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Toxic Air and Budgetspeak In Washington, Frankfort, and Louisville

By Theresa Fritz Camoriano

There has recently been a big flap about Louisville having the dirtiest, most dangerous air in the country.  Of course, we have not been given actual data comparing Louisville with other places for a wide range of pollutants or data proving that the pollutants in Louisville are more dangerous to human health than the pollutants in other places – we’re just supposed to take these “facts” on faith.  Forgive me for being skeptical, but after growing up near the heart of the petrochemical industry, where you could practically taste the air, I find these claims difficult to believe and would require much more evidence before publishing fear-mongering front page stories that try to scare people out of their wits.  Personally, I think the most toxic air is in Washington, D.C., and I have pretty good evidence to prove it. 

For example, in discussing the federal plan to cut taxes, people who have been breathing D.C. air for many years, such as Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt, refer to tax cuts as being “an expense”.  Almost anyone who normally breathes Louisville air can tell you the difference between income and expenses, and they understand that taxes are a form of income for the government, not an expense.  If these D.C. gentlemen can’t even tell the difference between income and expenses, can’t you just picture them trying to balance their checkbooks at home?  Now, the question is, could they balance their own checkbooks before they spent so many years breathing D.C. air?  If so, then it must be the toxic D.C. air that is getting to them.  No wonder Ernie Fletcher is so eager to get back to Kentucky!  As a doctor, he must recognize the serious problem with the D.C. air and wants to protect himself and his family by moving them back to Kentucky.

Not only do the long-time D.C. air-breathers have great difficulty understanding the difference between income and expenses, but they also seem to have trouble with the concept of a “tax rebate”.  They complain that the current tax cut plan does not give a “tax rebate” to people who have not paid any taxes.  But how can you “re-bate” something that was never “bated” in the first place?  Anyone from Louisville who has sent in the proof of purchase and receipt from an electronic gadget with a rebate attached understands that you don’t get the rebate unless you buy the gadget first!  Same thing with tax rebates – you don’t get them unless you pay taxes first.  Even those of us who spent a good portion of our youth attending government schools understand this basic concept – but apparently it escapes people who have spent many years breathing the toxic Washington, D.C. air! 

Of course, there are a few people breathing Louisville air who do seem to have cognitive problems that might be attributed to the corrosive effects of Louisville air pollution, but we can’t be sure.  For example, there was a recent editorial in The Courier-Journal saying it is terrible that the Kentucky legislature did not raise taxes, because now people who want to attend events at the fairgrounds are going to have to pay an additional dollar for parking, and the tuition of students at the University of Louisville will go up.  Apparently, they don’t think the people who use a service should be the ones who carry the load in supporting the cost of that service.  They seem to think that a stock clerk in a Piggly Wiggly on the other side of the state should be taxed to keep parking fees low at the state fairgrounds in Louisville, and a mechanic in Owensboro, who paid for his own education, should be taxed to subsidize some frat boy at U of L.  While those editorial positions do not seem very rational to many of us, the people writing the editorials do not sign their names or tell us how much time they have spent breathing D.C. air, so we really cannot use them to help us in our analysis.

One datapoint for the effect of Louisville’s air is Mayor Jerry Abramson, who has been breathing it for many years and who has just presented a budget that seems to be pretty sensible.  He has been able to recognize the difference between income and expenses, to understand that expenses need to be reduced, and to make some rational proposals for reducing the expenses, such as reducing the work force, farming out many functions to competitive private entities, and severely limiting capital projects.  Now we will see what the metro council does with the budget, which will give us 26 more datapoints for Louisville air-breathers. 

Of course, I realize that this analysis is not very scientific, but neither is the one that created the huge, fear-mongering headlines last week.  Still, to be on the safe side, and for the sake of your health and sanity, I recommend that you keep your trips to D.C. very short and try not to take very deep breaths while you are there!

“We easily forget that smog is the price of freedom of our streets from manure, and from the flies and diseases it brought.”
-- Daniel J. Boorstin

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