Anti-tax “Tea Party” in Goshen
April 11, 2009 by Julia King
It’s so much more relaxing visiting a protest than actually organizing one. As a visitor to a protest, all those people who wear the wrong clothes or make signs that are distractingly ill-conceived are entertaining. As an organizer of a protest, the goal is as much message cohesion as possible; but as a visitor, the presence of opposing political currents (like right-wing Christians and Libertarians, for instance) provides a nice undercurrent of interest. On the political Left, there are frequently too many drums and white guys with dreadlocks; on the political Right, there are too many flags and dirty baseball caps (and when I say “dirty,” I mean that they need to be washed, not that they are embroidered with naked ladies).
And so this morning I stood on the Elkhart County Courthouse lawn in Goshen as several hundred people (some with baseball caps, some with flags, and some with church flyers) threw a local version of the national anti-tax “Tea Party” that’s become all the rage on the Right. A lot of people who didn’t notice our dept or deficit or war expenditures when George W. Bush was in office are suddenly counting our collective pennies now that we’re talking about health care.
Have I mentioned that I like democracy? I do. I do like democracy. I love that Americans can congregate in public spaces and say anything they want (except “fire!” or “kill!” of course).
“Cut the fat!” read one sign (cleverly shaped like a pig). I approached the sign holder and asked her what, exactly, did she not want to pay for. She said she didn’t want to pay for things that “aren’t really necessary.” When I asked her about health care, she paused for quite a while. She wasn’t sure about that. Since she didn’t have insurance, she was iffy on that one. But she did not want to pay for some study about bird migrations, she said.
Midway through our conversation the prayer started, so we silenced ourselves to bow our heads and listen. The pastor at the microphone invoked Deuteronomy 28 and at one point mentioned “heathen nations” and at another point said we should be living as an “unabashedly Christian nation.” It was a long prayer.
I moved on through the crowd, taking note of a man’s “No Taxation without Representation!” sign. Was he from Washington, D.C. (where they really are taxed without representation)? Or was he just confused? Either way, the man (and the crowd) heard from Indiana state representative Wes Culver.
Culver speaks in sweeping terms, the way most good politicians do, but he isn’t afraid to utter specifics. Today he was the only one brave enough to make the real-world connection between taxes and government services. “If you don’t like taxes, don’t complain about potholes or the brush not being picked up on your street,” he said. (It would have been fair to add more items to that list of things not to complain about, including, but not limited to: your poorly educated kids, or when you have to file for bankruptcy because your health insurance runs out, or tainted milk products from China that end up on your table because regulators have been “cut back” along with the budget).
The people who congregated at the courthouse were there for a range of reasons, but they more-or-less agreed that taxes were too high (and that those taxes pay for things that “aren’t really necessary”). Some of them seemed like reasonable people who had done their homework, like the man I spoke with from a group called “FairTax;” (he was nice enough, but I’ll need to read more about it before I comment on the actual plan) but others just wanted to hang their ideology somewhere – and the “taxes” hook was the most convenient place. “Don’t use my tax dollars for abortion,” demanded one sign.
It was a crisp and sunny spring day, perfect weather for a Tea Party. There was plenty of energy and determination. But there was no clear winning argument.
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5 Responses to “Anti-tax “Tea Party” in Goshen”
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I read your essay with interest (especially after I didn’t find much depth in the local newspaper account).
And I’m curious about the reaction to Rep. Culver’s statement.
Did it make people shuffle nervously and examine their footwear?
Did they spontaneously chant, “We want pot holes”?
And what was his larger point? That he stands for fewer taxes AND less services? [“Navigable roads make us soft!”]
There was no applause in response to Culver’s “don’t complain about potholes” statement; but neither was there a “Hey! What’s he talking about?? I LOVE to complain about lack of government service!”
I think Culver just wants government to be small. He wants you to clear your own brush — and your neighbors’ if they can’t do it — instead of having a city truck and worker do it. He wants things done through churches and private businesses and individuals. That all sounds reasonable enough if we don’t bother with the details. A couple of dead branches on the side of the road are fine, but I think people like Culver forget that government provides an important check on private, profit-driven business. Does government overreach and overspend sometimes? Of course. That’s something that needs continuous monitoring. But I’m afraid there are people on the Right who mistake government flaws with private industry perfection.
If we shrink our government down to the size of a Toy Poodle, how do we deal with businesses who put tainted peanut butter on our shelves because they want the money (like here: http://www.wwlp.com/dpp/news/wwlp_news_peanut_plant_knew_product_was_tainted_200901282232 )?
These are questions Culver and others need to answer.
Julia,
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/02/24/why_democrats_should_love_the_fairtax/
I would like to recommend the above link of an article to you for your further reading about the FairTax. It was written by Laurence J. Kotlikoff, a professor of economics at Boston University, and is an economic adviser to former Senator Mike Gravel.
I am the state director here in Indiana for Americans for Fair Taxation, FairTax.org. We are non-partisan. I think that it is very important for this issue to remain non-partisan because I fear that if one party hijacks this issue then the FairTax will just become another wedge issue that will never see the light of day other than for the occasional “we are right and you are wrong” bickering that is far too common in politics today. Our broken tax system hurts every American, and it will take leaders from all parts of the political spectrum to fix it.
I think that in your research about the FairTax bill you will see the FairTax is far more progressive than the current income tax system. Under the FairTax, low-income households experience five times the benefit increase as compared to high-income households. The FairTax eliminates the highly regressive tax on wages of the working poor and middle class. The FairTax removes the single most regressive element (the payroll tax) for wage earners. The FairTax is the only plan that completely untaxes the poor. Even a person with a zero percent income tax rate today must pay payroll taxes on the first dollar they earn and also pay hidden federal taxes in the prices of everything they buy.
The FairTax sales tax rate isn’t graduated; everyone’s resources get taxed at the same 23 percent effective rate. What makes the FairTax progressive is its rebate. The rebate is a trivial share of the resources of the rich, but 23 percent of the resources of the poor. Since our current tax system is regressive, adopting the FairTax would achieve progressivity. The FairTax stops the export of jobs. Our income tax favors imports over U.S. production by exempting imports from U.S. tax, and we penalize U.S. exports by allowing foreign nations to impose taxes when our goods enter their shores.
Here are the highlights of the what I believe are the benefits of the bill:
The FairTax:
Enables workers to keep their entire paychecks
Enables retirees to keep their entire pensions
Refunds in advance the tax on purchases of basic necessities
Allows American products to compete fairly
Brings transparency and accountability to tax policy
Ensures Social Security and Medicare funding
Closes all loopholes and brings fairness to taxation
Abolishes the IRS
Finally, I recommend the following link for the complete details about the FairTax plan.
http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_main
Kindest regards,
Danny Higgins co-director InFairTax.org
Julia, as always, right on the money, penny specifically (as the tea party folks might have it). (PLEASE CONSIDER SENDING YOUR PIECE TO THE LOCAL PAPERS AS AN OP-ED!)
I was “minding the store,” (where hardly a dime or penny was spent) on Saturday, but stuck my head out the door about 1 pm and saw the sign totting crowd on the sidewalk in front of Court House. Many cars that passed beeped their horns and although I too love democracy, it made me sad. I was sad because I was unable to leave and go do what you did, talk to the sign carrying, horn beeping crowd. I would have loved to ask them where they were when billions of dollars were being squandered on supplemental (not out of the Pentagon’s current budget, but our children’s future Federal budget) funding for an unlawful war in Iraq. Billions were given to Halliburton and Blackwater, did they know that? Were they beeping in support of us when we were on the same sidewalk posing those questions? (And our signs were way better, for the most part – the pig was pretty clever.) I would imagine not, I think they were giving us another signal (with their middle finger) of their lack of support (or understanding) of what we were doing or why. I was also sad because they were on the LAWN for their protest. Do you remember when our permit request was rejected by the County Commissioners to have a protest about the impending war in Iraq because they said we were against the soldiers?
I would have also liked to ask them if they had a mom like mine. At 89 she has a pacemaker keeping her heart going, and lenses implanted and cataracts removed from her eyes as well as ongoing, sight-saving treatment for macular degeneration so she can see better, and quarterly visits to the orthopedic doctor for cortisone injections into her knees so she can walk and almost monthly visits to her regular doctor for various age-related ailments which he treats with medications and advice, and multiple visits to her cardiologist and surgeon to keep her heart condition in check. The lions share of all these medical costs are paid by Medicare. I wonder if anyone in the tea partying crowd has a mother like mine? If they do, do they know where the money comes from to fill Medicare’s coffers? Taxes? Hmmmm….
What about the police officer that responds to the car accident, or the medics who come to help the injured, or the fire fighter who put out the engine fire? Should they be eliminated or reduced to a skeleton force too? I don’t believe I need to go down this road, as you’ve already alluded to it and we are all smart enough to go down it ourselves.
I guess if they had carried signs, “We don’t need or want the F-22 Raptor!” and chanted, “we want our RV factories making “prefab green homes” http://realestate.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=18708410>1=35000 then maybe I wouldn’t have been so sad as I looked out a lonely doorway to a shop where hardly anyone came to visit me that Saturday afternoon.
Yes, there’s good taxes and bad taxes apparently according to Mr. Culver but the news report seemed to indicate that taxes now are bad but as you all say, taxes in the previous 8 years seemed to be okay to a very high price.
I am glad that taxes are now coming to LaCasa of Goshen so homes in Elkhart County can be tested for lead and then made safe for children and adults to live in. I’m glad these tax dollars will create jobs locally and stimulate the local economy. I’m glad people will have income to buy food and clothes and pay for their rent or mortgage. These tax dollars seem to be put to very good use to make our community better. Taxes are a community thing not a punishment. Taxes bring equity and provide for people in a just manner so that all might benefit, now just the wealthy but all who live and work in our community and in our country. Somehow sharing still doesn’t come to the forefront when it comes to the positive aspects of tax dollars collected in a society that was founded on “justice for all.”
Thanks, Julia, for conversation that goes beyond partisan thinking, conversation that equals working for the good of others because we can think through spending in a fiscally sound manner that leaves violence out of the picture and works for building up our society so we don’t decay further from within.