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A Bittersweet Finale For Discovery Space Shuttle
Julie188 writes "The shuttle Discovery re-entered the Earth's atmosphere for the last time Wednesday to close out the space plane's 39th and final voyage. And so marks the beginning of the end for America's shuttle program. Everything about the last flight felt epic, from how it overcame a down-to-the-last-second problem to launch on its final mission in February, to its sunny final landing this week. As it coasted to a stop, Discovery's odometer stood at some 5,750 orbits covering nearly 150 million miles, during 39 flights spanning a full year in space — a record unrivaled in the history of manned rockets."
I never complained about taxes, only the IRS and its workers. The IRS as an organization is bloated and extremely inefficient, wasting a large part of the taxes we pay just to run its own bureaucracy and pay its excessive number of employees. The fact that our tax code is FAR too complex just adds to that, plus creates an entire sector of the economy that really shouldn't exist: tax accountants (particularly for individuals, notably H&R Block). These businesses are simply a drain on society, and the money taxpayers give to them to do their taxes could be better spent on other things to improve the country's economic output. In most other countries (notably 1st world "socialist" countries like those in Western Europe), the tax code is much simpler, and filing taxes is a simple affair, not generally requiring the services of a third-party expert. Here, if you're middle class, that's simply not the case.
Moreover, the workers at the IRS, much like many other government agencies, are indeed lazy, spoiled, and overpaid, and have far too much job security, allowing them to get away with ridiculously bad performance without fear of being replaced. This isn't unique to the IRS at all, I only gave that as a three-letter example. It pervades all of government.