🎵 I love you, you love me, we love every tax and fee 🎶

The crocuses and daffodils are on full display, the pond frogs are screeching, and the trees are beginning to show a little bloom. In Portland, that can mean just one thing: It's arts tax time. Thirty-five bucks a head. But it's not a head tax, honest, no. That would be illegal. It's... um, er... an income tax. Yeah, that's the ticket.

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 fine.

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!