GUEST APPEARANCE: The Inquiring Taxpayer’s Christmas concession |
Christmas may well be the most treasured holiday and holy day for a significant portion of the planet’s population. The Inquiring Taxpayer takes a peculiar delight in the role that taxes play in the Christmas narrative. Had Caesar Augustus not called for a census throughout the Roman Empire, Joseph and Mary would not have traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Augustus needed to know how many people lived in each province in order to adjust his tax levies accordingly. Things are much improved today. Governments employ census takers and property assessors and tax collecting bureaucracies to do the heavy lifting. The taxpayer never has to leave the comfort of home. For this, we should all give due thanks.
Giving thanks was much on my mind as I read a recent edition of the Finger Lakes Times. First and foremost, I was humbly thankful for the ego gratification of seeing one of my essays in print. Thankful that legions of thoughtful readers would enjoy my usual pearls of wisdom or, at least, that several lucky parakeets might enjoy having their cage bottoms lined with a freshly printed Page 1, Section C. (I don’t presume to speak for the day’s other columnists on this point).
Secondly, and to be serious much more foremost, I was thankful for the 2025 edition of the Community Giving section. While journalism is often analyzed in terms of its investigative and political role, its potential to highlight the “good news” is often overlooked. A well-produced newspaper section recognizing local organizations and volunteers who work........