38 degrees this morning (wind 28 mph). 45:28 minutes walking.
We were the only people voting at the polls today. Three candidates for the position on the City Council. Seems there would be more interest, but there wasn’t a lot of publicity about it either.
On the other hand, I’ve seen what happens when people vote who are voting without knowledge. In my opinion, a high voting percentage isn’t necessarily good when people don’t have any idea of what they are voting for.
I can personally attest as to what happens when incompetents and toadies are elected to office. It can literally destroy a community as they bungle their way through.
Anyway, I don’t have any problem with people not voting, I do feel the government/school district and news media have an obligation to provide information about elections. The ultimate in freedom is being able to vote for whom you want, or not to vote, or to vote foolishly for that matter.
But, adequate information has to be provided.
I always thought it was strange that the least interest is normally in local elections, where your vote actually counts the most and the actions of the elected officials will actually have the most impact. (Streets, parks, drainage, utilities, zoning etc. have a significant impact on daily life.)
Looks like we will be having heavy winter weather today. A little bit of everything, rain, freezing rain, sleet and then snow! Hopefully it will be the last for the winter season.
Scheduled to look at a house today, it was sold before we could look at it. That is the second time that happened. Which is actually fine with us, we are’t ready to make a decision that fast, although if we found something that we really liked, I expect we would move fast!
I think the value of the tax deduction for buying a house isn’t necessarily the tax deduction, but the fact it means you can itemize since it normally makes it a lot easier to itemize, so you can deduct a lot more misc. deductions that you couldn’t deduct if you use the “standard” deduction.
I need to get back on our income tax. it has been so discouraging thus far I hate to even find out what it will be! I think the problem is that when your income is normally salary, you never see the amount of money going to income taxes. When enough isn’t taken to due to nominal “10%” withholding etc., it is a real shock to realize how much you actually pay for income taxes. And that doesn’t include property taxes, sales taxes, “fees” which are actually disguised taxes etc.
I actually don’t mind paying taxes, as long as they are basically used for he overall good of the citizens. Again, back to voting, if there are informed citizens who vote, funds will probably be more efficiently used. At least in theory.
I guess I would rather pay taxes I know about than all the sneaky “fees” and “taxes disguised as fees”.
Perhaps the worst “taxes” are the costs created by elected officials who waste money and pander to the lowest common denominator in people by appealing to their worst instincts and the costs of “cronyism” and the need to raise so much money for elections that “contributors” have so much say in decisions.
The local paper has been running stories about how this state has the most people in jail and what the true cost of of jailing people for minor offenses where the penalty would be better and more effective if it was community service etc. Not only do you have the cost of jail, you also have the society cost of paying for the person when then get out of jail and can’t get a decent job etc. because they have been in jail!
Not looking forward to the weather today. Aliene developed a bad cough last night, which is not good. Hopefully she can get to the Doctor (or get some medicine called in) before the bad weather hits.
That’s it for now, Wednesday, March 4, 2015.
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