Fitzsimon File

There's good news this week amid all the frustrating aspects of the political season. Folks seem to be finally seeing through the propaganda produced by the ideologues on right wing avenue, particularly the distortions about taxes and government.

The best indication of that came recently from Wilson County Manager Ellis Williford, responding to a report from the John Locke Foundation that urged county voters to reject a proposed ¼ cent local sales tax increase because the county has too much money in savings and can shift $23 million to what it calls more "high priority county-government functions."

The report is one of a series of cookie-cutter releases produced by the Lockers to oppose every proposed increase in local sales or real estate transfer taxes. It is all based on the principal tenets of their market worshipping faith, that government is too big and that taxes are too high, and it is all somehow an of assault on our freedom, like everything else they object to.

It's not far from there to declare that well-funded public schools equal slavery, but that conclusion has not yet popped up in their rhetoric, but it wouldn't be a shock to see it on a blog they maintain.

Williford countered virtually every point in the Locke report in a recent story in the Wilson Times, ending with a statement that ought to be reprinted in every county facing the distortions of the cookie-cutter reports.

"Obviously the writers of the report have no idea what the county's needs actually are or what resources the county actually has at its disposal." It may be obvious, but it's a message that cannot be repeated enough times.

Lee County is considering a sales tax increase too. The Sanford Herald has endorsed the idea and though it's frustrating to see counties keep relying on regressive taxes, at least the debate has prompted civic leaders to stop blindly accepting the anti-government propaganda as gospel.

The Lockers and their partners in distortion, Americans for the Prosperous, recently held a meeting in Sanford that they apparently billed as a "distress call" about the sales tax referendum.

Herald Publisher Bill Horner attended the event and writes about it in detail on his blog, refuting in detail many of the claims by the Locker staffers. Horner says he respects the folks from the Locke Foundation and Americans for the Prosperous, but says the presentations at Thursday's event included the "kind of fear-mongering and misleading claims that confounds the JLF's detractors."

Only one quibble with Horton's assessment. It's not the fear-mongering and misleading claims made by Locke and the other folks advocating for the prosperous that confound the Locke detractors, it's the failure of many policymakers and reporters to challenge them. Let's hope Horner's thoughtful analysis prompts more appropriately skeptical reporting about propaganda masquerading as policy reports.

For a progressive perspective one aspect of the local tax debate, read the latest column from Meg Gray Wiehe of the N.C. Budget and Tax Center on ncpolicywatch.com.

The anti-tax, anti-government groups and the politicians who use their claims as talking points on the campaign trial also can't be happy with the latest report by the Council on State Taxation that looks at state and local taxes paid by businesses.

One number calculated in the report is business taxes in every state as a percentage of the state's gross state product (GSP) or economic activity. In North Carolina, business taxes amount to 3.9 percent of the state GSP.  That is the third lowest in the country, trailing only Oregon and Delaware, states not generally mentioned as competitors for economic development.

It adds up to a bad week for the folks trying to convince us that North Carolina taxes are too high at all levels and making it difficult for businesses in the state to prosper. Turns out business taxes here are low, not high compared to the rest of the country. And the claims about counties being flush with money aren't true either, according to people who work with county budgets everyday.

It may be too early to call all this a trend, but it's a start. The more light shined on the thin curtain of rhetoric from the anti-government crowd, the easier the holes are to see. And that can only bode well for the policy debate and North Carolina's future.

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.