Ken Nelson

Moron

Steny Hoyer seems pretty stupid, you know, for an educated, “elite”, kind of fellow.

Military members are under paid, relative to risk and responsibilities. Now is NOT the time to cut their pay.

Federal employees, however, are over paid and except for paper cuts at very little risk.  We need to not only cut their pay, but also cut their numbers, their duties, and their reach.

Hoyer is of age to have served, but never did.  I don’t require it in order to speak about military issues, but this level of stupidity rises to the point where the man’s qualifications should be questioned.

His is a classic Democratic stupidity. HIs “constituency”, Federal district workers, aren’t happy, and he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the country in his efforts to please them.  What is so stupid about it is that the Federal workers, if asked, wouldn’t want what is happening to them to also happen to members of the military.

Pssstt…. Hey Steny… there’s a WAR ON.

Let them eat…

Not everybody has to go through this crazy airport security…. Nancy Pelosi doesn’t. Tim Geithner doesn’t. John Boehner doesn’t. And didn’t on his last trip.

I don’t mind exempting pilots. But politicians don’t deserve, nor should expect, special treatment.

Especially ones like Geithner and Pelosi, who are more dangerous to the country than the typical Muslim extremist.

I’m tired of them thinking they are so special when they are clearly just a bunch of morons and political hacks.  And in that I include Boehner, who should have been savvy enough to NOT use special TSA favors.

 
Someday, the TSA will bloat up like mike cheeks right now.

I’d just like to remind everybody swooning over George W. Bush in recent days that the TSA was created by him.   The massive TSA is one of the many large government turds W. left with us.

Just a reminder… you know…. so you REMEMBER that he sucked too, just not as bad as the current Fool-in-Chief.

Buried in the ObamaCare 2000+ page law was a provision that basically makes all people in the nation part of a huge double entry accounting system so that the IRS can verify that everybody reports what they sell because you have reported what you bought.

Right now, if I hire a non-corporation for a service, and the service costs more than $600, I have to file a 1099 reporting the transaction.  The law expands that requirement to corporations and requires me to report for every PRODUCT that purchase from a vendor where the total purchases for the year from that vendor exceed $600.

So… if I eat at Applebees, and Famous Daves, both owned by the same company, and spend more than $600 dollars there in a year, I have to report it.

Or if I go on a road trip to sell my software and stay in five Choice hotel chains for, say $120 a night.

Or virtually any air travel. Oh.. and the rental car.

And any computer I buy.

I file one with the IRS and I have to know where to send other copy for each vendor I buy more than $600 stuff from.

My company files, currently, maybe ten 1099′s a year.  For services like technical writing, janitorial service, that sort of thing.  If they aren’t a corporation. Under the new system, off hand, I’d say I’ll have to consolidate and file perhaps 100.  And these 100 are a LOT harder than the janitor we see every week, or the tech writer I conference call.  This is  A HUGE increase in work, basically because the Government has now impressed my company into their new national double entry accounting system.

This is so stupid. Why would they do it?  Because they want money. As tax rates rise, compliance drops. As compliance drops, the force used by the IRS rises. It is a nasty game, and we have to break ourselves of it.

Set taxes at fair, low, levels. Probably half, at least, what they are now. Have whatever government that funds – and make it do less, but do what it does well.

Read the full report card here...

It almost makes me glad my house flooded, losing my DVR, forcing me off to cable hinterlands in hotels for months so that I’ve MISSED most of the games.

Oh well, at least their cheerleaders are still pretty.

Latest example… a bag of “votes” found in Bridgeport, CT.

Long, steep, escalator, Woodley Park Stop, Red Line, DC Metro.
Imagine this thing sliding free for 18 seconds…

The DC Subway system seems proud of a 90% escalator safety rate…. that’s right 90%.   If you frequent the DC metro, as I did when I lived there, that means it is WHEN not IF an escalator will fail on you.

Quantitative Easing is just another way to get back to the crazy debt overload we mistakenly saw as a “strong” economy

San Francisco will be banning toys from fast food meals.

It’s a broadside against McDonald’s Happy Meals. The company said it was “extremely disappointed” by the vote.

In a RARE bit of sanity, the Mayor of San Francisco says he will veto the bill, but that is probably him just doing politics since it was passed with a veto proof majority.

A trip to McDonald’s for a Happy Meal and a romp in the playroom should not be illegal.   This is OBVIOUS to anybody except the busy bodies in San Francisco who clearly have solved all the other city problems with debt, corrupt police and careless civil servants.

This gets old. I travel. The airline screws up. They act like they don’t care. I waste lots of time.

We arrived in Atlanta at 7:15 tonight.  Now it is almost 11PM and we are still waiting for bags.  Normally, I’d say “fine – deliver them”, but one contains firearms and we have to wait.

At Las Vegas when we checked in there was chaos until a few more energetic passengers, myself included, organized the baggage check in line.  4 Delta employees, no-doubt unionized, stood around doing nothing.

The clerk then had no idea how to check firearms as baggage. I had to explain it to him. They then wanted to charge me $125 for a bag, when it was supposed to be $25.

The flight went okay.

Landing though… the baggage never showed. They said it was on another flight, which has now arrived but has sit away from the gate for 1.5 hours.

Nobody knows anything. It shouldn’t be this hard.

I’m flying Southwest from now on.  If they don’t go there, I probably won’t go.

Proposition B is a rare breeze of sanity coming from San Francisco. It asks San Francisco city employees to pay a larger part of their pension and benefits contributions.  Needless to say… they ain’t happy about that!

Campaign contribution disclosures show the largest union donor for this period was the Police Officers Association, which contributed $200,000 on October 14. The second-largest donor was the Service Employee union, which gave $100,000 on October 13 and nearly $300,000 in recent months. The Municipal Attorneys’ union gave $50,000, as did the fire fighters. Eight individual San Francisco deputy sheriffs gave small amounts that totaled $1,155.

I don’t mind public employees having organizations for credit unions, or sharing benefit administration costs, or even for having lawyers to defend them against frivolous lawsuits.  But I DO not think it safe, or wise, to let them affect elections other than in their individual right to vote. They should not be permitted to organize for election purposes.

These unions epitomize the short term thinking that will cause their members to suffer greatly.   No doubt San Francisco has more police, firefighters, and other employees than it needs.  I’d say, fine, you don’t want to contribute to your pensions, how about you contribute to LEAVING and DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE WAY OUT.  I’d fire there asses based proportionally on how much they donated to act against the common interest.  Put that in your pension pipe and smoke it silly greedy self-centered public sector unions.

Of course with Gavin Newsome as their handsome but idiotic mayor San Francisco has the classic fox guarding the henhouse situation.

When he feels good, his chin is too high. And when things go sour, he looks creepy.

BTW: It must pain him to put that flag lapel on each morning. Or to have one of his servants do it.

 
Not the sign in the article.
The news organization writes about the sign but doesn’t even include a picture of it.
That’s almost as dumb as the sign.

A guy in Florida has built a huge sign asking JP Morgan, his mortgage holder, to “help”.

The Acreage man built his house in 2007 but couldn’t handle the mortgage payment of $3,600 a month.

I don’t have his exact loan figures, but $3,600 a month at 6% for 30 years means he roughly financed $600K at the peak of the housing market.

I’m not exactly sure why he thinks he should get money, which is really what he bought – not a house – for free.

Money is just a product. You buy it if you don’t have it. The cost is interest.

People like this should certainly not be helped, or touted as “fighters” in newspapers. They should be ashamed.

You know if your job is tenuous. Layoffs shouldn’t come as a surprise if you are paying attention.  And you shouldn’t buy money for more than you can afford if you have an unexpected financial setback.

In other words… buy within your means – and that includes buying money as well as TV’s or any other product.

He should walk away and spend $1500 a month, or whatever he can afford, on a perfectly suitable house and let the bank have its collateral.   Instead of wasting money on a sign that you can see from passenger jets that really proclaims “I’m a dummy”.

Responsibility… suddenly un-American.

 
The Vegas house gives better odds than our “stock market”

I no longer own any stocks, except in companies I totally control.  I decided that in addition to there being no reason for stocks to go up long term (and plenty of reasons for them to plummet), that the game was rigged and I wouldn’t play anymore.

Rigged?  Yes. Even though I mainly invested in index and larger low cost funds rather than individual stocks, I felt it rigged even against even those large players. I felt that the price of a stock represented mind games rather than actual “what it is worth” and didn’t want to play that game any longer.  And I also knew that certain “special” traders were getting advance access to market information and trading automatically on it.

Today’s news that Capitol Hill staff are winning at stocks by playing an insider game with information they get in advance of the rest of us due to their position in government only highlights what a fraud the “market” is.

Crony capitalism. The Clinton’s gave us an early taste of it, with $100K gains on next to no investment, but now the government is so large and pervasive that even low level Congressional staff are “cronies”.

Investment has become gambling.

No thanks.  Now that the Stock Market’s “house” has an edge, I view it as a I do Vegas…  A nice place to visit to eat or see a show,  but I don’t gamble.