Actually, the politicians had to bend the law to keep us off the ballot that time. I don’t know if they did it on purpose or through sheer incompeten… - Howard Jarvis

After all, a government is supposed to be run by the people. We’ve developed in this country an apathetic philosophy that says: ‘I’m only one person. I can’t do anything—why should I take my time?’ The lack of interest means the people have lost faith in their elected officials. They have lost faith in their capacity to be part of government. They have lost sight of the fact that if this system continues as it has, it’s going to change American citizens into subjects.

Elected officials have a responsibility to represent their constituents to the best of their ability. But there is hardly a better example of a conflict of interest than the difference between the best interest of the politician and the best interest of the people he has the duty to represent. The more taxes, the more money government has to spend, the more public employees the politician can put on the public payroll, the more power the politician has.

For me, the words ‘I’m mad as hell’ are more than a national saying, more than the title of this book; they express exactly how I feel and exactly how I felt about the woman who died at the County building, as well as countless other victims of exorbitant taxes. I can tell you, there have been thousands of people who’ve had heart attacks—some fatal—or suffer severe emotional distress as they saw their lives drastically worsened by intolerable, unproductive, and unfair taxes made all the worse by inflation and an energy crisis that the politicians and bureaucrats have not been willing to face up to.