Measures 66 and 67.

Measures 66 and 67, proposed by the state of Oregon, have recently captured my attention enough where I’m breaking my long spell of ignoring my blog to make my opinion of them publicly available online.

I have a major beef with Measure 67 in particular for several reasons. My three problems are this: I’m angry at the advertising being produced and paid for by Oregon; I’m furious at the retroactive nature of the proposed tax; and I have a big issue with the entire premise upon which the proposed tax is based. So, let’s take a closer look here…

1. The Advertising

The video advertisements produced by Oregon say that 2/3rds of businesses pay only $10 in taxes every year. They propose to raise that amount to $150. When this is all the information you’re given, it seems pretty clear that businesses ought to pay more taxes than just $10 a year, which is criminally low if that’s all they pay. But what the advertisements fail to mention is that the $10 applies to income tax only, and it’s what businesses pay for income tax when they don’t make any money. This does not account for federal taxes, property taxes, or payroll taxes, which businesses pay even if they are not profitable.

But none of this is given in the advertisements, which simply state that 2/3rds of businesses pay $10 a year and leave it at that. I find this blatantly misleading and am therefore angry about it.

2. The Retroactive-ness (Retroactivity?)

Measure 67 proposes a tax which is retroactive in nature, and would be effective as of January 1st, 2009. This entire thing is so obviously wrong that I’m not even sure how to explain it.

Imagine if you bought a car and agreed upon a price of $35,000. You got the loan, made the deal, signed the papers, and drove away happy. You finish paying off the car as planned without any issues whatsoever. A year after you’ve paid off the car, you get a bill from the car dealership for an additional $35 (0.1% of the purchase price). When you call to inquire, the dealership explains that it’s having a problem paying its electric bill for the month and it needs that $35 from you immediately. Oh, and you’ll be thrown in jail if you can’t pay it.

Now, is $35 a big deal? Maybe not. But it doesn’t change the fact that this scenario would be wrong, no matter how small the amount. And for the business owners who will have to pay that $35 to the state on your behalf, when that $35 is multiplied by a thousand, it becomes a big deal.

3. The Premise

When reading the previous example, it’s easy to rationalize that 0.1% of sales is nothing, especially for businesses with over $500,000 in revenue who surely have plenty to spare. The problem here is that revenue is not the same thing as profit. If you buy something for $40 and sell it for $50, you’ve made $50 in revenue but only $10 in profit. With normal income taxes, that $40 you spent initially is tax deductible, so you only pay taxes on the profit of $10.

My issue here is that Measure 67 taxes revenue, not profit. You would be taxed on the entire $50, not just the $10. A business that has over $500,000 in revenue does not necessarily make a profit, depending on its profit margin and expenses. In this case, Measure 67 would be imposing income tax on businesses that didn’t even make any income. It’s called income tax for a reason, so let’s keep it that way.

Measure 66

I haven’t talked about Measure 66 yet. It’s just another tax increase on higher-income brackets. Punishing the evil rich capitalists and such. Et cetera.

Final Remarks

I could go on about how history has shown that lower tax rates are good for businesses and help to lower unemployment, how Oregon would probably have a lot more money to spend if they hadn’t spent 4 million on their advertising campaign for these measures, blah blah blah. But I won’t bother. So let’s just do a quick recap:

- Income tax should be based on income.

- Retroactive taxes are wrong.

- Blatantly misleading advertising is wrong.

And I guess that about covers it! There you have it, my opinion. Feel free to start a flame war in the comments.

-Caitlin

Transformations.

TL;DR Version, in Rhyme:

I made some bad decisions that weren’t so bright
But in the end it all turned out alright
Survived a crash and got over my depression
Had a baby, found some jobs in this recession
God is good and saved me through my itty bitty son
And now I’ve got some buddies so I’m not a lonely one
I’m acting more responsibly and I have great hair
And if I win this contest, I’ll be dressing up with flair!

The Very Long Version follows:

My son, Kael, is five months old on the 19th. If this was just a normal blog post, I’d leave it at that and maybe throw in a “he’s very cute” and possibly a picture and something along the lines of “PLEASE LEAVE ME A COMMENT I’M SO LONELY.” But this isn’t just a normal blog post: this entry is mostly for a contest over at ModCloth (contest found here), which is a great website filled with gorgeous clothes that I would be very willing to spend money on if I had any to spend. So instead, this is a story of the many transformations which turned me into the pretty awesome person typing this for you now. I hope you enjoy it.

I began typing out the whole tale and got a few thousand words in before realizing that this would be a very long story if I took it in detail from the beginning. In the interests of not boring you to death, here are the important background details:

-I began dating a boy I had no interest in during late January of 2007, when I was 16. We stayed together for nearly a year and a half before I got up the nerve to break up with him in June 2008.

-Side note: I chopped my hair from mid-back length to a pixie cut and dyed it from brown to dark purple the week before we broke up. Transformation!

-When I broke up with this boy, I was unknowingly pregnant with our son. I figured it out in July and immediately went into denial.

-Because I was in denial, I began attending Willamette University that fall. Nobody knew I was pregnant except myself and my increasingly uncomfortable size 0 jeans, which I’m sure were very upset with me for abusing them so.

-As soon as I began attending Willamette, I started dating a boy I’d been crushing on for a while. I was unhealthily obsessed with him and was positive I’d marry him someday.

-Shortly after I began dating said boy, my parents found the pregnancy test box I’d left in my room at home. I was forced out of denial, and due to my attitude, which in retrospect was disgusting, was nearly disowned. I would have deserved it, too.

-Said boy promised to stand by me despite my pregnancy and other issues, further cementing my obsession with him. He dumped me a month later.

And so the main story begins. The heroine of this tale (yours truly) is suffering from severe depression and spends probably about 15 hours a day playing a certain addictive computer game even though she is still attending college. I don’t want to slander World of Warcraft, though, so I won’t name the game.

So there I was, perpetually wearing a huge puffy black coat around campus to hide my swelling tummy, hiding in the computer lab for hours and hours every day and generally wasting my life. The only word I can use to describe how I felt all the time is “blank.” My parents checked in on me from time to time, and I blew them off like teenagers often do, except most teenagers aren’t pregnant and depressed. I frequently blatantly disobeyed them in irresponsible bouts of rebellion; it wasn’t my intention to cause them pain by doing it, I just didn’t care. I wanted to be left alone with my miserable life.

The turning point for me came in early November. Since I was irresponsible and rebellious, I accepted a dinner invitation from my former boyfriend’s mother, the grandmother-to-be. The ex-boyfriend came to campus and picked me up, and we enjoyed spaghetti and awkwardness. On the way back to campus, the ex-boyfriend failed to see a car in his blind spot while merging to the right at 60 miles per hour. There was a crunch, and I closed my eyes as the Ford Ranger pickup he was driving (one of the worst possible vehicles to roll over in) swung out to the left and began to roll over. We rolled a total of four times, across a median and metal stakes that should have impaled both of us, before landing right side up about a foot away from a telephone pole that would have completely crushed the cabin of the truck. The windows were shattered, the loose CDs were lodged in the roof like ninja stars, and chunks of upholstery littered the freeway. The truck was completely totaled, torn apart around us. We both should have died or at least been maimed, paralyzed, something. Instead, the ex-boyfriend had some cuts on his face and I had whiplash and a scraped right hand.

After I was released by the hospital (I had been kept overnight due to contractions that the doctors were afraid would turn into labor), I went home for a week to continue recovering. I attempted to go back to school once my midwife allowed it, but was forced to go back home for good after the Thanksgiving weekend due to back spasms and other issues. My parents, trying to deal with my terrible mental state, decided to cut me off from the bad influences in my life, meaning that I was left without telephone or internet access. I was perpetually monitored, as I’d developed a bit of a (deserved) reputation for being a sneak.

With nothing else to do, I figured I might as well turn my life around. Just giving up the certain unnamed computer game made a huge difference. With nearly 15 hours a day of extra time, I found time to read and draw and turn back to God. I was raised in a Christian home, but somewhere in high school I all but abandoned that path. Interestingly, I never stopped logically believing in the existence of God; I just stopped caring. The car accident was quite the wake-up call, and I firmly believe that He saved me and my unborn son. Believing that He personally cared for me and had a plan for my life, I began trying to live accordingly. I began attending church and going to extra Bible studies to meet Christian girls who were more or less my age. I was at that point very obviously pregnant and unmarried, and I was scared. My fears were unfounded. The girls I met never judged me in the least, never spoke a single unkind word. They were founts of encouragement and understanding and kindness, truly representative of the love and forgiveness of Christ, and I am so, so grateful for their friendship.

Slowly, I earned back my parents’ trust. My dad, who owns a car dealership, returned my confiscated laptop and gave me a job as a graphics artist and web designer, allowing me to work from home. I turned 18 on Christmas Eve of 2008 with a quiet family party at home; I didn’t especially feel like going out since it hurt to move. The next month and a half passed quietly. My son was due on February 3rd.

On February 18th, I went to the hospital to have the baby induced, as my midwife was getting impatient and worried. Labor began around noon and lasted until 1:17 AM on February 19th. The birth was all-natural, no pain medication (I feel like bragging about that bit). It was intense, to say the least, and I was startled when I suddenly found a little purple, sticky, squirming lump on my chest. I petted his hair and whispered hello before he was whisked away for oxygen. I didn’t get to see his face until I was all stitched up and he was returned to me. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

Life’s been exciting for the last five months. I’ve watched my Kael grow and learn how to roll over and reach for things to put in his mouth. I found jobs writing articles and tutoring algebra in addition to my graphics work in order to pay off the hospital bills (the father offers very, very minimal help, but I get by just fine). I dyed my hair black, put purple streaks in it, and re-dyed it black when the streaks faded to a strange gray-green. I’ve lost every ounce of the baby weight and more, so I’d really like a gift certificate for new clothes. I have plans to go back to college this fall. I’ve re-forged my relationship with my parents stronger than ever before and found new friends. Most importantly, I’ve come back to the Lord, who has blessed me richly through my son even though I deserve none of His grace.

So, this is my tale of transformation: being forced to grow up, and being able to do so having found peace and joy.

Also, my hair is much better now than it used to be.

Thank you for reading.

-Caitlin

Whale Wars.

Whale Wars is a show which airs on Animal Planet. It deals with the adventures of the hugely incompetent and vastly irritating crew of the Steve Irwin, which is a terrible name for a ship considering that Steve Irwin died in a freak accident. The crew is a group of vigilantes which have taken it upon themselves to hunt down Japanese whaling ships and throw rancid butter at them. They do so in an incompetent fashion, perpetually saying and doing stupid things and generally just looking like a bunch of dummies.

I hate this show and pretty much everyone on it. Everything about this show is infuriating and it needs to be taken off the air. Also legal action should probably be taken because vigilante action isn’t the way to go. I’m not condoning whaling in any way, by the way. I just hate this show.

-Caitlin

RAGE.

Today, I thought it would be nice to take Baby Kael outside.

I took him outside.

I sat on the ground.

I put him on my lap.

Otto, the dumber of our two German shepherds, walked up to us. He sniffed Kael in greeting.

He spit something on Kael’s foot.

Upon initial examination, all I could think was “crushed olive.” It looked just like a smushed black olive. Except that there was some mushy white stuff oozing from it.

And then I saw the legs.

Otto spit a chewed beetle on Kael’s foot.

I had to pick it off bare-handed.

Why do these things happen to me?

-Caitlin

Being a Rock Star.

This past Saturday (May 30), I had a J-rock themed photoshoot in Portland. I got my hair cut in an asymmetrical, spiky fashion and some purple streaks added. Then I dressed up in a neon blue skirt, purple leggings, and hot pink tank top-thing. Also, I had eye makeup that looked like a box of Froot Loops vomited on me, and purple lipstick. It was pretty great. (pictured below: me being pale)

The shoot was for Ms. Jayla’s hair portfolio, as she is working on setting up her own hairstyling business. It takes a lot of skill and patience to make hair as thick as mine behave, so she obviously knows what she’s doing. Comment if you live in Portland and want her contact information.

Anyway! So we (me and two other pretty Asian ladies with fun hair) were doing the shoot. We were getting individual shots before moving on to the group poses. When it wasn’t my turn in front of the camera, I picked up the pretty red electric guitar that Mr. Photographer Andrew brought. It was missing a string and had no amp and produced no noise at all. I stood on the street corner in downtown Portland strumming the soundless guitar and loudly singing Disney songs. In the middle of my “Under the Sea” rendition, a very proper-looking middle-aged lady walked past. She gazed cooly into my face, turned up her nose, and marched on in a snooty fashion. She didn’t even give me a dollar.

I almost choked on my enormous feather earrings from laughing so hard.

Another fun thing: Some hobo took a picture of me on his camera phone. He’s probably introduced the picture to all of his hobo pals as his girlfriend or something. Awesome.

In conclusion, Ms. Jayla the Hair Lady is great, the shoot was great, and it’s a whole lot of fun to strut through downtown Portland dressed like the above.

-Caitlin