School con vs. tax con

    Do you feel undertaxed, and do you feel that a centralized bureaucracy in Augusta would help to increase school efficiency?
    Consider these questions. Have you any memory of any candidate for office ever saying that Mainers are undertaxed and should pay more?  Any memory of a candidate promising to go to Augusta and raise taxes? I’m guessing you have not. Yet taxes continue to go up, running ahead of inflation and population growth in almost every year.
    This is not to say that our legislators hate taxpayers and want to hurt them. At least I hope not. Except maybe a few. You will understand this phenomenon better if you get yourself a copy of “The Peoples Guide to the Legislature (any year). There you will find statements by every representative and senator in Augusta about what they hope to achieve in office.
    And everything, almost without exception, will cost money. This is true of the current membership, even though it was already evident before the recession that Maine is fiscally overstretched with a huge burden of unfunded mandates. And while we are on the subject, check to see how many of these legislators have anything to say about how we are to fund those mandates.
    When these statements speak of improving government they almost invariably propose ways to spend more money. It seems as if nearly all of our legislators imagine Maine’s government has attained a superhuman level of flawless efficiency. There are no programs which should be terminated as ineffective. No inefficiencies which they can detect and propose to correct.
    When they do propose to “save” money, the results are disastrous. Think of jail consolidation, or the even more disastrous school consolidation. Baldacci’s administrators claimed in June of 2007 that school consolidation would save $221 million over three years. This year they claimed it would save $1.6 million – but now they have abandoned even thta pitiful number, because in reality it will cost more than it will save.
    So why aren’t some people concerned with overspending voting YES on 3 to throw out the bogus Consolidation law? The money savings isn’t there. And we want to give Augusta MORE power?? And why aren’t school employees concerned with local control voting YES on 4? TABOR II does not affect school budgets. Maine’s voters already have a vote on ALL school budgets, not just the rising budgets TABOR targets. By logic alone, every school employee in Maine should be voting for TABOR, which is less restrictive than current law. Schools aren’t going to get any more money out of state government. The voters have already voted twice to force the state to fund 55 percent, but that money has already been given to the welfare department, so people arriving here from away can get lifetime welfare benefits starting the day they step off the bus.
    Why aren’t these facts known? There are about 160 organizations which have rallied against TABOR II and about 83 percent of them get between 40 and 99 percent of their funding from the government, from the taxpayers. The anti-TABORistas are outspending TABOR supporters by well over FIVE to one. How can the truth compete with that?
    The political reality is that every program and policy puts money in the hands of some part of the populations. It does not matter if the program fails in its original intent, it is a success for prople who profit from it. When you spend money to fund a scheme you create a constituency which will defend it regardless of your original intent. Politicians like to smile and be smiled upon. They get no smiles from cutting.
    Spending is fun. Cutting is not fun. We all know this, and any of us elected to office would experience the same feelings.
    It’s this simple. There are no lobbyists working for the ordinary taxpayer. Legislators are influenced more by organized special interests than by unorganized taxpayers. TABOR II puts power directly in the hands of the taxpayer. They are free to sanction tax increases if they wish. Will they make mistakes? Maybe so. Will they foul things up as badly as our Masters in Augusta? Not a chance.
    Professor John Frary of Farmington, is a former U.S. Congress candidate and retired history professor, a Board Member of Maine Taypayers United and an associate editor of the International Military Encyclopedia, and can be reached at: jfrary8070@aol.com