One danger understated with the aggressive ICE raids and the detriotating relationship between the states and federal government is the risk of accidental or intentional gun fire between different agencies. Both have a responsibility to protect the public, but as political and policy motives depart, increasingly different law enforcement agencies may find themselves on opposite sides of a gun.
The risk of a ICE agent or state policeman getting killed by the other agency is only growing. If there is a lot of public outrage after such a situation, then it’s likely their would be an arrest and trial, potentially with the states and feds ending up on the opposite sides in court. While people assume federal superiority, it’s not clear that’s how it would work out – and there is always the risk of Civil War between a state and feds.
Maybe the risk of Civil War is overstated. Trump has less then three years left in his presidency at this point, and it’s almost certain whoever replaces him will be less aggressive towards the states. Cooler heads can prevail. It’s not that I’m embracing the abuses of ICE, but I do worry that a Civil War could impact are far greater slice of the population then the more limited operations of ICE harassing and abusing both immigrants and citizens. The current policy is not good but outright war and shooting between the feds and states would be far more harmful to public at large.
A few months back there where those Real Estate ads I was looking at that said, “Picture Yourself Living Here” next to screenshot of various houses that real estate agents had for sale. At the same time, I got thinking about what 14 years from now will be – namely the spring of 2040. Indeed, I know most likely the pickup truck I buy now will be what I drive up to state retirement with 30 years in.
After driving my Mom and Dad’s little Honda SUV with all the electronic toys, and climbing back into my big jacked up truck, I realized it would be mentally hard to go back to the mini-pickup truck full of screens like those Toyota Tacomas and other mid-size trucks are. At the same time, I don’t want another half ton truck as I think they’re the worse of both worlds – all the EPA fuel economy and safety crap – but in a big an bulky, underbuilt package. If anything if I’m retiring Red, I want a bigger truck, something I can stuff 35 inch tires under without lifting. A big bed for stuffing a week or two worth of camping gear and traveling across the country. Simple, reliable components, traditional engines without Superchargers or boost to cheat the EPA standards and cause premature failure. A real truck, which you only get once you get above 6,000 lbs with the HD trucks.
You’d think I am set on getting a Ford SuperDuty. I don’t want to get a Dodge Ram HD or Chevy Silverado HD as I’m dubious on the reliability of both those makes which I feel like have too much high tech sensors, especially after my recent experience, and I have good memories, the bad brakes problems somewhat faded now of my old Ford Ranger. But I really am not. While at one level I’m not super concerned about fuel economy, as this will primarily be a recreational vehicle as I live in city, I do know at some point I’ll have to buy a house and commute though if the truck is paid for with cash I can always finance or buy a second vehicle for communte. And if gas prices really surge, it could put a damper on my trips. I also hate how challenging driving a big pickup truck in those occasional times I have to find a parking spot in city lots, though I suspect the backup camera well help with that, though big trucks still turn poorly and take a lot of room to turn. And those occasional times navigating narrow city streets and back country roads. Probably won’t off-road in my big truck, but anything nice I’m not going to bang it up on trail. Trails are best for mountain bikes and ATVs. If I want to motor-ride in the backcountry, I should buy a quad not a pickup.
And there is also the cost. HD trucks, even basic gassers, are much more expensive then high-trim mid-size and full-size truck. You’re getting a lot more steel and engine with a SuperDuty then a Ford Ranger or F-150. While $10,000 or $15,000 isn’t that much of a difference spread over 10 to 15 years, that is still money that will be gone, unable to be saved or invested. With my salary after decades of hard work, it’s not that big of a difference, it does give me pause as a frugal individual. But of course, this does give me a lot of room to camp, and I won’t need a lift kit if I decide to run 35s and only a leveling kit for 37s. And just the general added cost of driving such a big-assed truck with fuel consumption, especially if gas prices go back up. But then again, I’m no longer impoverished, I work hard and make good money. And it will give me a lot of joy, spending nights camping out back of it, and driving roads and trails. The money thing really bites me, knowing how much cheaper those mid-size trucks really are. And how the Taco trucks are supposedly quite reliable, though not as good as they once were before the adopted blown engines and all the electronic safety gadgets as required by the EPA and NTHSA.
Maybe I am too down on new cars and the mid-sized trucks for their blown, I mean supercharged, tiny engines that use boost to get reasonable acceleration while minimizing fuel consumption at least in the eyes of the EPA. All those sensors in the passenger trucks offer confort and safety, reducing insurance rates and making it less likely you’ll crash. I mean collision detection does seem like a good idea when it works. Getting hit on the expressway sucks. But I just worry they will break and fail, though those HD trucks even in their base configuration are still loaded with sensors and technology. The era of 3-on-the-tree is well beyond us even in poverty-spec Town Park Department trucks. Maybe I’m just getting too much into the mind of outdated mechanic thinking, when the high-tech wonder trucks technology baked into every Tacoma, Ranger, and Colorado really does save fuel and lives, while not greatly reducing reliability. But I can’t help but question that. But maybe it’s just an excuse in my mind to buy a Ford SuperDuty, the big truck I’ve always wanted and prenteded to have with my lifted half-ton Silverado.
And when I do own that homestead, a 8’2″ bed would be great for hauling hog and cattle panel flat in the bed, an HD truck could haul loads of feed in the bed or tow a horse trailer full of feeder hogs or steers with ease. Most of SuperDuty trucks I am looking at have the plow/camper package, so I would have the electrical and brackets to buy a snowplow for cleaning the driveway of future land I might own. A used plowed put on the SuperDuty when both I and the truck get close to retirement could be a good second life for the truck, even beyond when it’s still road worthy due to frame rot. That said, I’ll be fluid filming my truck and making it smell sheep farm come next autumn for sure. But maybe I shouldn’t invest too much in a future that is uncertain, when right now I’m still just looking at a reliable camping rig to see America before those days when I’m stuck at home shoveling manure, feeding hogs and breaking ice on water troughs. Really, I know my time to travel is limited, and I should get the rig that best suits my need to travel while I’m still young.
As the email commentator wrote me, “Just buy the God Damn Ford SuperDuty truck if that’s what you really want. You got the money. You’ll like the big truck.” Alas, so it will be but I have nine or ten more weeks to fully play this through in my mind, as I study the ins and outs of dealerships, the various models and the pros and cons of everything in life.
There is just so many things to think about, 🐐 as my colleagues from High School and Boy Scouts post pictures of their mountain homesteads, probably living and surviving on so much less then I do. I’ve done a deep dive into many different sources of information on personal finance, trying to figure out what the next steps are both in building my next rig but also setting the path towards retirement and off-grid cabin and homestead. 🏡 I want to do it right without paying advisors or the tax man a ton of money. It’s not like it’s rocket science, but there is a lot I don’t understand fully yet about personal finance despite my years of studying, and I want to be smart. People say I’m blowing a lot of money getting a SuperDuty truck that will burn a lot of gas and soon enough be just more garbage to get rid of so this is still gives me a pause. 🛻 But they’re right too, that in ten weeks from now if that’s what I want and I’ll get 10 or 15-years of solid enjoyment out of it and then potentially use it on the homestead, then it’s worth it.
I’ve grown increasingly obsessed with Roth accounts for retirement, 💵 even though I’ve been saving in my Roth IRA since my 20s, I want to get more money in Roth accounts as they are so much better then IRAs. While with Secure Choice 2.0 I won’t get hit with a Required Minimum Distribution until Age 75 if I’m even alive at that point, IRAs still suck as you pay full income tax on both your principal and all capital gains when you take money out of them. Roth IRAs you pay with after tax dollars, and then you are done on taxes – no taxes on capital gains or withdrawals ever again beyond age 59 1/2. I’ve been maxing out my Roth IRA since my twenties, and I was looking if I get 10% average returns between now and my 60th birthday, I will have well over a million dollars even if I never invested again. And that ignores other investments, my state pension and the taxable IRAs I have and want to convert to Roth when the markets are down. I plan to stay the course on retirement, and actually I plan to start adding more money each year to the Roth both by a conversion of old IRAs and by doing some of my deferred comp as Roth. I’d rather pay more taxes now, and know I have tax free growth for the next two decades plus, rather then worry about taxes later. 🚜 I worry about “uneven” expense years in later years for the off-grid homestead – years where I have to buy a farm tractor or manure spreader, hay bailer, cattle trailer, ATV, new pickup truck, or make major upgrades to the off-grid cabin. 💩 Hate to pay a shit ton of taxes just to get a shit spreader for cows some day I’ll have. Even if my life is pretty frugal and minimal in retirement, without many utility bills being off-grid and growing and raising my own food 🥩🧅🍎 there are always capital expenses especially when you homestead. 🗡️ I guess that’s true for all homeowners, but it seems like homesteading makes it even worse. 🧑🏻🌾🦙
So yeah, it’s been all about car buying, personal finance, and the next steps in my road map 🗺️ that have dominated my mind, and now my ad feeds which are full of scammy “Active ETFs” I would never buy and dubious financial planning services, which either put you into high-price scammy products 💵 or other things for the “wealthy” or what at least uneducated people think wealthy people live like based on the TV. 📺 When people want to make you think it’s overly complicated, then it’s certainly a scam. I guess my head is full of big thoughts and dreams and planning, something I’ve not been doing since 2024 when I seriously was looking at homesteads with the new landlord taking over my building and I besides the $100 a month rent increase, was fearful he was going to evict me and turn my place into luxury housing. Didn’t happen that way, and it’s always a risk, but I did learn a lot reading 📖 about buying land, building cabins and buying homesteads. Of course, building my new rig is probably a much shorter-term goal then building a homestead, and much more flexible, as you can drive a truck to wherever, unlike a homestead that exists on a particular piece of land. I could be living out in country right now if I wanted, have that ATV and even a burn barrel, even if I’d have to be careful what I put in said illegal trash fire less a neighbor’s nose smell it. 🔥
I got to shower and ride my mountain bike into work today. 🚲 I still think there is too much ice on the Rail Trail to ride, so it will be Corning’s Hill today. It’s fine, beats busing it, 🚌 because it’s State of the State Address day at the Capitol which I am sure is pure insanity. 🤪 Tomorrow I’ll be busing it again with the rain expected by afternoon, plus probably another Save the Pine Bush hearing to attend.
I tossed that little fruit bag of unrecycable in the trash bin along the way in today, not even stopping my bike. Not a lot of trash but I did feel a ping of guilt knowing it’s going to the trash mountain in the Pine Bush. Stuff I probably would have burned if I had a had truck, but I realize it’s kind of silly as most people just have trash pickup and send most of their garbage to the landfill with little thought. Never done that, and I’ve always given pause any time I’ve paid to put garbage into the compactor at the transfer station or even just the trash bin at an event or the office. It’s in some ways kind of silly, as I realize soon enough my old truck will be smashed, it’s interior and gauges shredded, and buried on a similar garbage heap. Just like everything else I own, from my bike to the kayak, my furniture, appliances. Some of scrap metal may be recovered, some of the wood burnt, but most of it’s going on the garbage heap. Seems so trifling to save a wrapper to toss in a fire to keep it from the landfill, when I’m landfilling so many other big things I can’t burn.
I was noticing more garbage dumped along the way – big old garbage sack dumped at Erie Boulevard, another garbage can where somebody had dumped a bag of household garbage in a park can. Not a little bag, a big one. I would never dump garbage that way, but a little plastic bag occassionally probably isn’t the end of world, it’s an interim solution until I get my new truck. It seems like it’s just one garbage heap after another I ride by on my mountain bike. Mountains of garbage tower over our city. My current office is next door and overlooks the old city landfill, I could see two other modern dumping grounds when I worked downtown in Alfred Smith Tower Building. So much about modern society is about buying shit and producing more and more garbage. I say those things while I look at Ford SuperDuty pickups. But I don’t do Amazon or E-commerce and really try to keep my purchases minimal both so I save money and so I have less garbage to get rid of which is more challenging without a garbage landfill pickup subscription. People say I’m a cheap bastard, burning and dumping my crap when I could afford elsewise, but I have a real problem with the orgy of consumerism.
Never liked landfills one bit or the orgry of thoughtless consumerism that goes along with. Once in a rarely while I’ll use a garbage can, and do bring the unburnable cans to the transfer station or my parents bin for recycling. But I’d much rather save stuff for starting and perking up fires, as not only is it fun to burn, then you know what’s going to happen to it, and within 5 minutes of tossing it in a rip-roaring fire it’s gone. Not sitting in landfill for a million years, maybe a bit of a chemical smell depending what I’ve tossed but quickly dispersed into the wilderness.
Too many people subscribe to trash service, they pay a fee, they pack their bin full every week, pretend to be virtuous by washing out their plastic bottles, then watch thoughlessly as the garbage is packed into the garbage truck and hauled off to the nearby dumping grounds. The garbage never crosses their minds after that point. Maybe it’s like that too when I burn it, ignorant of chemicals released into the air and soil, but I also dig through the ashes and pack out anything that doesn’t fully combust. Truth is while their are all kinds of chemicals that make up modern garbage, thanks to industry, the worse offenders have been phased out from most uses, like that ever stinky and toxic polyvinyl chloride and rubber compounds. Polyethylene plastic is hardly nuclear waste or even the chemical soup found in the barrels of Love Canal.
I think too much about trash. It’s maybe because I know about the lies of recycling and consumerism, and that the plastic bag you throw away today is going to end up on the heap on outskirts of town. There is no away. I am aware how toxic and problematic plastics are, but are still superior alternatives to single-use glass and metal that while in theory is more recyclable, often is just used once and landfilled. I know if I buy it, and don’t burn it, I know where it’s going to end up.
That said, I’m also aware of dioxin and furans, the plasticizers and dyes used to make packaging attractive at stores. All things that go up into smoke or into the ashes, washed into the soil and environment all around when you burn it. Really the best option is just to buy less, and buy in bulk. Eat lots of beans, fruits and vegetables that come in minimal plastic. Recycling and recycling labels are mostly a scam, so just assume even if you do put it in a blue bin somewhere, it has a good chance of ending up smashed and on the heap on the outskirts of town. Yes, the ash contains a chemical freak show of chemicals used by industry from chromium to arsenic, but most burnt farm trash pits haven’t caused any problems pushed into the hollows and dumped in the woods once covered with rock and dirt.
When I have my homestead, I’ll continue to burn as much of my trash as possible. But I’ll also try to avoid as much packaging as possible, but inevitably there are feed bags, wrappers, and other discarded materials that come with running a homestead – and just plain living – buying off-farm supplies. I’ll recycle whatever scrap metal I can and avoid buying as much stuff as possible, as money not spent on trash is money you can use elsewhere. And I will get beyond these days without a vehicle, back when I can have nights in wilderness, fires, and do whatever I want. While I despise the burn ban, I do what I do, and I hate landfills and trash more generally even if I do get a good fire for a few minutes as the papers and plastics are converted from trash into carbon dioxide, water vapor and heat – along with those toxic residual chemicals. I’ll keep buying as much minimally packaged foods and supplies as possible, keep using my existing worn out equipment for as long as possible, and just try to avoid making as much trash I can whether it’s landfill or fire bound.
