Say you want a revolution

Oh, come on, fella. Don't beat around the bush -- say what's really on your mind:

Before citizens got mad over their tax bills, few politicians tried to do what was right. The protests on the governor's lawn and elsewhere only awakened them to the problems they'd created. Now these law-breaking lawmakers would like us to think of them as heroes coming to our rescue. But now is most definitely not the time to resume being the sheep we were a month ago.

For until this property tax debacle our politicians had hidden the true cost of government. They had lured you from 1776 into 1984 partly by snipping your paycheck before you saw it; partly by invisibly hijacking every good and service made in America through corporate taxes; and of course, by making you pay rent on your own property.

This month, when dizzying incompetence revealed the actual price tag, a class of citizens not accustomed to such treatment, a normally placid, mostly well-off group of citizens, protested. It was about time.

Doug Masson at Masson's Blog made the interesting observation a few days ago that people aren't thinking very much about which government services should be cut or to whom their tax burdens should be shifted:

Their thoughts seem to be like someone touching a hot stove: OUCH! MAKE IT STOP!

As Doug says, this is an understandable reaction. We expect, and accept to a certain extent, that our taxes are going to go up like everything else, but incrementally. And most people don't have the time or inclination to study the intricacies of all the taxing districts and what they're going to use the money for -- there are just too many of them. There is just THE TAX BILL, and when there is a sudden and dramatic jump, people get mad. They have a right to. This could be seen from a long way off, and politicians from both parties and all levels of government were asleep at the wheel.