When a python snake eats a large animal, it does not do it in one big gulp. Rather, it bites down on its prey, and slowly swallows it, one-inch-at-a-time.
In much the same way, the one-cent sales tax imposed by the misguided 2010 Kansas Legislature represents another bite that state government is taking, as it swallows the free-market economy in Kansas.
The most upsetting part of this new tax increase, which will cost the average family about $30 per month, is that it could have been avoided by applying common sense to the spending side of the balance sheet.
For example, USD-259 has about 50 employees who are paid in excess of $100,000 per year! Their wage, in my opinion, is entirely out-of-proportion with the value of their work. These are not school principals; these are assistants and staff, whose jobs could be done equally-well, by people making half, or one third, of that wage!
It makes no sense that USD-259 pays all these assistants in excess of $100,000 per year, while at the same time, WSU pays our best experienced, professors and teachers, who hold doctorate degrees in their field, $55,000 per year or less?
There is so much wasteful spending in the Kansas budget that every member of the Kansas Legislature should hang their head in shame for even considering raising our taxes, at a time when the economy can least absorb the impact. Yet, when individual legislators are asked about it, they always resort to threatening us with cuts in the most needed of state services.
For instance, I posed a tax question to Senator Jean Schodorf, when she spoke to the Wichita Pachyderm Club recently. She lamented that she voted for the new sales tax increase, because… quote: "I did not want to see us have to cut Meals-on-Wheels!"
I do not mean to single-out Senator Schodorf for criticism, because she is no different than the majority of our Kansas Legislators who passed the tax increase!
My point is that we do NOT need to cut those small budgets that are going to impact the neediest among us, like Meals-on-Wheels, or programs that help the handicapped and homeless.
Rather we need to stop the crazy out-of-control spending of billions of dollars, in the large budgets, like education. Unfortunately, we do not have enough courageous legislators who are willing to stand up to the powerful education lobby, the KNEA.
