Posts Tagged ‘government’

Why our government is obviously so corrupt.. And why doesn't the media mention this?

August 11th, 2010
No Gravatar

According to the San Jose Mercury News Meg Whitmen has spent $99+ million on her campaign to become California’s Governor. Now according to Stateline.org who has a table showing how much each state pays the governor California’s currently makes $206,000 per year…

The reason why I say that there is so obviously corruption in the government is because Meg Whitmen has spent $99,000,000 on her bid to be governor. She would need to have that position for 479 years to make back the $99 million she spent so far.

Now, I realize that she is a billionaire so perhaps she isn’t doing this “for the money” but honestly, do we want someone that has that kind of money making such bad decisions on how they spend money? Obviously this person thinks that they can simply just buy a position and in life you can’t just buy everything.

This leads me to one thought, if Meg Whitmen would need to work 479 years to get reimbursed she is either completely ignorant in how she spends money, or completely corrupt in thinking all the lobbyist and bribes that will come her way will pay her back.

And Whitmen isn’t alone on this. Many candidates spend way more then they will make to get the position, and I get a very strong feeling it’s not because they are doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. They are doing it for self gain which it ultimately bad for the taxpayers.

If you make $50,000 per year and you run and get it then yes you are more then likely smart in your decision making, at least you are spending money the right way. But if you are a billionaire throwing out $99 million for an elected position that wouldn’t even pay you back legally (key word here, legally) a percentage of the money you paid to buy the position then you are so far gone from society that you can’t even think straight.

I’m all about voting for the “every day person”. I want someone who is honest, making the “AVERAGE” wage in this country helping to decide what to do with our tax money. When you can spend $99 million and not even feel it that scares me.  In fact the average income in the US last I checked was approx $64,000, if you didn’t pay taxes and never spent a dime it would take you 1,546 years to save up 99 million…. enlightening isn’t it?

  • Share/Bookmark

No comments »

Posted in Observations, Rants

Tags:

When will you people learn…

June 18th, 2010
No Gravatar

I know I often write about government, taxes and stupid people…. But the reason for that is because our country does not have a lack of stupid people. I’m all for free enterprise and the free market as I’ve stated many times in past posts. But I saw something on the news last night that just made me cringe. See we have very hot weather in the Tennessee area and it’s not unusual for the temp to get up in the 95+ degree range. Well the “City of Nashville” has a program where “they” give free air conditioners out to low income families. There are also programs where the government will help pay for low income families power bills… Just think about that for a second…

Here’s the problem, the government is NOT paying for anything. It’s the Tennessee taxpayers that are buying these air conditioners for low income people. It’s the taxpayers paying the low income peoples utility bills. It’s not like it’s a gift from the government, that money is coming from somewhere. And if that wasn’t enough, the news doesn’t point this out. Nope, they instead say “state government is giving away free air conditioners today.”

When I first heard about this program I thought I might go get one, after all it’s my tax money being used to buy them, seems like I should be in the front of the line, or at least in front of those that don’t pay taxes. But nope, turns out since I earn money I don’t even qualify for the item I bought.

What a great country. My wallet gets emptier and people with little to no motivation get more stuff. I realize it’s hot, but my tax money is already paying for the public library and other government buildings with air conditioning. I say instead of spending money on air conditioners for low income people which ultimately require electricity these people can’t pay for which means I buy it as well the money should be spent elsewhere. Like on something that benefits ME.

Call me selfish, but I’m tired of buying crap for people that don’t have enough motivation or personal responsibility to go out and provide for themselves. Almost everywhere I have been lately has “now hiring signs” out front. Where I work there are about 25 positions open that we can’t fill. There are jobs, the problem is people with lots of kids are sucking on the teat of the government and they’ve got hooked. I imagine it’s much easier to stay at home and get free money then go out and work 40-60 hours a week, guess I’m the idiot for doing it.

All I want is for people to stand up and acknowldege they are taking my tax money, I would be fine buying air conditioners or paying utility bills for people who admit it, but it annoys the heck out of me that people think this “government money” just magically appears and they are entitled to it.

  • Share/Bookmark

1 comment »

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags:

2010 government senseless… I mean census

March 17th, 2010
No Gravatar

So I received in the mail yesterday my 2010 government census. I am mad.

See a week or two ago I got a letter saying the census forms were coming, that cost the government a conservative 3 billion if you figure the millions of households plus shipping fees and hourly wages for the people to stuff the envelopes. So the government spend a crap load of money to tell us a form was coming. Then all week I’ve seen commercials on tv and on heard them on the radio, more money wasted.

I think the census is a total piece of crap. And I normally don’t use words like that when I write but in this case that’s the best thing I can think of. See I totally disagree with the census forms and the concept behind it. And what really woke me up this year was when I saw an interview on tv with a guy that went to a household in california and asked if they were going to fill out the form. The people were worried that they would get in trouble if they did but didn’t specify why, but we all know it’s because they are undocumented people who don’t pay taxes. The representative explained to them it doesn’t matter who lives in the house, they just want to make sure everyone is accounted for and gets their fair share of money for their communities. After all this is a concept of “giving money back to your community” which is how they spin the census forms.

What it actually is, is redistribution of wealth. Money is taken away from the cities and towns that pay more taxes and given to those that pay less. A little like Robin Hood. And since money goes from the communities that pay more to those that have more illegals living in them, so they get their fair share right? Screw that. If I live in one community I want my taxes to go back to MY COMMUNITY, not a crappy little town that is happy to take in illegals because they get X amount of money for each resident as long as they check the census box.

I think the census should only be filled out by tax payers, and even that is not needed so all tax payers pay taxes every year and the government knows where we live since we follow the law each year and file our taxes! The census is 100% to account for illegals and undocumented residents. It’s crap and a giant waste of money.

And what I love is the letter that came in the census form said it’s anonymous and the information is not designed to allow them to pinpoint who filled it out. Yet the form is barcoded, it asks for names, birthdays, etc. Only an idiot would think they couldn’t track that down to the house hold and people that filled it out.

This all being said, yeah I’ll fill mine out simply because I want my tax dollars to benefit my community. But I think this whole system needs to be redesigned so that tax payers money benefits tax payers.

  • Share/Bookmark

2 comments »

Posted in Politics, Rants

Tags:

If you say it enough, it must be true.

January 28th, 2010
No Gravatar

Last night President Obama made his State of the Union speech. I have to admit that I don’t agree with everything he says or does, but I do like him as a public speaker. He’s got that skill down perfect. I mean this dude can sell an apple computer to bill gates, he’s that good at delivering speeches…

So I watched the State of the Union speech, I initially was sitting on my couch upright focused on what our elected president was saying, and through the speech I found myself getting irritated it was exhausting and by the end of the speech I had fell over and was sleeping, so yes I missed the end but that’s ok.

So why was I irritated? It’s simple. I like our country, I think we have a great thing going for us. See we live in a free market system… Or at least we used to where when an in-balance happened in time the market would straighten itself out. There are tons of case studies and examples in history on how if you let the free market work, it will restore balance to itself through choices people make.  So when I heard Obama talking about how he didn’t want to do the bank bailout but he had to because without doing it things may have gotten worse, more jobs lost, more homes foreclosed. But you see he uses the word “MAY” which means he doesn’t know, how can he? No one really knows what would have happened. So saying that he through billions at banks and because of that we saved X number of jobs is all fake information. It’s that info that is spread to make everyone feel all warm inside, where they can pat themselves on the back saying “we did good.” But the truth is, the bank bailout in my opinion should have never happened. I do believe in the free market system working itself out and who’s to say the recovery of our society ISN’T the free market system at work? I’m wondering if the money even did anything or if the fact it’s been a while since this whole thing happened if the free market corrected itself, and we threw money down the drain…

In fact I’m pretty sure we threw money down the drain. Let me explain why. See when Obama bailed out the banks he did so using money that we don’t have, if you have any debt you don’t have any money because every dollar you have is actually someone else’s you borrowed. So we lent all this money we don’t have and said “this is for banks and we are going only use it for that.” So fast forward a year or however long it’s been and listen to the State of the Union speech where Obama says that he wants to use this money that was repaid and spend that billions on small businesses now so banks will lend to them…… WTF just happened here? Taxpayers were opposed to the bank bailout and now the money’s been returned and rather then pay off the debt that it created were just going to spend that money somewhere else?

But don’t worry, Obama has a plan for that, see he’s also wanting to put fee’s on the big banks that are giving massive  bonuses because “they can afford it” if they can afford to give bonuses. But if my theory on greed is correct and from what I’ve seen in retail worlds the government is going to impose these fees on these big banks, etc and who do you think is going to pay those fees? The business? Heck no, they will just raise their rates to the customers like individuals and small businesses which means YOU tha taxpayer are paying the fees levied by the government to these big banks which got YOUR money to stay in business….. Just how many stupid things can we do at one time?

And I am sentimental towards businesses closing. I lost my job last year after the company I worked at for over 7 years filed bankruptcy and shut down without giving me any notice, severance, etc and I had to move several hundred miles to find a new job. That meant I had to sell my home at a tremendous loss because Wall Street and the banks got greedy so chalk up another large amount of money I am paying because of their errors. And we bought a small, modest house well within our means. I mean our mortgage lender we had was saying we could afford a $250,000 house and we knew we couldn’t so we only bout a $120,000 house. We were smart and still got our heads taken off.  So yes I know the pain when your business shuts down and you are out of work. In my case my wife and I made large sacrifices to sell our home and move on with our lives. So many people I know refuse to move to where jobs are. They want to stay close to family and yet stay out of work.  So many people I worked with at my last job are still out of work over a year later and hardly any of them want to move out of the area like I did.

But in life you have to make sacrifices to succeed. This attitude that “I deserve” is bogus. You don’t deserve anything, As a society we need to grow up and realize what’s going on. Because the heads in Washington really are out of touch. I applaud what Obama was saying in some areas I think he had some great points like giving tax breaks to companies in America that have jobs over here and impose extra levies on those that outsource. Yes those fees will be handed down to the customer in the forms of higher prices for goods, but that will make the outsourced products the same price with quality American made. So in that regards it works.

I don’t know, I feel like I’m starting to ramble here and it just really irritates me to listen to these speeches and hear so much and be sitting there going through my head the countless ways it isn’t going to work. But Mr. President if you are confident that bailing banks MAY have saved jobs then good for you, that is where we disagree.

And I’m sick of this “don’t ask don’t tell” B.S.  If your gay or straight I couldn’t care less. I applaud you for being in our military no matter who you are or what you desire. But I honestly don’t think our tax money, or our time should be spent on such an idiotic policy as “don’t ask don’t tell.” In my eyes this is a policy that should never have been put into place. To steal a line from one comedian this goes on the page right after “are we eating to much peanut butter as a people.” I mean is “Don’t ask don’t tell” really that critical in our nations interest or security?  Sometimes I just can’t believe how crooked the priorities are……

And don’t get me started with party lines… Oh it just irritates me to see half the room applaud and the other half sitting pissed off in those state of the unions. It’s like no one can think for themselves and we wonder why NOTHING ever comes out of the government. You ever watch the British house of parliament? I used to watch that for a few hours when it was on a station I had and I loved how things were done. Everything was swift and people just stood up yelling and cheering. But stuff appeared to get done. In our land you can’t get anything done… Why can’t we just have everyone in the government have their own minds and vote for whats right based on ohh say the peoples will and NOT politics. It’s so freaking childish it’s ridiculous.

I should run for president… We need like Ty Pennington to take his extreme makeover crew to D.C. and just tear down the current people and let’s just restart from scratch. We have far to many people in places holding up progress. Some are so old they aren’t in touch with what needs to happen and some are just to owned by the lobbyist who pays them to make the right decisions…

I need to stop otherwise I’ll have a novel the length of war and peace on my gripes.

  • Share/Bookmark

No comments »

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags:

Who could not agree with this?

April 8th, 2009
No Gravatar

This morning I woke up and got myself ready for work. I got in my truck and started thinking as I passed by gas stations with the big “Lotto Sold Here” signs out front. And the gas stations I’m talking about are not the nice stations in ritzy neighborhoods, it’s the hell hole stations in the bad area’s with bar’s on the windows and 1″ thick bullet proof glass. And I started thinking about how so many people in this great nation of ours are living on social security, welfare, food stamps, unemployment or other government assisted programs. And in reality all “government assisted” means is that you and I the tax payer funded it.

So, here’s my thought. I think that a new FEDERAL law needs to be implemented that is enforced nationwide to limit the funds that a person can spend on the lottery. Now I don’t care if you have a paid for house and have tons of money in the bank, if you want to spend $5k on lotto then so be it,  but if you are living on tax payer money you should NOT be able to purchase any type of lotto ticket at all, even with your own money. But seeing how that would be nearly impossible to monitor I have an alternative. Instead of banning the sale of lotto tickets to those people encourage it, yep. But when they win even a $5 scratch off the winner must slide his/her drivers license through a verification system that checks to see if you have received ANY government assisted funds over the last 6 months. If it comes back you did then it checks to see the ratio of where the money came from. If it came from food stamps or welfare instantly 95% of the winnings of that person go to the government in the form of on the spot taxation for lotto winnings. If the money that the person received was unemployment then only 5% of the winnings are subject to the on the spot taxation since that person did pay some into the unemployment system already.

By using this method it would prevent people receiving money from us, the taxpayers  into playing lotto. Essentially they are gambling with our money, heck I don’t even play penny slots and yet every dollar I pay into taxes could be gambled away by someone with no job, no house, no motivation, no goals to support themselves, no common sense to use the money wisely, etc.

This method allows the system to recoup the money and allow those that are receiving money and gambling with it the duty to repay the system and help fund it for those that really need it. And this wouldn’t just be for small winnings, if you win a $50million dollar jackpot, that same 95% applies.

And I know you say “there are already taxes on winnings.” Yes I do know, this is an additional taxes. See first you get hit with this instant taxation when you claim your winnings. So in the $50million dollar example if the person collected government funds in the 6 months leading up to winning instantly 95% or $47.5 million would be collected instantly to repay the system. That leaves the individual with a measly (sense the sarcasm?) $2.5 million dollars. Now, the standard tax rate applies on winnings.

Is double taxation fair? Not for normal people. But people that are gambling with other peoples money it definitely is. We should not reward poor behavior. In fact, don’t call it double taxation. the 95% that comes off the top could instead be called a penalty for irresponsible behavior.

Oh and here’s the caveat, in order to receive the remaining 5% of your winnings that wasn’t collected in instant taxes you MUST pass a hair follicle drug test to prove that you have not used drugs. A urine test might work, but it’s easy to cleanse your system  enough to pass one of those, but the only way to pass a hair follicle test would be to shave your head. Don’t pass the drug test? No winnings for you, the rest of the money is confiscated and given to the local police department and classified as “drug money.” Oh and then because there is evidence you used drugs, they have a little printer that prints up a search warrant immediately for the police to go search the players home for more drugs or drug paraphernalia.

Is this to harsh? I don’t think so. Is it to government controlling? Perhaps. But see, I’m sick and tired of people “being repressed” or so they say. People that complain they don’t have a dollar to their name yet they drive around in pimped out cars, they have $95 tennis shoes or gold chains. They spend hundreds on tobacco products all while receiving government assistance.

My belief is once you are receiving funds from the government it’s basically an allowance and you must earn it, and in earning it there are rules. Just like when you received an allowance from your parents as a kid. If you blow the money on non-essentials you MUST repay it and it starts with lottery winnings.

In fact I’d love to see this program rolled out to tobacco shops, car dealerships, restaurants, etc. Everywhere you go you swipe your drivers license or ID card before paying for the item and it validates that before you receive the “luxury item” you are paying for it yourself and not with government funds. After all, why should tax payers support your tobacco habit, your new car or dining out to eat. Instead you should be quitting tobacco, driving a beat up car and cooking food at home to save money. Quit being irresponsible with tax payer money and the system will be able to help those that truly need it.

Oh well, I’ll get off my soap box now.

  • Share/Bookmark

3 comments »

Posted in Observations, Random, Rants

Tags:

Rant session (it's been too long I know)

March 3rd, 2009
No Gravatar

So I’m home from work today, feeling pretty good and I turn on the news and get very irritated. I see Bernanke talking about how upset he is over AIG exploiting a major loophole in the treasure and government regulations (I didn’t know there were any at this point) and then says but we must continue to put money into them to ensure they don’t fail.

WHAT????

Then Timoth Geithner gets on and explains that the new stimulus bill that just passed will “get people back to work and stimulate private investment.”

Really? Cause we have had how many stimuls plans and the economy keeps tanking?

Then I liked when REP Jeb Henserling  of Texas asked “isn’t it true that in 8 years the debt would be doubled?” talking about the national debt. Then Peter Orszag the White House Budget director (hmm didn’t know he existed either) said “yes but the debt increase is less then if we did nothing.”

To that I say WTF? I know, so unlike me but come on. You are going to tell me Mr. Orszag that if we do nothing our economy will be worse? How the heck can you tell me that when the stock market is at it’s lowest level since 1997, house prices are at the lowest, unemployment is rising, companies are closing left and right and this is after already dishing out trillions to agencies that wound up spending the money on buying foreign banks, taking lavish meetings at posh resorts and raising rates on the customers when it comes to credit and loans. So excuse me if I am a little pissed off that we continue to dish out more money when all the money that’s already been spent isn’t doing crap for the American tax payer… Remember us, the ones funding your shopping spree?

I’m tempted to go down to AIG since as a tax payer I own part of them (woohoo), walking in and walk out with some artwork, or a chair or something. After all, I own it don’t I?

I guess it would be a different story if ohh say the economy turned around, or there was some benefit that we could actually see. But it’s all theory. The money is being spent on crap that won’t help anyone, and you keep telling us that without the stimulus we will be worse off. PROVE IT! For once quit spending money, let’s see if the free market can turn us around, cause your method of fixing it sure isn’t working. In fact every time the government does ANYTHING the situation gets worse.. I’m really tired of the government stepping in to try to save the world when they can’t even balance their own dang budget. A government that is now nearly $2 trillion in debt is wagging it’s fingers at companies that are in debt? How stupid is that. Let’s get Suze Orman, Dave Ramsey or some other financial guru to get up and lead us. You know, someone with some money that knows what the heck they are doing. But this scare tactic of “we must act” is just a load of dung because we don’t have to act, in fact I’m sick of acting.

Want to know my plan? According to the census bureau we have

305,934,608 people in the united states (tax payers). How about instead of spending $1,000,000,000 ,000 (thats one trillion I think) you instead give each tax payer one million dollars. There’s more then enough in the bail outs that has been dished out to do this. Then each tax payer can take the money and pay off their house, pay off their debt and buy shit to help the economy. At least this way those of us funding your massive bail out plan will see some benefit out of it.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m annoyed and angry. It’s like we are on a boat that is missing the bottom and we are using a pail to try to keep it from sinking cause “we gotta do something.” Screw the boat, inflate the dingy and let the boat sink. We can rebuild, we have to let the pompous monster companies fail that are to stupid to operate and let the strong businesses that have ohhh I don’t know ETHICS and INTELLIGENCE and a CLUE survive.

  • Share/Bookmark

No comments »

Posted in Rants

Tags:

Drunk with power… and billions of dollars.

November 15th, 2008
No Gravatar

So I’m a bit angry again with the good old United States government and world leaders. For anyone who doesn’t know we are in a bit of a world wide financial mess. This mess was caused by greedy companies that started writing mortgages to people that couldn’t pay them. I mean come on, how can you even begin to issue a mortgage that requires no proof of employment? Ohh sure simple, you just charge a higher APR. But how do you know the person can pay it? You don’t. Mortgage brokers starting writing mortgages that went bad (surprise, surprise) and the market just tumbled from that point into a world wide economic mess. 

Well last night apparently the leaders got together in Washington to discuss the state of the crisis. You would think if they were actually concerned about cutting waste, helping the world get back on track that they would start to use common sense. But nope. Instead they served $499 bottles of Shader wine. Now the White House said they do buy wholesale and get much better prices, but come on. My neighbor works for a government entity and they paid 3 times more for an almost identical laptop to the one I bought my wife. And we all know that everything the government buys costs a fortune, like the $1,000 hammers. These leaders should be showing they understand reality and instead of drinking $499 bottles of wine drinking wine from a box. 

Then the food, the menu was insane. It consisted of Fruit with smoked quail and thyme roasted rack of lamb, tomato fennel, eggplant fondue 

I guess it makes sense, after all of the European countries said they are officially in a recession so why not pop the $500 bottles of wine?

At first when the mortgage mess happened I didn’t care. It didn’t impact me and as long as I didn’t have to pay for other people’s mistakes I was fine. After all, why should I pay for my neighbors mortgage because they bought a house that was to big? I shouldn’t have to. But then the bail out came and well… that didn’t work. We were told that the money would buy up the bad mortgages. I didn’t like it but whatever. Now all of a sudden Henry Paulson is telling us that nope, they changed their mind and now they will invest in the banks. So basically we were sold a bill of goods, they didn’t follow through and now my generation and my children’s generation will have to pay off the greed of the businesses and government over the past few years. 

The government really is a big corporation. More so now then ever. I mean come on, we own mortgage companies, banks, insurance companies and several other entities. Next will be the Airline industry and Auto industry. So there is no denying that we are a corporation and we are all the shareholders. The only differnece is when corporations do things they need shareholders approval. But in our case we are silent shareholders. Sure we voice our opinion of our anger, we tell them what we want and don’t want and then they turn their backs and tell us we don’t know what we are talking about and go the opposite direction. 

But after hearing about AIG doing these company retreats with bail out money, the government actually passing the bail out package, and now the government having an economic crisis meeting with $500 wine and quail and lamb. 

I say the world is in such a mess we call a “do over.” Yep, all nations forgive the debts of each other. The credit card industry wipes clean all the debt of the consumers and everyone gets a fresh start. Why not? With all the money being thrown around this could almost happen. But rather then actually giving money to the consumer the money is going to the greedy people that caused this mess.  

As you can tell I’m a little ticked and am rambling so I will end this. I just would love to see something positive come out of all of this, but I’m afraid a black hole has been opened and it’s just going to suck money from the country for the untold future.

  • Share/Bookmark

No comments »

Posted in Rants

Tags:

Installed by SimpleScripts