Nothing Lasts Forever In the Cold November Rain

November is always one of those months that just seems to fly right by.  My son has four days off from school with Veteran’s Day and Thanksgiving, so work and school zips past.  Daylight Savings Time ends.  We vote.  Everyone is looking forward to the holidays.  It’s the heart of football season.  With all that action, it’s like the month is gone in a blur.

November is a fun month for me.  Movember (Moustache November), otherwise known as No-Shave-November, happens this month, and of course I use it as an excuse to lock away my razor and clippers and just let my facial hair go.  We’re only 9 days in, and I’m looking very Brett Keisel-like already.  What do you think?

November is also NaNoWriMo, otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month.  It’s a time for all writers to sit down and attempt to pound out a 60,000 word novel in a month.  You can sign up for free on their website, www.nanowrimo.org, and from there you can track your progress, participate in group write-ins, find support, etc.  Last year I started my last novel, Terminal Restraint, as a NaNoWriMo book, and while I didn’t get it finished until the spring of 2012, it was a great way to kick off and get those creative juices flowing.  If you are a new writer or are just looking for some advice, check it out.

I’m not really participating in NaNoWriMo this year, only because I’m about 40% of the way through my next novel, and I know I won’t have the time to get it finished by the end of the month.  I also have this idea for a new novel floating around in my head, which can be very distracting for a writer, because I’ve wanted to take a break from my current one and start working on this new idea.  I did that very same thing last year and the year before, and having all of these half-completed novels floating around isn’t really conducive to being an author.  So for now I plan on finishing the one I’m working on and then moving on to the next.  Hopefully you’ll like both of them!

November also marks the end of election season.  I still keep reading about Romney supporters griping about the election results.  Nothing will assuage their angst at having lost the election, but I’m surprised by some who continue to point out the flaws of the Obama administration.  And now that we have a very real “fiscal cliff” issue looming, I’m still amazed by the number of conservatives and Republicans who are unwilling to bend on allowing the Bush-era tax breaks for the wealthy to end.  These tax breaks were put in place after Clinton’s years, and it’s not like these wealthy Americans need them or are going to be taxed any more than they were in the 90s.  For example, if you are single and make over $203,000, your tax rate is going to go from 33% to 36% (see here: http://taxfoundation.org/article/next-years-tax-brackets).  So you’d pay about $6000 more per year in taxes if you made $203,000.  Look, if you make that much money, you can afford to pay that much more to help reduce the deficit.

I know, I know.  Why should I pay more of MY money when others are getting free government handouts?  Because, unfortunately, there are far fewer people with your abilities and skills and years of service out there that can make over $203,000, and there are far more people who LEGITIMATELY need things like Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and food stamps.  And it's not like your entire $6000 is going to pay for some lazy person's delivery pizza and marijuana habit.  A portion of that is going to the military and homeland security, some is going to infrastructure, some is going to education and space programs, etc.

And let’s face it, if you make that much money, chances are very high that you didn’t grow up with many disadvantages in your life.  Bill Gates wasn’t a poor boy who scavenged around for computer parts to learn his trade.  His father was a wealthy lawyer and his mother was a board member of First Interstate BankSystem and the United Way.  Donald Trump’s parents could afford to send him to the New York Military Academy where he got his start, earning honors and then moving on to Fordham University and then the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school with a steep tuition.  While Trump's road wasn’t quite as laid out for him as Gates’, not many families earning less than $40,000/year can afford to send their kids off to military school.  Right?

I’ve heard others say that Obama wants to do away with the upper class.  Now how exactly is he going to do that?  Employers can’t start giving everyone $100,000+ salaries.  And government handouts are rather piddly.  People on social security and food stamps don’t make that much.  Most make between $5000 and $15,000/year.  Even for single mothers with five kids, the government isn’t just forking over huge amounts of money.  Nobody is ever going to become rich off of the government, and no rich person is ever going to become poor because the government taxes them too much.  So it’s not like any government program can wipe out the upper class and turn everyone into middle class citizens.  It just doesn’t work that way.

I didn’t mean to go into a political rant with this post, but I did have to get that out there in light of the naysayers and people who are still upset over Obama’s reelection.  I’ve got news for the Republican party though—this election brought out a ton of minority support for the other side, and I’m thinking it may be a growing trend in many elections to come.  So for all of you who support the extreme, right-wing, TEA party conservatives, your days of power could be over, and you really need to look at moderating some of your views.

Back to November, the one thing I love most about the month is that it contains that lovely little holiday known as Thanksgiving.  Halloween is great with the scares and parades and the dressing up and the candy, and of course Christmas (the commercialized version) is fun because of gifts and Santa and Christmas lights and all that jazz.  But Thanksgiving is downright awesome.  It’s the only day of the year where we don’t have to work in the middle of a week, can eat a ton of great food, and can sit around watching football all day.  It’s a glutton’s paradise.  Now who can argue with a day like that??

Some Post-Election Observations and Thoughts

So I fell asleep watching the election coverage last night.  My wife had fallen asleep earlier, and she woke up around midnight and turned the TV back on.  I vaguely remembered hearing that Obama had won, which was pleasing, but when I woke up this morning, I can’t say I was satisfied.  I don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied with the state of our government.  And really, nobody should.  Government, like us, needs to change and evolve with the times.  If we went strictly by the Constitution, as some of us would like, women and minorities wouldn’t be able to vote, we could be thrown in jail or ostracized for practicing different religions and speaking what’s on our minds, etc.  That’s not the kind of government a society like ours needs.

I’m not saying the election didn’t turn out the way I’d wanted.  It did, for the most part.  But I just hope the two parties can now come together and make some positive changes for America.  Let’s get more people back to work.  Let’s get the economy booming again.  Let’s get energy independence and better education for our offspring.  Above all, let’s work together.

My wife and I were listening to the radio this morning, and this guy was complaining about how everyone he’d talked to was voting for Romney until he stopped at Sheetz and saw a girl in her twenties buying subs and soda and candy.  She said that she and all of her friends voted for Obama, and then apparently she pulled out an Access card (food stamps) and used it to pay for her items.  And of course this guy was all up in arms about this.  But my wife recognized a flaw (lie?) in his story.  You see, I don’t know how it works in other states, but in Pennsylvania you can’t use your Access card to buy prepared foods like Sheetz Made To Order (MTO) subs.  You can’t use it at McDonalds or other fast food joints.  You can’t use it to buy tobacco or alcohol.  You can only use it to buy groceries.  And my wife knows this well because she worked in a group home taking care of people with severe mental health and mental retardation diagnoses, and she would take them out shopping for food.  These women worked simple jobs (like putting nuts and bolts in plastic bags) so that they could use their earned money on personal items and trips to places like McDonalds where they could not use their Access cards.  And so this guy’s story was a bunch of baloney.

I’m not surprised that someone would embellish to try to prove a point like this.  Entitlement is a huge reason why certain people vote Republican as opposed to Democrat.  They think there is far too much of it, and they don’t want to see their tax dollars going to pay for someone else’s laziness.  And I get that.  Believe me, I do.  I had a friend who never wanted to work a day in his life and jumped around from job to job.  He had a relative who was on disability for mental issues, and so he went and did the same.  He was “diagnosed”, quit working, and started collecting checks from the government.  And man does that bother me.  I hung out with him enough to know that his “issues” weren’t severe (or even existent), and yet he got the doctor to sign off on his inability to work.  And by work, I mean pushing carts around and cleaning and stocking shelves.  So yeah, I GET IT.

But then I look at the little elderly ladies that lived in the group home where my wife worked.  I look at my own mother, who can’t walk unassisted due to severe spinal stenosis and who uses a wheel chair to get around.  Yes, there are jobs out there that people in these situations can do, but they aren’t the kinds of jobs that can pay for mortgages, automobiles, etc.  My mother worked retail her entire life, and just standing behind a counter waiting on people became entirely too painful for her.  Some people legitimately lack the mental or physical capacity to do meaningful work, and so without government programs such as food stamps and disability, they’d be unable to pay for anything.  Caring for those people should be a government responsibility, and if you disagree with me, I have to wonder what you would propose instead.  Should they receive no money and just be cared for by others, pushing that responsibility onto those who CAN work?  Or should the lives of the disabled be miserable because of their handicaps?

Even if this girl at Sheetz used an Access card, this guy had no idea what her life is like.  She could have been buying the items for her disabled mother, as my wife and I do for mine.  She could be a single mother to two or three kids with a deadbeat father who doesn’t pay child support.  And daycare isn’t cheap—it’s $30 per day for our son.  Think about that for a second… if you are working a minimum wage job, making $58 for an 8 hour shift BEFORE taxes, and then $30 of that goes to daycare, that’s leaving you with $28 a day to pay for everything else.  That’s $600/month BEFORE TAXES to pay for food for your kids, a house or apartment to live in, utilities, transportation, etc.  And if you’re in the unfortunate situation of where you have no family to help you out, what do you do?  And so even if this girl at Sheetz used an Access card and voted for Obama, this guy had absolutely no right to judge her.

Moving on, then I saw another post where the person said that everyone was tired of Obama’s excuses, and that every time he tried to do something, it was vetoed by the Senate.  He went on to say that now that the Senate is Democratic, there are no more excuses.  I’m just stunned by this.  First of all, the Senate doesn’t veto anything.  Laws are created in Congress and must be passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate before being forwarded on to the President to be signed into law.  If the President doesn’t like it, he can veto it.  The Senate does not veto anything.  Secondly, the Senate was already comprised of a Democratic majority prior to the election.  It was the House that was Republican, and the House still IS Republican.  Nothing has changed in the grand scheme of things aside from more minorities (thank goodness!) having been elected.  So I don’t know where this guy is getting his news and education from (Fox News, maybe??), but wow.  Wow.

Finally I saw someone post a message indicating that she was very upset with the outcome of the election because it meant that death panels could now deny people proper medical care.  Again, I don’t know where people are getting their information, but her post sparked a huge discussion about Obamacare and how it won’t work.  Ok, there are no death panels, so wherever people are getting that information from, they need to turn the channel or browse to another site (like here: http://www.factcheck.org/2012/04/death-panels-redux/).  Second, Obamacare is already working, and if you want to know more, just ask me and I’ll tell you.  I have very real data proving that it is working.

People are bitter.  It’s understandable.  For some I’m sure it feels like their team lost the Super Bowl.  And of course everyone is a critic.  Everyone has their own idea of how things should be.  And very few of us will ever be one-hundred percent satisfied with the outcomes of elections and the actions of our elected leaders.  And we really just all need to realize that fact.

But now it is time to move on.  If someone proposes an idea, we need to evaluate it and offer our own ideas—not flat out reject what has been given to us.  We need to see things as humans, capable of understanding middle ground and not seeing everything as a one or a zero, black or white, right or wrong.  In order for us to move forward, we need to stuff away the talk of liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans and Greens and Libertarians.  We need to simply all be AMERICANS, working together to make our country a better place for ourselves and our children.