“I didn’t raise taxes. I didn’t raise taxes.” [BIGOT ALERT]

I love Steve Lindstrom cartoons in the Trib. His is a very stripped down strip. No clutter just simple visual metaphors. Today’s was another smart strip which I regret the Trib does not feature on its website for me to link to.

It was about the recently chopped up homestead tax credit which I’d forgotten about when I blogged about the costs of school operating levies yesterday. I’d forgotten, because its hard to keep up with the GOP these days. Republicans took it away and poor homeowners will be hit particularly hard leading to a 5.7% increase in Duluth Area property taxes. This at a time when the County is bumping up its property taxes and the School District is asking the state to grant it a $15 million increase in Red Plan – with no vote of course, although the School Board will be asking voters for additional operating levies in a referendum.

Lindstrom’s cartoon showed a cursing homeowner perched on his home’s roof watching as a smug Elephant, Republican legislators, walks away with his ladder labled “homestead credit.” The Pachyderm is repeating to himself, “I didn’t raise taxes.” It was ludicrous as a surgeon assuring himself that he didn’t make a patient limp by amputating his leg.

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