My topic on day five is taxes, my understanding is that come January 1, if congress hasn’t reached an agreement about existing tax breaks, then a whole bunch of us will be seeing a lot less in our paychecks every pay-day.  You know, I don’t think I would mind losing my tax breaks quite so much if I actually thought the government was cutting costs to make ends meet instead of increasing their debt.

Think about it; when times get tough in your household what do you do?  You take a look at what your output is and say, where can I CUT spending?  You don’t run out to the bank and say give me a new credit card.

But that is exactly what the government intends on doing in order to meet their output.  Let’s face it, there are two ways to make ends meet 1) find a way to make more money or 2) cut what you spend.  One way to make more money is to increase taxes, the other is to incur more debt (in a manner of speaking I guess it would technically be like raising the credit line on your home equity loan, except they aren’t mortgaging a home, they are mortgaging our future!)  The economy is in the tank and they are talking about raising taxes again, I heard they may increase the amount of federal tax on a gallon of gas.  If the government would figure out a way to decrease spending, then perhaps the American people wouldn’t feel so bad about an increase in taxes. 

Let’s face it; we need to cut somewhere but in my opinion they are cutting in the wrong places.  People on Social Security will not be getting an increase this year and I can’t help but think that the ‘seniors’ have already paid their dues and they are supposed to be in their “golden years” but how can you enjoy yourself if you can’t afford to live?  Why doesn’t the government focus on the folks who won’t work, instead of the ones who can’t work, or the ones who have already worked and just want to enjoy the remaining time they have left?

I received a comment from Lloyd who said (para-phrasing) he would like to hear my comments about an article I had read.  Great minds think alike Lloyd, because I was thinking along the same lines of plucking a topic out of the headlines and putting my unique take on it. 🙂

Having said that, my two choices today were that WikiLeaks has been cut off from their paypal account or Sarah Palin has a show about going camping with Kate Gosselin.  Granted, I really do want to speak my mind about these two women, but tonight I am focusing on the WikiLeaks topic (the article can be found here Personally I think Amazon.com and Paypal are right in their decision to sever ties with the WikiLeaks organization. (For some reason the links button is not working, so the article can be found here http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/04/wikileaks.pay.pal/index.html?hpt=T2)

When I was in college I took a journalism class taught by a very bright woman, Susan Plese.  Now Mrs. Plese wrote a column for the local paper and was a steadfast journalist who truly believed in Freedom of the Press; the public has a right to know; yada, yada, yada.  I disagree with her.

There are some things the public should not know, let’s face it in today’s global world, when one person “knows” something, everybody knows it.  I think the Government has the right to keep certain information close to the vest and while I think there may be a need for a website like WikiLeaks to exist, I don’t believe they should necessarily be releasing that information to the general public.  One could argue that if the information they recieved were of vital importance or could bring justice to someone who was perpetuating a crime; then certainly that would be different than simply divulging all kinds of information about diplomatic ties and policies that could certainly do more harm than good.

So I applaud Amazon.com and Paypal for severing their ties with WikiLeaks.  The article insinuates that these two organizations were encouraged or pressured to severe their ties with WikiLeaks and perhaps that is true, but maybe just maybe Amazon and Paypal feel that WikiLeaks is in the wrong and they are taking a stand and saying, what you are doing is wrong and we will not help you do it!

So here I am at day three, I have the basic gist of the blog up and I send out the mass e-mail saying “hey check me out.”  I got a response back.  It was from one of the guys in the IT department where I work.  Besides the diabolical laughter which he inserted in my e-mail, my  friend (yes I am going so far as to call him my friend) says, “find your voice,” “worry more about your content than volume” or something along these lines.

What does he mean, I wondered.  So I asked my niece who is 16 years old and wise beyond her years, “What does he mean, find my voice?”

“Find something that you like to write about and put your own spin on it” was her response.

“But what do I write about?” I pondered.

“Write a bunch of random topics on a page and then pick one and write about it for 15 minutes” was her advice.

So here I am trying to find my voice, I thought I’d throw it out to you and see if you have any suggestions.  If not I am going to pick a topic to write about, it could be anything (hey, I think I’m pretty level-headed with common sense) it may be politics, it may be family life, it may just be something in the newspaper I read that strikes my fancy.  But I am going to write….everyday…for at least a year or until I find my voice.