Okay everybody, take a long, deep breath. Take your eyes away from the page, close ’em and let that breath leave your body. Relax. Come this Thursday, April 17, every upstanding, taxpaying Michiganian will have theoretically worked enough this year to pay off the government. Thursday is Tax Freedom Day.
Feel better?
Me neither.
Last year (2013) we taxpayers slaved for the government from January 1 though April 14 — three days less. And, our three extra days of freedom from the yoke of ever-intrusive government was able to gain state coffers an extra BILLION dollars of surplus. Let me state for the record and publicly right here: Please do not give us our pittance of a percentage of that BILLION dollars back in the form of a onetime refund. Put it back into the roads.
Oh, what is Tax Freedom Day? It’s this magical day all Americans have worked for. It is the day when we’ve worked long enough to pay off all our year’s national, state and local taxes. Pixie dust and fairy tales aside, it’s just a way to illustrate how much we work for the government and the programs provided (whether we support them or not).
In 2006, I wrote about Tax Freedom Day, too. In that year, we taxpayers worked for ‘The Man? 116 days — from January 1, through April 26.
I know I should be kicking up my heals, dancing a jig and thanking Benevolent Big Brothers for reducing our working sentence by nine whole days! But, I’m not. I hate it, but Donny Downer here looks back to last year and says, ‘I’m working three more days for the bureaucrats and three less days to better me, my family and community.?
I know, I know. I cannot have my cake and eat it, too. But, as a legal, born and bred American, it is my right, no, my solemn duty, to moan, groan and grumble about taxes and government. I’m exercising my rights, enumerated in the Bill of Rights via The United States Constitution to express my displeasure.
I know we need to pay taxes, but I would LOVE to see exactly how much ‘revenue? is brought in from our toils and see exactly how our tax money is spent. Transparency — just like pixie dust and unicorns — is purely a fable perpetuated by those on the government dole. I wish fairy tales were true. Of course, as I tell my sons, ‘If wishes were horses, we’d all be riding.?
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This past weekend, I heard a report on the 2008 Farm Bill. Well, actually it was a report on how the government has found a way to collect money from dead people. It seems some government lackey found there is a line in the 2008 bill which allows the U.S. government to collect money it thinks it is owed by dead people, by billing the dead’s living heirs. I believe that bill originated with U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D) Michigan.
Thanks, Deb!
I had always joked with my sons, when I die I’m only going to leave them unpaid bills because I knew sons are not responsible for their parent’s debt to Uncle Sam. Not so, anymore. Now I gotta? make sure I’m paid up before I take the long, deep dirt nap. Damn.
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And, as a red-blooded American, I can honestly say I hate all those namby-pamby socialist apologists who smugly suggest, ‘Well, you should be happy. They pay more taxes in Europe . . .?
Okay, okay: I don’t ‘hate.? I’m just saying there’s a reason we’re here and they’re there.
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A thought just whizzed across my mind . . . my mom’s kin are from the hollars of Kentucky and West Virginia. Maybe my angst about taxes is in-bred, genetically programmed in me. I hear my inner-hillbilly mumbling, ‘If taxpayin? Americans give up shoutin? at revenuers; if we turn yeller?, we will become Them sheep who pop-u-late the rest of the world.?
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Back to Tax Freedom Day. Who wants to roast some weinies in celebration on Thursday? Nobody? didn’t think so.
Comments for Don Rush can be e-mailed to Don@ShermanPublications.org