Cranstonites, Go Vote!

Anybody who's taken an empathetic interest in American history will hear something familiar in William Tooher's recent letter to the Providence Journal:

Last December, I registered two used Vespa motor scooters and paid a total of $469 in sales tax [to the state of Rhode Island]. Six months later I traded in the bikes for one larger one, for an out-of-pocket expense of $684. When I went to turn in one plate and transfer the other to the new bike, I was taxed on the full cost of the new bike -- which was $5,100, so I paid an additional $357 in sales tax. No credit for the two trade-ins!

Then, a scant two weeks later, I traded the new Vespa for a larger but less expensive bike. I traded even and figured there would be no sales tax. Oh, silly me. I was charged another $325 in sales tax for a trade that had cost me nothing out of pocket. Bottom line: I paid a total of $1,151 in sales tax for a bike that didn't cost me a dime!

Perhaps it's merely an ideological echo in my head, but in Tooher's anecdote, I hear a whisper from the early days of the American Revolution. It's one of those stories that, if not allowed to slip out of the public's awareness, results in demands for change when there are too many to ignore.

Part of the problem, in Rhode Island, has been the difficulty of change. Nobody's quite sure who to blame for the problems. And when the public's gaze begins to focus, it blurs once again with stories about why the recipients of all that undeserved revenue need it, or at least why it's reasonable to give it to them. Even reasonable gifts add up.

As it happens, today provides an opportunity to begin resolving the matter without recourse to coups. As Edward Achorn describes the sides and the stakes:

Recognizing that they could not readily beat him in a general election, given his popularity, [public unions] are trying to steal today's Republican primary [in Cranston], by running a puppet named Garry Reilly against Mr. Laffey. ...

Some of that money and organizational power has bought glossy fliers and busy phone banks that attack Mayor Laffey for having hiked taxes. That seems remarkably hypocritical, given that taxes had to be hiked to stem Cranston's financial meltdown -- brought on by giveaways negotiated by Mr. Laffey's more "cooperative" predecessors!

On the other side, informed taxpayers fear the worst. I know of some who are planning to move out of Cranston if Mr. Laffey is erased.

But the aggressiveness of this attempt to crush one politician, and scare others into slavish compliance, suggests that the state's public-employee unions are themselves deeply fearful. They know the stakes are high: If the citizens of Rhode Island begin to wake up and realize why they are paying such high taxes, the special interests' easy entrée into the taxpayers' wallets may be a thing of the past. And their iron grip on Ocean State politics could be broken.

If you live in Cranston: Go Vote! Polls close at 9:00 p.m.

ADDENDUM:
For some background (including video) see here.