Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 11, 1995 TAG: 9511130003
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROSS C. HART
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In preparing for campaigns, candidates and their campaign managers do what is de rigueur for a political campaign: take a poll. Pollsters apply their tried and worn techniques of dreaming up six questions. (E.g.: "Which is more important - education, prisons, law and order, lower taxes ... ?") They ask what they think is a representative sample of voters. The 1995 polls must have shown that education is the most important issue because that's what everybody seemed to be running on.
Columnist Ray Garland has commented, accurately, on these pages that no one is against education. The distinction between how one party vs. the other would improve education is, frankly, boring to the average voter.
What no candidate seemed to understand is that the big lesson of 1994 is "control.'' Voters fear they have lost control of their government. Every year, Virginia's voters diligently troop to the polls and vote for improvement. Despite rhetoric of the candidates, each year it seems that there are more restrictions, more rules, more regulations, more nonsense and less flexibility in how we as citizens of Virginia can go about our daily lives. Returning control to the people was, in a large part, Newt Gingrich's message in 1994. Too bad that message doesn't appear to have made it across the Potomac.
The charter-school concept (ironically originated by Democrats) is all about control - control of our children's education; control over the standards our children meet; control over the textbooks used, without concern for politically correct absurdity, and without the self-flagellation of country now popular. (One recent history textbook mentions the Ku Klux Klan 20 times and George Washington twice.) It's about control over the daily lessons our children receive without some faceless bureaucrat hundreds of miles away prescribing everything.
Were I drafting a plan for Virginia's future I would focus on control to support two or three additional elements: voters' initiative; the recall; and eliminating the sales tax on food. (Shades of Henry Howell.)
The initiative is supported by the heritage of our state and country as a "democracy.'' In fact, our form of government is representative. In a true democracy, people govern themselves directly. Voters perceive that their representatives are in too tight with lobbyists and special-interest groups. That relationship is believed to interfere with what's in the best interest of the public at large. Allowing the electorate to initiate and enact laws that govern themselves reduces or eliminates a lot of the special-interest influence and moves us back toward true democracy.
Those who propose to bring the initiative to Virginia are telling our citizens that they're smart enough to govern themselves.
Support for the recall is simply common sense. Sometimes our elected representatives get obnoxious, embarrassing or plain off the wall. We must acknowledge that if our representatives don't do their job properly, they can be fired by the voters.
Removing the sales tax on groceries is a historical favorite. More than 25 years ago, Howell attended a meeting of what was, at the time, the ``liberal'' branch of the Virginia Democratic Party. As is typical of meetings of this type, it had gone on for two hours with nothing accomplished. My father, James P. Hart Jr., got the floor and presented a multipoint plan for reorganizing the Democratic Party in Virginia and a list of key issues for the ensuing five years. The No. 1 issue was eliminating the sales tax on food and medicine, and Howell nearly became governor with it.
The irony is that the sales-tax issue is now a conservative issue instead of a liberal one. If Gov. George Allen is serious about a tax break to help the economy and help Virginians, particularly those at the lower end of the income scale, removing the sales tax from groceries would have greater benefit than reducing the income tax. I don't object to any reduction of any tax I pay. However, if there's a choice, I favor the food tax.
Everyone eats about the same amount of food. Rich people may have more steaks and caviar or eat in restaurants, while less affluent people prepare more beans and hamburger and stay at home. The dollar per person spent on food at grocery stores isn't greatly disproportionate from one person to the next. The proportionate amount of income, however, is going to vary enormously from an individual with a $10,000-a-year income and an individual with a $100,000-a-year income.
Assume a family averages $400 a month on groceries. The extra $22 that a family with low income would get per month will benefit that family much more than the same amount would benefit a $50,000-a year or $100,000-a-year family. The $250 per year increase in controllable, disposable, spendable income for each family is greater than the average benefit from the income-tax cut proposed by Allen, and it would have more economic impact in Virginia.
The real issue is control - the people want it back. What's amazing is no politician running for office seemed to have figured it out. Maybe that's the difference between a politician and a leader: A politician does what is thought to be popular; a leader proposes what's really needed.
Ross C. Hart, of Roanoke, is a lawyer and chaired the Roanoke city and Salem Democratic committees.
by CNB