Voting For Dollars

One thing that really bothers me about Albuquerque is that the citizens never met a tax they didn’t love. It amazes me that they vote for anything that sounds good or noble, but never stop to think where the money comes from. Politicians are so clever. They have new taxes on the voting ballots described as ‘bonds.’ To the average, uninformed voter a bond sounds like a good thing so they press YES on the ballot. Or maybe they think, “Let’s stick it to the rich guys and vote this in” never realizing that even though they don’t own a home and pay property taxes, the landlord that owns the apartment they live in, does. They just raised their own rent to pay for the ‘bond.’

Tomorrow we have at least 7 bonds on the ballot. Among the more outrageous tax increases are $45 million to beautify the medians in between the streets of ABQ (it means putting cactus, decorative rocks and art where simple painted lines would suffice), $37.5 million for public parks and recreation ( sounds so nice, more green parks in brown ABQ) $14.5 million for Senior and Family Community Centers (why don’t they just stay home and play cards?) and $10.1 million for “affordable housing bonds.” This means the city will buy prime real estate to build houses that poor people can afford because real estate in ABQ is very expensive. Why should we pay for poor people to live here? Shouldn’t we hope they leave? Why don’t they move some place they can afford? They WILL have a heart attack when they become home owners and see how much property tax they have to pay.