A mission to complete

Let’s fulfill Bud Canada’s dream

— EVERY YEAR, a stubborn state senator from Hot Springs would rise up to push his impossible dream. The most likable and reasonable of men, on this one issue he would not budge, he would not falter. Despite defeat after defeat, he refused to throw in the towel. His was a pipe dream, the cynics told him. His idea of lifting the state sales tax on groceries would never become reality. The tax had reached an outrageous 6 percent at one point, but the state’s movers-and shakers didn’t seem to mind. After all, they could easily afford it.

The gentleman from Hot Springs was handed all sorts of excuses every time he set forth on his quixotic mission: The state just couldn’t afford his dream. (It might get in the way of his colleagues’ pet projects, and legislators do love their pork.) Nobody in Arkansas really objected to regressive taxes anyway, or maybe even understood why they are so unjust. Didn’t a tax on necessities just hurt the poor? And the poor-unlike major industries and the colleges and universities and public officials and everybody who was anybody-didn’t have much of a lobby.The old senator was just being contrary. He was getting to be a bore with his one unkillable idea. Even if he was chairman of the Senate’s revenue and taxation committee, his dream would never come true. . . .

They told Bud Canada all those things and more, but the gentleman from Hot Springs would not give up. On the contrary, he redoubled, retripled his efforts. After all, he had played football for the Razorbacks in his youth; he was even a Hall of Famer. He was not the sort who gives up easily. Especially when convinced he was fighting for principle, for a moral imperative as old as Thou Shalt Not Grind the Faces of the Poor.

And slowly, bit by bit, year by year, percent by percent, the rest of the state began to come around to his way of seeing things. After all, he wasn’t asking for much. Just simple justice. All he wanted was for Arkansas to clear its conscience, and get ride of this cruel tax on the necessities of life. Just as so many other states had done, the fair minded ones.

Still, the going was slow. When a statewide election was held on his proposal, everybody on the state’s teat campaigned against it lest the tax money stop flowing to their own little bailiwick. Even “progressive” groups were less than enthusiastic about this kind of all too tangible progress, and a lot of so called liberals decided they were all for soaking the poor after all, at least if the money went to their favorite interests.

And so Bud Canada and his fellow idealists lost again, but they never lost hope. They just kept on keeping on, slowly chipping away at the meanest tax on the books. Till they finally, step by step, got half of it repealed. And still justice, justice they pursued.

Bud Canada would not live to reach the goal line. He had been in hospice care and Monday morning the news arrived of his death at 84. But the old boy had come a long way down the field. If you seek his monument, just check out your receipt the next time you pick up a cart full of groceries. The state sales tax was halved in 2007, and this year the Ledge shaved another penny off it-till now it’s down to 2 percent. It’s still the shame of Arkansas, but before his death Bud Canada had come closer to his goal than the cynics ever thought possible.

The man spent 27 trusted years in the state Senate, but no piece of legislation was dearer to his heart, or guts. For Eugene (Bud) Canada was a fighter. And, more important, a fighter for a noble cause. Other legislators might have been more sophisticated; none had a clearer sense of right and wrong, or a greater willingness to fight for the right.

By now surely most of us recognize the simple justice of his cause. And we’re as tired as he was of the same old excuses for injustice he was offered-and refused to accept. Now is the time to fulfill his dream. When the bill to completely end this abominable sales tax on groceries is introduced at the next opportunity, as it should be, let’s call it the Bud Canada Memorial Act. He didn’t give up on his dream; neither should Arkansas.

Editorial, Pages 18 on 12/23/2009

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