Taxes? Who Needs 'Em?

I don't know of anybody who loves to pay taxes. Kind of like WalMart, paying taxes is a necessary evil. However, with last year's campaign and election, Americans voiced their collective opinion: higher taxes might be a good thing. How else are we going to pay for all of the new government programs and agencies necessary to make our lives better and more complete? Our new Vice President even told us that paying taxes was a way to show our patriotism.

"It's time to be patriotic...time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut."

The past few weeks have taught us one thing: paying taxes is a good thing for other people to do. There have been three high profile appointees for Cabinet positions who had "minor" problems with paying all of their taxes the past few years. Two of these appointees withered under the spotlight of public scrutiny and decided to withdraw their names from consideration. One of them, Tom Daschle, should have listened to his own speech from 11 years ago:

"Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter."

I tend to agree with the former senator. If everybody paid their fair share this country would be a great place to live. Better yet, if most of our elected officials actually lived by the same rules that ordinary citizens had to live by, the tax code and reams of government regulation would be reduced dramatically. The guy in charge of that tax code, amongst other things, is Timothy Geithner, another tax cheat. But he happens to be the only person in America smart enough to guide us out of this financial chaos. All of those so-called geniuses being educated in our finest universities who aren't tax cheaters can't hold a candle to this guy. Finally, Nancy Killefer was set to become the Chief Performance Officer, a brand new position in the administration. Her role: "to make government more effective, more efficient, and more transparent". Apparently the transparency was too much for her as it was revealed she failed to pay property taxes. That's a shame.

I still haven't heard Vice President Biden publicly denounce any of these people for being "unpatriotic". Maybe another prominent democrat was right all along. John Edwards' entire campaign was based on there being "two Americas". Maybe he actually meant one America for politicians and the other America for the rest of us. I'm left to try to continue to cheat on my taxes while the rest of you dutifully pay yours. I am very impressionable that way. I'm only following their examples.