Facebook, Twitter, 66, and 67
Sunday, January 31st, 2010I have a confession to make: A few days ago I got an email from Facebook reminding me I have a dozen or so people who want to be my friend on Facebook. I recognize a few of the names, but most I don’t. I don’t know how to use Facebook, and I don’t want to learn.
Even though I got on the Facebook account Annie set up (for the magazine, I think) once or twice a few months ago, I still don’t know how to get back on it, use it, or anything. And I don’t want to learn. Same with Twitter. I don’t want to learn anything new about computers.
I’m not a real social person, anyway, even though I run a magazine. This blog is about as social as I want to get. I hate learning new computer stuff, no matter how “easy” it is. Always have! It took me forever to learn Quark Xpress to launch the magazine, and Annie converted BHM to Adobe CS4 InDesign at least six issues ago and I still haven’t learned that. She creates a template for me and I write my editorial in it. For 20 years the magazine has been using Photoshop to put pictures in the magazine, and I still know next to nothing about that computer program.
So how’s that! I’m the next best thing to a computer idiot and I like it that way!
Measures 66 and 67
Massachusetts offered hope for the future of politics the other day by electing Scott Brown to fill the late Ted Kennedy’s senate seat, but here in the much more thinly populated state of Oregon, where Backwoods Home Magazine is located, we cast gloom on our future by passing Ballot Measures 66 and 67. These measures ostensibly tax only the rich (individuals making more than $125,000, couples making more than $250,000) and corporations, but in actuality they will likely lead to between 40,000 and 70,000 job losses in the next couple of years.
It was sold to voters as a “make the rich pay their fair share” tax. Unfortunately, those rich folks (if you call someone making $125,000 a year rich) employ everyone else. Measure 66 taxes the rich folks, while Measure 67 dramatically increase taxes on “C” corporations, which are the corporations who provide most of the jobs. BHM is an “S” corporation so is relatively unhurt. They’ll probably go after us next time around.
Oregon suffers from having only one big city — Portland — and it is full of liberals who like big government and are willing to vote for these job-killing tax increases. Most of the rest of Oregon is composed of Libertarians like me or conservatives, but we are often outvoted by the Portland morons.
