Recently, Mike Wigley, founder of the Taxpayers League, wrote a commentary in Minnpost (and on the organization’s website) describing the past legislative session.  Probably not since my childhood reading about Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass have I seen a greater literary fantasy.

According to Wigley, it seems that “good” is “bad”...up is down...and all taxes are evil ogres.  The fantasy starts with his blasting the gas tax as “one of the largest tax increases in Minnesota history – to fund transportation”.  This is “bad”?  To begin with, the $6.6 billion he complains about takes place over a period of years with only pennies added to a gas fill. Though not progressive, it is a users’ tax. Moreover, hardly anyone still denies that the bill was essential to fixing our roads, bridges, and infrastructure.  There is even the added bonus of providing jobs for the Minnesota construction industry, now badly damaged by the national Bush economy. Even the last remaining diehards have conceded that this tax was on balance “good” – except perhaps the Taxpayers League which continues to remain in Wonderland.

An added “boondoggle” (Wigley’s words) is the funding of the light rail Central Corridor.  “Boondoggle”? It is clearly to path to start getting the only sensible mass transportation alternative as we head into the future of unremitting increases in oil prices and gas costs. The Twin Cities are well behind other metro areas in public transportation.  How can be characterized as a “boondoggle”?  Only in Wonderland.

Next Wigley comments on the $965 million deficit we are now confronting as a state – and blames it largely on the “tax-and-spend” legislature.  Sorry, Mr. Wigley, that part of the fairy tale simply won’t fly either.  This deficit was caused by a negligent administration which refused to properly fund needed and essential government services – some even mandated by law.  Even with reductions in practically every area of quality of life issues (education, transportation, courts, public safety, environment, and others), the Pawlenty administration stuck to its “no new taxes” guns.  The idea of cutting waste in government has been a theme of the no-tax crowd almost since Lewis Carroll’s time, but it too is a fantasy without much merit. No one likes or endorses “waste”; however, no less an authority than Arnold Schwarzenegger confessed that when he came into office he found less that 1% “waste” that he could actually cut without reducing services.

Wigley sighs a sigh of relief noting that “some small business owners may have been temporarily saved from a minimum wage increase”.  Saved? What about those who are trying to raise a family on $6.00 or $7.00 an hour? Translated into a 40 hour week, that’s about $280 a week! Or about $15,000 a year. Too much money according to Wigley’s upside down Wonderland world of governance.  He then refers to Marx and Engels as he rails about the evil of  “taxing profits earned overseas”, as though such a fanciful idea was a Communist plot.

The problem with Wigley’s claims is that they are totally and 100% focused on taxation (or lack thereof). If you doubt that, simply visit the Taxpayers’ League website. There is not one word there of government responsibility, government services, quality of life issues, or even the need for a fair and balanced tax policy.  It is centered around no taxation. Period. An attractive goal and idea, but one that does not make for a progressive, thriving, equitable society.  After all, taxes are merely the dues we pay to live in a safe, well educated, and civilized society. The kind of society Minnesota used to be before low-tax, no-tax aficionados took over our state.

No, Mr. Wigley, I personally do not wish to live in the topsy-turvy tax-free fantasy that Alice and your Taxpayers’ League live in; or Through the Looking Glass where the clocks run backwards.  I’ll stay in the real world – taxes or not – where we can hopefully find some government leaders who are interested in making this state, and this time, a better place to live for all our citizens.