Is it just me, or aren't some of the rest of you getting sick of the incessant promises from all three Demopublican candidates that the government needs to intervene in my life to help me with the things I can't handle?
Six people covering three generations live in my house, and like everybody else we're suffering from high food prices, high gas prices, and the inherent difficulty of making ends meet.
We bought an investment/retirement property several years ago, when times were better, and although we didn't succumb to a teaser-rate mortgage, it's been tough to squeeze out the payments over past year, even with my second job.
You know what? If we can't make it, we'll just have to sell the damn thing, take the loss, and move on.
Our answer to high fuel prices? I sold my beloved Ford F-250 two years ago because I couldn't afford to drive it to work. I now drive 65 mph or less on Route 1 or the NJ Turnpike because--in a given week--I can get two more trips from Wilmington to Dover out of a tank of gas than when I whizzed down Route 1 at (gulp) 80-85 mph in the flow of traffic. I don't sit with the car running anymore, and I try to think out those little daily trips to combine them and make them as short as possible.
I don't need a gas tax holiday or a windfall profits tax, thank you. (At least two of my retirement accounts are invested in oil stocks, anyway, and they are doing pretty well.)
We eat out a hell of a lot less these days, because it's too damn expensive. Instead, each of the kids now has one night a week where he or she is responsible for cooking dinner. They have to find a recipe that passes muster with Mom or Dad, make out a shopping list for me the day before, and cook the meal with minimal help from anybody. (FYI, the twins are 12; they can handle it.) There's been a lot of competitiveness about this process since we started. The highest accolade is, "You can serve that again, sometime, if you like," or "Put that one into the regular rotation."
As they do their shopping lists we talk about the prices, and how the Acme hamburger buns which used to sell for $.89/pack 18 months ago now go on sale for $1.69.
We bought a water filter and stopped using disposable plastic water bottles. We freeze or eat the leftovers.
If the government would like to help, I could do with the elimination of ethanol subsidies, and maybe we could talk about putting the price of milk back on the free market plan.
I never made a conscious decision to go Green, and I resent the Statist intrusion that's going to make incandescent bulbs illegal (almost as much as I resent the use of my tax dollars to subsidize HDTV adapter boxes), but then we hardly use any incancesdents any more, anyway. The others make my electric bill go down. So does keeping the heat set at 67 degrees, and the a/c set at 74 degrees. We keep the doors and windows open as much as possible during the spring, but in a house with asthmatics, that ain't always a possibility. I'll pay the freight for what my electricity costs (and the kids get rewards depending on how low we can keep the bill), but this is what I need from the government:
Get my legislators out of bed with the power companies, thank you.
We've got thousands of dollars in outstanding medical bills, and more consumer debt than we really should have. I found myself forced to turn down a potential job doing something I think I'd find a lot more professionally rewarding than my current employment, primarily because my wife and I get "state share" on our health care premiums, and the fact that we don't have to pay $8-10,000/year in premiums for our cadillac plan keeps me tied down to the existing job. You know what?
That's called responsibility, and is not an argument for single-payer health care.
Oh, and about the debt? We're doing something real old-fashioned. We're paying it off. And the family is talking about it. No Florida vacation this summer; a lot less time at camp for the kids. Which--along with that second job, the judicious sale of some investment assets, and a hell of a lot of scrimping--has allowed us to cut up the damn credit cards and throw them out. All of them. Life without a net, you say? For emergencies we've still got access to equity credit lines, but it has to be a real emergency.
Failure to plan doesn't constitute an emergency. We'll pay cash for what we want or figure out a way to do without.
Amazing thing? I don't really care anymore whether the government cracks down on the interest rate that Bank of America is charging, because it doesn't matter to me.
(And yes, I'll be driving that little piece-of-crap Sentra that replaced my truck until it dies on the side of the road. I keep a screwdriver in the glove compartment so that, when necessary, I can take off the plates and hitch-hike home. I plan to get at least 150-200,000 miles out of the ugly, uncomfortable little bastard.)
We cut down our cell phone minutes, too.
There IS a point to this rant.
I'm watching the constant, continuing (often nauseating) spectacle of three Senators pandering for my vote. And they are all pandering (Don't give me that Obama-is-different crap; we all know deep in our hearts that it ain't true). Jack Markell is going to promise housing to everybody in Delaware. John Carney is going to put more teachers in the classroom. Bill Lee is going to promise something to somebody as soon as he's sure he's running.
OK, you want to know what will get my vote?
1) On the Presidential level, handle foreign policy like we were a class act, and manage to cut the damn defense budget by at least 30-40%.
2) Get rid of the agricultural subsidies and the corporate welfare. Disband the TSA. Close down the Voice of America. Let NPR and PBS cash in on the Barney and Sesame Street marketing spin-offs and get them off the tax dole. Start selling off some government lands to the Sierra Club or the World Wildlife Federation or rich movie stars who want to be environmentalists.
3) Tell the helmet nazis that I can decide for myself if I need a helmet on a motorcycle, andthat I will damn well decide whether my kids need bicycle helmets myself, too. The same thing goes for seat belts.
4) Print up all the warning labels and reports you like, but quit trying to tell me which medications I can and cannot take. If James Madison had had any idea how you planned to use the Interstate Commerce Clause, he'd have left it out.
5) Stop taxing the working poor. Period. Shouldn't government vampires have to allow people to meet their own basic needs before they start sucking their blood?
6) While we're at it: get rid of that insane Alternative Minimum Tax, which is making most of my second job necessary in the first place. Get a clue: rich people aren't paying it, you idiots.
If you're missing the general drift here, I'll sum it up in one sentence: Instead of helping me, I'd really like the government to handle essential services (and I have a really draconian definition of essential), and otherwise leave my family and me the hell alone.
That means you, Hillary. I don't need you as my advocate. I'm only powerless if I believe I am.
That means you, Barack. I don't need the IRS filling out my tax forms, the Feds prosecuting hate crimes, the defense budget increased, or to be lectured by your wife on why America doesn't work right. (Ironically, if it had been anybody other than a Clinton running against Obama, they'd have pointed out a long time ago that Barack and Michelle are just Bill and Hillary repackaged for the blog-savvy world.)
That means you, John. If you can't think of a better answer than staying in the Middle East and Iraq for the next hundred years, then you're really too stupid to be President (and with Dubya already in the office, that bar has been set pretty low).
Don't promise me that Washington or Dover will bail me out. Promise me that Washington and Dover will get the grasping hands out of my pants, and leave me the hell alone.
Six people covering three generations live in my house, and like everybody else we're suffering from high food prices, high gas prices, and the inherent difficulty of making ends meet.
We bought an investment/retirement property several years ago, when times were better, and although we didn't succumb to a teaser-rate mortgage, it's been tough to squeeze out the payments over past year, even with my second job.
You know what? If we can't make it, we'll just have to sell the damn thing, take the loss, and move on.
Our answer to high fuel prices? I sold my beloved Ford F-250 two years ago because I couldn't afford to drive it to work. I now drive 65 mph or less on Route 1 or the NJ Turnpike because--in a given week--I can get two more trips from Wilmington to Dover out of a tank of gas than when I whizzed down Route 1 at (gulp) 80-85 mph in the flow of traffic. I don't sit with the car running anymore, and I try to think out those little daily trips to combine them and make them as short as possible.
I don't need a gas tax holiday or a windfall profits tax, thank you. (At least two of my retirement accounts are invested in oil stocks, anyway, and they are doing pretty well.)
We eat out a hell of a lot less these days, because it's too damn expensive. Instead, each of the kids now has one night a week where he or she is responsible for cooking dinner. They have to find a recipe that passes muster with Mom or Dad, make out a shopping list for me the day before, and cook the meal with minimal help from anybody. (FYI, the twins are 12; they can handle it.) There's been a lot of competitiveness about this process since we started. The highest accolade is, "You can serve that again, sometime, if you like," or "Put that one into the regular rotation."
As they do their shopping lists we talk about the prices, and how the Acme hamburger buns which used to sell for $.89/pack 18 months ago now go on sale for $1.69.
We bought a water filter and stopped using disposable plastic water bottles. We freeze or eat the leftovers.
If the government would like to help, I could do with the elimination of ethanol subsidies, and maybe we could talk about putting the price of milk back on the free market plan.
I never made a conscious decision to go Green, and I resent the Statist intrusion that's going to make incandescent bulbs illegal (almost as much as I resent the use of my tax dollars to subsidize HDTV adapter boxes), but then we hardly use any incancesdents any more, anyway. The others make my electric bill go down. So does keeping the heat set at 67 degrees, and the a/c set at 74 degrees. We keep the doors and windows open as much as possible during the spring, but in a house with asthmatics, that ain't always a possibility. I'll pay the freight for what my electricity costs (and the kids get rewards depending on how low we can keep the bill), but this is what I need from the government:
Get my legislators out of bed with the power companies, thank you.
We've got thousands of dollars in outstanding medical bills, and more consumer debt than we really should have. I found myself forced to turn down a potential job doing something I think I'd find a lot more professionally rewarding than my current employment, primarily because my wife and I get "state share" on our health care premiums, and the fact that we don't have to pay $8-10,000/year in premiums for our cadillac plan keeps me tied down to the existing job. You know what?
That's called responsibility, and is not an argument for single-payer health care.
Oh, and about the debt? We're doing something real old-fashioned. We're paying it off. And the family is talking about it. No Florida vacation this summer; a lot less time at camp for the kids. Which--along with that second job, the judicious sale of some investment assets, and a hell of a lot of scrimping--has allowed us to cut up the damn credit cards and throw them out. All of them. Life without a net, you say? For emergencies we've still got access to equity credit lines, but it has to be a real emergency.
Failure to plan doesn't constitute an emergency. We'll pay cash for what we want or figure out a way to do without.
Amazing thing? I don't really care anymore whether the government cracks down on the interest rate that Bank of America is charging, because it doesn't matter to me.
(And yes, I'll be driving that little piece-of-crap Sentra that replaced my truck until it dies on the side of the road. I keep a screwdriver in the glove compartment so that, when necessary, I can take off the plates and hitch-hike home. I plan to get at least 150-200,000 miles out of the ugly, uncomfortable little bastard.)
We cut down our cell phone minutes, too.
There IS a point to this rant.
I'm watching the constant, continuing (often nauseating) spectacle of three Senators pandering for my vote. And they are all pandering (Don't give me that Obama-is-different crap; we all know deep in our hearts that it ain't true). Jack Markell is going to promise housing to everybody in Delaware. John Carney is going to put more teachers in the classroom. Bill Lee is going to promise something to somebody as soon as he's sure he's running.
OK, you want to know what will get my vote?
1) On the Presidential level, handle foreign policy like we were a class act, and manage to cut the damn defense budget by at least 30-40%.
2) Get rid of the agricultural subsidies and the corporate welfare. Disband the TSA. Close down the Voice of America. Let NPR and PBS cash in on the Barney and Sesame Street marketing spin-offs and get them off the tax dole. Start selling off some government lands to the Sierra Club or the World Wildlife Federation or rich movie stars who want to be environmentalists.
3) Tell the helmet nazis that I can decide for myself if I need a helmet on a motorcycle, andthat I will damn well decide whether my kids need bicycle helmets myself, too. The same thing goes for seat belts.
4) Print up all the warning labels and reports you like, but quit trying to tell me which medications I can and cannot take. If James Madison had had any idea how you planned to use the Interstate Commerce Clause, he'd have left it out.
5) Stop taxing the working poor. Period. Shouldn't government vampires have to allow people to meet their own basic needs before they start sucking their blood?
6) While we're at it: get rid of that insane Alternative Minimum Tax, which is making most of my second job necessary in the first place. Get a clue: rich people aren't paying it, you idiots.
If you're missing the general drift here, I'll sum it up in one sentence: Instead of helping me, I'd really like the government to handle essential services (and I have a really draconian definition of essential), and otherwise leave my family and me the hell alone.
That means you, Hillary. I don't need you as my advocate. I'm only powerless if I believe I am.
That means you, Barack. I don't need the IRS filling out my tax forms, the Feds prosecuting hate crimes, the defense budget increased, or to be lectured by your wife on why America doesn't work right. (Ironically, if it had been anybody other than a Clinton running against Obama, they'd have pointed out a long time ago that Barack and Michelle are just Bill and Hillary repackaged for the blog-savvy world.)
That means you, John. If you can't think of a better answer than staying in the Middle East and Iraq for the next hundred years, then you're really too stupid to be President (and with Dubya already in the office, that bar has been set pretty low).
Don't promise me that Washington or Dover will bail me out. Promise me that Washington and Dover will get the grasping hands out of my pants, and leave me the hell alone.
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