I was driving down the freeway near our bay and I passed a nice car hauling a good-looking boat and I wondered if the car or the boat was paid for. Not my business of course, but I was just wondering. Credit is a wonderful thing.
Then for some reason I thought about the taxes. I know there were taxes on the boat purchase, the car purchase and the trailer purchase and then a hefty license fee for the car, trailer and boat. On the other side of the freeway I was passing rows of nice homes, each one paying a hefty property tax to the city. All of the cars and trucks on the freeway were running on fuel which we bought costing mostly taxes. Ever notice the taxes on your cable TV or the taxes on your phone bill? In fact everything I looked at or had at home had one or more taxes attached to it's purchase, function and maintenance. Then of course there is the big bite, Federal and State income tax. (We all know April 15 and IRS!)
I'm tired of taxes. Are you?
I was reminded of a hike I took in the jungles of India some years ago, and found I had leeches on my legs. Now I'm from San Diego and had never even seen a leech. They started so tiny that I didn't even feel them attaching themselves to my leg. As leeches do, they were looking for blood. They were sucking my blood; my life out of me ... little by little. And they were growing, how fast they grow!
I'm back living in San Diego, California ... USA and my life is being sucked from me by, quite literally a million little taxes and a few big ones.
Our elected leaders are quite literally leeches. "We need more revenue, where can we put another small tax? Just another half-cent will bring in millions." Just another little leech.
Proverbs 30:15 God has it right on! The leeches cry more! More! There is never enough! They never look at themselves and their bloated lives.
In a bureaucracy there are no mirrors.
Have you noticed; it's always our fault, we're not giving enough.
In the last ten years we've seen disproportional growth in the City, State and Federal bureaucracies, still the leeches cry out for more. Every bureaucracy is similar to a leech in two ways, (1) it sucks life from it's host and (2) it grows ... every leech grows.
Don't get me wrong.
Small government is necessary, and realistic bureaucracies have their place, but when they grow and grow, way beyond their purpose, they actually become the leeches they are.
What we did with our leeches that hot humid night, was simply scrape them off ... painful, leaving our legs bleeding, but soon to heal.
Simple solution to our growing government ... scrape off a third of the leeches and put the other two-thirds to work!
