< PREVIOUS ] [ 1987 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
Last week, many of Colorado's larger school districts asked for an increase in property tax. They lost at the polls, which means reduced staff and services.
Why were school taxes voted down? Some longtime school critics say that the public is catching on to their belief that putting more into schools is throwing good money after bad. Others may share my attitude: They don't ever want to get into a cold ear at night and slide down icy streets toward a distant parking for a standing-room-only Christmas program. Maybe if the schools don't have enough money, they'll give up on annual tortures for adults.
The most sensible explanation is that the turnout is always low for special elections. The only bloc that votes is the Gray Lobby -- our venerable senior citizens. And it has never been recorded that the Gray Lobby ever considered the general welfare in its voting; the Gray Lobby looks after the Gray Lobby, and the rest of us be damned.
A substantial portion of my income, and that of every other productive person, goes to Social Security. This money is not held in some trust account to benefit us in our sunset years. Instead, it goes to provide benefits to current retirees, so that they can get more out of the system than they ever put into it.
You might think that people who are so favored by the current social welfare structure wouldn't begrudge some social benefits for others -- such as an investment in the future in the form of good public education. But the Gray Lobby looks after the Gray Lobby, here and now. The future be damned. Why they care whether America will be a competitive nation in 20 years? They won't be around to suffer for their shortsightedness.
Social Security lurches toward bankruptcy. Benefits keep going up even as the number of people paying into the system continues to decline. But no presidential candidate dares to speak honestly about the crisis that must come sooner or later. Social Security is as sacrosanct as a sacred cow can get, thanks to the way the Gray Lobby votes en masse against any sensible candidates.
If I want to meet friends and hang out under a roof, I must wander off to the Victoria Tavern, First Street Café or the Salida Inn -- all private, tax-paying establishments, where I run the risk of meeting someone who might think differently from me, or whose taste in music might not be mine. You likely face the same problem when you want to see your friends.
But we wouldn't if we were old enough to join the Gray Lobby. The Gray Lobby doesn't want its members exposed to the diverse Real World when they socialize. So almost every town in America, no matter how small or impoverished, sports a Senior Citizens' Center, erected and maintained with public funds that the Gray Lobby acquired, generally at the expense of parks or schools.
The Gray Lobby makes sure its members get breaks on property taxes and income taxes. It hustles for discounts, often under threat of boycott if merchants won't go along with a 10 percent break for senior citizens. These schemes make the rest of us pay more taxes and higher prices with what little money we have left after paying Social Security taxes to support the Gray Lobby.
And whenever anyone proposes that the Gray Lobby try,
however little, to pay its own way, there's the loud and
anguished wail that We senior citizens are all on
limited incomes.
What a stupid excuse. Nobody, not even Donald Trump, has an unlimited income.
Somehow we have ended up with a powerful bloc that manages to vote itself immense benefits from society and the public treasury while arranging to avoid participating in society or paying taxes. They hog such benefits as are available, and are too miserly to support schools or anything else that doesn't directly benefit them.
Our ancestors fought a revolution over taxation
without representation.
The Gray Lobby has mastered the
art of representation without taxation.
There's only one solution. The Gray Lobby's power must be broken if we're ever going to solve many of America's major problems. Young people cannot vote until they're 18, so the Constitution obviously allows age to be used as a criterion for voting rights. Let's take away the vote of everyone who's over 65. Either that, or we can continue to be robbed of our money and our future.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1987 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >