Political Action
A Repeal of the Income Tax = A Decline in Education
Benjamin Franklin, a revered founding father, said, “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” In November 2008 no group is trying to put on the ballot a referendum to repeal death. However, a group is trying to put on the ballot a referendum to repeal the income tax.
Why did Benjamin Franklin believe that taxes are a certainty? The answer is simple. It is a certain proposition that no government can exist without the ability to tax. Government is preferable to anarchy.
Adoption of the federal constitution by the thirteen states guaranteed that all levels of government would tax the population not only to exist but to provide services which the people wanted. What remained to be resolved were the extent of those services and the type and amount of taxation.
In America this issue is perpetual because the ebb and flow of popular opinion requires the government to adjust constantly the levels of taxation and public services.
In the first half of the nineteenth century Horace Mann, the father of American education, aspired to create public schools available to all in Massachusetts. Subsequently, in fits and starts, Massachusetts led the nation in providing g public education to all. Although we in the twenty-first century have much more to do, Massachusetts can be proud. Our students are the highest achieving in the USA.
To maintain its intellectual and economic vitality our state will continue to depend on very well educated men and women.
Charitable donations and corporate gifts, though admirable most of the time, are not the main financial support of public schools. Taxes are.
Prior to the Civil War Boston established a public library, one open to all. Many consider it to be the first public library in the country. It is certainly one of the most eminent. Now a public library exists in practically every city and town in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Public libraries are inseparable from public education because upon their founding the prevailing view was that public libraries provided even more education for everyone in the community.
Charitable donations and corporate gifts, though admirable most of the time, are not the main financial support of public libraries. Taxes are.
Many generations ago leaders in the civic life of Massachusetts, seeking to improve the state’s quality of life then and wishing to expand it in the future, decided that public schools and public libraries were essential ingredients. Simply put, an educated populace means a better community.
Imagine what repeal of the income tax will do. It will remove approximately thirteen (13) billion dollars from the state budget. The decline in local aid form the state to cities and towns will be astronomical, leading to a huge decline in the amount of money available to public schools and libraries.
Fewer courses, higher class sizes, fewer teachers, paraprofessionals, and everyone else in the schools, less security, fewer extra curricular activities, fewer librarians, fewer books in the libraries, more crumbling schools, more disadvantaged children, more ignorance, more lack of opportunity, less civilization.
Repeal of the income tax will insure that students educated in the public schools of Massachusetts will not be the best in the nation, nor the second best, nor the third best. Who knows what best they will be.
The proponents of the repeal have leapt over the first hurdle by obtaining the required number of signatures. The repeal must then go to the legislature. If the legislature does not enact it into law (it won’t), then the proponents must leap over a second hurdle by obtaining approximately 11,000 more signatures to get on the ballot. We shall try to prevent them from doing so, but the hurdle is not high.
Then we shall organize, organize more, and organize even more to educate the voters of Massachusetts about the connection between the income tax and civilization.
Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a native of our state who demonstrated his extraordinary talents on the battlefields of the Civil War and on the US Supreme Court, said, “Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.”
July, 2008: AFT Massachusetts Has Endorsed The Following Candidates:
United States Senate
John Kerry
United States House of Representatives
Michael Capuano
William D. Delahunt
Barney Frank
Edward J. Markey
James P. McGovern
John Olver
John F. Tierney
Niki Tsongas
Massachusetts Senate
Doug Belanger -2nd Worcester -- D-Leicester
Stephen M. Brewer - Worcester, Hampden, Hampshire & Franklin -- D-Barre
Harriette L. Chandler - 1st Worcester -- D-Worcester
Kenneth Donnelly - 4th Middlesex -- D-Arlington
James Eldridge - Middlesex & Worcester -- D-Acton
Susan C. Fargo - 3rd Middlesex -- D-Lincoln
Jennifer Flanagan - Worcester & Middlesex -- D-Leominster
Anthony D. Galluccio - Middlesex, Suffolk & Essex -- D-Cambridge
Brian Joyce - Norfolk, Bristol & Plymouth -- D-Milton
Joan M. Menard - 1st Bristol & Plymouth -- D-Fall River
Sarah Orozco - Norfolk, Bristol & Middlesex -- D-Needham Heights
Marc Pacheco - 1st Plymouth & Bristol -- D-Taunton
Stanley Rosenberg - Hampshire & Franklin -- D-Amherst
Karen Spilka - 2nd Middlesex & Norfolk -- D-Ashland
Dianne Wilkerson - 2nd Suffolk -- D-Roxbury
Massachusetts House of Representatives
Kevin Aguiar - 7th Bristol -- D-Fall River
Willie Mae Allen - 6th Suffolk -- D-Mattapan
Bruce J. Ayers - 1st Norfolk -- D-Quincy
Ruth B. Balser - 12th Middlesex -- D-Newton
Jennifer Benson - 37th Middlesex -- D-Lunenberg
William J. Brownsberger - 24th Middlesex -- D-Belmont
Jennifer M. Callahan - 18th Worcester -- D-Sutton
Thomas J. Calter, III - 12th Plymouth -- D-Kingston
Linda Dean Campbell - 15th Essex -- D-Methuen
Christine E. Canavan - 10th Plymouth -- D-Brockton
James Cantwell - 4th Plymouth -- D-Marshfield
Geraldine M. Creedon - 11th Plymouth -- D-Brockton
Steve D’Amico - 4th Bristol -- D-Seekonk
Robert A. DeLeo - 19th Suffolk -- D-Winthrop
Paul J. Donato - 35th Middlesex -- D-Medford
Joseph R. Driscoll - 5th Norfolk -- D-Braintree
Julia Fahey - 29th Middlesex -- D-Watertown
Mark V. Falzone - 9th Essex -- D-Saugus
Gloria L. Fox - 7th Suffolk -- D-Roxbury
Sean Garballey - 23rd Middlesex -- D-Arlington
Denis Guyer - 2nd Berkshire -- D-Dalton
Lida E. Harkins - 13th Norfolk -- D-Needham
Kevin G. Honan - 17th Suffolk -- D-Brighton
John Keenan - 7th Essex -- D-Salem
Jason Lewis - 31st Middlesex -- D-Winchester
Ed Mills - 8th Middlesex -- D-Shrewsbury
Charles Murphy - 21st Middlesex -- D-Burlington
David Nangle - 17th Middlesex -- D-Lowell
Patrick Natale - 30th Middlesex -- D-Woburn
Harold P. Naughton, Jr. - 12th Worcester -- D-Clinton
Alice H. Peisch - 14th Norfolk -- D-Wellesley
Denise Provost - 27th Middlesex -- D-Somerville
Angelo Puppolo, Jr. - 12th Hampden -- D-Springfield
Kathi-Anne Reinstein - 16th Suffolk -- D-Revere
Pam Richardson - 6th Middlesex -- D-Framingham
Cheryl A. Coakley Rivera - 10th Hampden -- D-Springfield
Michael J. Rodrigues - 8th Bristol -- D-Westport
Michael F. Rush - 10th Suffolk -- D-Boston
Carl Sciortino - 34th Middlesex -- D-Medford
Frank I. Smizik - 15th Norfolk -- D-Brookline
Joyce A. Spiliotis - 12th Essex -- D-Peabody
Thomas M. Stanley - 9th Middlesex -- D-Waltham
Ben Swan - 11th Hampden -- D-Springfield
Timothy J. Toomey, Jr. - 26th Middlesex -- D-Cambridge
James E. Vallee - 10th Norfolk -- D-Franklin
Martin J. Walsh - 13th Suffolk -- D-Dorchester
Alice Wolf - 25th Middlesex -- D-Cambridge