raise my taxes, please

As my mother was fond of telling me, "Money doesn't grow on trees." 

If you want to have a cash flow, you have to make money.  It is that simple. 

If you want to spend money, you have to make it.  Again, very simple.

If you want to have roads on which to drive, you have to somehow pay for them.

If you want to send your children to a public school, you must somehow pay for the teachers, books, buildings, electricity, maintenance workers and so forth.

If you want your children to have transportation provided by the school district, you must somehow pay for the buses, gasoline, maintenance, and drivers.

If you want to lock criminals behind bars, you must somehow pay for the prisons and jails in which they will be housed.

If you want to attract businesses to your area, you must pay for the economic development professionals who make marketing the region their constant task.

If you want to feel safe when you go out for a walk, if you want to be alleviated of drunken drivers, if you don't want to fear you will be mugged when doing your Christmas shopping, you must pay for the police officers who stand in the way of the common crook.

If you want to receive your social security check upon retirement, or your disability check should you someday become sick and unable to work, or if you want your husband, son, or father to receive his military retirement check for time served, you must somehow find a way to pay for it.

As a nation, we could continue to beg, borrow, steal, and cut back to the point at which there is nothing left.  Or, we could raise taxes. 

If we want our country to flourish, 

if we want to raise up children who are well-educated, 

if we want to continue to be global players, 

if we want to treat our elderly and disabled well, 

if we want to feel safe in our own homes, 

if we want to have roads on which to drive, 

if we want to make leaps and bounds in the scientific community and one day cure diseases that are now sentences of death, 

if we want to honor our police officers and firemen who died in the line of duty, 

if we want to have a military, 

if we want to do anything other than sink into a nation of mostly impoverished people who can barely look up to see the wealthy few who rise above them, 

the government must raise taxes.

There is no other choice.  If you can't pay, you can't play. 

Don't listen to those who say that the money would come from the shoulders of the poor.  Don't listen to those who say that higher taxes will run you into the ground.  Don't listen to those who use scare-tactics so that they might become even wealthier and more powerful.  Look around you.  Our nation is crumpling to the ground.