Toward a Heightened State of Narcissism

A swarm of anti-tax, anti-government loudmouths descended on the comment section of a recent Seattle Times article about King County's proposal for a $20 car-tab fee to raise a little cash to help maintain the current inadequate level of bus service from already-debilitated King County Metro. The sentiment was nearly universal: I don't ride the bus, so why should I have to pay for it?
From brave American Hero/anonymous commenter rock90mc!:

Let the people who ride the damm bus pay for it- isn't that the logic behind the tolls...

Yes! The tolls–all those tolls we pay on the thousands of miles of state highways and roads throughout Washington! Great argument!

These are the same people who call up the county in the middle of January and bitch about that goddamned pothole where the Escalade is supposed to park. Then a truck full of low-wage "union thugs" shows up to fix the boo-boo using money from our "socialist" tax coffers. And then it's, they should have come faster. And why don't they just repave the whole goddamned thing? WHY WILL NO ONE HEED MY NARROW SELF-INTEREST?

Nobody is asking it the obvious question, so I will: Why should I have to pay for your pothole? I don't use your road. I don't drive down the streets of your low-density urban sprawl. Why should my money go toward your problem? Because roads are a public good that a lot of people depend on for getting places–just like public transportation, which costs money but helps a whole lot of people (who still have to pay a fee) get places.

I know it's not healthy to read online comments in local news stories, but after last year's election I'm beginning to believe this isolationist, self-centered mindset is gaining a following not just nationally but here in "progressive" Washington.

These Heroes of Humanity and Keepers of the New Millennium usher in a new era of progress and Responsibility by bitching about potentially having to vote on a two-year, $20 fee on cars to help an ailing public transportation system–just like they bitch about how oppressed they are when they want to allow our school system to continue crumbling into a mess of squalid dropout factories by opting out of funding public education taxes, because some Important People are rich enough to afford to send their kids to private schools. These are the real battles of our times! And these are our heroes!

Meanwhile, we continue to spend $6.7 $10 billion a month chasing after a couple hundred amateur bomb makers and "rebuilding" a faraway nation that never really existed in the first place, as the Vice President gets on the email to complain about the government spending $125 for a website to help save a species of tortoise that may soon vanish from the planet because a bunch of greedy investors, aided in part by incentives from the government, decided to build suburban McMansions in the middle of the desert during the height housing bubble.

In Bob Herbert's final column for the New York Times, he writes:

The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.

 Burn the turtle website!