Who pays the carbon tax?

Big news these days is the tax on carbon. The belief behind this move is that if you have to pay more for polluting the atmosphere you will choose to pollute less.

I was still a smoker when the government instituted big taxes on cigarettes. It angered me but did not stop me from smoking...something to which I was addicted. However it did create new industry... shipping untaxed cigarettes across the border and then smuggling them back bringing a new source of profit for the "entrepreneurs"

My point, "sin taxes" are generally an ineffective way to change peoples habits.

The other and more critical issue in the proposed "carbon tax" is that it will most affect those who can least afford it. Those who are poor or who are on fixed/limited incomes. Ah Ha! If you can't afford oil to heat your home, then get up and run around the room and stay warm that way. Or as my mother used to say, put on a sweater. "Another one", I always answered in a sarcastic tone...which started the usual verbal battle.

Now, if you can afford to buy a super sized, over powered, gas guzzler to drive around and impress the neighbors, you can probably afford to pay a bit more for gas. But if like most workers, you need your wheels to get to your minimum wage job at the mall and the bus doesn't run by the house, then the extra price for your gas is going to hurt. Oh Yes, buy a hybrid and then you won't have to use as much gas. You only have to double the price you pay for the vehicle so that it takes twenty years to offset the savings on the gas you didn't use???

My solution to the problem is to take all vehicles out of our cities except for mass transit. No cars big or small. Bring back the rail lines, Take the big rigs off the roads and out of the cities. Tim Hortons and Robins and the ilk will hate this suggestion. But just consider for a moment the amount of pollution generated by the drive through lines at so called "fast food" restaurants and coffee houses.

Possible, probably not. Too many dollars being made in the auto industry, the oil industry and the coffee industry. We have been too accoustomed to the easy way rather than being organized. As a child our family did not have a car. My father rode to work on the bus. We took a wagon to the supermarket to carry groceries home. We walked to the theater and school and the nearby empty lots to play.

The one thing that is possible is to ban private autos inside city limits and institute a vigorous economical mass transit system. That could significantly reduce smog problems for our big cities and ultimately reduce our carbon emissions. It could be done. It has been done...I can't remember where, someplace in Europe I think where license plates that ended in odd or even numbers could only be in the city on alternate days.

But don't tax y necessary home heating system. Don't tax my necessary auto travel. Don't tax the poor and allow the wealthy to pollute without regard.

Recalling???

Friday February fifteenth...such alliterative chances should not go unprinted.

I am trying to recall my early years in school. Grade 1 was sister Matilda, OSJ...Order of Saint Joseph...I think. She of the thick yardstick which she used to enforce discipline (as if grade one pupils needed DISCIPLINE). We sat in assigned seats in rows. Girls on the left hand side of the class closest to the door, boys i the rows to the right. I was third in the first row of boys which meant I had a girl to my right. But it also meant that I was in the row directly in front of Sister M's desk and therefore under constant scrutiny and ergo (latin for therefore) often caught passing notes to or from the girls side to the boys side. A CAPITAL offense in grade one.

I don't remember what I did but I do remember receiving a number of hits with the ruler (yardstick) across the palm for minor offenses and across the knuckles for more severe offenses whatever they might have been.
SADISM - was not a work in my vocab at that time!

Grade tw0 and three were combined. A non-nun...can't remember her name but I do remember she let me do multiplacation tables without having to check by means of division because I could always get them right??? Me and Math??? something fell by the wayside in the rest of my elementary years.

Grade 4 . By this time I was an alter boy and Hooks Nocoletta aka sister was in charge of grade 4 and the alter boy contingent. Hooks because she would constantly pick at your surplice to even it out . Surplice is the white, starched over garment that the alterboys wore over their cassocks...the long black robes. Any way, Hooks was okay as far as I can remember as long as you showed up for you altar assignments.

Grade 5. Sister Joan Marie...BTW they all had Mary or some derivitive as a part of their name...Mary Matilda , Mary Nicoletta, Joan Marie, etc. She was fresh out of the Novitiate where they brainwash the young ladies who seek to make jesus their spouse for life. She was not much older than some of the retards that were three or four years behind their age group. In those days you could fail a kid who didn't pass his exams and keep him or her back for a second or third year in the grade they failed. Not so anymore...too much damage to the psyche.

So what is all this to thee and to me... Not much!!!

I could tell you the story of how Bill (lnu) set fire to the display of cotton in the front of the room by shooting a match out of an empty spool. It hit the black board over the cotton field display on a table in the front of the room and caught fire. Sister JM ran for the door...only way out...and had to go past the blazing cotton batten. She told us to stay where we were and came back in after pulling the fire alarm with an extinguisher and put the fire out. By this time her wimple was askew and I learned that nuns had hair under their uniforms. DEVASTATING.

Grade 6 was my last year at Nativity BVM (aka blessed virgin mary) the nun in charge (name conveniently forgotten) was also the school principle or is that principal?? Enough of this nonsense for now.\

Ethics

Wednesday, February 13, 2008
The storm predicted is here. Hard to see the road from the house.

So why ethics.?

What's ethics? Well it's morals, principles, rules of living. It is in simple terms - doing the right thing. Now what is the right thing. A jihadist thinks that the right thing is to blow oneself up in pursuit of the cause in order to achieve a high place in "heaven".
A good christian (should that be capatialized?) follows the ten commandments and the "golden rule". Do unto others, etc. But puzzlingly ( if that is a word) those who follow Mohamed (jihadists) believe that Jesus (aka the Christ - ergo Christians) was a prophet like Mohamed. So where did the "golden rule" go for those who folllow Islam?
Turn the other cheek? For how long? Again and again and again?

Or react? React for what? Earthly power and control? Christians used to believe (perhaps still do) that martyrdom was an instant, guaranteed get into heaven card. From the earliest martyrs, e.g. Stephen who was stoned (in the rocks on head style) down to and including those in the middle ages who died in Crusades in order to promote the faith, the highest order of heaven awaited them.

So where is "love one another". Love thy enemies. Do good to those who hate you.

Perhaps "Ethics" is a worldly concern and not a religious concern???

"And all we are saying, is give peace a chance"

Give love a chance. Do good to those who harm you. Forgive, forget and move on.

Is the world doomed to react with anger or is there a way to rise above the feeling that we must get even. Yes, some deranged (?) individuals did a horrible thing on 9/11. Yes loved ones were lost. So we, a supposedly christian nation react by ?"Turning the other cheek"...No...Hell no... they won't get away with that...whoever they are. So we bomb Afghanistan, we bomb Iraq. We kill. We (those who have power in the Western World) bomb and maim and hurt in the name of a political system. They wouldn't do this if they had a system like ours???? Which only hurts people economically???

Genug. Ver zulatz lacht lacht am besten.

Watching the snow

Monday February 11...the snow is falling, the wind is blowing. I shovelled for about half an hour just to get a path down to the car and clean out in front of the car. School was delayed so A. stayed home until almost 8:30 before she came down to get into the car.

I thought I might get the truck out of the lane and go in to pick up the mail. However, I'm not sure the work is worth it because I really don't expect any mail. It is just an excuse to get out.

Instead I might just do some of those wonderful things I said I might do like finish the basement insulation and frame up the bath room down stairs.

But then I might just curl up with a book and doze between pages and watch the snow fall.

The trail I made for my cross country skiing is now deep in the snow and new trail breaking is in order sometime today...maybe.

Life is hard when you are retired and have all these decisions to make.

Meanwhile I cogitate about world affairs and politics and people. In the past I thought I could do something about these things. Now I realize that I can only control my life and not always that. So I have only one purpose here and that is to enjoy my life as much as I can. Try not to hurt others and try to help others when the opportunity arises. fiat

I"m Back

Sunday 10, 2008
May 2007 was my last post to blogger. I wonder now if anyone still uses this mode of communication. What with facebook and it's derivitives, this is so old hat or is it that way to me because I haven't been here lately?

Anyway, I have decided to begin again to record reminescences so that you my readers (I think only my children) will have more to pass on or carry with you.

So this is a start and I will promise to try a daily up date. But first I will reread my posts and yours to see where I have been in my remin...s.

So til tomorrow.