Community Update

                        Government is Force

George Washington said, "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

And this passage from Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book, The Gulag Archipelago, concerning the brutal tactics of the Soviet regime: “The usual practice was to impose on them (property owners) ever-increasing and finally totally intolerable taxes. At a certain point they could no longer pay; they were immediately arrested for bankruptcy and their property was confiscated.”  

The quotes are self explanatory, or should be. In Redding, taxes have doubled in just 12 years, despite several years of a severe economic downturn and the associated value drop in real estate.  Yet, despite this grim economic condition that persists to this very day, town officials apparently have ignored the suffering in the private sector and propose ever increasing taxes year after year.

A reasonable person would conclude that responsible public stewards of our money would make wise and discriminate choices with it.  But they don’t. Why? Because they are direct beneficiaries of ever increasing taxes – ‘a troublesome servant and a fearful master’, indeed. If this tax trajectory continues unabated, one day we will be in somewhat the same scenario described in Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s book. Although we may not be arrested, our homes will be confiscated if we’re unable to cough up the confiscatory property taxes.

In the final analysis, however, it is the tax payer to blame since we allow these tax increases to go through year after year.   Until people wake up and recognize the truth of George Washington’s words about Government, “Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action,” we will be the tragic recipients of its self serving decisions.