Dec 10th - Sightseeing Day

We had a fantastic day. It was sunny and the high was in the mid 50's. Today was a sightseeing day, or as my cousin used to say, "We did research", although our "research" did not include taking a 6 pack with us. Actually we did pick up a 12 pack at the Kroger store in Longview but all 12 are still in the package.

First we went to the east Texas oil museum in Kilgore. It was great! We watched several videos about oil drilling and the oil finds in east Texas in the early 30's. Below are some photos.

This is a replica of an oil drilling rig from the 1930's. It is in front of the museum.

This is "main street" Kilgore as it was in the early 30's. When the 2nd well came in the population of Kilgore grew from 800 to 8,000 in 24 hours. Right after the first wells came in it started raining and things were a sea of mud for quite some time.

Photo quality sucks, sorry. I bet PETA would have a cow if they saw these stuffed mules. They were quite lifelike.

These are steel derricks that once stood in the "worlds richest acre". Now there are rules about how close wells can be to one another but at one time there were 24 wells on 10 lots owned by 6 different people. This acre has produced over 2.5 million barrels of crude. There were more than 1,000 wells in downtown Kilgore. Since 1930 the east Texas oil field has produced over 5 BILLION barrels of oil. It is expected to keep producing for at least another 40 years.

One point the museum kept making is that people don't realize how dependent we are on oil. Some of the things I remember are:

That bowl of oatmeal some people have for breakfast required 4 ounces of crude to get it to your table.

Every pound of Starbucks coffee you use required a pound of crude to get it to you.

A stick of butter requires 2 ounces of crude to get it in your hand.

A bottle of water required 1 ounce of crude to get it in your hand.

An interesting tidbit, especially in light of Obama's refusal to allow a pipeline to be built to move Canadian oil to US refineries, was that the great socialist Roosevelt had a pipeline built between east Texas and east coast refineries in less than a year. In 1941 the federal government was concerned that German U-boats could slow down shipments of crude to the east coast. In June of 1942 the War Powers Board approved the project. Work on the pipeline began in August. In February 1943 crude was moving through the pipeline to Norris City, IL. By August 1943 crude was being delivered to New York City.

TransCanada claims that the pipeline is "shovel ready" and that it will bring $20 billion of investment into the United States, along with 20,000 construction jobs. The State Dept has "studied" the trans-Canada for years and even though they can't come up with a good reason to prevent it from being built. Obama has told them to keep doing studies, thus delaying the start of construction, until them can cook up some reason for not allowing the pipeline to be built. Maybe Obama's problem is that he can't claim to be the "messiah" who had provided 20,000 jobs at no expense to taxpayers.

We left Kilgore and drove secondary roads to Longview, TX. While travelling through Longview Kathy spied a Kroger store so we stopped and got our flu shots, then on to Marshall, TX. We arrived in Marshall about 4 PM. We had almost two hours of daylight to walk around before it got dark. Marshall goes all out for Christmas.

This place was an "outlet" craft store. It had a mezzanine and also a full 2nd floor. I took this photo while standing on the mezzanine level, at the top of the stairs.

This is a used book reading area at the back of the mezzanine.

The 2nd floor was devoted to art works.

This lady taking a bubble bath was in the storefront of another store. The "sign" behind the tub are the words to the song "Santa Baby."

This is probably as close to a toboggan slide as you can get in east Texas. The entire structure appeared to be air supported.

The courthouse was beautiful. We watched a light show where the lights switched on and off, and changed colors. The changes were sync'd to music.

We then drove the self-guided tour route to see a lot of other light displays in the town.

After that it was back to Lindale for supper at Italian Cafe and on home. Both our meals were excellent.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

Dec 9th - Out for Dinner

Weather was not quite as nice as yesterday. It was warm, high in the 50's, but cloudy.

Kathy painted the morning and then came back to the RV and cleaned and did laundry in the afternoon. I dug out the fill that we had put behind the stair forms and pulled the forms. I also moved about a cubic yard of dirt into another rain washout next to the building and compacted it, all my hand.

The food here is edible but it isn't nearly as good as what we had while we were volunteering at Spring Hill. LOTS of chicken. We may have had some beef in with some noodles once and we had a pasta dish once that had sausage in it. Other than that its been chicken, chicken and more chicken. We don't have to eat at the dining hall so I should not be complaining. If I don't like it I can either come back to the RV and fix something or go out. Tonight we went out.

We went to Petty's Steak and Catfish, in Lindale. I had a 10 ounce rib eye and Kathy had Tilapia. The meal was good, we enjoyed it.

Tomorrow we plan on doing some exploring around the area.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

Dec 9th - Political Commentary - Justify Your Existence

Today I received an email from Senator Dan Coats, I’m still on his mailing list from when we were Indiana residents. Below is an excerpt:

“To reduce excessive federal spending, we need to determine what programs are essential, what can be pared down and what needs to be eliminated. This week I supported the Taxpayers Right to Know Act, bipartisan legislation introduced by Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) that would require every federal agency to provide taxpayers with an annual report card for each of its programs.”

This is just further proof that the people in DC are totally out of touch with the real world. The only thing this bill would accomplish would be to cause every agency to spend thousands of hours justifying their own existence. Does anyone honestly think some federal worker is going to admit to doing an abysmal job and telling others that his/her job should be eliminated? Even if one of the “Indians” were honest enough to admit that his/her function was unneeded, no “Chief” if going to allow his kingdom to be reduced in size.

Aren’t our Representatives and Senators supposed to know what is going on in government, and where our tax dollars are being spent? Doesn’t their job description include being responsible about how our tax dollars being spent?

If your family had been spending more than it earned for many years and the time came where you had to do something about it how many of you would go to your boss and tell him/her that you just had to have more money because you couldn’t control your spending? The concept is asinine yet that is exactly what we are being told by the people in DC. The federal government spends 50% more, per capita, than it did just 10 years ago. The problem is not that the federal government does not gouge us enough, the problem is they can’t resist being bought by every special interest group in DC.

Our debt/deficit problem could easily be solved if only our Representatives and Senators to read the Constitution and then start going through the federal government department by department and asking themselves two questions. First, Did the People give us the authority to be involved in this area? Second, Is this activity so vital to the operation of the United States that it is worth further indebting ALL future generations?

The people in DC can’t be so stupid that they don’t understand how to solve the problem. Instead they are willing to spend our tax dollars on anything as long as they think it will get them re-elected.

Dec 8th - Political Commentary - No Payroll Tax Reduction

If we don’t contact the politicians in DC who claim they represent us, Social Security is going to be totally converted to just another federal government charity/welfare program.

Obama’a payroll tax reduction will be just the first step in “re-educating” the “its governments job to support me” crowd into totally believing that Social Security is just another welfare benefit that should be shared “equally”.“Equally” means everyone gets the same benefit no matter how much they have paid into the system.

One of the first steps in this war occurred in 1984 when social security benefits were first taxed. The tax was justified because the 50% employers paid into the fund was not considered income and thus not taxed. To increase the level of socialistic income redistribution, the amount of benefit that was taxable increased with the income level of the recipient. This was a double whammy. The higher income person paid taxes at a higher rate and they also had to pay the higher rate on a higher percentage of benefits.
Once the dam was broken the sky became the only limit. In 1993 the demi-gods in DC raised the per cent taxable to 85%.

The government wants some way to get at the private retirement funds of those of us who have managed to put aside some savings for retirement. They just can’t stand the thought that they don’t have control of IRA’s, 401k’s, etc. It is bad enough that the government controlled interest rates are so low that we actually lose money on our retirement savings, after inflation is taken into account. My guess is that the somehow the “payroll tax reduction” is the first step toward their confiscation of control of our nonsocial security retirement funds, no doubt so that they can “re-distribute”them also.

Please email your Congressman and Senators and tell them NO to the proposed extension of the payroll tax reduction.

https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Government is clearly showing us that we are no longer “TheLand of Equal Opportunity”, instead we are now the “Land of Equal Outcome.”

Dec 7th & 8th - Warming Up a Little

Today's high was 52, the low last night was 29. Saturday night the lows are supposed to climb back up above freezing for awhile. It was sunny today and not to breezy. It was warm enough that I took my jacket off while working outside during the afternoon.

Kathy is still painting and I am still helping on the new building. Construction moves very slow here. The decision on what color to stain the cedar entrances was finally made and I stained the front of one of the posts this afternoon. If it seems to be drying/curing OK tomorrow morning I will be turned loose to stain all the entrances. I'm sure I won't be the only one staining, there is enough new cedar that it will keep us busy for several days.

The stairs finally got poured today. The forms moved a little, no wonder after all the rain we had after they were built. It will be interesting to see what things look like once the forms are pulled.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

Dec 6th - Brrrrhhh

It was supposed to get to 44 today, the actual high was 35. It was damp, breezy, and cloudy. It is down to 31 now and supposed to get down to 26 tonight. Fortunately it is supposed to be sunny tomorrow with a high of 48. The weatherman just said we may get some snow flurries tonight.

After several days of rain our concrete forms, even though they were covered by plastic, had a bunch of mud and water in them. We spent the morning digging out the mud and bailing out the water.

Another volunteer couple, Lester and Marie, started today. They are from Newfoundland Canada. They will be here for a couple of weeks. Marie and Kathy continued painting. In the afternoon Lester and I measured a roof parapet so that Ron could order new siding for it. I also spent some time checking for more loose bolts in the new pre-engineered building. I was able to loosen about 10 bolts just using my fingers. Chris, the guy in charge of the new building, is going to get the contractor back out here to re-tighten all the bolts. We quit work at around 3:30 because it was so miserable out.

We were talking with a couple from Zambia during supper tonight. (They have two darling little girls. The older one is 5 and the younger one is around 3.) We were talking about where we were from and the wife/mother told us that she grew up in Monroe, MI.
They are taking classes here. They are also trying to find some work teams who would be willing to go to Zambia and help them build dormitories so that people who come to their place in Zambia to study will have a place to live.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

Dec 6th - Political Commentary - It's Not My Fault

All comments below are on articles on today’s CNN Money web site.

Let’s Punish Business

For those of you who think that more punishing taxes and more regulation of business is the answer take a look at the response you can expect from business.

Illinois recently raised it corporate taxes. Sears Holdings, 6100 Illinois employees, and CME Group, which operates the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, have both stated that unless there taxes are lowered they are leaving Illinois. Earlier this year Caterpillar threatened to leave Illinois.

Earlier this year 16 companies have already moved all, or portions, of their operations from Illinois to Indiana. The Indiana Economic Development Corporation claims that these move brought 1,500 new jobs and more than $305 million in investment to Indiana.

Companies are not going to just move from state to state, the rate that they are fleeing the United States is going to increase. Why would they stay here and have to deal with workers who don’t want to work, governments who want to control every aspect of their business and governments who want to use them as a means of increasing taxes on people. Remember, companies/corporations don’t actually pay taxes, they just pass the cost of those taxes through to the person who buys their product. In the end “We the People” pay all taxes because we are the end consumer.

The Occupy Mob

Who is preventing the police and judicial system from enforcing our laws?
According to CNN the Occupy mob have stated that they are taking new action, “Among the actions expected to occur is so-called foreclosure defense, where protestors try to stop police from evicting residents of homes that are being foreclosed upon. Protestors also plan to occupy homes that have already been foreclosed on and currently lie vacant.”
Blatantly illegal actions that will no doubt again be overlooked by police.
 
It Always Somebody Else’s Fault
More from whiners who blame business for doing what business is supposed to do, make money for their investors. "Big energy companies don't give a rat's ass about them," said Robson. "So, there they are, our community's youth, without a higher education to fall back on, up to their eyeballs in debt, and too young to know they should have put some money away for these types of situations."
This guy is blaming business because people who made the choice to go to work in the energy industry, rather than pursue additional education, have found that they now don’t have all the opportunities of those who passed up the opportunity for a quick buck and who went on to advance their education. It amazes me that no one seems willing to take responsibility for the bad choices that they have made. Buy a house you can’t afford and it was someone else’s fault. Don’t take advantage of additional education and it is someone else’s fault. Don’t save all the big money you make by taking a high paying job that doesn’t last and its someone else’s fault.

Government Spending is the Problem

We don’t need more taxes, we need less government. In the past 40 years per capita spending by the federal government has more than doubled, in inflation adjusted dollars. The Feds currently spend $12,000 per citizen per year. Thank God that I’m not getting my $12,000 worth of intervention from the feds. Federal government spending needs to be cut, as a minimum, back to 2000 levels, when it was only $8,000 per citizen per year. If those in DC would do that we would not have budget problems. I’m willing to live with only the services I got from the feds in 200 it the feds will agree to only spend what they spent in 2000.