This all goes back to the tax revolt of the late ’70s, the same backlash that led to the Reagan Revolution of 1980 and all the ills that have followed. I still remember my shock on hearing that some town in Ohio had voted to shut down their schools two months early rather than pay the property taxes needed to keep them open. At the time I thought (hoped) it was just a passing fad, but alas, it turned out to be a harbinger of all that has gone awry in America for the past half-century.