What I have been learning

This week, perhaps more than at any other point in my life, I have learned that when things feel dark, hopeless or bleak, loved ones may be the only glimmer. And that can be just enough to keep trudging up a seemingly insurmountable climb.

Broccoli

In light of today's excellent SCOTUS decision, I'm thinking I'm going to have some of my favorite vegetable to celebrate.

Seriously, tho, I'm quite relieved.

A follow-up

I haven't posted in 4 months and now there's a twofer today.
I have an idea about a way to save money and apply it in a more useful way.

#1 Did you know that the US spends 5 times as much on the military budget ($711 billion) than its closest competitor (China at $143 billion)? Do you know how much of that is needless spending according to an old Cold War mentality? Yeah, billions.
So how about we only spend 4 times as much as China? Then we can use the rest of the money to help the soldiers that are coming back. We can give them job training. We can apply better funds to physical recovery. We can apply significantly more money to help soldiers recover mentally from the horrors they've seen. Maybe this way we can drastically cut back on the suicide/day rate that the military now has. We can apply money to stop the rampant sexual trauma that women--and not a few men--suffer in the military.
Could you imagine if we did that?

#2 (This is based off the previous post)
For people like the person that I mentioned that pay so very little in taxes yet have exorbitant wealth, how about we draw things a bit more close. This family friend of ours pays about 40% in overall taxes, referenced wealthy person pays 13.9% in federal on some of his money--not all of it--and pays maybe 1% or 2% more on some of his money for other state taxes. Considering his $250 million in overall wealth, and that he only pays taxes on some of it, makes you wonder. Anyway:
So how about we don't even make numbers match? How about we have this wealthy group of people pay their taxes, use their loop holes, pay state taxes, etc., AND THEN we have them pay up to 75% of what middle class America pays? So then these wealthy tax dodgers end up paying only 30% in overall taxes. And it's still less than my family friend.

Now with all of this money, we can easily afford things every year like money for education and teacher training, money for job creation, money for research to develop 21st century industries so that we can compete on a global scale like we used to back when this type of money was applied to research.


How about we start with these two ideas?
But, you know me, I'm just a 1980s Republican. Or, in modern parlance, a socialist.

It's gotta be said

Mild rant. yeehaw:

Someone posted an absolutely horrendous thing supporting the mandatory drug testing laws in a few US states for people that need welfare. Pass the test, you get money. Seems like a good idea until you realize a few things:
#1 People being tested have to pay up front. They'll most likely get reimbursed later. But people with no money have to pay for it up front.
#2 The only requirement for getting this tested is being poor, no suspicion other than poverty. This also happens to be against both the spirit and the literal law of the IV Amendment.
#3 People on welfare do drugs per capita the same as the rest of America. White America? The same. Black America? The same. Hispanic America? The same. In fact, drug use is at the same percent across the nation regardless of wealth, skin color, etc. etc.
But really, we should pick on the poor people.
#4 It COST Florida more than $45,000 in the end. It didn't save them money, it cost them money. It didn't save them any money on welfare, nothing changed.

So FB poster went off about how he earns money and his 40% after federal, state, gas, food taxes shouldn't be going to these leaches on society.

Here's the thing, and I pointed this out to him (and he ignored it), a certain wealthy man has about $250 million dollars of personal wealth and he paid about 13.9% on a fraction of that, not even on the $250 million. If you add the rest of his property, etc., taxes, he doesn't even come close to paying half of what this 40% man pays.

So why on earth are we attacking the poor? If we closed the loop holes in this one man's taxes, we cover welfare for how many people for how many years?

Yeah, exactly.
So we should totally attack poor people, because they're the problem.