Direct democracy a blessing, curse

Published 9:15 pm Friday, October 3, 2014

Democracy, it’s said, “is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. … Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.” We’re seeing that principle play out in various states this fall as “populist” tax movements ask the many whether they should tax the few.

“This November, voters will again have the chance to decide on taxes,” Reason magazine reports. “But in a number of cases, the questions they will be voting on are not aimed at limiting taxes or at cutting them, but, instead, at increasing them. On the ballot: In Berkeley, Calif., voters will consider Measure D, which would impose a one cent a fluid-ounce tax on distributors of soda, energy drinks and sweetened teas. In San Francisco, Calif., voters will consider Measure E, which would impose a two-cent an ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages.”

Similar ballot measures appear elsewhere, including Nevada and Illinois.

(Texas has a constitutional amendment on the November ballot regarding highway funding, but it doesn’t involve new revenue.)

But there’s a definite pattern to the tax-increase propositions.

“[The] poll-driven playbook seems to be to tailor tax increases to target unpopular minorities — millionaires, big businesses, individuals with the poor taste to drink Gatorade or Coca-Cola instead of latte, Perrier or Cabernet — and then to claim that the tax revenues will be spent on worthy causes such as schools or obesity reduction,” Reason reports. “Never mind that the education tax measures are heavily backed by teachers’ unions, or that millionaires and many big businesses already pay plenty of taxes, or that studies have shown no connection between school spending and educational outcomes.”

Reason notes that the playbook was written by conservatives, such as those in California who pushed through the famous Proposition 13, which cut property taxes and capped revenue.

“The citizen activists who spawned the tax rebellion of the late 1970s and early 1980s — Howard Jarvis of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and Barbara Anderson of Massachusetts Citizens for Limited Taxation — were geniuses,” Reason explains. “So it’s no wonder that the left would try to mimic their tactics.”

Such ballot measure show the good side of democracy, as well as its darker side.

“Direct ballot initiatives are democracy at its best, but also at its worst,” Reason says. “At their best, they engage ordinary citizens at the grassroots and let taxpayers make their views known to politicians who too often prefer to tax and spend. At their worst, they are ways for well funded interest groups, such as teacher unions, to gang up on unpopular minorities, such as millionaire earners.”

Here’s where the well-armed lamb comes in. The left is counting on the public’s willingness to tax other people. But there’s a political force even stronger than that.

“The genius of the tax rebellion-ballot initiative wasn’t merely the idea of taking tax issues directly to the voters,” Reason adds. “It was the insight that, given a choice, most voters will choose to lower, or at least to limit, their own taxes.”

The sheep have a say, after all.