HappyTrails

Happy New Year everyone!!!  Hope you had a wonderful day and dinner.   We did the traditional pork, sauerkraut, potatoes and vegetables.  Even for this German Gal who loves great food, sauerkraut can be a bit overwhelming to the taste of the pork if it is cooked together, so ours is always cooked separately.  Hubs loves it that way too.

Just drain a bag (no canned kraut for us) add water, cook over medium high heat 1-1/2 hours (do not let it get dry and burn) then drain excess liquid.  Add a tablespoon of the pork drippings, a pat or two of butter, and my secret ingredient?  A teaspoon of bouillon.  Mix well and serve hot.  Yummy!

After a big dinner, it is time to sit and read what is going on in the news.

Chief Justice John Roberts  is reminding Congress that judges need a COLA, but Congress has not voted them one, unlike the automatic one Congress got and “forgot on purpose” to vote it down, our economy being in the dumpster notwithstanding.

Gee, aren’t all these people lawyers?  If they were partners in a private firm, it is likely they would be receiving more money.  However, when you work for our federal government, you get loads of perks you have to pay for yourself in the private sector.   Lawyers might not always win a case, but they will get their share.

Yes, I surf the net way too much.  I really should not be reading about lawyers laying off massive amounts of staff and junior lawyers, you know they were preserving their share.  Depressing reading,  especially where share per partner was mentioned, but when it is important to know what is going on, what can I say?

Have a Pepsi!  That will be about the only kind of COLA most of the rest of us can have.  Oh, and ours will be diet — right?

Maybe I should quit surfing the internet so much, but it seems that by searching the same subject on many sites provides a better opportunity for a more balanced opinion, regardless of the subject.  Different sites have different opinions, and jump starts the process of beginning to sort out the weeds from the wheat.

It is not always an easy process to come to a real or solid conclusion.  The mainstream news usually all seems rather biased in one particular direction, and lots of pertinent facts and circumstances are left out.  That is one of the best reasons to read independent bloggers and other sites, as well as independently research the topics.

One of the items on the news today involved the Oregon Department of Transportation. Apparently, not enough revenue is being collected from just the gasoline taxes, so they want to find new ways to enhance their incoming revenue.  Voila!!  A mileage tax — but does that mean no more taxes at the pump?  I would not bet any money on that one.  You can read it for yourself at http://www.dhonline.com/articles/2008/12/28/news/local/1aaa02_road.txt

Anyone who has purchased a fuel-efficient vehicle or restricted their driving to save money will still have to pay — oh, and they want to do it using satellite technology so that your vehicle will not be neglected and miss out on paying this tax.  Talk about shooting a fly with a Canon here, really, satellite technology is needed to accomplish this?

It is really only supposed to be used to track total mileage, but what really bothers me is knowing that it could be used to track every last place you go very accurately.  That is not a good thing.  Our freedoms and privacy are already eroding like a weathered beach lately, and taxes are destroying our quality of life.

Why shoot a fly with a canon like satellite technology — why not just come out and raise the damn gasoline tax and be honest about it?  Setting up satellite technology would surely require a much greater expense to implement, and require more equipment to make it work, costing everyone more money — and then require a lot more tax money to be monitored and collected.  Politics is always so convoluted in the way things are done.

Innovative taxes are contagious and will likely spread to your own state or one near you. Is there anyone out there that wants an additional bill to pay when it could have been paid at the gas pump?  Perhaps judicious belt tightening on the part of states would be just as important as it is for all citizen taxpayers. The economy is really on a rough ride right now, and higher taxes are just going to make things worse and prolong the time it takes to make a recovery.