By Mansfield Frazier
The problem of course is that when the new county government was put in place three years ago one of their first orders of business should have been to initiate a conversation with the team owners regarding renegotiating the lopsided contracts that totally rip off the public.
They failed miserably in their duty then, and will continue to fail if the Sin Tax passes. To say that public officials negotiated a rotten deal decades ago but that we have to live with the consequences of their ineptitude forever is downright silly.
However, with that said, I’m still keeping my opinion regarding passage of the Sin Tax to myself, and here’s why: I host a radio show on WTAM on Sunday evenings and invite proponents of both points of view to come on. It would not be fair for me to state my personal opinion one way or the other and then claim to be an impartial moderator. My guests deserve better than that.
But win or lose the opponents of the Sin Tax should hold a huge party in celebration of the fact ordinary, everyday citizens (and not of the kooky, rightwing extremist, Tea Party variety) got organized, and then stood up to ask pertinent, reasonable questions. Their actions are good for democracy, which makes the whole debate beautiful.
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.