TAXES FOLD LIKE A CHEAP SUIT

By

Jimmy Joe Meeker

Originally published in The Wilson County Advocate, Vol. 1, No. 15, ©September 17, 1991 Donald W. Gillette

After spending twenty grand for a referendum on a tax hike that drew about 5,000 of the 30,000 plus registered voters in Wilson County, it's no damned wonder this place is the laughingstock of the State.

I remember watching the County Commission the night they voted to hold this earth-shattering referendum. County Commissioner Joy Bishop stood up and I started to switch the channel (she does ramble on so), but the first thing she said, before I could get my hands on the remove, was, "The people have already told us--they don't want higher taxes. So why have a vote?" The voice of reason.

So what did this pack of gorillas do? They approved the referendum and you know the rest of the story. It didn't pass. Twenty grand for something they already knew. Four dollars a vote.

The sky is blue, folks. Expect my bill in the morning.

Of course, there's a good reason the sales tax hike didn’t pass. It didn't pass because we were promised that the money it would raise would go to the schools and we've heard that song before. The wheel tax was supposed to go to the schools, too, but most of it went to build the County Palace right across from the local branch office of the Associated Press where the School Lunch menu is published.

We just don't trust the majority of the County Commission anymore and there's nothing they can do to change our opinion.

I hung around outside of Sam Houston Elementary on Thursday to take a scientific random sampling of voters leaving the building. It know it was scientific because I wore a lab coat.

I chose Sam Houston because there's this girl I now named Gail who lives near the school, and…ah, well, that's really another story. Anyway, the voting there was anti-tax just like it was everywhere else.

I was getting four "no's" to every "yes" but then three people in a row told me they voted for the tax.

Next thing I knew, there was a blue-haired lady tapping me on the shoulder.

"Excuse me, sir," she said with a concerned look on her face, "but did you just scream?"

I stared at her blankly for a second and then realized she was actually talking to me.

"Lady," I answered, "I can't believe everybody here's not screaming. We should hang the bastards responsible for this fiasco from a flagpole on the square just like they did to Mussolini."

She twisted up her face and looked as if she were about to spit in my eye, but luckily, her husband grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away, cursing. I heard her mumble something that sounded a lot like "liquor on his breath" or something like that and I decided to pursue her and get to the bottom of this. But about that time, the girl I told you about called to me from across the street and I thought, "to hell with this."

There are some things in the world more important than county politics.

I was going to take a shot at the editor of the Lebanon Democrat in this column because he did one of his "once in a blue moon" editorials Friday that called The Wilson County Advocate a "nondescript local opinion sheet type publication," but hey, you can't argue with the truth. Let's check Webster out here:

Nondescript: Difficult to classify.

Ain't it the truth.

Local: Pertaining to a particular place.

No problem there.

Opinion sheet type:

Well, it could have used a couple of hyphens, but we're not dealing with a rocket scientist here.

Publication: Any printed work.

Okay, you got me. It's not really work.

No one here gets out alive.

XXX