One of the principle arguments that I've always maintained against the tax system is that when it comes right down to it, I don't seem to get very much in the way of the services for which I'm paying all this money.  Admittedly, the fire department does show up twice a year when there's a false alarm here in my apartment building, so there's that, but outside of that, I don't really see the results of my efforts in forking over all this money.

People argue that there are still a lot of things that I get - roads for instance - but it's hard to take them seriously when I pay a fifty cent toll less than half a mile from my apartment to access any of the major highways here, and the one major east-west stretch of road that is nearest is quite literally called the "Dulles Toll Road".  I also pay about $30 in tolls to drive to NY, so again, the "my-taxes-pay-for-roads" concept is largely lost on me.  I'm taxed on my labour, most of my groceries, all my bills, and taxed several times on my cell phone for all sorts of little taxes that I'm guessing no one actually understands.

I pay approximately 33% of my salary in taxes.  (I remember playing the game "Civilization" on SNES, and if you raised the tax rate above 9%, the citizens revolted.)  That means that for 1 out of every 3 hours I work, the working I'm doing is directly going to pay taxes.  If you look at it yearly, I work from January THROUGH April just to pay taxes.  (It's not so coincidental, then, that tax day comes in the middle of April.)  This is to say nothing of property taxes on my rental property.

I understand that generally, property taxes are supposed to pay for schools.  The schools in Binghamton, NY, where my rental property is located, are famous for exactly one graduate - Rod Serling.  This is not at all ironic; anyone who's ever spent any amount of time in Binghamton can watch "The Twilight Zone" and fully understand how Mr. Serling got to be the area's most famous graduate.  So, it seems, the property taxes that I'm paying are generally not going to good use.

One thing I am certain that they are not going towards is the Binghamton Police.  The property was apparently broken into over the Christmas break while the students were away.  This in and of itself is fairly unfortunate.  While the cops can't be expected to be everywhere, apparently they are nowhere, as there were apparently 149 other break-ins during the last month, according to the property manager.  If true, that's an average of FIVE A DAY FOR A MONTH.  I may know very little about police work (I was a police cadet in my younger years, but all I ever did was direct traffic), but I'm fairly certain that even a modest force that actually patrolled the streets with any amount of effort would be able to prevent at least SOME of the break-ins if there were five happening on any given day.  (Perhaps they did stop five a day and there were actually ten going on?  This seems doubtful.)

The REAL irony of all of this is that the City of Binghamton sends around a man who measures the grass and issues summons when the grass is too high.  (There are other various infractions you can be cited for as well.)  You actually have to visit the Binghamton City Court if you get one of the Summons, and if you don't, it's considered a missed court date and the judge has the option to issue bench warrants for the arrest of the homeowner.  The one time I attended the court, I saw at least three warrants issued for homeowners who failed to show up for court.  So if you fail to mow your lawn, you're likely to end up arrested, but if you break into someone's house you'll score a big haul for your online auction sales.

So in the end, with all the taxes I'm paying, and with all the efforts I make at "playing by the rules", the people who get screwed are myself and my tenants.  The burglars make out like bandits (pun intended), and the tenants and I are paying tax money to a system that clearly is not working.  Perhaps, as has happened in England (http://vladtepesblog.com/?p=11048) maybe the homeowners and myself should band together and actually pay a separate protection force.

The exceptionally bitter pill to swallow will be that this year, as I made money last year, the government is going to demand 33% of that money as well.

There are few things less pleasant than a fire alarm at 0630 in the morning.  (I'm saying this as someone who's had nine root canals, so I know.)  The alarms here are particularly shrill, which, if there ever was a fire, would likely be very helpful.  Don't get me wrong - I'm thankful that such systems are in place, and that I'm less than a mile from a firehouse, but when the alarms turn out to be false, as they were this morning, it's still annoying.

Anyway, while I was throwing on clothes in order to trek outside for the inevitable all-clear, I decided I'd "save" some of my stuff.  Given that I wasn't *entirely* sure that it was a false alarm (though I was at 95% - this has happened before), I made a light-hearted attempt at hastiness and decided to fill my backpack with things in case this turned out to be in the 5%.  Here's what I saved:

- Macbook w/plug
- Portable external hard drives
- Canon Vixia HF S11 Camcorder (with batteries) (w/accessories)
- Passport
- Kindle
- Droid 2 Global
- iPod Touch
- Both watches (they were easy to wear)
- Car key

As it so happens, in the first three instances, I wasn't running around looking for accessories - they were all in the same place.  (I'd had a long day of cleaning and organising yesterday.)  Most of the items were already in my bedroom with the backpack, and so it was easy to get them all.  Additionally, these are all things that fit in my backpack, and were my storage options larger, or my preparation time longer, I might have saved some additional items.  (For instance, if I were evacuating & had some time, I might take my Linux desktop and the smaller of the two monitors.)

One thing I didn't save is the family photos - I have some going back more than a hundred years - though this will provide me more impetus to finish scanning them so that they're online in case there really is ever a fire!

The graph above is taken from the article below:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/the-graph-that-should-be-_b_808747.html

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook this morning.  Here are my objections to the article, entitled "2010 Hottest Year on Record: The Graph That Should Be on the Front of Every Newspaper":

"On record" are two very important words... that graph only goes back to 1880. The earth has been around for 4+ billion years. It's ridiculous to look at that graph and draw any meaningful conclusions because for one thing, if we are looking at the impact of man, at the very least we would need data from times when man was not 'influencing' climate!

For instance, here's a perfectly good article on a climate anomaly that man had nothing to do with:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

It would be perfectly reasonable to draw the same graph for 1780 - 1910 and show how the earth warmed significantly from 1816 onward!

This is to say nothing of the fact that the earth has been through several ice ages. Ice once covered almost all of North America, and for that to have occurred, and for Chicago, New York, and Seattle to be inhabitable now, the ice must have receded - and how did that happen? The earth must have warned significantly. Manhattan was once buried under a mile of ice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum) - yet the temperature of the earth must have warmed enough that that ice melted. What is now the Sahara was once under water - clearly, warming periods occurred prior to the existence of man!

I'm all for ensuring that our approach to life is as respectful to the planet as possible. However, these misleading graphs and poor science (with basically no support in articles other than to say "Look at me!") really need to go.

I continued later:

Of course, it also depends on where you're taking your measurements, too, as Britain is apparently in a euphemistic "mini ice age" with one of the coldest winters on record:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8230318/Britain-could-be-heading-for-coldest-winter-in-300-years.html

Note this article from last year around this time:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/01/04/britain-facing-coldest-winter-for-30-years-and-temperatures-could-reach-18-115875-21940316/

Of course, the linked (HuffPost) article provides a completely different graph (how was it created?) from its source; actually checking the source shows that temperatures may actually be going down:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2009/global-jan-dec-error-bar.gif

(It's a little tough to tell that bit right there at the right end of the graph, but it does look as though it's starting down.)

The bottom line is that the "global warming must not exist because of this snow" is a very simple point - it doesn't jive with people's experiences. (Try convincing your average Briton of global warming right now, for instance. My cousins over there are still amazed at how much snow they got, and a friend of mine from Mexico who visited was amazed at the cold there.) We had literally 10 - 15 feet of snow on the sidewalks here in the DC metro area last year (whether through drifting or plowing or both) and I had to walk in the road until almost April!

Quite frankly, the climate-change folks, almost all of whom are in academic- or government-sponsored research, can wail and gnash their teeth until they're blue in the face.  They're never going to be able to convince people when they can't answer simple objections, and when the average person can see from their window that things aren't hotter.