“Our problems stem from
our acceptance of this filthy,
rotten system.” Dorothy Day
Early this morning I drove a young adult friend and his friend to the County Behavior Health Center. It seems if you are a young adult with particular illnesses but without insurance the only place you can get help is this place. There were other young adults waiting for the place to open, some being there as early as 5:15am. They were talking about prisons they or their friends have been in. I left my friends there. A little after 8 am I got a call to say the walk-in clinic had opened but only took five cases. They will need to return tomorrow morning very early again.
I finally got around today to going to the city dump to pick up wood chips for my garden and compost. The gates to the city dump were closed and a sign on the gate announced the dump was no longer open Wednesday. I will need to return there tomorrow.
One reason I drive persons to hospitals and doctors’ appointments is because we have a poor and expensive bus transit system in Milwaukee County. Over a year ago the people of Milwaukee County overwhelming voted yes to raise out sales tax by a slight amount to be used for the transit system. However, our vote was advisory since only the State legislature can raise the sale tax in Milwaukee County. Although the business and worker groups, education and social organization were all for the new Regional Transit Authority and the people wanted to pay for it, the state legislature failed to pass the necessary legislation.
When I was learning civics, I was taught that government existed for the ‘common good’, not for the individual, and the will of the people reigned in a democracy. This seems to be no longer true. Individualism reigns and the will of the people can be ignored by the government.
The irony of the situation is that a few select persons and the politicians say they are saving us money in all these cutbacks, from city dump to library hours, to a lack of medical services to people in need and to letting our bus transit system die. Yes we pay a lot of taxes but the majority of money, at least on the Federal level, is used for things many of us do not want — to make war and to subsidize the rich. When we want our taxes to pay for things we deem important, like a good transit system, those “in the know” say No.
If this sounds like taxation without representation, maybe it is. However, this time it is not a country far away that is taxing us without representation. It is our own country and it is us that are doing it to ourselves. As Dorothy Day said: “Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.”
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