Month: March 2022

I moved states and looking Back on every year is my state taxes, it says things like “owed $814, paid $815, returned $1” all the way back to 2012 when I have my last copy of my taxes. Now the state of Pennsylvania is saying that I owe them $2,600 for back taxes leading back to 2016 that I've defaulted on. It's a phone number from the state website .gov that I talked to so it's not a scam. I just don't understand, I've been sick with covid for months and unable to work. This will break me. I hate this country. I don't even know how to fight this when I'm barely getting by.

The other day I heard two ladies in my country's CNN from the right and from the left saying that sanctions on Russian oil are a necessary evil that we all must understand and just take it because of humanitarian reasons. Meanwhile, people are going to be closing their recovering small businesses and gaining more debt in order to buy groceries. The green tax already makes it almost impossible to afford any transportation and hybrids and EVs are hard to get or non-existent for the middle class. Inflation is getting worse because of this and those ladies will only have to allocate a little bit of their restaurant and travel budgets to gas. I fucking hate the elitist bubble these people live in. I am sympathetic to the people of Ukraine and I've skipped meals in order to donate to the Red Cross, but this has got me more than…

The kind of mentality it would take to stick other humans in cages, keep them there, many even without having been convicted of a crime… sometimes for years + solitary confinement in general, is beyond me. Much less for a paycheck. Not to mention the state of the prison system, legal system, and society as a whole. There are whole towns and industries that thrive on the suffering of people. And with the “war on drugs” they don't have to have done afit thing to anyone to end up there. That is the ace in the hole for the powers that be. They don't even need witnesses because it's a victimless crime. . The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” -Fyodor Dostoevsky, from The House of the Dead (h/t Wikiquote) What does that say about the person that does it, by choice, for a living, in a country where…

Worked at REI for several years. Have offered through multiple channels a $100k “donation” to discuss workers right with the CEO Eric Artz in a public forum. Wonder if he will accept?

Long time listener, first time caller. Hoping this belongs here. I’m a fairly quiet person but it’s gotten to the point I feel like I have to vent. I work for a Fortune 500 company. I’m underpaid for the work I do, and our health insurance is crap. I make a decent hourly wage but still underpaid for industry standards. Last year 2021 I needed to get emergency surgery, my insurance denied my much needed procedure and I ended up having to pay a lot more out of pocket than I should have. Luckily I had saved money through the years but drained virtually all my savings because of this one incident. I knew insurance was bad but didn’t realize how bad. I have paid into this insurance for years and then when I finally needed to use it I get denied coverage. Fast forward to 2022. My chocolate lab…