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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > September > 21
Monday, September 21, 2009
Editorial: Booing Brown was shabby
The one good thing about U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown getting booed at a Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce meeting is that we can skip the debate about whether the insult had anything to do with his race.
Definitely not likely.
That said, the incident was bad. It was, quite simply, boorish.
Lucky for Dayton that Sen. Brown is a big boy, not likely to take too much offense or never forget the experience. Some politicians definitely do have memories like an elephant, which, in this case, would not be good for Dayton.
After all, this was an audience that isn’t bashful about asking Sen. Brown to rustle up federal money for special pet projects now and again. It’s also worth noting that Dayton isn’t in front of Sen. Brown every day; when he does come to town, it would be good if the experience isn’t insulting.
That’s not about kowtowing. It’s about behaving well, even as others around you are behaving badly.
Sen. Brown was appearing before about 250 people at a chamber breakfast Friday, Sept. 18. In response to a question about the overheated rhetoric about health care, Sen. Brown, echoing former President Jimmy Carter (who touched off a controversy nationally), said, “I think some of the animosity against Barack Obama is race-based.”
That comment elicited boos, gratifying some people and mortifying others.
Sen. Brown, an avowedly liberal Democrat, could have been expected to side with the president and to have this concern about race. Trust him; he isn’t kidding when he says that if you read the e-mails and letters he receives, you’d know why he has this opinion.
In fact, you don’t even have to be a member of Congress to get that; turn on talk radio.
That said, the ugly people, the haters, are a small minority. Most of America has work to do, or at least better things to do than stoke bigotry and boldly proclaim prejudice. Yes, we all need to know such people are out there; but they don’t run the world or much of anything, which is among the reasons they’re angry.
If good and thoughtful people are making mistakes in judging others’ views about the health care debate and the role race is playing in it, their mistake is to assume the very worst about the people they disagree with, and the very best about the people they agree with.
It’s ridiculous to assume that the great bulk of people who oppose the president are driven by racial animus. There absolutely is a substantive and real ideological tug-of-war going on. Real political oxen are being gored.
At the same time, it’s equally ridiculous to deny that, in some people’s minds, President Obama couldn’t do anything right, and race is at the bottom of their contempt. You know people like this. You’ve heard them speak; some of them are probably your friends or family.
Falling into either of these traps — assuming the absolute worst or the absolute best — is giving in to forces that don’t deserve respect and that are corrosive to society and to culture. They polarize and divide people about an issue that needs our best thinking and best instincts.
Some people apologized to Sen. Brown after the chamber event, which was only appropriate.
If a few more people wrote him notes in the same vein, that’d be a good thing.
When you’re wrong or out of line, there’s nothing more cleansing than owning up to the mistake.
Permalink | Comments (64) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Health Care, National Politics
Editorial: Grocers milked tax argument in absurd way
You do not want to read the Ohio Supreme Court ruling that says grocers have to pay the state’s relatively new business tax.
The 28-page decision is bor-ring, even as court rulings go.
You, however, might want to know what the ruling means for your favorite grocery store: It, like pretty much all businesses, will have to pay a tax that amounts to 26 cents on every $100 of gross receipts over $1 million.
In a 6-1 ruling, the all-Republican court said last week that grocers owe the money even though the state constitution is explicit that food can’t be taxed.
Proponents of the tax — which included Republicans and Democrats — argued that it is a business tax, not a food tax. Tying the levy to gross receipts was simply a measure — a yardstick of sorts — of business activity, not a tax on the food itself.
The justices said it’s well established that businesses can be taxed for the “privilege” of doing business in the state.
Grocers, on the other hand, had argued that the state couldn’t tax their activity without bumping into the actual food on their shelves. That distinction was extremely important to them, because they’re a high-volume, low-margin business. The tax — even though it has an exceedingly low rate — can add up in their case.
Even granting this concern, it was always a stretch to conclude that when Ohioans amended the constitution and definitively made food tax-free that they had this sort of tax in mind. The more believable, the more logical objective was to exempt food from a direct tax, such as a sales tax, at the check-out counter.
If the Republican governor and legislature — who were in charge when the tax was imposed — and a Democratic governor who advocated to keep the tax are missing something about its peculiarly onerous effects, then grocers need to document that case.
The CAT — or Commercial Activities Tax — was billed as a broad-based, low-rate levy that requires all businesses to pony up in an equitable way.
If that’s not now turning out to be the case, then let’s have that discussion. But simply saying that a whole industry is exempt from what is now Ohio’s main business tax isn’t a winning strategy.
The court’s decision is especially good news for Gov. Ted Strickland. More than $700 million was at stake. (That’s the total that would have had to be refunded for taxes paid since 2005, and the estimated amount grocers will pay during the current two-year state budget.) Given how iffy the state’s revenues are, the court’s decision was welcome.
But there’s no reason to believe the court was trying to do the state a favor or that it knew what it wanted to do and then set out to find a rationale. It makes perfect sense that the Republican justices gave the legislature the benefit of the doubt and that they would be reluctant to make the leap the grocers’ argument required.
The end result was right, and probably should have been foreseen.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Ohio government, Ohio politics
