Nothing I knew of Don Sundquist's political career led me to
anticipate his recent proposal to reform Tennessee's tax laws.  He would
overcome the tax phobia that usually results in raising the highest sales
taxes in the US to address anticipated shortfalls in next years state
budgets --sure to affect UTC adversely.  Even more astonishing he would
eliminate the onerous sales taxes on groceries --a benefit to all but
especially for the poor on whom this tax is borne disproportionately to
their ability to pay --by closing a tax loophole for the well to do.

        I am beginning re-think the virtues of term-limits.  For who but a
lame-duck politician would champion the politically powerless poor and
shift the burden to lawyers, doctors, accountants, etc. who, using
accounting tricks, have escaped payment for the government services and
social and physical infrastructure that their businesses depend upon.
Surely he knows that these folks are the ones who regularly fill his
campaign coffers to buy extraordinary political influence and whose
interests are represented by well-paid lobbyists.

        And this from a Republican governor whose party's cynical strategy
over the past 30 years has been to divide the country on trumped up wedge
issues exploiting race, welfare, gender, sexuality, anti-intellectualism,
and arbitrary symbols of patriotism.  With amoral Clintonism taking over
where amoral Reaganism left off, Gov. Sundquist is causing me reconsider my
political allegiances.

        As the debate on taxes has shifted to a broad based income tax that
would raise my taxes,  I continue to support tax reform.  While my
understanding of tax policy was no doubt informed by
pinko-liberal-socialist college professors (I was an undergrad at UTC, the
Berkley of the South) --observation of the Tennessee economy over the years
seems to verify what I learned (or least what I remember of it.).  In
Taxation 101 I heard about the "three legged stool" of tax policy that
depended on taxation of property, consumption and income to provide for a
desirable distribution of the tax burden and to limit crises caused by
recession and to take advantage of economic good times. The Tennessee
economic experience could be the exhibit #1 example for the wisdom of
ignoring this principle.

        Recent e-mail has re-iterated [pseudo] libertarian creed on
taxation. The primary tenet of this creed is that, save a few functions
they deem essential,  most government services are not constitutional.  Not
just ill-advised or inefficient --matters that could and should be debated
in a democratic society --but illegitimate.

        The US Constitution specifically provides the Congress with the
power to levy taxes and to spend revenues on initiatives (six broad areas
of purpose are enumerated) for which a majority vote can be obtained.
Adherents to this faith of property worshiper focus on one and a half of
these purposes --"to establish justice" with emphasis on enforcement of
property laws; and "to provide for the common defense" which typically
finds no limits to military spending.

        By the way,  during the allegedly taxpayer friendly '80's I saw my
meager wages as a young artist evaporate --as super-regressive payroll
taxes were raised each year to support Reagan's military build-up --even as
taxes on the highest incomes were reduced.

        Following [pseudo] libertarian logic, which dismisses most
government activity "to form a more perfect union" and "to promote the
general welfare" as weak minded socialism, I ask why I should pay taxes to
protect their property.  Let them protect their own damn property!  They
would tax me to support the largest jail system in the world and a military
larger and better armed than all of the other nations of the world
combined.  And for what?  To protect a "civilization" based primarily on
the acquisition of consumer goods.  If that is all there is; if that the
reason that we ethnically cleansed the natives of this valley,   I say let
the invasions, the thieving, the looting begin!  (What the hell, these
criminal/liberators will soon be seduced by our mall culture anyway.)

        What about the government's role protecting the air we breathe and
the water we drink (our precious collective property) from those who would
fill these with garbage?  Most of the property worshipers are hostile to
"tree hugging" protective regulations.

        The tax haters claim that the government (unlike private business?)
doesn't make money. They only take ours. (And I always thought that the US
Treasury DID make money.)  Governments provide much of the infrastructure
(i.e. money) necessary for individual citizens and private business to
operate.  They also provide services for which it would be impractical or
unprofitable to extract individual fees.

        Employers as well as employee benefits from our education system.
Even such "social(ist)" programs as income support and food stamps
subsidize business even as they aid the poor by allowing business to pay
obscenely low wages. (Note the poverty level wages that many workers
essential to the highly profitable service industries receive.)  Is this
the best way to organize an economy?  Could/should more government services
be privatized?  Let us debate these points rather than rely on simplistic
political jargon in the name of [narrow] self interest.

        For a long skinny state like Tennessee that borders eight others
that have or soon will have a lottery,  I concede that it is probably not
very smart to be a lone holdout (but not as stupid as having the highest
sales tax among our 8 neighbors.)  Too, I find it insultingly patronizing
to "protect" those who would succumb to the seduction of an unlikely
lottery win (I guess that's the libertarian in me.)

        But I reject that the introduction of a state lottery does not
raise important moral issues. Consider another situation a little closer to
home involving the seduction of quick and easy cash.  A few years ago while
working fall registration, I noticed a table at which a local bank was
offering easy money via 18%+ interest credit cards.  Not 20 yards away,
university cashiers were taking that credit to pay fees.  At a time when a
squeeze had been placed on low interest student loans, this amounted to the
university's complicity in this usury while contributing to the profits of
a private business.  Certainly the students who availed themselves of the
credit did so voluntarily.  But the powerful, both the university and the
bank created circumstances for which they have the principal moral
responsibility.

        I close with this subversion of Marx that seems to me to sum up the
[pseudo] libertarian-social Darwinist creed.

To each according to their means.
From each according to their inability to resist economic exploitation.