All over the country — all over the world, even — middle class voters are saying the same thing. With no housing bubble to create fantasy money, with global competition for jobs in the private sector as cutthroat as it's ever been, taxpayers are feeling crushed beneath the heel of a system that rewards the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

Locally, this has spurred voters to first reject a school budget in Rondout Valley, and then to pass an alternative with a 0.3 percent tax decrease by a bare minimum. Do more with less, is what voters are saying.

In Ellenville, a high turnout rejected the Fire District's request for a new ladder truck. This, despite the fact that the current truck is 22 years old and repairs are becoming more and more expensive and impractical. This could end up having an impact on response times in our area.

And that's what we are heading into in this state. We all know that Albany is dysfunctional, corrupt and broke. But, like Wile E. Coyote, with legs churning the air ten feet over the edge of the cliff edge, we haven't felt the pain yet.

Not really, anyway.

For a moment, when the Governor was threatening to close parks, like Minnewaska, we were facing that pain, but the parks are still open. But then, so is the State's yawning fiscal deficit, and no politician wants to offer a realistic plan for that, because to do so would likely be political suicide.

Ulster County, it turns out, thanks to a report on overall debt load by County Comptroller Elliott Auerbach, has nearly a half-billion dollars of municipal debt. That's billion with a "B."

We have reached a situation, where, at every level, from Township to County, to State to Federal governments — even to Europe, which has been dealing with the slow-motion train wreck that is the Greek economy — our political desire for more benefits has decoupled from our ability to pay for them. Many are beginning to think the unthinkable — shut down the state, stop paying the bills, default on the bonds, fire public employees en masse.

Might that become the way of the near future? School districts, their unions, and school boards, will never voluntarily accept the "new" economy's reduced circumstances. Raises are a natural law in their world.

Thus we may be coming, step by inexorable step, to the point where the bridge is closed — until October or maybe next year, and the toll just went up $10 — and you better be really sure you have all the fire extinguishers you might need, because, though the fire department might have a shiny truck, it can't actually go anywhere because its transmission is shot.

The only logical solution to this problem has to come from the national level. The federal government must begin to redirect the money we are squandering in pointless wars into things that actually create economic opportunity. In our area, there are tons of shovel-ready projects that would put people back to work — if they were funded properly.

But our legislature keeps flailing away, as voters in our community continue to make it clear that they're tired of the status quo.

So, don't be surprised if, one day, you dial 911 and the response is a bit slower than you'd like, or that your kids will be in classroom of 35 students, or that the other municipal services you take for granted don't work as well as they should.

This is our future. We had better get used to it.