Debt and taxes

ACCORDING TO Joan Vennochi ("Let the people pick their poison," Op-ed, Sept. 23), I helped push Bay Staters to the juncture of the road on casino gambling because I "led the antitax crusade that resulted in the passage of Proposition 2 1/2." I'm sure that we 59 percent of the voters who desired to limit the property tax weren't thinking in 1980 that casino gambling was the answer to the state's extraordinarily high tax burden. After all, most states had lower tax burdens yet no gambling or even lotteries at that time.

Despite what Vennochi suggests, taxes is not "a dirty word" to us when they're reasonable with good results. However, the following is a dirty phrase: extraordinary taxes that are used to provide public employee pension and health insurance benefits that we private-sector taxpayers must provide but will never have ourselves. The choice today is even higher taxes, casino gambling, or reform of a government system that exists to take unusually good care of itself instead of providing good services. Let's do choice number three now, before we debate the other two.

BARBARA ANDERSON
Executive director
Citizens for Limited Taxation
Marblehead

JOAN VENNOCHI suggests putting the choice of higher taxes or casino gambling to a vote. But why would people vote to raise their taxes given the opportunity to further exploit the minority of taxpayers who gamble? Gambling problems fall disproportionately on alcoholics, people with low incomes, the elderly, racial minorities, teenagers, and the emotionally needy. As George Bernard Shaw put it, "A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."

TOM LARKIN, Bedford

The writer, a psychologist, works with recovering addicts.