Yes, especially those taxes paid on the local level… property tax, sales tax and even State income taxes.  As for the federal level, I think if any of us can keep track of those monies any better than what is itemized occasionally on one of those pie graphs…. then we are doing better than average…way better.

Remember old Benjamin Franklin and his quote "Nothing in this world is certain except death and taxes"?  Try as we may to put both out of our heads, his words still hold true.  . and will.  All our thoughts of "this isn’t fair" and - oh yeah - the other "WHY, ME?" are only that. 

I know that you can protest local taxes and win.  In the scheme of things, I call the amounts "peanuts", and the high blood pressure caused in the process of fighting for a few hundred dollars while raising your already high blood pressure to heart attack range is a gamble.  But that is just my own thinking. 

I have handled budgets in my occupations, but what we are seeing now is incomprehensible, changing almost daily.  We can do nothing but pray that we will somehow see a better day.  In the meantime, what can we do?  I believe as I always have, that placing our attention on finding quality of whatever sort in our daily lives is what we - as individuals - are able to do best.  Love and caring for family and friends give them and us a stability that is needed even more now.  There is something wonderful in that.

As for the changes in all of our lives, let us hope that the axiom:  "This too shall pass" still will forever ring true.  But let’s not even get into the "when?" part!!!!

I think about taxes in a sort of broad social sense. and i do think about how they are spent since i’ve worked for more than one government entity in my life. So i’ve seen first hand how they get spent.

And i think i’m in a unique position to judge the realities of our tax codes. i grew up dirt poor. put myself through school partially on a pell grant. went on to work a very middle income job and raise a family on a middle income. and now am "overprivledged" (as Candice says) at this point in my life. When i was middle income i kept thinking "ya… tax the rich they don’t need it!". and now that i’m looking at a tax bill that’s capable of paying for small agency budgets i’m more like "okay… i get it… but why should we always be the ones paying more?". we pay MORE already. We pay our "share" so to speak. since any % of a big income is still more than a smiliar % of an income that is less. So i don’t get how people think continuing to up tax rates in our income bracket is fair. it’s not like people who make a lot of money owe the rest of the world anything for having made that money.

i voted for Obama even though i didn’t agree with his "let’s take more from people who have it" platform entirely. There are portions of it i agreed with.

No, but I just wrote a piece on it:

Members of the Greater Lansing Network Against War & Injustice and the Peace Education Center will stage an informational picket tonight at the Lansing post office on Collins Road. Judith Bridger from those organizations says they’re calling for cutbacks in military spending:

 She says that addressing health care, education and the environment will help stimulate the economy, while military spending drains the economy.

As a resident of ‘Taxachusetts’, I’ve become numb to the tax issue because we have a lot of them and they constantly increase, in good times and bad.

What we need is an actual two party system in government here. The same people keep electing incumbents (Frank, Kerry, Kennedy) over and over and they wonder why nothing changes?!

P.S. Happy Birthday to my ‘Tax Day’ baby - she’s 17 today!

Green Tears

I hope your daughter has a great birthday!  17 is a great age!

I do think about my taxes - local, state and federal.  Although getting through most of the budgets are an extreme pain in the … neck, but necessary.  We the people are very much a part of the checks and balances.

I’ve never "worried" about where my taxes end up. However, as a resident of Orange County, CA, the county where OctoMom lives, I’m now aware of the money this scam artist has been scamming. While I don’t begrudge the money that goes to the kids, I sure as heck am mad as heck about her decision to have ANY children at taxpayer expense while she was unemployed and with no source of income.  [Tranlation: that means all 14 kids.]

California is in a really bad situation. More than anything, knowing the State is broke makes me really angry at all the freebies the illegal aliens have collected. Now we’re paying the piper.