What Is It With the Virginian Pilot's Love Affair With Taxes?

As surely as the sun rises in the East, the Virginian Pilot favors higher taxes.

The headlines and opinion pieces are as inevitable as crabgrass.

Trust me, I could write the headline (and save the for-sale Pilot a lot of money):

“Vital Services to Be Cut Without Tax Increases, Women and Children Hardest Hit.”

For a change of pace:

“Tax reductions ahead. Women and Minorities Hardest Hit.”

These are the ONLY two expressions the Pilot ever has on the issue of taxes.

Taxpayers, to the Pilot staff are a nameless, faceless, herd of sheep that only exist to be sheared. They have no lives of their own, no dreams that are not delivered by government, and no money worries that can be made worse by tax increase after tax increase. They are a bottomless pool of money; an endless source of government revenue for all the vital things that government MUST DO. And whatever the government does, it must do more, never less. The sheep may tuck in their belts because the government cannot do with less, EVER.

For a fine example of Pilot thinking, re-read "A Tale of Two Cities" where you will find the Pilot's editorial staff's ancestors in the persons of French aristocrats who spurn the peasantry whose only function is to pay taxes to their overlords ... and die of starvation.

What brings these thoughts on?

I should say what brings these thoughts on today?

Well, gentle readers; take a peek at today’s Pilot editorial on the evils of tax relief for home owners.

House Speaker Bill Howell admitted to Chamber of Commerce leaders last month that a plan to discount property taxes would penalize Virginia’s businesses and harm its communities.

In the same breath, however, Howell said he would do nothing to stop a bad idea from becoming law. His reasoning: “My guys are up for election next year.”
State legislators this winter are giving constitutional and statutory permission for the most sweeping changes in a half-century to the way residential property is assessed and taxed.

Real estate taxes are the largest source of revenues for local governments and the largest source of complaints from taxpayers. As the housing boom widened the gap between the value of a home and the income to pay the property taxes, the complaints became a cause across the commonwealth.

Now it is being propelled to passage by a popular myth and bad math. Theoretically, it would allow local governments to grant every homeowner a real estate tax discount of 20 percent. But as a practical matter, the expectations for tax breaks would greatly exceed the ability of government to deliver them, and any savings would at best be short-lived.

Unfortunately, many lawmakers have only a shallow grasp of such details, of the corrosive effect on municipal services, or the unintended consequences of shifting the tax burden from the wealthiest homeowners to the poorest.

My real estate taxes have risen 50% in the last 5 years, and many have had their taxes raised much more. For those on a fixed income, increases of this magnitude are serious; so serious that people have been forced to move from their homes because they could no longer afford to pay their property taxes. It is a serious matter when your property tax bill exceeds your grocery or you utility bill.

Republicans proposed a fixed annual cap on assessment increases, an idea that has forced dramatic cuts in services and caused havoc in other states. Many local officials rallied around Kaine’s homestead proposal, hoping it would inoculate them from demands for the more pernicious caps.

Like the “Wild West Shootouts” that the Pilot predicted when the right to carry concealed weapons passed, the “dramatic cuts in services and havoc” have not happened in other states. I defy the Pilot’s editorial writers to refer me to just one state where havoc now rules due to caps on property taxes.

It’s the Pilot’s constitutional right to lie, it’s our right to call them on it.

If legislators endorse the tax plan, voters will approve it overwhelmingly in a November referendum.

Imagine that. The legislature passes something that and the voters approve! Of course the Pilot is not always opposed to the will of the people. In fact, just the other day it castigated Terry Suit for opposing a smoking ban in restaurants because polls show there is broad backing for restaurant smoking bans in Hampton Roads. Terry Suit should vote a smoking ban because polls show it is popular. The Virginia legislature should not pass a tax cap despite its popularity.

I was going to say that consistency is not something that the Pilot’s cracked staff is known for, but I would be wrong. They are consistently for higher taxes. That is as sure as death ... and taxes.