Federalism actually works; make it the only tax we pay™

Insert your better governance here; the curator's is federalism, actually working. Decisions made close to the people who live with them; the pool, the school, the road, the bus, the clinic; the layered civic floor you can walk to and vote on (this is the government-can-actually-be-good plank made fiscal). So the tax worth paying is the one that funds that; the commons near you, the things that keep a person here and make a day better. Federalism should be the only tax we pay; and that's why defunding the military is the right mission. A budget is a moral document; what it channels is what we get; and a country that funds an oversized war machine over its own civic floor has written down what it values and it isn't people (books, not bombs; fund joy, not war; vote pool). Move the money from the thing that ends conversations to the things that keep a town alive. (Labeled opinion, party-blind on the test if not the conclusion; and the steelman kept: national defense is a real federal function, and federalism has its own failure modes; the argument is proportion and priority; fund the floor first and cut the war budget, not a claim that defense is worth zero. See also how you finance a war and where the money goes.) Kin: government-can-be-good, fund joy not war, books-not-bombs, pools-not-war, prisons-not-pools, the property-tax critique, the convention petition. (His coin; machine's read, refine to his.)