By Mike Prokosch

It finally clicked when I saw the news item: The Massachusetts legislature isn't considering tax increases, yet Governor Romney is running anti-tax ads across the state.

Romney's endless war on taxes is Bush's endless war on terrorism. It's a war on a non-threat, it's his path to the presidency, and it's the way to tilt the wealth-and-power balance in this country so far, we might not tilt it back.

Endless wars are nonstop four-year campaigns. They start on Inauguration Day and run til Election Day. To make them work, you don't compromise with your legislature and actually solve problems like nuclear weapons, the recession, or the state budget crisis. Instead, you stretch them out. Day after day, Bush bashes Congress for not giving him his tax bill that, he claims, will pull us out of the recession. Romney, meanwhile, blames the Legislature for not passing his state reorganization bill, not firing Billy Bulger, not naming the Big Dig the "Liberty Tunnel," and other life-and-death issues.

A governor who actually wanted to solve the state budget crisis would work with the Legislature. Instead, Romney stretches out the crisis. He distracts us from his failures by waging an endless war on the Legislature.

Endless wars keep you in the news and make you the Man. Rivals have to define themselves against you. Your bold ideas and bolder moves appeal to people who are sick of politics and just want a leader.

Played right, Romney's endless war could put him in the White House. But that's minor league. The big game is the Bush-Romney strategy to make the very wealthiest Americans even richer.

Here's the strategy according to Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform and one of Washington's most powerful men. "We've set as a conservative movement a goal of reducing the size and cost of government in half in 25 years, which is taking it from a third of the economy down to about 17 percent, taking 20 million government employees and looking to privatize and get other opportunities so that you don't have all of the jobs that are presently done by government done by government employees."

There aren't 20 million people working for the federal government. Norquist is talking about every level of government, and the states' budget crises create the opening for him. Don't help the states get through the crisis, as Washington did in previous recessions. Instead deny them federal aid and force them to cut services. This is what devolution looks like.

But note Norquist's lie. He says he'll "reduce the size and cost of government," but he's not actually cutting those 20 million government workers. Instead he is contracting them out. This "gets other opportunities" for corporations that track welfare recipients, run schools, and provide healthcare. It also cuts opportunities for federal employees who lose their unions, job security, future benefits and pensions. It's trickle-up, a massive shift of income and wealth from the middle class up to investors.

Conveniently, privatization also gets rid of unions, the only organized force standing between Romney-Bush-Norquist and complete political power.

Romney is running Norquist's lie in Massachusetts. He's not blocking all taxes. He's increasing fees and forcing other people, namely cities, to raise their taxes. But those and local taxes are different. With fees and property taxes, the people on the bottom pay the most. With the state income tax, people at the top pay more. When you keep the income tax rate down and raise other taxes instead, you shift the tax burden onto the wage-earning majority.

At the same time, you cut the services they use. This is a good way to turn working people into tax-cutters. If we're paying more of the tax load and getting fewer services for it, we'll rebel. Especially if we're being bombarded by Romney's antitax ads and his nonstop four-year campaign.

It's the strategy, stupid. And it goes on. Romney, Norquist, and Bush want to end taxes on unearned income - dividends, for example, and estates, much of which have never been taxed. If taxes on unearned income disappear, wage-earners will pay much more of the tax load - while government serves them less.

The big plan here is to change whom government serves. Socialize the costs and privatize the payoffs. Make most of us pay more for what we're getting less of, turn us against taxes, make us drop out of politics, and let big campaign contributors buy politicians freely.

The big plan is based on big lies. Iraq has weapons of mass destruction aimed at us. My tax cuts will pull America out of its recession. The state dug itself into this hole by overspending. In fact, Massachusetts is 45th in the country if you compare state spending to personal income. In taxing, we're 44th. We have cut state taxes more, compared to personal income, than any other state over the last 20 years.

Taxachusetts is a myth. Taxes aren't our problem. The recession is. And the longer it lasts, the more we all will need state services - and the taxes that pay for them.