The Opinionator

The Czar and Tax Caps

The Czar and Tax Caps

 Every once in a while a word comes along that fits a situation correctly, and we seize on the word, use it a great deal, and in some situations even beat it to death.  One of these words is "czar."  It means emperor and comes to us via Russia, where the ruler of that country was the czar until 1917. The newspapers are full of stories about the "car czar" A few years ago we had a drug czar and we have also had an energy czar.

 When there is a problem begging to be solved, apparently it is human nature to focus on leadership and power in the person of one individual whom we hold accountable and to whom we ascribe great power to solve problems.  It just wouldn't sound right in a free society if we called these powerful individuals "emperors." We are a democracy and don't want any kings or emperors telling us what to do. Certainly "Fuhrer or Il Duce, for obvious reasons, would be out of line.  We seem to have settled on czar. It has a ring to it, comes from an ancient yet failed country, is short and snappy and even has a rhyming quality as in car czar. You can even spell it funny if you wish, using tsar or tzar to display a kind of erudition. Etymologists connect its ancestry to the German Kaiser, which started with the Roman Caesar or the Iranian  Shah.

 Another term that has powerful political utility is "tax cap."  If it had stayed as "Proposition 13" out of California in 1978, it probably would have gotten nowhere as a movement. When it came to Massachusetts two years later it had the name of "Proposition 2 ½ "   although that was the permissible increase, not the number of the ballot question. "Tax cap" became what it meant and everyone knew exactly what it meant.  Taxes were running away; they needed a strait jacket or a lid, something needed to be done to tell policy makers that there is just so much that people could take. Like an oil rig overflowing, like a volcano exploding, the eruption needed to be capped.

 And so we have learned to love the tax cap and to hate the override, which some hold to be a fiscal taboo, a mortal sin of the vilest and rankest type.  To some of the most zealous conservative politicians, an override to our sacred Proposition 2 ½ is at least as reprehensible as marrying your sister or going to church in drag. I think it can be amusing to read and watch selectmen wring their hands in despair as they consider overrides.  You'd think they were contemplating inviting the black plaque to come and reside in the community.  Many of them get poor marks for their less than vigorous efforts to convince ordinary people that some things might need to cost more than a 2 ½ percent increase a year. On the contrary, some of them pander right into the prevailing taboo. I guess they figure the worse thing in the world is not to get