Death & Taxes

I found this neat website I thought I would share. Death and Taxes is a representational graph of the federal discretionary budget. The amount of money that is spent at the discretion of your elected representatives in Congress. Basically, your federal income taxes.

One of the ironic things about our system is that those who pay the highest taxes receive the fewest services.

Chris ask
Relative to the services that you receive from government, do you think you pay too much in taxes? Explain.

Yes, I think I pay too much in taxes. Especially on the Mississippi State Income Taxes which unfairly penalizes one income families.

Some of the bloggers out there want universal health coverage. I don't. Why? First consider the poor are already covered under Medicaid, the elderly have Medicare and the military have their own health coverage. None of these programs are all that great. The people I know on Medicare also have private insurance to cover all the things Medicare doesn't. Universal health care for most of us will mean paying HIGER TAXES for CRAPPY INSURANCE. Many of the uninsured could afford insurance but choose not to purchase it. I fail to see why I should pay higher taxes because they would rather buy a boat, a new car or some other luxury item instead of health insurance. Yes, I do realize there are people in some areas that honestly can't afford health insurance. But this seems to be more of a problem with the insurance laws in their state. Also the public needs to be EDUCATED so they understand that if they forgo insurance and then get sick, they will 1.) have trouble purchasing a policy and 2.)Most policies exclude pre-existing conditions. We also need to make it easier for a group of people to band together to purchase insurance, insurance co-ops if you will. But under no circumstances should we put the government in charge of our health insurance.

Public schools ~ even though my family doesn't use them I have no problem supporting them as long as they actually educate the children in their charge. Unfortunately many of the students entrusted to the public school system are not receiving an education and will be a future drain on society. I am not altogether convinced it is the fault of the public schools, Charlie Mitchell had a column in The Sun Herald Paying students to attend will complete the evolution that may shed light on where the fault really lies.

For all of recorded time, education was something people sought for themselves and their children because they knew education had value. The complete inverse has come to pass. The trend is now to beg children to learn and their parents to instill an appreciation for what teachers have to offer.

The War in Iraq is a huge waste of money and lives. It's time to bring our troops home.

And while we are on the subject of taxes it's a disgrace that one of the poorest states, Mississippi, has one of the highest taxes on groceries ironically we have the third lowest tax on cancer sticks.