Louisville Magazine

JUL 2012

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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[Bob Hill] The Low Road to Utopia A s we all gird our eyes, ears and loins for a five-month, Super PAC-funded presidential campaign filled with all the wit, honesty and problem-solving debate of a Monday Night Raw blood-flailing, I have finally figured out how the con- servative mantra of "no new taxes" will work. It is accompanied by a sincere, eternal and utterly incomprehensible belief that the price of everything will never ever rise — thus rendering any new taxes unnecessary, if not moot. It's Congress and a White House in Never Never Tax Land — eternal childhood, petty foolishness and escapism as writ large by Peter Pan, Tinker Bell and the Lost Boys. As long as the prices The next time your city sewer line erupts, your city park is overrun with trash or you need a cop or fireman, call Tinker Bell. of tax-supported goods and services never rise — and that surely includes police cars, fire trucks, Air Force jets, Navy ships, U.S. Marine helicopters, Medicare, Medicaid, child care, veterans' benefits, education, bridge building, highway repair, food, water, parks, clean air and Congress — there will never be a need for higher taxes. Ditto for the prices of personal cars, houses, clothing, vacations and hair-removal wax. Once we get those prices permanently sta- bilized — and cut back a little more on taxes for the rich — the rest of us will prosper as the blessed money trickles down to the grateful masses from Wall Street, Captain Hook and the Jolly Roger. Here's the problem: Te only thing that hasn't gone up in the last 20 years is compensation for middle-class wage earners, many of whom are rabid supporters of the very politics that keep the rich getting richer at their expense — a legalized piracy that flies beyond understanding. If prices go up but the size of the middle-class tax base doesn't — and the rich remain well protected — how are we going to pay for anything? In Southern Indiana — where I live and where Clark County politics are always more farce than anything offered at Actors Te- atre — the statewide, voter-mandated cap on property taxes has meant Jeffersonville alone has been asked to cut $3.5 million from its budget. Tat could include $61,000 in vehicle maintenance, $121,000 in economic development, $155,000 in sanitation, $294,000 in parks and $331,850 in its police and fire depart- ments. [96] LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.12 No problem: Te next time your city sewer line erupts, your city park is overrun with trash or you need a cop or fireman, call Tinker Bell. In Louisville, Mayor Greg Fischer's proposed $512 million "leaner" budget got that way in part with cuts to indigent care — people not likely to vote. Of course we have to balance out-of-whack budgets at all levels, make tough choices, bring reality back into our lives. My problem is, hypocrisy rules; many of the most virulent no-new-taxes advo- cates seem to have the most difficulty leading us back to the 1950s, when gasoline was 20 cents a gallon. Topping that list would be conservative fraud and Eastern Ken- tucky Republican Congressman Harold Rogers — aptly dubbed the "Prince of Pork" — who vigorously defended a $17,000 transmission-fluid drip pan made for Black Hawk helicopters by a company in Rogers' district. A New York Times story noted that the company, Phoenix Products, is a political contributor to Rogers. Te tight-fisted chairman of the House Appropriations Commit- tee has directed $17 million in work orders to Phoenix. A compet- ing drip-pan company in North Carolina offers a similar product for $2,500. Waving the flag and well-oiled rhetoric in turn, Rogers defend- ed the $17,000 drip pan as the "best use" of resources to ensure our military's safety, while "saving taxpayers' dollars." Tis is the same Tea Party-controlled House that just voted more tax money for the Pentagon than even the military wanted — a Pentagon that already spends more money for defense than the rest of the world combined. It's an equal-opportunity game. Democrats and Republicans on the Armed Services Committee just unanimously rejected all proposed Pentagon cuts to the Air National Guard — an outfit literally too close to home to be messed with. Drip. Drip. Drip. Ten there's those high-flying fiscal hawks Sens. Mitch McCon- nell and Rand Paul and Rep. Ed Whitfield, who happily delayed the closing of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, and the loss of 1,200 election-year jobs, for another year. Te plant, a Cold War-era relic, processes depleted uranium — a commodity itself the subject of great dispute — with expensive, outdated, energy- sucking technology. Te delay in the closing, the lawmakers dubiously claimed, would save the federal government $150 million in maintenance costs for a closed plant. Te cost of keeping it open another year was never mentioned, although the accompanying press release did include the phrases "creative path forward," "national security" and "taxpayer's value." Drip. Drip. Drip.

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