Chronicle readers should not be surprised that the Infernal Revenue Service is cracking down on parking.

After all, if you get free parking at work, isn’t it a benefit you should you pay a tax on?

How about parking at church, not only if you work there but if you park there for a worship service or some other event?

We can hear you now saying, “Martha, did you read in the Chronicle that they want to tax us for parking at work, church and just about any other place. When’s this taxing gonna stop?”

This is a flea bite compared with the millions of dollars we spend in your tax money regulating monopoly utilities such as Carolina Water Service, SCE&G – now Dominion Energy – Duke and other service providers.

And what do we get for it?

Ever increasing rates for rarely-improving services.

If you are an unfortunate Carolina Water customer, you know exactly what that means.

We pay the Public Disservice Commission each more than $104,000 a year to sit on their rumps, listen to lies from the utilities, ignore counsel from the Office of Regulatory Staff that did it’s homework, and give the utilities what they ask.

The brightest spot so far this year is the federal shutdown.

Sure, we feel for federal employees who were out of work and out of pay for more than a month. We feel even more for border guards, air controllers, airport security workers and others who showed up for work without pay. They have since been paid, whether they worked or not, but this raises a major question: Do we need so many federal employees? Most of us on work outside government saw little affect on our lives. Why do you think that is?

Dear friends, it won’t stop until you pick up the phone, turn on your computer or write a letter delivered by the postal service all of us pay billions of dollars a year in taxes for.

Write your public officials and ask them for some tax relief,

Yes, this takes effort on your part. If you let this opportunity go, live with the result.

– Jerry Bellune