The John Galt Line: Happy April 15th

I’m eternally grateful for my computer’s DVD player and the plethora of titles available to me. While I’ve never been one to prefer the home theatre to the big screen, if frequenting the local movie theatre means cutting Mayor Thomas Menino an even larger check, I’ll have to make my own popcorn.

While the mayor’s new 50-cent film surcharge has yet to be enacted into law, this and other ‘revenue’ measures of his (i.e. an increase in the meals and parking tax) will undoubtedly be on the books in no time. Fiscally speaking, this half-dollar levy is but a mere nuisance, but from a philosophical angle, it is an atrocity.

Menino’s State of the City address revealed that he has mastered the art of begging, but I am not among those legislators and newspapermen swooned by his call for sacrifice and servitude. While not directly addressing college students, Menino is not known for his particular fondness of the demographic, and a dose of Sherlock Holmes’ inductive prowess is not required to see his new policy as discriminatorily engineered against this cash-strapped group.

Any insinuation that college students don’t pay their fair share and should therefore bear the brunt of any new taxation is ludicrous and insulting. If anything, students use a proportionally smaller share of city services than other residents. For the most part, they do not drive cars and wreak havoc on roads badly in need of construction. (The vast majority of them use public transportation, such as subways and buses, which should be primarily self-sufficient.) Universities’ private police forces do most of the patrolling on campuses, and in their ranks corruption is virtually non-existent. College campuses are among the most beautiful and well-groomed spots in Boston, the result not of city beautification funds but of tuition and private endowments. It would be a lie to claim that college students never stray from their campuses, instead existing peacefully behind moss-covered walls in their own little worlds. But the reality is not what Menino’s staff nor the editorial board at The Boston Globe would have one believe, either.

Students who attend college in Boston probably didn’t randomly select their school on a map and surely hold reverence for this historic and enriching city. They choose Boston for a reason. But make no mistake about it they did not come here to help the city. And in this time of ‘need’ (as city councilors are sure to remind us), the city does not deserve nor should expect their help. This city, like any other governmental entity, functions to help its citizens (which in the sense of classical liberalism translates to protecting individual rights and providing basic public goods) not the converse.

Colorado’s Governor Bill Owens, showing a rare degree of insight for a politician, argues that government does not have a revenue problem but a spending problem. City budgets were no exception to the spending craze that inebriated government during the late 1990s, when year-to-year expenditure increases two times the rate of inflation were not uncommon, but fashionable. It is egregious that over-zealous spendthrifts at City Hall expect the citizens to tighten their belts before the city tightens its own … and tightens it a lot.

In terms of a taxpayer, I regard myself as a Bostonian who deserves to be treated equally under the letter and spirit of the law. I have no delusions about paying for the upkeep of sidewalks on which I walk or pitching in for the salaries of hard-working police officers who make walking along those sidewalks safe. But I also will not be guilt-ridden into financing ‘T’ construction that produces no tangible results aside from cracked pavement and clogged traffic lanes. And I will not be duped into helping the city enforce anti-smoking laws that restrict individual freedoms and further entrench the mommy-state.

A public hearing, recently initiated by House Speaker Thomas Finneran to study methods to boost revenue, will only fuel politicians’ insatiable appetites. Governor Mitt Romney gravely warns that proposals to raise the sales tax from 5 percent to 6 percent won’t nearly solve the state’s budgetary gap but will definitely saddle Bostonians with a monumental 20 percent increase in said tax. I urge Romney to stand strong and not cave into the demands (loosening restrictions on municipalities’ abilities to raise taxes) of politicians who wish to help the cities at the expense of their residents. Romney may be a Republican, but in a state so Democratic that it even voted for George McGovern in 1972, there is little hope that Menino won’t receive a helping hand … or two.

With increases in the meals and movie taxes, and whatever else City Hall can cook up, Boston really will be the ideal host for the 2004 Democratic National Convention. A more fitting choice hopefully does not exist.