Give credit to the Bushites, for there is one thing they do quite well. They’re masters at framing the language of public discourse.
For instance, there is something once known as the “estate tax.” It affected less than 2 percent of the population, and it was about as painless as a tax can get, since it did not take from the earnings of any living person. Heirs wouldn’t get as much, perhaps, but it wasn’t money they had worked for. It was promoted as good social policy a century ago by a Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, who feared that vast accumulations of inherited wealth, passed down through generations, would create an unaccountable but powerful American aristocracy.
Put that way, it sounds just and reasonable. But call it the “death tax,” as the Bushites have, and it sounds like yet another grab by a greedy government that, not satisfied with taxing you throughout your life, also reached in after your departure from this mortal coil. And by framing it that way, the Bushites could build popular support for repeal – even among the vast majority of us whose taxes would rise to make up for the loss of revenue from the estate tax.
Consider the discussions of abortion. If, like a good conservative, you resist the encroachment of governmental power, especially into the interior of women’s bodies, then a good Bushite will tell you that you “favor the wanton murder of millions of innocent unborn children.”
Or if you wonder about whether the invasion and occupation of Iraq have improved American security, or the lives of the Iraqis, then the Bushites will come at you with “If you had your way, then a murderous tyrant like Saddam Hussein would have remained in power. Surely you cannot be in favor of that.”
Now there’s a new Bushite language hustle. If you’re dubious about a recent proposal, then you must be opposed to the education of children in rural America.
In days of yore, school districts in a given county received 25 percent of the proceeds of federal timber sales in those counties. For a variety of reasons, ranging from environmental concerns to a shortage of money to subsidize below-cost timber sales, those revenues have fallen in recent years.
The National Education Association observed that “Payments to some local schools have dropped to less than ten percent of their historic levels,” which has caused “elimination of extracurricular programs, cancellation of school meals programs, and postponement of desperately needed building repairs.”
And so, to make up for the money from timber sales, the Bush administration has proposed selling about 300,000 acres of public land. This would raise about $1 billion for rural schools to replace lost timber revenue.
Some of the land proposed for sale is managed by the U.S. Forest Service, and the agency says the parcels it plans to sell are isolated, expensive to manage, or do not fit the needs of the national forest system. “These are not the crown jewels we are talking about,” according to Mark Rey, undersecretary of agriculture who directs forest policy.
Other parcels fall under the Bureau of Land Management, and these are typically small parcels which would fetch high prices because they are near growing urban areas, and it’s land with little natural, historical or cultural value.
Many people beg to differ with this, arguing that such growing areas are those in most need of some public-land open space.
For my part, I look at the astronomical housing prices in some rural resort communities surrounded by public land, and the consequent loss of community as the people who work there, like teachers and cops, are forced to commute long distances over winding, icy roads. The sale of some public lands, if done in a thoughtful way, could improve life in those mountain towns.
That’s a discussion worth having. I love having public land right next to town, but I also like living in a community, rather than a commuter destination. Some sort of balance should be possible in the great American tradition of compromise.
But that’s not the discussion we will have, thanks to the framing powers of the Bushites. Instead, you’ll be an enemy of rural education unless you support all these land sales.
Ed Quillen of Salida is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
