Taxes

Today is Tax Day - the day to pay the "Man". For most of the past week I've heard very little other than complaints about paying taxes and how unfair it is...how we shouldn't have to.

I'm just as frustrated as the next guy when I feel my tax dollars aren't spent well. I have fought against paying more than my fair share of taxes but the fact of the matter is that taxes are paid for a reason - because we, as a group, as a civilization - are more effective as collective-bargainers than we are as individuals.

We all require an infrastructure to keep our communities viable, we all benefit from nice stadiums where sports, arts and civil interests are supported and we all need to chip in to lend a helping hand to those in our society that are trying to gain a solid foothold in the American Dream...not only because it is the right thing to do but because in the end it benefits us to do so.

I will be the first to admit that there are many unscrupulous people in politics who crave power and spend the money that is entrusted to them by their peers inappropriately - that, however, is not a problem with the system - it is a problem with the individuals IN the system. No laws can be designed to regulate good behavior. It takes a populace who is involved, interested and cares.

So stop complaining - get involved. Make sure your tax dollars are spent the way you think they should...That is why we have a country of Taxation WITH Representation so we can collectively bargain for those things we want and so those with ulterior motives are kept from spending tax dollars in ways that do not support us collectively.

You may even want to try to take it a step further - try being grateful for all that your tax dollars are able to provide for you...maybe you are grateful that you have running water in your homes, your trash is picked up on a weekly basis or that you have roads to drive on...whatever it is you may have been taking it for granted and maybe, just maybe, for one day you can practice being grateful for those things....maybe even try writing THANK YOU on your tax check when you send it in. You never know who you might make smile :)

Namaste

Kjerstin Klein

Central Intersection

Time Magazine: The Paperless Chase

I know Central Intersection hasn't been the prolific blog I'd hoped it to be - so many other things pulling at me I guess. I find just keeping up with my reading to be a challenge. The start of the new year, however, found me committed to catching up with my magazine overload so this morning I vowed to finish the November 23, 2009 edition of Time Magazine - I know, why bother when it is so far in the past, but I find the arts and opinion articles to be relatively timeless so I'm willing to at least scan them before I toss an out-of-date copy. This is how/why I stumbled on an articlette the really got my goat. It got my goat so badly that I tore it out of the magazine and started to jot notes all over it - The articlette is The Paperless Chase by Barbara Kiviat and I found it to be narrow minded, short sighted and frankly...inaccurate. Yes Ms. Kiviat, I have to call you out on this one.

Ms. Kiviat's premis is that we are less likely to take our credit card statements seriously if we don't see it, handle it and relate to it on paper; that the electronic versions of credit card statements are causing us to loose the ability to "internalize broader spending habits", her words, not mine. Hogwash! Oh, I'm sorry, did I say that out loud?

Ms. Kiviat does admit that there are many services coming out that help to make these on-line statements more "comprehendible" but clings to the idea that this is only necessary because we are loosing so much by not having the credit card company print and snail mail us a copy of our account statement each month. Ok, I'll say it again, hogwash.

Her premis is based on the idea that we take in information differently off of the web than we do off of paper. Who is this 'WE' you are talking about Ms. Kiviat? If you know anything about learning and processing information you know that everyone absorbs, learns and processes information differently. According to her source Jakob Nielsen, a web-usability expert, 'WE' do not learn deeply from the internet - only 'surf'....um, that will be bad news for all of the on-line continuing education credit companies out there that train nearly every significant professional field in our country. This Nielsen claims that by the time we are half way down an internet page we have tuned out...is that halfway above the fold or below?...just asking...

Well, I'd like to see your research Mr. Nielsen. Who was your subject group, how big was it, how old were they and did you do anything to determine their level of comprehension for the matterial you just exposed them to...and speaking of the matterial you exposed them to was it of any interest to them, or was it a list of screw parts manufactured by the Acme screw company? I guess I'll have to read the book... but I think Ms. Kaviat might want to spend some more time with it too because I'm not sure that his information has much to do with how we process our on-line statements.

Another of Ms. Kaviat's sources claims that it is even worse for those of us who have the audacity to auto-debit from our bank accounts to pay these credit card bills each month - we really have no idea where our money is going because we are really out of touch with our finances. I'm sorry, I'm just not buying it.

I will agree that many people do not have an acurate enough handle on their day-to-day finances but I will argue 'till the cows come home that it has anything to do with electronic vs. paper statements. It has to do with our relationship to values, money and how we utilize our resources. I will admit that there are some people that are simply more comfortable with the world the way it used to be and do not want to change - age is often the excuse but I'm not buying that one either - my 97 year old grandfather no longer receives paper statements but either way, paper statements are, for the most part, still available to those few who still want them. I do beleive that we need to ween ourselves off of paper statements - they hold little to no value and needlessly destroy valuable natural resources to produce and send. I believe that most people welcome the idea of secure, electronic availablity to their statements. It enables them to sort, filter and examine the information in a far more tangible way than a paper statement ever could and this I will argue, is the way to better "internalize broader spending habits," understand, relate to and take charge of how your resources are utilized.

9/11 Ceremony at Markham Elementary, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Markham Elementary has always done a very special 9/11 ceremony to honor those lives lost on that tragic day 8 years ago. This was the first year I was able to make it and I am so glad I did. If I'd realized how touching the ceremony would be I would have brought a better camera but a better camera would not have been able to capture the beauty of those children's voices floating on the cool morning air as they sang the Star Spangle Banner and America the Beautiful. Children are so full of hope and gentle strength - there is more that we can learn from them then we allow them teach us.

When I took Dylan to his GS race two weeks ago the temp in my car read 18 degrees below zero - yes, I should have gotten the Mom of the year award for standing at the bottom of the hill in those temperatures but I guess they don't give those out any more.

Today school has been canceled due to the huge snow and ice storm that is hitting the East Coast and while we are making it a fun day - and so far no one has been seriously injured in our mattress surfing contest it does start to make you wonder what is going on with the weather.

We own a Willi's Ski Shop so don't get me wrong - we're digging the weather but weather like this is used by global warming nay sayers as proof that the world is not getting warmer. To me Global Warming is a misnomer - it should be Global Weirding. Anyone with even a high school science class under their belt can understand the concept of what happens in a closed system when even a single parameter is altered - everything within the system is affected and it triggers cascading changes that reverberate throughout the entire system.

To me it doesn't really matter if the world is getting warmer or colder - what matters is that we are responsible for changing the parameters - we have been poor stewards of this beautiful world and I for one, would like to still have it around to enjoy. It is time that each of us take steps to behave more responsibly and not take our environment and its wonderful gifts for granted.

Do Your Homework Before You Vote

Living in America is awesome and nothing shows this better than a presidential election year. There is nothing like the democratic process to really show how free we truly are. Other countries, even democratic ones often prove not to be even as free as we are. But freedom comes with a price. Yes, we are free to make our own decisions but this also gives us the freedom to make mistakes – and this can be painful to watch. It is a bit like being a parent. You can know that the decision your child is making is not going to work out for them but as a good parent knows you have to let them make their own mistakes so they can learn from them. I am just having a tough time being as good of a citizen as I am a parent and frankly, after living with the Bush administration for 8 years I’m really not interested in living with other peoples mistakes for another 4 years.

OK, I could live with self-defeating decisions if I honestly felt they reflected the true values of the majority of the country. But what really gets me is when smart people don’t do the due diligence to test the validity of media sound bites, fall for Orwellian rhetoric and vote counter to their stated values.

In my mind the McCain campaign has run a disastrous race thus far. They have spent little to no time explaining what they plan to do for the country – only promise that they can fix it – “Trust us, we know what we are doing”. I’m sorry but I’m not a blind faith kind of girl, I need a little more to go on than that. They have spent most of their time being critical of the Obama camp, which wouldn’t be so bad, if they didn’t stoop to such ludicrous attacks that do not hold up under any kind of scrutiny. They keep insisting that Obama will raise your taxes, his medical coverage plan will cost you more money and that ‘your’ wealth will be taken away to be given to some undeserving person, all of which even the most cursory research will disprove. Unlike Palin, I can name a few of my resources – try the Consumer Report’s examination of the two candidates’ plans, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s run on the figures between the two tax plans with examples for the average single person, the average household, average small business and an average larger size business, or how about the Time magazines continuous coverage of the two candidates on economics, taxes and medical coverage plans. I could go on but Katie Couric isn’t listening to me. I’m sorry but the idea that McCain’s plans for the country have been misrepresented by the ‘liberal’ media doesn’t wash. It only takes the average intelligence of a 5th grader to see through any liberal white wash to find the basic facts – I know this because my own 5th grader has been studying the election in social studies and neither he, nor any of his classmates have fallen for any of the half truths, contradictions or circular arguments from either camp. They have examined this race with the clear, unemotional eyes that I wish more voters would. What I see, however, is people with certain hot buttons voting their emotions because they have allowed one of the candidates to push those buttons, not because they have examined their values, and done their research to look for which candidate represents those values.

I realize that I feel my values are the best values – that is why I have them and why I am trying to teach them to my children. I have, however, gained enough maturity to realize that there are other sets of equally valid values but I feel that too many people have developed their sense of values more by accident then by choice and as a result have many conflicting or misunderstood values that are virtually impossible to resolve into any kind of useful platform from which to operate. You cannot make good decisions that support the life you want to lead if your values are in conflict.

I realize that in the next 5 days the average American is not going to be willing or able to examine and rewrite their entire value structure but is it is possible for each and every voter to take a few minutes to explore what drives them in this election and what they truly want in a candidate. I entreat anyone who is willing to put the effort in to use the GRIP model as a template for examining their goals for this race. It is the perfect tool for exploring what it is we truly want from our politicians, for washing away the double talk, the spin and the filters and get down to what truly matters to each of us. We owe it to ourselves, to our country, to our children and to the entire ideal of the democratic process to take some time to delve into what government means to us and what we want out of it so that we do not fall prey to the most negative side of campaigning.

An explanation of the GRIP process can be found at Soaring Mountain Enterprises as a free, downloadable e-book. It is a simple process that will help you to walk through the evaluation of a simple goal statement – in this case related to what you want in a presidential candidate – and will help you to determine what information you need and what actions you need to take to ultimately satisfy your goal of finding the candidate that suits your values.

We are only now beginning to realize what a wonderful tool the GRIP model can be for political analysis – before the next election look for our new book Get A GRIP On Politics!