Some people have noticed the presence of very large bonds on this election, and the last election (2023) and before that. This may happen every election, dating back to who-knows-when.
If there is a $1 billion bond up for vote, in a county of 22,000, for schools (“graft”), do we:
- Vote it in as the last money/asset grab before the dollar collapses
- Vote it down like we always should have been doing
I’m thinking at this point that every dollar of that damn bond is going to be propping up the local deep state on our backs.
“Vote no to all bond props, countrywide.” seems like the best path forward, but maybe I’m missing something. Thoughts?
2023 thread: https://greatawakening.win/p/17rlrMTkE3/bond-proposal-a-research-needed/
I always vote no on all bond issues, even the ones I might think aren't a bad idea.
Bonds don't go away. They just keep adding to them, as well as adding new ones. This is the source of a huge portion of my property taxes, which already goes 40% to the schools (i.e. state) and 35% to other government agences.
Yeah I liked that breakdown thread you had a few days ago. Did you pull that from your town’s operating budget pdf?
Not sure what you're referring to, Am...I posted a breakdown of my proptaxes in a recent thread...but my brain ain't letting me remember which. There was a great discussion of property taxes, N Dakota having a ballot measure to end them:
https://archive.is/z6Cpy
One thing I haven't said recently is how, where I live, "bond issues" are a major source of welfare for giant Tech corporations. Every other year it seems we're being hit up for tens of millions added to our assessments...so that new Microsoft, Apple, and other swag can be handed out to the chilldruns.
Maybe 8 years ago I saw numbers indicating that the Tech industry made about $20bn a year from the education market. But I don't remember seeing how that was calculated. My point is just the magnitude of this industry's reach into taxpayers' purses.
This one. https://greatawakening.win/p/199OKUEo8E/x/c/4ZFBzVif0eg
I’d forgotten about both these things. Used to actually look up local budgets and see reports of counties bidding on subsidies to get some corporation to come to their county for tax revenues. It never occurred to me they might fund that with voted-in bond measures.
Then the Obama years got me distracted away from local issues by doing so much worldwide. Good reminders!
"COVID" was a source of enormous windfalls for Tech, which been moving away from "computers/iPads for all" to, now, the more lucrative "security and safety," "distance learning," and "high speed internet." (Contracts for selling entire systems, not just components.)
https://www.edweek.org/technology/how-massive-k-12-bond-issues-during-covid-19-are-shaping-school-technology-plans/2020/11
(many such cases)
There are entire conferences/convos where people on both ends of these redistributive formulas meet. Every engineering/tech group meeting I ever attended had an education track/events. People have no idea how incredibly developed and detailed this whole system is.
We can look ahead to a massive railyard of future bond initiatives on infrastructure. If you skim EdWeek or similar, there are constant streams of stories put out by education PR agents that strike my eye as partly reporting on what the budget managers and school boards and politicans are intending to do, and feelers on what they think the next cash cow is. For example I've been seeing more stories in the past 18 months on needs to replace "water systems." One assumes that there are consortiums of corporate consultants in on that, calculating which set of "needs" is most likely to lead to profit, just as there are in tech.
None of the above tech spending is producing better students/skill/aptitude outcomes, which long ago led me to conclude that this is just part of the globo neofeudalist model: dolt wrangling for profit. The Ed Biz has been an enormous institutional tool, these past 50+ years, for middle and working class income/wealth redistribution using taxation. They come right out and say it--how we can't have GROWTH if we don't keep importing IQ 75 melanists and tax working families to pay for the swanky new stuff they want.
About 15 years ago in my blue taxation fiefdom there was a bond floated to redo a bunch of stuff at the largest high school, including the roof, student parking lot (the chubby little darlings didn't like how far they had to walk from car to door), and athletic tracks. It was a major contract that went to a huge blue city firm, with all the expected PR bells and whistles in "local" media.
So the work gets done. And the second or third winter after completion, the roof collapsed in 18 inches of snow. Why? Because it required simple maintenance that didn't get done.
Result?
An emergency repair bond. Can't recall whether it was a special ballot or what.
In the education industry press outlets, one reads more somewhat nervous feeling stories about voters rejecting bond issues...but that's rare. Given that property tax assessment increases are approved in the majority by people who don't pay property tax, they generally pass. So voting no on bonds is a good idea...but the well herded masses never vote against stealing the income and assets of others. They don't even have to get anything out of it directly. They just like the idea of fiscal punishment.
And you can't get it through the heads of Millennials and Zoomers that the reason housing prices are so high is the local, politically driven artificial inflation of "values," to keep this whole machine going.