The Bellevue Reporter’s editorials, cartoons, and columns consistently present a conservative slant on issues. Specifically, they revel in denouncing taxation and supposed government waste.

Fact is: government provides all sorts of essential services (e.g., banking, food and environmental regulations, the police, public health departments, public roads and transportation, libraries, parks, education, licensing, courts, land management, and disaster services). Moreover, government is often far more efficient than the private sector (compare health care in the U.S. with in Europe).

Fact is, any further cuts to the state budget will be cutting into bone.

Fact is: Washington state has a regressive tax system that benefits the well-to-do and burdens the middle class and the poor with an unfair share of the costs.

Oddly enough, it’s often well-to-do people (like Bill Gates Sr.) that support progressive income taxes while poorer people buy into conservative propaganda about “tax relief” and “elitist government.” A senior Microsoft executive told me that almost everyone there is politically progressive.

Yes, government can be wasteful (witness the unprecedented corruption, bloat, and waste that occurred when Republicans controlled Congress and the White House from 2000 until 2006.) But the answer isn’t to destroy government.

Weak government regulation was a major cause of the subprime crash and corporate scandals. Low taxation has resulted in crushing debt and grossly unequal concentration of wealth.

Donald A. Smith, Bellevue