Friday night, while I was onstage with my band at a local club, a driver hit my truck in the parking lot and took off. Witnesses got his license plate number and I called the police as soon as I found out about it, which was about 1:30am.
I waited...and waited...and waited some more for the police to arrive, but by 3:00am, they still hadn't got there. I called back and cancelled the request, telling the operator that I would call the next day and make a report. The next day I called the police again at about 3:00pm. I didn't get an officer at my house until about 6:30pm. I know a hit-and-run gets put pretty low on the priority list for them, but I was more than a little frustrated with the response time. My frustration, however was not with the police. The police were completely professional, and once they were on the case, they caught the guy within about a half-hour. My frustration is with the fact that we do not have enough police.
In the last year, Washington State has undergone severe budget cuts. Federal stimulus money has helped to offset that a little bit, but the fact remains that the services are still suffering. Sure, we may not have lost any police, firefighters, or EMTs with the budget cuts, but we don't have any money to hire any more of them, either. Because of budget cuts in other areas, the effect of not being able to hire more police is just as bad as if we would have laid some of them off.
The other areas I am talking about are drug/alcohol treatment programs, and mental health services. These areas saw huge budget cuts this year, which is undoubtedly having a major impact on crime in our state. More crime with the same amount of police is just as bad as having the same amount of crime with less police.
Budget cuts piss me off because in the case of Washington, they were completely avoidable. One of the biggest reasons for the lack of revenue in our state is the work of anti-tax activists like Tim Eyman and Mike Fagan. For years, these two idiots have worked to put citizen written initiatives on the ballots which have greatly limited the amount of revenue our state brings in. Now, in Eyman and Fagan's case, their initiatives may not have directly contributed to the lack of budget for police, but they are a high profile example of an attitude about taxes that is completely ignorant.
The other problem with these guys is their whole M.O. I think that initiatives and voter referendums are completely un-American. Our system of government is NOT a democracy. It is a democratic republic. This means that we as citizens don't make laws ourselves. Nor do we vote on the laws. We vote to elect people to make laws for us. If you don't like the laws that are being made, vote for people who will make laws that you will like. It's as simple as that. It is so easy for these people to write up an initiative that benefits their particular special interest, and stand outside of a Wal Mart to gather signatures by telling people that it will lower their taxes. Then it gets on the ballot, and the ignorance principle again prevails.
Most voters are not lawyers, and so they don't understand the potential consequences of the specific language of the initiative - all they know is that the writers of the initiative say that it will lower their taxes - so they vote for it. What happens then? Washington residents get to pay only $30/year for car license fees - regardless of the type of car they drive. What else happens? Washington State gets robbed of millions of dollars worth of revenue, and Spokane doesn't get the north/south freeway it so desperately needs, it's arterials become wrought with potholes, and everyone wonder's why these things aren't getting fixed. Sorry, but if you can afford to drive a Lexus, then you should have to pay a little more to help build the roads that you drive on. This year, Mike Fagan is running for city council in my district. I am going to do whatever I can to make sure he's not elected. If you live in northeast Spokane, vote for Amber Waldref.
Ok, so there you have it. I wrote this blog in kind of a hurry, so I apologize if the arguments weren't as well-organized as usual. That's my little rant about taxes.
I am the Reverend Humpy and I have approved this message.
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