I guess they showed me

Or, the post in which Allison is forced to admit Missouri did something right. Living in the lllinois half of this bi-state area, one grows to expect a certain amount of misguided condescension from Missourians, a group of people who tend to believe that the world ends at the western edge of the Mississippi, or at least right past the strip clubs clustered near the east end of the river bridges. “Why would anyone live in Illinois?” they wonder. Well, for starters, it’s not Missouri, the state with an educational system that rivals that of Arkansas and a population happy to have sent John Ashcroft both to their governor’s mansion and the U.S. Senate.

Thankfully, my interaction with Missouri's government is usually limited to filing my Non-Resident tax return, a document that, even more than most government forms, is Brazil-like bureaucracy put to paper. While I suppose I should just be happy that I'll never have to again file paper returns in three states against $12.47 of income divided among nine W-2s (true story) (except for the $12.47 part) (but it might as well have been), the Missouri 1040 irritates me so much that for years I have gladly paid the extra twenty bucks for a second Tax Cut state program just to not have to deal with it--even though I, as a non-resident, still had to print a ream of paper forms to send with paper copies of everything else across the border to Jefferson City so I could wait for my paper refund check. Such burdens I bear. Until this weekend, when I finally summoned the energy to find an envelope and a stamp only to find out, nearly accidentally, that I could finally file Missouri's return online. The Show Me state gets with the century! Strange but true.

Stranger still, though, was the fact that two days after I filed, my refund was in my checking account. Two days? That's so efficient as to be distrubing, but at least Missouri won't have what's rightfully mine to help fund the kind of mean-spirited, short-sighted immigration legislation that makes me glad I don't live there. That bill's another post or three, but in the meantime I guess I'll take my refund money and buy a few week's worth of gas to get to my job, in part funded by Missouri tax dollars, helping educate the very Missouri students that proposed Missouri law would thwart. Ah, Missouri government. What is it you're showing me?