As today is Election Day, I thought that as a public service message, I'd remind everyone to vote.

I just did, and the only issue of any importance here in Ann Arbor is a proposal for a double digit property tax increase. Ann Arbor already has the highest property taxes in the state, but that's not enough for the tax guzzling bureaucrats, who say they need more money for the schools.

I voted NO, but only because there wasn't a choice that said "HELL NO!"

In marked contrast to last November (when it took me two hours to vote) the polls were nearly empty today. Whether that means that raising taxes is not a hot-button issue, I don't know. Certainly I saw no Tea Party anti-tax demonstrators anywhere, but that doesn't mean there isn't any opposition to the tax millage. There is, but as Ann Arbor is a very left wing town, opposition to tax hikes is marketed via a cleverly packaged attack on Bush. No, I am not kidding:

Several groups have organized to defeat the millage, but taking the lead is the Citizens for Responsible School Spending, spearheaded by former AAPS board member Kathy Griswold and Ted Annis, a technology entrepreneur who's on the board of the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority.

"Fear-mongering"

Speaking to The Chronicle just before a meeting of CRSS on Sunday afternoon, Griswold characterizes the rhetoric of millage advocates as misleading and fear-mongering, likening it to the tactics that former president George W. Bush used to drum up support for the war in Iraq. She says the per-pupil amounts are misleading, too, and that per-pupil funding for AAPS is much higher - over $12,000 per pupil, not the $9,723 figure that's quoted by the district. She calculates that amount by taking the district's most recent audited financials (from the 2007-08 fiscal year) with general fund revenues of $192 million, dividing that by the number of students in the district, and adding another $1,500 per pupil from revenues of the sinking fund and bond millages.

I'm glad I read that after I voted, though. Because, over the years I became so conditioned by years of kneejerk anti-Bush attacks that I might have been tricked into voting for the millage by mistake!

Instead, I voted against the millage without knowing that I was actually voting against Bush's misleading, fear mongering tactics!

Hope I did the right thing.

These days, you have to be careful!