The thrashing of Mary Panzer

The Wisconsin primary election was last week. The count on one of the local state senate races just blew me away. Long time Senate member and Senate Majority Leader, Republican Mary Panzer was voted out of office by 21% to 79%. Her opponant, a Republican member of the State Assembly ran against her because of her abject refusal to let the taxpayer's bill of rights come up to vote in the state senate.

What's the taxpayer bill of rights? It's simple enough. It's an ammendment to the state constitution that would state that any tax hike, short of inflation raises, must be put to a referendum to the voters.

With Wisconsin sitting embarassingly at the top of the pile of high tax burden states, the taxpayer's bill of rights is desperately needed. Government spends money like water.

They're like the teenager who's parents pay all the bills. They have no responsibility or consequences for spending irresponsibly, so they don't care. The Taxpayer Bill of rights would kick the teenager out of the house and force him to live on a budget. I support this thing 100% because the taxes in Wisconsin are crushing lower income families (with property taxes), and driving businesses right out the door.

Mary Panzer dressed as a conservative republican, but she was anything but. The real reason she didn't bring the bill up for vote was not because she wouldn't have had enough votes to pass it, but because she was protecting herself and other liberal republicans from the flack that would have resulted if they'd voted against it.

So, she lost the primary by over 55% of the vote. This is not a case of the voters just being a little tired of her. No, this was an out and out rebuke. Other state senators better sit up and take notice. The taxpayers are speaking up.

Some folks say that the average citizen doesn't care about taxes. Truth is, when it comes down to it, when you're liable to lose you house because you're elderly on fixed income and can't pay the irresponsibly high property taxes, you care about taxes a heck of a lot.