Just Another Day

Hodgepodge

For me at least, it's official, I'm finished all I have to do now is wait. I'll be honest, I do kind of suck at waiting; you've probably seen me because I'm the one in line at the grocery store, stuck behind the person who decides at the last moment they are paying by check, or counting pennies. I'm at the bank stuck behind the person that hasn't filled their deposit slip. It's me behind the person at dry cleaners that's lost their slip and is taking FOREVER to describe their clothes. Did you catch me 'waiving' to the person on the freeway that entered doing only 35 instead of freeway speed. Yup that was me.

However, as I said I'm finished, I've done all the research I'm going to do, so for me it's all over, until the Tuesday following the first Monday of November I am effectively finished. I took three hours filling out my ballot and I'm bittersweet about some of the hard choices I had to make. I don't always agree with mandatory sentences for people caught with a controlled substance. I believe it should always be handled in a case by case way. I don't believe that a 18 year old should have to register as a sex offender because his 16 year old girlfriend's father and mother decided they didn't like the fact their daughter had sex. I believe the law should always be applied in a common sense way not because people just want all sex offenders off the streets--so yeah I'm against knee-jerk laws of any type.

The Best Advice

A Long time ago when the first Bush was running for president, there was a young Ranter in line waiting her turn to vote for the first time. An older gentleman in line ahead of her struck up a conversation, and unwittingly handed over the best voting advice she's ever gotten. He said to her, almost never vote to raise your own taxes. It sounds so easy coming from a retired person probably taking full advantage of California's Prop 13*, but I pondered it. I queried, what about school bond issues? He did agree that would be an exception in some cases but he also felt he was paying more than his share in taxes (income tax rates were higher under Reagan than they were under Clinton). He pointed out several things on the ballot that were just wasteful spending or that he felt the private sector could fund. I have done a fairly good job of following that advice with few exceptions.

This election I've found myself asking these questions more and more, but I'm almost certain a tax hike is in our future (at some point) regardless of who is elected. I think all any of us can do is make the best choice we can.

Of Cleaning and Men

It's not a secret, the men living in this house are slobs and that I'm sure anyone could agree if you could see the condition of my house. So I spent 3 hours yesterday cleaning a bathroom my older son, Piss-Boy was supposed to be cleaning. I had fully anticipated cleaning the floor well and cabinet fronts (about an hour) but I had no idea that I also had to scrub the bathtub/shower area AND spend 30 minutes cleaning the toilet! Mind you just the inside! I also spent a while unclogging Fredo's hardened toothpaste filled drain. Today, I'll be spending most of the day cleaning the rest of the house, since the bathrooms are sparkling, the rest of the house needs to.


*For those of you from other states Proposition 13 was overwhelmingly approved by California voters in 1978, which froze their property taxes at whatever level they were currently paying for as long as they owned their home. If you purchased a new home, your property taxes would go up based on the amount you paid for the house (figure around 10%) but remain frozen (meaning they couldn't go up any higher). A majority of the those monies collected go to the school systems in the state. The exception is bond issues, if approved those will increase the property taxes, as would sewer increases, and other miscellaneous items but they never added up to much. So in California it was very possible for a retired person that owned their home for 35 years could be paying around $200 dollars a year for their property taxes while their neighbor that had just purchased their house would be paying $6000 a year, plus those special bond issues.


© 2008 Whimsical Ranter
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