Now that the 2009 election postmortems have been completed, the People In Charge are already looking ahead to February’s election, which promises to be full of bonds and levies designed to relieve you of your excess cash.

“What excess? I don’t have any excess! We’re in a severe economic downturn!” you might say. Politicians say the same thing, so often that we could turn it into a drinking game (take a shot of whiskey every time you hear “challenging economic climate” at a City Council meeting; you’ll be on the floor inside of an hour).

The reality is, we all have some excess cash. The challenge for legislators and school boards is how to convince you of that fact, and get your yes vote. For school levies, parents with school-age children are a lock to vote yes, and anti-tax watchdogs are always against it, so there’s just a huge chunk of independent voters in the middle that are left to decide its fate. You might be one.

Rational discussions won’t grab your attention. Cost-benefit analyses aren’t inspiring enough for you to even finish the paragraph.

The simple truth is, we don’t make rational, informed decisions. If we did, the benefits of providing school computer labs to kids would pass with 100 percent approval. Because it doesn’t, the People In Charge have to appeal to our emotions instead.

The latest disturbing trend in emotional manipulation is the use of Latte-Math Units. Here’s an example: “This levy would cost the average homeowner about $200 a year. So, if you could give up just ONE latte a week, our children can finally get the quality education they deserve.”

This argument dishes out guilt in two ways. One, children in your school district will not get a quality education if you vote no. Two, you are wasting money on selfish beverage choices that aren’t benefiting society.

Personally, I believe that cutting out one latte a week would reduce worker productivity by 10 percent, cutting millions out of the economy. My productivity would probably decline by a lot more, as I would spend the next day complaining about the coffee I was cheated out of the day before. But for the People In Charge, it’s far easier to soft-sell this tax in Latte-Math Units, since we’re reducing $4 in actual money down to a single guilt-filled trip to the coffee stand.

The money isn’t really the issue, though. Most of us have a lot of extra money lying around, and we spend it on useless stuff to fill up our houses. Don’t kid yourself about your stuff; I’ve been to your yard sales, and there’s a reason I didn’t buy everything in your driveway. We all think that our stuff is priceless and important, including me. That’s why I’ve exempted my stuff from this criticism.

I don’t believe the Latte-Math deception is necessary, and I do believe that you, the independent voter, can respond to a rational argument. The best reason for approving a school levy to buy computers is that computer skills are now one of the most essential skills for workers to have at any level. I can’t overstate that fact. The people I know who don’t have computer skills are seriously handicapped in the job market, and are often left with manual labor as their only option. I’m not knocking manual labor jobs (I’d still like to be a delivery driver), but we’d all like our kids to have choices, and not be limited to a small percentage of available jobs.

When kids grow up around computers, those skills develop naturally, just like kids who grow up in houses where two languages are spoken. You may think it’s a big deal, but when the layoff notices come around, your skill sets are evaluated, and the person that always fixes the office computer problems or can also speak Spanish will survive.

Now, where did I put that latte?