The title of the Bloomberg piece: Wildfire Tests Police Force In Colorado Anti-Tax Movement’s Home. Its opening:


As Colorado Springs battles a rash of burglaries after a wildfire that still licks at its boundaries, it does so with fewer police and firefighters.

The city where the Waldo Canyon fire destroyed 346 homes and forced more than 34,000 residents to evacuate turned off one-third of its streetlights two years ago, halted park maintenance and cut services to close a $28 million budget gap after sales-tax revenue plummeted and voters rejected a property-tax increase.
The municipality, at 416,000 the state’s second-largest, auctioned both its police helicopters and shrank public-safety ranks through attrition by about 8 percent; it has 50 fewer police and 39 fewer firefighters than five years ago. More than 180 National Guard troops have been mobilized to secure the city after the state’s most destructive fire. At least 32 evacuated homes were burglarized and dozens of evacuees’ cars were broken into, said Police Chief Pete Carey.
“It has impacted the response,” said Karin White, a 54- year-old accountant, who returned home June 28 to a looted and vandalized house, with a treasured, century-old family heirloom smashed.

A little history, because history tells you shit and stuff:

Colorado Springs, which depends on sales tax for about half of its revenue, was hit harder than most. The city — the birthplace 20 years ago of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which later passed statewide and has been pushed around the country to restrict government spending — became a high-profile example of cost-cutting. The law restricts government spending to the previous year’s revenue, adjusted only for population growth and inflation.

After a little history, the present reality...

Dunn [an associate professor of political science at University of Colorado] notes that the city, where there is strong anti- federal government sentiment, is now turning to the U.S. for assistance. Before visiting Colorado on June 29, President Barack Obama declared the state a disaster area, which frees aid for communities affected by the wildfires.
We in Seattle are enjoying a cool summer day. No stress at all. Lots of sun for the leaves. No clouds for now. Everything looks great out my window. I'm even enjoying the wind chimes. Why should we in perfectly perfect Seattle pay federal taxes and shit like that? Because a fucking disaster could strike us in the future. And in this future, Colorado Springs could very well be doing great, having a nice day, and enjoying the sounds of wind chimes. Get this, tea people: We need a functioning government more than we need rich people on welfare. We cannot cut costs because we do not want to tax corporations or the wealthy. The function of the state is always to distribute the good luck and the bad luck—the good luck of a sunny day or a big payday; the bad luck of a natural disaster or a job injury.