Rate Increase Counts

The board of a very small government agency--the Channel Islands Beach Community Services District--just passed a budget resulting in a $4-per-month water rate increase. Rate increases are so routine that most people do not even take note. They just write out the check and go back to work or to the TV set.

Always, the offhand dismissal to protesters is that this is only $4 a month, only a half-cent sales tax increase, just a mere $1 a year more on your auto registration fee, really nothing at all. Only a little mandate here, a small regulation there. In this way the Lilliputian threads bind the giant down.

Remember the movie in which the exasperated man finally threw open the window and yelled, “I’m not going to take this anymore.” Are we already so firmly bound that such a cry would be only a joke: “Look at that fool thinking he can do anything but lie there trussed up like a turkey.”

RUTH JOHNSON

Oxnard