Imagine

"Imagine there's no taxes,
It's easy if you try ..."
-- with apologies to the late John Lennon

I stood in the Wendy's line at lunch, lusting over a luscious salad. I had eight quarters and three one dollar bills in my hand. Should be more than enough to cover the cost of an item whose listed price tag is $4.79, right?

Wrongo, bucko.

Not in 2009, not in this city, not in this swiftly-sinking-to-h$ll country of ours.

With tax, it came to $5.25. That's .46 tax, or eight percent!

I didn't have the invisible two extra quarters the city/state/feds demanded so I had to use the credit card or get something cheaper or just starve. Sweetie will not be happy -- She doesn't like to use the card except for emergencies.

Unless you are a math genius with a tax table in your pocket, you can't hope to use a store price tag these days to determine how much you will pay for your merchandise.

Tax anger created this country. Tax anger just may be what drives out the current crop of slime that has oozed into all its positions of leadership.

We need taxes for public education, we are told. Well, public education in this country stinks. It's not the fault of the majority of teachers, highly over-worked and underpaid, but rather of badly-raised children, moronic parents and stupid administrative ideas such as recess elimination. So let's figure out a better way and maybe pay for it more intelligently.

We need taxes for roads, we are told. What, those same roads that our current taxes can't keep fixed? Why not sell stretches of freeway to big corporations and let them rename it, for example, Ronald McDonald Expressway and paint the happy clown's face on the pavement and pay a fat fee for the privilege of millions of drivers getting the craving for a Big Mac as they speed down the road?

We need taxes to pay the salaries of senators and such, we are told. I really, really hope that you don't believe that. Why not have communities pick local good guys and gals and compel them, George Washington-style, to temporarily serve their country as leaders, and pay them a living wage like honest folk make and no more? I'm sick up to my ears of all the arrogant political dirtbags who salivate over public office like a junkie craving his crack-pipe. Let 'em work off some of their bloated belly fat laying asphalt on our new, tax-free roads or dodging IEDs in Iraq.