The difference between what is legally owed the federal government and what it actually collects in taxes each year is called the “tax gap,” which the IRS recently estimated reached $385 billion in 2006. Other studies have placed that figure higher — at upwards of $600 billion. So who owes this money and why? The single biggest contributor to the tax gap — accounting for 84% of it — are people who simply under-report their income. This doesn’t usually happen to folks whose employers withholds taxes from their paychecks, as 99% of people in that position end up paying their income … Continue reading Not Paying Their Share…..

  I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign toys. They are nations of eternal war.   — Thomas Jefferson  –Letter, 11 June 1823 to President James Monroe Even though the words of above were penned over two hundred years ago I believe they are just as valid today as they were then. The only difference is maybe I would now … Continue reading Nations of Eternal War….

I am bringing up a new category with this post called “We the people”. Of course many of you know that those words are the start of our Constitution. What I have in mind for this category are posts about what polls and such show that the people of this country want as opposed to what is happening in Washington today.  I must admit that I am getting pretty fed up with our dysfunctional federal government. I don’t know if this dysfunction is a planned strategy of one of the political parties or not. At this point I really don’t … Continue reading We The People…

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true. — Nathaniel Hawthorne  I got this quote from a young blogger friend. It struck me as poignant as it did him. Being that I am in a different stage of my life I approach the quote in a different way than he did. In order for us to really say what we think we often do it in an anonymous manner. We don’t want to take the risk of possible reprisal for our … Continue reading Wearing a Mask…

No, this post is not about pornography on the internet. Instead it is about all those words we accidentally hit that bring up small screens to get in the way of what we are reading.  I admit that I am one of those guys that uses my computer pointer to keep track of where I am on the page.  I need to do that as my wife is constantly interrupting me with one emergency or another. :) But often times when I move the pointer to just the right space suddenly a another box pops us.  I can’t tell you … Continue reading The Internet Mine Field…

Often in life we think we are in love with something but it turns out that we were really in love with the idea of something. I currently think I am in love with RVing. It sounds like a freedom that I seek. But have I really thought out all the ramifications of being on the road for long periods of time?  Am I in love with RVing or just the idea of RVing? That is the question. Many of us would love to be or do certain things in our lives but once we realize the efforts it would … Continue reading Being In Love With The Idea…

We spent the day touring amish country around our friends home. There is a very large population here in northeast Ohio ( I made a terrible mistake originally here in that I said northwest instead of northeast.  Sorry about that).  Almost every house we came to had clothes out on the line and all in typical amish colors. So that made discovering which farms are amish rather easy.  That and seeing no utility lines going into the houses.  It seems that some of the families are “cheating” though; they have solar panels installed on the roofs. It was a good … Continue reading On The Road Cleveland – Day 7 If It’s Monday It Must Be Wash Day….

Since we have been walking so much the last few days we decided to take it a little easier today. We drove the mile to the center of the city instead of walking. Our fatigue and the fact that it is still in the 30s and 40s here enticed us to take the easy way.  When we got close to the Tower City Center we found a convenient parking garage. I have been reading about a 4th Street complex of restaurants and sites so we decided to head there. It was not as we expected. There were a number of … Continue reading On The Road Cleveland – Day 5 Downtown

Starting tomorrow we will finally be on the road again. These last six months seemed longer than most. Cabin fever was really getting me down.  I know several of you really enjoy my “On the road reports”. I thought about not doing them this time and instead taking a hiatus from blogging but I realized that I really do enjoy writing the reports. They allow me to sit back and think about how my day was and to record things in a “Travels with Charley” format similar to what John Steinbeck did about fifty years ago. So my daily posts … Continue reading On The Road Again….

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. Mahatma Gandhi For here we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead… Thomas Jefferson Remember, we learn nothing by speaking. St. Francis of Asissi I thought I would pull up three inspirational quotes from some of my heroes for this inspiration Sunday. Gandhi was a man of simplicity. He lived his life with very few luxuries. But his words were full of riches. We can’t just complain about something in life. Doing only that is a worthless task. Instead of complaining work to find … Continue reading We Learn Nothing By Speaking…..

I have been thinking about all the partisanship and our legislative process lately.  We seem to be in a gridlocked pattern that is almost impossible to break. Washington is completely out of step with the rest of the country.  Poll after pole tells us that we the people want them to get off their butts and do something. Doing nothing in the U.S. Senate feeds the cynicism in the country which enhances the Republican view that government can’t do anything right. The filibuster is the latest major tool used  to accomplish that task. All it takes now it for the … Continue reading Feeding the Cynicism….

Source: Are you getting overcharged by your hospital? Time to become a Smart patient | VentureBeat. If you’re a patient represented by Medicare or Medicaid, you’re well served because these programs have significant market muscle: They negotiate prices below what it costs to treat patients. …..With few exceptions, private insurers tend to be relatively weak when bargaining with hospitals, so that hospitals can extract from them prices substantially in excess of the full cost of treating privately insured patients, with profit margins sometimes in excess of 20 percent. Finally, uninsured patients — also called “self-pay” patients — have effectively no market power at … Continue reading Overcharged By Your Hospital?

Source: Republicans Win Congress as Democrats Get Most Votes – Bloomberg. The 2010 elections, in which Republicans won the House majority and gained more than 700 state legislative seats across the nation, gave the party the upper-hand in the process of redistricting, the once-a-decade redrawing of congressional seats. The advantage helped them design safer partisan districts and maintain their House majority in 2012 — even as they lost the presidential race by about 5 million votes. Also nationwide, Democratic House candidates combined to win about 1.4 million more votes than Republicans, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News. Gerrymandering which is … Continue reading About Gerrymandering….

In the decades since a jury convicted him of murder, nearly every piece of evidence in this case has fallen away. A key witness told The New York Times that a detective instructed him to select Mr. Ranta in the lineup. A convicted rapist told the district attorney that he falsely implicated Mr. Ranta in hopes of cutting a deal for himself. A woman has signed an affidavit saying she too lied about Mr. Ranta’s involvement. Detective Scarcella and his partner, Stephen Chmil, according to investigators and legal documents, broke rule after rule. They kept few written records, coached a … Continue reading Wrongly Convicted….

  Source:  Thinking outside the box – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Thinking outside the box (also thinking out of the box or thinking beyond the box) is a metaphor that means to think differently, unconventionally, or from a new perspective. This phrase often refers to novel or creative thinking. The term is thought to derive from management consultants in the 1970s and 1980s challenging their clients to solve the “nine dots” puzzle, whose solution requires some lateral thinking. Ironically, telling people to “think outside the box” does not help them think outside the box, at least not with the 9-dot … Continue reading Thinking outside the box….

Source: China’s real estate bubble – CBS News. China has been nothing short of a financial miracle. In just 30 years, this state-controlled economy became the world’s second largest, deftly managed by government policies and decrees. One sector the authorities concentrated on was real estate and construction. But that may have created the largest housing bubble in human history. If you go to China, it’s easy to see why there’s all the talk of a bubble. We discovered that the most populated nation on earth is building houses, districts and cities with no one in them. This article got my attention … Continue reading China’s real estate bubble