ustxtxb_obs_1959_08_01_50_00005-00000_000.pdf

JUDGING THEM BY WHOM THEY TAX A GREAT THING FOR TEXAS WOULD BE FOR THE VOTERS TO GET RID OF CARR, HAREEMAN, RAMSEY, AND THE OTHERS OF .THEIR KIND. IF THAT OUT-FIT CONTROLS THE LEGISLATURE FOR ANOTHER SESSION, TEXANS WILL BE PAYNG SALES TAXES ON THEIR GRITS AND GRAVY, AND THEIR PIE AND COFFEE. EL PASO HERALD POST, JULY 27 AUSTIN, THURSDAY MORNING Ortega y Gasset believed, when he wrote On Love, that a person can be understood by whom he loves. For like reasons a politician can be understood by whom he taxes. Those he most cares for, he leaves unburdened; those he cares not about, he taxes. We have before us this morning the tax bill the Senate approved last night, not substantially different from the bill the House approved, over liberal objection, the week before. Let us see whom they love. In the Senate bill, which the House accepted and thus will become law, about 73 percent of the lagrden is sales tax on the people and 27 percent falls on business.. The House bill was just as bad. This was because Speaker Waggoner Carr’s anti-gas tax, general sales tax group, seeing that they were losing the battle, came forward with the lobby’s token gas tax and the Senate’s sales . taxes. A handful of mushminds wobbled off from the Danielliberal group. to constitute a new House majority of general sales taxers and token gas taxers. In the final version, the corporation franchise tax increases on business come to an end within two years, and the severance-beneficiary tax on natural gas companies, as written by the Senate, may be totally invalid if any detail of it is held unconstitutional. The taxes on the people are permanent and constitutional. One of the taxes on business is temporary, and the other may be unconstitutional as drawn in the Senate. The new franchise taxes on business simply vanish after 1961; the gas tax will be challenged in court. After the court ,test, the tax bill of 1959 may turn up to be 100 percent sales tax. Who, then, is the true love of the politicians in control in Austin ? They steal the people’s goods and hock them, and their souls, to bear to business their tawdry baubles. ITEM BY ITEM one must study this tax bill, because the politicians in control did not have the courage to call the mover and steal everything at once. As said, Sen. William Fly, Victoria, the interests’ rebuilt Victrola, during the debates Wednesday, “You know good and well that what we ought to do is to come out with a general sales tax and let everybody pay it.” Why didn’t they do what they thought they ought to do ? Because, not only would everybody pay, but everybody would know everybody would understand Senator Fly by whom he loves. Instead they waited until the sun was down, the lights snuf fed out of the windows, the policemen busy trying to trap drunks on the streets, and the first early-morning chill reaching their bones ; then they cut the screen and bore off the goods, piece by piece. Look at this tax bill. General Selective Sales Taxes Three-fourths of the sales taxes fall on things nearly everybody buys. The only one of the sales-tax staples the night-raiders overlooked was gasoline, and