I hadn’t seen Barbara Anderson for years when I pulled up to her house in Marblehead last week, a small place tucked behind two big spruce trees with a woodsy backyard and a sense of stay from the confusion on Beacon Hill. Check out the sides of the modest, comfortable, cozy and cluttered home and you’ll find out something telling about the woman who has terrified both Beacon Hill’s ruling class and liberal interest groups for the last thirty years.
Each side of her shingled house is a different color. That’s because Barbara replaces one side of shingles every year, which she pays for with funds on hand, instead of buying all four sides’ worth of shingles on credit. So each side of shingles takes on a different color as they age. Citizens for Limited Taxation, who pays Anderson minimum wages has an authentic small spending original for its executive director.
Barbara looks far better than the shingles and can still light up a room, but the unruly and flowing red hair is gone now and she’s drawing Social Security. She laughs at the irony of becoming one of the fixed-income senior citizen home owners whose anxiety over escalating real estate taxes led to the passage of Proposition Two and A Half back in 1980, which she championed as a young rebel in the cause.
These are supposed to be quieter years for the silver-haired grandmother, but she is definitely playing the role of warrior-princess once again, rousing the horde of angry taxpayers to send a message to the political leaders of “Taxachusetts” this November by voting Yes on Question One, which would eliminate the state’s income tax. It’s not that she is the Leader of Vote Yes on Question One initiative; but rather that she commands more enthusiasm, more devotion, more attention from the press and more fun-loving tax-limiting troublemakers than Carla Howell, who is the actual Leader on Question One.
Howell belongs to the Libertarian Party, ran for The US Senate as a Libertarian in 2000 and led the effort to eliminate the state income tax in 2002. She’s lightened up on the stage from previous years–she’s even done a song with a beat called “How Could I Live Without Filing Taxes” — but read some of the full text of Question One in its earnest and reverent ideology.
“(i) Small government leaves us free and unburdened to fashion our own lives, and
(1) Small government is simple, cheap, and good;
(2) Small government is thrifty and effective;
(3) Small government is accountable and responsible; ”
Whereas
“b) Big Government has a harmful impact on those who rely upon it, and
(1) Big Government promotes irresponsibility;
(2) Big Government makes people weak and dependent; and
(3) Big Government saps personal initiative and undermines the work ethic.”
Somewhere I can see wagon trains and wheat fields and Michael Landers and Melissa Gilbert, except that living in a small town, I can tell you how wretchedly bad small government can be. The recitation of political creed conjures up the chant “Four legs good, two legs bad,” only since we’re talking about the virtue of small government Libertarianism, I guess it should go “Two legs good, four legs bad.”
But it’s Carla’s show, not Barbara’s.
I mention this because as I was sitting in Barbara’s House she showed me a book shelf stuffed with the writings of Ayn Rand, the mother of Libertarianism. Barbara laughed as she showed me the adjoining book shelf crowded with Astrology Books, something Ayn Rand, the ultimate rationalist, would not have approved.
Then again, Ayn Rand would have approved of Carla Howell more than Barbara Anderson, who is no big L Libertarian but a practical-minded and emotional, political strategist who’s quite familiar with the Beacon Hill crowd and not so constrained by any ideology other than getting Massachusetts to be more like New Hampshire.
Anderson, who says her cynicism is well-earned, has no reason whatsoever to believe the Legislature will ever accept Question One and the end of income taxes if it passes. When she and CLT won by overwhelming numbers an initiative to roll back the state income tax to five percent in 2000, the Legislature thwarted the will of the voters. The Legislature never rolled the tax back to five percent. And anyone who saw what happened in 2002, when the Legislature pulled the rug out from underneath the feet of Anderson and the voters who passed Question One in 2000, can not honestly believe the Legislature is going to accept the end of the income tax.
One ranking Democrat told me this week, begging anonymity of course, “There’s no way [Question 1 ] is going to fly. There’s no way in hell the Leadership will let it go through if it passes.”
Of course, Anderson is not going to say that, because she wants Question One to pass. And the Democrats on Beacon Hill aren’t going to say that either, because they want Question One to fail, and the best way to do that is to put the fear of God in the voters of what will happen if what serious people think isn’t going to happen were to happen. Got that? Good.
Although they call it a Question, Question One seems more of a non-Question.
Which brings me back to Carla Howell, who was quoted in the Berkshire Eagle this week as saying that if Question One passes of course the Legislature would enact it.
“It would be political suicide for them to reverse this decision.” Hello. The Legislature got away with doing just that very thing in 2002…and they also failed to abide by Ballot Questions passed in 2000 and 1998. Some taxpayers might understandably despair that the rate of political suicides on Beacon Hill has remained stable.
Back to Barbara Anderson and her book shelves. One of those Astrology books close to Ayn Rand’s books describes Aquarians like Barbara as being hopeful. All that she and CLT ever wanted was for the income state tax rate to be returned to 5 percent.
And perhaps it’s more reasonable for supporters of Question One to hope that if it passes, the Legislature might roll back the income tax back to the five percent people voted for in 2000, because there’s no way Beacon Hill is going to turn Massachusetts into New Hampshire though Barbara Anderson is cheering for it, as she has been for years.
