Salty Sal

   

Tomorrow is April 15th, Tax Day.  Now I don't mind paying my fair share of taxes, but as I have expressed in previous years, I would really like a tax system in which each individual could choose how to have their tax dollars spent. This year the great state of North Dakota is holding it's legislative session (they meet only every 2 years).  North Dakota is undergoing a paradigm shift.  Our largely rural, agricultural state is being challenged. Many, many outside entities are vying for our resources.  Not only the obvious one, oil, but also the money that comes with it. We, as a people, tend to believe that others have our best interest at heart.  We're easily influenced.  You could say we're naive.  We're smart and we're educated, but we believe in the goodness of others. We think that if we're good to people, companies, corporations...they'll be good to us. We're largely church-going Christians and that's what we've been taught. The Golden Rule. That's pretty much been my life philosophy as well.  It's a real kick in the pants to realize that not everyone is that way.  In fact, there is real evil in the world.  We've been shielded from it, isolated even.  When it shows up at our doorstep we don't recognize it.  North Dakota is being sold a bill of goods and the legislature is signing on the dotted line without reading the small print.  Women's health issues are being used to blindside us from the real problems.  Like the crisis in the oil field.  Men are dying on oil rigs, people are dying weekly on unsafe highways, families are living in third world conditions in Williston, ND, beautiful wild spaces are being turned into industrial waste-lands.  Same thing with the "Fighting Sioux" nickname.  North Dakota citizens are having real struggles with day-care, teacher pay, flooded homes, law enforcement shortages, to name a few, and our legislature has chosen to spend its resources on a University nickname. Really?!  I have gotten off track.  I wanted to tell you how Salty Sal would spend her tax dollars.

1.  Free milk and juice breaks for school children.
2.  Raising teacher pay to a living standard. 
3.  Same thing for law enforcement officers.
4. Helping the average hard-working North Dakotan with tax relief or whatever, so that the "salt of the earth" can afford to stay here and take care of our people after the circus has left town. 
5. Not one dime on frivolous law suits that have already been decided by the United States Supreme Court; because I think the good and decent (albeit somewhat naive) people of North Dakota are being used by outside interests.