Taxes

Six months of tax free time in Iraq last year plus the mortgage and kid all conspired to give me a 100% return on my taxes.

For the first time in my life I don't feel guilty about getting money back.

Before someone gets offended and says I have an overdeveloped sense of guilt brought on by my public school indoctrination, I would like to refer to the parable of the "Widow's mites". When people give to the treasury from their abundunce because they believe that the treasury should be filled, that is good. When someone gives to the treasury from their poverty because the treasury should be filled God gives note.

I've always been blessed with an abundance. Maybe not by some standards, but I've always had a vehicle to drive, someone willing to let me crash on their couch (and for the last few years a house of my own), and access to books, media, and the internet. When you think about what that really means in the grand scheme of things means that I am a truly wealthy individual.

So when I got my tax return back, I felt that even though I was "doing my part" according to the law, that there was still a need to fill the treasury. That like ancient believers who filled the treasury of the temple I was bound to support this nation that I love dearly, for the freedoms and opportunity that exist nowhere else.

Now, with the massive intrusion into our civil liberties that is HCR, I feel that it would be better for the treasury to be empty.