The rich shall inherit the world, in DC Comics and Gotham anyway. In the real D.C., much as the real Montana, the super wealthy now run government. Topping their docket are lavish tax cuts catering to the donor class. In politics, you gotta pay for the show.
Soon thereafter, they’ll work to rid us of those galling tax breaks that provide lifesaving healthcare to millions of Americans but help the wealthy less beyond preexisting conditions, if anyone even remembers those relics from the good old days.
On cue, Montana’s governor presented lawmakers with a state budget with another income tax cut, $850 million more in assistance, or about $50 a year for a full-time $15/hour wage earner and about $10,000 for Montana millionaires with $750,000 salaries.
I strode upstairs and grabbed the 3-inch-thick Holy Bible my bishop uncle gave to me decades earlier, and wiped the dust off the cover which had settled throughout the years. I sought practicum from the good book about whom might inherit the world.
Turning to Saint Matthew Chapter 5, I read that, “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” I got my 1920-page dictionary from the top shelf, the cover dustier than my Holy Bible, and looked up the word meek.
I wrongly assumed meek referred to weak, meager or feeble, but the definition says that meek is patience and humility, gentle. The archaic definition says meek is kind, merciful.
I’ve mixed up the cast of characters nominated to run our country with comic books now that Albert Pennyworth, Batman’s loyal and tireless butler, was forced into retirement by his own Party. Suddenly on stage stood the Joker, Two-Faced, Penguin, and Catwoman all eager to run the show.
Somewhere, I knew the Riddler was lurking and Mr. Freeze stood at the ready. With Albert headed to the beach and philanthropist Bruce Wayne just absent, Gotham was on its own. Maybe Green Lantern, Aqua Man, and Wonder Woman will join the rest of the Justice League and save America from looting itself. Doubtful in comic books, never mind real life.
Four of the five top elected politicians in Montana are gazillionaires from the lucky class, the really wealthy, and all live in the Bozeman area. A city that’s suddenly overrun with remote workers, tourists and day trippers. A place that just two decades earlier was affordable to workers and locals.
Jeff Welsch, managing editor of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, noted the two-decades worth of change by writing in a recent column, “The cool $1 million it costs to own a modest family home today might’ve bought a block on Main Street then. When I flew in for my interview in 2004 from Seattle – stopping in Butte, on purpose! – Bozeman’s little airport offered four direct-flight destinations; now there are 23.”
That living changed radically over the past years is easy to see in the Flathead or anywhere Montana. Even the cowboys on the hit TV show “Yellowstone” lament like daytime soap stars about the ever-changing landscapes and lifestyles, as ranchland is replaced by never-ending million-dollar condos. It’s the last of much in Montana.
Conversely, America is jet-setting back into the Roaring Twenties where the lucky, super-wealthy host lavish speakeasy-style parties while the rest of us labor on, paying the ever-increasing bills and state taxes which are squarely targeted at middle-class Montana. The late 1920s roar was preceded by another world-wide pandemic and ended with the dreadful Great Depression that lasted into the late 1930s.
For middle Montana, it’s more and ever-increasing bills and spiking state property taxes. Lawmakers are eager to let their revaluation of your homes and businesses compound the property taxes you pay to Montana as ongoing revenue into future state budgets.
That historic increase amounts to $500 million in extra state property taxes that the governor put into the state budgets. Money that existing homeowners and small business must pay to the state of Montana, and includes no local taxes or new construction revenues.
Money-shufflers in Helena will treat your middle-class homeowner tax dollars as new ongoing revenue, mix, match and offset, then pay for top-end income tax cuts. Someone gotta balance the state budget. Lawmakers rarely make the donor class pay.
Of course, they’ll deny it. But money is money, every lawmaker knows it, and every middle-class Montana homeowner and small business owner can see their own state property tax bills aren’t headed back down, rather increase permanently, compounding.
Back to D.C. I’d be remiss not to mention that I pray the real Joe Biden is brave enough to free 80-year-old Leonard Peltier from prison, much like the president pardoned his own son. After 50 years, freedom for Peltier would be a courageously decent act.
“God bless us, every one!” said Tiny Tim Cratchit offering as a Christmas-dinner blessing symbolizing Scrooge’s change of heart in the 1843 story “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. Show us mercy America, we’re just people trying to live and get by.
Thanks for being friends, for acting kindly to neighbors, and helping those amongst us who simply need a little respite during the cold holiday season. Montana is not DC Comics, and not D.C. Yet you’ll undoubtably have to stand up to protect your values come the New Year and relearn to lean on trusted friends for strength and solidarity.