A WORD TO THE TAX AVERSE

The quickest way for a politician to get whacked is to suggest, in any way, however intelligent or well-meaning, that taxes do go up. Fritz Mondale won only his home state and was soundly trounced by Reagan when he suggested that higher taxes were here to stay. Kim Campbell had the colossal nerve to suggest that there might be more taxes. She lost of course and the caucus was reduced to two members, one of them now the Liberal premier of Quebec with a rating somewhere in the dungeon below the basement. (Footnote to the Reagan era: once he was President he pushed the deficit to record highs and declared that" There is no such thing as a free ride.")

The principal aide to Toronto’s new mayor Rob Ford and architect of his victory has left the mayor’s office and will work to create a Canadian version of the tax-averse Tea Party. If it was his idea to tell the mayor that his campaign should use the word “taxpayer” as often as possible in his campaign, he deserves a medal. Not from me, but from the powers of the tax-averse right wing.

Want to be elected? Promise lower taxes. Keep making pronouncements about the “hard-working” taxpayer. Keep telling people that government has no place in their wallets. It’s all rhetoric, all rubbish, all the time. But it works. There is, in the heads of so many voters, the notion that somehow governments are feasting on their hard-earned money. For what purpose? Greed? Tax and spend. (on who?) The Tories are hanging that one on Iggy even though the poor guy has two chances in the coming Federal election: slim and none.

In America the voters have swallowed all the propaganda about the deficit and vote for the tax cutters. At the same time, in the insane world of political paradox, surveys show differently: that unemployment, not the deficit, is the country’s biggest problem.

The “hard-working taxpayers” have stopped thinking. Long ago.

If you are watching the Toronto mayor’s climb in popularity (now at 60% - and he only got 47% of the vote) you know that he continues to harp on taxes. He has already rescinded some unpopular taxes plunging the city further into debt. (All taxes are unpopular.) No one, except the chattering classes of pundits, has noticed the contradictions in his statements. It was only a few weeks ago that he deplored going to the province for money, saying that that too was taxpayer’s money. So he froze property taxes (and will increase users fees) and is going to the Province for many millions of dollars that the Province doesn’t have. He needs it for stuff like road fixing. The province is being blackmailed with the promise that if no money is forthcoming he will lead Toronto voters to vote for the Conservatives. That one already looks like a shoo-in and a return to the teacher-bashing and welfare thrashing of the Harris Tories.

But the effect of the “promise to taxpayers” has been prodigious. It is the greatest hoax in modern politics today. Voters and politicians are equally to blame.

I remember when people in search of wealth would declare: “I’d be happy to pay a million dollars in taxes. It would mean I’d made a lot of money.” Now, even the super-wealthy groan over their tax- “burden” as they build McMansions with five car garages.

In am happy to pay my taxes. I love this country and I echo a remark made several years ago by Brian Tobin (it may have been Frank McKenna) that “It costs money to be a Canadian.” We are blessed. I can still live well enough after meeting my obligations. I also, and I know this will sound self-righteous, get furious when someone offers to forgive the HST if I pay cash. I show them the door. I want to pay my fair share. I live in a country where we (most of us) have a decent standard. The tax-haters curl up at the edges when anyone dares to suggest that government services should be extended fully to those in need. “My tax dollars are going to lazy bums,” is the cry.

Even more stupid is the notion that there is a “gravy train” and that greedy politicians are living it up on the taxes that should be going to public services. The mayor struck the mother lode when the THC was found to be spending taxpayer’s money on pedicures and parties. What a political bonanza for the tax-hating mayor.

Look out. We’re heading to the Right. The Tea Party is contagious. Ford is the second mayor in the last twenty years to put on a tax freeze while our roads and services succumb to potholes and neglect. Remember the guy who said he was worried about going to Africa and finding himself in a pot of boiling water. Like Ford, he was the most popular guy on the block.

We all have to pay for a better life. If some of that “better life” goes to the helpless, so be it. My final stab at the past “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” It may sound Marxist to you, so what. The reality, not the ideology, is what counts. It does cost money to be a Canadian.