Pilgrimage

Despite growing up mostly in Rochester, New York only a fairly short trip from it, I had never visited Gettysburg. Well, that has been corrected now. I am writing this from a hotel right in the center of the town of Gettysburg. We rolled in here at around 4pm and have not had a chance to see much yet. My wife and I strolled a bit through the town and we've taken the kids to dinner. They just went out to take a "Ghost Tour" of the city, something I have no interest in whatsoever. Tomorrow, I plan to visit the places I have only read about. But places I know well from the words of others. The Peach Orchard. The Wheat Field. Devil's Den. Culp's Hill.

Little Round Top.

I'll have pictures.

Seeing Red Over “Green” Taxes

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is about to get raked over the coals in parliament over his latest greenmail scheme. The proposed "green" change to road taxes will subject a huge number of Britons to a massive tax increase - retroactively - for driving cars with larger engines. British MPs are furious.

The Treasury admitted on Wednesday that almost half of all drivers will be hit with significant rises in Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) on cars with larger engines.
 
Less than 20 per cent will be better off because of tax cuts on cars with lower emissions.

But only last month in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister told David Cameron, the Tory leader, that if he looked at the VED plan, "he will see that the majority of drivers will benefit from it."

George Osborne, the Tory shadow chancellor, has said that Mr Brown "misled" parliament, and called on the Prime Minister to explain his remark…..

….The plans - against which The Daily Telegraph has campaigned - are especially controversial because they are effectively back-dated, applying to cars that are already on the road.

Treasury figures slipped out in a parliamentary answer show that of the 21.9 million cars that will be on British roads by 2010/11, 43 per cent - or 9.4 million - will pay higher VED in real terms than they do now.

Another 39 per cent - 8.4 million - will be left no better off. Just 18 per cent - 4.1 million - will actually benefit.

Of the 9.4 million who will be worse off, 1.18 million motorists will be dragged into the highest two tax bands, where the annual cost is upwards of £400.

How bad is it? Well, even Greenpeace is saying the scheme gives "green" taxes a bad name. Just a quick prediction here. The scheme will get changed before it take effect and Gordon Brown will be gainfully unemployed when he next faces the voters.

Visitors

While we were in Canada, we returned to our hotel room one evening to find a family of raccoons waiting outside our door. This is in the middle of Niagara Falls right on Clifton Hill, mind you. I think they're stalking me.

Drunk On Disappointment

Or looking at the world through morose-colored glasses. Monica Hesse, writing at The Washington Post, examines the results of a new Pew study into the outlooks of Americans of various generations. The result?

Baby Boomers whine. A lot.

The baby boomers — that prominent group of middle-agers whose massive numbers invite never-ending dissection and speculation — have once again spoken. What they have said is, " Waaaaaahhh."

This is according to a social and demographic trends survey released recently by the Pew Research Center. The survey measured the pessimism, dissatisfaction and general curmudgeonliness of 2,413 adults in various generations.

The results validate any member of the Greatest Generation who ever looked at his or her offspring and sadly thought, "soft." Simply put, boomers are a bunch of . . . whiners.

More than older or younger generations, boomers — born from 1946 to 1964 — worry that their income won't keep up with rising costs of living. They say it's harder to get ahead today than it was 10 years ago. They are more likely to say that their standard of living is lower than their folks' but that things don't look too good for their kids either (67 percent of younger generations, meanwhile, feel they have it better than their parents).

Everything stinks, except for the things that stink even more, and it's not exactly clear why, considering that this is the population with the highest median income. Boomers also have fewer difficulties affording housing or medical care, the survey says, and they enjoyed greater job security last year than older or younger generations.

There are some very interesting points made in the article. Funny points, in many cases.

Personally, I took my kids through the old neighborhood I grew up in yesterday. It was an eye-opener for them. The streets were a little meaner than when I lived in that area and I'm sure it is more dangerous since there are gang problems these days that didn't really exist back when I was growing up. But the same hopelessness of a poor, crime-ridden neighborhood was there. The same dirty streets, the same rundown houses. My kids were stunned at where I had once lived. And I didn't show them the really bad places.

Maybe coming from that background saved me from the angst of the boomer generation. My mother raised five kids alone on a secretary's salary. We lived hand-to-mouth at best and we lived in very poor neighborhoods. But three of us managed to work our way through college. My youngest brother has a highly-skilled (and highly paid) job repairing boat engines. We worked our way out of poverty.

It's probably best that Pew didn't interview me. I would have been an outlier. I'd rather not spend my whole life drunk on disappointment like too many of my generation.