Word: revoltingly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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They were not the only tax rebels feeling federal heat. Bill Greene, a Marin County, Calif., real estate magnate, started publicizing his new book, Win Your Personal Tax Revolt, which tells how to use paper losses to avoid paying income tax. Then, on Jan. 13 the Internal Revenue Service announced a grand jury had indicted Greene on charges of criminal tax evasion. Greene said he would mount a "crusade" against the IRS, and led a parade of 75 tax protesters through downtown San Francisco while wearing a suit of armor. Says he: "For years I have conducted my affairs...
...mood have thus far fallen along predictable ideological lines, with knee-jerk diatribes or celebrations the general rule. Robert Kuttner, former chief investigator for the Senate Banking Committee and currently editor of Working Papers magazine, has taken the first reflective and analytical examination of the subject in his book, Revolt of the Haves. Though he begins with the difficult but crucial step of acknowledging that something is wrong with the current incarnations of the Great Society, Kuttner does not suggest government abandon the cause of social justice to the free market. Kuttner proposes no liberal agenda, perhaps leaving that duty...
...even Democrats moved toward the realization that they did not have all the answers. If the "ins" had any doubts about their effectiveness, the overwhelming success of Proposition 13 in June 1979--and the similar proposals it inspired in other states--earned the tax revolt status as a bona fide national phenomenon...
...that is where Kuttner begins. The first and most entertaining third of Revolt is a narrative of the peculiar (in California what else could it be?) set of circumstances that led to the passage of Prop. 13. Mostly, it concerns the bejowled Jarvis and his trek from the lunatic fringe (Barry Goldwater disowned him as a fund-raiser in 1964 after Jarvis's "Businessmen for Goldwater" kept as "fees" $88,000 of the $115,000 it raised) to national celebrity. Within the context of the loony personalities, slick p.r. firms and confused politicians, Kuttner clears away the inevitable confusion...
Given the impetus of the tax revolt, several well-organized right-wing groups have captured the ideological as well as political momentum away from the liberals (a word now about as popular as "child molester" with politicians). What's good for General Motors has become once again good for everyone. Tax abatements to attract business are a national fad, even though Kuttner says they do not succeed in attracting business, and even if they did, would not generate enough tax revenue to make up for their cost. Furthermore, he attacks the Right's insistence that the government causes all inflation...