Do you have a favorite holiday?

I'm sorry you don't agree. But I am not going to allow a comment about causing economic anarchy or a comment that encourags that kind of activity to stand without being challenged. There are real people that are going to suffer as a result of Carrot and her ilk causing mischief and mayhem in Portland.

Feudalism gets old after a while.

i am sick of this shit. Not necessarily your own personal shit, jackbenimble, but American capitalist bullshit.

As I recall you've devoted your life to taking care of disturbed or disabled kids. That's admirable. I really respect that.

Do you have any idea how kids like that fair under any system but capitalism? It's not pretty. The incredibly sad plight of orphans in the former communist Romania leap immediately to mind. Even in capitalist systems that are less successful then ours, the kids you care about are the first ones to suffer when tax revenues decline. It takes a very wealthy society to give the children you care about anything more than what amounts to a cage and an occasional feeding. In most places they don't even get that. Only highly successful capitalist societies generate the kind of wealth that allows the care of these children to be given any sort of priority.

I suspect that given your line of work that you are either a government employee paid directly by taxpayers or if you work for a private institution it is highly dependent on subsidies from taxpayers that come either in the form of direct government grants and/or government aid to the parents that end's up in the pocket of your institution and eventually on the payroll checks of people like yourself. If neither of those things is the case then you are very much the exception rather than the rule.

I'm sorry you don't like caitalism but given your own dependencies and your priorities it is a rather cavelier and irresponsible attitude. When people like Carrot and her pals are hurting the businesses that struggle to earn profits and pay taxes they are taking money away from the children you claim to care about. Whether you like it or not, decent hard working people in our society are connected and mutually dependent.

For the record, I don't mind being taxed to support the truly needy like "your" children but I have a real problem with being taxed to feed somebody of sound mind, sound body and unwilling to work and who actually delights in causing harm to those who do.

And by the way, Sarah Palin, having brought one into the world herself, is a champion for disabled children and most pro-life conservatives (I'm not one of those) share her views.

I just turned 50, I'm semi-retired now. I keep my three businesses running but they are mainly in cash cow auto-pilot mode. I am no longer trying to grow them much.

From age 13 to 20 I worked summers as a cowboy. Mostly it was branding and mowing, baling and stacking hay. Grueling, low pay work. My last two years of college I spent my summers working contruction. One summer I was a laborer and one summer I was a framing carpenter. Much easier work and better pay. I got my first real job after college as a revenue accountant for an oil and gas company. The energy industry was my passion and I am still very interested in it. I worked my way up to supervisor. The last two years I was there I was very involved in the design construction, testing and implementation of a new revenue accounting computer system. Oil prices crashed in the mid 80's and they went bankrupt. I continued working for them part time but I went back to school and got my MBA and picked up enough accounting to sit for the CPA exam which I passed. I never got certified as a CPA because I was not overly thrilled about being a bean counter. I satisfied every requirement except a self-administered ethics exam and I knew I was unethical enough to pass any self-administered exam so what was the point? I then got a job with the consulting company (Accenture) that had been building that revenue accounting system that I had worked on. They knew me and apparently liked me. I hoped to work on more oil and gas systems but that industry was in the toilet so I spent the next 8 years building huge computer systems for telephone companies including a year in Australia that was about the highlight of my life. I worked my way up to senior manager but eventually quit and moved home to Wyoming because my wife's drinking problem bloomed into full blown wild crazy alchoholism. I was trying to save her, my marriage and my family. I pretty much failed at all except that I have a very close relationship with my daughter. When I got home to Wyoming I needed to do something so I started a retail computer store. That business was a dog and in four years never paid me a paycheck. But it did create paying jobs for two and sometimes three technicians, a salesperson and a secretary. I eventually gave the business to my two technicians and they are still operating it successfully and creating jobs for about 3 other people too. The last two years I was in the computer business all of my time was devoted to building and growing my Dial-up ISP business which I never would have started if I had not been in the computer business first. That business was incredibly lucrative and I was raking in money hand over fist. All those years of telecommunications consulting I did earlier in my career came in pretty handy because everything I knew about the Internet I was learning on the fly. I learned UNIX (very rudimentary knowledge at first) the day I turned my system on. I was one of the first three internet providers in Wyoming. I eventually merged with the other two and we grew into the largest in Wyoming. It still is the largest and employees several dozen people. I sold out my share at the top of the tech boom for a LOT of money and invested in the natural gas industry which was just beginning to boom in the Powder River Basin near here. My cowboy days gave me a lot of knowledge of that area and my early years in the oil and gas industry also helped. The two little companies I started have flourished although I have mostly lost interest in them. Most of the hard interesting work of raping the land is already done and really it is just about counting revenue now. I have come full circle on my career and I am back to being where I started out of college as an oil and gas revenue accountant. This time I am also CEO. I work about 3 hours per day more or less and I employee a full-time assistant who really does most of the real work. I also have quite a pile of money that I invest. It is mostly cash right now and has been for two years because I could see these bad times coming. When I think the economy has bottomed out I'll go bargain hunting in real estate and the stock market and help the economy pick up the pieces.

The rest of the time I pursue my non-money making passions like re-constructing my 110 year old mountain cabin, fishing, riding my four wheeler in summer and my snowmobiles in winter, traveling some (I'm headed to Costa Rica in January), doing some volunteer work ( I raise money for the homeless shelter, the foodbank and the disabled persons service center) and being an internet activist. I am very involved in trying to bring the illegal immigration problem under control and fighting against amnesty. And I spend some time blogging here and elsewhere.

That is what I have done and what I do.

she just turned 2 in May

"What a crazy random happenstance!"
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Read my Blog!

Oh my God it's the trampoline of DOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!

Also, that dress is, in fact, adorable! :-) But not nearly as cute as that cheesy smile! ;-) I love it!

"What a crazy random happenstance!"
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Read my Blog!

That second picture is probably my favorite. That smile is amazing! It just makes me laugh, in a good way.

Like what you've read? Well, then here's more:
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tricia0711