Plucking feathers from the goose

To the editor: Famous historian Barbara Tuchman once said: “The art of taxation is the ability to pluck the largest amount of feathers from the goose with the least amount of hissing.” Advocates of the Real Estate Transfer Tax insist that Warwick residents won’t pay, even though it remains unclear how the estimated $750,000 generated annually will be adequate to fulfill the grandiose aims of preserving farmland, protecting drinking water and controlling property taxes. We voted in and paid the millions for the PDR: Why didn’t it accomplish all those aims? Here we go again. They are clever pluckers, these Real Estate Transfer Tax lovers. But I, for one, am tired of being plucked over and am hissing. On Nov. 7, vote no on the Real Estate Transfer Tax. L.E. Hemphill Warwick