Bait and switch. A common legislative tactic. Is it any wonder we
fre getting more cynical?

A case study from Oregon: (http://www.seattletimes.com/news/local/html98/park_19991219.html)

After push for parks, most of money parked elsewhere

by Charles E. Beggs The Associated Press

SALEM, Ore. - Oregon voters may have had visions of vast new state parks when they decided last year to permanently funnel a share of lottery revenue into the park system. But the results will be far from grand, park boosters say, because of the 1999 Legislature's budget juggling. The new lottery money, $43.4 million, went into the Parks and Recreation Department budget as the voters required. But much of it replaced other money already in the budget that then was allocated to other uses. The result was the parks agency ended up with a $99 million budget for 1999-2001 only 5 percent higher than spending in the previous budget for comparable programs.

Now when legislators are doing things like this in Oregon, over-rifing "no" votes on stadiums here, I think it's time and past time to get more citizen's "butting in" to their fiefdoms through the initiative process.

-- Mark Stilson (mark842@hotmail.com), December 19, 1999

Answers

Wasn't the lottery here also going to give us all sorts of money painlessly, so taxes wouldn't have to keep going up? I think that taxes are just going to continue going up until the people just refuse to pay, either collectively through the initiative process, or individually through tax avoidance schemes of one sort or another.

I know several people who have incorporated solely for the purpose of avoiding paying sales tax on things that they claim they intend to resell, but in fact simply use for their families. An 8% discount on every purchase. Illegal, yaeah, like registering your car out of state to avoid the MVET, but there's very little enforcement. If they spen $50,000 a year they save about $4000. That would get eaten up quickly in investigative expenses and court expenses. It underlines what a previous person posted, tax collections don't work unless they are, to a large degree, voluntary. And they only wind up being voluntary if a consensus exists that they are fair in amount and distribution. Lose that consensus, and you get a tax revolt.

And the state that did not have enough police to control the streets of Seattle against 50,000 protesters during the WTO, certainly doesn't have the manpower necessary to go after a couple of million tax scofflaws.

-- (zowie@hotmail.com), December 19, 1999.