After mailing in my absentee ballot today, marked “No on Measure S,” I had a few chuckles at the barbed letters to the editor targeting my dear wife, Susan Tellem. I had no idea I was living with such a monster! Thank you, Judith Slosser, for pointing out that the grotesque mismanagement of our schools’ finances was Susan’s fault. Who knew? She’s pretty good with the family checkbook. And Phil Cott, beleaguered principal of Webster has revealed my wife’s bitter, narrow definition of the meaning of “community.” Phil-dude, as I fill out the divorce papers, I owe you one, pal. I really dug Carolyn McLunkie’s characterization of my wife as a modern-day Marie Antoinette. I always wondered about that sparkling tiara. Now the truth can be told. Just yesterday I found $400,000,000 in Iraqi cash Susan had stashed in our garage.
But enough fantasy. Our situation is the same as that of millions of hard-working, over-taxed Californians who struggle every day to keep afloat in these bad financial times. Our family has no trust fund, no offshore accounts, no Hollywood fortune, just the sweat of both our comely brows six and seven days a week in our small businesses, already heavily burdened themselves by taxes. So much for Marie Antoinette.
With Governor Davis tripling the car registration tax-good for about $800 to $1000 additional burden next year for our vehicles-raising the sales tax and the federal, state and local governments raising hundreds in taxes and “user fees” (read, “taxes”), we just don’t have any more money to hand out to failed enterprises like our grotesquely mismanaged public schools.
What Susan pointed out and many failed or refused to understand, is that we have paid, do pay and will continue to pay far into the future, plenty of tax dollars to support public education despite having sent our kids to Catholic schools on our own dime. What we object to is a large increase in taxes on top of the existing burden.
The nasty “divide and conquer” ploy of exempting seniors from a tax they get to impose on us is outrageous! It is “taxation without participation” and is overtly unfair, un-democratic and un-American and is a disgusting example of pitting one group against another in the interest of an issue that is supposed to benefit us all. By many studies, the current crop of over 60 and retirees is the most well-off in history. Plus, most of these already benefit from Proposition 13 which already gives them a free ride on property taxes. So they get yet another freebie while sticking it to us? This is even more dastardly than anything Cruella-I mean Susan-could come up with.
You can only blame Susan, Enron and the evil Republicans for so much of the damage to our economy. The truth is uncontrolled illegal immigration of millions of Mexican and central American dirt-poor workers has drained Los Angeles County of $350 million tax dollars in just health care costs last year alone.
Overcrowded freeways, hospital emergency rooms, packed housing, chocked courts and jails are the result of gutless Democrats and Republicans at the state and federal level who for political reasons refuse to protect our borders. Anyone in Malibu who hires undocumented day laborers, construction workers, child care or domestic workers is actively taking cash out of the pockets of every taxpayer in this city. Since these workers are almost universally paid in untaxed cash, they contribute little or no dollars for their healthcare and social services.
The well-meaning but wrong young Benjamin Hoffman (like our state legislators and our god-awful governor) has failed to master the following mathematical truth: If you go to the store to buy a soda and you have no money, you do not get the soda! Vote no on Measure S!
Marshall Thompson