Friday, January 18th, 2008
Have you ever heard the term “government pork”? Simply put it is the government throwing away its (our) money on pointless projects that serve no ones better interest except the politicans. I’ve decided to bring four such pork projects to your attention.
- 15 billion dollars
- In 1991 when the city of Boston broke ground on the so-called Big Dig project who would have ever guessed it would explode beyond its estimated 5.5 billion dollars to over 15 billion dollars? Who would have ever guessed that in addition to the initial cost just to get things going the tax payers of the Commonwealth would be saddled with ever increasing costs of maintenance, and upkeep? I guess those questions are kind of unfair. Perhaps I should ask who aside from the government didn’t know?
But there’s good news! The government has once again come to our rescue, or so they’d have you believe. But first a little background. Aside from the huge cost overruns the Big Dig project has also fallen victim to tragedy when 39 year old Milena Del Valle was killed by tons of concrete tiles collapsing and smashing the car she and her husband were in, seemingly endless leaks which will probably never be stopped completely, and a lot of questionable backroom political wrangling which saw engineering giant Bechtel make out with nothing more than a slap on the wrist over innumeral safety violations.
- 11.something million dollars
- Do you know what that number represents? It’s the hourly cost we in America endure to wage war in Iraq. Nearly 275 million dollars a day. Can you even begin to fathom how much good we could do, even unto our enemies, for 275 million dollars a day? The mind literally boggles at the concept. Let me say that again. Two hundred and seventy five MILLION dollars a day. I don’t know about anyone else but I can dream up a whole host of better ways to spend 275 million dollars a day. And people wonder why we’re going into a recession. Sorry George, but all the economic stimulus in the world can’t save anyone from your lunacy.
- 130 billion dollars
- I like space. Both in terms of “give me some space!” and astronomically. I find it to be pleasing and interesting. As much as I like space I can’t imagine spending 130 billion dollars to hang around up there. It seems that even though I’m not a visionary other people are. Welcome to the International Space Station which is supposed to be an effort between NASA, ESA,JAXA, Roskosmos, and the CSA. Anyone else amazed that we can come up with so much internation cooperation? I guess it really shouldn’t surprise me. If nothing else governments can certainly agree on taxing their citizens to death for pork projects like this.
- 1.3 billion dollars
- Do you eat? Chances are you do, and if you’re like me you could stand to skip a meal or ten, but wait I’m getting way off track. Chances are you are a hunter/gatherer. You hunt for a parking space and gather your food at the local store. Someone has to grow that food. For those of you who aren’t quite with me here I’m talking about farmers. A strange thing has happened in the United States and other nations however. We now pay farmers 1.3 billion dollars here in the US not to grow crops. 1.3 billion dollars. Uh, how about letting them grow the crops and getting it sent out to the rest of the world who needs it? Can’t do that? Then why not use that money to help the countries who need it to develop their own farming industry?
Now if you’ll excuse me I need some sleep so I can work so I can get taxed so the government can keep throwng away my money so I can find something else to bitch about so I can do it all over again so I can stop writing this hideous run-on sentence.
I’d like to remind everyone to please sign up for my email rss feed. Once I reach 500 subscriptions I will randomly choose a member of the 500 signups and send that person $50.00! Tell your friends, tell your family, tell everyone about their chance to win $50.00! Hell, you’t even need to link back to an article, or write an article. Just need to be one of the 500 subscribers. Contest will run until there is a winner. So tell everyone because until we reach 500 subscribers no one has any chance to get that $50.00!
Posted in Potpourri | 6 Comments »
Monday, December 24th, 2007
As I was looking through my feed reader this morning one of them caught my eye. It was from Turk Hit Box who is having problems with paypal. Personally I have a love-hate relationship with Paypal.
Over the course of time I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with Paypal’s staff on multiple occasions regarding several issues. Each time I was treated as a valued customer with the problems addressed quickly and effectively. And if you believe that I’m the King of England too.
- Where’d my money go?
- A few years ago I bought a product called Fraps used for recording online video game play using Paypal. I received the product (instant download), my paypal account was charged the cost and I immediately setup a transfer of funds from my bank account to my paypal account to cover the money that had come out.
Long story short paypal claimed I never had the money in the paypal account in the first place to make a transaction (but still it went through) and that I had never transfered money from my bank. They finally after over a year of back and forth gave in about the money having been in the paypal account. It took them another 8 months to finally acknowedge that they had in fact received a transfer from my bank account. Then only after the bank president sent them proof over the course of 18 months. The best part is that during that entire time my account was frozen and they were making interest off of my money!
- Stop taking my money damn it!
- This is the latest incident I’ve been dealing with. Like an idiot I signed up for Paypal’s Payment Pro/Virtual terminal. The plan was to just try it out. Every month they charge me $30.00 and I can’t get them to stop. They take $30.00 out of my paypal account and if I haven’t left it in the paypal account they go directly into my checking account tied into the paypal account. Which almost always hits me for a $30.00 bank overdraft fee because that account I only keep $5.00 in and do my banking from another account.
The first time around shame on me for not having been more aware, but after 6 months of requesting them to remove Payment Pro from my account I’ve finally had to go to the bank to file an affidavit so the bank will refuse to consider their claims for money and cause me all kinds of overdraft fees.
By no means am I the only person who has ever had issues with Paypal. If you want to see a whole host of problems go take a look at Paypalsucks.com and you’ll be reading for days. I especially encourage you to take a look at the Paypalsucks forums.
A few things to keep in mind if you’re dealing with paypal:
- Document everything you do so you can find the information easily later
- Keep copies of every transaction you make, both buy and sell via paypal
- Throughly read their Legal Agreements
- Make sure to pull your money out of the paypal account and put it into a real bank account as quickly as possible after every transaction
- Realize now and not later that paypal is NOT a bank. You have no consumer protection.
- Checkout other alternatives just in case. There are a lot out there, but I’ve heard (as in read) good things about Google Checkout (never used them personally)
- Be patient. Paypal takes their sweet time in resolving issues. And why wouldn’t they, the longer your money sits in their bank accounts the more money they make.
All that to say my Paypal account is still open. It has to be they owe me over $180.00 in bank overdraft fees not to mention the $180.00 for unauthorized withdraw they owe me for not shutting down payment pro. My bank has advised me not to shut down the account before the issue is resolved or it might cause just as much hassle. In the meanwhile they (the bank) are taking care of the fees, but who knows how long that will last. If you’re considering dealing with paypal be aware of the risks. When everything is going smoothly it is great, but when you run into issues they can get real ugly real fast.
Posted in Potpourri | 16 Comments »
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007
First there was
Scared Straight, designed to terrify juvenile delinquents into behaving. Now however we’re light years beyond using abject horror to make people straighten out their lives. No in todays touchy feely world where we must be kinder and gentler towards one another we use a much softer approach. Like
exploding piggy banks.
What?
You heard me. I said exploding piggy banks.
TOKYO (AFP) - Greying Japan has a new weapon to scare people into saving for their retirement — an exploding piggy bank. The “Savings Bomb,” which goes on sale in Japan next week, “explodes” and scatters coins if users fail to save for a long time, toy manufacturer TOMY Co Ltd said Thursday.
The battery-powered toy — designed as a cartoon-style, ball-shaped black bomb with a skull and crossbones logo — lights up, makes a noise, shakes violently and scatters coins if it is not topped up for a long time. - Source and rest of the article.
Strangely enough according to another article I read while doing some research into this odd method of savings stated that:
January is a battlefield for Japan’s piggy bank market, because people often make saving money one of their New Year resolutions and because children like to put aside the cash gifts their family gives them on New Year’s Day. - Source and rest of the article.
I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around the idea of Japan’s piggy bank market become a battlefield even if only for the month of January. You’d think that some of the brightest and most industrious people in all history would have better things to do than turn their piggy bank market into a battlefield.
No one can ever question the innovation of the Japanese. What will they come up with next? Exploding cars? Oh wait, someone has already beaten them to that.
Posted in Making Money, Potpourri | 3 Comments »
