Tom Foolery

The most simple way to describe the events that lead to the 2008 market collapse: The last 100 players drafted in the MLB are moved to a new league where the top 10 are called “superstars.” The remaining 90 are moved to yet another league and the top 10 are also called “superstars.”

This new league sought out new team owners and told them they would be buying “pure superstars.” The sellers then took out huge bets that this new league would fail.

Fans bought tickets to watch these new “superstars” but came to realize these were bush leaguers hyped up to be the new Griffey’s and Pujols’.

Fans stopped buying tickets, owners couldn’t pay their players, sellers demanded the new owners pay off their debt, owners go bankrupt, sellers collect their winning bet against the new league, players are jobless and broke, owners beg the gov’t for a bailout, players on unemployment are called welches and lazy, sellers apply for bailout money to cover their “losses” from the loans the owners couldn’t afford to pay back, the gov’t pays off the sellers losses by borrowing money from the players, the sellers turn their loan into a profit and pay back their debt at near zero interest rates, players ask for a tax cut and get denied, sellers claim the gov’t are regulating their industry too much and demand they be allowed to regulate themselves because they have more incentive to root out bad lending policies…

TruGreen Is AWFUL!

You might be looking at your lawn and thinking, “Maybe I should call TruGreen! They have great commercials and those lawns on TV are gorgeous!”  In this case, the saying stays true because the grass is definitely greener on the other side.

I used TruGreen last year. During my time with TruGreen I never met with or saw a single TruGreen associate; not on my property and not anywhere. I would come home from work with a few signs strewn about my property hidden behind hundreds of dandelions and weeds that overshadowed the bushes in size and scariness.

I would call TruGreen and ask about all the weeds and they kept telling me it would take time and that my lawn would eventually fill in and the weeds would die out.

By the time August rolled around, and I had 18” tall dandelions growing overnight; I had enough. I had complained about the weeds several times throughout the year and not once did it get better; in fact, it got worse - much worse.

I cancelled my service with TruGreen and told them how disappointed I was with them and how awful it was that I never walked around my property getting a personalized plan (like they claim in the commercials). I told them about all the weeds and how yellow and brown my grass was and all they could muster was, “How often do you water the lawn? If you don’t water it enough your grass will die.”

Well, TruGreen, I had a buddy at the sprinkler company set up my clock and he put me on a schedule that fed my lawn daily. When I told TruGreen this, they reverted to, “You’re watering your lawn too much and feeding the weeds.” I was beyond fed up at this point and told them how poor their service was and that I would go out of my way to make sure nobody in my neighborhood ever used them.

This year, I will be following a fertilizer and weed killer schedule that you can get customized for your region for free from Scott’s. You can do this for a fraction of the cost of TruGreen and you’ll get more personalized service from the gang at the local home improvement store than I ever got from TruGreen.

Welfare for the Wealthy

It’s been a couple years since our government blindly handed out trillions of dollars to Wall Street. Now we sit here looking at an enormous deficit and the budget cuts getting the most attention are Social Welfare programs like Medicare an Social Security.

Last I checked, it wasn’t those programs that caused the economy to collapse and it wasn’t those programs that cause millions to lose their jobs and homes. It was Wall Street gambling on fictional “assets.”

Now that we have to balance this out of control budget and cut back on spending, we look to programs that benefit the poor and middle class?!

Why do we keep protecting the people who caused this disaster? Why are we letting our government off the hook for lending trillions to off-shore companies that pay no taxes?! Why the fuck are we lending billions to Bahrain, Mexico, and South Korean banks and then looking to cut Medicare?!?

This isn’t just the fault of our elected leaders. We all had a hand in this, however small. So why is the burden of recovery placed on those who need it the most?

I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if we let Wall Street fail back in 2008. Would they have declared bankruptcy and come out a year later operating in a more refined and streamlined business? Would all those people have lost their jobs while the world’s economy collapsed?

The only glimpse of that alternate reality we have is Chrysler. They had to declare bankruptcy, they shed some dead weight, and now they are a whole new company - finally listening to the consumer rather than making 6 identical cars with different tags.

Politicians today are nothing short of blood sucking leeches. They prey on our fears and pit Americans against each other with outrageous claims like the myth that the Democrats Health Care Bill is going to create Death Panels and that Barack Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii.

Politicians know they can get away with it because we keep re-electing these clowns. At the end of the day, should I really be shocked when we get clowned?

Just Plain Silly

This “Birther” nonsense is so far out of control. Sworn testimony by State and Federal Officials, Doctors, classmates, family, random strangers, on top of two newspapers that printed the birth announcement, and oh yeah, a Certification of Live Birth.

And let’s not forget that not one shred of evidence to the contrary has been provided. What happened to the burden of proof belonging to the prosecution? I guess we can alter our entire Judicial System when it’s convenient while berating those who do it for their own reasons.

These “birthers” have created something out of nothing and have now wasted tax payer dollars and legislative time and energy discussing a fake controversy they created.

How is this any different than claiming George Bush isn’t a citizen because he was conceived overseas and since life apparently begins at conception, then his life began overseas and as a result he’s not a US Citizen? We can refuse to accept his documents and the testimony of everyone around him. Then we can create a new law in each state that will allow us to circumvent the constitution by requiring proof that all Presidential candidates were conceived on US soil. This will be the “conceiver” movement and to get it started, all we have to do is reject all logic and embrace our inner ignorance.

Sponsor

So today I finally signed up to sponsor a child with Children International. I usually avoid these volunteers in the streets of New York because I’m too focused on my destination and I’m not thinking about helping others.

So for the next month or so, I’m going to skip 2 meals a month, save that money and send it to this organization so they can get that child medical care and some clothes to wear.

It’s easy to complain about all the things we don’t have when we have so many things to complain about. I whine about having to cook dinner after a long day of work while these kids just wants something to eat, period.

$22/month may not sound like enough to make a difference, but any improvement in their lives is going to be so much more profound than I can imagine.

Threw the Baby Out

In reading the CBO’s report on Paul Ryan’s budget proposal, I realize I may have thrown out the baby with the bath water.

While I don’t agree with many elements of his budget proposal, it would be remiss to ignore the positive and clarify the misleading interpretations.

The first point I missed on was the manner in which Ryan wants to cut Medicare and Medicaid. I admit, it was a bit “reactionist” to assume that current beneficiaries of these programs would immediately lose their benefits. That is far from true. Under Ryan’s plan, there is a decently long window of eligibility for current and soon-to-be beneficiaries which allows them to retain their benefits.

This doesn’t help the poor or disabled who have no chance of affording health care. There will always be people who rely on these programs so I hope we don’t stop at slashing funding and that we continue to work towards improvements in our health care system to protect patients and control outrageous costs.

The burden of righting our economic ship should be the responsibility of us all. We can’t ask the largest portion of our country to make sacrifices as profound as higher health care costs now (which may or may not reduce costs in the future) and at the same time cut taxes for corporations. If we are going to fix this, everyone has to contribute fairly and transparently. No more ambiguous tax loopholes and offshore tax shelters for these companies. I know the argument against this is that they’ll take their business overseas and we will lose jobs, but if that is the mentality of these supposed “American” companies, then we have all been duped by the CEO’s who claim to be “in it” with the rest of us.

We can’t afford to gamble again, not on the stock market and not on the hopes that these huge corporations will do what’s right by their country rather than their shareholders. I don’t know the answer to fixing the area around corporate taxation, I just know who I can’t trust with a giant bag of money. At the end of the day, these corporations are not much more efficient at fiscal management than our own government, after all, the highest economic positions in our government are held by former big bank executives.

All I’m saying is we can’t be too careful.

Cowards

Why are we so afraid to tax the rich? Not the $250,000/year “rich” but the $2,500,000/year RICH!

99.90% of Americans earn less than $2,000,000/year, yet when anyone mentions raising taxes on the rich the fear is that we’ll all lose our jobs and the cost of goods will skyrocket.

Why do we pretend the rich are our best friends and they’re so generous with their money? Since Reagan dropped the tax rate on the top tier of earners to an all time low what have we seen?

A rapid, unnatural, and unsustainable expansion of our economy that came crashing down on our heads. Millions lost their jobs and homes.

How did we respond? We have money to banks (Bush AND Obama) who then paid off their debt to other banks and continued to foreclose on homes while searching for other cost cutting measures.

Did they create jobs with that money? Nope!

Did they hold off on foreclosures until the economy righted itself? Nope! They rubber stamped foreclosure after foreclosure and blamed the jobless for being so lazy.

I’m not saying taxing the rich would solve our problems; that’s far from the truth. Our government is going through the same rapid, unnatural, and unsustainable growth that our economy went through. The government will self-implode if they don’t cut spending.

In the meantime, sacrifices have to be made. But why should the middle and lower class bear that burden? The middle and lower class don’t represent us in the government.

In 2008, the average wealth of a US Senator was just under $14,00,00. The House average came in just over $4,500,000.

We should all be a bit concerned that the truly RICH are the same people who refuse to impose taxes on themselves and their RICH friends. They’re trying to appear down to earth and normal as they convince is that taxing the wealthy is backwards economics, that it’ll do more harm than good.

Why are we so afraid to rebel against our aristocratic government and so quick to protect the RICH?

That’s Customer Service??

My email to Mint.com Customer Service:

I’d like to add my other bills, such as my cell phone, car insurance, and cable bill. I only see an option to add financial accounts by searching for a bank. How can I add these accounts if there is no bank associated with them?

Mint.com Customer Service Response:

Dear David,

Thank you for taking the time to contact Mint’s Customer service.

Basically, you will need to have an online access to these accounts before you can access them through Mint.com.

We appreciate your patience. Have a blessed day!

Yours sincerely,
Leonida Y.

Basically, I have no fucking clue how this helps me!

Calculated Decision

When looking at new career opportunities we tend to look at two things:

1) Salary 2) Career Growth/Opportunity

What needs to be added into this is an equation.

Take your total time off available. This includes:

• Sick
• Personal
• Vacation
• Ma/Paternity
• Disability (short term)

Subtract the days off available with the new opportunity. Keep in mind most new employees are not eligible for Ma/Paternity and Short Term Disability right off the bat.

Now divide your annual salary by 2,080 as this represents the average work hours per year. That number is your hourly rate.

Multiply your days off difference by 8 (hours per day).

Multiply that number by your hourly rate.

Add this number to your current salary.

If this number is higher than the new offer, you’re losing money.

If this number is lower than the new offer, calculate the percent difference.

Would you change jobs for that? If it’s too close to decide, consider the other variables like new work clothes or additional travel.

At the end of the day we get this:

((Current PTO - New PTO) * 8) * (Current Salary/2080) + (New Travel Costs - Current Travel Costs) + (New Wardrobe Costs - Maintaining Current Wardrobe Costs) = Salary increase required to maintain existing financial habits

Make sense?