Richard Starr, child of the '70s.
That '70s Show Iwas actually thinking about Jerry Falwell before he died last week. A few days earlier, during my daily commute, I saw the golden-oldie anti-Falwell sticker on the bumper of the car...
...The worst part is the posturing every year by the board, which trumpets the fact that it is "reducing tax rates...
...I have no special theory about why the obsessions of the '70s have proved so durable...
...Last week—in what seemed like another blast from the 1970s—the commandant of the Marine Corps lowered the drinking age for leathernecks from 21 to 18—both for official functions on military bases and on leaves abroad...
...Jarvis was one of the great mad-as-hell activists of the 1970s, leading the property-tax slashing Proposition 13 initiative that California voters passed 65-35 percent in a June 1978 referendum that presaged the success Ronald Reagan would enjoy as a tax-cutter...
...And this wasn't a faded bumpersticker on a 1980 Volvo...
...Not a leisure suit, though, or bell-bottoms or six-inch-long collars—some aspects of the 1970s are far too hideous ever to be allowed back in our lives...
...I'll sign a petition, I'll send money—for the good of the cause, I'll even wear a sandwich board...
...I base my prediction not just on the fact that we seem to be living through a replay of the 1970s, but on a highly scientific sample of one...
...Nancy Pelosi is yammering on about "gouging" at the gas pumps...
...Believe it or not, a couple of days ago I even heard joking about the metric system on a sports talk radio show...
...And what do we have to show for their binge...
...The Washington Post reported last fall that the county was curtailing one program known as Community Spokes...
...Richard Starr...
...But single-digit rate reductions when combined with double-digit increases in real estate prices have still produced hundreds of millions a year in new revenue for them to spend...
...But I do have a prediction to make...
...Fans of the classic Zucker brothers comedy Airplane...
...They'd spent $500,000 on this boondoggle over the previous five years, but according to a county official, "the number of regular participants had dwindled to three...
...How long till Mothers Against Drunk Driving goes on the warpath...
...Thanks to the real estate bubble and the connivance of the aforementioned liberals of Arlington—who have controlled my county government for the last quar-ter-century—my property taxes have more than doubled in the last 10 years...
...Were the late Eisenhower years similarly a topic of lively banter a quarter-century after the fact in the mid-1980s...
...The latter are referred to as "traffic-calming measures"—but in my experience they aggravate more drivers than they calm, and are no doubt proving a windfall for the auto repair shops specializing in springs and shocks...
...So, to the next Howard Jarvis, wherever you are out there, you can count on me...
...It was a newish sticker on a newish car...
...To be precise, not only have the taxes gone up with inflation, they've also increased by an additional 6 percent a year...
...It won't be long till the next Howard Jarvis bursts on the scene and leads a property tax revolt, the likes of which we haven't seen for 30 years...
...To the contrary: Until it came to its senses, my county had placed a value on that relationship to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars per turn of the spoke wrench...
...A few days earlier, during my daily commute, I saw the golden-oldie anti-Falwell sticker on the bumper of the car ahead of me: "The Moral Majority Is Neither...
...Lots of "state of the art" school buildings (a fellow Arling-tonian jokes that he reaches for his wallet every time he hears the words "state of the art" or "world class" emanate from our county board) although with no evidence of higher educational achievement, and new speed bumps every 20 feet on our residential streets...
...Okay, MADD is not quite a '70s group, but close—they were founded in May 1980...
...As the Post told it, the program "gave Arlington high school and middle school students the chance to learn [repair] skills from an experienced bike enthusiast...
...The Moral Majority's heyday is 25 years behind us...
...Jimmy Carter departed Washington 26 years ago yet managed to provoke a passionate back-and-forth between friends and detractors of his administration with his book on the Middle East last year...
...Not that I recall...
...One parent of a participant spoke up to say: "I think you can't place a value on the mentoring relationship...
...the organization proper ceased to exist 18 years ago, yet its brilliantly needling name lives on and apparently continues to get under the skin of my liberal neighbors in Arlington, Virginia...
...Have you noticed how the politics of the 1970s seem to linger on well past their sell-by date...
...will remember Jarvis in his cameo role as the man in the taxi...
...You might think such an expenditure of public funds is indefensible, but you would be wrong...
Vol. 12 • May 2007 • No. 35
