February 24, 2005
A suckers' game: reprised
By Bill Kraus
The way it works is the state Legislature assesses sales and income taxes. Then about two-thirds of the money these taxes produce is sent to local school boards, local governments, and people who the feds say are eligible for medical assistance (Medicaid).
This system is designed to give the Legislature maximum blame for taxing and minimum credit for helping educate the young, fund city, county, and town governments, and heal the hurting.
It's a suckers' game. It's been going on a very long time, and surprisingly there does not seem to be much appetite for changing it, even by the suckers.
In recent years as the cost of campaigning to become a part of the Legislature has risen dramatically, another suckers' game has been invented.
The way this works is that candidates for election and re-election spend hours on the phone asking for the money needed to finance their campaigns so they can pay their political consultants whose advice is to spend everything the candidates raise on 30-second television commercials, and if there is anything left over to spend that on 30-second television commercials too.
The candidates do the dirty work of dialing for dollars. The consultants and the television stations get rich.
Suckered again.
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