Tax Time

Published in the Desert Valley Times
April 15, 2005

A news flash from our “Duh”-partment Of Obvious Facts (DOOF), today is tax day.
It’s that glorious moment when all of the Last Minute Larrys trundle down to the post office to mail off their 1040s, W-2s, and big portions of their kid’s college fund to Uncle Sam.
We always hear about the idiotic endeavors our tax dollars fund, like $20,000 hammers and $30,000 toilet seats, and it’s never a good idea to visualize your hard-earned check going into the pocket of the smiling dunderhead on C-SPAN railing to an empty Senate chamber about the dangers of imported dental floss, or an impassioned plea to save the endangered Sierra Mountain Spotted Rock Fly,
However, those aren’t the only things your tax dollars support.
You want to feel better about sending the IRS the money you were going to use as a down payment on the shiny red ATV?
Think about the other places your money may go.
Three months from now, a soldier in Iraq may be alive because it was your money that bought the Kevlar jacket that saved his life.
You may have stopped a terrorist attack when your check was used toward the purchase the bomb-sniffing equipment at a major airport.
And while the Welfare system gets plenty of knocks, your dollars just might be the ones used to feed a hungry child next week.
The fact that nobody likes to pay taxes is also a unifying bond of all Americans.
It doesn’t matter if you’re white, black, brown, red, yellow, or purple, whether you’re from a red state or blue one, we are all brothers and sisters united in a disdain for sending our green to the gub’ment.
Happy Tax Day!