Harking back to Jefferson

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Harking back to Jefferson				June 28, 2006

If you hang out long enough in the rec center sauna and are possessed of the gift of gab, you’re bound to get into some memorable conversations with your fellow sweatmates. Just last week, for instance, I was talking to a high schooler from James City who told me that his favorite subject was history, especially U.S. history. Yet, when I asked him what he thought of the politics of our third president, he was embarrassed to admit that he had no idea who our third president was.

I can’t say that I’m surprised by this, and it was, I suppose, a trick question. But the fact is that we are so woefully ignorant of our own history that we deserve the parlous predicaments in which we find ourselves as a result of the partisan political dickering that currently prevails on both the national and local levels.

In 1788, our third president, Thomas Jefferson, wrote a letter to James Madison in which he outlined what he thought should be potential amendments to the Constitution. Among these were freedom of religion, freedom of the press, trials by jury in all cases, freedom from commercial monopolies and no standing army.

Prescient as he was, Jefferson abhorred the idea of a large, centralized government that would be susceptible to a takeover by what he called the “pseudo aristoi,” or citizens wealthy enough to influence political decisions. He was especially fearful of a Senate filled with aristocrats, as opposed to representatives from the working class.

He was also convinced that large corporations, like the East India Company, represented a severe threat to governments if their influence were allowed to trample on what he called the Natural Rights of all citizens. Any talk of a Pentagon or a permanently bloated military complex would have sent him apoplectic.

In terms of economics, Jefferson was a minimalist, and he worked dutifully to reduce what would now be considered a piddling national debt. Nor was he a fan of taxation. Taxes, he thought, should be levied only for specific projects about which citizens would be fully informed.

How times have changed.

While, thanks to Jefferson and his cohorts, we now enjoy freedom of religion and freedom of the press, the Senate, as Jefferson feared, is replete with millionaires. The military-industrial complex virtually runs the country.

So entangled in our political system have corporations become that just last week the Republican majority in the Senate killed a Democratic amendment to the Defense Authorization bill that sought to eliminate fraud and abuse by corporations involved in contracting and procurement for the war in Iraq. So in the pockets of Halliburton and Kellogg, Brown & Root are these senators – including George Allen and John Warner - that they refused to pass a law that would prohibit corporate schemes to defraud taxpayers. So what if Halliburton billed us for 42,000 meals when they served only 14,000? Who cares?

The problem is that we taxpayers have no idea how our income tax money is squandered nationally or where our real estate taxes are going locally.

Under the Jeffersonian model this would cease to be the case.

If the president or leaders you elect to Congress want to take you into a war, they would have to tax you specifically for that purpose. The cost of the war in Iraq now stands at over $321 billion. According to the National Priorities Project, Virginia’s share of that would be over $10 billion. If the president wants a $48 billion glitch-ridden missile defense system, he has to levy taxes specifically for that. Pay up!

On the local level the system would work similarly. Forget real estate taxes. If a locality has allowed growth to proceed unchecked and without regard for demographics or population booms, the citizens would be taxed for the specific projects undertaken in order to accommodate that growth.

If Jefferson were running James City County, he would certainly be devastated by the loss of farms and green space. More importantly, he would counsel taxpayers that if growth is what they want, they must foot the bill. If you, citizen, want a $50.6 million third high school, pay for it out of your own tax pocket.

You want an eighth elementary school for $23.65 million? Pay for it. You want a fourth middle school and a ninth elementary school for over $80 million? Shell out the taxes for them. You want traffic adjustments so that Prime Outlets can cancerously creep over to the Ewell shopping center? Open your checkbook. Either that, or watch your real estate taxes skyrocket and meekly accept the mark-up. And don’t ask where the money is going.

Jefferson knew well that if citizens understood clearly that they would be taxed specifically for dubious projects on the national or local level, they might pay closer attention to what their leaders were doing. There would be no borrowing, no bonds, no $8 trillion national debt. The United States would assuredly not owe its economic soul to China and Japan.

It is indeed sad that my young friend in the sauna and millions like him have no idea who our third president was. We have much to learn from the good man from Monticello.