Here they go again

I don't buy it or read it, but I saw a headline on the local liberal newspaper that signaled it was again trying to convince people they should pay higher taxes.

This is a fixation with the media.

As always, they try to tell you that paying higher taxes will give you a higher “quality of life.”

You know what gives you a higher quality of life?

Keeping a little bit of the money you have earned so that you can provide what your own family needs and wants, instead of turning it all over to politicians to spend as they see fit.

Does anyone in Jacksonville think that their quality of life has increased measurably because wealthy judges and wealthy lawyers can now work in a building that rivals the Taj Mahal?

How about the huge, expensive horse barn that was built out on Normandy Boulevard?

Or the ridiculous intersection at Bay and Laura streets, where the pavement was ripped up and replaced with broken pieces of brick so that your car tires are shredded as you bounce across it? That's the “quality of life” Jacksonville residents had in 1910.

This is the same nonsense we get from Washington. You would be so much happier, liberals insist, if you had less money for your health care, retirement and other needs. Let them spend it instead on their lavish retirement and health care plans, junkets around the world and fat contracts for their contributors.

At one time the local paper, at least on the opinion pages, had some regard for the hard-working Jacksonville families and demanded that politicians justify any new spending. Not any more.

Now it is: cough it up, citizens. We will connive with the politicians to decide how best to spend your money.