Copyright 2000 Boston Herald Inc.
The Boston Herald
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August 13, 2000 Sunday ALL EDITIONS
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. 026
LENGTH: 651 words
HEADLINE:
OP-ED; AS YOU WERE SAYING. . . Personal freedom goes to pot in this legislative
frog soup
BYLINE: By Chip Ford
BODY:
I've never understood why
anyone would want to boil a frog, but folklore provides the recipe to do so
without the frog jumping from the pot. You drop it into cold water then slowly
increase the temperature until, voila, you have frog soup.
So it is with
lawmaking. For those who won't be satisfied until they have everything that's
ours - whether it's our money, our property, or what's left of our liberty -
more is never enough.
They grab what they can get away with today . . .
and come back for the rest later. They are a patient and persistent lot.
The More Is Never Enough crowd says or does anything - anything - to
grab what they can today, then totally disregards it when they return for more
tomorrow.
In 1986 and again in '94, voters were promised that if we
would give up "just a little bit of freedom" and accept a mandatory seat belt
law, it would be enforced only if a motorist was stopped for another offense.
But that was then (voters bought the promise the second time) and this
is now. A bill to change the law to "primary enforcement" - a
motorist can be stopped and ticketed just for not using a seat belt - failed to
pass during this session's final moments. It will be back, for they are patient
and persistent.
It's the same in the gun-control debate. "Be
reasonable," the gun-grabbers implored decades ago - and gun owners mistakenly
acquiesced. That opened the floodgates to more than 20,000
"reasonable" gun-control laws and the degradation of the Second Amendment.
Banning "Saturday Night Specials," "assault weapons" and "cop-killer bullets"
along with a multitude of "common sense, reasonable" new infringements poured
through the breach . . . and that's still not enough.
The federal income
tax, passed by constitutional amendment in 1913, was a small tax of 1 percent on
only "the very wealthy." The federal telephone tax was passed
to fund the Spanish-American War and lingers on. The 3 percent state sales tax
was only temporary, until it was raised to 5 percent. The Dukakis Surtax was
temporary, but persisted until taxpayers finally put its repeal on the ballot.
The Big Dig was to cost $ 2.8 billion and be completed years ago, we
were assured when it was being pitched in the early '80s. Nobody honestly
believed that but it got slamdunked through. Today the price tag has ballooned
to more than $ 13 billion and its completion date is still off in the
misty future. Did we learn anything?
Nope, we taxpayers just got saddled
with buying the Red Sox a new stadium with another promise of limited exposure.
The MINE crowd says and does anything it takes to have their way with us
today. And they are a patient and persistent lot.
Eleven years ago, they
promised their income tax rate increase was "temporary." Now they deny the
promise, and assert they can't be held to it anyway.
Why do they make
such promises, why do they impose "solutions" that never quite solve the latest
"crisis"? Because More Is Never Enough until they have it all.
The
bigger question is, when are we going to start laughing in their faces when they
shamelessly lie to us?
Our opportunity arrives in November with the
income tax rollback ballot question.
The MINE crowd clings
tenaciously to what they've taken from us because as far as they're concerned,
"It's mine now!"
It's time for us frogs to rouse ourselves, awaken to
our plight. Vote "Yes" on Question 4 and jump out of the simmering pot while you
still can.
Chip Ford is director of operations for Citizens for Limited
Taxation. As You Were Saying is a regular feature of the Boston Herald. We
invite our readers to contribute pieces of no more than 600 words. Mail
contributions to the Boston Herald, P.O. Box 2096, Boston, MA 02106-2096, fax
them to (617) 542-1315 or e-mail to oped@bostonherald.com. All submissions are
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LOAD-DATE: August 13, 2000
