Owen's at it--again!

I have a post in me somewhere about the new panel that's supposed to hash out a plan to increas attendance in the Milwaukee Public Schools, but I'm mostly unfocused. Except for my never-ending quest to stomp TABOR (the unironically named Taxpayers' Bill of Rights) into the ground.

So when Owen shills for it, I just gotta respond. He writes:

I could pull statistics until the cows come home.  In category after category, Colorado’s people are doing exceptionally well.  They are becoming better educated, getting better jobs, and enjoying a higher standard of living than the rest of the nation.  They do all of this while being 40th in State Tax Burden.

Opponents of TABOR may try to argue that Colorado’s success is not the result of TABOR, but they can’t argue that TABOR has damaged Colorado.  At the very worst, TABOR has had no effect on Colorado.  At the very best, TABOR has spurred Colorado to one of the leading states in almost all categories. 

We need TABOR in Wisconsin.

I left the rest of this as a comment over there:

One, Wisconsin ranks 30th in taxes and fees as a percent of personal income. It's not as bad as you think.

Two, over the last 30 years, the residential property tax payer has shouldered a greater share of the burden: In 1970, the residential taxpayer was paying but 50% of the overall property tax revenue. In 2002, that burden was 68.8%. TABOR will lock in this tax rate, and Wisconsin's homeowners will be forever forced to pay unfairly high tax rates.

Three, success in Colorado's schools notwithstanding, Colorado ranks near the bottom in childhood immunizations (39, Wisconsin is 8); 31st in unisured children (Wisconsin is 3); in fact, just compare Colorado overall with Wisconsin when it comes to healthy children. Or watch Colorado's fall in terms of overall health since TABOR--including measurements of healthy children.

Four, who's going to break it to John Gard (and his road-building contributors) that his precious automatic gas tax increases would be frozen under TABOR?

Five, the worst thing about TABOR is that it approaches the issue ass-backwards. Rather than addressing cost, it only addresses spending. Example: Due to political impotence on the part of state and national leaders, the costs of health care have increased at three to four times the rate of inflation annually for years. TABOR limits spending increases to inflation plus population growth, meaning that it will be impossible to keep up with health care costs. And don't get me started on the unfunded federal and state mandates in education! WIthout checks on cost, limits on spending are doomed to produce unpleasantness, your otherworldly welfare fantasy aside.

Six, the underlying assumption of TABOR is that elected officials are mindless boobs who can't be trusted to control themselves when it comes to spending. When you support TABOR, essentially, you are supporting a subversion of the system of representative democracy that has sustained this country for more than two centuries. If you don't like how your elected officials spend, then feel free to vote, campaign, or run against them in the next election. It's that simple.