Why Georgia Power is our friend, NOT!

I was sitting in my van today, waiting to pick up my granddaughter from school and got bored. I started reading the insert in my Georgia Power bill envelope. They were letting me know that they were increasing rates by 10% in order to pursue greener technology, improve delivery, and blah, blah, blah. They went on to say that, even with the rate increase, their rates were still below the national average so it was ok. Guess what? Our salaries here in South Georgia are also below the national average, so it does impact our budgets negatively. We aren't getting 10% raises anytime soon, either. They are an industry pretty much unaffected by the recession and their employees make good money with plenty of benefits, too. Further down in the article, they go on to say they are also adding an average 3.5% to pay for construction costs related to 2 nuclear power plants they are building for the next 4 years. So, we basically are getting a 13.5% increase in our bill. Another item in the newsletter was a program they started to help us get rid of our old refrigerators and freezers sitting in our garages and basements. Their theory is that each one uses about $100 per year. They will pick up the old fridge and pay $35 to boot! They are partnered with an appliance recycler who does the actual pickup. I have several problems with this. First, if I have an extra fridge in the garage, it's holding beer or fish bait or something. It's not empty. If it was, it would be for sale on Craigslist! Second, Georgia Power stated they don't pickup non-working appliances. If the recycler is only picking up working appliances, they aren't tearing them apart. They're selling them to the budget used appliance stores for resale. Sounds like a hell of a racket to me. How stupid do they think we are?

Odd thoughts

Well, not really odd thoughts. Just a collection of unrelated stuff thrown together.

• When money gets tight, the term "tighten our belts" is used. I just realized where that came from. I bought a belt the other day. I haven't worn a belt in 30 years, but in the last 2 years, I've lost about 15 pounds. Not that I needed to but that's the recession for you. I decided it's cheaper to buy an $8 belt than $100 for new pants.

• I was riding down the road the other day and was behind a car with a GPS stuck to the windshield. It was obviously a local car. I was thinking that, in Atlanta or Tampa, it might make sense to have one if you went to different unknown places. In a town of 40,000 people, unless you have a really bad memory, why would you need one? Especially if you are just driving to work. I guess it's the "gadget factor" striking again.

• I had to replace the fuel tank straps on my van last week. It lived in Delaware for 12 years before moving south and has a lot of undercarriage rust. I don't know why undercoating isn't an automatic thing up north. No one had them in stock, so I called the 4 main parts stores to find out who could get them the quickest. Note that there is only one company making them so everyone had to get them from the same place. Here are my results. I stopped by NAPA first. They said all they had was a universal kit that you just cut off what you need. I told them that their website listed the correct parts but they weren't interested in trying to look them up. I called Advance Auto Parts. Note that it's Friday. They said they could have them by the following Wednesday. I called O'reillys and they said they would have to email the warehouse to find out when they could get them. They said to call back between 4 and 6 pm. Autozone was my last call. They said if I order them before 1 pm, they would have them the next day (Saturday!) It's pretty bad to have one part with 4 different answers. Needless to say, Autozone got my order.

It begins with gun control

I saw a comedian the other day who brought up gun control. He was making the point that, when our forefathers wrote the Constitution and included the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, the current firearms were all black powder guns. That means it took a few minutes to load each shot. They never imagined we would have guns that fire off 100 rounds or more a minute. The comedian's conclusion was that we could all keep guns but they all had to be muskets. Interesting when you think of it that way. What was going on 200 years ago when they wrote the Constitution was a lot different than now but they covered the basics. I'm all for some sort of gun control, but we should all be permitted to have at least as much firepower as our government (or more if I listen to some of my more radical Republican friends - you know who you are!). What it boils down to is that we have free will to do some things that appear stupid to others and the government and/or society wants to limit a lot of it. Some will argue with me but some things that appear innocuous on the surface have underlying implications or open the door for more "official" control. Helmets for motorcycle riders is one. They aren't much protection against a 2 ton Buick and if the rider doesn't mind cracking his head open, it's his choice. Helmets, elbow pads, and knee pads on kids riding bicycles is another. We managed fine for 80 years without them and it should be a parent's decision, not the government's. We have way more limitations on what we can and can't do now in the name of civilization and society than we used to. Some are good and some are bad. My thing is that, if God gave us free will, then why are we trying to suppress it at every turn. He surely knows what He is doing more than we do.

My New year's Day Post

Another one of those binary days! Well, when I checked my Mega Millions ticket numbers, I realized that it being 2011 didn't change my Lotto luck. Who needs $242 million anyway? After a time, I would run out of crap to buy. If you bought Aaron Spelling's house, you would still have enough to buy 54 Bugatti Veyrons at $1.7 mil each. My granddaughter was trying to wrap her head around the vastness of the sum. I explained that she could buy an ice cream from school every second of every day for 7 years and 8 months. I'm glad to see 2010 go. It was just an extension of 2009. I'm hoping things start really turning around since the experts declared the recession over last year and the government claims that the economy is improving. You know those guys are always right! I think it will be different. The economy can't stagnant for too much longer. It is shit or get off the pot time for our government. Speaking of governments, the increasingly common practice of party jumping after an election is bullcrap.For someone voting along party lines, it's like stealing a vote. If you get elected on a particular platform, you are there because the majority of voters agreed with you. To jump ship because the nerds became the cool kids shows a lack of real commitment to your beliefs. Y'all have a happy New Year ;)

Political correctness at Christmas

As I was sitting at my granddaughter's Christmas program at her school yesterday, I realized that public schools don't do stuff like that anymore. When I was growing up, we always had some sort of Christmas play or something to dread being in, unless you were one of the future drama class candidates. They weren't secular, either. There was Mary and Joseph, Baby Jesus, and the 3 Wise Men. We had commercial Christmas songs and religious songs. I guess now one of two things has happened to end public school Christmas programs. Either someone complained about the Christian religious aspect of them or the state Department of Education decided they couldn't please all of the people all of the time. We need to get away from this "everyone is entitled" attitude and realized that somewhere someone is always going to bitch about something. It's just human nature. We've gone from majority rule to minority control. This country was founded by Christians intent on stopping religious persecution and allowing religious freedom for all. This means anyone can practice whatever religion they desire. This doesn't mean they can whine about a Christian-themed traditional school program to the point that it gets canceled.

The Georgia Governor's Race

I will be glad when the midterms are over. I'm so sick of the political ads that try to best each other in the amount of mud they sling. The bad thing about most elections these days is that neither candidate is a good fit for the job. It's just whoever climbed to the top of the pile and got their party's blessing to run. Why not let 2 or 3 candidates from each party run? Why should it boil down to a playoff system? This ain't baseball, it's hiring the people who directly affect our security and general well-being.

That being said, look at the Georgia governor's race. Barnes vs. Deal.

Roy Barnes has already been governor once. His platform is the usual: more funding for education, green technology, and rural economic development. He also wants to bring back the property tax reduction Sonny Perdue got rid of. I'm not sure how this will be paid for but that's a typical Democrat for you. One of his most well-known accomplishments as our former governor was getting the state flag changed. To me, this is the typical way of getting the focus of real problems to move to extraneous stuff that doesn't really change our paychecks. He is also against showing a picture ID when voting. I think that if you have to show an ID to buy beer and cigarettes, why not voting. It's a lot more important than beer and cigarettes!

Nathan Deal got his start as a Democrat senator, switching parties 4 months into his second term. His last re-election was had by winning the race in a time when the people were fed up with Democrats, not by any personal virtue. He got into an ethics scuffle over pushing on some legislation that would directly affect a business he owned. He resigned his seat before the Ethics Committee could fully investigate him. He basically has the same goals as Barnes, but that's all bullcrap anyway. They just say what they think we want to hear. By the way, he voted for Clinton's impeachment, which in itself was set up to be a distraction from the real issues of the day. I'm a bit nervous about him being governor because he sort of resembles Larry Hagman when he played J.R. Ewing on "Dallas".

So, we're down to the lesser of the 2 evils, which is the way it always plays out. It's a shame when the lesser criminal is the one everyone picks (sometimes).

What has Congress done for us lately?

The current sitting Congress is patting itself on the back, claiming to be the most productive session since 1966, and complaining that the voters don't appreciate that fact. 1966 was when Medicare and Medicaid were created. There is a list on Yahoo! outlining their accomplishments that follows. Be aware that I am paraphrasing on the list and some of my opinions may not necessarily be based on actual fact (isn't that how the news works anyway?)
1. Making college loans more affordable
For who? The only way to do this is to come up with a way to get a job after college that pays more than minimum wage so you don't have to live with your parents for 10 years.
2. Cash for clunkers
We as taxpayers had the opportunity to pay $4500 each for 690,000 Ford Explorers that were subsequently crushed.
3. New consumer protections in the credit card industry
They did make some inroads into the screwing over that we put up with on a daily basis by the banks. Unfortunately, the banks seem to be one step ahead of Congress. Oh, the latest round of credit card rules do not apply to business credit cards. Who thought that up?
4. Making it easier for women to challenge pay discrimination
No opinion here. I'm sure somewhere in this country, some guy is making more than some woman doing the same job.
5. Increasing federal regulation of tobacco products
How much more regulating can you do? It's already almost to the point of needing a prescription to buy cigarettes. At that point, we will then need to decide whether we want tobacco or weed!
6. Cracking down on waste in Pentagon weapons acquisition
I busted out laughing when I saw this one. How do you gauge cracking down percentages when waste is over 50%? Weapons spending is one of the biggest pork-barrels in DC.
7. Making attacks based on sexual orientation a federal hate crime
They should have done this years ago but at least it's done now.
8. Giving businesses tax incentives to hire unemployed workers
Too bad there aren't tax incentives for us under-employed workers who took giant pay cuts 2 years ago with no end in sight.
9. Tax credits for first-time homeowners
All this did was continue the process of buying a house without putting any real money into it, which is what caused most of the recession to start with, along with the added benefit of costing taxpayers billions.
Of course, there is the whole healthcare revamp, which I haven't seen any evidence of yet, as well as the stimulus package, which all Republicans are claiming as failed in their election ads. How do they know it failed? What would have happened if there wasn't one?