OPINION: Courage To Begin

Last month at a forum of Civil Rights leaders in Charlotte the question came up time and time again what is it going to take reverse the disturbing trends in America of widespread unemployment, compensation disparity, discrimination in multiple forms and contexts, and overwhelming debt. The answer was unanimous – Courage. Courage, beginning at the top, from our political, business and moral leaders.

Whether it be at the State of the Union or any other forum it is time to begin. One suggestion I have is to eliminate taxing the poor to provide basic governmental services. Many suggest not taxing the rich. I suggest stop taxing the poor. Taxes take many forms, and many of those that target the poor don’t bear the label – tax.  Perhaps, for example, it is time to end state and local governments “running numbers.” The sanitized name for this taxing of the poor is  — lottery. I suggest that when a government operates a gambling enterprise that targets the poor and offers purely false hope, it has lost its moral core. State and local governments by operating “numbers rackets” are telling its citizens and especially its children that it is okay to exploit the poor, to hold out false hopes and dreams, and that gambling is endorsed and encouraged by your country’s leadership.

I know that state and local governments depend on the revenue from the “numbers” to support things like education, college scholarships, and the like. But do we really believe that basic services should be supported by the poorest of our citizens? Would any state have raised taxes on only its lowest paid citizens to pay for education, for example?  So we don’t call it a “tax” or “gambling,” we call it a lottery and tout the benefits it provides, and turn a blind eye to the person who spends their last five dollars on a lottery ticket. A person who has just been sold a bill of goods buy his government. Lotteries are now using celebrity endorsements and NFL teams to promote their taxing the poor agenda.

The U.S. government doesn’t operate a lottery. Yet! Instead it just collects its income tax on the few winners, and turns a blind eye to a national billion dollar gambling operation. It still calls a press conference when it busts a “numbers runner,” but quietly just counts its taxes when an individual scratches his/her way to $1000 payout, or state lottery commissioners get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars.  We talk about “stimulus” and its effectiveness when we pour massive amounts of money back to the wealthiest of the wealthy, how about the “stimulus” effect of giving the poorest of the poor an extra $25 for food and medicine that might keep someone alive, instead of false dream about “riches beyond their imagination.”

If we eliminate lotteries we can be bi-partisan. We can be for lowering taxes by eliminating the cost of lottery tickets. We can be for stimulus programs by putting more money in the hands of the people most likely to spend it. Yes, states would have to find a new way to pay for the programs that are currently supported by lotteries, but let’s be honest. Would a state legislature have ever developed a program fueled by something called a “tax on the poor?”

There are many ways to begin to right the ship of state. As we examine our tax code and our government’s priorities let’s be cognizant of the moral basis for what we suggest. I don’t profess to know what is the perfect way are where is the perfect place to start, but a beginning that just seems right to me is let’s simply stop, as a nation, taking the bottle out of the mouth of babies to feed our gambling habit.

Webb Hubbell is the former Associate Attorney General of the United States and is an opinion contributor for TalkRadioNews.com. He can be found daily at www.webbhubbell.com.

Tuesday In The First Week Of Lent

I recently went to a new doctor and noticed he was located in something called the “professional Building.” I felt better right away. – George Carlin

Credentials are so much our society. We need to know where you went to school, where have you worked, in DC especially one’s credentials are critical in where one can work, what you can speak about, and your place in society. Who you are, is more important than what one actually has to say.

This is not unique to the current generation. Christ was not accepted in his own home. This Lenten season let us all try to be a little more accepting to individual without the appropriate resume’. The individual whose has learned through experience how to be a professional may teach us more than the individual who occupies the building.