Thursday, March 26, 2009
The Rich Don't Get It
One article today talked about Vick's (ex-dog fighting quarterback) bankruptcy plan would allow him to keep the first $750,000 of his annual pay. After that, a percentage would go to his creditors based on a sliding scale. Another article talked about some young wife divorcing her old husband for $100 million, stating she can't live on $53,000 a week. And I'm not even going to mention the various CEOs and execs making millions.
They just don't get it. If Vick is truly going bankrupt and can't pay his creditors, why should he still be getting $750,000 before paying his debts. There's a whole lot of folks doing quite well on less than $50,000 a year. If Vick was really repentant, why does he need three-quarters of a million to live on before he pays off his debts. And that silly divorcee? As much as I hate stupid lawsuits and such, in this case I hope the lawyers get it all and both her and her husband end up working at Walmart as greeters.
Next thing you know, some executive will be expecting to be paid a big reward for running his company into the ground -- oops, that's right, it's happening too.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Politics as Usual
It's nice to see nothing has changed. I wasn't expecting that much from Obama since Washington D.C. is what it is. It's nice to see that my lack of faith wasn't misguided. The country is throwing our money in huge heaping smelly piles at walls of problems in the hope that something will stick and coverup what's going on.
Some of that money gets to go to the executives who led their companies and our country into the fiscal morass. I'm not sure why a company wants to reward and keep the very people who destroyed it. However, since it's my money (and yours) they're using to pay off these folks, I guess it really is understandable.
I guess we're pulling a few thousand troops out of Iraq and sending dozens of thousands into Afghanistan. I'm hoping we can get some Soviet advisors to help us really mess that up.
I've got a house that I can't sell whose value has dropped down below what I owe on it. I never bought it to get rich, but I didn't expect it to become a millstone. I suppose I need to abandon it to get some of the political pork I keep hearing about. Doing my duty in paying my bills is starting to seem ever more stupid.
And why did the astronauts move out of a big space station into a tiny capsule because there was flying debris in the area. That chunk of space garbage had just as much chance of nailing the Soyuz capsule as it did the station. And what happens next year when we are dependent on the Russians to get folks to and from the station. Can you believe we have to pay the Russians to do space travel that the USofA can't do? Man, does that suck.
Labels: government
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Government
Somebody (actually my tax preparer) asked me what I thought about the new government and I mentioned I was for a certain amount of socialism in the government. When he asked what parts I was for, I had to stop and think about it awhile. And I've been thinking about it. Here's some of what I think should be looked into. Mind you, I'm not saying I know how to fix the problems, but here's some suggestions.
The major areas I'd like to see the government involved in are, health care, retirement, mass transit and education.
Health care - It has gotten to be too expensive. I think law suits play a big part in the cost. Too many tests and treatments done in defense of a possible law suit instead of for true health reasons. The cost of medicine; I got a tiny bottle of eye-drops the other day that cost $207 dollars a bottle, which lasted about three weeks. I also think health care is unbalanced. Why should one person with insurance get millions of dollars of treatment while someone else suffers because they can't afford a $500 pill regimen. I'd hate to make the decision but why should some insured 86 year old get hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical care to extend their life a month or two, while some out-of-work thirty-something mom goes without a treatment that could extend her life for years.
Retirement - I'm not saying retirement should be free of cost, but there needs to be some government oversight and guarantees of payment. Recently, the 401(k) plan looks to be a disaster. What was supposed to be a lifeline in retirement is turning out to be nothing more than a source of funds for the Madoffs and Stantons* of the world to use for their own enjoyment. For all those poor souls who had to count on a 401(k) for their retirement, instead, they'll now be looking forward to being a greeter at Walmart. The government should offer some kind of bottom line guarantee in a retirement fund where the principal money wouldn't be lost and you'd get at least some kind of interest in it. I wasn't too crazy about 401(k)s when they were making double-digit interest, and I'm less crazy now that they're making double-digit decreases.
Mass transit - I don't think in modern times that mass transit has ever been a money-making proposition. It has to be government supported. The state of mass transit in the USofA is embarrassing. I live near Saginaw, the northernmost good-sized city (about 50,000) in Michigan. The nearest train station is 45 miles away in Flint, which leaves most of the state even farther away. There are no bike paths for the most part. To get from where I live in the suburbs to Saginaw by bike, I'd be forced to travel on 45 - 55 mph roads with no shoulders and with drivers having no expectations of bikes. The local buses come no where close to where I live and even within the Saginaw business area, aren't all that convenient. (Honestly, even I don't expect bus service out by me, but it isn't completely out of the question.)
The government has to start laying the foundation for mass transit. It has to fund the trains and the rails for the trains to ride on. Gas taxes should go up to help pay for this stuff. Quit building new roads and get people out of their cars. There should be convenient bus service from outlying areas to feed to the trains. The schedules for all these should be inter-related. A bus should arrive at the train station before the trains leave, not after. In outlying areas, perhaps the buses could be combined with other functions. Package deliveries, road inspections, police surveillance, courier duties; all these could help make use of the buses. Eventually people would learn to depend more on them and ridership would go up.
Education - I just checked and the tuition at the small state-run university where I graduated in 1999 has doubled since then. The figures I found for 2000-01 are $109.65/hr and for 2008-09 are $201.80 . That's just nuts. What doubled in price (other than gas) since 2000? We need to make it easier for people (not just kids) to afford to go to secondary schools. It doesn't have to be a college or university. Some folks just aren't cut out for the college world. Vocational schools would be a better choice for them. And let's face it, for most people, a solid grounding in carpenter or electrician skills will pay off a lot better than a degree in English Literature.
There needs to be a wide range of affordable educational choices available for everyone. High school needs to do a better job in getting kids ready for the next level. Maybe a five-year high school's time has come. Life is more complex these days and many no longer have the basic skills for day-to-day life. In all honesty, I don't have any idea how to improve high schools, but the high school I graduated from 30+ years ago didn't do that bad of a job getting kids ready. Maybe we shouldn't be trying to improve things so much and just do what we've done in the past. I know the teenagers of today aren't the teenagers of my day, but something really needs to be done.
Those are some ideas I have about increased government involvement. The place I don't want it in is running businesses, either financially or otherwise. The government has no place in telling someone how to manage their company. The government does have a place in setting some minimum regulations about what the company has to do. Safety and health do need oversight. There does need to be some government oversight over hiring and firing procedures. Certain basic freedoms need to be protected. Where to draw the line is the hard part. But if a company is going to fail because of mismanagement, it should be left to fail or forced to change its management. There's no reason to artificially save a failing company only to see it fail in the near future.
*assuming this is read sometime in the future by someone for some reason, Madoff and Stanton are the names of two of bigger swindlers to steal people's money at the time this was written.
Labels: government
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
I Don't Know
About the only thing I do know is that our country and most of the world right now is in a mess. I have a house that won't sell at about half of what I paid for it. The value of my 401k looks like the price list of Macdonalds value meal menu and after insurance it costs me $150 to see an eye doctor for 20 minutes that results in a prescription for a $200 bottle of eye drops, that costs me $40.
What I don't know is why the above is going on or who to blame. The government of the last eight years blames the government of the previous eight years and of course the current government blames the previous government. Some people blame the rich for making too much money and others blame the poor for spending too much money. Some people put the blame on not buying American, while many others have made Walmart and its low-priced foreign crap one of the few business success stories in the USofA. Others blame the foreign governments for selling us cheap and shoddy merchandise while forgetting other Americans have accepted the cheap and shoddy merchandise to sell in their stores. Like I said, I don't know who to believe or to blame.
We spent over ten years in Vietnam with less than stellar results and have been in Iraq for all the wrong reasons overseeing seven years of disaster after disaster. The Soviet Union (much to our glee) spent over ten years in Afghanistan with nothing but dead bodies to show, and we're about to send another 17,000 American bodies over there to do the same. We're hoping for peace in a Middle East that has never know it, and I don't expect it ever will while more than one person is still alive to argue.
I also don't know why we put so much store in what celebrities say. That's not to say that many, if not most, are pretty smart folks. It's just that why do we care more about what some svelte actress or singer with designer shades has to say about foreign policy that some scholar who's spent his entire life studying the policy. Which brings me to the below comment I read on BBC after also reading about how the supposed leader of the Republican party has publicly kow-towed to a radio celebrity:
Former Bush speechwriter David Frum, writing on his website newmajority.com, bemoaned the prominence conservatives were giving to the radio host.
"With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence - exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we're cooperating!"
Labels: government
