The debate last night on CNN was pretty good, although there were quite a few aspects that I didn’t care for at all. Mostly trying to limit the answers to 30 seconds. For many of the questions, especially those of the economy and how to fix it, 30 seconds just isn’t enough. You have to give some background information, and explain things that are basically a taboo on the mainstream news, such as the Federal Reserve, and our Monetary Policy. For our Foreign Policy, 30 seconds just isn’t enough to explain why we have enemies in the Middle East now, and why exactly our Foreign Policy has been flawed for decades.
Another thing that I dislike about the debates, is how they give each candidate a different question. Let’s ask one question, give each candidate 3-5 minutes to answer, and then move along to the next subject. As well as wasting time on silly this-or-that questions.
The title is about as sarcastic as you can get, obviously. I just now got a chance to opt-in to having health insurance again at work for the new enrollment period, and even given the things that I’ve seen that can go wrong, I just can’t see it worth getting, again. The increase over last year’s premiums are 19.00%! Umm, I thought the Obama Administration praised the Obamacare plan so much as to say that we could see relief in healthcare costs, ha!
It’s obvious that the healthcare system was (still is) broken in our country, but the solution is not more government. Healthcare is setup in a way that nearly everyone that goes in for treatment has insurance, and the doctors exploit this by charging the maximum allowed under the law. I’ve seen this, and know it’s true by some of the doctor visits that Mom went to. She had no insurance, and always saw a decent price reduction by having to pay cash. I have some family that go to the doctor every other week it seems, and if you take a scenario like that, apply it to most of America, no wonder costs are exploding like they are. Insurance wasn’t made for that. It’s meant to be used for something catastrophic. But the solution isn’t to force everyone to have insurance, it’s to get the government out of it, and get back to the way it used to work, where doctors would charge the least they could instead of the most.
Not even close. I know this is put out by the GOP, so the potential argument is there that it’s one sided, but given all the news and headlines pertaining to unemployment continuing to rise despite the passage of that horrible stimulus bill, I just can’t see where it can be said that it was a success. I guess it did succeed in a few ways that you don’t hear of, like further enslaving the states to the Federal Government by accepting funds that came with promises of future obligations, unaffordable obligations, that the states will now be on the hook for. It that case it worked, because our state lawmakers took the bait, hook, line and sinker, just to fill there their then gaping budget holes.
And all the talk about how it saved our country from another Great Depression, give me a break. It’s impossible to make claims of what would have happened had they not passed it, and when the interest finally comes due on the explosive debt, we can say then whether it was truly worth it or not.
Once upon a time, there was job security in a government job.
That’s no longer the case. The layoff ax has hit public sector payrolls with force as states wrestle with massive budget shortfalls. Since August 2008, some 231,000 state and local government jobs have disappeared — 22,000 last month alone, according to federal data.
The majority of the cuts are on the local level, which at 14.4 million workers is nearly three times the size of the state workforce. Plus, unlike at the federal level, most of these cuts come from the ranks of teachers, cops, firefighters and social service workers. Source
This comes as no surprise for me. I actually predicted just by seeing how much in the red local cities, counties, and even the state’s budgets all seem to be lately, that this would be coming sooner rather than later. As an employee of a semi-state agency, there’s becoming a good chance that I may very well be affected by all of the scrambling that there is and will be later to fill these budget gaps. Of course there’s no telling how things end up playing out as the year progresses, but it will certainly be interesting to see what the end results of these cuts will be for the services that are provided to the public in towns and cities across the nation.
It’s hard not to be concerned with seeing the unemployment rate rise month after month. Just today the numbers were released bringing the national percentage up to 9.5%, a 26 year high. You hear all of these predictions like, “expecting to only see another 1 million jobs lost for the rest of the year” and you really can’t put any faith at all in the economists’ predictions. They naturally change their predictions often, and when the single month of June alone was -467k, it’s hard to imagine only another 1 million jobs will be lost over the next 6 months.
Georgia is sitting at a 9.7% unemployment rate as of May 2009, and my county, Whitfield County, had a rate of 12.4% for May. Not as bad as some of course, but that’s nothing at all to be happy or proud of. My county’s major industry was carpet, so when the housing bubble popped, so did things here. I won’t even bring up budget deficits.
I’ve been thinking all along that Washington is going about the “bailouts” of the banking industries and the auto industries completely unfair. Whether you are for or against the bailouts of either sector, I think that should be one thing you can agree with. Banks have received money numerous times, CEOs still intact, wasting millions of taxpayer money in bogus bonuses, etc., while the auto industries are being treated in a completely different manner.
Today Rick Wagoner (CEO of GM) was asked to step down, a man that worked his way from the bottom to the top, working for $1/yr salary, and obviously wanting to see General Motors succeed. He sat in front of Congress for hours getting grilled when he could have easily stepped down. That is a man that wasn’t there just for the pay, but one that wanted to see a turnaround in his company to become a viable company once again. While the CEOs of Citi, and others, are still being paid their handsome salaries and are no where near being profitable businesses. This doesn’t set well with me.
The video below explains the graph in more detail. This is why I personally just can’t come to support any stimulus bills, stimulus checks, or any bailouts. Even though they may seem like they’re needed and can help, it looks to me like it just pushes off one problem and makes it become another a little later on.
Interesting times ahead, especially with the news from California today.
So today it was announced that the debt clock has officially ran out of digits to track our national debt. I’ve seen the debt figure before online, but I was astounded to see that each family’s share is currently ~$86k.
The Durst Organization says it plans to update the sign next year by adding two digits. That will make it capable of tracking debt up to a quadrillion dollars.
Now that is surely some positive thinking, setting the clock up for showing a potential a quadrillion dollars worth of debt?! 
I’m not one of those people that are paranoid about every little thing that happens. But I am one that tries to look ahead at what the outcome could be and/or what something can lead to. This is one that I’ve read about a little while back, and find it a little wierd how you never hear a thing about it. Especially w/ the upcoming elections and all of that jazz, you not once hear any of the candidates on either side state their stance on this.
First, the article..
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You only have to do a very few things right in life — so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.
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