Category: Mount Vernon

Taxes from every angle…

July 16th, 2008 · Daniel · Illinois, Legislation, Mount Vernon, Politics 2 comments - Tags: anger, gas, government, Haliburton, income, prison, property, sales, tax

Have you ever sat down and thought about how many taxes you pay?

Think about it: property taxes, income taxes, sales taxes, gas taxes, bed (hotel) taxes, and on and on and on…

How do we survive? I mean, all levels of government keep taxing us from before we get paid, to yearly taxes on our homes, to taxes on our gas to get to our jobs, to sales tax on everything. I just keep thinking about how much money is given to the government by an average person and I am amazed.

Have you ever figured up the amount you pay yearly? It’s astounding. I did a guesstimate of what the government takes from us over the course of a year, and I was shocked. I won’t share the amount here for personal reasons, but we wound up at about 25%.

Can you belive I work 10 hours per week so our government can exist? So they can spy on me. So people can starve on the streets daily. So our borders can be wide open. So they can criminalize everything and keep Haliburton building prisons. So the prison-guard unions can keep influencing to make more laws to keep those prisons full. So we can invade other countries that have been at war for thousands of years and think we can solve it.

I’ll stop now before I really get upset.

You send your job across the ocean daily

July 16th, 2008 · Daniel · Illinois, Mount Vernon, Politics 5 comments - Tags: America, China, economy, jobs, K-Mart, overseas, sacrifice, Verizon, Vodafone, Wal-Mart

Lots of people today like to bitch about how all of the good old American jobs are hard to find, going overseas, etc. Well, guess what? You are the one supporting China, lowering wages, and ruining our country.

It’s sad but true. Every time someone shops at Wal-Mart, K-Mart, or any other place that sells goods made overseas they are shipping our dollars across the ocean. You are supporting some little asian kid making $.03/hour and depriving an American of a job.

“But everything is like that…” “But I can’t afford to shop anywhere but Wal-Mart…”

Can you afford to live in a third-world country? That’s where we are headed. Think about it – no manufacturing, corporations owning farming, lazy population, tech jobs moving overseas, and more I’m sure I’m missing.

What do we have left? White-collar jobs? Not after everything leaves. We will become China just to survive. Talk about the most surprising flip ever, and it is coming. Thanks to our laziness and inability to see the obvious screwing of ourselves we will soon be hosed.

Perhaps we should all wake up and quit sending our money overseas? Maybe quit sending half of your cell-phone bill to Europe? Yes folks, 1/2 of Verizon Wireless is owned by Vodafone, a European mobile company. Good job America!

This is going to require some serious thought and planning on your part to stop supporting other countries, but it can be done. So, will you continue screwing yourself, or make the tough sacrifices now and save our future?

Wednesday Podcast 7-9-2008

July 10th, 2008 · Daniel · Illinois, Mount Vernon, Podcast No comments - Tags: bunny, Daniel, death, Emily, fit, Kevin, Murph, news, Playboy, Wii

Here’s a return-to-form podcast about current news and some upcoming things. I generally come off pervy, a bunny almost dies, and other, lesser things.

Thank you, patient viewers

July 1st, 2008 · Daniel · Illinois, Mount Vernon No comments - Tags: blog, Daniel, Illinois, Mount, RSS, stats, Vernon, Voyles

I just wanted to make a short note to thank everyone who has put up with my design changes, experiment(s) with advertisements, and sometimes lacking new content.

As of late, I have decided that the theme you see now will likely stay for quite a long time, with no ads planned for any time soon. I have been trying to come up with new content daily during the week, but sometimes I don’t feel the inspiration from any news or topics to write about. Perhaps that is the biggest benefit of a nothing blog – no content is okay sometimes.

Finally, I would like to let everyone know how our stats are holding up…

Since surveillance is easy, do it for us – US Government

June 27th, 2008 · Daniel · Illinois, Legislation, Mount Vernon, Politics, Technology One comment - Tags: Act, bill, camera, card, Columbia, credit, debit, domestic, Facebook, Freedom, government, illegal, Illinois, internet, IRS, Louis, Mount, myspace, Patriot, Saint, Senate, spy, STL, surveillance, TSA, Vernon

It seems that more and more the US government is surveilling (is that a word?) and controlling the public by ever increasing leaps and bounds. Traffic cameras, the Patriot Act, TSA, domestic wiretaps, internet tracking, etc.

There are more cameras watching you in a day than you know. Heck, if you are a member of MySpace or Facebook, you provide the government with more information about your life and networking than you realize. The best ‘feature’ added so far is the ‘tagging’ of photos. drag a square around friends’ faces and then put in their name. Facial recognition anyone?

Yes, that is pretty far out there, but so were electric cars.

Back to task – All of these things and more make surveillance extremely easy for anyone, especially a powerful and ominous force like the government. I don’t think things are as bad as the crazy conspiracy theorists do, but the opportunities are there.

Unfortunately, the government has realized that the opportunity is there as well, and now they are asking companies to help them right along. Here is a snippet from the Senate summary: