Sounding Board -- LEFTERIS LAVRAKAS

After reading Joseph N. Bell’s niggling column on his emotional

involvement with the current administration’s tax rebate (“It’s nothing a

little ‘summer sillies’ won’t cure,” Aug. 23), I’ve come to the

conclusion that Bell’s use of “ill-gotten” was ill-natured and

ill-advised. (Perhaps he was “ill” when he wrote this diatribe.)

At any rate, I hasten to instruct the crusading author that the mere

fact that taxpayers received a rebate, however large or small, is a

political event of great significance. His sneering, almost contemptuous

appraisal is one that I do not buy nor does the majority of the public.

A syndicated columnist wrote “I suspect that the tax rebate checks

have helped Americans look more favorably at [President] Bush.” He makes

a further point that Bell seems to have missed: “Many people are coming

to realize that these checks are just the beginning of a reduced tax for

them that will go on and on.”

Perhaps no president put the question of government’s right to tax

better that Grover Cleveland. His words should be a guidepost for all

elected officials and more importantly, a rallying cry for the American

citizen:

“When more of the people’s sustenance is exacted through the form of

taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government and

expenses of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless

extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of a free

government.”

* LEFTERIS LAVRAKAS is a Costa Mesa resident.