Peter, where are you now that we need you?

The 19th century fictional tale of a little Dutch boy named Peter,  by author and poet Phoebe Cary, says he put his finger in a leaking dike and held it there all night while the adults slept in order to keep the dike from breaking, thus saving his country.

In the Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates story, the little Dutch boy, a hero in the fable, is trying to save his country while everyone sleeps, similar you might say to our current obsession with raising taxes.

The Transportation T-SP(REGIONAL)LOST forum sponsored by the Times-Enterprise last week was sparsely attended and, had it not been for the six candidates running for offices in the July 31 election, there probably would not have been enough in attendance to warrant turning the lights on in the Thomas County Board of Education auditorium.

Folks, there is a hole in the dike and there is no one sticking their finger in to stop the bleeding of new taxes on the citizens.

Mayor Max Beverly says the 12.5 percent increase in the sales tax is a losing proposition for Thomas County.

If the regional tax passes, we would be contributing $77 million while presumably getting back $47 million — with $28 million of that figure not being available until 2020.

Inflation, cost overruns and political shenanigans will most assuredly cause that $47 million to be reduced by the latter part of the decade.

When the state went from a three to a four percent sales tax, a hole in the dike was created and it gets bigger all the time as politicians recognize while citizens snooze when talking about a one cent tax increase they will not awaken until a 10, 12 or 15 cents tax is imposed.

Those on Medicare might want to note that their Medicare cost rises to $120 a month next year to $245 in 2014 unless Obamacare is replaced.

While Democrats have predictably demonized Republicans through the years as wanting to dismantle Social Security and Medicare, it took a Democrat by the name of Barack Obama to actually cut Social Security by $500 million a year — and the hole in the dike continues to expand.

Patricia Gainey’s letter to the editor on Sunday was right on target when she said, “I predict the new health care law will be so difficult to administer that citizens will rise up in protest demanding Congress get rid of it.”

She jumps the rail, though, by calling for a single-payer system with universal coverage, which by overwhelming opinion indicates that method would crash land because there is no appetite for taxes high enough to pay for it — especially when we are running $1 trillion annual deficits.

Gainey makes another good point by saying we have many goods and services because we work and we pay taxes.

Universal health coverage would plunge this country into pure Socialism and our life as we know it would lack the ingredients that made us great namely economic and personal freedom from government control of our lives.

Our minister on Sunday made a poignant point in describing Jonah’s boat ride when he said, “You can’t afford to sleep” and further amplified that statement by saying, “Pay attention to what is going on between now and November.”

Who will be the next Peter to plug the hole in the dike?