Government so big, my world so small

Well, I’ve filed my federal and state tax returns. I now file this report on what it’s like to be browbeaten by Uncle Sam, who scowls more fiercely around this time of the year.

Last year I earned $12,000 less than I did in 2010, yet the tax table tells me I owe the IRS just $780 less than in the previous year. The “making work pay” credit has been eliminated by our astute leaders, you see, and they’re right; working hard is pointless.

My $6,376 check to the government, dated April 1, will retroactively pay for some long-forgotten Congressman’s ear-marked project approved in 1992. The bill for nearly half of everything the federal government does today will eventually go on my, and your, children’s tab. The guy who, with his marginal savings, is currently paying for all of Obama’s green initiatives is the factory worker in China-the same worker making the solar panels which undercut Solyndra’s products.

I feel my $6,376 check entitles me to ask a few questions about the government. Why, when it cannot run the postal service competently, does the government think it can manage the health-care industry, which is one-sixth of our economy?

The goal of the Environmental Protection Agency, originally, was to keep us from having to breathe foul air. Recently the agency designated our very exhalations (carbon dioxide) as a pollutant, which means we — far from breathing bad air — are now producing it. The EPA has met the enemy, and he is us.

But the government isn’t always overly ambitious. For instance, since it cannot seal our southern border, or deal effectively with Iran, it resorts to campaigning against bullying, steroids in baseball, and the use of incandescent lamps.

The government sure is big, and my own world so, so small.

Alexander Lee

West Chicago