This topic [PA Museums Threatened by Harrisburg] is drifting badly away from railroad preservation into a debate on taxes. Let's get it back on track before I have to lock it.

With all due respect, when one seeks to preserve obsolete technologies (that are so because of a proven economic weakness -I like steam and 539/244/251/567/606/608 powered stuff, but they are generally industrial artifacts and not commercial fixed assets for a reason) it is IMPOSSIBLE not to have a discussion on taxes, because there will always be an certain impetus to seek the use of public money to finance such things, making our particular interest into a compelling general public interest.

Indeed the mechanics of this was illustrated just a few weeks ago with the thread entitled “URGENT: Railway Museums funding under threat TODAY” (September 15)

The concluding injunction:

Personal comments: my friends, this is as close as we will ever get to a single-issue gut check for our community. There is no one in this movement who has not directly benefited from the hundreds of projects funded by this program. This Coburn amendment directly targets RAILWAY MUSEUMS--not museums in general, RAILWAY MUSEUMS--singling us out as as the latest example of useless pork-barrel spending. And the window to act is tiny--essentially, today or never.

Please, I implore you, take the time to call your two Senators today and ask them politely to vote down any amendment offered by Senator Coburn to end funding for museums in the Transportation Enhancements program. If you have the time, tell a story about the educational and economic impact these grants have had in your community. If not, its fine to just make the general request. But now is the time to stand up. No one else will do it for us.

I note this thread incurred NO moderator intervention, despite similar philosophical musings and a less appropriate specific injunction to call (lobby) legislators (as if said politicians actually cared about a couple us calling them)

Personally, I tend to agree with NOT INCLUDING museum grants in transportation bills, because it’s misrepresentation of the purpose and scope of bill and its exactly the kind of opacity, not transparency that has allowed the government to spend its time dictating such things as the amount of water necessary to flush my toilet. Somehow, that particular preoccupation of Congress was so telling, they seemed so comfortable and familar with the topic. (No doubt because the maker(s) of the mini-flushers had a K street lobbyist(s) seeking to peddle otherwise commercially unviable porcelain as a compelling public interest)

Taxes, friends are the business end of the historic grant and John Marshall was indeed correct when he wrote "the power to tax involves the power to destroy" in his opinion In McCulloch v. Maryland. A tax on X, but not on Y, causes "subsitution effects" that can threaten an industry. In PA, we could not only reduce a loophole, but the overall sales tax rate, if we just taxed clothing. But we won't because the retail industry is a lot more powerful than museums and they understand that an additional 6% tax on a elastic good will kill their sales. As citizens and civic actors; we need to know this, let alone as participants in an industry that's always enamored of government money.

It’s wonderful to complain about not getting your slice of the pie and not worry about where the apples came from and I would suggest that people who submit to such appeals are afflicted with a form of fiscal Stockholm Syndrome.

Long before the current widespread realization that may laws are ridiculously lengthy pieces of legislation written in arcane legalese that legislators now openly admit they have no intention or capacity of reading before voting upon, something called the “Small Business Job Protection Act” (1996) was placed on my desk for light reading as its affected, among other things, qualified retirement plans (er, uh pensions in plain English) that were my bread and olive oil then,. As I poured through the tiny type that allowed its contents to be placed in a small book the size of a Readers Digest, (1996 was in the dark days before legislation was almost always distributed in pdf files) I realized only a politician could assert that its contents related to anything in the title and that contained within it was a myriad of wholly unrelated trinkets for specific legislators-and funding museums under the guise of "transportation" is just dishonest, something I oppose from that 13 year old trauma.


Indeed, long before there was "technology" (let alone obsolete technology), astute observers have understood how politicians have use the largesse of the public treasury to maintain the idle submission of the governed (or ruled in a nod to that infamous freudian slip of several months ago) with the financing of the baubles of their affections. The term bread and circuses or "panem et circenses" was coined by the Roman poet Juvenal in Satire X (10), millennia ago.

The questions of finance and administration are primary to preservation; more so than any technological question. No cash, no business. The greater the taxes, the greater incentive to seek fiscal solvency from bureaucrats, rather than from the public you serve. I note that the most dynamic and innovative organization that has representatives posting here, the one whose “latest from..” draws the oohs and ahhs. Perhaps that’s because they have machinists familiar with Sellers injectors, and things to please the public (I say this as a guy who heard a five year old with a lot of train miles under her belt say "this is the best train ride I've ever been on" when riding behind a most useful engine-and this kid's ridden behind two blue engines.) rather than grantwriters identifying “funding opportunities” and packing those requests in the lingua franca of the grantors, pandering to petty tyrants.

Moreover, can we blunt? Grants only benefit the best sounding supplicants, not everybody. Nor is a lot of government money a guarantee that something will (K-4) run.

The discussion of taxes may be fraught with controversy, but there's no need to lock it on the basis that it's irrelevant. There's nothing MORE relevant, because I think that if people had less of a tax burden, they'd spend more riding and preserving trains and we'd spend more time acquiring, fixing and operating things (how many threads in the last few years discussed scrapped locomotives, "junkyard" museums, exhausted parents not bringing kids to ride ol' 99, etc).

Distateful or irresolvable isn't irrelevant.

Thank you superheater for that wonderful post. I became an engaged citizen regarding politics in 2000 when I came to the realization that the purpose of my efforts in preservation is to ensure the existence of those objects that I care about over the long haul, and if I was serious about that I had better know a little bit about the very system of government that makes all of this possible.

It seems that all too often discussions regarding politics or the impact of government on all aspects of life are deemed "out of bounds" in the various forums and lists that I frequent. I do not understand why that is, as government has the greatest single impact on everything that we do. From EPA regulations making your diesel and steam locomotives contraband to pork barrel spending bills that take away your disposable income and weak eminent domain protections that can result in your organization being evicted from land that has been owned free and clear for decades, we had all better realize that it is the erosive, destructive power of government that poses a greater threat to our equipment than snow, rain and UV rays.

Wasn't an idea floated recently about changing tax laws regarding charitable contributions? Was it mentioned here? Why not? Have we ever discussed eminent domain? Is your museum located in a "blighted" area? City Fathers may want your land to give to a developer to put in a shopping center that will bring in more tax revenue than your gate admissions would ever generate. How about tort reform? How much does your facility pay in liability insurance because we have a system of laws that places such a high burden on property owners to protect both legal and illegal visitors from every conceivable and inconceivable harm? Each of these issues have the ability to cripple a non profit organization, but to bring up these issues would most certainly bring out a moderator with a stern warning to return to the discussion of more mundane and less polarizing topics. However they do warrant discussion if we are truly interested in the long term security of the institutions and collections that we have invested so much time in.

You are quite welcome.