A Day to Vote

If you can you should go vote today.

I say "if" because I'm not one of those who can....not an American citizen.  I hope to be...one day...when I can afford the time and the money. I'm still recovering from the huge amount it took to to spend two years without income and huge legal fees all for a five minute interview to reinstate the green card I'd had for 16 years which was suspended because of a form that wasn't recieved (the ex was given it to mail). That coincided with my wanting to claim unemployment after being laid off my job of ten years. Hmmm.....

Water under the bridge...another hurdle in my life jumped.

I'll be honest and say I'm not sure the whole political system works, it seems to have come down to "who has the most money wins". The shame of it being that the big money comes from big business who want to sway politicians to vote on bills in their favor. And I'm not talking about one party or another, I'm talking in general.

I think some politicians start out with the right intentions but it takes a very high integrity to avoid the pitfalls of Washington and as we see constantly an integrous politician is something of an oxymoron.

I'm not sure there's any fix for the problems the world is in...there's certainly no quick fix, no easy fix.  And four years is not enough time for any president/leader to turn things around, I don't care who he/she is.

There is one thing that would really help turn things around....and that's working together, stopping all the fighting, name calling and nastiness, for the parties to stop behaving like street gangs out to take the other gang down....lord, they even have colors.

There is one thing about taxes I will say.....

anyone with an off shore account used to avoid paying taxes should be taxed heavily for that account. If you have money you can afford a high priced tax attorney to find you all the loopholes so you can get away paying less tax...and we all know they do.

If you're making $1000 a month 1% of tax nets the IRS $10, and if you're only making $1000 a month that $10 buys you the gas/busfare to get to work, it may be nothing to lots of folk but it can mean surviving or not to some.

And what can that $10 do to help the economy? Buy some government official a couple of lattes on their expense account?

Now if you make $1 million a month (Charlie Sheen reportedly makes $2 million an episode of Two and a Half Men!) that 1% becomes $10,000.

$10,000 is a number you can actually do something with...it's almost enough to cover a year of government assistance for a disabled person.

And will that $10,000 affect the life of the person paying it? Well....they'd have $990,000 left so I think they be able to make that mortgage payment, and put gas in their car....all their cars!

As for the people who say they deserve to make millions for their job I challenge them to work for a month as a CNA and live on that wage and then tell me if they work harder, have a less pleasant, more meaningful job that deserves so much more reimbursemnet...because I doubt you could pay those people enough to do that job....and they'd probably pay to get out of it.

Anyway...my point is, we live in a screwed up world and there's no quick fix.

If we all cared about our fellow humans enough to not want them to suffer and struggle...and were willing to step up to the plate, to forego our luxury needs to help someone meet their basic needs there might be a fix.

To some helping the less fortunate makes them a Good Samaritan.

To others it's called Socialism.

Ok...off my soapbox...go vote!