Peoria Times
March 24, 2022
OPINION
7
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849 Arizona taxpayers had a curious impulse BY DAVID LEIBOWITZ Peoria Times Columnist
Somewhere in this sprawling state of ours, there are precisely 849 people that I would like to meet. I’ll buy a cup of coffee, a beer, lunch, steak dinner for two. Whatever it takes to have one of these 849 individuals sit down with me for a few minutes, the length of a simple conversation. Those of you who understand text messaging shorthand will appreciate the single question I intend to use as an icebreaker. WTF? Some circumstances in life require such a blunt approach, because they
are so stupefying, so insane, they defy all logic. Truth be told, while I do not condone murder, there are circumstances where I understand what the murderer was thinking. But these 849 Arizonans? I haven’t a clue. Each year on our Arizona tax returns, a number of boxes appear that allow taxpayers to make voluntary gifts. You can donate to the Special Olympics, to prevent child abuse, to support veterans in need. Then there’s the box that 849 people checked last year, making voluntary donations that totaled $25,735. That would be the state revenuers’ I Did Not Pay Enough taxes fund. I want to know — no, I need to know — what these 849 people were thinking. All day, I’ve tried to imagine Joe
and Jane Arizona at the kitchen table, tax documents spread out, sweating over their state 140A form. Joe: “Dammit, looks like we’ve got a refund coming to us again. How do you want to handle that?” Jane: “I guess we could take the grandkids to Outback. They love that Bloomin’ Onion.” Joe: “Oh, hey, here’s an idea. The state government only collected $24 billion in tax revenue last year. Let’s give it to them!” Jane: “Now that’s good thinking, sweets. Either that or we can donate it to Jeff Bezos. Maybe he can buy more scalp.” These 849 neighbors of ours represent a record number of donors to the I Did Not Pay Enough fund, established in 2010 by that noted band
of deep thinkers, the Arizona Legislature. According to a recent story in the Phoenix Business Journal, the fund has collected about $185,000 total — or about $185,000 more than anyone would have predicted. Look, I understand that Arizona is a relatively low-tax state, especially compared to California, which taxes top earners at more than 13% of annual income versus Arizona’s top rate of 4.5%. But gifting the government more money? Voluntarily? I don’t get it, especially when you consider that we collectively paid $14.2 billion in state sales tax last year and another $8.3 billion in state income tax. And that was before recreational marijuana taxSEE IMPULSE PAGE 8
Didja hear? It’s the ‘year of living dangerously’ BY J.D. HAYWORTH Peoria Times Columnist
Comedian Robert Klein offers a lament for laughs, regretting that life does not come with an audible soundtrack. He jokes that we would be spared mistakes, mishaps and maybe even an “apocalyptic occurrence” (gasp!) if only we could hear foreboding music to warn us. You can be forgiven if current events have your “internal speakers” blaring a certain song. Based on the tenor and tone of developments over recent months, perhaps you’ve been hearing an “age-appropriate” tune of doom in your own mind. Based on a very limited survey conducted exclusively for this column, it
seems that “Star Trek” enthusiasts of the baby boomer generation hear the threatening “BAHHM-bum-bum-bum-bumbuh-BAHHM” that would inevitably usher the audience into a commercial break as Capt. Kirk and crew confronted the latest peril unfolding in the plot of that episode. Curiously, the melodic “theme of undoing” for the American left enjoys a wide but weird appeal across all demographic groups who share that political ideology, even though it permeated the collective consciousness of our culture in the monochromatic mid-20th century. It’s the “Dragnet” theme, with those unmistakably ominous opening notes, now updated with a one-word lyric: “TRUMP-Trump-Trump-Trump! TRUMP-Trump-Trump-TrumpTRUMP!” And, just as Jack Webb revised and
reintroduced “Dragnet” in living color for NBC in the late ’60s, so, too, does the left fear that Donald Trump will return as a “21st Century Grover Cleveland…” only this time as a Republican, employing a makeup artist who was trained using the “golden tan” pancake, so prevalent in the colorful productions emanating from “Beautiful Downtown Burbank” decades ago. The memory of “Mister Rogers,” on loan from his estate and PBS, courtesy of the generosity of taxpayers (and perhaps “viewers like you”) might put it this way: “Can you say 45th and 47th presidents of the United States? Sure you can! No worries for you, King Friday. … After all, you rule the ‘Neighborhood of Make Believe!’ But for our friends’ parents and their Volvo-driving pals, this is all too real!” Of course, on the other side of the
political street, the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue prompts fears that are also all too real — not to mention contemporaneous. Conservatives are often accused of a desire to “turn the clock back,” but based on the current calamitous atmosphere in the USA, who can blame them? With war raging in Europe, runaway inflation here at home, and our southern border still wide open as an “invitation for invasion,” what’s a right-winger to do? You guessed it: “Turn back the clock,” but with a high-tech twist. Since late-night network television has abandoned any pretense of even-handed political humor — must as their news divisions have deserted any efforts at objective journalism — conSEE DANGEROUSLY PAGE 8
