Pass the cuppa from the left-hand side

I don't think what they're serving at the Baton Rouge Tea Party is really oolong.

I DON'T say these things lightly. I just read the old hometown newspaper in Louisiana and make the obvious extrapolations:

The tax package, like the one that narrowly failed last year, consists of a half-cent sales tax increase and a 9.9-mill property tax. If approved, the taxes would fund drainage system improvements, a new public safety complex and parish prison, traffic light synchronization, riverfront development and other projects.

“When you look at the total package, it’s something that’s going to take us to the next level,” Holden said. “We can’t get by with the status quo.”

(snip)

Another bond-issue opponent, Dwight Hudson of Baton Rouge Tea Party, said his group plans to hold “town hall” meetings in Zachary, Central and southeast Baton Rouge to encourage people to vote down the tax.

“Our members are general, every-day citizens who want to get involved,” he said. “They are concerned about how their tax dollars are being used.”

He said the first tea party meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 30 at Kristenwood Reception Hall in Central.

I CAN SEE HOW these party-hearty Baton Rougeans would be "concerned about how their tax dollars are being used." If the city raises taxes and cops at police headquarters suddenly stop falling through the floor or having brick walls tumble onto them, they just might be healthy enough to drop by for a cuppa.

And that would ruin everything.

We can haz brain???

While Maria Bartiromo was showing the Scarecrow there's hope for him yet sans cerebellum, the Omaha City Council was busy Tuesday sending another message to straw men everywhere.

Abandon all hope.

I sat on the council's marathon budget-deliberation story for the better part of a day, wondering if their eventual vote in favor of a "budget" (as opposed to a budget) would smell any better after it had aired out overnight and most of the day. The answer is no.

FROM THE Omaha World-Herald:

Mayor Jim Suttle was skeptical today about whether the Omaha City Council's budget plan is based on realistic numbers.

“It was very chaotic yesterday,” Suttle said in an interview with The World-Herald. “We have to now see how it all adds up.”

After nearly nine hours of debate and maneuvering, a divided council Tuesday approved a 2010 budget that includes Suttle's property tax hike to pay city debt but makes more than $10 million in changes, including a 2½-day voluntary employee furlough and a new satellite TV fee.

The approved budget now goes to Suttle for review and any possible vetoes.

Suttle said he will study the council's changes and is willing to work with council members. But he said he's concerned that some of their ideas won't bring in as much money as they hope.

If revenue sources fall short next year, he said, the city could end up having to repeat this year's round of cuts to swimming pools, libraries and other services.

“I don't want to repeat this summer, next summer,” Suttle said. “I'm really guarded about that.”

Some council members also were dissatisfied with the budget, but for different reasons.

The budget was approved on a 4-2 vote after a debate that stretched until nearly 11 p.m. Council members Pete Festersen and Jean Stothert voted against it because it contains a tax increase to pay debt on projects such as the Qwest Center Omaha.

That tax increase would cost the owner of a $100,000 house an extra $24 a year.

An $11 million shortfall in the budget was addressed with the help of a new, $50 inspection fee for satellite TV dishes and the voluntary furlough plan for all city employees. Both were proposed by Councilman Chris Jerram.

(snip)

Initially, the budget did not pass. Councilman Franklin Thompson voted with Festersen and Stothert to reject it, citing the tax increase.

Thompson later switched to become the deciding vote in passing the measure.

“I do believe the council has been cornered, but I believe this council has done everything it can to do the right thing,” Thompson said. “My constituents are going to be disappointed in me.”

YOU GOT that right, Franklin. I'm your constituent, and I'm disappointed that Ben Gray was the only grown-up on the city council. I'm disappointed Gray was the only council member to realize the city had already cut into the bone . . . and that it was time to tell taxpayers to bear their share of the burden of self-governance.

And now the council has passed a sham of a budget, one that kicks the fiscal can down the road for a date with another crisis in a few months.

Voluntary furloughs? Lord God, what kind of insanity is that?

Most of the council declared they couldn't expect property owners to pay enough more in taxes -- about $52 extra a year when all is said and done -- to cover the city's budget shortfall and debt-service obligations, yet they expect city employees to voluntarily forfeit 2 1/2 days' pay?

That's not just your average, everyday insanity, that's some heavy-duty, patently unjust insanity.

TO MAKE THIS short and not-so-sweet, the council-passed Omaha city budget is the biggest fiction you're likely to see until the next Glenn Beck Show. And the council members to blame for it have proven themselves unworthy of their office.

Cutboigy! Budgetboigy! No library! Kindle!

Councilman Sigerson! The people have no books!

Well, let them buy Kindles, then.

Tune in again same time next week for another thrilling installment of Chuck Sigerson: City Councilman. Our next high-voltage episode . . . "They Shoot Red Robins, Don't They?"

COME TO THINK of it -- given a certain council member's alleged weakness for a gal in plush -- perhaps former Omaha Public Library chief Rivkah Sass might have gotten farther with the council if she had shown up for this month's budget hearing in a bird suit. The I-wish-I-didn't-believe-this-but-I-do details are in the latest edition of The Reader:

Every year the city council holds budget meetings where department heads present financial needs and answer questions. This year Sass was the only director asked to defend the existence of her department. Councilman Chuck Sigerson said the Internet and devices such as Amazon’s Kindle might eliminate the need for libraries.

“Sure we can all download books on a Kindle, but who’s going to buy the Kindle for us?” Sass said. “There’s an assumption people can afford these devices and then there’s the thing that chills me to the bone … when the book 1984 disappeared from the Kindle. Talk about the ultimate irony.”

Sass said libraries are changing with the times, beyond e-books and DVDs to involve more people in more ways. For instance OPL now offers etiquette classes, baby classes and parenting classes.

“Information isn’t just something you find in a book; information is about satisfying a need, whether it’s curiosity, educational or informational,” she said.

IT'S TOO EASY to merely label right-wing pols like Chuck Sigerson a civic embarrassment and leave it there. That wouldn't do justice to the fundamental disconnect at the core of the "conservative, family-values" governing philosophy of the American right.

What we have here is a credo that favors decimating the civic infrastructure of a community -- indeed, of a nation -- above the possibility of modest tax hikes for even those citizens who can most afford it. In Sigerson's case, the Republican stalwart of the Omaha council would rather raise the specter of a city without libraries than raise the property tax on a $100,000 home by $25 or $52 a year.

Put it this way: To Sigerson and his anti-tax constituents, all the municipal services that make a city a livable place -- those services that give small comfort to the afflicted and provide nice things for the masses for little or no fee -- are not worth the cost of an Old Market dinner for two (with drinks) on a Saturday night.

Or burgers and booze at Red Robin.

COPS AND JAILS, they'll pony up for. Books and thin slivers of hope? No way.

In the moral and political universe of Chuck Sigerson, when fiscal times get tough, it's those who depend most on municipal services who receive the call for sacrifice. And it's those with enough money to live in nice suburban homes who get off scot-free.

This philosophy, frankly, is anything but "conservative," and it turns the raison d'être for democratic governance -- fostering the common good and protection of the weak from the strong -- on its head. This is radical stuff . . . just as radical as any mad schema cooked up by Lenin or Marx.

What it does is destroy the very notion of collective responsibility for the community's well-being and turn government into a protection racket for society's most well-heeled. And it does this at the expense of -- in the instance of public libraries, for example -- the opportunity of Omaha's poorest and most vulnerable to have something approaching the educational and informational resources of those, like Sigerson, who think nothing of going online to purchase a $299 Kindle.

Or purchase $9.99 E-books to load onto the thing.

LIKEWISE, "conservative" radicals think absolutely nothing of denying low-income youth well-maintained city parks . . . or pools . . . or recreational programs . . . or after-school programs. This for the fiscal sake of people who ostensibly can't shell out a few bucks more in property tax but damn well have the scratch to pay for dance lessons, soccer leagues and iPods for their middle-class progeny.

Oh . . . I forgot Kindles.

This isn't conservatism, it's radicalism. It's government-sanctioned social Darwinism.

And it's a moral outrage.

Brother, can you spare a book?

Because the mayor is feckless, the city council is spineless and Omaha taxpayers are shameless, the city's library system has been decimated.

And that same level of public non-service will be creeping across all of city government. Soon.

From a story this evening on KETV, Channel 7:

A day after the cuts are finalized, the reality is made clear for the libraries --the downtown branch will no longer be open on the weekend. Homeless shelter outreach programs disappear. Book trading between branches is severely curtailed. The Florence branch closes. Homework Hot Spots program disappears.

Mary Mollner is one of 53 to lose a job. More than a mentor, Mollner helped senior citizens connect to a 21st century world and she helped the jobless reform their resumes and find work.

"We bring the world of information to them and they come to us," Mollner said, fighting back tears.

Mollner's ideals of educating and enlightening aren't lost.

"During this time off, I'll go out and volunteer," Mollner said.

Teenagers like Samantha English turned to the library after school for homework help and book clubs.

"The programs here are fun. They actually get you out of trouble," English said.

ONE BRANCH'S HOURS are being reduced by 19 hours a week. Another's by 14.

And on the reductions in service go -- another 19 hours here. Four hours there. Two hours over there.

And at the main library downtown, a 21-hour cut per week. It will be closed all weekend starting Sept. 8.

I would suggest that high-school teachers start accepting Wikipedia as a legitimate reference source.

MEANWHILE, the head of Omaha's firefighters union has grudgingly negotiated a two-year pay freeze with the mayor. The deal stipulates that firefighters will get a raise in Year Three no matter what happens with the economy.

It also says they'll get makeup raises on top of their regularly scheduled raises if the fiscal picture improves. Would that my wife -- who had to take, without benefit of negotiation, a 5-percent pay cut plus five days' furlough -- could get to "sacrifice" to such an extent as our firefighters.

About the only thing hard times are showing us in the 21st century is to what extent we all figure every man -- and woman -- is indeed an island, contra John Donne. Librarians get fired, city services get slashed and the little (and big) things that make up a city's quality of life take a beating, all because people who damn well have enough money to live in a six-figure house say they'll be damned if they pay another $25 . . . or $50 . . . or $100 a year in property tax.

And because the best other alternative the mayor could come up with was a Rube Goldberg "entertainment tax." One that would hurt a struggling industry enough -- and thus garner enough angry opposition -- that its demise at the city council's hands was a given.

And because Mayor Jim Suttle doesn't have the cojones to implement an occupation tax that's been on the books since the early 1980s.

And because the city council ran out of creative alternative ideas before it even had a one. That is, apart from a recent proposals to furlough every city worker still standing for two-weeks.

BASICALLY, hard times came and no one stepped up. No one -- not government, not business, not taxpayers.

No one.

And we're officially hosed. Except, ironically, for the hose jockeys. They're making out just fine.

You can get anything you want . . . .

I've been scarce around these cyberparts, off fighting another skirmish in the ongoing war against cyberobsolescence. Mine.

Or, more precisely, my computer's.

A flat-screen monitor Mrs. Favog and I found at an estate sale for $40 suddenly decided the other day to follow its former owner to the Great Beyond. Or to Florida -- whatever.

Having been burned by our quest to get some LCD magic for (next to) nothing, my better half and I trekked to Nebraska Furniture Mart in search of some brand-new monitor goodness . . . some 22-inch widescreen goodness. As if we had a choice.

Computer-monitor makers still might be cranking out 4x3 displays these days, but the Mart and Best Buy weren't selling them. When in Rome, and all that, you know.

And I love me some wide-format computing. You used to have to hook up multiple monitors to get this kind of virtual workspace.

And the picture. . . . oh, dear me, can a Blu-Ray burner for the old Dell be far behind?

OF COURSE, being that we're talking computers -- particularly 4-year-old ones -- you know the path to widescreen goodness had to be a bumpy one. Very. The road to planned obsolescence is never an Autobahn experience for the poor consumer, who just wants a lot for a little.

Like me and that estate-sale flat-screen.

First, the fargin' integrated video controller, I discover when I hook up the new monitor, wouldn't support widescreen monitors. So everything had that funhouse-mirror look -- the video version of getting the news from home via a phone call from Mama.

Well, I figured that might happen. So I head down to Best Buy to get me an inexpensive video card. Excuse me . . . graphics card.

I can put it in. I can put anything in a computer. Hell, since we got our first one in 1993, I've replaced everything there is to replace inside a computer tower except the power supply and motherboard.

But there's a problem. My Dell Dimension 3000, which I didn't think was that old or decrepit . . . is. And it features an undersized (by today's standards) 250-watt power supply. Most video -- er, graphics -- cards won't give you a crappy black-and-white kinescope view of the world for under 350-watts of the Omaha Public Power District's finest.

ON THE OTHER HAND, it might cause your computer to melt down.

And not only that, most of the graphics cards Dell says are compatible with my model of computer most certainly aren't compatible with the tiny-ass power supply they put in my computer. Power supply, anyone?

To go along with the new monitor and a new video -- OK, graphics, GRAPHICS!!! -- card.

What was a $40 estate-sale bargain so far had turned into a $192 Nebraska Furniture Mart shopping trip. It was threatening to ring up another $65 for a video card and at least that much for a bigger power supply.

Face it, if we all had to constantly rebuild our automobiles just to be allowed on the Interstate, we'd all be taking the bus. But that's the "world of personal computing" in a world that eats the computer-deprived for lunch.

AFTER A DAY of back and forth on the graphics-card issue, I opened up the Dell to see who was full of it -- the folks in Round Rock, Tejas, and their system specs and upgrade recommendations, or . . . the folks in Round Rock, Tejas, who maybe put more power supply in my "old" Dimension 3000 than I thought.

As it turns out, the folks in Round Rock, Tejas, were full of it. And they did put a puny 250-watt power supply in the computer . . . as promised. And it looked like not just any off-the-shelf power supply would fit in that thing.

And it looked like the only place I'd find a graphics card that wouldn't suck up more juice than old Dell could give was online. Trouble is, I was sick of messing with the damned thing -- which was lying half taken apart on the dining-room table.

So we went to the one place in town that carried a 250-watt card and happily paid too much for it. And here I sit, in widescreen bliss . . . $250-odd poorer.

BUT THIS ISN'T about my computer.

It's about how the city of Omaha has gutted the public library system -- and is about to gut God knows what else -- all because some loud taxpayers, and some feckless city council members, think you can run a city on $40 estate-sale, flat-screen computer monitors and not have to pay the piper at some point.

It's about how folks still expect the city to cut, cut and cut some more even when the budgetary fat is gone and the muscle ain't looking so good anymore.

It's about how cops aren't being hired, one library branch will close for the rest of the year (at least) while others slash their hours (and staff) and youth-recreation programs in poor neighborhoods are being axed (great combination, eh?) all because a bunch of loud-mouthed, right-wing yahoos are raising holy hell from somewhere east of Eden and west of the 'hood. Because it would just be completely scandalous and unreasonable to expect people who live in $100,000 houses to pay $25 more a year in property tax.

From the Omaha World-Herald on Wednesday:

Although libraries and other services drew strong support, Festersen said he thought the common theme for many average citizens was their opposition to tax increases.

Council members are cool to Suttle's proposed entertainment tax and property tax hike, and they are looking for ways to cut spending further. They are set to vote on the budget Sept. 1.

Suttle and the council face a projected $11 million shortfall next year. The mayor also is trying to close a $12 million revenue gap in the current budget.

The hearing followed weeks of bad news on the city budget: The temporary closing of Florence Library, and cuts in library hours at other branches. Layoffs of 130 civilian employees. The grounding of the police helicopter for the rest of the year. Swimming pools closing early for the season.

Earlier Tuesday, Suttle announced furloughs in the Mayor's Office, saying all members of his staff will take eight unpaid leave days before the end of the year.

(snip)

Doug Kagan, chairman of the Nebraska Taxpayers for Freedom, urged the council to cut spending.

“Don't tell us about sacred cows that cannot be touched. Sacred cows make the best hamburger,” Kagan said.

IT SEEMS we have a couple of dynamics at work here in the "don't tax you, don't tax me" contingent.

One group wants a really great computer monitor but sees no real need to pay for it. The other, exemplified by the Nebraska Grumblers for Screw You, already has a computer monitor and figures a Big Chief tablet is good enough for everybody else.

The common good is not a popular notion these days. Obviously.

Which brings us back to, you guessed it . . . computers. In Wednesday's Omaha paper. Really.

Florence is part of northeast Omaha, lying within an area bounded by the Missouri River, Redick Avenue, 45th Street and the Washington County line. It includes the Ponca Hills area.

The decision to close the library has upset residents of all ages.

Teresa Miller, 20, and her brother Jonas, 15, were checking out story and music CDs when they heard the news Tuesday.

“That's weird to close a library,” Jonas said. “I mean, you need books, right?”

It never occurred to Teresa that her childhood library had a shortage of customers. She said the Florence library probably has fewer visitors because it is smaller than most branches.

“I like the small things,” she said, adding that she's frustrated that she'll have to use more gas to drive to a different branch.

For Craig and Deborah Johnson, a stroll to their public library is a family affair they hate to see end.

As a reporter approached the couple, they already were asking, why Florence?

“Things are going downhill real fast,” said Craig. “A snowball effect.”

Both he and his wife have been laid off from jobs as, respectively, equipment operator and office clerk. Tuesday, the couple walked to the library — their 2-year-old and 6-year-old in tow — to search for employment via library computers. The little ones also signed on to a computer.

The older Johnson children use the library as well, often taking a break to go across the hall to play basketball or participate in some other activity at the Florence recreation center. A senior center also is in the complex that contains the library.

Paying for bus fare to go elsewhere is an expense the Johnsons said they didn't need.

Hartline on Tuesday was at the senior center arranging a volunteer visit. She is a frequent library customer and also stops weekly at the post office a few blocks away.

“It's very upsetting,” said Hartline. “We are just as deserving of community facilities as any other part of Omaha.”

SURE YOU ARE. But Doug Kagan would rather you have this really cool $40 estate-sale, flat-screen computer monitor.

Just don't expect him to throw in a couple of bucks toward fixing it.

Omaha can't rely on cuts . . . or Erin Andrews

If you're running a mid-sized city and you're looking at starting the new fiscal year at least $11 million in the hole, you're pretty much looking at just three things you can do.

You can gut city services that already have been cut and cut again, thereby destroying your community's quality of life.

You can raise taxes.

You can sell nekkid pictures of Erin Andrews. And by that I mean not unclothed pictures of the ESPN sideline goddess, but rather pictures of the ESPN sideline goddess unclothed.

To his credit, Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle -- in a budget address that was anything but subtle -- rejected the first option out of hand, declaring it a supremely bad idea. Likewise, he recognized there's no way out of the second option -- that citizens face a choice between horrible and unpleasant, and sometimes you have to suck it up and fork over a little more to the community chest.

As for that last option (though it would be an exceedingly lucrative sideline for Omaha city government), the reality is that Erin Andrews' chest does not belong to the community . . . and neither do photographic representations thereof.

SO, IT LOOKS like the Omaha City Council will have to either like or lump what the Omaha World-Herald reports the mayor set in front of it this afternoon:

Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle wants to raise property taxes and impose a new tax on restaurant meals, movies and other entertainment to help the city climb out of a projected budget shortfall for 2010.

Both the property tax increase and new entertainment tax are part of Suttle's 2010 budget proposal, which he presented Tuesday to the Omaha City Council.

The 2 percent entertainment tax would affect anyone who sees a movie or goes out to dinner in Omaha. The tax would bring in an estimated $10.3 million at a time when the major revenue sources for city services — sales taxes and property taxes — are projected to remain essentially flat. Meanwhile, health care and other costs are projected to rise.

The proposed property tax hike would amount to an extra $36 a year for the owner of a home valued for tax purposes at $150,000. The $6.2 million in revenue would be used to pay off debt from the Qwest Center Omaha.

Whether either tax is approved ultimately will be up to the City Council. Omahans will get their chance to weigh in during a public hearing Aug. 11.

Suttle includes some new spending in his 2010 budget, including restoring the public safety auditor's position, as he had promised to during the campaign, and buying 44 police cruisers. His plan also includes some cuts to help address an $11 million shortfall, such as closing Westwood Golf Course and spending less money on street resurfacing.

Council President Garry Gernandt has said in the past that the council would be cool to the notion of increasing taxes and wants to look for further spending cuts.

But Suttle warned of the consequences if the council fights the tax proposals. The city would not open any pools next summer, he said, and libraries could close as well. He said both possibilities would be “a gross mistake.”

“If the council says no, then we've got problems,” he said. “There's just no place else to go (for cuts).”

LISTEN, tax hikes are going to be unavoidable. Not unless you relish life in a city remarkably less "user friendly."

But I have problems with the tax Suttle seeks to implement -- an "entertainment tax." Such a levy has the potential to hurt a local industry (encompassing everything from sports franchises to restaurants to concert venues) that's already being buffeted by people's lack of discretionary income amid economic hard times.

Obviously, the mayor wants to impose a tax that won't hit everybody . . . and one that has maximum "soak the out-of-towners" potential. There's three problems with that, though.

First, would it cause people to attend even fewer shows, skip the ballgame or decide to eat in rather than eat out? Second, would it make Omaha hotels and restaurants less competitive for the tourist dollar? In this tough economy, do you really want to roll the dice on that one?

And third, fiscal experts looking at Omaha's tax structure have said the city already relies too heavily on sales-tax revenue. That's what has bitten the city in the rear during this present downturn. Do we really want to increase that dependence, particularly on something as regressive as a sales tax? After all, an "entertainment tax" is nothing more than a targeted sales tax.

Better to just take the hit straight up, no chaser. Raise property taxes enough to cover both the shortfall and the Qwest Center debt -- the hike still wouldn't be exorbitant.

Of course, there's one thing Suttle could do tomorrow without council approval. He could implement the occupation tax on the books since the recession of the early 1980s. Denver and Kansas City already have.

Maybe that's Suttle's last-resort ace in the hole with the council. Or maybe an occupation tax is what's going to stave off municipal bankruptcy in the looming fire-and-police pension implosion.

Stay tuned.

O! Suck it up and git 'er done

They're talking about us down on the bayou. Most of what folks are saying is pretty good.

Interesting that, sometimes, visitors in Omaha for the College World Series look at our city and end up having more faith in us than we do. Says Gary Laney of The Advocate in my old hometown, Baton Rouge:

Baseball is about Little Leaguers in Williamsport, Pa., summer leaguers playing around the clock in Wichita, Kan., and collegians spending a couple of weeks at Rosenblatt Stadium — with the lucky few getting to feel the Ivy at Wrigley Field or hear the thud of a line drive off the Green Monster at Fenway Park.

When the Red Sox play the Yankees, the sport does fine. It’s when it goes into these misadventures with the new — overpriced Yankee Stadium seats, shortened college seasons — that it always seems to trip over its own spikes.

It’s within that context that folks here are a little nervous. Rosenblatt Stadium’s days are numbered, to be replaced for the 2011 CWS by a brand-spanking-new downtown stadium, to be called TD Ameritrade Park Omaha, named for one of the city’s Fortune 500 companies. Rosenblatt will become a parking lot for the Henry Doorly Zoo, and the stadium’s other tenant, the Omaha Royals, will move to suburban Papillion, Neb.

The new stadium promises, or threatens, to be everything Rosenblatt is not. Where Rosenblatt has the dome from the zoo as a right-field backdrop, TD Ameritrade Park will have the city’s skyline, and yes, Omaha has a skyline. Where Rosenblatt is in a working-class neighborhood with Zesto’s ice cream stand (where one can spend a couple of dollars for what is supposedly the best ice cream in the Midwest) across the street, the new place will be on the edge of trendy, touristy Old Market with the state-of-the-art Qwest Center across the street.

And, one is named after a corporate giant while the other is named after the mayor who brought professional baseball and the College World Series to Omaha.

All of those thoughts are downright scary for baseball purists. But folks in Omaha are the perfect hosts for the College World Series for a reason, and that’s what gives hope for their new stadium. If any place is going to do a new stadium right, it’s Omaha.

THERE'S A LOT RIGHT about Omaha. And, yes, if any town can make a major change to a beloved baseball tradition -- and, more importantly, make it work -- it's the Big O.

But we're facing tough times. City revenues are tighter than one of Sasha Baron Cohen's "Bruno" getups, and ordinary folk are yelling and screaming for city fathers to take a budget ax and cut right through the bone.

That's because Omaha, unfortunately, is not immune to America's generation-long affliction with taxorexia. It's kind of like anorexia and bulimia combined, except that while you're not taking any nourishment in, you're still purging cops, libraries, yard-waste pickup and street repair.

Funny thing is, it only applies to civic affairs. Show us skyrocketing cable-TV bills and we'll still pay up. We'll bitch, but we'll pay. Upgrade to digital, even.

And we'll sell Junior on Craigslist to fill up the SUV with premium unleaded.

But show us a city that's cut the budget to the point of "You don't want to go there," and we'll say "Go there . . . we ain't paying no stinkin' taxes." Of course, no one has any useful suggestions about where to cut, but that's not important now -- there must be some more fat somewhere.

Sadly, it's often between the ears of the armchair budget director.

AS I SAID, Omaha's in a tough spot right now, what with anemic tax collections and all. But we've been in tough spots before, and Nebraskans usually suck it up and do what needs to be done.

So maybe we just need to shut the hell up and do it again -- in this case, that would be protecting the city's quality of life, basic services and economic viability just as zealously as we've guarded the CWS all these decades.

What, do you think we got to the point where far-off newspapers run glowing accounts of life in Omaha by sitting on our butts muttering "No, no, never, no"? I think not.

Suck it up. It's important.

Don't tax you, don't tax me. . . .

To read the comments on newspaper stories is to understand why the Founding Fathers gave us a representative democracy, not a direct one.

Basically, Americans always want something for nothing. They also think you don't have to spend money to make money. And, of course, a people hooked on iPhones, three cars in the driveway, plasma TVs and credit-card debt can't help but lecture city fathers about living within one's means.

So, when the Omaha World-Herald reported Saturday that the city is facing another $11 million shortfall next fiscal year, that the city budget already has been cut to the bone and that something drastic will have to be done, folks were quick to denounce being "taxed to death." Well, that and the new downtown baseball stadium.

THIS COMMENT is pretty typical:

What was the city thinking of when they approved the new stadium, the Qwest center,and annexing Elkhorn. Obviously the city of Omaha can't afford these. We are not a big city like Chicago, or New York. Omaha is just a little hick city in Nebraska. Why are we trying to be like the big guys. We didn't need a new stadium. Rosenblatt has served well over the years, and should have been maintained all along. We have the Civic Auditorium and that should have been sufficient. Also it cost a lot more for city services out west in Elkhorn. They should have been left alone, providing their own services. Plus the services they now receive and not near as good as Elkhorn was providing. I also disagree that the nation should mandate the update of sewer systems, however I know that is out of Omaha's control. Mayor Fahey did a lot of damage to the city's financial picture, and it seems as if Jim Suttle is not doing any better so far. We can't afford these things and now us taxpayers are going to have to pay. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people and businesses move out of Omaha, because just like us, we can' afford the high taxes.

UNSUPRISINGLY, the combox warriors' bile seems not to be exactly reality-based. Here, from the World-Herald, is the problem Omaha actually faces:

Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle met with business leaders Friday to outline possible tax hikes — including new taxes on entertainment and workers — as ways to resolve the city's budget crisis.

While Suttle didn't say he had decided in favor of any tax increase, his message was that Omaha would be hard-pressed to avoid one at a time of slumping revenues.

Sales tax revenues this year are expected to drop for the first time. Meanwhile, the property tax base is not growing significantly. Sales and property taxes are the city's main revenue sources.

As a result, the city already is cutting $14 million from the current budget, although a large portion of that depends on a wage freeze that has yet to be negotiated with the city's unions.

For 2010, when the revenue slump is expected to continue, city officials are projecting an $11 million shortfall in the amount needed to maintain city services.

Suttle is considering additional spending cuts that would close the gap, including ending yard waste pickup, closing three libraries and allowing police staffing to shrink by not hiring new recruits.

But Suttle is also looking at raising revenue in 2010 with one of the following: higher property taxes; a new 2 percent tax on entertainment, including restaurants and bars; and an occupation tax that would collect $2 a month from people who work in Omaha and an equal amount from their employers.

Both of the two new taxes would affect not only Omaha city residents but also people who come into the city to work, dine or catch a movie.

Suttle has not decided that higher taxes are necessary, said spokesman Ron Gerard. But the mayor is concerned that current revenue may not be adequate to fund city services over the long run.

“We're at the edge of a cliff, and we don't want to fall off,” Gerard said.

(snip)

Suttle outlined the two new taxes that the city could impose, each raising about $10 million a year. Both have been controversial in the past.

— The entertainment tax was proposed in 2007 as a way to finance the city's new downtown baseball stadium. It was dropped amid heated opposition from the restaurant industry. If Suttle revives the idea, he would need City Council approval.

— The occupation tax on employees has actually been on the city's books since 1983, when it was passed as a way to balance the budget in an earlier shortfall. But sales tax revenue rose, and the tax was never implemented.

WANT TO MAKE the city's financial problems a lot worse in a few years? Don't build the new stadium, and let the NCAA use the breach of contract to move the College World Series to another city -- one with a shiny new stadium. See $41 million in annual economic activity and more than $2 million in annual tax revenue disappear.

I wonder how much more taxes would have to be raised to make up for that? Alternatively, how much more draconian would cuts in city services have to be to fill the even wider budget gap?

Likewise, for the want of Joe Omaha paying an extra $42 in property tax for a $100,000 house or an extra $24 annual occupation tax, how much are Omahans really willing to sacrifice in quality of life?

Do they really want to live in a city even more underpoliced than it is now? Do they really want to live in a city that's closing public libraries? Or has noticeably rattier parks and public facilities?

Do they really look forward to living in a town without yard-waste collection?

HERE'S A reality check for you: Having your yard waste hauled off by a private contractor will cost you a lot more than $24 . . . and probably more than $42.

Hauling it to the dump yourself will set you back, too. And burning it in the back yard will get you a visit from the fire department -- assuming it can get there before you burn the neighborhood down, you idiot -- and an illegal-burning citation.

And how much is it worth to you to have the cops actually show up when you need them?

How much do you think the quality-of-life losses you're willing to set in motion for fear of having a decade of property-tax cuts rolled back a bit are worth to companies considering opening up shop (and creating jobs) in Omaha?

I'VE LIVED places with too much blight, not enough libraries and more crime than cops. You don't want to go there. Coincidentally, neither did companies that could have created lots of well-paying jobs.

Listen, it's not complicated.

We live in a pretty wealthy area of an extremely wealthy country. Times are tough, tax revenues are off, and the city has cut the budget close to the bone. Those are the plain facts.

If you value the city Omaha has become, and if you value not living in a s***hole, it's time to suck it up and do what needs to be done. Even $10 more in city taxes a month won't kill you -- it just won't.

Leave the third car in the driveway, cut back on your pay-per-view habit, tell Junior he has to choose between soccer and taekwondo, then just suck it the hell up.

Omaha is a great city. That would be a hell of a thing to waste.

American of the Year

It's always a rush when you stumble upon an ideological kindred spirit. It doesn't happen that often -- OK, almost never -- in my Favogian universe.

But it just happened. I present to you a great American -- former New York Times investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston, expounding upon how the Reagan Revolution ushered in profoundly radical, unjust and unbiblical economic policy and passed it off as somehow "conservative."

TO THAT I say, "Amen, brother!"

The interview is in Vermont's independent weekly, Seven Days:

SD: Given that you’ve been doing investigative work for newspapers for many years, what do you think will happen now that newspapers are in danger of going extinct?

DCJ: Most serious journalism is still done by newspapers. What people see on TV at night typically begins with the work newspapers have done. The decline in print journalism is very bad in terms of protecting the public purse. Those who want to pick your pocket and enrich their friends are having a field day.

But if newspapers do die, that won’t necessarily mean we won’t have good journalism. Ninety percent of blogs read like drunks talking in a bar, but a few of them are very, very good. I’ve long warned that the collapse of serious news could be a precursor to a revolution in this country. And in a country as complex and as contentious as ours, a revolution could make Pol Pot’s Cambodia look tame by comparison.

SD: How could there possibly be a revolution in a country as apathetic as this one? There’s not much activism despite the economic crisis.

DCJ: Revolutions do arise from economic collapse. We’ve had a decade of faux economics that has left large numbers of people with no jobs and no prospects. We’re destroying social stability, and we’ve lost sight of fundamental principles.

SD: Such as?

DCJ: Where do you think democracy comes from? We got it from progressive taxation. It came about when Athens separated political power from economic power and gave ordinary people an equal voice. The only reason Athenians could get rich was because Athens made it possible for them to get rich. Civilization establishes necessary conditions, so the richer you are, the greater your burden to sustain civilization and democracy with your taxes.

That’s not what’s happening now. Americans making $26,000 a year have a tax burden about one-quarter greater than a person making $260,000. If you make $50,000 to $75,000, you pay roughly the same rate as someone making $100 million. My books show how all these devices take from the many and give to the few. America did all right for many decades because we got the rules right — until the rise of Reaganism. We then abandoned conservative, time-tested ideas for radical ideas that were sold as conservative. All throughout the Bible, taking from the poor and giving to the rich is denounced as evil. Almost everybody who runs for Congress and certainly for the White House makes at least a show of going to church. So how can it be that people who profess to believe in the Bible have enacted hundreds of laws that prescribe what’s described in the Bible as one of the most fundamental evils? We’ve just been through an era when it was argued that the only duty of a corporate executive is to push up share prices. But you can manipulate numbers, and a corporation doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It has customers, vendors, employees — and all the infrastructure of a democracy. You can’t have a healthy company in a sick society.

THAT'S A LINE all the "business firsters" ought to learn, live and learn to love, because it's true and getting truer: "You can’t have a healthy company in a sick society."

'White schools' and 'n***** schools'

The problem with conservative ideologues like Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is that rarely do they "conserve" anything. Except, of course, the ability of radical individualists to blow up society for their own profit.

Thus, the dirty little secret behind the "school choice" agenda Jindal has embraced in his call for the state's second special legislative session this year, as reported by The Times-Picayune of New Orleans:

The governor spent little time in his prepared remarks on the tuition tax deduction proposal. But teachers union lobbyist Steve Monaghan said afterward that it could define the tax portion of the session.

At a $20 million cost -- allowing parents to deduct half of each child's tuition cost up to $5,000 per child when figuring their taxable income -- the plan is a blip on the state's budget radar. But the precedent, Monaghan said, would establish that the state's educational priority list is no longer topped by public schools.

"This is a distraction," said Monaghan, president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers. "If we're truly concerned about building a world-class public education system, then we have to stop sending mixed messages. Why incentivize sending children to private schools?"

Jindal said the idea, which was not part of his campaign platform, came from several legislators and other advocates of "school choice."

"They made a persuasive case," the governor said. "We think it's important for our families to be able to send their children to high-quality schools all over Louisiana."

WHY IS IT that someone who bills himself as a "conservative" -- particularly a fiscal one -- is so enamored of what amounts to welfare for the well off? Or at least well off enough to shell out thousands of dollars a year in private-school tuition.

Welfare for the at least moderately well off is what Jindal's proposed tax credit is, too. And it's what passes for sound public policy in the eyes of Jindal's buddies in the "school choice" movement.

One of those "school choice" friends is Rolfe McCollister, publisher of the Baton Rouge Business Report and a founder of the city's Children's Charter School.

McCollister, who's had his scrapes with the local school system, recently penned a column calling on voters not to renew a penny sales tax that funds part of teachers' salaries and provides funds for school construction and renovation. He decries the local public schools' poor performance, particularly their record with at-risk students.

This despite his own charter school's barely passing grade from the Great Schools website, which uses publicly available data and parent ratings to grade America's schools. In fact, according to Great Schools, McCollister's Children's Charter School had the second highest pupil-teacher ratio of any school within a five-mile radius, while earning only a 6 rating on a 10-point scale.

One would think Children's Charter School would be drawing the at-risk children of the most motivated of at-risk parents. Parents you would assume at least gave enough of a damn to try a charter school. Yet. . . .

On a college grade scale, 60 percent is a D. Barely. On my old high-school grade scale, 60 percent is a solid F. And one nearby public, non-charter school at least managed a C. Barely.

IF I'M BOBBY JINDAL, I'm going to be seeking out advice on education policy from "D" educators? And I'm going to be following these folks' advice to pursue a policy of undermining public schools . . . for what, exactly?

There are none so blind as right-wing pols who refuse to see.

"Conserving" a civic culture and a functional society does not include aiding and abetting the "school choice" of the relatively privileged while abandoning the rest to a "separate and unequal" public-education system. There is no "conservative" principle, properly understood, in tolerating decay and dysfunction as the normative environment of those "left behind" in public schools.

(East Baton Rouge Parish public schools, in the wake of court-ordered desegregation, now are 83 percent minority and 79 percent African-American. Most students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.)

And there is nothing "conservative" about opening the public coffers, wholesale, to private groups for carrying out the public's business. In this case, that would be educating Louisiana's children.

"Conservatives" have forgotten -- utterly -- the flip side of freedom. That would be "duty." Just because middle- and upper-class folk have the ability to "escape" a struggling school system, that freedom to do so does not therefore become an entitlement underwritten in whole or in part by the state.

And it certainly does not translate into some "right" to cast the less privileged into an abyss of voters' making, either by commission -- as in the separate but unqual of Jim Crow days -- or by omission . . . as in the separate but unequal of some McCollisterian "I'm not paying a cent of tax money for 'failed schools'" dystopia.

When, by default, most white children attend private schools partially underwritten by public monies and most black children attend public schools abandoned to decay and dysfunction, it is difficult to discern how the "desegregated" present differs substantially from the darkest days of de jure segregation.

LONG AGO, before de jure school segregation had breathed its last in Baton Rouge, my parents used to threaten me with being sent to "the nigger school" when I misbehaved at the officially all-white Red Oaks Elementary. That was supposed to imply a fate worse than death to a young mind indoctrinated, from birth, into a white, racist milieu.

Now, in my hometown, they're working on making every public school "the nigger school" -- with all the awfulness that once meant to little white ears -- and all you have to do to get your kid sent there is not have enough money (or luck, or whatever) to get into this generation's "white school."

And if you don't have the dough (or luck, or whatever) to get into the "white school" in the first place, I don't see how Bobby Jindal -- or his proposed tax credits -- can offer you any hope. Any hope at all.

Let me know how that works out for you, Louisiana.

Washing their feet and looking at the moon

With people like Chas Roemer -- son of Louisiana's last (failed) reform governor -- running education in the Gret Stet, it's hard to hold out hope that anything will ever get better there.

Roemer, newly elected to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education from Baton Rouge, is another Capital City swell who thinks teachers and children need to pay the price for the sins of the school board. He writes in the Baton Rouge Business Report:

Taxpayers are now faced with the proposition of either sending more money to the same system or being labeled as “against the kids.” Nothing could be further from the truth. I, for one, will vote against the tax—not because I’m against spending the money, but because I am against wasting the money. I would support any number of different approaches and, in fact, could support sending even a greater amount of money to a system that I believed put the kids first and not “the system.” I have witnessed firsthand the system making decisions that protect them while sacrificing potential opportunities for our kids. For example, the system turned away KIPP Academy—a nationally recognized charter school provider that specializes in serving urban kids. They turned down the Children’s Charter School in their attempt to expand—despite that their student body is 98% at risk and scores above the state average on school performance scores. Children’s Charter operates an 11-month school year with extended day for the same amount per pupil as the system. Furthermore, for years the Children’s Charter operated exclusively out of temporary buildings. Why can’t the system do some of these same things?

HERE'S A NEWS FLASH, podna. When you willfully advocate a politcal course of action that will force teachers to take a pay cut of between 2 percent and 22 percent, you're not only against the teachers . . . you're "against the kids."

And when you willingly advocate a politcal course of action that will doom the parish's students to remain in crumbling, outdated and squalorous "facilities," you're "against the kids." In fact, you're guilty of child abuse.

But that's OK. Baton Rouge's public schools now are 83 percent minority.

So it's not like the children of actual white people are on the line here. At least not enough of them to represent an unacceptable level of collateral damage when you blow up the public schools so that a magical voucher scheme might descend from the heavens and set everything aright.

BUT WAITING FOR GODOT is what my fellow Louisianians do. They're good at it. And the state's periodic political messiahs are happy to offer up the latest hare-brained scheme to throw Bubba a sop and stick it to the Negroes in the name of "reform."

Gov. Bobby Jindal (PBUH) is the latest to try that approach, just today calling on legislators to approve a tax credit for private-school tuition. In other words, welfare for people who have the money to pay thousands per year in tuition for their kids to go to private schools . . . so they don't have to give a damn about public schools.

Welfare is only a dirty word when it applies to minorities -- whose children are left to rot in defunded ratholes.

Gotcha.

IN OTHER WORDS, things ain't changed much in the Gret Stet since Gov. Earl Long stood at the dais in the Senate chambers and laid into one of its members, arch-segregationist Willie Rainach. In his book, The Earl of Louisiana, the journalist A.J. Liebling recounts the scene:

"After all this is over, he'll probably go up there to Summerfield, get up on his front porch, take off his shoes, wash his feet, look at the moon and get close to God." This was gross comedy, a piece of miming that recalled Jimmy Savo impersonating the Mississippi River. Then the old man, changing pace, shouted in Rainach's direction, "And when you do, you got to recognize that niggers is human beings!"

It was at this point that the legislators must have decided he'd gone off his crumpet. Old Earl, a Southern politician, was taking the Fourteenth Amendment's position that "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States . . . nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

AFTER THAT, they put Uncle Earl in the nuthouse. Being in favor of the Fourteenth Amendment . . . that'd always get you in trouble in the Gret Stet of Loosiana.

Still will, I suspect.

Hurting people to make a point

Rolfe McCollister, as we've discussed previously, wants Baton Rouge voters not to renew the penny sales tax dedicated to public-school construction and teacher raises.

The Baton Rouge magazine publisher asks voters to write out a spite-based public policy prescription because he's frustrated with the public schools and the poor performance of many. This, when local teachers are chronically underpaid and local schools fall apart around those inside them.

Here's a passage from an article on my alma mater, Baton Rouge Magnet High, from one of McCollister's own magazines, 225:

The Government Street school, decades behind in maintenance, is crumbling around the National Merit semifinalists it produces.

Plaster flakes from classroom walls. Mold and mildew feed on intruding moisture behind the crumbling brickwork, which has separated from the building’s exterior. It’s so bad it routinely sickens students and faculty.

“The mold and mildew on the third floor are just out of control,” Principal Nanette Greer says. “You wouldn’t believe the number of people who are sick or have problems due to allergies. It’s unbelievable. We’re all sick. I’m on allergy medication as is most of the staff. We don’t complain because it is what it is.

OH, BUT IT GETS WORSE than that. Here's an excerpt from a story about Baton Rouge High and the plight of local public schools in McCollister's other publication, The Baton Rouge Business Report:

The findings were no surprise to Dot Dickinson, who watched a tile fall from the ceiling before a performance of the school’s orchestra, which included her son, in the mid-1990s. Luckily, the wayward tile landed on empty seats.

“Seems someone would have noticed the need for maintenance at that time,” she says.

Most likely someone did. But at the time, every public school in the parish needed work, and there was virtually no money to pay for it, school officials say. The system isn’t in the crisis mode it was in 10 years ago, but there are still a number of school buildings that are drafty, leaky, moldy or otherwise disheveled.

The School Board was scheduled to discuss—and most likely finalize and vote on—the system’s facility plan on Jan. 10. The futures of Baton Rouge Magnet High, which is in line for a $62 million renovation, and Lee High School, which the system had considered closing before Superintendent Charlotte Placide proposed building a new Lee High on the same site, have elicited the strongest emotions.

But the problem is much bigger than two schools.

YES, THE "PROBLEM" IS BIGGER than Baton Rouge High and Lee High. The "problem" is as big as an entire city -- an entire state -- where public education, and generations upon generations of students, just aren't that big a priority.

The problem is as big as a magazine publisher who sits on the board of a charter school and loathes the public school system with such a white-hot intensity that he's willing to cut off kids' noses to spite the school board's face. And he hopes to accomplish this by convincing voters to effect positive "change" via means of material and financial destruction.

Really, what's condemning somebody's children -- though certainly not those of Baton Rouge's Brahmins -- to attend classes in squalor when it's all to fire a shot across somebody's bow. The shot may well cross the East Baton Rouge school board's bow, but here's a sketch of whom it won't hit . . . and whom it will.

Again, from McCollister's own Business Report:

Thirty percent of children in East Baton Rouge Parish do not attend public schools, nearly double the state average of 16%, which the Louisiana Department of Education says is the highest rate in the nation. The private schools can pick and choose whom they want to let in, while public schools take all comers. Public schools tend to have nearly all of the special education and special-needs students, while private schools grab many of the high-achievers.

For middle- and upper-class children, private schools are the rule, not the exception. Nearly 77% of the students left in East Baton Rouge public schools are poor, as measured by how many qualify for free or reduced lunch. Often, poor children come from unstable homes or dangerous neighborhoods, and they bring those problems with them to school. Parental involvement in a child’s education, a key factor in academic success, is often lacking in poorer homes.

IT TAKES A BIG MAN -- and a classy city -- to kick kids who already are down. And, in the case of Baton Rouge High, an added bonus is getting to kick the crap out of the really smart kids Louisiana desperately wants to stick around.

The school board is clueless. Kids, however, get the message loud and clear.

For the former, may we have a standing eight count and a prison cell, please? And for the latter . . . a scholarship to an out-of-state school, a U-Haul and some mail-order Community Coffee.

Because now it's possible to get the coffee without having to live in a world of suck.

SO, WHOM ELSE is Rolfe McCollister willing to shaft to make the point that he's mad as hell, dammit, and he's not going to take this anymore?

Here's part of a comment left by a Baton Rouge public-school teacher in response to McCollister's diatribe:

If you run a business, you get to choose the best and the brightest people with which to surround yourselves. You get to choose from which suppliers and vendors you will purchase your raw materials to make/create/perform your products/services. If an employee is failing to do his/her job at a high enough standard, you get the luxury of firing him/her. We don't get that luxury. We have students that come to us with varying negative backgrounds, poverty, no adult supervision, no structure, exposure to violence, etc. over which we have NO control. We have students that come to us from homes where they are taught that the teacher is always wrong and "out-to-get-you." Sometimes, when I discipline a student in class for negative behavior, that student tells me "I'm going to tell my mom. She's going to come here and get you."

Yet, despite this, we work as hard as we can. We go above and beyond the call of duty. Even when we have NO support from administrators, and sadly sometimes no support from parents, we make strides to take kids from nothing to something.

I like my job. I like what I do. I love to teach and talk to the kids and see them learn and grow. I like to hear them laugh. I live for that rare moment when a kid tells me "thank you."

So, if you have a problem with the way the school system runs, then get involved. Work to make changes. Go into the schools and observe. Volunteer. Maybe you could offer your advice on something (since you obviously know so much about education). But, PLEASE, PLEASE do NOT take it out on us. Do not take it out on the kids. Do not take it out on the hard-working, dedicated teachers.

And, finally, if this renewal does not pass, my annual salary will drop by exactly $5218.00. How would you like to suddenly lose $5218.00 of your salary just because people don't like the school system for which you work. If I lose that salary, I won't be able to afford the house that I worked so hard, took a part time job, and struggled to be able to buy five years ago. I guess I will have to move back in with mom and dad.

REALLY, if you're willing to make children suffer for pique's sake, what's ruining the life and finances of a schoolteacher? It's all in the name of reform, right? Even if you don't have a Plan B yet to deal with the wreckage you leave behind.

I would ask Rolfe McCollister what the hell gives him the right to tell people to hurt kids and punish teachers in the name of making the perfect the sworn enemy of the good. But, then again, everybody knows that "You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs."

Maybe it's time you tried, Baton Rouge

One has to wonder whether the animating political instinct of my hometown, Baton Rouge, is spite.

Confronted with pictures -- in his own magazine, no less -- of a public high school crumbling around the children and faculty within, the publisher of the Baton Rouge Business Report is foursquare against renewing a sales tax that could fix all that. And give raises to teachers, too.

IN SHORT, Rolfe McCollister is calling on his readers to put a bullet in the head of a school system that has come up lame:

I had a neighbor tell me last week, “I have never voted against a school tax, but I am going to have to vote no this time.” I think that’s the conclusion many folks have come to for the special March 8 election. I certainly have.

“Outrageous,” you say.

No, what is outrageous is what my neighbor said to me after he proclaimed his position. He said, “We have become the New Orleans school system.” Now that should make the hair on your neck stand up. Fact is, he is referring to the old New Orleans system characterized by poor performance, declining enrollment, resistance to change and a constant hunger for more money. New Orleans, as a whole, has been innovative about its school system since Katrina and drawn lots of attention. It still has issues and is struggling, but it has signs of new life and hope. Can you say the same for East Baton Rouge schools? This election is your opportunity to answer that question and speak out so the school board and the community can hear you loud and clear.

So why would folks oppose the school taxes?

It’s not because we think education isn’t important. It is very important. And many of us opposing the taxes have been involved in supporting education in many ways for many years.

It’s not because we aren’t concerned with the needs of children, particularly lower-income children. They are the ones who have been denied a choice and stuck in our failing system. More of the same provides them with no hope and no way out.

It’s not because we don’t appreciate teachers and the tough job they have. We have supported teachers and pay has increased—but are teachers and the classroom a priority for funds? Have the best teachers been rewarded and the worst removed?

It’s not because we aren’t patient enough. We have allowed time and supported previous taxes. We have watched for progress for years and passed millions in new taxes [property and sales taxes] and renewals. And what are the results we have to show for that commitment and investment?

GOT IT? The school system is failing. Ergo, let's take away the money to fix and rebuild crumbling schools, let's make sure teachers are paid less than surrounding school systems, let's give the school board a symbolic fickle finger of fate and see whether things get any better.

That's what we have to assume is McCollister's line of "thinking" since, unfortunately, he doesn't tell us what, exactly, he proposes to do about the quite live children crawling around inside the carcass of a school system euthanized by denying it nutrition and hydration.

The ballot will have three propositions funded by renewal of a sales tax. While the tax was previously authorized for a five-year period, this time they are asking for a 10-year tax which would generate $870 million total. Proposition 1 funds construction and technology, Proposition 2 is for discipline and truancy and Proposition 3 maintains salaries of teachers and school workers.

The school board points out they have done well in the last 10 years and built seven new schools, with three more under construction. They have repaired 40 schools, spent millions on technology and created six new alternative schools. So with all these millions spent, these accomplishments, facilities and new assets, we still have an F system, we’re losing students and now the state is even taking our schools away.

And the school board is asking us to sign up for 10 more years and spend $870 million more. For what? More of the same?

This is exactly why a tax is set up for a limited duration: So you can decide if it generated the desired results and if you want to re-invest. I would conclude we got little return on our investment, and we need to look for something new to invest in. This system is broken down like a car with no engine. Why would you paint the body and hire a driver when it is going nowhere?

WHAT DOES McCOLLISTER propose Baton Rouge invest in after it again cuts off its nose to spite its face? U-Haul? Ryder? Mayflower Van Lines?

Perhaps the citizenry might choose, instead, to invest in more prisons. Of course, McCollister might object to a new prison tax -- being that the recidivism rate never came down -- so Baton Rougeans might want to just invest in guns and ammo.

In 1981, white Baton Rougeans invested in private schools so their darlings wouldn't have to be bused across town to attend school with the Negroes. In time, Baton Rougeans also invested in new homes in neighboring parishes so their children wouldn't have to go to crappy public schools that really weren't any more mediocre than they were at 65 percent white -- just much poorer and much blacker, with all the baggage that connotes.

And, by and large, the East Baton Rouge Parish schools have been awful for decades, with some glaring exceptions . . . like Baton Rouge Magnet High, my alma mater and one of the schools most desperately depending on that tax getting renewed.

Part of the reason the parish's public schools have been so substandard for so long is that Baton Rougeans have been OK with that. After all, until voters approved the penny sales tax in 1998 -- the one up for renewal -- no school-construction tax had passed in three decades.

Indeed, most of the Baton Rouge schools I attended more than three decades ago were, shall we say, dumps. Except for Baton Rouge High. Now, it may be the biggest one of all.

IF INCOMPETENCE were a capital offense, the East Baton Rouge school system ought to have been executed years ago, when it was still mostly white and the public still was paying attention. Not properly funding it, mind you, but still paying attention.

But no. The Rolfe McCollisters of Baton Rouge only want to "pull the switch" after the public and "civic leaders" have really let it go to hell . . . and have let it become 83 percent minority, and largely poor.

Now it's time for the blindfold and last cigarette -- now that those who have better options largely have exercised them and those "left behind" have no better option at all. But only if we're sure there's no Plan B for doing this public-education thing.

But say there were a Plan B -- which there isn't. If there were a Plan B, a knight in shining armor to magically fix the school system and make every poor, ill-educated child suddenly above average . . . if there were such a savior on the horizon, where would these miracles be performed?

In the same old crumbling facilities, decrepit schools unfit for dogs but not for Baton Rouge's kids? Would that make the miraculous all the more . . . miraculous?

DOES ROLFE McCOLLISTER'S public-policy prescription include making children sit in squalor to atone for the sins of the school board? Or is it possible that the city might embrace an imperfect plan to fix up facilities in anticipation of a coming push to fix the problems with education administration and student achievement?

Baton Rouge never has been, is not now nor ever will be "America's Next Great City (TM)" so long as it is dominated by reactionary, spite-driven, race-tinged politics. It will never progress beyond "Southern backwater" in the eyes of the nation until folks down there figure out that they're all going to pull together or fly to pieces.

That starts with public education. Building a capable, literate and skilled workforce for a state that currently doesn't have one is a lot easier if you don't -- in a fit of pique -- throw your school system back to Square Zero in the name of "reform."

But then again, we are talking about my hometown, Baton Rouge.

They say that a dog won't crap in its own bed. That may be true for Phideaux, but not for the Baton Rouge that I know and love . . . and hate. (They get complicated, my feelings do.)

The Baton Rouge I know -- and the Baton Rouge evidenced by the deplorable conditions at my alma mater, and by that anti-tax McCollister column -- not only will crap in its own bed, it'll then plop its children in the stinking pile.

Change you can believe in (to steal a slogan) is a city overcoming a crappy legacy. A big part of that would be renewing the school sales tax to fix dilapidated school buildings and raise teachers' pay -- a first step on a challenging journey toward a better future for Baton Rouge's children.

In Baton Rouge, for a change.