Watching the budget negotiations unravel these past few weeks, monitoring the chatter of progressives stupefied by the behavior of our elected officials, and wondering why in the world our Democratic majority is behaving like a minority, it occurred to me: They’re afraid.
Lawmakers, let me assuage your fears. Do not be afraid to raise my taxes.
In fact, please, please raise my taxes!
When the choice is between living in a city with clear streets come winter, and a cash-strapped city that can’t buy salt because revenue sharing dollars were just slashed again, I’ll choose the former. Even if it means moving to Ohio.
If it means more students can go to college because of the Michigan promise, I will gladly shell out another measly nickel for each bottle of water I buy.
I’ll toss in an extra three cents a beer to give kids the basics they need to succeed in life: early childhood education, health care and food.
For the privilege of not having our roads revert back to gravel, for the honor of keeping police officers on the streets and criminals off them, for the sheer unadulterated joy in knowing that the state in which I was born and raised will continue to exist as I raise my little one here, I beg of you, Michigan lawmakers: please, raise my taxes.