To the editor:
There's not much surprise in the letter from the League of Women Voters urging us to vote "no" on Question 1.
Did the League weigh in with a defense of Sarah Palin yet? I ask in part because Alaska is one of the seven states that has no income tax. So whatever Mrs. Palin has managed to accomplish as the state's governor, given the end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it recitation of prospective horribles in the League's letter to this newspaper, is surely entitled to acknowledgment and admiration from, even celebration by, the League. Google says "no," but I may have missed it.
The nearest of the non-income-tax states is neighboring New Hampshire. The letter from the League does not help us understand how it is that the sky-is-falling consequences sure to follow from an abandonment of an income tax in our commonwealth are not to be found in New Hampshire or in any of six other states that rely on other sources of revenue to survive, and indeed sometimes to thrive.
The League writes, for example:
Infrastructure will deteriorate further with less money for roads, bridges and public transportation systems. This means more crumbling roadways, potholes, and repair bills for drivers and a greater risk of train derailments and unsafe bridges.
I have often driven in New Hampshire, and I have noted, with some chagrin, that the quality of the roads there, subjected to worse weather than our own, is almost invariably superior to that of our own. Indeed, the difference is noticeable as soon as the state line is passed. I do not typically read newspapers from those other states, and that may be the reason I have seen no reports of train derailments or unsafe bridges there. I have read of such things occurring in Minnesota, most recently and dramatically, which is perplexing because of state income tax rates there of between 5.35 percent and 7.85 percent.
Nor have I seen any such reports of out-of-the-ordinary civic chaos in Texas, Florida, South Dakota, Nevada, Washington or Wyoming.
My point is a simple one.
Spare us, please, the lurid descriptions of the prospects for a civic Armageddon if we vote to declare our independence from state income taxation. Give us some credit for understanding that it is up to us to decide, on the rare occasion when we have something to say about the taxes imposed upon us, whether we want a government of yes-we-can or of no-maybe-we-shouldn't. It is right and just for us to question whether we want to have our hard-earned dollars taken from us to support feel-good programs that, while offering some benefit to society as a whole, inevitably involve mismanagement and fiscal irresponsibility and overpayment to and for the financial advantage of those who are supposed to be our civil servants but who think of themselves instead as our masters.
The League of Women Voters has a proud, if sometimes uneven, tradition of trying, at least, to promote our education on civic matters. It is disappointing to see it so readily abandon that fine tradition in favor of talking-points memos in the transparent disguise of a concerned letter to the editor.
We deserve better of the group. Education, yes. Shrill propaganda, no.
Ed McCabe
Gloucester
