Liberals are Confusing Priorities with Preferences

Liberals are Confusing Priorities with Preferences
Al Ritter

As most of you know, I was involved with a local state senate campaign this month, and there was a referendum item in that county that explained the liberal progressive mindset to a “T.”
Paid firemen in Montgomery County Maryland were out in full force to ask voters to approve a “fee” for an emergency call under threat from the Montgomery County Council that if these fees weren’t approved then services and ambulance services would be cut.

I have to hand it to the Montgomery County Council; they succeeded without really raising a hand. They created an adversarial issue between firemen and the citizens of the county when none should have existed in the first place.

Conservatives believe in something called “primary services,” but progressive liberals don’t. We believe that certain services should be paid for with our county taxes, then and only then if there is anything left it may be used for other projects. Personally I feel that if there is something “left over” they were charging us too much in taxes anyway, but that’s another article!

Conservatives see the primary services as fire, police, schools, and trash removal. Progressives see things as social experiments that they want instituted first and then pesky little things like fire, police, schools as the last things on the list.

The referendum failed in Montgomery County, but not by much, which just shows how progressive the county really is. It’s all about priorities, specifically the ones who placed it on the referendum. Many municipalities charge for fire services now, but where do we draw the line? What would you think if your local police department charged for every call? Is it fair to ask such a question? Of course it is! Would it be fair to charge a fee to your local county to transport your children on a school bus? Then why is it fair to charge for fire department services? This particular referendum placed the firemen in a strange situation. They can’t change policy or the wish for the county council to charge for primary services.

Instead the county council put them into an uncomfortable situation of begging for money that was already paid in taxes to cover such things. This particular county has approved the first “cap and trade tax” in the nation just this year. They have never met a tax they don’t like, but they refuse to fund the services considered essential.