Dear Editor:
Well. According to the May 8 Reporter, our Hoboken taxes will be raised yet again by The Insatiables. Somebody’s cousin, or brother-in-law needed a job?
We (Western civilization) owe a lot to the ancient Greeks. They were our teachers in politics, democracy, philosophy, comedy, tragedy, Olympics, and so many other things we take for granted. In politics, the Greeks invented a procedure to get rid of nepotistic rulers and leviers of ruinous taxes. It was ostracism. “Ostracism was a method of getting rid of a politician who had become unpopular, by sending him into exile. Every citizen could inscribe the name of the Athenian whose banishment he favored on a piece of pottery (potsherd, ostrakon), and then, provided that the number of ostraka totaled 6,000, the man whose name figured most frequently in this ballot was sent away. He had to leave within ten days, and stay in exile for ten years.” (The Classical Greeks, by Michael Grant)
Now, Hoboken is about the same size and population as ancient Athens, and it’s certain that someone on a fixed income whose taxes were raised so high that he had to sell his house and leave town, can think of someone in City Hall whose name he’d like to inscribe on an ostrakon.
T. Weed