Monday, February 28, 2005 at the Minnesota State Capitol make your voice heard in support of public education. Public schools are at risk. Inadequate funding from the Minnesota Legislature is forcing schools throughout the state to lay off staff and cut programs. 
A STATEWIDE RALLY for PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING organized by the City Pages interview David Cay Johnston provides some of the reason, 
The steady trend of tax changes in the United States – I argue starting in 1983, that’s the year I picked, although you can make some arguments for 1981 – has been to shift the burden of taxes off those who are the greatest recipients of the benefits of society and onto the middle class and the upper middle class. And we’ve seen during this era this explosion of income at the very top that is not taking place in any other advanced economy. Now, taxes are not the only reason for this, but they are clearly a very important factor. I don’t know if you are aware of this but there is a growing argument being made among the radical right to end public education because, like social security and like Medicare, that’s socialism. If you want your child to be educated you should pay for it directly out of your own pocket, goes the argument. On the one hand you can say, “Oh this is a fringe movement and there’s no broad political support.” Well, nobody would have thought you could have the kind of tax cut or social security changes Bush is proposing 15 years ago. I find it frustrating going to buy items at a store where the clerks can’t even operate a cash register with numbers on it, so they have to put picture symbols on them. Imagine a world that’s that illiterate.
There’s a theory called starve the beast, that the only way to change the government is to cut off the revenue for it.
Edmund Burke, in his 1793 letter, which is the founding document of the modern conservative movement, famously said the revenue of the state is the state. If you want to get rid of programs that you regard as inappropriate – social security, Medicaid, Medicare, public education, public health, arts, humanities, and probably for that group corporate welfare and agricultural subsidies – then one way to do that is to strip the government of revenues . . . I think that we can be a wealthier society. But the rules that we have created are funneling all of the gains to a very narrow group of people. It is not just through their hard work. A lot of them got there by luck, by corruption, or by simply writing the government’s rules.
In other words there’s a reason it’s difficult to convince these radical Republicans that tax cuts to the rich need to be reversed so they pay their fair share and that is they don’t believe in it. Not only do they not believe the rich should pay taxes they don’t believe in public schools. This is what we are up against. This is why we must stand together and let our legislators know what we think of their plans to under mine our public institutions.
Back to the City Pages article:
In recent years, income tax rates have been reduced for all Minnesotans.
A decade ago, Minnesota’s tax system was deemed proportional; regardless of their level of wealth, all residents of the state paid about the same share of their income in taxes. In 1996, that ranged from 12 to 13.1 percent. At the time, welfare reform was pushing poor people into the workforce, and the system’s overall fairness drew praise from around the country for providing generous credits to families struggling to become self-sufficient. For families with the lowest incomes, the system actually functioned as an income support system.
Of course those were the years when Minnesota ran a budget surplus, and for the most part its relatively prosperous citizens were delighted to find their taxes cut and part of the state’s savings account parceled back out in the form of rebates. With the notable exception of advocates for public health care, child care, and education, hardly anyone noticed as the tax system began to skew regressive.
By 2003, the wealthiest Minnesotans paid a lesser share of their incomes in taxes than many middle-class families. Indeed, that year the lowest effective tax rate was for the wealthiest 1 percent. Projections through 2005 show this trend accelerating, according to the Minnesota Budget Project, an effort of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits.
In a related cover story by Britt Robson, he explains the results of this policy: “Minnesota Eats Itself,” January 19, 2005
State Taxes Reflect National Trend: Put the Burden on the Middle
(MN Dept of Revenue statistics graphed by MN Budget Project)