Raleigh Dispatch: Cynicism edition
One of my dirty little secrets is that I actually like and respect most of the elected officials I run into during an average day. Sure, there’s a few that hack me off from time to time, but by and large I respect the effort it takes to put aside one’s personal and professional life and try to do some good in the world.
There are, of course, days when the doings down here in Cap City are enough to drive me to the balcony of either chamber and start bellowing lines from famous plays, like Big Daddy’s line from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof:
“Mendacity! You won't live with mendacity! Well, you're an expert at it. The truth is pain and sweat and payin' bills and makin' love to a woman you don't love any more. Truth is dreams that don't come true, and nobody prints your name in the paper till you die.”
So when I read one of columnist Scott Mooneyham latest missives, I knew whereof he spoke.
“Every once in a while, I start to think that maybe I'm just too cynical, too quick to look for that self-serving angle when it comes to the world of politics,” Mooneyham wrote. “Then something happens to bring me back to my senses: The rest of the world just isn't cynical enough.”
Driving me to the edge this week was crowing over the sales tax cut.
You will hear from the honorables running for re-election this fall, at least those of them who voted for the budget, that the legislature is looking out for you, the little guy. You will hear about the tax cuts that got passed, to the income and sales tax. Unless you’re in the state’s highest income tax bracket or a run a small business you probably only care about the sales tax.
Yep, they cut that tax a quarter-percent. Unless you live in Charlotte or somewhere else in the state that has a higher local sales tax rate, you’re looking at sales tax going down from 7 percent to 6.75.
And the honorables running for re-election are going to tell you that there is more to come. That they’re planning to cut a whole other quarter-percent next year. And what with all this tax cutting, you should vote to re-elect them.
Well, whether you vote to re-elect is up to you. But if you’re thinking of doing so on the basis of the sales tax cut, let's chat.
That cut starts on Dec. 1 and will save you 25-cents, a whole quarter, on every purchase of $100.
Or, say, if you will be making what will likely be the state’s new minimum wage of $6.15 an hour come January 1, that quarter-percent tax cut over the course of the year would be worth a maximum of $31.98 if you spent your entire year’s income on stuff that was subject to the minimum wage. (That entire year’s income, by the way, would be $12,792 if you worked 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.)
I don't know about you, but given the choice I might trade in that tax cut for one like the fuel tax rebates that the budget extended for NASCAR teams and the airline industry.
Speaking of the gas tax, the honorables will tell you that they capped it, once again looking out for you, the little guy. It might slip their mind that the gas tax wasn't going to be going up this July anyway and the cap will only last a year.
But I digress.
Am I arguing that the honorables shouldn’t have cut the sales tax?
No. I’m not even saying it’s a bad thing. Heck, I’ll happily dump my pennies right into my kids’ college account if I can figure out how.
And there’s plenty else in the $18.9 billion budget to talk about, a lot of which even the opposition in the loyal Republican minority acknowledges does some good stuff.
But come campaign time things tend to get boiled down into sound bites and that process started last week with pronouncements that the state budget “cut taxes.”
So sure, give the honorables credit. Just give them the credit they deserve.
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