17 posts tagged “politics”

And closer to 100 tomorrow, let the carnage begin..... I do not DO heat.

I am NOT going to be amused if we do. 90 outside means 110 or more inside when you live in a 1970's Mobile Home. I don;t even want to try to explain what happens when it hits 100 around here. There is not an A/C on the market that will not trip the circuit breaker and also keep it comfortable, trust me. I need to sell enough of the stuff in storage to be able to put a deck along full length of the front door side of the house so I can sleep outside this summer. After a full winter of $400 heating bills, I am NOT running the A/C until we hit critical mass!

I get paid tomorrow and this means I get to start my anti-cholesterol medication. I can hardly wait to see what side effects it provokes. The last week or so has been hard on me, I am still loopy, hoping that gets much better once I get my B12 built up. I voted in the Oregon democratic primary the day after I got my vote by mail because I was afraid of misplacing my ballot.

I'm not convinced the vote counting in Oregon is authentic because you can never find anyone who voted for the winners, but what the heck, I'm a thrill seeker. Most interesting thing on the ballot is ballot measure 53... the arguments for it say it's for the cats and dogs who get confiscated in drug raids, to free them up to be adopted....  to fix an error made in 2000 that stopped the cops from selling a person's assets before they were convicted of a crime. The facts are that is one paragraph of a quietly involved measure that if passed will reopen the doors to allow the cops to confiscate everything belonging to an arrested suspect and let it to be sold BEFORE a conviction. What the hell happened to innocent until proven guilty in Oregon? This is a prime example of the issues I have with Oregon politics... the voters info booklet chats up the poor doggies and kitties...and not one letter against in the booklet...all of them are FOR this piece of poop. Oregon has a large portion of uneducated, uninvolved voters, obviously someone is counting on that. I may start voting no on every damn thing they turn out here just to be spiteful.

I want to sell, and do the RV move but 11 homes have gone onto the market since they announced the space rent hikes, so I have to wait till some sell or get taken off the market to list, ( I figure it would be counter productive to add another home to the mass exodus) and I might as well be comfy while I wait....

BTW in my quest to season food with limited sodium I have discovered the joys that are called Wishbone Salad Spritzers! 15 sprays = 15-20 cal, and 10-80mg sodium. Veggies, meats, sandwiches and rice get quite tasty with 3-5 sprays...skip the margarine and salt. Most of us really do inhale too much added salt, I dare you to track your intake some time. It's scary even if you eat healthy, or think you do.

I have some spicy beans in the crockpot. I baked some Tilapia last night (if you do not like fishy fish, you would LOVE Tilapia), and I am making my world famous 3 bean Tabouli, well...okay so it's not world famous, but everyone who has tried it has loved it. For dessert I am making my no bake Chocolate mousse.

Chocolate Mousse

1 container Cool Whip
12 ounces quality semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup espresso or strong coffee
1 tablespoon Kaluha (optional)

In top of a double boiler, combine chocolate chips, coffee. Melt over barely simmering water, stirring constantly. Remove from heat while a couple of chunks are still visible. Cool, stirring occasionally to just above body temperature.

Fold the cool whip into the cooled chocolate.
Do not over work the mousse.

Spoon into bowls or martini glasses and chill for at least 1 hour. Garnish with fruit and serve.

(If mousses are to be refrigerated overnight, chill for one hour and then cover each with plastic wrap) WARNING: THIS STUFF IS RICH!

---------------------------------

3 Bean Tabouli

1 cup bulk Tabouli mix or 1/2 box of prepackaged
Mix with equal amount boiling water and let set til the water is absorbed

Open and drain 1 can each: Pinto or Piquinto beans, garbanzo beans, baby corn pieces, olives of choice. Mix into the tabouli once it is hydrated. Add diced onion to taste, 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley, and toss. Add 1/4+ cup of your favorite Vinegar and oil dressing, toss to coat, chill at least an hour before serving.

Obama and Clinton are wading through Oregon. So far Obama has mentioned Hillary only once, when discussing the gas tax vacation she and McCain endorsed to try to get votes, and only while explaining why he is not for it. Good for him, he stayed focused on who he has to beat, McCain, and much older man, a friend of GW Bush, and oldtimer in DC politics who offers more of the same old same old.

Clinton is promising Oregonians everything but a blow job, I guess that's Bill's job (insert a silent giggle here).... I'm sorry, but Hill looks mean, calculating and desperate. I assume she is all of these, I have never seen her in another light. I do not like her health care policy, forcing Americans to buy insurance the government has fixed the price on, with no outline of what it will be fixed at, also no justification on how forcing the insurance companies to lower prices is fair but forcing gas companies to limit at the pump prices is not.

My ideas on solving the health care crisis are rather different. The short version of the fix: I think the best bet is to offer education grants to medical students, and we pay the medical training costs of doctors, BSNs, PAs, NPs. radiologists, lab techs, and pharmacists in exchange for 1 year of public service for every year of paid education, then open government funded clinics and roaming rural service vans, place a doc and nurse in every one of them. First of all this would open higher education to thousands of talented people who cannot afford to go, secondly it would revive the pool of care providers, third it would provide care to those who do not have access to it now. This plan could be started immediately by offering to pay off student loans on those set to graduate in exchange for public service. The people seen pay $25 per office call, they pay flat rates labs and flat rate med costs.... pay set salaries to the staff while they get valuable on the job experience and we turn out seasoned medical care staff that can be hired in at a higher rate of paid to train newly graduated doctors. This is a win/win/win/win for all concerned because it opens up education, and health care access. It also encourages people to consider a medical education, rebuilding our supply of trained providers. I am betting it would make providers outside the clinic be more competitive on their pricing. OTW no one gets forced to do anything, with a low cost option for care in place, the others would HAVE to lower pricing to compete. Plus it would not be a bottomless hole, it would generate money to help fund it's self.... throwing money at insurance companies will never do that.

No one running has come up with anything like this, but there is more than one way to fix what is wrong. This way we would fix more than health care access, we would educate trained professionals who might otherwise wind up as fast food servers because of financial restraints regardless of how brilliant they are. And while we are at it, let's offer dental services in the clinics under the same kind of program too, dental health goes hand in hand with medical health and it is sometimes even more expensive.

The 2008 Orphaned Works Bills are creating a battle that wages on all over the internet, an excellent sample of this can be found here: http://mollykleinman.com/2008/04/16/wonks-and-librarians/

To amuse myself I've been researching the Orphaned Works legislation everyone is wetting their pants over, people are drafting letters and poised, ready to fight. I personally decided to take a different route, I went looking for where it might have come from, looking for who might have pushed for it, and who might be owed favors that might help get it over the hump before I write any letters. This is probably the most important thing I learned while battling politicians down in Coos Bay Oregon, "follow the money". It's a good lesson to learn. Anyway I ran into some interesting data while looking into contributions made to the politicians involved in the senate bill, don't you just love the internet?

First of all the senate version is also called "The Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 (S. 2913)  It was introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and lists Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) as a backer, I find this odd because Hatch appears to have drafted this originally. It's named after Shawn Bentley, who was an intellectual property counselor for Hatch for several years before he died from cancer.
Interestingly enough he also worked for years for AOL/Time Warner... who happens to be a major contributor to most of the people heavily involved in both versions.... $41,100 to Leahy alone, they might very well be interested in this passing, but they were not the biggest contributor.
 Other major contributors include a litigation attorney who defends naughty people who seem to infringe on patents and copyrights, Disney, and then there is "TechNet", an interesting little group of tech moguls, who do a lot of big money lobbying for "causes" that tend to make their members lots of money....  on the record, $81,491 went from Technet to Leahy alone last year, (John Doerr is at the top of the Technet heap), that's a lot of freaking gerbil food in my book. I find it interesting that Technet members are already profiting nicely from registries for health care, real estate and financial information, so IMHO they would be crazy to not be interested in making a bundle by creating a art registry. Technet is endorsing a move to lower patent violation penalties by Leahy and Hatch... info on that here . Now, if you read the OW legislation, both versions seek to lower and limit fines on copyright violations...in fact they read quit a bit like Technet's outline of the need to limit patent infringement lawsuits " for the good of humanity" of course. Ahem.... can I prove their donations to Leahy or Hatch are to encourage a push to get the Orphaned Works through and make money as a result? No, but it looks suspicious on a major scale to me.
I feel some deja-vue coming on.... and I suspect people are gonna need to do more than write letters to stop this, in fact I doubt it can be stopped. I haven't finished digging but there appears to be some major money going to the politician behind making these bills resurface, and some major players have to be involved, it could be Technet, or someone else who doesn't matter, not really. I doubt whoever it is, that they are use to investing large amounts of money and getting nothing in return. Maybe artists better start taking down their art and locking it up now.

I do have to say I haven't had this much fun since I tracked down the skinny on one particularly powerful Environmental Impact Study company in the mid-90's that was up to their elbows in obtaining way too much Federal grant money for performing environmental impact studies (prior to public works projects that seldom actually ever occurred) in financially depressed areas, especially along the west coast. I also found a link from them to suddenly appearing HIGH interest home loans in those areas that were defaulted on at a very high percentage rate, leaving them in control of large amounts of property, some of which they sold off at a loss to local small town politicians, some they kept... the value of all of it rose dramatically within a very short period of time after they got control of it. No one cared then and I doubt they do now, so I imagine that is still going on. I haven't seen anyone mention potential lobbyists for these bills yet so maybe no one but me cares about that either.

BTW, It's impossible to ignore the fact that Technet CEO John Doerr sits on the board of Amazon, Google, Intuit (quickbooks), and the investment company he is a partner in is the primary funding behind Zazzle, (sorta like cafepress). I also discovered that additional donations were also made separately from those by Technet to many of the politicians involved, in the name of John, his wife Ann, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers ( the venture capital group where John is a partner)... and under the name of everyone I have tracked so far that sits in power at Technet. The contribution numbers coming from this general direction will soar much higher than it appears on the surface..... Leahy may never need to buy gerbil food again.

It is always about following the moola, either where it's going to wind up, or who it's being taken from who has friends in the highest places, or who wants to make more. I'm just a nobody, finding this took info me a little over an hour, if I had the time and the desire to create a spread sheet and to cross reference contributions, names and connections the picture would get much scarier and clearer...and it might even lead in further reaching directions, but it is definitely food for thought and something to keep an eye on.

I am sure my daughter Ramie would admire the fact that John and his wife have shoveled a ton of money into backing stem cell research and lobbying for it. That is going to make someone a lot of money some day too.

Anyway I need to get some stuff done here at home.... more on yesterday after I accomplish something productive on the home front.

Okay so, first off...
Obama can't bowl worth a crap... few people in Illinois can, trust me I know, I was born there... I nearly killed a superior court judge myself with a bowling ball once... on accident (grin) True story, in fact when someone from Illinois tells you they cannot bowl, do not bully them into being a fill-in on your damn bowling team unless you want someone killed....remember you heard it here first, write it down so you do not forget it, it's important!

Secondly we have....
Royal Crown drinking, "blue collar" Hillary who can't work a simple jiffy mart vending machine but she has assured us she is not an elitist and she can run this country.... (cough)

And now, without a doubt, we ALL know  for SURE that neither Hillary nor McCain knows a thing about economics....

This is me, slapping myself on the forehead.... I just got one daughter straightened out about Clinton related things... and now the other one has gone mad on me.... and become a Hillary supporter. I have no idea where I went wrong, I promise never to do it again, and it may come down to me killing her to keep her from voting to cancel my well thought out vote in the Oregon primary. I did not change my registration from a card carrying independent since 1979 to (cough) a democrat (cough) to have a person I gave birth to negate my vote..... as the saying goes, I brought her into this world and by gawd I'll take her out of it if she insists on being a brain-dead moron.

Okay so I won't kill her, but I may be investing in some duct tape and a gag....she'll forgive me eventually....and if she doesn't Keegan will at least be amused by seeing his mom tied up and gagged on our primary voting day.

I really do think the world has gone mad, and the worst part is usually rational thinking people are willing participants in the craziness. I am utterly stupefied by the number of card carrying democrats who do not yet realize Hillary is a republican in a democrat suit. I suspect she and McCain are MUCH closer than even Bill realizes...  I am also quite sure it's "strickly business" and she is not having sexual relations with that old man.... heh, ewwww, I just got a visual that almost made me go blind!

Okay, back on track....
So we will be seeing McCain in Nov even though he wants to line the pockets of the oil guys with more profits this summer, (because dropping taxes does not insure prices will drop, in fact demand will rise and so will prices , so when the tax comes back on we will be paying more than ever, so this plan is not helpful) Let's say Hillary somehow manages to get the Democratic nomination slot, we will have our first republican vs republican presidential race in history! Not only that but if she loses to McCain she'll slime her way into the VP slot somehow, and wait for John to drop dead or help him get there if she gets tired of waiting, and that will be the ball game.

 Buenos dias mi amigos, Como esta?   ....just practicing, in case.... I'm beginning to think my 4th grade teacher was right she assured me that my ability to sing 10 Little Indians in Spanish would come in handy someday, maybe she was psychic.

Anyway, my hat's off to Obama for showing he has both common sense and an "elitist" understanding of basic economics, I don't want to trust either McCain or Hillary to balance the US budget after today. I sure would love to talk to Obama about some easy steps I and my 31 years of health care experience think he should consider in order to truly fix health care for everyone, but I imagine he is pretty busy these days dodging bullets from the two republicans he is running against.... ( I'd outline them here but Hillary would probably steal them and claim them as her own).

I will say one thing :
Life was a whole lot easier when I was an Independent, because I hated everyone running for office that had even a shot at winning.

I suspect she had McCain to "console" her.

Here is a video for provoking thought: You REALLY need to watch this video!

Gawd, politics just make me want to vomit some days....
It really makes you wonder why we bother to vote at all.

It also makes guys like Alex Jones, (and the things he outlined in the American Dictators Video I mentioned in my last post) look not quite so crazy.

....if you have no IRS approved dependents anyway....  for those coming into this late, this all started because I support 2 people I cannot claim by IRS standards... ( even though I gave birth to one of them) so add me to the bitter American list, and my thanks to Obama for noticing.

Last night at work I did some calculations after someone left me a link to a how-to article on how to live on $12k a year saying she immediately thought of me when she found it. I think in light of how I have felt health wise the last few months ( after several years of doing 87+ hour work weeks), I am going to try to seriously restructure my life in order to work smarter and a whole lot less, because frankly, what I have been doing is killing me.

I know my friends think I am crazy for saying hard work does not pay, but I have proof, sorta.
Using the H and R Block tax calculator found here. I determined federal taxes on several income levels, maybe it will help explain my frustration:

Using federal taxes only because Oregon taxes and SSI payment deductions are a pain to figure, but I added in all available Oregon state benefits based on the web info on qualifiers that are based solely on what you earn with no allowances for your actual cost of living, taxes or other mandatory deductions ( not that I would apply for these benefits, but they are there if I need them):

Why hard work doesn't pay when you have no dependents:

45 hour week (based on my current hourly pay of $11/hr)
I know all the totals on this one because this has been my ugly reality up to now:
$24,750- single- $1896 owed on federal tax alone
( in 2007 I worked extra and this amount rose to $28,987 and my fed tax rose to $3124) I will NOT do that again!
(spendable income after SSI, state and federal taxes = less than $17k and I qualify for nothing)

32hr work week (approx)
$17,500- $921 owed (but I would qualify for $139/month or $1668/year in food stamps) = yearly spendable income rises to $19,168 and I qualify for single person energy assist of up to $928).

28 hr work week (approx)
$15,000- $625 owed (but I would qualify for $159/month or $1908/yr in food stamps+ single person energy assist of up to $1078/yr) = yearly spendable income rises to $17,986).

23 hour work week (approx)
$12,000- $282 owed (but I would qualify for $159/month in food stamps, low cost housing worth $425/month/ $5100/yr plus energy assist of at least $1278/yr= $20,286 spendable income)

19 hr work week ( approx) *Working less than 1/2 time- this one is the mind bender*
$11,000- $105 owed (but I would qualify for $159/month in food stamps, low cost housing worth $425/month or $5100/yr, $1278 in energy assistance plus I qualify for free health care coverage/treatment) = yearly spendable income rises to $19,008 plus free health care)....meaning I would have more spendable money each year if I were making $11k a year and a burden to society than I do working 45 hours a week and making 24k a year. How can that be right????

I cannot explain why anyone who qualifies for food stamps or anything else funded by the state or federal government for the poor would ever owe taxes but it seems to be how it works, so they take from you and then give it back plus some. (This system of shuffling money around must employ a lot of someone's friends and relatives).

I have no idea why anyone with no dependents would feel like they benefit in any way from working full time... because you don't. You can buy more stuff, but you get beat up for it financially by the government, and it usually means you live life constantly in debt and without health care coverage so you almost have to ask yourself if being able to buy that flashy Iphone is worth it, ya know?
Personally, I'm gonna bare bones my work schedule, downsize my financial needs by moving into a travel trailer full time , since our gas is now at $3.59/gal I am gonna build myself one of these, and spend a big chunk of my summer close to home doing some sewing, or at the beach, or camping by the river.... I think I might feel better, I know my body is telling me it could use a time out. Then I'll decide if I am up to increasing my income again.... but you know, somehow I think I am gonna find it easy to get use to having a ton more time to do what I want to do.

He is gonna go out the way he came in... blindly entertaining us. My daughter is a tad upset that he said "Awesome speech" to the POPE. Heh, well now, maybe it WAS an awesome speech. You must be able to say that to the Pope, after all... he didn't act upset by it being said to him, and God didn't hit George with the big smackdown either... so it's all good. I actually find President Bush's silliness refreshing, he seems comfy with being simple in his thinking, it's who he is, I get the feeling if he could say so out loud he would tell us all that anyone who doesn't like the way he talks can kiss his pa-tootie.... being beat up in the press has not made him change so one must assume he is much more comfy being himself than Hillary is at being who she is. Of course if she was true to who she really is, no one would vote for her, so I suppose being a lying, sneaky conniving beotch suits her purpose for now. We gotta keep all these things in perspective ya know.

So while Ramie might need a sedative to calm her down over the awesome speech comment.... I find it comforting to know the new Pope has some awesome speeches in him, he DID have a hard act to follow.... and I think it's nice they are being appreciated.... I hope GW keeps his speeches light and fruity to the bitter end, it is exactly the comedy relief we need to offset the democratic primary bickering.... and the blithering of McCain.

I got my new voter registration card in the mail today, it's official...I'm registered as a democrat. So yay, I get to vote in the primary, of course being a registered member of a political party may cause me throw up if I think about it hard enough, (this is my first transgression since the 1980's), but at least I get to vote against Hillary in the primary. Pass me an air sickness bag please?

Life, dumbed down politics, a primary that is REALLY starting to make my head ache, Hillary Clinton and her constant distortions, struggling to make my ends meet, the IRS telling me that congress allows each Taxpayer $60/month in gasoline as a reasonable deduction, $45 a month for medicine and $20 a month in medical copays..... everything else has to be proven "and approved"! What freaking planet do these idiots live on? Surely not the one I live on. Why are these people not equally accountable to me on their spending of "my" money? If they are going to take 24% of what I earn, I should have a say in how they spend it and they should have to prove they used it the way I wanted it used, after all "I" earned it.

Now, regarding the Obama comment Hillary is clinging to.... the man is right, he spoke the truth, why is he being called elitist for recognizing those of us in the trenches, working low wage jobs and being beat up by the government tax-wise for trying to get ahead are indeed FED UP. Not one other politician has the guts to acknowledge our struggle, not one. The forgotten working class doesn't have much left to cling to thanks to politics as usual, something Hillary seems bent on delivering. That damn woman sure seems to have trouble with recognizing the truth.

Southern Oregon is a prime example of what Obama was talking about, low wage jobs, being taxed out of property ownership, mills and forestry down to nothing, no family wage jobs coming in to replace what's been lost, churches are filled to the brim with people who are losing hope, the second amendment is staunchly defended and trust me, a large number of southern Oregonians will never be disarmed peacefully, they do NOT trust the government, their guns are the only remaining defense they have any control of, they will not give them up quietly, ever. It's not a bad thing to acknowledge their struggle or their fears. Most of my life I was a card carrying pacifist, and it is because of the government I now own a gun and a concealed carry permit. The working poor and the struggles that have been created for them need acknowledgment from somewhere. Obama gets it, and he acknowledged it, I say good for him.

The Republicans cover the hinnies of their rich friends when in office, the democrats enable the under achievers by taxing the middle class to death to fund their hand out programs, and they line the pockets of their friends. Both parties have crippled this nation in their own way while offering no motivation to anyone to be more productive... and the forgotten middle class, those living at poverty level in spite of their best efforts have had enough of both options. I am one of these people. I barely make my ends meet, I can't get help from anywhere, my daughter is fighting MS and does not qualify for help from anywhere.... unless she gets pregnant or strung out on drugs, she is on her own. I do not understand why in America being willfully non-productive and irresponsible has more value than being an innocent victim of an incurable disease or that hard work and contributing does, it makes NO sense to me.

The government says you have to make under $14k a year to be worthy of help, at that level you almost have to be homeless in most cities. I use to be a home owner, and a business owner that employed 9 people. Now I am neither. I am now down to one job that pays just under $19k a year and I am moving into a 28' RV this year so I can cover my cost of living and have something left over after paying the power company, buying gas for my van and a few groceries. I qualify for no help from anywhere but I am expected to give up 24% of my income so the government can provide help to others, many of whom are able bodied and put nothing in, many of them never have. That 24% in taxes should drop me to a usable income that qualifies me for some kind of help but it doesn't. It doesn't matter what is left to me, what counts is what I make. Call me bitter but I am more than a tad unhappy about providing free health care and cash benefits to irresponsible single moms and meth addicts while my 7 year old grandson has no coverage and I cannot afford to buy it for him at $278/month. My boat is sinking and the way I see it only Obama offers me any hope of bailing it out.

My only other hope is to become worthy of help on purpose, by lowering my income below poverty level and start being a recipient instead of a struggling funder of programs.... because clearly the great American dream has become more about doing as little as possible so you can be paid for under achieving. The reality of this wears me out, on a daily basis. No wonder I am tired all the time.... the truly big mystery to me is... why anyone making under $25k a year bothers to work at all when not being productive pays so much better for little or no effort.

I wonder, what would happen to the pecking order of life in the US if every person making under 25K dropped themselves to part time employment making under $14k a year in taxable income and started cashing in by claiming their long overdue break from the struggle to survive for a change? Yes indeed, WWED?