The current budget deal will shut down a lot of programs that in particular aim to benefit low-income people (and in Los Angeles like most cities, that means minorities). The Los Angeles Times wrote that lobbyists for the makers of TurboTax were even pressing the state legislators to dismantle a program that has the state tax board fill out the tax returns of low-income residents for free. It definitely must suck to be poor in California now. There probably was a convincing reason to start the program in the first place. Maybe.. it was to make it so that people who don't speak English and therefore don't know which fields mean what on the tax forms would be able to file their returns. This seems pretty important, and it's sad that the politicians were actually listening. I understand that taxes were astronomically high in California already, but I don't understand why the Republicans won't even allow a teeny tiny tax increase on the rich.. which LA and SF have many of. That would save programs that people really depend on, not to mention the jobs that the programs support.
Anyways here's a screenshot of my planned driving route to California, for the sake of adding images to this colorless blog. In posting/editing mode, this image seems to be of very low quality. Oh well. (EDIT: but ah, I see you can click on the thumbnail to see the original image in its full Microsoft Paint-cropped glory.)
Some of you readers have heard this from me already, but here are my stops:- Bethesda, MD
- Ann Arbor, MI
- Memphis, TN
- Dallas, TX
- Temple, TX
- Los Angeles, CA
I don't have any obligations until September 8, so I'll have some free time to check things out. I fantasize that this will include locating all the sweet bars, the cool clubs, and the hotspots in West LA but this will probably boil down to locating where the closest supermarket, convenience store, pharmacy, and farmer's market are.
