NoJoMo 16 in Book Five: Working Through the Maze 2018

NoJoMo 16 Prompt 1: What do you consider a “crazy vacation”?

NoJoMo 16 Answer 1: HA! Oh, the layers to unravel there. How do we define crazy, is it a crazy as pejorative meaning negative experience or crazy as hyperbole for an excellent experience? So many layers.

I’ll simply use the space as “Crazy means anything can happen.”
Tour of the Pacific Northwest. We saw cities, forests, trees, oceans, whales, humans. It was nice. But it wasn’t a straight forward affair. I was blossoming into my sexual awakening, which was dangerous at my house, so I spent many nights awake and struggling with my new feelings of horny and anxious. In one hotel, the toilet broke and they wouldn’t send someone up to fix it since we were expected to check out later that day… so Dad opens up the window (9 stories up) and starts peeing out of the window directly into Puget Sound. Later on the boat ride between Washington and British Colombia, everyone keeps talking about a whale that I can’t see. Never saw the whale. A lot happened, lol.

NoJoMo 16 Prompt 2: You have an extra $100,000 to give away and you cannot spend it on yourself. What do you do with the money?

NoJoMo 16 Answer 2: HA! Another question requiring layers. Technically… one could argue that with the language of the question, giving the money to a friend or a spouse would qualify; then you could simply require/expect/contract that a portion of that money be allocated to “gifts for you”. It is one way of doing it. NEVER come at me with the Brewster’s Millions scenario. I’ve played it out in my head a number of times and I can win that game in many different ways.

BUT… if I change the nature of the question to
YOU must give your money away to a charity, municipality, or some organization that would be legally barred from providing you with any benefit of that money....
Lets take that $100,000 and split it up a bit.
$25,000
$25,000
$25,000
$25,000

First batch sent to Animal Rescue League of Iowa. All of my auto-deduction charity spending goes there already.
Second batch goes to a PAC (even if I have to start it myself) established to support Iowa Political Candidates who believe in Schools, Infrastructure, and Intelligent Mental Health Policy.
Third batch goes to an Institute working to “aid, cure, or treat” chronic pain ailments (including helping people to kick opioid addictions)
Fourth Batch? Call this petty, call this vindictive… call it what you will… but I’d invest in a state-wide ad campaign exposing the budgetary priorities of Iowa’s Government. Because, in order, they are as follows
(1) Politician Re-Election
(2) Partisan Politics
(3) Corporate Development
(4) Tax Breaks on a Top Down Basis
Which has resulted in Iowa slashing the budget for Education, Judges, Attorneys, Department of Human Services, Infrastructure. In other words, Iowa has a law that the budget MUST be balanced. We do not support “deficit spending.” Therefore, year after year after year after year after year Iowa has demanded steep cuts to programs that ACTUALLY HELP people in order to preserve tax breaks. So the Department of Human Services gets in the news for “letting a teenage girl die” but the news story should be “DHS understaffed, underfunded unable to do their job. Costs children lives.” The State Attorney budget has, according to the 10 term Attorney General, “Dipped below our ability to function. We thank the County Attorney’s Association for their continued support and their ability to provide us with the resources we should be supplying to you.” So, when a Murderer goes free and the newspapers say “Murderer Released on Technicality” it should say “Attorney State Budget Below Level to Function. Creates problems in Public Safety.”

Des Moines cried and bitched about RECORD levels of murders recently. WELL… where is the money? Going to Principal Financial Group and Kirk Ferentz’ paycheck and attempt after attempt after attempt to grab an Amazon HQ or the Apple HQ or whatever tech HQ Iowa thinks they can lure by promising (and this is true, this is what they promised Apple) 0 tax liability for the first MANY years and fully funded construction on Taxpayer dollars estimated to reach maybe 200 million dollars. By the way, the job expectation? Construction jobs: 550. So, temporary work for 500. Long term staffing? 50 jobs. So the state will not receive tax revenue from Apple… and gave up to 200 million dollars to the company… to create 50 jobs. Meanwhile, and this is no joke, the Attorney General is trying to consolidate his offices just to keep the damned heat running!

That… needs to be common fucking knowledge.