THE POWER TRUST PLANTS A NEW ONE
McMillin, Miles
Public Power News The Power Trust Plants A N ew One By Miles McMillin IN CONNECTION with a rapidly developing fight over municipal acquisition of the light and gas company here at Madison, Wis.,...
...There are two cases now pending which illustrate how determined local governments are to fight federal encroachments in this field...
...It Wouldn't End In Congress The...
...The courts have traditionally recognized it as an integral part of our dual system of government...
...There are hundreds of cities and towns in the South for whom TVA and public ownership have brought solvency for the first time in many years...
...Suppose, says the pro-utility Wisconsin State Journal in its frantic scratching to dissipate the impression that it is more concerned with the welfare of the eastern holding companies than the welfare of the people of Madison—just suppose that Congress decides to tax the revenues of municipally owned public utilities...
...fight, of course, would not end in Congress, assuming that the power lobby negotiated the passage of a bill which it has yet not had the guts even to propose...
...Public Power News The Power Trust Plants A N ew One By Miles McMillin IN CONNECTION with a rapidly developing fight over municipal acquisition of the light and gas company here at Madison, Wis., an interesting question concerning federal taxation of utility revenues has been raised...
...And the Southern Democrats come, for the most part, from areas where TVA is operating...
...What Chance Is There...
...Federal taxation on those revenues would be tantamount to flirting with another Civil War...
...In its screwy assertion of federal tax power, the Madison paper could have been no more ridiculous if it had raised the possibility that Congress might pass legislation to levy taxes on the tax revenues of states* counties, and cities...
...It should be challenged...
...Proponents of acquisition, in addition to pointing out that the city will save some $600,000 in profits which the holding companies now siphon out of Madison annually, have also stressed the point that under public ownership the rate payers would be spared the payment of more than $300,000 a year in federal taxes...
...Where would the people of Madison be then...
...There is the very substantial legal problem of getting around the constitutional immunity from federal taxing power that the functions of state and local agencies enjoy...
...Admitting that Congress today is riding the reactionary swing and that the power lobby is growing stronger every day, the idea, in the realm of political possibilities, is little less than'preposterous...
...In one case the Port of New York Authority has challenged the constitutionality of the power of the United States Treasury to levy a tax even on the income derived by an individual from bonds issued by a governmental agency...
...Anyone who has had his eyes open in the last few years knows that reactionary measures of the kind the State Journal allegedly fears, depend upon the Southern Democratic bloc for passage...
...These are, of course, important cases, but even if the courts should find in favor of the Treasury it is hardly conceivable that they would constitute precedents for the frightful extremes to which papers like the Wisconsin State Journal have carried their pathological fear of progress...
...Against the first point the private ownership gang has rallied all the old familiar cries of "communist," "un-American," etc...
...Against the latter they have raised a barrier of frenzied patriotism and some hazy syllogisms about federal taxing power which, at best, are a fair cross-section of what one might reasonably expect to hear at a Junior League tea...
...Actually, what chance is there of Congress taking such action...
...It is not difficult to imagine what would happen to one of these Congressmen if he supported a proposal of that nature...
...Ordinarily, it is the policy of this paper not to impose on its readers the more irresponsible flights of imagination in which power trust writers have a habit of indulging, but the State Journal has raised a point which is probably being carefully planted by the plun-derbund wherever there is a drive for public ownership going on...
...And the Delaware River Joint Commission is challenging the authority of the Treasury to impose a documentary stamp tax on bonds issued by it...
Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 45
