emazur
04-03-2012, 06:05 PM
Try listening to act 3 (though the whole thing is worth listening to) of last month's This American Life broadcast and see if you get the same feeling:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/459/what-kind-of-country
TLDR: "fuck taxes"
Then I found this:
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/04/13/colorado_spring.html
Leslie Eaton writes in the WSJ that volunteers are filling in where there are shortfalls:
"Let's start cutting stupid programs that cost taxpayers a pot of money," says Tim Austin, a 48-year-old former home builder now looking for a new line of work. "It's so bullying and disrespectful to take money from one man's pocket and put it in another's."
Such sentiments, which might draw cheers at a tea-party rally, are pretty much a mainstream view here in the state's second-largest city, the birthplace of Colorado's small-government movement.
Almost a decade ago, voters imposed strict limits on how much the city government can spend. Last November they turned thumbs down on a property-tax increase, despite warnings from city officials about a projected $28 million shortfall requiring at least a 10% cut in an already shrunken budget.
And so, faced with dwindling revenues, intransigent voters and widespread distrust of government, this city of 400,000 has embarked on a grand experiment: It is trying to get volunteers and the private sector to provide services the city can no longer afford.
Taxi drivers have been recruited to serve as a second set of eyes for stretched police patrols. Residents can pay $100 a year to adopt a street light. Volunteers are organizing to empty the garbage cans in 128 neighborhood parks. The city is asking private swimming programs to operate its pools, and one of the city's four community centers soon will be run by a church.
...Many people here say the proper role of government should be limited to paving streets, paying police and firefighters and, if there's money left over, frills like parks. Those are, in fact, the only projects for which Colorado Springs voters have been willing to approve tax increases in recent years.
And furthermore, the Libertarian Party was born in David Nolan's Colorado Springs home in 1971: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Libertarian_Party_%28United_States% 29
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/459/what-kind-of-country
TLDR: "fuck taxes"
Then I found this:
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/04/13/colorado_spring.html
Leslie Eaton writes in the WSJ that volunteers are filling in where there are shortfalls:
"Let's start cutting stupid programs that cost taxpayers a pot of money," says Tim Austin, a 48-year-old former home builder now looking for a new line of work. "It's so bullying and disrespectful to take money from one man's pocket and put it in another's."
Such sentiments, which might draw cheers at a tea-party rally, are pretty much a mainstream view here in the state's second-largest city, the birthplace of Colorado's small-government movement.
Almost a decade ago, voters imposed strict limits on how much the city government can spend. Last November they turned thumbs down on a property-tax increase, despite warnings from city officials about a projected $28 million shortfall requiring at least a 10% cut in an already shrunken budget.
And so, faced with dwindling revenues, intransigent voters and widespread distrust of government, this city of 400,000 has embarked on a grand experiment: It is trying to get volunteers and the private sector to provide services the city can no longer afford.
Taxi drivers have been recruited to serve as a second set of eyes for stretched police patrols. Residents can pay $100 a year to adopt a street light. Volunteers are organizing to empty the garbage cans in 128 neighborhood parks. The city is asking private swimming programs to operate its pools, and one of the city's four community centers soon will be run by a church.
...Many people here say the proper role of government should be limited to paving streets, paying police and firefighters and, if there's money left over, frills like parks. Those are, in fact, the only projects for which Colorado Springs voters have been willing to approve tax increases in recent years.
And furthermore, the Libertarian Party was born in David Nolan's Colorado Springs home in 1971: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Libertarian_Party_%28United_States% 29