A half-cent sales tax, a dispute over a slush fund and a page still saying coming up when the polls had long closed.
FRESNO, California – It is the second morning after the vote, and I am on the sofa of Marguerite’s Uncle Teo, wrapped in a blanket decorated with a large embroidered eagle. We have driven out for a long weekend because Marguerite said the Central Valley “has the best light in America”. It is raining. I have decided the eagle and I are in this together.
Update 1: Uncle Teo Explains the Roads
Uncle Teo is a man of strong views and slow speech, and he has spent a lot of the past two days explaining Fresno County roads to me. I now know that a road here can have a name, a number, and a funding source, and that the third is the one that matters. “People love a road,” he said, “until you ask them to pay for it.” It is the truest thing I have heard since I arrived, and it applies equally to Wales and to anywhere with a pothole.
He also told me that the ballot had a thing on it called Measure S. I asked whether this was a measure of the sort in which you check how long something is. He said no, and put the kettle on, which he had bought specially for me and which is also a saucepan.
Update 2: What Measure S Is, As Far As the Page Will Tell Me
I did what I always do when confused, which is open a news page and read it with the intensity of a person defusing a bomb. A local TV live blog on election night describes Measure S as a proposed half-cent transportation sales tax that would replace Measure C and fund Fresno County road projects.
The page also reports a dispute. Critics call a part of the measure a “slush fund” for nonprofits and private organizations. Supporters dispute that characterization. I will say plainly that I do not know who is right, and neither does anyone who has only read one page, which is the situation of about ninety percent of voters on any measure, anywhere, in any year.
What I can say is that I went looking for a half-cent coin. There is no half-cent coin. America has a cent, and then it has the idea of half a cent, which is an idea so small it can only exist on a receipt. Uncle Teo said, “That’s what the register is for.” I think the register may be the real constitution.
The Page, Which Is Still on the Same Evening
Here is the part I found beautiful. The live blog is marked as last updated on Thursday, two days after the vote, but its newest entry is from the small hours of Election Day itself. It lists a city council race as pending and gives no vote totals whatsoever. It reads like an invitation to a party that has finished. A cheerful schedule promises local coverage from 3:30 and results from 8, and all I could think was that the page had not been told, and so it sat there smiling at an empty room.
I looked at it for several minutes, the way you look at a friend who is still waving after the bus has left. I do not say this to criticise the station. Anyone who has had to turn live news into a web page knows that the page is always the last to hear.
Update 3: A Short Argument About Sales Tax
Let me explain to readers in Britain how a shop works here. The price on the shelf is a suggestion. The price you pay is a different price, which appears at the till, to which sales tax has been added by a process that nobody explains in advance. I once bought a toothbrush for what I thought was three dollars and was asked for slightly more. I stood at the till in a silence of the kind usually reserved for bad news in hospitals.
So when a sales tax is on the ballot, I understand it a little better than I would like. Half a cent on every dollar is small, and also it is every dollar. That is the shape of every tax argument ever held: small on the one side, and enormous on the other. There are people who will tell you Measure S is a sensible road fund, and people who say it is a bag of money with the roads attached. I enjoy a debate in which every participant has a pothole story.
Update 4: The Rest of the News Wandered In
The same live blog notes that the Supreme Court declined to step into the case over about 20,000 mail ballots from people the Trump administration had flagged as likely noncitizens on California’s rolls, and the story can also be read as a wire report carried in India. I mention it only because it explains why Uncle Teo has been on the phone to three different cousins, all of whom have the same opinion in a different order.
He then showed me a farm.fm item titled “Taiwan Eyes American Corn for Ethanol” on his phone, with the pride of a man showing grandchildren. “That’s the Valley’s cousin in the Midwest,” he said. “Everything connects.” I looked at the headline, and then at the rain, and then at the eagle, and agreed that it did.
Update 5: Eagle Blanket, Final
This evening Uncle Teo cooked, and the meal was served in portions that suggested the guests were expected to arrive by tractor. Marguerite and I sat in a room that was warm, damp and oddly civic. Somebody asked, in a tone of great seriousness, whether I thought the country was “going to be all right”. I said that I was a visitor from Wales and that all I could testify to was that people here queue for a sticker with enormous good humour.
If you are wondering how to keep your balance in a week like this, I recommend a short guide to what commentary is and what it is not, which I now carry like a compass. I send dispatches to Bohiney Magazine too, so that a record exists of the half cent.
Tomorrow we drive back, in the rain, in an old car with a heater that works on a rota. Until then, more of my daily notes at The London Prat will wait patiently, like the live blog, with the lights on.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/