So, Wanna Pay Your Taxes Now?

Back in the 1980's, there was a recession. States needed to cut budgets. They cut money from psychiatric care facillities. The persistent homeless rates went up as people who weren't really dangerous, but who could in no way function on their own, wound up on the streets. I had a chat with a man in San Francisco who carried on very involved conversations with the rat living on his shoulder. Yes, the rat talked back. The rat's name was Charles. The man never told me his name. So, it's the 20tweens, another deep recession, and states are cutting budgets again. Now we're parolling criminals. (In between, we privatized much of the prision system, and that complicates things, I know...) Now we have a national focus on a really sweet girl who was abducted, defiled, killed, and buried in a shallow grave by a known and repeat sex offender because there's no money to keep very bad people in jail (and because we think rape is a less serious offense than murder). This was one of the "hard decisions" we are forced by circumstance to make.

So, I ask you. Do you want to pay your taxes now?