Who Got 120,000 People to Sign a Petition?

By Susan Greenleaf
October 2000

Ever wonder who got those 120,000 people to sign a petition to lower your state income tax back to 5%?

Will you know who to thank for working so hard if you get to keep more of your money next year?

You can begin with Norm and Joan Paley from Scituate. The Paleys personally generated thousands of these signatures that have given grass-roots democracy an opportunity to reverse the flow of power. 
They are two of the best volunteers that Citizens for Limited Taxation has, according to Chip Faulkner, one of the directors of CLT. 
"Norm and Joan are easily among our top five or six people. They're consistent, hardworking and reliable. They never fail to come through for us." 
The Paleys say that there were two rounds of signature gatherings. In the first round they needed a little over 57,000 signatures and they got over 120,000. The second round, they needed fewer than 10,000 and they got over 30,000. "There was an over-whelming response. We have the signatures, it's going to be on the ballot," they say.
"We collected signatures early in the morning at train stations, bus stations, street corners, town meetings, at fairs, anywhere there are large groups of people. In front of post offices, town dumps, thousands of people were out there telling the legislature, 'No you're not going to do it to us this time! You're not going to keep that money. You're not going to increase government and think up program after program that basically enslaves people instead of keeping people free!'"
Norm plays the guitar and is an orthodontic laboratory technician. His wife, Joan, is an illustrator of children's books. But their passion is helping to make our democracy work. 
They say that uncontrolled spending on programs beyond what the taxpayers could afford during the Dukakis administration almost put the state into bankruptcy. The state of Massachusetts increased the income tax up to 5.95 percent and called it "temporary." The debt was paid back years ago but the "temporary tax" is still here.
For the Paleys, the issue of the tax rollback is a moral one."We have numerous newspaper articles that quote legislature after legislature that said that this was a temporary income tax hike. Well the bonds have been paid off, and the legislature doesn't want to reduce the taxes now. They're saying, 'Oh well, we have all of these new programs. And gee, we can't afford that income tax cut that you're asking us for.' It's not a question of whether they can afford it; it's not their money to begin with. They've paid the bonds off and could roll it back. But they lied to us." 
The Paleys' conviction comes from seeing something deeper. "For me, there's a movement in this country towards socialism. It's not a movement where we fear someone is coming in with tanks like they did in Russia and take the country over. This is what they call "Democratic Socialism" which is where we vote ourselves into slavery rather than have armed troops bring us there. You either live in freedom under the constitutional republic that the forefathers gave us, or you live in bondage to the system. And you live under the false promise that you will be taken care of from cradle-to-grave, but it doesn't work that way.