The more we let these elitist spendthrifts, passing themselves off as our elected officials, tax us the poorer we all become, the more content and numb we become to poor; quality, return on our investment and acceptably lower and lower levels of performance. The next thing you know, while they are getting rich and avoiding the ills that befall us, we will lose control of our elected officials. The worse they perform the more we will want them re-elected.

Before you know it, it won’t make any difference who we elect because they will be all the same. They will become our slave masters and we will hail them for the worse slop they will swill our way tomorrow and the next day.

We will forget the thought that possibly we let these fools take advantage of us and that we are to blame. Instead, we will blame them, but not blame them enough to punish them in any way. We will re-elect them again and again while we slit our own throats knowing we are finally doing the right thing for once.

They will not morn or miss us - nor should they.

It’s the ignorant, wasteful, useless, initiative destroying, profligate, agenda driven spending that results in overcharging, lost and stolen money that’s now lining peoples’ pockets and retirement accounts that really bugs me.

I’ll pay for what is really needed and for that which produces visible/tangible improvement in something that requires improvement. All the rest might as well be flushed down the porcelain convenience.

So what happens if someone slips theirs in the mail on their way to work on the morning of the 16th? I read that the penalty for filing late is something like 5% per month added on what you owe. Or maybe it was 5% of one’s total taxes for the year?

But what about if it was just a matter of those extra 8 hours or so?

My most hopeful wish would be that the government would spend less on things that should not be federal issues and let the private sector, locals and state fund it more appropriately.

Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

The expenses of government, having for their object the interest of all, should be borne by everyone, and the more a man enjoys the advantages of society, the more he ought to hold himself honored in contributing to those expenses. ~Anne Robert Jacques Turgot

Why shouldn’t the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them.
–Edward A. Filene

The idea that some people would pay half of their estate, after some substantial exemptions, to the federal government seems to me entirely appropriate.
–Bill Gates Sr.

Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.

–Thomas Jefferson

Of course the truth is that the congresspersons are too busy raising campaign money to read the laws they pass. The laws are written by staff tax nerds who can put pretty much any wording they want in there. I bet that if you actually read the entire vastness of the U.S. Tax Code, you’d find at least one sex scene (”‘Yes, yes, YES!’ moaned Vanessa as Lance, his taut body moist with moisture, again and again depreciated her adjusted gross rate of annualized fiscal debenture”). ~Dave Barry

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors… and miss. ~Robert Heinlein

I don’t want to pay you any kind of “dues” or “taxes” unless you got an army to back you up.