OPINION
THE MESA TRIBUNE | MARCH 20, 2022
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849 Arizona taxpayers had a curious impulse BY DAVID LEIBOWITZ Tribune Columnist
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omewhere in this sprawling state of ours, there are precisely 849 people that I would like to meet. I’ll buy a cup of coffee, a beer, lunch, steak dinner for two. Whatever it takes to have one of these 849 individuals sit down with me for a few minutes, the length of a simple conversation. Those of you who understand text messaging shorthand will appreciate the single question I intend to use as an icebreaker. WTF? Some circumstances in life require such a blunt approach, because they are so stupefying, so insane, they defy all logic. Truth be told, while I do not condone murder, there are circumstances where I understand what the murderer was thinking. But these 849 Arizonans? I haven’t a clue.
Each year on our Arizona tax returns, a number of boxes appear that allow taxpayers to make voluntary gifts. You can donate to the Special Olympics, to prevent child abuse, to support veterans in need. Then there’s the box that 849 people checked last year, making voluntary donations that totaled $25,735. That would be the state revenuers’ I Did Not Pay Enough taxes fund. I want to know – no, I need to know – what these 849 people were thinking? All day, I’ve tried to imagine Joe and Jane Arizona at the kitchen table, tax documents spread out, sweating over their state 140A form. Joe: “Dammit, looks like we’ve got a refund coming to us again. How do you want to handle that?” Jane: “I guess we could take the grandkids to Outback. They love that Bloomin’ Onion.” Joe: “Oh, hey, here’s an idea. The state government only collected $24 billion in
tax revenue last year. Let’s give it to them!” Jane: “Now that’s good thinking, sweets. Either that or we can donate it to Jeff Bezos. Maybe he can buy more scalp.” These 849 neighbors of ours represent a record number of donors to the I Did Not Pay Enough fund, established in 2010 by that noted band of deep thinkers, the Arizona Legislature. According to a recent story in the Phoenix Business Journal, the fund has collected about $185,000 total – or about $185,000 more than anyone would have predicted. Look, I understand that Arizona is a relatively low-tax state, especially compared to California, which taxes top earners at more than 13 percent of annual income versus Arizona’s top rate of 4.5 percent. But gifting the government more money? Voluntarily? I don’t get it, especially when you consider that we collectively paid $14.2 billion in state sales tax last year and another $8.3 billion in state income tax. And that was before recreational marijuana taxes re-
ally ramped up – $116 million contributed to the state in six months last year – and before the legalization of sports betting statewide in September 2021. Toss in a few billion extra dollars from the feds in COVID relief funds, and the state is looking Bezos-style wealthy, even as inflation bites residents hard. To my way of thinking, checking the I Didn’t Pay Enough box is like seeing a family of homeless people in need seeking donations at a stoplight, reaching into your pocket and handing a few crumpled singles to the guy in the Porsche next to you. He was doing just fine, thanks. At least one of these 849 people should sit for an interview to explain their thought process, and I want to be the guy. Then again, maybe a free meal isn’t much of an inducement to these folks. How about we go out to eat, we chat, and you pay the check? Since all 849 of you clearly have more money than you know what to do with.
boom generation hear the threatening “BAHHM-bum-bum-bum-bum-buhBAHHM” that would inevitably usher the audience into a commercial break as Captain Kirk and crew confronted the latest peril unfolding in the plot of that particular episode. Curiously, the melodic “theme-of-undoing” for the American Left enjoys a widebut-weird appeal across all demographic groups who share that political ideology, despite the fact that it first permeated the collective consciousness of our culture in the monochromatic mid-20th century. It’s the “Dragnet” Theme, with those unmistakably ominous opening notes, now updated with a one word lyric: “TRUMP-Trump-Trump-Trump! TRUMPTrump-Trump-Trump-TRUMP!” And, just as Jack Webb revised and rein-
troduced “Dragnet” in living color for NBC in the late sixties, so too does the Left fear that Donald Trump will return as a “Twenty-First Century Grover Cleveland,” only this time as a Republican, employing a makeup artist who was trained using the “golden tan” pancake so prevalent in the colorful productions emanating from “Beautiful Downtown Burbank” decades ago. The memory of “Mister Rogers,” on loan from his estate and PBS, courtesy of the generosity of taxpayers (and perhaps “viewers like you”) might put it this way: “Can you say 45th and 47th President of the United States? Sure you can! No worries for you, King Friday…After all, you rule the ‘Neighborhood of Make Believe!’ But for our friends’ parents and their Volvo-driving pals, this is all-too-real!” Of course, on the other side of the polit-
ical street, the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue prompts fears that are also all-too-real…not to mention contemporaneous. Conservatives are often accused of a desire to “turn the clock back,” but based on the current calamitous atmosphere in the USA, who can blame them? With war raging in Europe, runaway inflation here at home, and our southern border still wide open as an “invitation for invasion,” what’s a right-winger to do? You guessed it…”turn back the clock,” but with a high-tech twist. Since late night network television has abandoned any pretense of even-handed political humor, (much as their news divisions have deserted any efforts at ob-
Sometimes, you gotta laugh to keep from crying BY JD HAYWORTH Tribune Columnist
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omedian Robert Klein offers a lament-for-laughs, regretting that life does not come with an audible soundtrack. He jokes that we would be spared mistakes, mishaps, and maybe even an “apocalyptic occurrence” if only we could hear foreboding music to warn us. You can be forgiven if current events have your “internal speakers” blaring a certain song. Based on the tenor and tone of developments over recent months, perhaps you’ve been hearing an “age appropriate” tune-of-doom in your own mind. Based on a very limited survey conducted exclusively for this column, it seems that “StarTrek” enthusiasts of the baby
see HAYWORTH page 20
