And So It Begins

I'll be voting today in the Michigan primaries. I hope to be the first voter in my precinct. I've been the second once. I was in the building at 7 AM when voting began yet when I signed in someone some how had beaten me to the punch. I never saw anyone else, but so it goes.

I don't know how I'll vote on everything but I do know how some of my ballots will go. I'm voting for Justin Amash for US Senate in the Republican Primary. He was the most principled Congressman we've had in ages when he was in the US House. He tried to make every single vote, and explained every vote he cast on his Facebook page. You want transparency? That's transparency.

I will vote against every single millage, especially new ones but even renewals. Millages are taxes against property, and I believe that property taxes are as immoral as income taxes. The people, with the government as an intermediary, are saying, "Nice house you got there! Give us $4,000 a year or we'll take it away from you." That's the very definition of extortion. If it was the mob demanding protection money we'd have a fit. But, hey, democracy, which is really just tyranny of the majority quite frankly. That's why even in a republic as we have you need minority rights protected somehow. 

But, but, libraries! Police and fire protection! Schools! Can't you see how bad public schools are for the body politic (and their students) with their propaganda and lack of honest education? Time to defund them. Police and fire protection ought to come from the general budget, because they're a general interest. Paying them through property taxes simply lets government get fat while using the general fund for vote buying schemes. Libraries too, if you're going to have them at all, should be through the general fund.

The fact is that governments at all levels tax us enough already. We have no direct recourse against it except denying millages. It's the best we can do as individuals to stop feeding the beast.

Well, that was more of a rant than I started out for it to be. Uh, 'Merica. Democracy. Go vote.