Massive fire at recently closed Avalon Housing complex.
Pauline & Arbordale
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Archived by the Ann Arbor District Library
Massive fire at recently closed Avalon Housing complex.
» Want more items like this one? Visit the Stopped. Watched. page.
This is 1500 Pauline: [link]
Previous coverage by the Chronicle includes: [link]
Ugh! In the article linked through the Chronicle, I read a comment that talks about ‘taxpayer money’. Most of government revenue is through taxpayers. People talking about ‘we need to spend taxpayer money’ this way or that way, as if it were their money to spend, drives me crazy! Who came up with this idiotic term? It’s been used as a whip ever since and it’s nonsense.
The money paid to run the government is the governments to spend. We elect representatives to run the government whom we feel will serve the citizens best interests. Tax dollars are the government’s, we do not have some magical ownership of that money once it is deducted from our paychecks, once we pay for it at the pump or the store, once it is levied upon us in any form that it is levied.
It isn’t ours, never was. That is the point of a ‘tax’. People lose all credibility with me when they use this term, because it tells me that these folks do not think critically and just parrot what is commonly used to pass for intelligent discussion.
I apologize for my rant, but seriously!
Re (2), I read the comment where that was used. I think apart from the die-hard anti-tax crusaders, people frequently use that because they perceive an issue of allocation. In other words, if our collected tax dollars are not used judiciously, we may find that they are not available for our own high priorities.
In that comment, the writer was a fervent advocate for the homeless and doubtless was trying to say that the precious few dollars allocated to affordable housing could be better spent.
@2: I doubt that any taxpayer that pays attention to government and politics agrees with every allocation made by their elected representatives, even if those allocations were made by representatives the taxpayer voted for. Since we live in a representative democracy, we are entitled to communicate with our representatives and attempt to influence their spending decisions. When our elected representatives run afoul of the taxpayers is PRECISELY when they start thinking of government revenues as THEIR money to spend as they see fit, instead of the people’s money to be spent as the people see fit.
@1: FYI, Both links go to the same Chronicle article.