Your editorial of last week begins with the suggestion that “voters have reason to question whether the tax cap is good for Long Island,” which begs a fundamental question, namely, who is responsible for the education of children?
Assuming that the family unit is a bedrock of civilization and culture, it logically follows that parents are responsible for the educational needs of their children, most certainly while they’re minors.
Whether parents choose to assume the task themselves, through home schooling, or choose to allow a third party to perform this task for them, in either a private or public setting, is a function of their means.
Regardless, the notion that everyone, including grand parents, neighbors, friends, unrelated citizens and other voters are obligated to support the education of anyone’s children is simply a ridiculous Fabian Socialist fantasy.
This self-evident truth is anathema to the education establishment and their sycophants who relentlessly promote the nostrum that a ‘social contract’ requires any and all to support schooling, because it’s necessary for the advancement of society – a dubious piety and very questionable assertion.
Without logic to buttress their position, these ax grinders resort to emotional cliché’s such as ‘you’re hurting the kiddies,’ implying selfishness while promoting guilt; predictable thinking of the leftist mind set.
In your editorial, the Herald-Courier asserts that ‘…..any requirement beyond a simple majority (to override) is unfair. It certainly is undemocratic.’
Perhaps it is, but what is most certainly undemocratic and discriminatory is making one class of taxpayer, the homeowner, responsible for the primary financial support of the New York State public schools system.
Many states have had both the good sense and the will to abandon this 100-year old tax anachronism in favor of a broader, fairer and more universal approach.
Suggest your paper get on the bandwagon and support an appropriate and long overdue overhaul of the current system.
After all, haven’t newspapers always been the catalyst for reform in the tradition of Hearst, Greeley and Pulitzer?
Just think of the upside. No more hysterical letters to the editor raging over whether a tax cap increase of 2.03948576 percent is either too high or too low to meet the needs of the school district. Wow!
Tom Coffey,
Herricks
