Rod Arquett recently asked, why
is America so divided? I wanted so badly to call him because it would have
been a great chance to plug my
book The Great Compromise: Getting Past The Emotional Nonsense DividingAmerica, available on amazon.com. There are a lot of things, most of them have a middle ground, but there is one change in America that we can offer no compromise on, and much to my disappointment, it was on full display at this week's Tooele County town hall at the Tooele High School.
All around the country everyone is going broke, individuals, municipalities, states and of course the federal government. We’re all hurting, but while most of the poor and middle class workers of the world are having to make significant cuts to our budgets to get by, we have far too many in government who have fought tooth and nail to avoid cutting their budgets. The biggest battle in the federal government has been over spending. At a time when the average person is losing money Obama adds trillions of dollars to the debt, making an already bad situation much worse.
The tragedy of all this spending is that it takes
more out of the private sector to stay on top of it all. The more taxes and
fees the businesses have to pay, the more regulations they have to deal with,
the fewer people that the private sector can employ. Tooele learned this lesson
recently when the over taxed and over regulated Energy Solutions had to lay off
a huge number of employees. Business has, of course slowed, and as a result the
number of dollars collected by the county from this business has fallen
sharply.
The situation at Energy Solutions is far from the
only complication facing the county, but it was a major focus of the town hall.
It is important to keep this tragedy in mind as this is not an anomaly. High
taxes and extreme regulations lead to this very thing. As businesses dry up, so
to do the employed, as they dry up so too does their spending, all of which
drys up the tax dollars that a county, a state, or the federal government can
collect. Raising taxes during economic
downtimes only exacerbates this situation, even Obama agreed with that at one
point.-1
I was stunned at how many people at the town hall
seem disconnected with this economic reality. I don’t want to see Deseret Peak
deep sixed either, but I have to separate frivolities from necessities. We need
the police, we need schools, we don’t need Deseret Peak, it’s nice, but far
from necessary and proper. There are a number of legitimate services that the
government must provide as outlined by the federal and state constitution.
Paying for you to go swimming is not one of them. And there is lay the divide
in America.
No longer is it about serious issues like racial,
religious and gender discrimination, but those who feel like they deserve a
free lunch (or swim as the case may be) versus the rest of us who work and
scrimp and save, only to have the fruits of our labors stripped from us by
means of force to subsidize someone’s recreation, literally as in the case of
Deseret Peak. No longer is about ensuring abortion is safe, legal and rare, but
now safe, legal and free, that is to say, paid for by me, and I happen to be
pro-life. How is that fair?
Your kids will not go to jail if the complex is
privatized, sold, or closed. Heck, I never went down there. Odds are they will
just find something else to do. We have theatres here, we have a bowling alley.
Heck, if you’re like me you’re spending much more time in GameStop than at
Deseret Peak. If physical recreation is you’re thing, that’s fine, but right
now Gold’s Gym is offering Month to Month for a measly ten dollars, I shouldn’t have to pay for your habits, any
more than you should have to pay for my World of Warcraft subscription. If
getting the county back in the black means getting the complex off the book we
should do it.
Besides, there isn’t as much to fear in pursuing a
privatization option, if such exists, the best keep secret by the liberals
promoting their recreation at your expense is that New York’s Central Park was
privatized some time ago. John Stossel did a huge expose on this.-2) Private
parks have actually done better, in many cases, than the government run parks,
in reality. We should be more afraid of hurting the poor and middle class
worker with these draconian tax increases, of taking food off their table, than
we are of making a small handful of entitled folks pay to go swimming.
The simple truth is that property taxes are not a
progressive tax. It will hurt the working poor in Tooele. Not only by forcing
them to pay more to the county, but if you think that Tooele’s businesses will
just absorb the cost you’re only fooling yourself. They will all increase their
prices to offset the taxes, and when those taxes become too much to bear they
will leave. At a time where gas, food, energy and shelter and life essentials
all over are skyrocketing in price, these additional inflationary drivers will
only further burden Tooele’s poor and middle class, and as that burden
increases those poor and middle class will leave turning Tooele into Utah’s own
tribute to Detroit. Detroit should stand
tall as an example of what happens when frivolities rule your politics, a
lesson we too may learn the hard way. For sixty years they spent themselves into oblivion, and because of their refusal to get their priorities straight, painful austerity is no longer optional, but mandatory. If we can't learn from their mistakes our beautiful town won't be much different. The houses will be empty and largely in a
state of disrepair, the businesses boarded up, but hey at least we’ll still
have Deseret Peak Complex
-1) FLASHBACK: Obama
Says You Don't Raise Taxes In A Recession-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aufAtuTwKlE
-2) Stossel
Gets It Right on Parks Privatization, Harris Kenny, Reason Foundation 12,2,2010
accessed 8-14-13
Daniel Moir, Tooele City
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