Photo illustration by Getty Images.
At what point do the dollars become socialist?
It’s a crazy question that hardly makes sense, but welcome to politics beneath the Big Sky.
Yet, the question is a sincere one: At what point do government greenbacks turn into Soviet red?
Last week, the Flathead County Commissioners appeared to close the door on accepting funds that would help alleviate just a bit of pressure on affordable housing in one of the least affordable corners of the state. It’s the kind of place where the average Montana household income makes a person eligible for subsidized housing. Flathead County’s median house price is $452,020, nearly doubling in four year’s time.
Undeterred, though, the Flathead County Commissioners have resisted accepting money that the other larger cities of Montana seemed to take gratefully from the state to help making the cost of living more affordable; money that, ahem, was given to them by a supermajority of Republican lawmakers in the Legislature.
The commissioners’ rationale is that the money represents a sort of creeping socialism, although the money is so small and the need is so great, that I’d like to think even clumsy socialists would prove to be more effective at actually solving the problem.
County governments in Montana are largely pass-through extensions of the state government, by design. They are creatures of limited means, and can only raise so much money from levies, cannot enact sales taxes, and don’t get to set property tax rates, if the last two years has taught us anything. They are often hamstrung and cash-starved, which makes the commission’s decision even harder to understand.
But these same county commissioners have complained about the state’s lack of funding for roads, law enforcement and jails. And they’re not wrong when they point out those gaping budget holes.
Yet, when the State of Montana sends places like Flathead County money to alleviate jails or help maintain roads, why don’t the commissioners stand on the principle of state socialism and being self-reliant on Flathead County to fix Flathead County’s problems? Where’s the creeping socialism in those cases? I mean: Why not make the people who use the roads pay for them? Why not privatize all jails and liquidate inmates’ assets to fund a service that the rest of us don’t use?
Absurd?
Certainly, but no less so than refusing the legitimate tax money designated to help people afford something as basic as housing and as necessary as workers are to a free, capitalist market.
How can county commissioners decide that some dollars coming from Helena are legitimate tax funds and others smack of socialism?
I’d suggest that what the commissioners aren’t saying is much more powerful than that tired line about socialism that’s trotted out anytime leaders want to scare people into not thinking too deeply about an issue. You know, just say something is socialism and it will torpedo an idea, while giving the appearance that you’re looking out for the public.
The larger issue is that the commissioners seem to view the housing crisis as a moral failing — people are just not working hard enough, or have been too careless with their money. Or they must have unreasonable expectations of such trifling things like a roof or a bedroom.
I suppose I understand their decision against the backdrop of a larger national picture in which we have rekindled our love of the ultra-wealthy oligarchs, where being unimaginably rich isn’t just a sign of material success, but a statement of character and righteousness. That is often coupled with a twisted religious message rooted in the gospel of prosperity despite Jesus Christ’s own admonition that the rich should sell everything they have and give it to the poor.
Somehow, we’ve been tricked into believing that the billions in their bank accounts are evidence of godly favor and so Flathead County Commissioners can almost be forgiven for being deceived that those who can’t afford the most basic necessities in life are morally flawed when money becomes more than an example of worldly success.
Meanwhile, those same commissioners have adopted specious justifications to accept other types of federal and state welfare funding in the name of good government.
Roads are just something we need in a big, old open place like Montana. There’s no one who doesn’t use roads, which, if you think about it, sounds pretty much like communism — people sharing the same public infrastructure, using the same paths, sharing the same space.
And, public safety? Well, you can’t be a Republican county commissioner and not love law and order. And, you can’t have law and order without paying for things like jails and police.
Montana’s libertarian streak often raises questions — interesting ones — about the intersection of government’s role in a person’s life. What role should the government play, and what basic necessities should it provide, and at what cost?
Yet, government, at its best, often does for people what cannot be done easily as individual parts — that means a postal service that delivers mail, a banking system that ensures a stable ebb and flow of money; and, recognizing that building a healthy workforce is the antithesis of socialism.
But setting aside the communists that seem to lurk in every shadow of the overheated minds of some politicians, it seems darn un-Montanan of the Flathead County Commissioners to refuse help to their neighbors when they have the means, and should understand the problem, and yet refuse to act.
And as residents in places like Kalispell struggle to afford the roof over their head or the other bills that go along with simply surviving, it must be a great comfort to know that if they’re hungry, homeless or freezing, that’s nothing more than what freedom apparently feels like.