Too many government critics act as if we were still ruled by the government in London with no benefits from the taxes and regulations imposed from there. We now have taxation with representation, but because the representatives don't agree in lockstep with the critics, all taxation and regulations are bad.
We are in a financial fix now partly from our own profligate ways, partly from lax government oversight, and partly from insufficient taxation. The "no new taxes" proponents look on tax revenues as going to someone else, not to themselves as part of a well-functioning society.
Well, I have just come inside after spending a half-hour paying a "no new taxes" tax. Our sidewalk, previously shoveled, is now covered with three-inches of hard-packed snow plus several large snow "stones". This "new" snow is because a snowplow came through to widen the street. I managed to get a shovel width cleaned in a half-hour, partly with a brand-new "sharp" shovel and partly with an ice scraper. I'm too winded to continue for another hour or so.
Supposedly the city should clear sidewalks that the plows put a lot of snow on. I did call Duluth's "Snow shoveling hot line" yesterday about this, but nothing has happened yet. Since two neighbors on our block had already cleared their part and then some, I should make an effort.
I should also make an effort for civic reasons. I don't like walking on unshoveled sidewalks; I don't think others should. I know that one grade school kid has to pass our house to the school bus stop, that at least two middle-schoolers, probably a dozen or more have to pass our house, and there are many women and children from the women's shelter going to and from the bus stop. In the half-hour I was working outside, two women walked by in the street.
Not only is the dumped snow a tax on me as a homeowner, it is a tax on all the people who walk by.
