**This and that..

Saw the first dandilions I have seen blooming this year. Must be a near certain indication that spring is here. Also, the end of April is rapidly approaching and that means property taxes are due in South Dakota. Damn, are they ever a reminder of how upside down the SD tax system really is. When RE taxes start pushing $20 per acre, it is time some of the people living in towns and cities and making good money as some of them fill the schools with kids need to be picking up their fair share of the taxes. Perhaps a few of the corporations doing business in SD could kick a few bucks into an education fund too. I don't notice the chain marketers charge less here because they don't have to pay a state corporate income tax as they do in other states.

The schools consolidate and should get more efficient and teach better and cost less. It looks to me that all that actually happens is that administrator salaries go ever higher and the school years get shorter. And, oh yeah, the real estate taxes keep going up even if special assessment op outs are required.

And, unless my eyes are also playing tricks on me, it appears the Rapid City Journal dead tree version has a new format. I don't particularly care for it. Maybe some of the artsy types can explain why a paper that looks like propaganda from a farm credit publication is a better typeface, etc. etc. than some good old newspaperery looking text. The fine fonts must save some of that ink the papers buy by the barrel.

And then there is George Bush. I watched the weasel trying to blame his economic, political, and diplomatic foul ups on congress this morning. And on the war, Bush doesn't just move the goal posts, he makes them dance.
What a bunch of spineless wimps there are in the White House Press Corps. They might as well be the Whitehouse Press Corpse.

Where is the "Mr. President, you are questioning my motives. I am searching for truth here. If that motive is at cross purposes with yours, just what are your motives, sir?" Gutless damn wimps. Speaking truth to the Texas Twit in power is absolutely the last thing on their tiny minds.

Bush goes on and on about the never-ending fight against terror and how we are making progress against it in Iraq and Afghanistan. I must have been dreaming, but I would swear I remember the smirking weasel in a flight suit on an aircraft carrier with a big "Mission Accomplished" sign behind him.

Bob Schieffer of CBS correctly summarized the Bush speech as a political gasp of somekind..an attempt to shift blame. Then Schieffer went on to say that it really was true however that Congress did not have an energy policy.

Hmmm. How the hell are we supposed to know what kind of an energy policy the US has? Cheney held secret meetings on energy policy and so far it seems to me that nobody including Bob Schieffer and the rest of us outside of the collection of aiders and abettors in the White House know what that policy is. It seems without knowing of course to just be to drive the price of fuel so high that agriculture and travel grind to a screeching halt.

Bush is just too, too cute by half at least. He reminds me of all the smart ass arrogant prick frat rats I ran into on college campuses and the worst of them pale in comparison to the Texas Twit.

What we need in the White House of course is a dry drunk that all the barflies would just love to sit with and toss back a few. Oh wait, I must be dreaming again.

***Stay tuned, keep your eyes open even when you think you are dreaming--- Doug Wiken

Comments

[tgrindadams]

Your pain concerning this ugly time of the year (tax time) shows.

On paying quarterly self employment taxes, my husband gets quite sullen for a few minutes, then proclaims, like a time clock each quarter, that "if I didn't make decent money I wouldn't be paying taxes. Guess I'll keep paying taxes."

Not quite the same context in regards to real estate, but what are your options?

[mikesdak]

I own (well,am paying off the loan on) a mobile home on a rented lot, so my property taxes are pretty low compared to many, I'm sure. I haven't figured out who the people are who are buying the new houses here. Knowing what my taxes are based on the low evaluation of my house, I don't see how anyone can afford the tax bill on the exorbitantly priced homes here.

As for George Bush, it's been said that he's one of those people who was born on third base but goes through life thinking he hit a triple. He's the lamest lame-duck president I've seen since LBJ decided not to run and got completely written off. He's flopping around like a puppet whose puppeteers have stopped paying attention,which is exactly what has happened. They're just getting ready to set fire to the sack of crap they'll leave on the White House doorstep for the next President.