Blueberry buckwheat pancakes that is. That makes me sad!

Bluebucks are served at Eastern Market, which was about a block from where I lived in DC. And today it burnt! So I’m guessing that means no more Bluebucks!

I must say that I am a little sad about that. They were good. Also I must say it has made me a little hungry thinking about them.

Article here.

We finished the last of our wedding thank you’s last night! That’s exciting. Now it’s time to go trudge through traffic.

Happy Monday!

It’s going to be a great one I believe. The weather will be nice (maybe a little hot), but it’ll be pretty sweet. Some roller blading will be done, maybe a jog. It will be good.

Roller blading was done tonight. First time in a long time. My right knee kind of hurt, but it was fun. It was beautiful out there, and it’s great to have the nice trails right out side our place. Lovely!

Plus the Twins won tonight, so that means things are just that much better!

That’s what I call my portfolio on Google Finance.  I’ve made $200 this week, and $95 today.  Too bad that money isn’t real.  It’s fun to play though!

The past couple of days have been good.  Work is fun, but busy, as normal.  Today they debated the Smoking Ban.  I see that passed.  It was a very non-partisan issue though.  We’ll see what happens next with the conference committee I guess.

I’m excited to watch the last four episodes of 24.  I think it will be pretty interesting to see how that ends.  My guesses for what would happen next season are down the drain, so I’m not sure what’s going to happen.

Happy Thursday!  Almost Friday…

After a long work week it is a happy weekend. It seems like there was a lot going on there this week. Of course with all the omnibus bills they passed, and the many hours they were on the floor it was a long week. But it was fun. I really love working there.

Tonight we’re going to test out our new DVD stereo system with the first (almost real) test. We’re watching 007 Casino Royale with Kari and Adam. It should be good. I’ve got some Chicken Alfrado cooking on the stove which I think we might all share once they get here. It’s smelling pretty good.

I took some time and worked on my site today. I got some stuff all css’d. I made an official page of News Articles and Blog Postings that I’ve found interesting lately. You can read those here. I also put a mini-site map on the links page. With a link to my latest Google Homepage Gadget. It puts the MN/DOT Traffic Map on your Google Homepage.

To my Programmer/Analyst friends… If anyone is looking for a job, there is one at the Capitol open.

I think I smell dinner, and it smells done.

So due to the response from the other post I figured I’d expand upon taxes here, and how they’re good, how they’re bad, and why I don’t agree with the Democrat tax increases they’ve proposed thus far.

Taxes can be good. It pays for good things. It helps build roads and bridges. It provides for the common defense (aka pays for the military), and it helps pay for educational costs. These things are worthy projects, however I feel like the money could be spent much wiser.

Taxes are bad when they allow for people to collect money for doing nothing. Now I understand that people will fall on hard times, and I don’t have any problems with the government giving a hand up (although that can usually be done better through the church or other private sector areas). The government should not give unlimited hand outs. Which the tax increases this session would be needed for welfare roll backs making more people eligible for welfare for longer.

Taxes are bad when they are unfair. The American Dream is to get a job, and to be able to have a home and provide for your family. When the government is taking 8%, 9%, or nearly 10% of your paycheck every week this allows for less money for you and your family. Let’s move to a flat tax, which gives one rate for all income taxes, or a fair tax which totally abolishes the income tax and gets a national sales tax. (I’ll get back to the fair tax and flat tax at a later time and post).

When the government taxes your paycheck you do not spend as much money. The more money people earn, the more money they spend, which means the government earns more in sales tax. It’s been proven that you don’t need high taxes to have a large state revenue. Right now MN has a $2 billion surplus, and our taxes aren’t over the top.

If we keep taxes low on businesses, we get more companies to move here, providing more jobs, providing for more people with money, providing for more money in the state coffers. It’s that simple. The JOBZ program in Minnesota does just that. It allows for tax incentives for businesses to go into rural areas and provide good paying jobs, with benefits, to people. If you tax businesses they’ll move out of the state, look at California. They’ve lost some big businesses, and some good jobs.

I think we need to require that our taxes are doing good. That’s how the private sector works. But the Democrats don’t want to see results, they just want to through more money at the problem. They want to gut the Q-Comp program which pays teachers for performance, making sure students get the best education they can.

They want to move to Universal Health Care, at a cost which will consume the entire state budget within the next 40 years. There are better solutions.

The State has gotten by just fine this past biennium with a $32 billion budget. This year the Governor has agreed to spend the surplus (instead of giving it back to the taxpayer), bringing the spending total to over $34 billion, or about a 9% increase in spending. That’s a much larger increase then the average family.

Looking at the bills there is no reform in any of them, and the taxes the Democrats want to raise money to throw it at the problems, instead of solving the problems.

The government budget should not grow faster than the family budget. We should not pay more taxes when there is a $2 billion budget surplus.

The Democrats are trying to tell people that they are fiscal moderates and they can be responsible. But they aren’t showing that with their actions. I think that the Republicans need to show their working for the common man and vote against the tax increases. They need to protect our wallets and protect our freedoms.

And with that I’ll leave it open to comments.

The DFL Controlled Legislative Session thus far.

I added, to the right, a little section called Articles I found Interesting.  Okay, so really Google has helped me with it.  I can star items that I read in my RSS Feeds, and share them with you to read as well.  I don’t really have a lot of news feeds in my rss feed, I just have them on my main page.  But I might have to add some of them, just so I can share articles with you.

This week is going well.  Especially with all the global warming stuff.  Anyway… I’m not to hip on the snow that we got, but I am happy that it all melted today.  It’s been a good week, since members weren’t there on Monday.  But it will be a busy Friday I think.  I’ll be there for a little bit on Saturday I think to take pictures at the Tax Cut Rally.  I want to go to the rally anyway.  Cuz we need tax cuts, not tax increases!

Other than that I don’t think I have much new.  Peace out!

That I don’t like.  This being the article about Maryland sidestepping the Electoral College.  But it’s not quite even that.  They could be side stepping their own people.

They passed a law which says their electoral votes will go to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular votes.  So if a Republican wins the national popular vote in 2008, but the 55% of the citizens of Maryland vote for the Democrat, Maryland’s electoral college votes will go to the Republican.   They would be disregarding what the people of their own state said.  To me that is totally wrong.

I’m open to the debate that the Electoral College is out of date and a different way is needed, but to blatantly sidestep the electoral college just seems wrong.   If I vote Republican, and the majority of my fellow Minnesotan’s vote Republican I would want the electoral college votes from Minnesota to be for the Republican, not the Democrat.

A day late I suppose.  I hope you enjoyed it!  I had a good easter.  I spent it in LP with the in-laws.  It was good.  There was a lot of good food, and the church service was good.  Over all it was a good time.
I also got to hang out with some high school buddies.  We went to play some bowling on Saturday, and on Friday we went and saw Blades of Glory.  Over all I thought the movie was alright, but one of my co-workers really bragged it up, and it didn’t live up to thoat.

Pictures of the weekend are here.

Tonight it’s off to Brad’s house in a little bit to watch some 24.  I’m looking forward to that, because the commercials are making it look like a good episode tonight!

It’s one of the best holiday’s of the year.  It’s a good time for me to remember what Jesus has done for me.

This weekend started off with waffles from my wife! After sleeping in a bit.  I slept til 10:30 today, which is longer than I have in a long time.  It felt nice.  In a few hours we’ll be heading back to the LP.  It’ll be the first time that we’ve been there since our Wedding.  It’ll be interesting to go back.  It’ll be alright.

We’ll be spending the weekend with Beth’s family, as my parents are out in Rapid City, SD visiting my sister.  (Hi sister, I love you!)  But seeing how we saw my parents for all of last weekend that’s alright.  We’ll be sleeping at my parents place, because Beth’s sister and brother-in-law will be up, and I think Grandpa will be there also.  So that means no beds.  It’ll be easier for us to just stay at my parents place.

Google Desktop for the Mac came out.  I’ve installed it.  I haven’t gotten a chance to play around with it much.  I’ll hopefully do that some time and then I can let you know my thoughts on it.  So far it seems alright.  But I don’t like the fact that it sits open in my Dock.  That just seems annoying.  I wish they had it like the Dashboard icon, which you could remove.

I think I mentioned this last time, but I’ll say it again.  We got the internet at home!  We got the Comcast 6 mbs package.  There was a deal if we ordered Basic Cable (like $12/month) we could get internet for $20 for 6 months.  Plus we get a free modem (after rebates) and $100 cash back (after rebates).  So after the rebates come back (which according to some will take like 6 months) it’s a pretty good deal.  After the 6 months we might go away from cable internet, depending on if we can get a decent price for it or not.

Have a Happy Easter Weekend, and perhaps I’ll have some more pictures for ya’ll on Sunday!

For 2007 anyway… If you’re interested in seeing my final results, you can.

In other news I’m working on Wedding Thank You’s tonight. We’ve gotten about 1/4 of them done I think. So we should wrap that up next week I think. We probably won’t do much of them this weekend.

My Aunt Theresa died this past week. Her funeral was on Tuesday. It was a good celebration of her life. There were lots of family there, so I got to see a bunch of cousins, some I haven’t seen in a long time, and all the aunts and uncles. That part of it was really great. Here are some pictures of the people there.

My parents spent all weekend here. That was kind of fun.  They came to visit me at work.  I gave them the cheap tour of the Capitol, took them on to the House floor, and we took some pictures.

And to celebrate the fact that we now have the internet at home, and it’s fast, I uploaded some other pictures.  It’s of a piece of mail that got delivered to my place.   Check it out.