People who think redistributing wealth is the primary function of government don't usually let little details get in their way. Sen. Joe Biden's slip late this week -- "We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people," Biden said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America" -- may have been overwhelmed by the Bush Administration's welfare for banks scheme, but in terms of sheer hubris, they have nothing on small towns in Kentucky who have a nifty little way of lying about their population size in order to enact and keep a certain restaurant tax. Here is one example:
"Elizabethtown still classifies itself as a fourth-class city, making it technically eligible for a restaurant tax. According to the population-based city class system, a fourth-class city has a population of less than 8,000. Opponents of the restaurant tax point out that Elizabethtown’s population exceeded 20,000 in 1997, and had a population of 22,452 in the 2000 U.S. Census. Cities with a population of 20,000 to 99,999 are second-class cities per the population-based class system. Second-class cities are not authorized by Kentucky law to enact a restaurant tax. Elizabethtown’s population is now well over 24,000."
While it is debatable if anything can stop the pick-pocketing on the federal level, stopping such blatant fraud in our small towns is a matter of pulling together a much smaller number of people. With social networking web sites gaining significantly in popularity and the movement for government transparency on the internet picking up steam, motivated Kentuckians have at their disposal some powerful tools to change the status quo.
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