Ronnie Carroll and Courage

From inside the Stokes County GOP convention:

Apparently Ron Carroll, who is running for County Commissioner in Stokes County, NC, believes that it takes no courage to be a Republican and to be opposed to tax increases. The corollary of that would be that Ronnie, who apparently favors all kinds of tax increases, thinks his position is courageous. Nice try, Ronnie, but no sale.

Let's examine the nature of the office and the associated taxing authority and it will become obvious that raising taxes is the last refuge of the coward and standing against increasing taxes is actually the courageous position.

The position for which Ronnie longs is really nothing more than an administrative function. It is not high political office. The primary responsibility of the position is to develop and adopt a budget to operate the county government for a year. Revenue for this purpose arrives from several sources: sales tax, grants, special appropriations, and others. Mostly, though, the county's operations are funded by property taxes.

Property taxes are the most insipidly evil form of taxation. All other forms of taxation are, at least to some degree, participatory. Property tax is not. Even the income tax is somewhat participatory in comparison since you can opt to make less money than the minimum taxable amount. In order to avoid the property tax, you must avoid owning property. Furthermore, the mere existence of property triggers the tax. Year after year, the property owner must be taxed on the same property, increasing the owner's economic basis until eventually a critical point is reached and the owner will be forced to sell or see his basis exceed the market value of the property. The simple fact that one owns property put him in the way of county governmental authority. Failure to pay the taxes triggers legal action that will eventually force the owner to forfeit his property. The truly scurrilous nature of the property tax is that it adversely affects the elderly, disabled, and people who make small incomes to a much greater extent. In short, it is a regressive tax.

One mechanism that could potentially mitigate the evil of property taxes to a small degree would be to restrict voting for the office of County Commissioner to property owners only. Unfortunately the forces of socialism and its dark twin, participatory democracy, have forced the dishonesty of "one man, one vote" on us and all manner of people who are unaffected by the property tax participate in the decision of who will administer it.

So, it takes no courage to pander to people who will not have to bear the burden of property taxes, or who will bear a relatively small burden in order to get elected to the office. Once there, socialists like Ron Carroll move to dispense largesse to their mascots and force property owners to pay for the ego-stroking of the elites at the point of a gun. That's not courage, that's the simple cowardice of a looter.