Where's the Equal Protection?

Considering that I've actually read the 14th amendment, I am aware that the equal protection clause specifies that the states can't deny equal protection under the laws; but shouldn't we be able to expect equal treatment and equal protection under the laws of the federal government as well?  We should, but we aren't going to get it and that point has really been driven home in the last month or so.

We don't get treated equally by the government.  Not at all.  Especially when it comes to a tax code that says some pay 35% of their paycheck, others pay 25%, some pay 10% and some pay nothing at all.  And instead of railing against the inequality of this, people scream that those paying 35% aren't paying enough.  It should be equal.  The same percentage for everybody.

One of my pet peaves is that somebody making the exact same amount of money as I do will pay much less in taxes than I do because they have children and I don't.  As if not being able to find somebody who wants to marry me and being physically incapable of having children isn't hard enough, I have to pay higher taxes as a result of those things.  How's that equal?  If it's based on pay it should be based on pay.

Now we have the backroom deals where some states will get money and others won't.  Some people will have to pay taxes on their healthcare plans and others won't.  This bank should have to pay back money they borrowed, but that one won't.  This company that is failing gets saved but the government, but your company won't.

We have taken a country begun with the belief that we are created equal, and legislated inequality.

During the first round of the tea parties we were told to "learn our history" and that the original tea parties were about taxation without representation.  Well I don't know about you, but I'm not feeling represented.

The colonists were fed up with Parliament saying we need money for these people over here, so we're going to take it from those people over there.  Isn't that exactly what's happening now?  Isn't our government saying that if the poor need money they can just take it from "the rich".  Talk about a lack of representation, the rich people in the US have no representation at all.  If you dare to stand up against the idea that they should always be on the hook for paying whatever the government needs, then you are villified.  I'm not rich, not even close to it, but the way they are expected to foot the bill for everybody else in the country offends my sense of fairness.

If we're going to have an income tax, then everybody, and I mean everybody, who earns money should pay the same percentage of their paycheck in taxes.  What's more, I think we should do away with the payroll taxes and everybody should have to write a monthly check for their taxes.  Of course the government will never do this and it's not hard to figure out why.

If those in the lower income brackets, which I have fallen in for much of my adult life, were to actually have to feel the impact on their own checkbooks, they would be the fiercest guards against government waste.  The staunchest defenders of small government and personal liberties.  If you have nothing and the government is taking that from you, you're going to be sure they're not wasting your hard earned money. This is exactly why the government works to exempt these people from any taxes at all.  With no skin in the game they don't really care how the money is spent.  Why should they?

Can you imagine what would happen if there were a house in Congress where, like the Senate with the states, every tax bracket had the same number of representatives and had the same representation? 

I'm completely fed up with the legislation of inequality in this country and my point, after all my rambling, is that if a piece of legislation applies to one person, it should apply to all people equally.