The black community is racking up more notable ‘firsts’. Last year, we joyfully elected the country’s first Black (who is actually biracial) president, and this year we made history again. On Jan. 3 (Sorry for my lateness. Full-time life calls.), Mia Love, a Saratoga Springs Councilwoman became the first black woman elected as mayor of a Utah city. Lattecafe readers will be interested to know that Mia married across color lines to a guy named Jason Love. That’s them smooching in the photo from The Salt Lake Tribune. (Mr. and Mrs. Love—too much!) I suppose that in a state like Utah, where blacks are a tiny minority, just about anything a black man or woman does of note is bound to be historic!  But that doesn’t diminish Mia Love’s accomplishment one bit. Let’s wish Mayor Love a successful first term, a decisive reelection should she want it, and a distinguished career of service to her community marked by integrity, wisdom and the respect of all her peers, even if they have philosophical differences. I’ll also include Mia’s campaign video, which just happens to feature another Lattecafe-type couple.

Saratoga Springs looks like a beautiful place to live and raise a family. I’m from North Jersey, so whenever I see pretty pictures like that I automatically think: high property taxes. That’s the way life is here in the Northeast: if you don’t want to live in the ghetto and send your kid to a school with dropout, gang and drug problems, fork out the money for high property taxes. But Ms. Love appears to be dedicated to keeping taxes low. For a long time, I couldn’t understand why people in certain parts of the country had such an aversion to taxes. They had such a well-developed distrust of the revenue source that it seemed to be a phrase applied generally to anything detestable.

And then I started paying tithes regularly at church. At that point, I truly began to appreciate (though I do not always agree) where some American voters are coming from when it comes to keeping all taxes low. A lot of Americans are devout Christians, and are taught to pay tithes regularly. When you consider that tithes is defined as one tenth of a family’s gross earnings, paying it regularly is a major financial commitment along with meeting other obligations, not the least of which is saving and investing. So you can’t blame a person for wanting to elect politicians that promise to eliminate wasteful public spending of any sort. I don’t happen to think that all public spending should automatically be deemed socialistic or wasteful, because I do benefit from some of it. Some of these subsidized government programs really do help middle class families live a little bit more comfortably—certainly without living high on the public dollar.