand some of the arguments, especially the frustration with waste and corruption, but I still think that this ballot question is like using a ‘hatchet when a scalpel is needed.’ The following exchange sums it up for me:

Your representatives will tell you they can’t do it (balance the budget). Tell them, “Do it or get out”

>Of course they can do it. Anyone can put a balanced budget on paper. The real question is do we want them to do it? New Hampshire is an excellent example of the problem. Trying to fund education primarily on the regressive property tax does not work, and is fundamentally unfair to children, whose education will vary wildly from community to community……I have looked at local budgets for a long time, and there is not a lot of fat anymore. If we lose the income tax, STATE AID will be cut. And municipalities, who CANNOT raise their own taxes enough to make up the difference within the limits of prop 2 1/2 (a bar NH does not have!).

Yes they can do it. I don’t think they should.

The regressive nature of the funding that will likely replace the lost income tax dollars is what keeps getting lost in the proponents’ arguments. I am still voting “no” on Tuesday.

Decades ago, I visited a place where adults with mental disabilities made a living preparing large-scale mailings for businesses. I remember being impressed by their work ethic and their joy at being productive self-earners. I thought of that place recently when I read about Governor Patrick’s budget cuts that required layoffs at a Malden employment center for the blind, as well as other impacts to social services statewide. I know the Commonwealth faces a financial crisis due to a Wall Street fiasco with global impacts. I also believe the governor is a good and intelligent man, trying to do more with less in a climate overwhelmed with real fiscal problems (not counting the havoc if Ballot 1 passes—see here for earlier mention), but is this really what we’ve come to? How is it that our society cannot care for the least of us—even when it simply means giving them the opportunity to work? It reminds me of a Mary Oliver poem, unlike her in its dark brooding, but so indicative of the day:

Of the Empire, by Mary Oliver, from her book Red Bird

We will be known as a culture that feared death

and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity

for the few and cared little for the penury of the

many. We will be known as a culture that taught

and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke

little if at all about the quality of life for

people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All

the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a

commodity. And they will say that this structure

was held together politically, which it was, and

they will say also that our politics was no more

than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of

the heart, and that the heart, in those days,

was small, and hard, and full of meanness.