twice as much fun

i'm going to start posting to both my livejournal and a blog because, i can.

this month i got health benefits through my wife but since our marriage is only legal in massachusetts it turns out these are domestic partner benefits. okay, i've tried this dom. part. bene's before when i lived in maryland and was making about $11/hour and i got royally screwed so i rasied hell and had them immediately cancelled. i only did it at the time because we thought it would be nice. i told my partner at the time to go back to her old insurance at her company. for anyone unfamiliar with domestic partner benefits let me outline it for you.

let's say you get paid $10/hour and make $400 a week.
you pay $15 pre-taxed for a single person to have insurnance
you also pay $30 more which is taxed to make up the difference between single and family insurance.
the company pays $200 a week for insurance benefits for your "family" plan.
our brilliant government decided this was a good idea....
your pay of $400/week is reported and taxed at the rate of $600 ($400+200 insurnance).
so a person who makes $21k a year is getting taxed at the rate of someone who is making over $31k.
for some this would push them into a different tax bracket, as was the case when i worked in maryland.
THANKFULLY, my wife makes significant money and i don't think the extra $10k a year will push her into the next tax bracket. i'm looking into it. BUT there is still a 2% increase in the amount of tax that is taxen each week. in time 2% adds up. when i was in maryland making $11/h i had nearly 75% of my paycheck deducted. you can't live on that.
sadly this is something that only congress can change. the states have no power to change the irs codes even if the state chooses to recognize my equal marriage.

there have bee two congress-folk who have drafted legislation to change this but the bill has stalled.

somehow this is reminicent of separate but equal. and we saw how well that worked!