Nestled between Baltic Avenue and Reading Railroad, thimble landed on Income Tax. Pay back that $200 just refunded for passing GO. Earlier thimble avoided the Luxury Tax square between Boardwalk and Park Place. But now the taxman wanted money.
Those self-declared fiscal conservatives in Congress just increased the federal debt limit by $5 trillion. Says so right there in the black print of the law. No big deal, the fiscal conservatives insist. It’s just Monopoly money. $5 trillion of new national debt is a gigantic amount, which will increase the cost of everyday local loans.
The men whom voters sent to Congress gave trillions in tax breaks to people lucky enough to own $10 million second homes on Flathead Lake while the local working stiff can’t afford to purchase any place Montana. Don’t seem fair to voters. Congress don’t listen. After promising not to cut Medicaid during election season, they cut Medicaid by $1 trillion in Congress
To fund trillions to luxury, it’ll cost millions of rural Americans their healthcare, food, and jobs. Healthcare and food taken from workers so second and third homeowners on big lakes get bigger tax cuts while burdening grandkids with trillions in new debt. Hundreds of thousands of good-paying energy sector jobs across the nation to be slashed as the price of household power is set to increase nationwide.
Way back, a last-generation apple grower repeatedly said that “you gotta take the bitter with the sweet.” What congressmen did feels more cruel than bitter to a working-class guy who might be lucky enough to get a few bucks back in enhanced standard deductions. Most money from the feds now goes to good people who have grown over a lifetime of luxury to believe that everything is free and affordable. It is not. Ask anyone you know.
That old apple farmer would say that there’s too much bitter in D.C., that lobbyist voices drown out locals. On the farm we find sweetness in things like Aisle Craigs. These long-day, heirloom onions bulb-up soon now that days are getting shorter. They’re suited for long, hot Montana summers. Few even grow to a half-foot diameter with enough moisture.
The bitter that Congress jammed onto the working class is a clear indication that we need new voices in leadership. Enthusiasm and good ideas from locals willing to help bail out the ship and balance politics away from evermore chaos. Chaos serves status-quo and gazillionaires.
Before the state’s most recent property tax reappraisal, the market value of all homes and small businesses in Montana was a $0.25 trillion. That’s twenty-times a smaller amount of money than the $5 trillion of new debt by congress. That quarter trillion of market value is still a handsome amount, risen by years of fast housing growth, which politicians oddly call a “Montana miracle.”
Oddly, because no place in Montana is affordable to worker wages. Calling expensive housing in Montana a miracle feels elitist. Apparently, politicians listen more to lobbyist than locals. Away from the halls of power, wages are far below everyday costs like housing. There is no miracle when workers have to pay $2,000 a month rent forever.
We need new voices in politics. Maybe young, old, or just middle class. Good ideas. Not more voices that seek a fight or wage war. Voices that listen. Stable voices that know what it’s like to live as a worker in rural Montana.
Gazillionaires own all the politicians that big money can buy. But politicians who slash healthcare to pay for more top-end luxuries like another boat, a summer retreat on the lake, or a beach home in the Bahamas, are out of touch with life on the other side of town. Sure, workers got a couple breaks but the real money went to people who already own everything.
Most people know what it’s like to work for a living. Know the value of a dollar. When it’s half-price day at the local thrift store or senior-day at the grocer. I went to the Columbia Falls thrift the other week, en route to market, hoping to find some deals like a new baseball cap. Ended up getting a portable air tank for the farm.
Two shoppers at the thrift wore handguns on their waists. One with a family pushing a cart full of finds, the other shopped alone. I was in old Montana. It was Sunday, before church time. I chatted up one pistol-packer who sought jeans during the sale day. We decided that at those prices, there’s less reason for laundry.
None of the shoppers at the thrift will see much benefit from the trillions Congress handed to the lucky and fortunate. And as the law shifts into higher gear, most everyone here might lose benefits like healthcare and access to food. Congress was robbing the working class to fund up the elite. But that’s not the story AM-radio surrogates would blare.
Aristocrat politicians would soon be on TV telling us of all the great tax cuts for people and business. Yes, they bumped the standard deduction a smidge. There’s always a little fat flavor left on that old bone and every dog knows to instinctively gnaw for more flavor. Workers will one day figure which dogs don’t hunt.
While the men of Congress bluster and back-slap other lawmakers for their $5 trillion worth of new national debt, the rest of us back home keep working, hoping that new voices materialize. Voices with good ideas. Voices not too brash and don’t bloviate us to fight in the streets. Voices that talk middle class. Voices of leadership.
Democracy is good, even if every damn thing in Montana is way too expensive and rigged to increase. Montanans deserve more good ideas, new voices who still believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. ###