Archive for July 23rd, 2007
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It is bad enough the government uses our money to support businesses that would otherwise fail or never open, now we are faced with supporting artists and cultural institutions without having any voice. An artist could be producing pure crap, yet have a nice lifestyle paid for by the taxpayers at the whim of government officials. The same goes for cultural institutions and their well connected administrators.
Cheered on by their allies in government, cultural leaders tried in the late 1980s to snare a fraction of Erie County sales tax revenue as a permanent hedge against budget uncertainty — their own and the county’s.
They asked that one-eighth of the “temporary” eighth penny per dollar that had been added to the sales tax to bail the county out of fiscal hot water in 1984, and subsequently extended by the Legislature, be dedicated to the arts. The effort ultimately failed because of legislators’ concerns about the county’s bond debt and the wisdom of setting aside millions of taxpayer dollars for a particular cause.
Almost 20 years later, the cultural community is gearing up to try again.
Leaders will march in lockstep Friday to the Legislature’s Community Enrichment Committee to ask that 3 percent of annual property tax revenues be set aside for the arts. That projects to about $5.4 million, based on current sales tax receipts, or roughly the amount currently allocated to the arts.
The Buffalo News: City & Region: Cultural leaders want property tax revenue set aside for the arts
It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government.
— Thomas Paine
Looking toward the government to address all of our needs violates this principle and leads to the loss of our property and liberties. Our country was unanimously founded on July 4, 1776, by the thirteen states, with the principle of a limited government respecting the natural rights of people.
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them . . .
