• Must do things? http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/costa-rica/
  • Learn Spanish
  • Zip Line / Hiking thru the Rain forest
  • River tour
  • Hang gliding over San Jose
  • Deep Sea fishing
  • Volcano tour Irazú Volcano or Poas Volcano
  • Rural Tourism??? Not very high on my list
  • Environmental tourist?
  • Teach a computer class?
  • Learn to surf
  • Lay out on a beach – tan; you can’t go on vacation and not get a little sun
  • Any local festivals or holidays upcoming (April 11th: Juan Santamaria Day, National Hero)
• Spanish is the official language; need to brush up on my Spanish
• Fly Delta for frequent flier miles, if possible (Tues-Sat)
• Where to stay (4/5 star hotel)
  • San Jose
  • elsewhere?
• Duration?
• Rent a car?
• Money Exchange Rate?
• Shots/Health Concerns – scheduled shots/boosters needed $350 worth.
  • Drink bottled water, avoid ice in all drinks
  • vaccinations – Yellow Fever, hepatitis A+B, Tetanus, typhoid, Mumps-Measles-Rubella.
  • Malaria Risk in Alajuela, Limón, Guanacaste, and Heredia provinces. No risk in Limón city (Puerto Limón).
• US State Department / Costa Rica Consolate Safety issues ** Don’t carry your passport – photocopy of Costa Rican entry stamp) Travel Suggestions
  • State Dept Travel Registration International Travel tips
    Entrance/Departure Visa fees – none for short stays; US$26 to leave
    Airport Shuttle costs?
    Power converter not needed
    Internet/WiFi in the hotels?
    Insect repellent w/ DEET
    Immunization records – Mumps, Measels
    Phrase book

Overseas telephone card?

• Important Phone numbers:
  • Bank CC cancel/replacement
  • overseas health insurance
  • family
  • in-country US embassy/consulate
  • airline
  • hotels
  • tour guide

Current temp – 27 deg C – 80 deg F
Time Zone – Central US

The Power to Tax is the Power to destroy.
– John Marshall

Government is the people’s business and every man, woman and child becomes a shareholder with the first penny of tax paid. – Ronald Reagan

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax – Albert Einstein

Ok, now that you are thinking that taxes are bad, what solutions are there to funding our government, minimizing the ability to cheat, being fair (which isn’t the same as progressive), having non-citizens and illegals share in the tax load with a slight penalty and preventing elected officials from being able to change it with a simple vote. If you make more money, you shouldn’t be taxed at a higher rate. Success needs to have rewards, not penalties.
Some simple caveats:

• A consumption tax is required. If you won’t admit to being in my country illegally, why would I expect you to pay your taxes? I don’t, so we need to take your money at a point of sale.
• Consumption taxes hit economic classes differently. Wealthier people spend more money. Less affluent people spend less money. Wealthly visitors spend lots of money.
• Ok, now you’re saying that the cost of food and medicine shouldn’t be taxed. ‘’No loopholes.’’ The tax must be flat. If there are any ways around it, then everyone will find a way that they qualify.
• But I’m not completely indifferent towards economically challenged folks. Each household should be reimbursed some amount to cover the taxes for basic living for average costs around the country. There is no local adjustment for different costs of living. People choose where to live. They can choose to move to less expensive locals too.
• Ok, we’re with either the Flat Tax or the Fair Tax Wikipedia.
• Short description of the Fair Tax

Google Video on the FairTax 18 minutes to understanding.

More to come …

Term Limits are needed. The rules are simple:

1. To run for office, you must be legally able to vote in that election and the prior election for that office.
2. You can only hold 1 office at a time.
3. You can only be elected to the same office twice – no more.
4. You may run for other office during your current office, but only one office at a time.
5. These rules should apply to local, state and national elections

The main goal is to prevent lifetime Senators and House Members. If you know you are only there for 12 years and have to leave, you’ll probably try to get something done and not forget who elected you.

Some like minded people – http://www.termlimits.com/

See also Campaign Contributions

First you need to know the current rules for campaign contributions.
Here’s my proposal.

If you cannot vote in an election legally, then you should not be allowed to contribute campaign dollars.

• Special Interest Groups – nope, unless you live in the election area.
• National Parties – nope.
• Corporations – nope, NEVER
• Illegal Aliens – nope.
• Dead People – nope.
• Registered Citizens residing in the county, city, and/or state for the election? YES!

There needs to be a contribution limit per voter, per election. I don’t know what it is, but if an average voter might contribute $100, then perhaps $50,000 would be a reasonable limit for anyone? We don’t want to infringe on anyone’s right to free speech, but we don’t want anyone buying an election either.

Sound reasonable?

See also TermLimits

Ok, these are just a few things that I’ve been thinking about over the years. Don’t know if any are good enough to follow thru on, but heck, political speech is protected, right?

• TermLimits
• [[Voting]]
• Campaign Contributions
• [[Why patching your computer is important]]
• [[Fair Tax]]
• Education
• [[Privacy]] | [[PrivacyPolicy]]

More to come … I’m certain.

Latest update from my Senator Saxby Chamblis …

Dear Mr. Pxxxx :

As we continue to think about immigration reform and securing our borders, I would like to update you on the Senate’s latest actions.

Recently, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez announced a twenty five step plan to increase security at America ’s borders, strengthen interior and worksite enforcement, streamline existing temporary worker programs, crack down on employers who hire illegal workers, and enhance worker verification mechanisms.

Also, the Senate passed H.R. 2638, the fiscal year 2008 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act. This bill included a unanimously adopted resolution that Senator Isakson and I introduced, that calls on President Bush to send an emergency supplemental spending bill to Congress to fully fund border security and interior enforcement activities.

This bill included an important amendment, which I cosponsored, to authorize and provide $3 billion to secure our southern border. The funding will be used to achieve full operational control over the entire U.S.-Mexico land border, by constructing 300 miles of permanent vehicle barriers and 700 miles of border fencing, deploying four unmanned aerial vehicles, installing 105 ground-based radar and camera towers, and obtaining the facilities and resources necessary to detain up to 45,000 aliens per day on an annual basis. Moreover, it will provide for the hiring, training and deploying of 23,000 Customs and Border Patrol agents.

Immigration reform is the most important domestic issue facing our nation today. The President and Congress must work together to secure the border first. Once this is done, we can work to resolve the collateral issues. I believe we can get there, but we are not there yet.

If you would like to receive timely email alerts regarding the latest congressional actions and my weekly e-newsletter, please sign up via my web site at: www.chambliss.sentate.gov . Please do not hesitate to contact me if I may ever be of assistance.

Actually, it would be nice if any of this actually worked!

This is meant to be almost an exact clone of the SampleFormatting page, but showing how to do everything in Textile instead of TiddlyWiki style markup. View the source of this Tiddler to see samples.

Header Samples

Header 1

Header 2

Header 3

Header 4

Header 5

Unordered Lists:

• Lists are where it’s at
• Just use an asterisk and you’re set
  • To nest lists just add more asterisks…
    • …like this
• The circle makes a great bullet because once you’ve printed a list you can mark off completed items
• You can also nest mixed list types\
  1. Like this

Ordered Lists

1. Ordered lists are pretty neat too
2. If you’re handy with HTML and CSS you could customize the [[numbering scheme|http://www.w3schools.com/css/pr_list-style-type.asp]]
   1. To nest, just add more octothorpes (pound signs)…
      1. Like this
3. You can also
   • Mix list types
     • like this
4. Pretty neat don’t you think?

Tiddler links

To create a Tiddler link, just use mixed-case WikiWord, or use [[brackets]] for NonWikiWordLinks. This is how the GTD style [[@Action]] lists are created.

Note that existing Tiddlers are in bold and empty Tiddlers are in italics. See CreatingTiddlers for details.

External Links

You can link to "external sites":http://google.com with quotes, a colon, then the site. You can also LinkToFolders on your machine or network shares.

Images

Edit this tiddler to see how it’s done.

[img[http://img110.echo.cx/img110/139/gorilla8nw.jpg]

Tables

Nope, can’t do tables yet.

!th1111111111	!th2222222222
>	colspan
rowspan	left
~	right
colored	center
caption

c

For a complex table example, see PeriodicTable.

Horizontal Rules

You can divide a tiddler into
<hr />

---

sections by typing four dashes on a line by themselves.

Blockquotes

This is a blockquote.

Other Formatting

Bold
Strike
Italic
source code
Superscript: 2^3^=8
Subscript: a~ij~ = -a~ji~
green colored
color #fc9
even more fancy

First, this site is for entertainment only. It contains lies, truths, half-truths, and occasionally facts. Verify whatever you read here, don’t trust us – we lie. Ok, you’ve been warned.

SunRocket Offer for 2 Years of Service for $199. Please reference my home phone number if you sign up. You’ll get a free Uniden 2.4 GHz Cordless phone with 2 handsets

Comcast has been pushing their Voice Service really hard. Too hard actually.
Tonight I was called for the 5th time after requesting never to be contacted over the phone for marketing of any services by them. I had to block their number tonight.
Then the boy tried to tell me that they weren’t selling a VoIP service – a lie. Motorola provides devices as do a few others called "eMTAs" – whatever that means. Normal VoIP uses ATA devices – SunRocket calls their version a Gizmo.

I’ve decided to help a few worthy causes here. “Heinlein Society” and the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation.

Ok, the numbers are out on the tax revenues for 2006. Corporate Tax is up 19% and individual is up 11%. Gee, who’d a thunk it – Pro-Growth economic policies work? We are still running a deficit which is just crazy unless you are in an active war on your land. The economy has had 3+ years of growth by any reasonable measure.

Ok, Only in New Jersey is a tax increase toughted as a tax decrease. See story The governer is raising the annual expenditure by over 10%, so of course he’s having budget problems. Imagine that. This is after shutting down non-essential services for 5 days.
So he’s decided to raise the state sales tax by 1 penny. That turns into an estimated $1.1 billion per year tax increase. To get it passed, he had to agree to a tax cut for property taxes. "Over $5 billion over 10 years". Ok, lets do some simple math. A tax increase of $1.1 per year is $11 over 10 years. A tax decrease of $5 over ten years – he just increased taxes $6 billion over 10 years. If you believe that sales taxes tax the poor and property taxes tax primarily the rich, see my “Rants” on the “Fair Tax”.

VoIP rocks, but only with good QoS! I recommend SunRocket.com if you have a stable internet connection and broadband speed. Upload will be more important than download speed.

I had a dream last night it was quite and unsettling. I awoke in a pool of sweat. And the dream, there was a car garage performing custom installations, a private bachelor party, and meeting with bill gates and a few of his cronies. Scary!

For those of you who know me, you understand why I was freaked out.

By the way I’ve been playing with speech recognition for this the journal. It is faster but not better than typing.