Category: Politics

Damn politicians. No, really.

April 29th, 2009 · · Family, Illinois, Legislation, Mount Vernon, Politics No comments - Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My employer has laid off no less than 1/3 of its employees. Yesterday morning we had meetings with Man-Tra-Con and unemployment people. Lawyers are negotiating.

Some of you may ask why, if you know me very well you know why – DAMNED politicians.

I’m not talking about elected officials that are upstanding (in Illinois?) and try to do their jobs properly. I’m referring to the jerks that run this state. They have successfully raided the Underground Storage Tank Fund to the point that payments for work already completed in good faith and approved for payment by the IEPA are almost two years behind.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but if I let any debt go for a month I’ll be receiving phone calls daily at all hours. Apparently the state of Illinois can rape funds and move them around however they like. I’m sorry, these are called sweeps by the politicians so that the public doesn’t notice as much when the funds are stolen to pay for another social hour in Springfield.

Granted, these sweeps happen all of the time, but this time they are causing my employer serious issues that may even include closure. I consider the people I work with to be friends, and my friends are not getting paid and/or are laid-off thanks to flipping politicians ‘legally’ stealing money to go to pet or pork projects. It’s bullcrap.

For those who don’t know, the UST Fund is used to do a number of things. The most common that I’m aware of is removing/replacing petrol tanks from gas stations and cleanup of these sites so that there is no contamination. This keeps land ‘clean’ so that it can be sold and used safely. What happens when businesses that clean up these sites are all forced to close thanks to politicians?

I’m willing to wager that the politicians are still getting their paychecks and that welfare is continuing to be doled out.

Why do we put up with the format wars?

January 5th, 2009 · · Entertainment, Legislation, Politics, Technology 2 comments - Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Compact disc, mp3, tape, SuperAudioCD, DVD,etc.

We as a culture enjoy music. This is something that I think most anyone can agree is a fact. Now, types of music are a completely different matter for another forum. Some prefer rap, country, rock, religious traditional, or some other type or sub-type of music that could take forever to list here.

What I am pondering as I write this blurb is how we keep allowing ourselves to be forced into the latest and greatest new medium for enjoying the music we purchase. I caught the tail-end of cassette tape’s life, and purchased several Garth Brooks albums on that medium. (Yes, I like his music and have about everything produced. Still missing the McDonald’s CD if anyone knows where I can aquire one.) When compact disc came out, I purchased everything again in that medium.

The argument here would be that compact disc was a vast improvement in sound quality and lasts much longer than tape can/could. I’m willing to accept that to a certain degree, however why do I have to pay again for the ability to listen to music I already paid to listen to? I wouldn’t mind if I could ‘trade-in’ my cassettes and pay a small fee for the cost of the CD or whatever the new medium is, but paying the same or more for a catalog album seems ridiculous to me.

Compact discs have a negligible production cost (somewhere around a couple bucks last I checked), but yet they are continually priced at a 500% profit. How much of that is seen by the artist? I would wager not much. I understand that some cost is associated with studio costs and promotion, but I doubt it takes quite the markup that we see as consumers.

Now, we are faced with the mp3 upgrade. This new round lends itself to at least one quandry unseen previously – ripping from CD to mp3. There are a few caveats to this process, the DMCA and sound quality.

Continue reading »

Now that the election has subsided…

November 11th, 2008 · · Politics 9 comments - Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Some are happy, some are sad. Stereotype spam is flowing everywhere. I can’t keep track of all the black-stereotyped emails, sms, and mms messages I have gotten over the past week. Some were pretty funny, and some were just mean.

I have to say that with Obama as president, our foreign image will improve greatly. The man has an awesome personality and relates to most anyone. As Kevin is fond of saying, he is “One smooth brother”. He’ll probably even give us warm fuzzy feelings as the economy continues to spiral downward.

John McCain might have been able to get the same results, but his campaign was over at least when he picked that tart from Alaska as his running mate. There are elections when you can just tell that the party has already conceded the election, and this was conceded by the republicans a long time before November 4th. It is sad but true.

Unfortunately, I think that Obama’s policies, given his inexperience, stand a good chance of disaster. I hope I am wrong.

My point with this post is that we can’t seem to get a well-rounded candidate. We need a president who is a great leader, listens to the people, and has the country’s interests at heart. As it stands now, we elect the lesser of two evils. Whatever happened to the president being a leader, and using a support cast (cabinet, etc.) to help with foreign policy, ambassadors to help foreign relations, and all of the other positions of the executive branch?

Continue reading »

Burn Baby, Burn! (the economy)

September 26th, 2008 · · Illinois, Legislation, Mount Vernon, Politics 3 comments - Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

There is a lot of hype over the economy these days. Some confirm that it’s horrible, some say it isn’t too bad (incorrect and in the minority).

Fortunately, the government seems to be thinking twice about propping-up the financial markets. Good for them, although I have faith that dollars will win and a bailout will happen. It really ticks me off that the government is willing to go into more debt to salvage private business. Sounds dangerously close to communism to me, but I’m only a high school graduate, what do I know.

I was going to avoid this discussion altogether until I came across this quote from CNN.com:

“Credit is the mother’s milk of the modern economy. The tighter the credit spigot closes, the worse the economy is going to be,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com. “Businesses operate on credit. If they can’t raise money, then very soon they won’t be making payroll.”

I take issue with the whole bit, but especially ‘Businesses operate on credit.‘ If that is truly the case, then they are in far worse shape than anyone realizes. A company should not be depending on credit to make payroll.

Continue reading »

How can anyone vote for Obama OR McCain?

September 9th, 2008 · · Legislation, Politics 2 comments - Tags: , , , , , ,

How can a citizen of these United States vote for either of these two? Let’s ignore semantics – I know they can vote for them because this is still a semi-free republic.

My point is that neither of them lives a normal life, nor have they. Both candidates pander to votes and refuse to take a stand on anything.

The extremely sad fact is that both will get a majority of their votes from idiots who blindly follow party lines. Perhaps at one time Republicans stood for the moral conservative views, but no longer. They now give wishy-washy answers about abortion and many other topics. Democrats used to be for the little man, but now they are just rich men and women who tax-burden us like Republicans give breaks to corporations.

Gone are the days of the founding political ideals, and now we are left with idiots running the country into the ground.

Please don’t waste your vote on either of the duopoly candidates. Go vote for someone you actually support.

The only real way to ‘throw your vote away’ is to keep these to sides of the coin in charge. Heck, they are more on the same side now.