Taxpayers Against Other People

I was at the Charleston Animal Shelter today, getting shots for my two adorable foster kitties.  While I was there, a disgruntled gentleman came in to get his dog, which had been picked up by Animal Control.  It sounded like a routine that happens quite often there, and was handled far more professionally than I would have.

They got some information about the dog, whether it had a license, current with shots (like rabies), and informed the gentleman that he would be responsible for some fees, like to update vaccinations, $35 for picking up the dog, and $10 per night for the one night the dog was sheltered.

The guy was polite and fairly quiet about all this, at least until he got his dog.  Then he indicated that that $35 fine wasn't right, because "I pay it in my taxes."  They tried to explain to him that this was the charge for picking up a roaming dog, but he (fairly politely) restated his position.  They offered to let him talk to the manager, and then she came out (she had obviously done this before as well), and explained that the $35 was a county fee for picking up the dog, and the officer could have given him a $1,000 fine for a loose dog, plus $1,000 for not being up to date on vaccines.

He restated his case, that is, that he had paid his taxes, and she restated her case, and offered to have an Animal Patrol officer talk with him.  At which case he backed off, I'm sure with the $2,000 in potential fines helping to persuade.  When he next said that his dog needed to relieve himself, they kept a discreet eye on him through the window.  Very experienced, very professional.

I, on the other hand, wished that I was the kind of person who could walk up to him and explain to him that he had a hell of a nerve thinking that my tax dollars should pay for his failure to follow the law.  That I am sure that his tax dollars don't hardly cover the shelter, much less the cost of the Animal Patrol and the Animal Patrol van.

But I just listened, and thought, and they say liberals whine???

So I might just as well go all the way and be totally politically incorrect.

I thought that Keith Olbermann reached a new low when he interviewed the man whose house burned down while firefighters watched.  Now, I think there's plenty of blame to go around on this one.  That firefighters would stand by and watch a home burn down is bad enough, there were layers and layers of administrators that created and enforced this policy.

And we all know it wasn't the $75.  The point was that if you only paid when your house was burning down, the whole firefighting thing wouldn't work.  The point is that people need to pay taxes, just in case they need a government service.  You may not have kids in school, but you probably have family that does, and you probably did.  Most of you surely don't use the prison system, but we pay a lot more to keep criminals off the streets than we do for firefighters.

And along the way, the money you pay in taxes does cover a tremendous amount of government service.

While I was watching Olbermann gush with sympathy and rant over this admittedly bizarre and cruel policy, I muttered about the offended citizen -- not his refusal to pay the damned $75, but the likelihood that he believes he is taxed too much, and the government shouldn't take his hard-earned money, and, "damn it, I'm not paying no $75 for no fire department."

"I PAY TAXES."

Please hold me down, because I might hit the next person that whines about paying taxes.  We don't, most of us, pay a lot of taxes.  And the biggest whiners of all, the wealthy, don't pay a drop in a bucket of taxes for the use and abuse of our society that they commit.  Subsidies, tax breaks, tax shelters.  And don't forget the profit they make off us poor slobs.  Privatize my ass.  This country, in Ariana Huffington's words, is becoming a third world nation thanks to the greed and poor business ethics of the private sector.

I'd put my money in the government over private industry any day.

And stop whining.