KC 1% Tax. It's for the Kids or Something.

Reporters followed Kansas City Mayor Sly James like overeager puppies recently as he walked through the ritzy areas of town tooting the "benefits" of a citywide earnings tax.  (Start the video around the three-minute mark.)  That's right; they skim 1% of your gross income just because you live or work in the city.

They always say they'll lay off police and fire fighters if they don't get what they want. But they never mention laying off anyone's brother's uncle's cousin who got a job because he knows someone but doesn't really have any work to do.  Or God forbid they have to stop handing out cash to corporations via TIF and other mega-tax breaks.

And the argument about the tax supporting great schools?  HA!!  Show me a person with an income over "on the edge of homelessness" who voluntarily sends their kids to Kansas City Public Schools, and I'll show you a crazy person.  This is the school district in which children are routinely raped in bathrooms and in which a white kid was doused in gasoline and set ablaze because he didn't properly respect Black History Month.

I hope this proposal to extend the tax goes down in flames on Tuesday, but last time and forever and ever every time the issue comes up, people keep voting it through.  I think it's because most of the people voting for it aren't paying much into it.  This is certainly why Sly James is running around the areas of town in which people actually have a positive cash flow, begging them to pretty please vote for the tax.  Elections being what they have been of late, things can be decided on the basis of a very small number of votes.  I don't blame him, but sheesh, I'd sure love to stop paying 1% of our income and getting absolutely zero back.