by Jeff Smith
September 27, 2013
I saw a sign encouraging me to vote yes on the Override. Imagine my delight as I learned this wouldn’t be an expense of any sort, but rather, an investment! Furthermore, I learned it all will happen without a tax increase! Then an elf promised to spin straw into gold for me, but he disappeared, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.
I am compelled to address this dishonest campaign being waged by the Override machine.
First, the idea that somehow the Override isn’t a tax increase. This is patently false. If the Override isn’t a tax increase, why does it have to go to the voter’s at all? Why must the board send it to the ballot if it isn’t a tax increase? Of course the Override is a tax increase. If it passes, our property taxes will be higher than if it doesn’t pass. That’s the very definition of a tax increase. Q.E.D.
Second, the disingenuous notion that somehow the Override represents an “investment.” This is a tired canard predictably trotted out to deceive the public and disguise confiscatory taxation as something otherwise virtuous. Actually, investment is strictly a private sector concept, describing a transaction one enters into voluntarily with one’s own resources. It is not described by the seizing of one’s private property by the coercive force of a 50 + 1 vote of a special interest mob in an off-cycle election.
Far from being an investment in anything, the Override is simply the perpetuation of artificially inflated property taxes that continues to mask the waste and inefficiency that is endemic in the spending of the public schools.
Every board member, administration member, union member, and special interest lackey who supports the Override should renounce this shameful campaign. I understood this campaign would eschew the dishonest tactics of previous Override campaigns. It’s still not too late.