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. 

Better to Vote, But...

Tomorrow is a primary election day here in Michigan, and I will dutifully cast my vote. Yet the older I get, the less certain I am of its value.

To begin with, there's a degree to which democracy is simply the tyranny of the majority. Too many people want everybody else's money, time, and effort spent on what they believe important. Those folks are all too ready to force their will on the fifty percent minus one. That's arrogance, and insults basic human dignity. 

Generally speaking, we can and should do for ourselves, and are decent enough on our own to help those who can't. We need to put clamps on government power rather than give it further release. Voting I sometimes fear merely feeds the beast while giving it legitimacy. Legitimacy to do anything it chooses. At the risk of understatement, that's fraught with peril.

Then there's all these people more than willing to 'sacrifice' for us. I am increasingly skeptical of the integrity of anyone who actually wants to be a politician. What makes you so great that you can solve all what ails us? 

At the heart of it, I can't escape the idea that the great majority of people who want to be politicians are at heart narcissists. To be sure, the depth of that will vary from person to person. Some will be better than others, but circumstance works against them all. I'm not sure it's possible for anyone to be completely selfless enough (or forceful enough) to serve the populace in full objectivity.

So I'll vote, and hope and pray for the best. It's all I've got, and it is a bit of neglecting duty to not cast a ballot. Still, it's a shame that all too often my vote is cast while holding my nose, and fearing my neighbor.

Onward and onward

Now we're on the downside, onwards towards an election and Christmas. How's that for putting two disparate things together?

But it's after Halloween and then there is that pesky election tomorrow, followed by the kind of sort of forgotten holiday of Thanksgiving. That's sad, because we should be giving thanks to a far greater degree than we give and get. That's consumerism for ya.

I really don't want to say much about the election except that I'll be glad when it's over. On Wednesday morning no matter what happens I'll check my e-mail, respond to what needs responding, and go to work. Because that's what we should do. 

Do I care who wins? Of course I do. But my vote isn't going to mean a tinker's damn when all's said and done. I don't care who wins what, there's going to be a lot of things done in the coming months which I don't agree with yet cannot affect. It's just part of the human condition. Cast your vote, hope for the best, and get on with your life.

I believe that's the real trick to it: live your life well so that you become better and those around you might just too. That's the best vote you can offer for yourself and everyone else.

You should vote in person

There are several reasons why I don't like mail in voting. Five came to my house yesterday, as forms asking everyone in my household to vote by mail. The trouble is, three of those voters no longer live here. They live out of state.

Such inaccurate voter rolls with the obvious opportunity for fraud worry me. What's to stop me from requesting ballots and voting for myself and three of the four?

I won't do that of course. Yet that's because of me and my principles and not due to the diligence of the Detroit City Clerk's office. They wouldn't know. What's worse, they wouldn't check. If they actually checked up on things, we would have gotten two and not five ballot requests.

Outside of legitimate circumstances, you should only vote in person and on election day. This insures against fraud while serving the true purpose of elections: as a snapshot of what the nation thinks on that day, not days or weeks before (or after).

What might change between your voting by mail and election day that might cause you to reflect and alter your vote? You don't know. You cannot know. That is why we need an election day and not an election season.

Bottom line philosophy

Why can't I get the health care which suits me via an open market? Why must I participate in a government run (or heavily influenced) system? Simply because the majority of voters make me? We forget what I believe Abe Lincoln said: all democracy ultimately means is 50% plus one can everyone else do what that scant majority thinks right. That means that we as a people must be very careful about making others pay for things, even important things.

I have the moral right to seek my own health care as much as seeking work, home, and food. Society doesn't have the right to make those decisions for me except in very limited ways and manners. I think a free market best suited towards my being able to do for myself, and others for themselves.

That is a very condensed (I'm using the word very a lot aren't I?) version of my basic philosophy. But it's the essence of how I vote.

Recalling Snyder: Doomed From the Start

The attempt to recall Governor Rick Snyder is looking more and more like the failure everyone knew from the start it would be. They need too many signatures in too short of a time, and are hampered by an ending date of their own making. They don't have money, they lack professional leadership, and they are naive to the point of being merely comedic. They must collect enough signatures to ensure that they will have enough to overcome the challenges which shall surely occur in the ever so tiny chance they come within even a whiff of success.

Mr. Snyder need not worry about that. The effort cannot succeed; truth be told, it was doomed from the start. Say what you will, and we say this with a certain pity for those involved (for it tough to wholly dislike persons who mistakenly feel they have a legitimate cause), the entire process and type of people involved demonstrate that the whole concept has been the work of simplistic rabble-rousers and shallow knee jerks.

Consider one of those circulating a petition. One such circulator was a twenty something parent of two who attends a community college, and who even voted for Snyder by their own admission. The person seemed to have a vague belief that 'voting is important' and that Snyder is 'indifferent' to education. Knowing (we presume) that Snyder was a Republican who was likely to cut education from the start, why did this person cast a ballot for him to begin with, or change their mind so (relatively) quickly? The obvious answer is that they really didn't think things through before last November, despite the feeling that 'voting is important'.

Even some of the big boys who have to come to support the recall effort have little more than the odor of self interest wafting from their corner. The Michigan Education association has come out in favor of the recall, interestingly after the legislature had passed new rules making it easier to fire teachers. It becomes fair to ask whether theirs is a principled (a pun, sort of) stand or merely what has to be done to please the dues payers. But at least the naive person can be excused their naivete. The teachers' union are mere shills.

It is fascinating that the group has employed a famous phrase from a great conservative on their website. The banner proudly displays the wonderful quote of the English Whig Edmund Burke: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil ...
is for good men to do nothing. It is akin to Hillary Clinton's 'It takes a village' scheme: yes, it in certain ways takes a village. But a village based on traditional mores, not on liberal claptrap aimed only at selling a political package. In the immediate case, we doubt the esteemed Mr. Burke would agree with the recall, thus extending a laughable irony to the situation, as well as supporting the argument that organizers themselves haven't thought things through.

At the end of the day, the Recall Snyder effort is actually rather cute. We simply hope that when the cuteness wears off, the folks involved may mature a bit. Short of that, the whole thing is merely sad.