Tag Archives: democratic party

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Assessments. I made the mistake of opening my property tax assessment on Sunday morning. I was having a perfectly nice day up until that point. Look, I mean it’s great that the county thinks I’ve picked up that much equity over the last three years, but that in no way means I’m happy about throwing more money to the Cecil County executive and council to piss away buying up even more land for regional parks that seem to be accessioned specifically to provide a place for people to go overdose. 

2. The new normal. I’m looking forward to getting started on the Biden presidency and the conclusion of the Trump impeachment trial. I, for one, am sick and tired of finding myself siding with things members of the Democratic Party are saying and look forward to getting back to opposing 60-70 % of their policy agenda. I’m tired of living in a world turned upside down.

3. Stats. If this week has taught me anything, it’s that my blog readers either a) don’t want to read about insurrection, politics, and all that or b) the zone is so flooded with posts that things aren’t getting through. Views are more than 50% off where I’d expect them to be in a normal week. This, of course, has been anything but a normal week. I’m going to keep doing what I do, even if it’s just me shouting into the void.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Getting in through the back door. Every time I hear one of the Democratic primary candidates wax philosophical about one of their wealth redistribution schemes by confiding to the camera that “it’s a tax on Wall Street,” I look around and wonder how many people really believe that. My reading on their collective plans is that this chimera of making the “big banks and hedge fund managers” pay is ultimately a tax on every working person who has a retirement account. Your 401k, 403b, IRA, or TSP can’t help but be taxed under these plans, because at heart these accounts are nothing more than fractional shares that get traded on a regular basis to keep the fund balanced… and these funds are the definition of big players in the financial market. The Democratic candidates know they’re going to have to tap into huge sources of capital for their plans. I just wish they had the stones to admit that getting it done is going to require levying this backdoor tax on every man and woman in America who’s bothered to make an effort to save for retirement and not just the guy in charge of running the fund.

2. When you can’t even half ass the work. I worked on three things today. Simultaneously. All were a priority of effort… at least to someone. What that really means, of course, is each of them got exactly the level of effort and attention you’d think they got. Instead of half assed efforts, the very best they could hope for was being third assed. It’s a hell of a way to run a railroad. You’d think after 17 years I’d have started to get use to the idea that most days good enough just has to be good enough. Then again some days don’t even rise to that paltry standard.

3. Facebook memories. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to disable Facebook Memories, because every morning I open the damned app I’m met with the picture of a bulldog doing something alternately ridiculous or endearing. Jorah has done quite a lot in the last six months to patch up the sucking chest wound Winston left behind, but those pictures every morning still catch me directly in the feels. Despite the myriad of issues, vet bills, and costs, I don’t think I’ll ever really get to a place where I don’t miss such a good dog.

Slow News Day or: Here Come the Democrats…

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I’m a registered Republican and have been for most of my adult life. By the same token, I’m a Maryland Republican, which loosely translates into belonging to a fairly moderate strain of the party. I suspect that’s largely because the Democrats who perennially control the state house and governor’s mansion tend to subscribe to the west coast definition of what it means to be liberal. The result is a Republican party that tends, largely, to be pretty middle of the road when compared to our red state brethren in someplace like Wyoming. Sure, we have plenty of our own wackadoodle right wing nut jobs too, but they don’t tend to grow quite as thickly around here as they do in other parts of the country.

Usually I don’t think too much about the labels of politics, if only because I don’t find myself fitting nicely into any of them… but with tonight’s kickoff of the Democratic National Convention, I find myself glaring at the television and trying not to give in to the temptation to yell in its direction. To be honest, nominating conventions aren’t for guys like me. We made up our minds back during the primaries. Conventions are about rallying the faithful ahead of the long, hard slog to November. Well, that and maybe, just maybe reaching one or two percent of the undecided voters out there occupying the middle ground.

The only thing I’m going to gain from watching this convention is (re)learning that in a head-to-head comparison, I disagree more with the Democrats than I disagree with the Republicans. I should probably go ahead and switch over to a rerun of Big Bang Theory so my blood pressure doesn’t shoot into the stratosphere at some point this evening.