🎵 I love you, you love me, we love every tax and fee 🎶
And just in case you need a reminder, the city mails to every address a tax form to fil out. Always in the envelope with said tax form is a little flyer promoting the tax as wonderful policy. This year's version is as inane as ever. It's "for the children," of course.
When Trump's IRS does stuff like this, it's decried as using the tax agency for political purposes. But when the cut-throat revenuers at Portland City Hall do it, it's okey-dokey.
There ought to be a law against using public dollars to promote a tax. Collect it, fine, but to market relentlessly how wonderful it is? That should be outlawed. Hey, Mayor! Hey, Z-Man!
We're told that the City Council book club is taking up a replacement tax for the arts, that maybe this is the last time they'll be shaking us down for the head tax. Uh oh. By the time the socialistas get finished, we'll probably all wish we could just pay the $35. Soak the rich! What, they moved to Lake Oswego? Soak the middle class! And in the sacred cause of equity, take away their cars!
And only homeowners pay the tax, so worse than a head tax. I think that is why they want to change the game- not enough people to shake down. Why they can't fund school arts programs is another sign of how much money they waste on middle management, unrealistic pension returns, payoffs to fired admins, and on and on.
ReplyDeleteNo, everyone must pay, even renters. Even homeless people! But yes, this is a back-door school tax.
DeleteThe first cut of the dough goes to the schools--no one asks why they can't do arts education on their own dime, especially PPS, which has money to burn on creepy stuff like the Black Excellence Center (which has now edited out the "black", in an ultimate wink-wink, nod-nod).
ReplyDeleteThen the next bunch 'o' bucks goes through the city bureaucracy and then into the hands of two NGOs, both of which promptly vanish the money. Ask them how they make decision to fund the mostly-progressive schlock and you will be told to mind your own business. The process--totally secret--involves artists (no names, please) giving other srtists little $-thousand grezzies. The process operates in total omerta, and forget the public meeting laws, since they're miraculously not public.
It's arrogant corruption--the Machine's only talent.
Does everything you post here have to include a racist dog whistle, or worse? It gets old.
DeleteI always make it a point to file by mail, and write in expletive form what I think about this tax.
ReplyDelete