Crime and/or Punishment in Clallam County

As you doubtlessly know, Thanksgiving has come and gone, as has Christmas and the New Year. Well, to that trio of holidays we can now possibly add another one that may soon be coming to an end: The so-called tax "holiday" in Clallam County. You know, the one that saves you twenty cents out of every hundred dollars you spend.

Admittedly, as holidays go, this is a minor one - sort of like having your lunch break at work extended by an extra three minutes. What will you do with all that extra, uh, dimes you (might) end up with? The possibilities are not quite limitless, to be sure.

Mine, goddamn it! MINE!

Ah, but the possibilities for rabid right-wing outrage over the idea of "taking" that twenty cents back is nearly as limitless as it is clueless. In their eternal quest to keep those two dimes, it's safe to say that no quarter will be given. Not a finger!

Here's just one sentence from the comments on the PDN's article about the possibility of reinstating that twenty cent tax, which sums up the general tone of the comments: "There is now a political majority of left-wingers, Chapman & Ozias, who are free to punish taxpayers to their hearts content."

Oh.

Now there's a reasoned and rational argument, eh? No biases or partisanship (or fantasy football) intruding into that worldview, is there? And once again, well stated, President Trump!

Obviously, this is part of a larger political problem in the United States, the problem being intense partisan division. But, though it plays out in some way all across the country, it does seem to be even more intense in smaller, economically distressed areas like Clallam County. To put that another way, in a larger, more sophisticated area, it might take, oh, say, at least forty or fifty cents to get the far-right so worked up.

But, with pressing problems at hand - a flatlined economy, failing schools, high rates of drug abuse, an aging population, aging infrastructure, tight budgets and political corruption, etc. - how do real-world solutions get discussed, yet alone approved, in such a divided community? Especially when much of that division runs right along the split between Reality and Fantasy.

I didn't speak up when they came for the dimes, because I had no dimes.

I didn't speak up when they came for the nickels, because I had no nickels.

When they came for the pennies...



I mean, Mike Chapman is a "left-winger"? Hardly. Political opportunist is more like it, one who will do what he has to in order to survive. When Mike's travelled all along the political spectrum, it's just not accurate to pin him down to any one ideological silo. Meanwhile, I think it's safe to say - speaking from Planet Reality - that both Chapman and Mark Ozias consider taxing issues to be, you know, financial matters. I don't think either of them are aiming to "punish taxpayers." And if they are, really, how much punishment can you buy for twenty cents? But a lot of people are spouting foolishness just like that, and some is even less tethered to Reality than this example.

So again, how do you solve real-world problems when half the population denies that world - Planet Reality - exists? And, in a place where hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of public dollars are routinely stolen and/or wasted, right out in the open, why do people get so agitated over twenty cents?