Never give in

Project Destiny, the new sales tax / property tax relief / community enhancement plan is still around and may be back with us next summer in a special election. It is critically important that all middle to low income homeowner and all renters fully understand the negative affect this plan will have on their personal finances and work towards its defeat.

As the Project for Destiny Plan now stands, expect the following financial impacts:

• If you are a homeowner (property taxpayer) with a home with a market value of about $225,000 or less in Des Moines, you will see lower property taxes and a sales tax that is higher than your tax reduction. – You lose.
• If you are a renter, your landlord will receive property tax relief. He will be free to pass it along to you if he wishes. Will he? You’ll get a new sales tax. – You lose big time.
• If you are a child, teen or homeless, what you buy including meals, pop, candy and clothing will be taxed at a higher rate. – You lose too.

Who else looses? The community does because what I just described above is called regressive taxation, taxing the people with less ability to pay than those with more ability to pay. Although the promoters of this plan call it a “property tax reduction plan”, most people will actually pay more taxes in total!

Please ask your local leaders about how they learned about the full impact of this program? Ask them if comparisons have been shown which illustrate how the plan will affect the various economic groups in the community, especially big business and low income folks - an economic impact statement if you will.

As the plan stands it is a bad deal for most residents, even those who think of themselves as middle class. Even if they were to “break even” by having their property taxes lowered and then equally offset by the new sales tax, they would be hurting their community. Why, by increasing the taxes on people with less than they. This is just morally wrong.

I don’t see that it is ever, ever right to put people who have lower incomes than you into a worse financial position than they were before. That goes not only for this current tax question but also to many other areas of our community that prey on financially weaker people.

The true strength of a community comes from its people and their total value systems including spirituality, not from feeding government’s incessant greed.

There will always be folks with blinders on, folks who want the easy choice, folks who will vote the politician’s line. We have it within ourselves as individuals, families, communities, cities, counties, states and a great nation, under God, to never do that again.

Please stand in opposition to Project Destiny. If you are offered a petition, don’t sign it. If it goes to the ballot, take the time to vote NO. It’s just not a good idea.

“Never give in, never give in, never; never; never; never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense” – Sir Winston Churchill