In an Oct. 14 post on his Raw Fisher blog, WaPo columnist Marc Fisher invokes the Founding Fathers – who revolted against English rule in large part due to excessive taxation by the British Crown – and then asks whether Virginia s bipartisan tradition of fiscal conservatism (i.e. low taxes) is simply a matter of the political elite preserving its power? Huh? Don t political elites typically preserve their power by extracting even more tribute from the little people, rather than less? When Fisher quotes Taxachusetts historian Susan Dunn, it s clear where s he s going with this tortuous line of reasoning. Prof. Dunn declares that Virginians don t want roads, they don t want schools, they don t want large cities. And yet they re idealistic, with this great vision of yeoman farmers, of rugged individualism in the name of real Virginia values. That s funny, considering that Virginia has several cities, 57,867 miles of state-maintained highways, and a state university system considered among the best in the nation. Of course, this is really about politics. Fisher was attacking conservative Republican House Speaker William Howell s reference to the shared values we have in Virginia. In Fisher s view, anybody who s against raising taxes (again) favors a conservative, nostalgic society clinging to its agricultural past, ruled by an aristocratic elite and deeply suspicious of the Yankee s investment in industry and city life i.e. they re xenophobic racist rednecks as opposed to enlightened progressive urbanites like him and the perfessor. But seeing as how this conservative, nostalgic society was recently ranked by Forbes.com as the very best state in the nation in which to do business, Fisher s analysis falls completely off the tracks. Low taxes – which incidentally also promote the Virginia value of rugged individualism as opposed to dependency on the state – have proven to be a boon to the commonwealth s economy, not the other way around. The only real question is whether Virginian voters have the courage and foresight to keep it that way.
