I'm not particularly tickled pink by the spending habits of either party this year.

Nor do I harbor the naive illusion that if my taxes were suddenly doubled, that we would suddenly have surpluses. That new money would find brand-new wasteful ratholes and we'd be right back where we started in deficits. There is no upper limit to what the government thinks it needs. None. The curve is going logarithmic.

Half our budget--about 1.1 trillion dollars--goes to non-discretionary spending, or "entitlements:" money dragged from some citizens and given to others in return for reliable votes. Most of this is going to the elderly, then much of it is funneled to a medical system now almost completely divorced from any restraint by market forces.

This area of Federal spending--massive redistribution of wealth--was not in the wildest dreams of our Founding Fathers. One assumes some part of the Constitution would have addressed it otherwise--hopefully to forbid it. Had they known that "promote the general welfare" would get twisted into this...

As new programs are generated, like the delightful new prescription drug program which will balloon like a dead cow in the sun and enrich the pharmaceutical industry, the curve will get steeper. I see no way out of this positive feedback loop.

A fair tax would be one where everyone paid in pretty much what they got out of the deal. With property taxes, someone in a mansion pays hundreds of times as much for exactly the same government services as someone living in a trailer park. Exactly why this is "fair" eludes me.

Even the flat tax beloved by many conservatives, where everyone paid, say, 15 percent, is not really "fair." A millionaire pays $150,000 for almost exactly the same services as the guy with the income of $50,000, who pays $7,500.

Face it, to a liberal "fair" means cutting the tall guy down to the size of the shortest guy, and that's not going to change either.

If there is ONE area we should spend money, it should be on schools. We've all had our chances, we need to give the younger every chance they can get.

I could say that the private sector would give us better schools or other methods of education, just like it gives us the best of pretty much everything else, but what would be the point. Despite the immense expanse of luxury and choice given us by private enterprise for almost all our vital needs, we seem to have convinced ourselves that for some obscure reason, education does not qualify as such a product.

I have great hopes for the home school alternative. A tremendous amount of Internet and computer tech is focused on this field, and I see it really going places.

For the record, I actually voted FOR a local tax increase for our schools, for building work and improvements. The key is that the taxes were local, and applied to the actual schools my kids went to. I knew where the money was going, and it wasn't off to Sacramento or Washington.