This time, they’ll make it work
In The City (My The City), our politicos spend too much money. And instead of doing what, like, say a family would do and cut spending, they always try to raise taxes. For the children, they say. The marketing plan is vote for schools because a vote against is against schools and not against waste or something. So, every few years there’s a ballot initiative to raise sales taxes. Trouble for them is they have those elections in major election years and the voters tell them to get bent:
Well, this year they done got smart and a bit slimy and decided to have a December 2013 election that is receiving very little coverage in the press. And it’s on an off year. So, the minions know but the rest of us may not be aware.
Any way, I’ll vote no and I hope you locals do too. Early voting is now. Just follow the signs trying to guilt you up near the court house.
November 21st, 2013 at 10:58 pm
In Texas they do this every time. Its why tax elections almost always pass. 🙁
November 22nd, 2013 at 10:16 am
Where I live they have started to do this, but we have been lucky (or informed?) enough that they still fail. Of course the people in my community have seemed to hit their limit with government spending over the last few years.
It started a few years back they wanted to build a state of the art firehouse with a full training yard, but the vote to fund it failed. Instead of not building it, they just took the money from the already allocated budget for the police and fire departments. They then had an emergency vote for new taxes to fund the police and fire departments since they were projected to run out of money for both before the year was half over. There were weeks of scary TV & radio ads, cold calls from the unions, and people going door-to-door warning us of the doom that would happen if the emergency funding didn’t pass. To the shock of our local politicians, fire & police unions, and local media not only did it not pass, but it failed by a huge margin (something like 64%-36%). This was followed by the city council proposing an ordinace that would bill anyone who had contact with lawenfocement or emergency personel to be billed for their time, even if they were a tax payer to the city. These were some poor decisions that resulted in three of the city council being recalled, and almost all the rest being replaced a year later in normal elections.
November 22nd, 2013 at 10:19 am
Just a side note: That state of the art firehouse they built has never been used because they have never had to money to staff or pay its utilities.
November 22nd, 2013 at 12:14 pm
If your kids can still read then the schools are underfunded.
November 22nd, 2013 at 2:09 pm
Two stories:
Local 115,000 person city decides they NEED NEED NEED to spend several dozen million dollars to build a conference center in order to compete with the conference center in the 30-mile-away city of 600,000. Folks promoting it say they NEEEEEEED it because local hotels won’t build their own. Folks opposing it point out that if it was going to be profitable for the hotels, they would build it themselves. Vote happens….and it failed.
Two weeks later, local hotel announces their building their own conference center.
Story Two:
Mayor in a town of 25,000 decides to DOUBLE property taxes. Tells citizens and city workers that unless she gets what she wants, they’ll need to lay off 90% of all city employees, including (starting with) police and fire.
No referendum, and it narrowly passes council vote. within a couple of months, she announces a project to install updated tornado sirens that can text citizens’ cell phones AND computerized lights for the public baseball fields. Cost of the two projects exceeds the increased revenue from tax increase.
November 22nd, 2013 at 2:14 pm
My point, in case there’s folks that don’t follow, is that when a government says the need more money, they’re lying.
November 22nd, 2013 at 3:52 pm
My local schools did that. Voters said “no” last year, so they had a spring “re-do” and it succeeded.
Of course, when a levy fails, the schools cut busing and sports and extracurricular activities because that’s the only places they can find to cut.
Compulsory schooling, the government monopoly, needs to be ended, in my opinion.
November 22nd, 2013 at 4:35 pm
The Problem is that we have coercive funding of anything at all in the first place. As long as the concept is tolerated, we have nothing to stand on, i.e. you can’t make the case that there is a “correct amount” of coercion, i.e. you cannot wield the Ring of Power, so to speak, and expect good to come from it.
So you can take all your analysis and complicity, all your ideas for tweaking the system, any conversation on “how much is too much” verses “how much is enough” and throw them out. Dismiss them out of hand– they’re all based on the acceptance if not the promotion of coercion were just arguing on HOW BEST to wield the Ring of Power, yet it has only one purpose.
November 23rd, 2013 at 7:04 am
And Lyle just explained the reality behind the idea that “power corrupts”. It’s that certain powers can’t be wielded morally – no one should have them. That they exist IS the corruption source.
November 26th, 2013 at 1:16 pm
(Crickets)
There does seem to be a pattern here.
Well at least there is one other person in the blogosphere who both gets it is able to say so.
Greetings, Seerak, my brother! (or sister – I don’t know if Seerak is a boy’s name or a girl’s name)