Tax Dollar Ferraris

It had been a lovely, lovely spring here in and around Washington, DC.  Summer is finally arriving.

We've not had one for years, as our winters have blanged right into summer.  One day, it's bitter.  The next day, it's fetid and cloying and oppressive.  Why our nation chose to build its capitol on Dagobah is ever beyond me, but I suppose we're stuck with it.

But this spring was a spring.  Gorgeous days, with clear blue skies and perfect temperatures.  Nights with a hint of lingering crispness.  You couldn't have asked for more.

And that meant that the Ferraris came out to play.

My commute to my little church takes me through some of the richest turf in Washington, and snakes along the beautiful country roads of the Western Upper Montgomery County Agriculture Reserve.

This spring, it feels like every Washingtonian who owns a trophy vehicle has taken it out on those roads.  They've been as omnipresent as the pollen.  That means, on my every commute, I pass at least two Ferraris.  And a Lamborghini.  Mixed in with the Mercedes and Jags and Lexuses (Lexi?) that are every other vehicle here, there are the toy cars.  Behind the wheel, men of a certain age, the tanned and toned silverbacks of industry.

These are vehicles that sit covered in the three-to-five car garages of the mansions that stretch for miles up the Potomac.  They aren't driven, not often, because though they are impossibly fabulous, they aren't meant for daily--or even monthly--use.  That's why you have your Audi or your Mercedes, which are as common in certain Washington suburbs as Chevys and Toyotas.

The Ferraris and Lamborghinis say: I am not just well off.  I am absurdly well off, so wildly and excessively successful that I can purchase a car that I drive once or twice a year.

It's the kind of car that you show off during a catered dinner party, as you bring a few select guests into the garage to ogle it over your third martini.

These are unquestionably beautiful vehicles.  I admire them, as objects of industrial art.  The boy in me finds them delightful.

Yet I wonder at them, too, because there is only one industry in Washington.  We are in the business of government here.  I have no beef with that.  Government has a role in any society.

But what's troubling--knowing how much the rest of the country still struggles with underemployment and the explosive deindustrialization of our nation--is that the resources that my fellow citizens are obligated to render under Caesar are buying these cars.

Perhaps it's my pastor's bias against ostentation and consumption, but if your position is that of a servant, then that implies certain things.  I look seriously askance at pastors who enrich themselves at the expense of their flock, and I have the same feeling about public servants.  Should they be desperate and hungry?  No.  But neither should they be Croesus.

The owners of these vehicles aren't public servants, though, not technically.  The federal employees and oft-reviled "bureaucrats" putter around in their Hondas and Fords and Subarus, and live in smaller townhomes and old ramblers.

The owners of these glistening trophies are the lawyers and politicos, the lobbyists and--mostly--the captains of those vaunted "public-private partnerships."  These are the businesses who took over so many of the tasks of governance from public servants back in the Reagan Years.  It was all done in the name of "efficiency," which is absurd.  Profit-driven systems thrive on inefficiency.  They feast on it.  What is profit, after all, but inefficiency?

And for those businesses, government has proven very, very profitable indeed.

That seems worth remembering, as those gorgeous tax-bought Ferraris are tucked away until the first beautiful fall morning in Washington.

The Spiritual Deduction

I pay more taxes than I should.

I know this, and I do not doubt that it makes me a fool.

I was reflecting on it just last week, as I drove a day's worth of meals to my route for the Meals on Wheels program.  It's a small circuit I ride, varying between eight and eleven miles depending on who has been added to my route.  I know that every mile I drive can be tallied, and then counted as a charitable deduction.  Over the course of a year, it would add up, perhaps to a couple of hundred dollars worth of mileage, which would translate into a couple more twenties in the family bank account come tax time.

To accomplish this, I would have to keep a log.  Every time I went out, I would register my mileage in the log, and it would tell me just how much I stood to benefit from my bringing of meals and a cheery greeting to the homebound.

Cha-ching, would go Turbotax.  I think it actually does make that noise.  Cha-ching.

I can't bring myself to do it.

Oh, we do take advantage of our other deductions for giving.  The forms arrive from the synagogue and the nonprofits we support, and I put them in the year's tax file along with our 1099s and Dubya-Twos, to be entered during tax season.  I know it serves a public benefit, and I grasp the rationale for deductibility from the standpoint of the state.

But as I go from door to door, bearing food for those who need it, I do not want to be distracted.  As I act, I do not want to leaven my love of other with a little splash of self-interested book-keeping.   It changes my focus, shifting me from serving for the joy of it to serving for the profit of it.  It alters my perspective, turning me from a sense of duty towards neighbor and nation and towards my own self-interest.

Why should I care?

It's that Jesus.  That pesky, pesky Jesus.  But that he had never talked about giving at all.  What he taught matters to me, though, given that I've dedicated myself to spreading what he taught.

Before pursuing my call to ministry, I was steeped in the rarified thought-leadershippy echelons of the nonprofit world for a decade.   I came out of that experience wondering at the ferocity with which the interest groups of the insanely rich defended that deduction.    Folks with wealth that would make Croesus blush would protest that limiting the charitable deduction would force them to cut their giving.  Why would I put a small portion of my billions into a foundation that will trumpet my name if I don't get benefit from it, Lovie?

But giving out of self-interest is not, by the definition of the word, "philanthropy."  If it is not done for love of other human beings, it moves outside of the root meaning of the word, unless the anthrope you most philia is your own bad self.   Nor is it "charity," because it is not done from the foundation of love of other.

It's changed.  It feels like the involuntary "voluntarism" required of our children as they are forced by well-meaning school systems to rack up their community service hours.  Does that teach the essence of what it means to volunteer, to do a thing from the heart of your will?

And yes, it is complicated.  Good things do come from giving that's self-interested.  The hungry are fed by the grandstanding egotist, just as surely as they are fed by the saint or the bodhisattva.  Acclaim and profit can drive giving, just as surely as the coercion of the law can force civility.

Whichever way, I just can't do the log.  Fool that I am, it would...deduct...from my joy in the doing of the act itself.

Taxes and Charity

This Sunday, having returned from a week at the beach, the sermon was to be about communion.  I'd spent much of the week thinking and reflecting on it, and so rolling into the service I was all about the Lord's Supper.  My heart was on the Eucharist, on its meaning, on its transforming power, on how it had come to be a transforming experience for me.

As I moved from the sermon about the Eucharist to the Eucharist itself, I noted my music director giving me some funny looks.   But I was caught up in the spirit of the thing, and so we proceeded.  As I went up to sing the last hymn, she seemed to hesitate, but on we continued.

As I prepared to offer the benediction, one of the elders who'd served communion gave me an urgent signal.  "Offering," he murmured, with some gentle urgency.

Which, being in a communion-focused state of mind, I'd completely skimmed over.

Doh!

We took it up as we departed, but what struck me afterwards was two things.  First, that sometimes when we come back from vacation we're not entirely back from vacation.  And second, just how vital a part of community the offering is.  Beyond paying my salary, it sustains the shared space that enables us to do ministry together, and supports our mission work and our collective aspirations.

It's not something we want to get out of.  It's charity, meaning it's a gift that we want to give.  It's a good thing, essential to the life of community and a positive part of our individual identity.

Which is why when Mitt Romney recently declared that he considered his charitable giving similar to paying taxes, I found myself nodding in agreement.

Of course it is!  You go, Mitt!

Taxes pay the salaries and training of firefighters and teachers, and equipping them to do their work.   They insure that our police are professional, competent, and honest.  Having been in places in the world where that was not true, I really and truly appreciate that about America.

Taxes build the roads upon which we drive, and the bridges that get us to the beach, and the satellites that monitor weather and give us fair warning when a storm's a-comin'.   Taxes pay our best scientists and engineers to pull off the seriously awe-inspiring landing of a laser-wielding atomic robot on Mars.   Which was, in the event I have not already said so, awe-inspiring.  Epic, as the kids might say.

Not to mention insuring that orphans, widows, and the elderly aren't starving in the streets.

And so, shortly after Paul Ryan got the Veep nod, we now have the Republican nominee for the President of the United States implying...on purpose, I am sure...that taxes are a good thing, as necessary to the bonds of our American community as giving is to the health of a congregation.

Crackpot Idea Number 1040: Taxpayer Allocation Budgeting

My mind is an endlessly churning font of crackpot schemes, and this morning's neural randomness involved taxes.  As I was standing at the bus stop chatting with one of the moms, we were both lamenting the impressively sorry physical condition of our schools.   I live in Fairfax County, one of the richest counties in the United States.  Our school system is arguably one of the best in the nation.

But at nearly every school in Fairfax, kids are relegated to aging "mobile classrooms," which spring up like trailer parks around the periphery of most of our schools.  My little guy has been in a trailer two years running, one whose decor is essentially that of a 1970s basement.  He's cool with it, unless it's pouring rain, in which case the kids get wet when they go to gym, or to lunch any time they need to use the bathrooms.  For that, you need the main building.  There just aren't the funds to build permanent facilities that meet the needs of the kids.  The mom lamented that she'd be happy to have her taxes go to something like that.

Here's what I found myself wondering.  Congress is notoriously, wretchedly, heinously bad at budgeting.  They couldn't balance a budget if you held a gun to their heads.  They fail, year after year.  What if...what if...citizens did the budgeting?  By that, I don't mean we sit down and go through item by item.  Instead, near the end of working through your 1040 in TurboTax 2016, you'd have a section in which every major Federal department listed.  Education.  Energy.  Environment.  Defense.   Homeland Security.  Transportation.  Then, you'd allocate your taxes across those departments based on your priorities.   Want better schools?  Ramp up that percentage.  Want to spend billions on the Joint Strike Fighter?  No?  Ratchet that bad boy down.

The budget would, well, it would directly reflect the preferences of the people.    If it gets funded, well, then it gets funded.  If not, well, so it goes.  That could work at a state level, too, I suppose.   It would link paying taxes to a new empowerment as citizens.  If something doesn't manifestly contribute to the good, well, we're unlikely to pay for it.  At a bare minimum, it would be interesting to see what that budget would look like.

Ah well.  Yet another one of those ideas that will have to bear fruit in an alternate universe, I suppose.

Don't Go Hatin' A Playa

With a sigh of only slightly premature resignation, I'm coming to terms with the likely reality of a new GOP governor in my home state of Virginny. It's been something of an inevitability since the rather uninspiring Democratic primary, in which the best the donkey party could muster was 1) a flamboyantly flagrant Clintonista carpetbagger and 2) a rather taciturn but decent and "authentically Virginian" rural state Senator.

Given the choice, Democrats went with number two...but all along, it's not looked good.

The reason for this is the GOP candidate, who is Mr. All American. He's tall. He's rugged. He's the high school quarterback who married the Redskins cheerleader, and then went on to have a really quite photogenic family. He's also a quite competent politician. I say that not by way of insult, but out of admiration. He ain't just a pretty face. He is quite evidently smart and articulate. Though his campaign has involved some impressive lowest-common-denominator assault politics, he's stayed mostly above the fray.

Ultimately, though, I think Bob McDonnell will be the next governor of Virginia because Virginians...like all human beings...like the idea of getting something for nothing. The big issue of this campaign is our crumbling and overmatched transportation infrastructure. McDonnell is convinced that this can be made better without a single additional dime coming out of the pockets of Virginians. Deeds has published that he'd support new taxes that are targeted to revamping transportation...but then can't bring himself to actually say that in public.

As Deeds has hemmed and hawed around the issue of taxation, McDonnell's folks are going to town. Deeds is a waffly stuttering tax-and-spender! Taking our money in these troubled times! Doing harm to Virginia's families! Taking your hard earned dollars and using them to..cough..build the roads you need to get to work...but it's still Your Hard Earned Money!

I've read McDonnell's plan for funding transportation. What's interesting about it is that it is largely reliant on 1) selling off public property and 2) bond revenue. If Virginia were a person, that's pretty much the equivalent of hitting the pawn shop and then taking out a second mortgage. The stuff we'll sell, like the profitable state-run ABC stores that put $104 million dollars annually into the state coffers, we ain't getting back. The $3 billion in new state bonds he'd issue...well...they have to be repaid at some point. How do those bonds get repaid? With..um..tax dollars. But only after McDonnell's finished his 4 year term, so it technically won't be his responsibility. Ka-CHING!

It's amazing how effective conservatism has been at convincing Americans that actually paying for what you need is for suckers.