Burnt Orange Report

How well funded will our Schools be?

By Byron LaMasters

Well, under Rick Perry's plan, our school funding will be directly tied to people like Vanity, Destiny and Rio. That's how the New York Times puts it:

How much money Texas spends to teach children reading, writing and arithmetic may soon depend in part on how successful women like Vanity, Destiny and Rio of the Yellow Rose, a topless bar in this state capital, are in attracting customers.

Gov. Rick Perry called the Legislature into special session Tuesday to change the way public education is financed in Texas. He wants to give billions of dollars in property tax reductions to the most affluent homeowners while making up part of the revenue loss through a vast expansion of legal gambling, increasing cigarette taxes by $1 a pack, raising taxes on alcoholic drinks and collecting a tax of at least $5 each time a patron enters a topless bar.

The governor's plan faces an uncertain future, but it seems likely that Texas will adopt at least some of his "sin tax" proposals. Mr. Perry is a Republican, and Republicans have comfortable majorities in both houses of the Legislature.

[...]

A tax on admission to topless bars is just fine with two of the three dancers at the Yellow Rose, which is in a brightly painted cinder block building in a neighborhood marked by derelict automobiles and failed retail stores. The dancers would give only first names.

Vanity, 26, who said she expected to start a new job as a United States marshal within days, said she was "all for more school funding."

Destiny, 23, a mother of two, said that an admission tax would not reduce demand for her services because "men are men."

But an older dancer saw it differently. Rio, 32, a mother and homeowner who said she had a bachelor's degree in art, said she was appalled by the governor's proposal. She characterized it as immoral because it linked "adult entertainment" with school children and because she saw it as a tax increase on the women like herself, who she said lack political influence.

"This is the lowest thing they could do," Rio said. "The governor wants to give the owners of the biggest houses a tax break and he wants women who have to take their clothes off for money to pay for it."

I'm still not sure how I feel about all this. "Sin taxes" are usually the easiest taxes for politicians to propose because the people taxed by them are usually unorganized and most people don't have too much of a problem with taxes on what is often unhealthy behavior. On the other hand, "sin taxes" disproportionately effect low income people and families, and give further breaks to people at the top (with the proposal to lower property taxes). In essence, it's a regressive tax proposal which I am generally inclined to categorically oppose. Parts of the proposal such as allowing for people to use credit cards to gamble are just asinine, but I don't have much of a problem with the $1 per pack cigarette tax (but then again, I don't smoke either). I guess there is one thing to look forward to if all of this passes. I can just see strip clubs running ads urging people to come see Vanity, Destiny and Rio to help the kids! At the very least, it'll be good for a quick laugh.

Posted by Byron LaMasters at April 21, 2004 12:38 PM | TrackBack