Full steam ahead, tricky Dick
So it looks like the trip to western PA is a go. I got the time off from work, confirmed the dates with my dad and secured a bird sitter. My dad and step mom are excited for us to come visit. Ali mentioned it would be cool if we could stop by at her brother’s place briefly to see our nieces. I am trying to figure out scenarios to make that work since it is about 4 hours away from where my dad lives.
Last night I saw an amazing thing when I got home last night, the Camry was in the garage. The fact that the car was in the garage wasn’t the amazing thing, what it represented was, Ali was actually home before me. I can’t tell you the last time this happened.
Not only was she home, she was already working on the dog’s dinner and had harvested salad from the garden. It was great. Originally when Ali started contracting this was the intended plan. I had ideas of how nice that would be for both Ali to work less hours for the same money and still be able to enjoy at least a partial housewife life style where she only was working two or three days a week.
For a short period of time after the transition things were pretty close to what we laid out. However after not so long stuff morphed for various reasons. For the last couple years I have been lucky to see Ali home before me one day a month. I protested about it several times only to see things revert back in a short time period. I am hoping last night will become more routine instead of an annual event, it sure was nice.
Yesterday Ali took the dog’s in for their annual physical. Sadie has turned into the little porker, tipping the scales at 59 pounds, a full 5 pounds heavier than Nicki. To put this into perspective, when we adopted Sadie she was a scrawny 38 pounds. Evidently she has found life in the Duffey household quite to her liking.
Last night I used a Zappos gift card to snag another pair of retro Adidas training pants. I really like the other two pair I own. After my gift card and a $4 credit I already on my account I wound up paying a whopping 90 cents for the pants, sweet!
Florida’s new governor has really been making headlines recently. The other day he revealed his proposed changes to gut the Florida Retirement System, the state worker pension plan. Yes this is one of my benefits as well.
Why he is targeting the pension plan in the first place is questionable. The Florida pension system is one of the healthiest programs in the country, currently ranked at number 3 nationwide. Ironically, it’s health may be why he see’s it as a fat juicy apple to pluck since there are literally billions of dollars in it.
Now on top of this he revealed plans for his budget in front of a pay per seat tea party gathering instead of announcing the budget in the state capital. This is the same cowardly strategy he used when revealing his pension plans which was done in front of a local business that were strong backers of Scott’s campaign. Tricky Rick likes to announce stuff only in front of the people that want to hear it.
Rick’s budget highlights include cutting taxes left and right, especially for businesses, and laying off around 7,000 state workers. Local governments that are already spiraling from property values that have plummeted are besides themselves if faced with even slimmer revenue.
Scott is doing just what he did during the campaign, throw out highlight line items that sound good to the lightly informed. PAY LESS TAXES, SCREW THE STATE GOVERNMENT WORKERS, it is the classic “me first” attitude that focuses on the short term and ignores the repercussions.
These same morons that cheer lower taxes will also be the first to complain when the various services provided by local governments are no longer available or are at a level less than the community has come to accept as the norm. There is no free lunch.
The good news is Scott can not single handedly dismantle the state. He would require the backing of the majority of legislature to do that. Those legislators have already been besieged by people outraged by many of these proposals and have thus far demonstrated an awareness of the backlash.
Tricky Rick is acting like he was given some sort of enormous mandate this last election. The reality was that despite the 70 million dollars of his own personal fortune that he spent to win the election, he only did so by less than 1% of the vote.
As aggravating as I find Rick’s ideas, there is one thing I find more aggravating. It’s any state worker that actually voted for this guy (there are a lot of them) that are now whining because Ricky is now gunning for their retirement. Scott made his intentions towards state employees well known during the election. Don’t cry about the bed that you helped make.