Cheap

A woman in Oregon calls 911, and is told that there are no police officers available. The dispatcher says that she should ask him to leave. Her ex-boyfriend breaks in and rapes her.

I take a few lessons from this post:
- First, the obvious: No one is responsible for your protection but you. When you are depending on others to protect you from harm, you are subject to their whims.

- The citizens refused a tax increase that would have funded services like police. The tax on a $100,000 is now $59 a year. The proposal would have raised it to $148 a year.

- The residents of this county lost their police protection when Federal budget cuts forced the Sheriff to reduce the number of deputies to 6.

- The people of this county are, in other words, wholly dependent on Federal tax dollars for their local government's needs. They would have me here in Florida foot the bill for the police to protect them in Oregon.

If the citizens of Josephine and Curry counties of Oregon don't care enough about their own safety and well being to fund their own police force, why should I here in Florida be forced to do so through Federal tax dollars? They don't want to pay a property tax of $148 dollars a year, so I am forced to pay it for them? Even though MY property taxes are $1600 a year for a $120,000 home?

This reminds me of the people in Tennessee who were angry when the neighboring town's fire department refused to respond to their home when it caught fire, because they didn't pay the fire fee.