Day: 02/16/2015

NM Working Families Tax Credit

https://progressnownm.wordpress.com/2015/02/16/nmleg-progressive-bill-of-the-day-02-16-15/

Here’s some more great information from SHARE New Mexico on the WFTC:

If you live in New Mexico and you claim the federal Earned Income Tax Credit, you can also claim the New Mexico Working Families Tax Credit. The Working Families Tax Credit for New Mexico residents equals 10% of the federal EITC amount. The New Mexico state tax credit is 10% over and above the EIC that you get from the federal government.

Example: If you live in New Mexico and you claim a $1,000 Earned Income Credit on your federal tax return, you can claim an additional 10% of this amount, equal to $100 ($1,000 x .10 = $100), on your New Mexico state income tax return.

I can’t fix that

Community:

1. a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.

2. a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. “the sense of community that organized religion can provide”

The religious can visit a church to find a community, but where can pain patients go?

You can find pain patient patients in every city and state in this country, as well as all over the world.  And yet, we have been unable to form a sustainable community.  Marijuana advocates did it.  Gay and Jewish people did it.  Pain patients?  Not so much.  (Not that we haven’t tried.)

Communities can share information, educate, point out and warn others of the dangers within our community, and also spread the good news.  Without a community, pain patients will continue to be isolated and afraid.  Without advocates fighting for our rights, we continue to lose them.

I am only one person trying to build some kind of community for pain patients.  I’ve tried communities for one of my specific illnesses, TMJ.  That organization no longer exists.  I’ve tried communities for intractable and chronic pain patients, along with seeking chronic pain patients in the medical cannabis community.

I can’t tell ya’ll how sad it is to find all of the other blogs from pain patients on the internet, many of which are now inactive.  Believe me, as a pain patient, I completely understand why this has happened.  I sympathize and empathize.  And it’s not like pain blogs are the only kind that have become inactive — many cooking blogs are dead too.

I’ve spent time reading about successful nonviolent revolutions, thinking a macro look might give me some clues on how to build our community  I’ve reached out to other communities, asking for pain patients to be included.  I’ve watched websites, like AlterNet, become popular… and then, not so much.  When you think of the number of people in the internet community, you can see the problem of trying to unify one certain group.  The internet was supposed to make communication easier, bring us all together, into one worldwide community.  I dunno, maybe it’s not working anymore…

No doubt other pain patients have made similar efforts, only to fail time and time again.  It is discouraging, if not downright disheartening.  It would be great if I had a solution, but I don’t. I’ve decided:  I can’t fix that.

Perhaps I should make a new category for my site, entitled “Sad But True.”

Take That Maureen Dowd: I Ate 90 Servings of THC and Lived

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/03/take-that-maureen-dowd-i-ate-90-servings-of-thc-and-lived.html

In the rocky mountain high state of Colorado, you can get your THC-infused food products in almost any format: cookies, candy, brownies, granola, potato chips, pasta, breath strips that dissolve on your tongue, soft drinks, muffins, popsicles, ice cream. If you can bake it with weed butter, oil, or extract, someone has festively packaged it and made it available…

Pasta, ice cream, and brownies, oh my.  🙂