These are two things in life one may complain about without any effect whatsoever. None.
The interesting thing about taxes comes in how people define them. Liberals refuse to view fees as taxes. Conservatives see any money extracted by the government from it's citizens as taxes.
Glad we cleared that up.
No this isn't about the January ballot measures 66 and 67. You'll be getting an expensive 92 page document in the mail from the state over the next week that will serve to confuse anyone adequately without my adding to it.
This is about local fees, local taxes. Astoria clearly leads the way in finding creative ways to separate it's citizens from their cash. Just read your phone bill some month for one example and your cable bill as another. It just kills me that some people pat the city council on the back for charging those franchise fees to utilities. These people of the democratic persuasion think it's perfectly appropriate for the phone companies and cable outfits to pay for the right to use city right of way to deliver their services and turn a blind eye to the fact that these are treated as pass-through to customers. Customers who, at least theoretically, own the right of way and so are paying the utilities way in every way. Yes, I know...Everybody does it.
So we have property tax, phone tax, cable tax, garbage tax, gasoline tax, building tax, inspection tax, electric tax, nat gas tax, water tax, sewer tax, extra sewer tax, business tax just to name a few off the top of my head. We haven't even talked about State or Federal taxes.
The question that should be coming to you? What do we get for all this money we pour into our
cities and local taxing districts? The answer to this is quite easy. We get more government and more people in that government looking for more ways to take your last dime so they can continue without changing a thing. Change, after all, is hard. Taking your hard earned dollars is easy.
There are those who do get rich off of this arrangement. When government gets in over it's head on some project they had no business starting in the first place they hire consultancy firms, fund studies and ultimately come up with plans that without exception result in a new tax.
It's a vicious cycle. Much like the weather that cycles across the globe that we can complain about but are powerless to do anything about. I believe I pointed this out earlier.
I feel better. Thanks for listening..er..reading.
