Jefferson Review

"Your Liberty is Our Interest"

Home /  Archives / Links / Quotes / Book Reviews / Advertise /Contact us / Subscribe / Calendar

Library Taxes, Amobi Okoye, and Hopeless Hawpe

By Theresa Camoriano

Library Taxes – At the same time that Kentucky’s governor is trying to provide tax breaks to attract business to the state, Louisville is considering raising taxes to provide special funding for libraries, which would help drive business out of the city.  Good libraries are important.  So are providing police and fire protection and filling potholes.  Louisville’s mayor and city council need to do their jobs and make the tough decisions in order to live within their means.  If they want to dedicate a certain percentage of the city’s existing occupational tax revenue to libraries, that is fine, but raising tax rates would result in less tax revenue in the long run, because it would prevent the growth that would otherwise occur.

If anyone wants to talk about earmarking funds, Louisville ought to be demanding that the funds it sends to Frankfort be earmarked for Louisville.  If the state were not draining its funds, Louisville would have enough money for gold-plated libraries and even for tax breaks. Then it would be much more able to attract business and be the engine that provides growth and jobs for the state.  

Councilman Hal Heiner has worked out a plan to provide the funding the libraries want without having to raise taxes.  He is doing the hard work that residents should demand of all their city council members, and he is taking plenty of heat from the people who want to raise taxes.  Louisville’s residents, and the people who live outside of Louisville but pay occupational taxes there, are lucky to have him. 

Okoye – Amobi Okoye, a twenty-year-old native of Nigeria and former University of Louisville  football player, just signed an NFL contract with the Houston Texans worth $17.6 million. Congratulations to him on his outstanding success!  He has a very promising future, and his hard work is paying off.  The Texans are lucky to get him.  Is this the land of opportunity, or what!?

Hopeless Hawpe – David Hawpe continues to malign freedom and the free market in his most recent diatribe.  He thinks we are too immoral and stupid to decide for ourselves how to spend the money we earn, and we can’t even let the naming rights for an arena go to the highest bidder in order to ease our tax burden.  Instead, we need morally superior people like David Hawpe, Ernie Fletcher, Mitch McConnell, and John Yarmuth to decide for us how to spend the money we earn and what names to put on the arenas and other buildings they force us to buy.  No doubt they would find their own names to be most appealing!

Weather (Louisville) / Mapquest /  White Pages / Business Search / CNN / Dictionary / E-card / MSN