Day: June 8, 2026

I have always paid my taxes and I have done so on time even when I was struggling a bit with finances. There was a time when I took care of multiple children in my home. The parents paid me in cash so nobody would have been the wiser that I was receiving those funds but I reported every single penny and paid the fees that that were due. It’s who I am, how I was taught to be. Not once have I attempted to cheat the government by hiding the income that came my way. 

I don’t say these things to brag. My honesty is part and parcel of most citizens of the United States. It is what we do, not just to stay out of trouble. We understand that the funds we send to the government keep important programs running, even some that we may never use.

As a child my family was saved from destitution during the interval between the time my father died and my mother began working. She was a thirty year old woman left in a rented home with three children under the age of nine. She had only a small savings account and a damaged car that was totaled in my father’s deadly accident. If not for the SSI payments that came to her we would have been hungry and perhaps even homeless. They were a stopgap measure that kept us alive for a time. 

My brothers and I are now eligible for Medicare, a privilege that did not even exist when our grandmother was dying of colon cancer. Her illness literally left my grandfather penniless because he had to absorb an enormous number of medical bills not covered by his health insurance. My grandmother was eighty eight years old when the doctors and hospital quit treating her and sent her home for my grandfather to do the job in her final weeks of life. He could no longer pay them because everything that he had saved over a lifetime was gone. When she died he ended up living in a room provided by a young widow who felt fortunate to have the small fee that he paid her each month from his Social Security check and pension. I give my taxes to make sure that what happened to my grandparents does not have to happen to another elderly person.

We now live in an upside down society that allows a billionaire president and his family to never again be audited for the taxes that they may or may not actually pay. All the while so much of the national treasury that we the people send to the government is being used for unnecessary wars, an out of control immigration system. for painting the bottom of a reflection pool and for the president to fly regularly to Florida to play golf and host parties. 

I thought that my contribution to the treasury might play a small part in giving nutritious fruits and vegetables to pregnant women unable to afford such things. I thought that my funds might support educational programs for the underserved. I felt comfortable at ith the idea of using my taxes to provide for our veterans or to monitor invasions of screw worms that if left unchecked might devastate those involved in the beef industry. 

We are all in this together. The founding fathers never suggested that we did not need taxes to fund the fledgling nation but they certainly were acutely aware of taxation without representation and that is where I find myself at this moment. Why is my voice not only being ignored but gerrymandered out of any chance to elect candidates whose focus seems in line with mine? Right now I feel as though the present government does not give a hoot what I think or what I care about. If they came to my door at gunpoint to take my taxes I would not feel anymore violated than I do in this moment. 

I am angry that those immature DOGE boys in their twenties took an ax to so much of our government. I am incensed that the rich are growing richer and the middle class is being all but obliterated while the poor are barely able to survive. I am regularly reading stories of good honest people living in their cars because they cannot keep up with the high cost of housing.

There are reasons why the founders created what they hoped would be an ironclad ability to insure check and balances on presidential power. The nations top leader was never intended to be immune from prosecution for criminal acts or to be exempted from paying a fair share of taxes like the rest of us.

I find myself in the year of our two hundred fifth anniversary understanding more and more how the original citizens who founded our nation must have felt when they were being ignored and abused by a king wielding his unchecked power. I feel that the present Republican government in the presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court does not care one bit about what I want or need as a citizen. I am tired of being accused of being a communist or traitor or dumb person because i can plainly see the graft being inflicted on us all. It is long past time to stop the rewriting of the foundations of our Constitution without input from the people. Surely everyone can see how we are being hoodwinked out of our rights. The evil has gone too far.