Fire This Columnist
Like hard-driving, Type-A, highly-motivated, self-starters everywhere, I’m always looking to move up in my career. Unfortunately, like my house, my column is stuck in Scituate, far from the limelight. Fame, fortune, and syndication, that’s what I want - The Outer Marker appearing in hundreds of newspapers around the world. Problem is, I have to get myself fired from this job first.
Fortunately for me, getting my employer to hate me won’t be difficult because I don’t like them very much. Not the Community Newspaper folks, who are, of course, sweethearts, but the big guys, the corporate mother-ship - Fidelity. If you’ve been paying attention to the news lately, you know that Fidelity has taken the road to riches that Raytheon blazed - sticking up state government at gunpoint to get the kind of tax break that other businesses (like self-employed columnists) can only dream of. In short, the powers-that-be at Fidelity have threatened to move a bunch of jobs to Rhode Island if they don’t get a tax cut. For obvious reasons, Fidelity executives, and their hostages in state government present this naked tax-giveaway as an example of business and government working together to keep existing jobs in state, but the stain of extortion sticks to the whole transaction like fish guts on a wooden deck.
The assertion that we should use tax breaks to ‘compete’ with states like Rhode Island, South Dakota or Mississippi is stupid, and is only made by people who stand to benefit whether we win the competition or not. Fidelity’s interest is obvious. If we ‘compete’ they get money, a lot of it, no matter what happens. And simply for agreeing to tinker with the tax code, state legislators get to be ‘players’ in the big-money games. You can’t be a ‘player’ if you’re bound by archaic notions of fairness.
From a taxpayers point of view, state government’s fascination with this concept is hard to fathom. For one thing, the threat is usually empty. Businesses don’t want to move. In fact, they hate the idea. If Fidelity really wanted to be in Rhode Island, they’d be there now. The very choice of Rhode Island as ‘stalking horse’ is a dead-giveaway. “Let’s not pick a place too far from Boston in case they call our bluff.” Do you really think the suits from Congress Street want to haul their pinstripes down 95 on a regular basis? I don’t.
Even more important though, the jobs Fidelity is threatening us with can’t be retained at any price. It’s like a kid threatening to cry. There’s nothing anyone can do to stop it. As any mother knows, even trying to appease a demand like that is self-defeating. It validates the threat, and hands the little thug a weapon that he will have to use again. After all, what successful businessman ever voluntarilly abandons a strategy that works?
My response to The Fidelity Bailout Bill would be based on the mother and child model. If I were Governor, Speaker of the House, or even just some schmuck legislator, I’d say something like this. “Geez Ned, I’d love to hear all about your tax-break bill, but we have a bunch of other bills in the queue that I’d like to run by you first. One raises the tax on income over $200,000 per year to 50%. Another puts a special surtax on mutual fund companies. There’s a third that raises the excise tax on pleasure boats to $200 per thousand for boats valued at more than $80,000. Oh yeah, and the last one prohibits one company from owning more than five local newspapers. Pretty exciting stuff, huh? Now, what was that tax-break bill you were gonna tell me about?” If only state legislators retained some of the common sense they were born with.
The entirely predictable fallout from the state’s craven capitulation to Fidelity began before the bill was even signed into law. The insurance people have lined up at the trough, and every other overfed industry in the state will be close behind. What will we tell them? Your jobs aren’t as important as Fidelity’s? Yeah, right.
What fascinates me in this political mugging, is the idea that somewhere in this big company, there has to be one guy who understands what an obscene gesture this bill is. Where does he live? What neighborhood supports the notion that sticking up the neighbors is okay? I just want to know so that I can remember to keep my doors locked if I happen to drive through there.
Next week: the top-ten loudest powerboats in Scituate Harbor.
John Rodley is a special interest group that is lobbying hard for a state tax break for local columnists. The most obvious benefit of keeping him in Massachusetts is The Scituate Page: http://www.channel1.com/users/ajrodley/Scituate
Possible pull-quotes:
the stain of extortion sticks to the whole transaction like fish guts on a wooden deck
From a taxpayer’s point of view, state government’s fascination with this concept is hard to fathom.
The entirely predictable fallout from the state’s craven capitulation to Fidelity began before the bill was even signed into law.
The insurance people have lined up at the trough, and every other overfed industry in the state will be close behind.