(Diary slightly timelagged. Sorry.)
One of my favorite phrases when I'm discussing anything involving government is the old chestnut, 'You get what you pay for'. Nothing irritates me more than watching people who continually vote for the dismantling of the government and then bitch when basic services take the hit at the local level. This is typical in my town; here's one example:
ROCKFORD -- In 2005, there were nearly 200 neighborhood streets and two miles' worth of alley improvements either completed or planned by the city's Public Works Department.
Coming in 2006? Zero.
The fallout from last month's doomed sales-tax referendum will be felt in every city ward -- from the rutted back alleys of older neighborhoods to the bustling roads near thriving commercial developments.
And I sit here, and I shake my head listening to the justifications.
Chandrasekaran, a homemaker, said she hadn't known her road would have been repaved when she voted against the referendum March 21. She quickly added, however, that it wouldn't have mattered anyway.
"We don't know where the money is going right now," she said.
Which is literally true of every single dollar in taxation you've ever given. Sheesh. But that's nothing compared to the entitlement whines of the next one:
In another section of the 9th Ward slated for repairs, Denise Koltz said she also voted against the referendum. And though the alley behind her house resembles a frontier trail in spots, she defended her vote.
"How much burden do you put on people?" she asked. "The government has to live within their means. If I am living beyond my means, I have to cut back on things. The government should do the same."
Even with the referendum's failure, Koltz railed against this year's cancellation of the ward program.
"I'm pretty angry at the (city's) response, that `Well, this didn't pass, so we'll just cut everything,' " she said. "Are they teaching us a lesson? `You don't give us more money, so we're not going to do a damn thing for you. We're just going to let you suffer.' "
Words fail me. Words just FUCKING FAIL ME.
Our system of government has been under attack from a bunch of different groups like this one with the stated goal of getting rid of the government.
"My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."
I thought openly agitating for the destruction of the government was worth time in a prison cell, but I guess IOKIYAR. Anyways. These folks have hammered it home again and again: You can't trust government with your money. They're at best hopelessly inefficient and at worst outright crooks. And they've got these suckers so bamboozled by their theme song that they're willing to live on dirt roads in a large city rather than pay the bill to get the fucking roads fixed. Hell, here they even rejecting home rule because they don't even trust themselves to elect folks who aren't crooks.
How do you fight that? What do you fight it with? I don't know. I wish I did. Someone give me some pointers, because what we've tried before isn't working.