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I guess because I'm from St. Louis and a diehard urbanite, I should say something about stupid Prop A. It's a bunch of shit. And a cynical bunch of shit, too. While those of us who live in St. Louis (us of the city proper; NOT the douche-sprawl denizens who always say "St. Louis" when they talk to people outside the area, but always say "Chesterfield" and "Town and Country" and "Maryland Heights" etc. when they speak to locals), don't necessarily love paying the 1% earnings tax, we mostly understand that if it were to go away as a huge source of the city's public funding then it would need to be replaced by something. The Prop A supporters have yet to suggest a replacement source of a third of the city's budget other than nebulous Republican-flavored promises of "increased tax base" because of "more business investment" and "economic growth" and "blah, blah, blah." They also have no answer for this: what happens to the city's credit rating when every five years if not as soon as next year) a popular vote could take away a third of its operating budget? What if I were a big stinking sweaty disgusting moneybags capitalist banking tycoon, and you came to me for a loan to buy a super-duper-muper-expensive house, and I asked you what your income is, and you said, "One brazillion dollars a year!" I might say, "Awesome! This loan is no problem. Here are the keys to your house." But then what if you followed up by saying, "Well, my income may fall drastically next year." Then I'd furrow my fat-cat moneybags brow in worry and suspicion and wonder if you could still make your 30-year mortgage payment on your super-duper-muper-expensive house. You'd hang your head, scuff the floor with one heel, wishing you had said nothing at all, and reply, "I don't know. It's all up to the voters." Well, fuck, I'd say. That's a really dumb way to run stuff. You're gonna have fucking voters decide, based on a stupid talk-radio-addled whim, whether you have a budget next year or not? W. T. F.
But aside from the dumbassity of the economics behind it, what I really hate is the fact that it's a state ballot measure that people outside the city limits of St. Louis and Kansas City have a say in. Why do the people of benighted Festus and Mexico and Aux Vasse and Joplin and Springfield and Troy and ten thousand other ghost-towns get a say in what happens in my city and Kansas City, the only two great cities in the state? The answer, one word: teabaggery. By getting the issue on a statewide ballot measure and drumming up phony-baloney anti-tax sentiment and linking it to other teabagger/Republican boogeymen, they have guaranteed passage of the measure. It's politically brilliant. Voters in all the hinterland, ghost-town, don't matter-at-all, drive-past, fly-over territory between STL and KC will get to say, "Well, I don't want an earnings tax up in here!" As if that would ever happen anyway. To be clear: there was and is zero danger of "new earnings taxes" being imposed in any other municipality in the great Show Me State, and the engineers of Prop A know that very well. They are using out-state hostility toward the cities (which trend liberal and Democratic in their voting behavior) to force a destructive measure on the cities that they hate so very much.
FOOTNOTES...
On voting Republican
...Despite my traditional mouthiness on political matters, I haven't had much to say about the impending mid-term election because I don't honestly care that much about the outcome of it. If the GOP wins Congress, they won't get a damned thing done and they'll still end up making asses of themselves and propel President Obama to re-election (just like they did with Clinton in the 1990s). It might even be good for the country to see what teabagger control of the House and Senate looks like. And I've said it all before anyway: if you vote for a Republican at any level of government for any office anywhere in America for any reason whatsoever, then you are voting for bigotry. This is because of the GOP's ongoing practice of espousing homophobia and opposing marriage rights in its official platform. The official-in-writing homophobia of the GOP is something that I have been complaining about in writing since I was a teenager twenty years ago, and it has not gotten any better. Indeed, they have slid even further back. My total opposition to the election of any Republican anywhere generally extends to opposition to any Republican-backed ballot initiatives as well, such as Missouri's Proposition A.
On ballot measures...
The ballot initiative itself, as a process, is crap. It was once an aberration confined mostly to the newcomer Western states, but it has crept into almost every corner of the country and is used again and again as a tool for a dumbass majority to deprive the minority of their rights. That's why more than thirty of the fifty US states have those fucking disgusting one-man/one-woman marriage amendments in their constitutions. If we're going to have the moron masses decide every law by popular vote then we might as well abandon every progressive reform of the last century. The reason we have a written constitution is to specifically protect certain values from the mob mentality.
But aside from the dumbassity of the economics behind it, what I really hate is the fact that it's a state ballot measure that people outside the city limits of St. Louis and Kansas City have a say in. Why do the people of benighted Festus and Mexico and Aux Vasse and Joplin and Springfield and Troy and ten thousand other ghost-towns get a say in what happens in my city and Kansas City, the only two great cities in the state? The answer, one word: teabaggery. By getting the issue on a statewide ballot measure and drumming up phony-baloney anti-tax sentiment and linking it to other teabagger/Republican boogeymen, they have guaranteed passage of the measure. It's politically brilliant. Voters in all the hinterland, ghost-town, don't matter-at-all, drive-past, fly-over territory between STL and KC will get to say, "Well, I don't want an earnings tax up in here!" As if that would ever happen anyway. To be clear: there was and is zero danger of "new earnings taxes" being imposed in any other municipality in the great Show Me State, and the engineers of Prop A know that very well. They are using out-state hostility toward the cities (which trend liberal and Democratic in their voting behavior) to force a destructive measure on the cities that they hate so very much.
FOOTNOTES...
On voting Republican
...Despite my traditional mouthiness on political matters, I haven't had much to say about the impending mid-term election because I don't honestly care that much about the outcome of it. If the GOP wins Congress, they won't get a damned thing done and they'll still end up making asses of themselves and propel President Obama to re-election (just like they did with Clinton in the 1990s). It might even be good for the country to see what teabagger control of the House and Senate looks like. And I've said it all before anyway: if you vote for a Republican at any level of government for any office anywhere in America for any reason whatsoever, then you are voting for bigotry. This is because of the GOP's ongoing practice of espousing homophobia and opposing marriage rights in its official platform. The official-in-writing homophobia of the GOP is something that I have been complaining about in writing since I was a teenager twenty years ago, and it has not gotten any better. Indeed, they have slid even further back. My total opposition to the election of any Republican anywhere generally extends to opposition to any Republican-backed ballot initiatives as well, such as Missouri's Proposition A.
On ballot measures...
The ballot initiative itself, as a process, is crap. It was once an aberration confined mostly to the newcomer Western states, but it has crept into almost every corner of the country and is used again and again as a tool for a dumbass majority to deprive the minority of their rights. That's why more than thirty of the fifty US states have those fucking disgusting one-man/one-woman marriage amendments in their constitutions. If we're going to have the moron masses decide every law by popular vote then we might as well abandon every progressive reform of the last century. The reason we have a written constitution is to specifically protect certain values from the mob mentality.
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