Have you heard about the Federal Tax increase passed by the House last week? Not many people have because it contained a tax deferment and the Washington elite from both parties didn’t want the news spread. Ignorance of voters is bliss—especially when it is Washington taking more money out of our pockets.
In this case, the bill would allow employers to defer making pension fund payments. Pension fund payments are tax deductible. Companies are required by law to make those payments…unless…the government wants those measly tax payments for something else.
It’s a matter of taking from Peter to pay Paul. This Highway bill, which our local congresscritter, Vicky Hartzler voted for, allows companies to defer making those pension payments. If a company is in such dire straits, they would have more trouble making their tax payments. Peter, in this example, is the FedGov. Paul is the retirees. Guess who gets screwed. Vicky says, “It’s budget neutral.” My question is, “Whose budget!?” Not mine!
Highway maintenance is a subject that will appear on the upcoming primary election ballot August 5th. Amendment 7 is a sales tax increase to ‘help’ fund maintenance of Missouri’s roads and bridges. The reality is that there is sufficient money already—if the state, county and city governments use that money as it was intended.
The real problem is that the state, counties and cities, have not been spending the existing funds on roads and bridges. Instead, they’ve been using the funds for other items. For example, Kansas City has a fixation with light rail and street cars. They have a plan, using funds from the roads and bridges maintenance funds, to restore a 1940’s era rail plan.
In 1943, Abraham Maslow published a paper on Hierarchy of Needs. In that paper, Maslow discusses needs—prioritization of needs that must be met. In engineer-speak, it is known as prioritization of tasks and dependencies. In order to complete a project, say maintaining roads and bridges, the individual tasks must be listed, dependencies determined, and then the tasks are prioritized by need and efficiency, i.e., getting the most bang for the buck.
The assumption is that the state, counties and cities, will be logical and work the projects as engineers. Unfortunately, the leaders of the state, counties, and cities, especially the larger cities more insulated from voter wrath, are not logical. They are more like neurotics, seeking to upset that engineering hierarchy of needs to feed their neurotic needs of their egos. They want their needs to be at the top, and a high need is to remain in office.
If they can placate their supporters, some of their needs have been met. The original purpose of the project funding gets lost and instead of maintaining the city’s road and bridges, we get the light-rail/street car boondoggle in Kansas City. I’m given to understand St Louis has similar boondoggles that is funded by the road and bridges budget just like Kansas City.
Maslow’s thesis was that everyone has a hierarchy of needs. No one really disagrees with that concept. Organizations, like city and county governments have needs, too. Unfortunately, governments are logical people. They are reflections of their elected officials. The passage of Amendment 7 would feed their egos insteading of meeting the actual needs of roads and bridges.
In Kansas City, the issue is the ego-stuffing of Mayor Sly James. In Cass County four years ago, it was the egos of the presiding commissioner Gary Mallory and commissioners Bill Cook and Brian Baker.
Mallory, Cook and Baker approved two unworkable boondoggles called Tri-Gen and Broadband Internet. The projects were unworkable and unaffordable but they did present the opportunity for corruption. That issue is still being played in the courts.
The damage to Cass County’s finances was severe. The county was within a hair-breath of bankruptcy. Due to the leadership of the current Presiding Commissioner Jeff Cox and County Auditor Ron Johnson, Cass County is slowly recovering.
Cass County has a new crop of responsive elected officials and an auditor who actually does his job instead of being a rubber stamp for the county commission. But the opposition, the prior officials, are still present, building an insurgency to regain access to public funds. Their hierarchy of needs opposes the hierarchy of needs of us the residents of the county.
When the primary arrives on August 5th, vote for yourself, your needs, not for the selfish needs of an oligarchy, unrepentant of their corruption. Vote for Jeff Cox, Ron Johnson and Stacey Lett. Let’s keep Cass County free of the Oligarchy and supportive of the needs of the residents. We don’t’ need a minority in office who has rapacious eyes on our public funds.