"All politics are local," alcoholic Irishman Tip O'Neill once observed.  He was correct, and someone else, I don't know who, maybe that guy who wrote a book about what's wrong with Kansas, observed that we don't always vote in our own apparent self-interest.

What we do notice, though, are our local taxes.  Last year, Fulton County, Georgia, decided that property assessments weren't keeping up with the actual market values, especially in the City of Atlanta, and sent out appraisals that would have doubled some people's property taxes.  It wasn't a tax increase, the county insisted, the tax rate stayed the same, it's just the amount the tax is being paid on that's increased, just like you pay more sales tax for a new car than you do for a pair of shoes (assuming the car you buy is a Kia and your shoes aren't Air Jordans, in which case the values might be reversed).  

There was an uproar, property assessors, lawyers, and tax consultants made a lot of money, and the county backed off and froze the property appraisals for that year, but warned that they'll have to make an adjustment, some adjustment, the next year (i.e., this year).  But since that decision, property values have skyrocketed in the county, especially here in Atlanta.  Because, you know, gentrification.  So after putting the genie back in the bottle for a year, Fulton County had to finally let it out this year, and the genie got released in an even more torrid real-estate market than it briefly saw a year ago.

The Fulton County Commissioners did everything they could to sticker-shock the population before the new assessments were mailed out. They talked about the explosive growth in the city, the effects of new development, and so on and so forth.  And then they started mailing out the new assessments late last month.

I heard in the press and on the radio about people experiencing 100%, even 200%, increases in their valuations. But unlike last year, there was no uproar - we, the people, were expecting the increases, and we just downed a shot of whiskey, braced ourselves, and slowly opened the envelopes when they arrived.

My revised property assessment arrived on Friday, but I couldn't get myself to look inside the envelope until today.  

I didn't do nearly as badly as some others.  My valuation went up 29%, which any other year would seem outrageous, but as it's both a two-year difference due to last year's freeze, and it appears to be a lot better than the 100% increases I've heard about, I'm actually kind of relieved, until I start wondering if the county wasn't using reverse psychology and had started the rumors about 100% and 200% increases themselves so the landowners and voters didn't start a revolution over a 25% to 30% increase.

All politics are local.  We pretend to care about the federal deficit and the social security trust fund until we don't anymore, but mess with our property taxes, and you'll have an uprising on your hands in a New York minute.