On today’s news, there was a story about Hillary Clinton’s multiple recounts of her trip to Bosnia when she was under sniper fire. After that was proven to be false, she said she misspoke. There are certain things in your life that you’re unlikely to forget; I’d think that getting shot at would definitely be one of them. Can we actually believe anything else she has said?
The US House of Representatives this week apparently passed a resolution saying that China should talk to the Dalai Lama (which, of course, has pissed off the Chinese). This resolution carries no weight and means nothing. However, it took time for our lawmakers to draft it and pass it. Why do our elected officials waste our taxpayer money with this stuff that means nothing? They are lawmakers, not resolution makers.
I’d love to see a law get passed that makes it illegal to propose and pass resolution with steep fines as penalties. There is enough work for lawmakers to do without futzing around with stuff that doesn’t do anything.
It is time for me to pay my taxes again. As someone that is self-employed, I have to pay quarterly estimated taxes, so this happens 4 times a year. One of the things that gets me (it’s a mental thing) is paying taxes in such huge chunks. Salaried employees have taxes withheld and in theory, the total withholdings equals the total tax, so the money comes out in small increments and people don’t end up with a huge tax bill. Being self-employed, my income varies each year. If I have a good year, I end up with a big fat bill. If I have a year worse than the previous year, I get a refund.
Enough about the technical side of paying taxes. When I write the check (figuratively, not literally as I pay my taxes online so the check doesn’t get lost in the mail), I always think about what my taxes buy me. Really, nothing that helps me. You might be asking, what about the roads I drive on? Or the police? Or the fire department? OK, I’ll give you that, but isn’t some of that funded by sales tax, property taxes, and state income tax? What is the federal government giving me? Here’s my list:
Wow, with that list, I should be more than happy to give the government more money! I reluctantly pay my taxes because if I didn’t, they’d nail me faster than Al Capone.
This shouldn’t be news to most, but our government is quite hypocritical. Today I was reading about a bunch of men that were arrested in Saudi Arabia for flirting with women. They were arrested by the religious police. Here is a country that has no religious freedom and is a dictatorship, ummm, I mean kingdom. Yet, the US considers Saudi Arabia an ally and hasn’t made moves to invade it. The US has tried to intervene in other countries that are dictatorships and have governments that the US doesn’t like, but because Saudi Arabia has oil and is strategically placed, the US keeps it as a bed buddy. Is Saudi Arabia any different than communist governments or say Cuba?
With the current heated race between Obama and Clinton, the inner workings of the primaries are becoming more public and being talked about in the paper and on the news. Prior to this year, I personally had no idea how the primaries worked. So, if you vote in the primary, your candidate may or may not be your party’s candidate, even if he or she receives a majority of the popular vote. First off, the delegates (which is OK as it is supposed to be representative of the people) aren’t required to vote for the people that they represented. Second, there are “super delegates” that can vote for whoever they want. These super delegates are random people (some important, some ordinary). Third, “the party” can make deals and put up whoever it wants (“the party” being the important people in the party). Fourth, “the party” can make up its own rules on who can vote. For instance, the Michigan and Florida Democratic primaries don’t count because they were held before “the party” wanted them held.
So, does your vote count? Got me. Yesterday when we were coming out of Target, someone registering voters said, “are you registered to vote?”. My flippant response was “unfortunately”. Why did I say that? I find it hard to believe in our political system when in this day and time, we can’t have a true democracy. How hard is it to get the total number of votes and elect someone? We could get this mess over with very quickly by letting each candidate lay out his or her plans and views, have a few rounds of questions submitted via the Internet, and then have people vote. We could do the entire election for a few million bucks and take the tens of millions spend on campaigning and help to finance the public debt or even attempting to balance the budget.