More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won't pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

Do I really need to rebutt this further?

#31 devastates that logic abundantly?

You want more?

Your logic such as it is, is 'if there is a tax attached to it, it must therefore be constitutional' or 'as long as the enforcement mechanism is taxation, it must be constitutional'.

However this can easily be seen to be fatuous:

'Citizens will become Secular Humanists or face a levy'

'Citizens must buy a rifle or pay a penalty' [works for Switzerland admittedly]

'All householders will upon demand provide temporary room and board to [redcoats, batf agents, americorp volunteers, supply your own example] or pay a fine.

...and so on. You can nullify the entire Bill of Rights if simply enforcing the unconstitutional action by taxation makes it constitutional.

Although the American colonists fought for independence from British rule and British taxes, once the United States government formed, its main source of revenue was derived from placing customs and excise taxes on the same items that were taxed by Great Britain. In 1812, in an effort to support an expensive war effort, the U.S. government imposed the first sales tax, which was placed on gold, silverware, jewelry and watches. In 1817, internal taxes were terminated and the government relied on tariffs to support itself. It wasn't until 1862 [to pay for the civil war -B] that the United States imposed the first national income tax. - I did not know that