Taxation Without Representation???

You know, I find it really interesting when I listen to various political pundits and “experts” give their opinions on how we should pay higher taxes for more government services.  I pay about 40% of my income in local, state, federal, sales, and special district taxes.  Yet the government doesn’t provide my power, heat, food, or maintain the roads to my house.  Law enforcement does not patrol my area, though a couple of times in ten years I have seen them out here to arrest someone.  The fire department does respond, I know that because I work for them and am one of the volunteers who responds. 

So the big question is what am I paying most of those taxes for?

1. Education
2. Welfare
3. Health and Human Services
4. Social Security payments.
5. Medicare
6. Police, Fire and other government personnel
7. Military
8. Paying the debt on money we borrow from other countries
9. Capital Project budget expenditures

These nine amount to most of the ongoing expenditures by government. I get nothing from most all of those services.  Someone does.  The Chinese get a lot in interest payments on what we owe them.  The 45% or so percent of Americans who pay no income taxes get those benefits.  The kids who are quitting our public schools with an ever increasing dropout rate and leaving our country in the bottom of the list of well educated people get a huge chunk of that money.

Yes, I know…My kids went to public schools and I get to drive on roads built and maintained by the government and a bunch of other things, but they really are a small chunk of what government takes in and spends compared to the “big nine.”

Is it any wonder that so many Americans are dissatisfied with the status quo?  When you add to all that the scandalous waste of public funds that actually surfaces and we accidentally hear about occasionally as frosting on the cake, it just frosts me, too! 

I heard recently that the government will create another 45,000 regulations this year.  Nothing special.  That’s the average promulgated every year actually.  They will be created by agencies with little or no knowledge or oversight by our elected officials. We will have to abide by them, and I guarantee many of them will cost you more money in fees and taxes.  One great example is the Environmental Protection Agency.  Did you know that they fined a couple in Idaho for building a house in a county approved and platted lot.  EPA said it was a wetland…just that lot and none of the others.  It didn’t matter than it was not a wetland and had no wetland species anywhere near it.  What the EPA map said goes!!!  It took years and a U.S. Supreme Court decision to whack the EPA in the head and tell them to get some sense.  It all worked out in the end so that the folks didn’t have to pay the $80,000 per day fine that the EPA slapped on them for building their house.  This was one of those regulations that was established that no elected representative has input on…which means that you the people have no input.

Taxpayers revolting created this country.  I wonder if it will re-create it?  People make fun of the TEA party.  I’m not a member, but I can certainly relate to what they have to say.