Steve and Judy's Travels!

Disturbing and interesting.

I’m with another guy, but I don’t know him.  We were walking through a shabby part of town; what town I have no idea.  We were stopping and looking at stuff in thrift stores.  At one particular store, I was looking the other way when I heard the shopkeeper say “So this is how it’s going to be.”  I didn’t understand what he meant.  I turned and looked to see that the three of us were aligned in a straight line, him in the middle with a table of stuff between him and me, and the other guy behind him.  The shopkeeper said “So which of you is it going to be?”  I still didn’t understand.  Then the other guy began the assault.  Up to that point, I had no idea what was going to happen.  I was surprised and shaken by the violence.  That dream was disturbing.  I’m not trying to analyze it.  I don’t think dreams, especially bad dreams, really mean anything, they just are.  I wouldn’t even be describing this dream, except that I need it to set the scene for the interesting part.

The interesting part, and what struck me right away, even while I was still dreaming, was that the shopkeeper figured it out so fast.  This was a dream coming from my head and he figured out what was going to happen way before I did.  I’m dreaming him.  He should only know what I know.  How could he know before I did, and not just by a little, not just a moment, not a split second, but by a lot?  He saw it coming and I never did.

I’ve figured it out.  I’ve been puzzled by politics for years now.  How can we all be looking at the same information yet be so far apart in our understanding.  Well today the pieces came together.  I heard politicians and analysts talking on the radio and they all agreed that if Trump gets elected to be president again, that will be the end of our democracy.  We won’t have our country anymore.  Well, that triggered a recollection.  Years ago, when Obama got elected, Judy and I were out for an evening walk at Gulf Waters and stopped to visit with a person we didn’t know at the time.  We were both shocked when we heard him say we were never going to get our country back again.  We didn’t know it was gone, but he was apoplectic so we knew something must have happened.  We had to think about it and talk about it for a while until we made the connection that for some, our country was gone right at the moment a black man got elected as president. 

I can be pretty smart sometimes, and I’ve thought this through.  I’ve put two and two together.  If Trump regains the presidency, we’ll never get our country back.  When Obama got elected, we’ll never get our country back.  What this all means?  Trump is black!

When I was younger, I thought of the cost of acquisition as the price of an object.  If I paid a certain price for something, I was done.  Now it was mine.

As I got older though, I gradually realized that the cost of acquisition was only the beginning.  Everything a person buys has a continuing cost.  Houses, cars, bicycles, boats.  Each item has to be maintained, maybe even repaired from time to time.  If nothing else, it takes up space.  It has to be housed.

The real price of an acquisition is what a person pays for it plus all the future costs.  For the future, every acquisition requires an endowment, either in the form of money set aside for its lifetime costs, or more commonly, a share of a continuing income stream for the life of the object.  The more things we own, the more continuing costs we’ve accumulated, the less flexibility we have, and the more dependent we are on that endowment or continuing income stream.

Judy went outside with the dogs and discovered a grasshopper on the deck.  I went out to take a picture,

But before I could get a good shot, the grasshopper flew in the open door to our living room.  We didn’t really want it in the house, but that gave me a better chance for a picture anyway.

I think it’s called an “obscure bird grasshopper”.  Bird grasshoppers tend to fly well and even land in trees if disturbed.  After the kodak moment in the house, we were able to liberate it back into the night.  It flew off in the dark and landed in a tree across the road.

How do we fund roads and bridges?  Gasoline taxes.  Every vehicle that uses roads and bridges pays its share.  Except electric vehicles.  They don’t pay any gasoline taxes.  Uh oh.  Electric vehicles are a necessary component of our response to climate change, but how are they going to pay their share for road use? 

There is no national solution.  It’s a state-by-state issue.  I checked with Colorado.  They have added an annual tax on top of their registration renewal each year for electric cars, for the average amount other cars pay in fuel tax.  Not a perfect solution, people that use their electric cars less than average end up paying more than their share, but Colorado has done something and that’s better than nothing.

Texas has instituted an initial $400 fee for registering an electric vehicle, and an annual $200 fee after that, which is actually punitive because it’s more than the average gasoline powered car pays in fuel taxes.  Whatever.  Even if the system for each state isn’t perfect, at least it’s something.    Some states haven’t done anything at all.  They need to step up.  We don’t want the quality of our infrastructure to suffer because we’ve improved our methods of getting out and about.