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These days, there are those of us who must make choices based on our current economic status. Sometimes it is just a matter of which oil to put in the car or if the cheaper blue jeans are a better deal. Sometimes it is buying groceries instead of paying the cable bill. I have noticed a couple of people who have made their own economic choices that appear to be pretty darned selfish if you ask me. There is the guy whose kids used to go to private school. Not a snooty private school, just a really good Catholic school. The kids now go to public school. He now drives a Land Rover. Another is the owner of a large commercial construction company. As most people now, this business sector is experiencing 25% unemployment and reductions in sales up to 90%. I am acquainted with an employee (recently let go) who actually worked with this guy's father-in-law in the original company. But, he's getting older, and when cutbacks started, he was on the list. I think the company's employee list was reduced by at least half. The owner of this construction company is going bird hunting in South America.
For these guys, personal priorities override any potential effect on the people around them. Their way of dealing with a sour economy is to screw up other people's lives and livelihoods so that they can maintain their lifestyle.
I've been seeing the political ads for a while now, as mid-term elections approach, and I was wondering how many of the promises made actually get anywhere. The opposing candidates are constantly dissing each other while claiming they can put people to work or solve our economic problems. Roy Barnes is running for governor of Georgia again. He lost his bid for re-election in '02 by pissing off the education sector and the Confederate flag gang. Now, he is claiming that he can reform education again and is sorry that he made the teachers mad. Typical political double-talk. He is also claiming that he will institute procedures to keep Georgians from losing their homes in foreclosure by forcing mortgage companies to exhaust all possibilities or solutions before foreclosing. It's 2010, Roy! Foreclosures have been happening for 2 years. Doing something about foreclosures after November is like closing the barn door after the horse got out! It's already too late. Mortgage companies already don't give a crap or follow the federal guidelines so why would they pay attention to a state mandate? Every candidate running now claims to have the answer for our faltering economy because they are all businessmen. Generally, a businessman's main goal is to improve the bottom line, regardless of what it takes or who it affects besides customers. Businessmen are the reason we have outsourced jobs to other countries. How is it that we can make plastic pellets in the US, ship them to China for manufacture, ship them back to the US, and sell them at Walmart at a profit? There has to be more to it than just the 64 cents an hour Chinese factory workers earn. Some of it has to do with tariffs or the lack thereof. The US will not take on China in a tariff war because China owns us like Bank of America owns my house.
One law that did get passed in Georgia is the texting while driving law. Why it takes a law to stop us from doing what is really stupid to start with puzzles me. Apparently, common sense died out a generation ago. What about reading the newspaper while driving? Until the internet happened, this was a common occurrence. I was beside a car the other day in Tampa at a red light where both occupants were texting. When the turn arrow changed to green and the turning traffic started, they almost drove through the red light! Another strange thing I saw was on Clearwater Beach. Someone was laying on the beach in the dark, texting. The fine in Georgia for TWD is $150 and 1 point on your license. If you are under 18, you can't even talk on a cellphone while driving. They can subpoena your cell phone records (like a drug test) if you are in an accident if they suspect it was a contributing factor. I think the penalty needs one more step. There should be a bumper sticker placed on the offender's car that states: "I'm an ignorant dumbass because I text while driving"!
Thought I'd put together a synopsis of some new laws we should really pay attention to.
Alabama has made human trafficking a crime. I guess their unemployment rate will go up now!
Indiana is requiring everyone to show ID when buying alcohol. Gramps will have a fit.
10 year olds can no longer get their genitals pierced in Minnesota.
In Mississippi, you now have to go to the doctor to get a prescription for Sudafed.
You can't buy bongs at Walmart in Florida anymore.
You can't text while driving in Georgia. I can't do that anyway. I can't see the screen without my reading glasses and I can't drive with my reading glasses.
The French are going on strike to protest the push to raise their retirement age from 60 to 62. What a bunch of cheese-eating whiners! The government says it will save $30 billion by doing this and that it will keep their pension fund from going bankrupt. I don't see how anyone could retire at 60 or even 62. What the hell are you going to do all day? Assuming that you can afford to continue paying bills after retiring, there is only so much golf or fishing you can do. Will you wind up being one of the people wandering around Walmart for hours? I could see wanting retirement at 60 if you spent your last 40-45 years digging ditches 6 days a week. I would want to retire, too! I suspect that a fair amount of us can't retire at all. If you were lucky enough to have a government pension or your employer didn't go belly up and screw you on a private plan, you might be ok. Finding retirement money in this Great Recession is tough. My retirement plan is to work until I can't and hope and pray that I can afford to live on Social Security, if it still exists.
The media has been full of stories lately about BP chairman Tony Hayward's trip to a yacht race and Obama playing golf instead of being on the job. It seems that the media and everyone who leaves comments on these stories think that they should be "monitoring the situation" 24 hours a day. I guess they can't take a day off! Not to defend BP completely, but trying to cap the largest oil spill in history is a huge challenge. No response plans in place ever considered this big of a spill. The fact that the well is 1 mile underwater doesn't help. What are Hayward and Obama supposed to do? They are CEOs. Their responsibility is to oversee others who hire the required people to get the job done. They are not rig workers or engineers. They don't have a clue about the technical aspects of solving the problem. That's why they are bosses, not workers. There is a saying that if you don't know how to do it, hire someone who does. My personal opinion is that, in order to properly run a company (or country), you must work up through the ranks. You should pretty much know what every job position involves and how it is done. Only then do you have a legitimate opinion. I don't know if the people sitting around in Louisiana because they can't fish or drill or go to strip clubs have the same opinion as the media, who is apparently getting their material from gossips in DC. Their plight isn't much different than the millions who have lost their jobs in this Great Recession, except that they have a potential share of $20 billion dollars.
The decision made by Obama to stop all drilling and permitting of offshore wells because of the oil spill is also a stupid, knee-jerk reaction to the situation. Not only does that decision put even more people out of work, it makes the oil market speculators nervous, which in turn makes gas prices move all over the place. Obviously, this and other actions by government officials, is a reaction to public outcry, not factual evidence. To use this disaster to push alternative energy is not the best use of our government. Half of our government (not verified) has a stake in good performance of oil companies so it isn't in their best interests to kick oil to the curb. Any energy alternative is more expensive, which is not a good thing in our current economic state.
I recently read where Meg Whitman (ex-CEO of Ebay) spent $71 million on her campaign for the Republican nomination for governor of California. There is talk of limiting what candidates can spend of their own money to get elected. I say Amen to that! It has gotten to the point that any political position above city councilman requires a fat bank account or friends with fat bank accounts. Gray Davis was earning about $158,000 per year but Arnie has been giving his back (being rich helps!). Why pay $71 million for a chance to be governor? Why would friends pay big bucks for someone to be senator? Back room deals! People aren't just pissing away the money. There are strings attached. Those strings are the reason we have such a screwed up economy. Those strings are why getting Congress to pass any legitimate or intelligent legislation is impossible. We, as a nation, should stop the rich people from running our country. Being rich doesn't make you smarter. There are a lot of people who could do a better job than those in office if they only had the chance to compete. The mainstream media crams rich people down our throats (actually in our eyes and ears, I guess). Look at Donald Trump. Why is that smug asshole on TV? If he acted like that in a Walmart parking lot, someone would kick his ass. The rich politicians get on TV and say how concerned they are that we are hungry or don't have a job. They don't give a shit. It doesn't change their 4 o'clock tee time. It doesn't change their plans for a vacation in the Bahamas. They might moan about losing money in the markets, but they didn't lose so much that they can't pay the power bill!
A 15 year old boy was killed by a Border Patrol officer. US Customs was arresting illegals trying to cross into El Paso and locals on the Mexican side were throwing rocks at them. Kinda dumb, dontcha think? You are sitting there, hanging out by the dried-up Rio Grande, and decide to throw rocks at guys with guns? Of course, on the Mexican side, everybody is blaming the big, bad USA. I guess we are supposed to just let them wander in at their leisure. I'll bet at least half of Mexico is actually run by drug cartels and gangs. They have had corruption for decades. The family of this kid is making out like he is a perfect angel and never gets in trouble but what was he doing there? Now, he may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but after the news I've seen about the El Paso border area, there is no way I would be hanging around there. The Mexican government is bitching about the amount of force the Border Patrol uses and is turning a molehill into a mountain when compared to the impact of years of illegals sneaking into the US. Illegal aliens are the reason we have to press 1 any time we call a business. They dilute pay scales. Framing contractors who were charging anywhere from $4 to $8 per square foot are competing with illegals doing the work for $2 per square foot. Hospitals and medical clinics are being crushed by indigent care costs and US citizens who need the care can't get it because illegal aliens are using up the budget. I don't have a problem with immigrants. This country was created by immigrants. The illegal aliens just need to go through proper channels to get here.
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