I’ve been telling people for months that I want to blog. And here I am. The problem is, I have so much on my mind that I’m having a little trouble deciding where to start.
I guess I’ll start out by telling a little about myself. I am a displaces desert rat from Tucson, Arizona. My husband first dragged me from Tucson to Florence Arizona (Hell on Earth) then to Colorado….OK not dragged exactly because Colorado is beautiful, then to Lincoln, Nebraska. This time kicking and screaming. I’m still screaming.
The hope was that we were moving to a quieter, more conservative, CHEAPER (oh yeah) lifestyle. The reality is, higher taxes, higher taxes and even higher taxes. Believe it or not, our taxes on our little 800 sq. ft. house is over $2,400 a year…my brain calculates that to over $200. a month just for taxes! This month they re-evaluated our house and up-ed the value over $17k. We figure that at the going rate that will increase our taxes by about $36. a month. Now that may not seem like much to most people but when your income is just above poverty level (with both income earners bearing degrees and working on advanced ones to boot) it is pretty disturbing.
Now, I know what you are going to say. Write to your Congressman. I did. Every response I received, and some were actually via telephone, albeit, not from the Congressman but from someone in his office, pointed the finger to one person. Our esteemed mayor. You guessed it. That person never bothered to respond. Not even a generic email saying ” Thanks for your email now go away”.
The mayor of Lincoln is a lovey, gray haired, matronly woman who thinks she lives in New York City. The goal is: lots of green tree filled parks, big convention halls, trendy restaurants and art galleries and so on and so on. However, there are not many people living here and we have to pay for it all. With Taxes. Gas is .20 a gallon more than in surrounding states. People stand in blood-bank lines to make an extra few cents for gas. But then I suppose they are doing that all over America. Add to that the fact that it is as cold as camel snot in the winter and we have tornadoes in the summer does not put this at the top of Corporate Americas list of places to open a new business. We have a nice University. Enrollment is actually up. I think that is mostly because the benevolent folks who run it have decided to give instate tuition to the children of illegal immigrants…yes you read right ILLEGAL. Oh, if, however, you were born in the United States, and you lived in Nebraska for over a year, and work in Nebraska, they will use the fact that you lived here for at least a year before enrolling as proof that you moved here only to attend the university and not because you love it here and charge you our of state tuition for the duration of your education. I know that sounds really stupid and you may have to re-read it to understand the sentance but that is how it is actually stipulated in the student handbook. (I scream again). I could go on and on about things like the fact that the public school won’t provide busing (can’t afford it on their meager budget) and they don’t have grades in but here you are allowed to continue until you are 25. Less kids are graduating, I wonder why. That is one reason for allowing illegal immigrants kids to get in state tuition. We are not graduating kids to fill the college and the kids from California don’t like the weather. GEE! Go figure!
Well, there are certainly worse places to live. At least I’m not in Iraq. As big a mouth as I have, I would have been left in the desert to die years ago, or worse. At least here I can mouth off when I want to. Now, if someone would just listen to me I might be able to get off the meds.
