The Problem With Mandates

It's one thing to demand a significant and expensive change. It's another to refuse to pay for the changes you demand.

A new storm water management fee is costing commercial property holders in the District, but the city's largest property owner and the instigator of the levy -- the federal government -- has suggested it is exempt.

[...]

D.C. Water said it expected the federal government, as the largest property owner in the city, to owe $2.1 million in fiscal 2010, the first full year of billing, and $3.2 million in 2011, about 19 percent of what the utility needs to collect that year.

D.C. Water, formerly known as WASA, is mandated to improve the system by a federal consent decree it agreed to in 2003 after being sued by the Environmental Protection Agency and environmental advocates.

The GAO apparently believes that this $2.1 million tab is a tax. Bumpkiss. It's a bill. The District is has to pay for the upgrades and, like any reasonable entity, is passing a portion of the fees to its customers.

Worse comes to worst, the GAO could find a way to roll the amount due into currently available funding and call it a day.

Being Left Behind

At one point in my life, I was riding on the wave of technology. I was up-to-speed on the latest-and-greatest and updated my tech just about every three years.

But that was over five years ago.

These days, I'm using a Power Mac G4 as my desktop, a Power Book G4 as my laptop, and an iPhone 3Gs as my phone.

As you can see, everything except for my iPhone has been obsolete for at least four years. Also, everything except for my iPhone has been a hand-me-down.

My desktop is running along just fine and does everything I need it to do. I haven't used the desktop as my primary computer in a couple years ... it exists primarily to house my digital music catalog. My laptop, however, is dying a slow death and seriously needs to be replaced.

Which is where I find myself today. I'm very picky about my tech. As you can see, I've made my bed with Apple. I know exactly what I want and need in a new laptop. The problem is that I can't afford to buy it outright, I can't get financing through Apple, and I can't add any more credit through my current cards.

I know how I got into this predicament. I was in a relationship in which we racked up a lot of debt. Some of it was solely mine. Some of it was solely his. Most of it was ours shared. But I've ended up being the one left holding the tab on the vast majority of it. I've enrolled in a Debt Reduction Plan to get the interest rates back down to a manageable 9.25% (from a criminal 28.99%) on each of my two credit cards. Even with that, it's going to take me almost five years to pay off what is owed. That's left me in a bind in many areas of my life (i.e. selling the current condo and buying something in an area I want to live, saving money, replacing older things with newer things, et cetera).

But back to the tech issue. I have no choice but to ride the back of my laptop (and then desktop) until I'm in a financial place to get what I need to replace the laptop.

It's just irritating that I'm left in this position ... a position that I am not solely responsible for being in.