spfldnet

Edward Bernays and the devolution of public relations

2012-01-09T14:38:00.000-08:00

Currently I'm reading Edward Bernays "Propaganda" via my iPad. I came across a paragraph I found interesting. Bernays wrote in 1928: "...many large corporations were employing public relations counsel under one title or another, for they had come to recognize that they depended upon public good will for their continued prosperity."

When did this go away? I mean when did corporations become so confident in their abuses that they no longer need to care about their public images? Something happened to one or many major corporations that had so little effect on their prosperity that they arrived at the decision that they could act with impunity. They stagnated employee wages, busted unions, produced dangerous products, lied and stole from customers, abandoned whole communities that developed their economic systems in dependence of the industry, polluted, and who knows what else. What gave these corporations so much self-confidence and protection from self-destruction that they could do all of these things?

The very thing which nearly all of the spokes persons from these industries claim they hate: "Big government."

It's not about the government as a whole entity, however. When business people want to shrink government, they don't want to shrink the whole government, they want to shrink only the parts that don't help businesses in particular. They don't have a problem with government contracts. They gladly eat at the trough of government bailouts.

The corporate lobbyist is no longer a necessity as the Citizens United Supreme Court decision has eliminated the need for persuading politicians in exchange for out-right purchase of the congressional offices by the corporations. So, what's the point of paying attention to the Republican Primaries anymore, all of the choices were bought by corporations. You won't have a choice in the end because all the eggs in the carton came from the same farm.

The new rule we live under is called a Plutocracy: A government by the rich, for the rich. However, I continue to receive letters and emails from allegedly progressive groups that want my support so they can send members to Capitol Hill to lobby members of congress. Sorry, that doesn't affect the corporate boardroom holding the puppet strings. All the long-existing charities and not-for-profits have been redefined by the government to give them a better taste of the "good life." Really, how effective are the long-standing charitable and non-profit organizations you know?

What if we didn't vote? Would it matter? It would drive us further and faster into slavery than we would go if we did vote. Why prolong the inevitable? What else can we do? What ELSE can we do? #OCCUPYWALLSTREET #MOVEBEYONDSPEECH

Illinois is the Titanic

2011-12-13T08:35:00.000-08:00

The state of Illinois is sinking fast. The dynasty that runs the state is not unlike Greece in its current condition. The candidates that get the most exposure during campaigns always win because they can afford the advertising. Most candidates for Governor come from Chicago.

A member of the Illinois General Assembly submitted legislation that would create a separate state for the Chicago area. It seems that every chance the Chicago politicians get, they transfer another state agency from the southern counties into the Chicago suburbs.

The state employees who work throughout the state get paid as if they live in the more expensive Chicago area. The tax increase must continue to pay exorbitant union labor and management salaries. A Janitor at the department of Central Management Services makes over $80,000 per year ("Janitor I")

People who work for the state for decades are privy to loopholes that allow them to scam the system. Once the public becomes aware of the problems, legislators make a theatrical magnanimous gesture that makes the public think something is being done. As soon as the public has something else to focus their attention, the process of reform is reversed.

Illinois is over $4 Billion dollars in debt to vendors, and in a desperate attempt to repay the debt has now added interest on top of the debt by selling the debt to investors who pay the vendors. The state then pays the investors with interest.

In January of this year the state attempted to start recovering from deficit spending by increasing the individual income tax from 3% to 5% and the founder of Jimmy John's sandwich shop (Jimmy John Liautaud) threatened to leave the state. Recently, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Sears Holding also threatened to leave the state, so the Illinois General Assembly passed a $330 Million dollar tax relief package which will accrue to the state of Illinois already bloated $200 Billion dollar debt.

In 2009, shortly after the Impeachment of former governor Rod Blagojevich, the former Lieutenant Governor-now-Governor Patt Quinn promised to "fumigate" the state government of Blagojevich appointees. We are still waiting as of December 2011.

Ultimately, the responsibility lies with the voters of Illinois, who continue to automatically and unconsciously vote for their candidates based on name recognition and charisma as they have for decades, allowing in the opportunistic greedy sociopaths to feather their own nests and to treat their elected office as the finish line of a race rather than the beginning of an effort to improve the lives of their constituents.

Disillusionment

2011-11-29T16:31:00.000-08:00

I'm stuck in Springfield, Illinois. I was born here and lived here until I reached high school age, then moved away. I graduated from high school elsewhere and came back for a couple of years to attend Lincoln Land Community College which ended in failure, so I joined the military.

After the military I earned a Associate degree then interned at a cable advertising company which turned into an eight year career. I got laid off and moved back to Springfield, Illinois, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication and started looking for meaningful, gainful work in this town.

Unfortunately Springfield is full of entrenched dynasties of politics and business. You can't get gainful employment here unless you go to the right church or were born or married into the family business. The rest of us "line workers" earn poverty wages.

Ironically, there are fewer than a dozen people around here who could be considered part of the "One Percent" yet there is a volatile caste system based on the difference in wage of just a few dollars. People who earn between nine and ten dollars per hour have told me that it's unfair to raise the state's minimum wage to ten dollars per hour. This kind of attitude is so pathetic I can no longer speak to people who feel that way. Raising the minimum wage to match or surpass their current earnings somehow shatters their sense of superiority. Really? Someone below you catches up to your earning level by a dollar fifty and you are humiliated? Please!!

Another conversation among the locals is about who got the cheaper gasoline for their vehicle. I know someone who gloats when he is able to purchase gas ten cents cheaper per gallon. He occasionally saves about two dollars more than me, struts and beams with pride with his chest puffed out. It makes me sad to think that one's life is so meaningless that such trivial advantages mean so much.

Most of the people I know have costs related to college loans, credit cards, car payments, real estate taxes, mortgages, schools, daycare, car insurance, food, utility bills, transportation, etc., but on top of that, they must have their extra vehicles, motorcycles, smart phones, cable television, online video game subscriptions, and extra child that was the "accident." The trappings of uneducated, unprotected sex. Thank the brilliant strategy of creating slaves known as "abstinence-only sex education."

In the cold streets of this town on the endless flat prairie of central Illinois, there are mostly parks, shops, bars, restaurants, movie theaters. I'm sure there are skating rinks and bowling alleys. I know there is one water park, and the state fairgrounds are here. There are a few museums too, but not very much time passes when you have done everything here at least five times.

Maybe it's who you spend your time with that counts most of all, but at forty eight, I still have yet to find that person. I wish I knew who said this first: "You will find the love of your life when you do the things you love." There are plenty of things I would love to do here, but they are locked up in the dynasties that run this town.

The businesses and government here are so infected by politics, nepotism and cronyism that everyone around here has become complacent, but an overcast of malaise and discontent that can no longer be recognized permeates this town. Anyone who has any real sense has already left, and soon so shall I.

Notes for #OccupyWallStreet

2011-10-02T18:32:00.000-07:00

Passive resistance and protests are instigated or aggravated by wrongdoers for entertainment rather than for redress of grievances. Do you know any non-violent demonstrations that yielded positive results over the last thirty years?

A Fool's salary lies at the point where the fool believes he is part of the ruling class, but will never achieve it. He's paid just enough to believe he will be protected from underclasses. He is entrusted by the ruling class, to facilitate its enrichment through thuggery and fraud, and he will never experience the pain and suffering of those he bullies and robs, until he retires and realizes too late, the error of his ways.

Police earn a salary just enough to not care about the concerns of the protesters they are called to control. Officers earn just enough to feel like part of the ruling class, but not enough to join the ruling class. They will learn very late in life that they were exploited.

Illinois

2011-09-16T13:06:00.000-07:00

Illinois is pretty much finished as a state. Chicago runs the state like a feudal city-state with the peasants living south of the 80-90 Toll Road. The rest of the state should rebel from the Chicago machine by simply following the political winners of each county.

That's right. Governors instead of Governor. Each county should follow the governor who wins the race in that county. That would castrate Chicago.

So, if you didn't vote for Pat Quinn in the last election and another candidate won in your county, he or she is your actual governor and should take his or her rightful place, where else? Springfield. Since governor Quinn doesn't stay there anyway like he said he would. The governor of Illinois Proper will with the other federal, state and local candidates who won in your county, write a new constitution for the collective opposing counties.

This will effectively represent the people they way they should be represented.

Harassing robo-calls

2011-08-13T13:21:00.001-07:00

We can't figure out who this is. I don't know if you can hear it or not. This is test to see if audio can be emailed to Blogger via Blackberry.
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Wait, there's more than just parks at the park district?

2011-06-16T01:49:00.000-07:00

Not too many of us go out much anymore, I sure don't. Maybe it's just my age, or that I work nights and sleep during the day so my free time is during the dark hours of Springfield when nothing but Denny's, Walmart or the grocery stores are open. It might have something to do with having a minimum wage part-time job with no benefits and a schedule that changes weekly so I can't have a second job.

Botanical Garden in Washington Park

At least I can go to the park once in a while when it's not raining. That's pretty much my impression of the Springfield Park District. Occasionally I'll hear about some events like fireworks at the Carillon. There is beautiful indoor botanical garden at Washington Park.

I saw an article in the State Journal-Register "Springfield Park District should broaden movie choices" that astonished my notion of what the park district offered. I had no idea they had movies. What's more astonishing is that I was born in Springfield in 1964 and lived here until High school. My mother actually worked for the park district for a while. Shocking!

We didn't grow up with the Internet. We were limited to radio, television and the newspaper. It seems the Springfield Park District really doesn't have an advertising budget. If they have a section in the newspaper, it's either drowned-out by other events or the events listed don't seem to be associated with the park district. That's just my perspective. There might be an effort at public relations, but it's probably directed only at families with kids.

Families typically have shoe-string budgets. They wouldn't have a lot of money to spend so the Park District might be hard-pressed to get money from the city, especially under the current budget crisis.

If it wasn't for Brian Mackey's article in the State Journal-Register It never would have occurred to me to research the Springfield Park District's website [ http://www.springfieldparks.org/ ].

But since I'm a single man with no children who works nights, I wouldn't fit in at events, but at least I can get some exercise in nature swatting mosquitoes.

Potential revivial of BuyLocalSpringfield.com

2011-05-28T18:46:00.000-07:00

I've been sitting on www.buylocalspringfield.com for quite a while now. It was inspired by the film Food, Inc., but also the fact that money was literally being siphoned permanently away from local circulation. Every dollar not spent on local payroll is leaving the community forever. There is a slow leak in the community's economic radiator.

There was a significant increase in foreclosures, layoffs, pay cuts, and prices on food, gas, and other goods, which means there is a very large inventory of extra stuff to find at garage sales, consignment shops, pawn shops and flea markets, and storage unit auctions. The cause was mostly man-made until we had severe crop-damaging rain, wind, hail, tornadoes, and drought in Texas. Now food prices will climb higher and faster than ever.

Retail-food prices will jump more than the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s estimate of 3 percent to 4 percent this year, said Chad E. Hart, an economist at Iowa State University in Ames. Companies will pass along more of their higher costs through year-end, said Bill Lapp, a former ConAgra Foods Inc. chief economist. -- Bloomber.com May 25, 2011.

Potentially, there will be a significant need for websites featuring local products. There are sites featuring local farmers markets, and I hear advertised local meat markets, Turasky, for example which also offers Deer processing. I had Venison sausage once and it was not bad, very interesting. There are more.

It is imperative that we support local food producers because they will be robbed blind if they must sell their products to national food processors at commodity market prices. If commodity prices, or wholesale prices are driven down too far, local producers will lose their land to agriculture conglomerates that build environmentally damaging factory farms. The result will be Salmonella outbreaks in neighboring vegetable producing farms, like the Spinach and Bean sprout outbreaks in recent past.

To improve www.BuyLocalSpringfield.com, it needs only needs links to websites of local product retailers, businesses that repair and refurbish used products, tailors and clothing makers, furniture makers, potters, etc. Leave comments here, or follow @BLSpringfield at Twitter.

It's day 2 of my 3 days off. What next?

2011-05-24T15:51:00.000-07:00

Today I posted to some of my blogs. I have at least 15, but I can't get to them all in the few days I have available.

I'm reading Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. I wish I had that book in the early COM classes at UIS, it would make a perfect accompaniment to Deliberative Argumentation. Of course it's biased toward a liberal social agenda. Alinsky is quite direct about it.

Communication students with any weight will not fear or admonish bias, but will recognize it for what it is and present the proper arguments as balance.

I'm hungry. Today was Taco Tuesday at Schnucks. I'm kind of bummed I missed it, but it's pricey.

Springfield, Capital of Illinois - operating on the backs of the poor.

2011-04-05T20:57:00.000-07:00

De-industrialized and with a large income disparity, Springfield, Illinois has some people who have enough money and enough time on their hands to get involved in politics.

The rest are too busy living paycheck to paycheck saving nothing, living on borrowed money and borrowed time until they declare bankruptcy, were never taught how their own lives are effected by politics, or never see any significant political change to their own lives and don't bother to get involved.

Local political candidates go for votes they know they can get so they campaign on the platforms of yard waste pickup, fly-dumping, taxes, government waste, potholes, business related fees, and other topics of interest to local property owners.

Absentee landlords don't care because they can't vote in local elections, so the upkeep on their property is deplorable. The problem is that most absentee landlords started in Springfield then moved away as soon as they could afford it, to communities beyond the reach of the city taxes, utility costs and other fees.

So Springfield is mostly blighted. The illusion that it has nice neighborhoods is created by separate villages that are interwoven like an oddly shaped quilt. Leland Grove, Jerome, Southern View, are a few villages that actually do everything to contribute to themselves, but very little if anything to Springfield except the downtown public spaces and "cultural" centers, and even then it's the bare minimum.

Springfield is riddled with neighborhoods full of dilapidated old buildings, many of them abandoned and boarded up.

These distressed neighborhoods line every major thoroughfare into the city center where the Abraham Lincoln historic sites are located, and contribute nothing to the idea of starting a new business in town or even an inkling of a notion to live here.

Surrounding the historic sites are a few knickknack shops, bars, restaurants, banks, offices, hotels and a convention center. There are some residents who live around the downtown area, but the downtown grocery store that once served them has long ago departed.

The Illinois governor's mansion has been vacant for the last few terms. The majority of the population of Illinois resides in the Chicago area, so we get Governors from northern Illinois who prefer to do most of their business outside of Springfield as often as humanly possible.

The city struggles to recruit and retain the high level professionals needed to maintain a functioning local economy. Salaries for engineers, professors, lawyers, doctors and basically anyone who can be marginally successful in larger more popular metropolitan areas must be exceedingly high in Springfield.

Springfield's economy is supported by some higher wage and salaried employees: State, county and municipal employees, Memorial Hospital, St. Johns Hospital, Springfield Clinic, Horace Mann Insurance Company, Southern Illinois School of Medicine, The University of Illinois at Springfield, Lincoln Land Community College, and a few lesser known companies that pay above minimum wage which is currently $8.25 per hour. These people can afford to live outside of Springfield. They pay county property taxes, shop for groceries and pay sales taxes near their homes in Jacksonville, Chatham, Rochester, Sherman, New Berlin or other bedroom commmunity. Rents are usually $500 or above for these communities, you know, to keep out the "unwashed."

The other economy consists of disabled and elderly on fixed incomes, retail and food service workers, and other workers paid no more than what is legally required, minus the payroll tax-withholding of course. These are the people who can't afford to live outside of Springfield. These people can't afford to support a political candidate, nor can they afford to run for office. They are therefore ignored.

This society is under a structure called "political Darwinism." Springfield, Illinois clearly demonstrates political Darwinism by its obviously distinguishable geographic boundaries between the rich, working class, and poor.

The 2000 Census data showed that one third of the population of Sangamon County earned under $10 per hour. Since then, the population of Springfield alone rose nearly 5000 residents. Let me repeat, five thousand new residents in ten years.

Springfield, being the capital city, is the main hub for processing more Public Aid recipients, who often arrive from Chicago, get their paperwork processed, and then head back north, so I've been told. Some choose to stay.

Politics requires money, and the monied get what they want from their elected officials. Plain and simple political Darwinism. Not Democracy.

So we have higher utility fees, higher local sales taxes, higher cigarette taxes, so the local property owners can have yard waste on their rental properties hauled away by the city, instead of hiring private haulers.

There is a whole lot more to this than I can cover here. More later.

GPS Inside Deal

2011-04-01T01:37:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time there was a GPS navigator that gave directions to drivers very efficiently, saving the drivers time and fuel.

One day an executive at the GPS company had a brilliant marketing plan. He called up his contact over at the big oil company and the two of them hatched a scheme that would be unprecedented in human history.

The GPS executive proposed to the big oil company that the big oil company's logo could appear on the GPS navigator device when ever the driver came close to one of the oil company's gas service stations.

The big oil company executive thought that was a pretty good idea and he would agree to buy the advertising space under one condition: that the big oil company have editing rights to the driving route software.

The GPS executive though that was crazy, but then came back with "you can have editing rights so long as you don't make it so obvious that your competitors file a lawsuit against us. Why would you want to control where our drivers go?"

Big oil replied: "We want people to buy more of our gas, but if you insist on limiting our control, then we agree to make only minor changes."

From that day forward, drivers saw the one gas station's logo among the generic logos of gas pumps on their GPS navigator devices, and the drivers found themselves taking inexplicably longer routes with turns that seemed to lead them more frequently to stop signs.

The end.

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Springfield Gentrification Plan

2011-03-29T05:29:00.000-07:00

Springfield requires an overall gentrification along the main roads coming into the downtown area, just to make a nice facade for tourists. What's gentrification?

Gentrification and urban gentrification are terms referring to the socio-cultural displacement that results when wealthier people acquire property in low income and working class communities... -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification

There's a much simpler and cheaper way to do this. Custom design tour buses with blacked-out windows, and video monitors embedded in the back of each seat so the passenger can be distracted by an informational video about the Lincoln Historic Sites.

This way we don't have to make any changes and the poor people can live in their rotting hovels and there will be enough money left for potholes and leaf pickup.

Unless you want to attract more businesses or professionals, then you can just attract them to Chatham or Panther Creek. Problem solved.

IL Governor Quinn wants dot coms to pay state taxes. Amazon.com's response:

2011-03-10T18:35:00.000-08:00

For well over a decade, the Amazon Associates Program has worked with thousands of Illinois residents. Unfortunately, a new state tax law signed by Governor Quinn compels us to terminate this program for Illinois-based participants. It specifically imposes the collection of taxes from consumers on sales by online retailers - including but not limited to those referred by Illinois-based affiliates like you - even if those retailers have no physical presence in the state.

We had opposed this new tax law because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It was supported by national retailing chains, most of which are based outside Illinois, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors. Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue. We deeply regret that its enactment forces this action.

As a result of the new law, contracts with all Illinois affiliates of the Amazon Associates Program will be terminated and those Illinois residents will no longer receive advertising fees for sales referred to Amazon.com, Endless.com, or SmallParts.com.

Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned prior to April 15, 2011 will be processed and paid in full in accordance with the regular payment schedule. Based on your account closure date of April 15, 2011, any final payments will be paid by July 1, 2011.

You are receiving this email because our records indicate that you are a resident of Illinois. If you are not currently a permanent resident of Illinois, or if you are relocating to another state in the near future, you can manage the details of your Associates account here. And if you relocate to another state after April 15, please contact us for reinstatement into the Amazon Associates Program.

To be clear, this development will only impact our ability to continue the Associates Program in Illinois, and will not affect the ability of Illinois residents to purchase online at www.amazon.com from Amazon’s retail business.

We have enjoyed working with you and other Illinois-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program and, if this situation is rectified, would very much welcome the opportunity to re-open our Associates Program to Illinois residents.

Regards,

The Amazon Associates Team

Springfield Illinois Residency Requirement

2011-03-05T01:07:00.000-08:00

I created a discussion topic at the new forum now available at www.spfld.net focusing specifically on the question of how much actual dollars are lost forever from the city's economic cycle, by employees who work for the city, but live and spend their money in other communities?

The question of residency requirement in Springfield, Illinois is especially important because the city has it's own utility company, City Water Light and Power, which generates money from it's private sector customers as a revenue source that helps pay the salaries of city employees.

If municipal employees live outside the city of Springfield, in the realm of other utility companies, merchants and services that have private sector employees that live in other communities, The potential tax revenue that might have been generated for the city of Springfield is lost forever, which means that real money is slowly and permanently being siphoned out of Springfield, Illinois' economic circulation.

Money is already being siphoned permanently away from Springfield when people choose to buy anything that was not manufactured locally. When you look at money in terms of an environmental cycle, like the hydrogen cycle, for example, it becomes clear that survival based on the money cycle is limited and is dependent upon new money flowing in faster than it leaves.

New money flowing in faster than it leaves is entirely up to businesses. If businesses pay wages high enough, the tax revenues generated should produce services and infrastructure that is attractive enough to draw in more businesses. Unfortunately, businesses will only pay employees what the government forces them to pay employees. The government employees have organized and demanded to be paid more than the city is willing to tax the private sector because the private sector can leave.

The consequences is a crumbling infrastructure which becomes so unattractive that the only way to compensate is to pay exorbitant salaries to the professionals needed for the survival of the community, who would otherwise leave, in the fields of academics, health, finance, engineering, etc.

But the habit in Springfield is this: If you can afford it, live outside of the city.

The city of Springfield, much like most municipalities, is becoming an economic crater. The only difference is that inevitability of collapse is slowed by money generated from the city's own utility company, CWLP. The evidence of a crumbling infrastructure can be clearly seen in the architecture of the buildings surrounding the state capitol, and the odor rising up from the open sewers on 13th street and other older areas of the city.

The aim of business

2011-02-25T19:53:00.001-08:00

To a business, labor is a pure expense rather than an investment in the quality of the community from which the future workforce is produced.

On the surface this does not make sense, until one considers that there are tax benefits for depreciation, and the more rapid the decline of an area surrounding a plant, the quicker the benefit can be reaped until the next plant is finished where labor is cheaper. Is this true?

Carly Fiorina said in response to a question about outsourcing:, "Americans are not entitled to work for HP."

Americans seem to think they are entitled to a lot lately, like special tax exemptions, free health care, eight hour work days, uncontaminated food and water, wages that allow for housing and raising children, labor that doesn't cost anything at all, free use of government troops for security and commandeering of foreign natural resources, the list goes on and on.

Nobody is exempt from this mental defect called "sense of entitlement." When the Federal government decided it was no longer going to pay for junk food for public aid recipients some people complained that the government was telling them what they can and can't eat.

Nobody told them they couldn't drink soda, they would just need to earn the money to pay for it.

Junk food is a privilege, not a right.

Ultimately, the aim of business is to set an example that entrepreneurship is the most successful method of achieving wealth, and if you can't, the "free market" absorbs your corpse into the protein bank.
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Wisconsin not to become another Illinois

2011-02-17T18:31:00.000-08:00

It looks like all the state workers have turned out in droves to prevent the governor from dismantling non-safety related unions.

The state of Wisconsin has come within a couple of million dollars of going into the red, and unlike Illinois which plans to cut social programs and education money for the poor, Wisconsin plans to cut the salaries and power structure of union members.

I would like to have become a union member, but unions have become feudal dynasties that no one who was not born into it can becomes a member, no better than the industries they proclaim their enemies.

They are all riding high on the backs of the disenfranchised minimum-wage earning taxpayers, not knowing or seeing beyond their own enrichment. They have become their enemy.

So, kudos to Wisconsin's governor for taking real fiscal responsibility for the state's finances. Perhaps breaking the back of the unions in Wisconsin will make them see the error of their ways, and they won't in the future be so greedy that they cost the lives of everyone else who won't be allowed in their club.

Springfield Mayor Candidate Forum

2011-02-05T05:47:00.000-08:00

Fudging the unemployment numbers

2011-01-27T14:18:00.000-08:00

When the news media reports a drop in the unemployment rate, it doesn't always mean the unemployed found work.

First, those who collect the unemployment statistics must know exactly who the unemployed are so they can be counted. The laziest way to figure that out is to look at everyone who is registered for unemployment benefits, and are actively calling in to collect their bi-weekly unemployment benefits.

Unemployment benefits run out. So the unemployed who still can't find work, can't collect anymore benefits, so they disappear from the database and are no longer counted.

If an effort is made to keep an account of the unemployed who no longer collect benefits, sooner or later their numbers must drop as they must leave the community to find work elsewhere.

When this occurs, the employed, which is a fixed number of workers can remain the same, and the statistics will still show that unemployment dropped.

So, if you're planning on starting a business in a community that shows a rapid improvement in the unemployment rate, watch your wallets, your likely moving into a trap.

The Illinois economy is finished.

2011-01-10T16:25:00.000-08:00

Colleges are training nurses, the nurses are doing their time at local hospitals until they can move on to more attractive climates.

One University of Illinois at Springfield professor gets paid a six digit salary, but he doesn't stick around central Illinois. Why the hell should he?

The city of Springfield is desperate to keep the engineers at the local power plant. They have to be paid huge salaries just to stay.

What is it about central Illinois that is so unattractive to the intelligent people?

Is it high taxes? No. that would be a lie.

It's the shitty business practice of only paying minimum wage.

Attractive communities are dominated by highly paid individuals with large disposable income, and little need for social services.

State, county, and municipal governments in Illinois are being forced into raising taxes so they can pay salaries that are high enough to keep smart people around.

There are very smart people who work in the private sector, but you won't find them in central Illinois.

Real estate and employment on PBS News Hour

2010-12-27T16:48:00.001-08:00

It looks like Real estate investors are turning over foreclosures of larger homes and making them rentals for the new class of permanently temporary employees.

If you live in a nice subdivision with a lot of distressed real estate, prepare for the renters.
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Addiction stimulates the economy in Illinois

2010-11-13T07:25:00.000-08:00

The Chicago Tribune on November 11, 2010 published an article Gambling our way to prosperity? in which the lame duck session of the Illinois Legislature is "expected to push through legislation expanding casinos in the state" following on the heels of recent legislation that legalized video poker.

Meanwhile, another issue reported about, but kept carefully apart from the gambling issue by time and/or space is the fact that the Illinois Department of Human Services seems to be suffering the most when the state's budget is being cut. The World Socialist Web Site focused on this issue in an article titled Illinois budget cuts gouge education, social services back in July of 2010. This article pointed out that mental health was primarily targeted:

The largest of the detailed spending cuts was made to the Department of Human Services, which is to lose $312.6 million, or nearly 8 percent of its funding. Although these cuts are expected to impact a wide variety of programs, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that programs for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled were particularly targeted. -- http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jul2010/illi-j09.shtml

When these two issues are kept at a distance from one-another, it's easy to overlook their engineered interactivity. When considering the reaction of the business community to the state-wide smoking ban, one can get a sense of the motivation and back-room influence the business community has on the state's decision to most severely cut the budget of the Illinois Department of Human Services in the area of addiction, whether it be substance or behavior.

Mental health services deal with such economically influential addictions as gambling, over-indulging in consumption of mind-altering chemicals, food, and even hoarding. The Department of Human Services particularly deals with people who can't afford to pay for private assistance in these matters.

So it's easy to conclude that providing such services has a two-fold negative effect on the state's economy. First, it costs the state to help people fight their addictions, and secondly it costs the economy to have people gain control of their addictions and rein-in their spending habits, thus reducing the state's tax revenues through sales taxes on such things as cigarettes, alcohol, the state lottery, and even the revenues gained by law enforcement seizing drug money.

So when wondering about half-hearted attempts at law enforcement, national border security, the war on drugs, and the poor treatment of the good people at the Department of Human Services, just follow the money.

Craigslist has a serial "Flagger"

2010-11-04T03:35:00.000-07:00

The site Craigslist.org, specifically the site for Springfield, Illinois [ http://springfieldil.craigslist.org/ ] has a section called "Rants and Raves" where people usually post general complaints or compliments about anything.

The problem is that some users indiscriminately "flag" posts, not because they are offensive, but simply because the user wants to feel some sense of power. This comes from a sense of inferiority, or perhaps the user feels powerless over his or her own life and feels the need to lash out, much like a serial killer of online posts.

Another problem is that Craigslist.org automatically removes the posts that are flagged, without reviewing the posts first, then they send an email stating "98% of posts flagged are removed legitimately...but feel free to re-post if you feel...." Actually, the opposite is true. I can say this because my posts that were flagged were all perfectly acceptable for the forum, because you see, I am not only a college graduate, my degree is in communication.

There's really no way to deal directly with the serial "Flagger." Some users actually attempt to get back at the flagger by posting insults and complaints about him or her, but this just validates the flagger, making the flagger feel more powerful.

I propose a solution for this problem. Instead of allowing a post to be removed because it was flagged by only one other user, a post should be flagged by no less than 10 separate users before it can be removed. This way, either a consensus about the offensiveness of a post must be created, or the flagger will need to have ten separate computers with ten different IP addresses from which to flag a post for removal at Craigslist.

I hope the administrators over at Craigslist.org take my suggestion seriously.

Election2010

2010-10-21T13:12:00.000-07:00

Epson Stlus CX4200 printers and Windows 7

2010-10-20T12:21:00.000-07:00

... i.e. No Windows 7 support for the Epson CX4200. Time to get a new printer. But still never get an HP.

Regan for Sheriff-Too Long

2010-10-18T19:20:00.000-07:00

How About These Figures, Congressman Schock?

2010-10-12T07:00:00.000-07:00

Panasonic BL-C230A Network Camera. The most frustrating product on the face of the earth

2010-10-07T18:55:00.000-07:00

There was never a more frustrating first-time installation and trouble-shooting experience. The first time I tried to install it I gave up for about a week and a half. The directions came on three seperate tabloid sized sheets instead of a step-by-step saddle stitched manual.

If that wasn't bad enough, they combined instructions for different model numbers. There were vague references to an SD card memory, which is typically removable, but there was no diagram showing exactly where it was or if it actually existed on the model I was using

When I finally got it working I tried to set it up so I could watch via the Internet. There is supposed to be a free site where you register your camera and create a page where you can link up to your camera, but it never successfully launched and I could never find the right section for trouble-shooting my camera because the Panasonic website is a total navigational disaster.

If you insist on using panasonic network cameras, I suggest dividing the steps up in very short intervals over several weeks just to keep the frustration to a minimum.

Tim Bagwell's site is up!

2010-09-28T18:31:00.000-07:00

John Shimkus' nemesis, Democrat Tim Bagwell, running for the 19th congressional district in Illinois is a press conference at 11:00 am on Wednesday September 29th at the State Capital Blue Room in Springfield.

Quoting from the site http://www.bagwellforcongress.com/ :

The news conference will be directed at issues of Congressional oversight of the Save-A-Life-Foundation (SALF), a Chicago area non-profit that has been the subject of numerous media exposes. Bagwell will raise concerns whether millions of Illinois and Federal taxpayer dollars were improperly administered.

For more information about Tim Bagwell you can now safely visit http://www.bagwellforcongress.org/ or http://www.votesmart.org/bio.php?can_id=33472

Bagwell site hacked

2010-09-26T07:29:00.000-07:00

Democratic congressional candidate Tim Bagwell's website http://www.bagwellforcongress.com/ was slow loading at first, but then an old nemesis popped up.

The old "Your computer has many viruses and we'll scan your computer for free" popup window showed up.

Of course there's no getting out of that exept by pressing "Ctrl-Alt-Delete", going to the Task Manager window and forcing the browser to shut down. Then you must load a program called C-Cleaner that clears out all the garbage before you launch your browser again, because you will still have all of that crap in your temporary folders.

Democrat Tim Bagwell is competing for the 19th congressional district in Illinois, with John Shimkus. Dear John Shimkus. You better track down the little thug hacker on your staff and give him a slap on the wrist. I don't think that's good politics, Mr Shimkus, I would prefer to judge Mr. Bagwell's position on the issues than make my voting decision based on who wins some Internet Tech War.

The Extreme Right Needs an Education

2010-09-21T16:33:00.000-07:00

Quinn's pick for Illinois private lottery management

2010-09-16T03:56:00.000-07:00

The following are exerpts from the sites belonging to Northstar Lottery Group, the private organization selected to take over management of the Illinois Lottery system.

Original story in the Illinois State Journal-Register:
Gov. Quinn picks private company to manage lottery --
http://www.sj-r.com/breaking/x718562495/Gov-Quinn-picks-private-company-to-manage-lottery

GTECH is a leading gaming technology and services company, providing innovative technology, creative content, and superior service delivery. Lottomatica S.p.A. is one of the world’s largest commercial lottery operators and a market leader in the Italian gaming industry. GTECH and Lottomatica together create a fully integrated lottery operator and gaming technology solutions provider – a combined company with worldwide scale, considerable financial strength, and industry-leading customer solutions. Lottomatica is publicly traded on the Italian Stock Exchange and has approximately €2.2 billion in revenue and 7,500 employees in over 50 countries. GTECH and Lottomatica operate under Gruppo Lottomatica, which is majority owned by De Agostini, which belongs to a century-old publishing, media, and financial services group.

With 7,500 employees in over 50 countries when combined with its parent company Lottomatica Group, GTECH provides innovative technology, creative content, and superior service delivery to effectively manage and grow today’s evolving gaming and lottery markets. If you have what it takes, a career at GTECH can be highly stimulating and rewarding. We keep our people focused, challenged, and proud of their work.

GTECH Corporate Headquarters
GTECH Center
10 Memorial Boulevard
Providence, RI 02903

Main switchboard: 401-392-1000
Fax: 401-392-1234
Media line: 401-392-7452

****

Contact Us
Scientific Games Corporation
750 Lexington Avenue
New York, NY 10022
Phone: 212-754-2233

Scientific Games International
1500 Bluegrass Lakes Parkway
Alpharetta, GA 30004 USA
Phone: 770-664-3700

Media Inquiries
Aimee Remey
Scientific Games
Phone: 212-318-9152
International Business Inquiries
John Walsh
Scientific Games
Phone: 770-664-3821

****

Northstar Lottery Group is a fully integrated consortium of best-in-class companies that have come together to respond to the State of Illinois’ Request for Proposal for a Private Lottery Manager. Northstar includes:

•GTECH and Scientific Games, the world’s leading providers of operations management, technology solutions and innovative lottery products
•Chicago-based Energy BBDO, one of the world’s leading consumer marketing
and advertising companies
With over 50 years of combined experience in Illinois, Northstar will responsibly drive Illinois Lottery growth and returns to benefit Illinois residents.

Guiding Northstar Lottery Group’s operations is a distinguished six-member Board of Advisors, comprised of civic and business leaders from around Illinois.

Dick Devine (Chairman): Partner at Meckler Bulger Tilson Marick & Pearson LLP; Former Cook County State’s Attorney
Sharon Gist Gilliam: Former Principal, Unisom Consulting; Former Chief Executive Officer, Chicago Housing Authority
David Gupta: President, System Development Integration LLC (SDI)
Karen Hasara: Former Mayor of Springfield
Manny Sanchez: Partner at Sanchez Daniels & Hoffman LLP
Rufus Williams: CEO, Olympus LLC; Former Chair of Chicago Public Schools Board

*****

ENERGY BBDO
410 N. Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL 60611
312-337-7860
http://www.bbdo.com/worldwide

*****

http://www.northstarlottery.net/about-northstar/

Why I voted for Barack Obama

2010-09-05T12:07:00.000-07:00

Google Gmail accounts hopelessly hacked

2010-08-25T18:07:00.000-07:00

The Google help forums are rapidly filling up with frustrated users complaining about "Unknown" contacts mysteriously showing up in their Gmail account contacts list.

Users have reported changing their passwords multiple times a day, only to find the "Unknown" contacts still appearing.

Users are also resorting to deleting their Gmail contacts lists entirely just to keep their friends and familiy from receiving spam.

Google's response has been the standard link to old instructions on how to change your password.

Digg has changed!

2010-08-25T17:58:00.000-07:00

Digg.com has changed. It now allows you to add a feed from your own blog so that you can automatically have your own posts dugg.

Lack of mowing becomes a traffic hazard.

2010-08-23T06:50:00.000-07:00

Geese feeding on grass seed behind County Market on White Oaks Drive

The grass along White Oaks Drive is going to seed and the geese are loving it. It might be a good idea for controlling grass and possibly some species of weed, however, goose poop and roadkill are the inevitable side-effects of not mowing the lawn behind the shopping center on White Oaks Drive.

Several vehicles, including my own were forced to stop for a gaggle sauntering across the road. They were totally oblivious to my car's horn.

The city of Springfield does fine for not mowing the lawn, and this incident serves as a perfect reason for such measures.

Barack Obama Is Scamming Review | Rip-off Report #311553

2010-08-21T11:16:00.000-07:00

Ripoff Report [www.RipOffReport.com] is faltering in its ability to manage false and malicious reports. Cred-o-meter has now zeroed out for RipOffReport.com

Here is an example of a current report at their website:

Barack Obama Is Scamming Review | Rip-off Report #311553

snopes.com: Charley Reese - 545 People

2010-08-13T22:53:00.000-07:00

snopes.com: Charley Reese - 545 People

GPS Protection from theft

2010-08-13T22:27:00.000-07:00

If you own a Tom Tom GPS device, by now you've plugged it into your computer to update it with the latest maps and voices. You probably also noticed that you can access Tom Tom like you would an external data storage device.

You can find the images that pop up when you first turn on your Tom Tom and edit them to show your ID photo and phone number, in case some idiot steals it. Then the idiot will have no choice but to see your smiling face every time he turns it on.

But that's not enough is it? No, you want your Tom Tom to accept only the IP address of your personal computer for updates, and to wreak havoc on any other computer that some thief tries to use to update the maps.

Actually, when you bring home your GPS, you must hook it up to your computer, register the device and open an online account with the company, just to be able to update the maps or download voices.

So the moron who stole the GPS out of the truck (Reported in the State Journal-Register) will never be able to update it, never be able to pawn it, or sell it to someone else.

That GPS is one hell of a hot potato. If you steal one of those, you not only completely wasted your time, you ruined your future.

Furlough days are economic suicide.

2010-07-28T16:38:00.001-07:00

You run a government that depends on tax payers for support. You're running out of tax payers because businesses are closing or moving away, laying-off consumers who then must further depend on your government. The only real source of tax revenue is from the remaining consumers who have discretionary income above housing, food, transportation, insurance, energy, clothing, and taxes.

Those consumers that remain, who have the extra discretionary income that provides the necessary tax revenue for the survival of your government, are the highly paid government employees who are receiving systematic cost-of-living raises every year, while the private sector employees receive no such raise or are laid-off, and are consequently dragging your government down due to social program needs.

Who is at fault?

You are, for allowing the activities of indifferent anti-social and predatory business practices that have plundered the community you govern.

Now lay-off all of your union workers and start hiring non-union members, because you will never get the tax revenue you need to sustain such an expensive opulent workforce.

Or sue the businesses that laid off your tax-payers, and sue the businesses that refused to raise the wages of your tax-payers so that you could sustain your government.

Outsourcing

2010-07-14T19:53:00.001-07:00

Whose bright idea was it to outsource?

Someone said "hey, it's cheaper over there," and the bosses fell for it.

The money for production went over there.

That money, over there, circulated down to people who acquired resources and manufacture products.

They pay taxes over there. They buy clothes over there. They buy food over there. They rent over there. They drive over there.

It's happening over there.

Not here.

So, who is the moron whose bright idea it was to outsource?

The old woman in the Scooter

2010-06-27T15:36:00.001-07:00

Today I was at work and I walked passed a door. Glancing out I saw an old lady at the far end of a parking lot sitting on one of those scooters for the walking semi-impaired.

A harsh wind was blowing. I could tell by the whipping of the American flag on the back of her mode of transportation which itself was red.

She was out there by herself, her face was down, protected by her arms. I couldn't tell if she needed help. I wondered if the battery was dead in her scooter.

I continued walking a few feet, then thought that I should at least see if she was okay. Maybe she was merely waiting for a ride, but I wasn't sure. Maybe she really was in distress. I sighed, turned, and started to push open the door. It was particularly difficult. The wind was very hard at that moment.

She tilted her head up and I saw the cigarette dangling in her mouth. She was out in the far reaches of the parking lot because the hospital has a rule. No smoking on the property.

I walked away wondering if those scooters served to extend the smoking habits of people who can no longer walk because they smoked so much.

Springfield needs a 12-step program.

2010-06-21T18:21:00.000-07:00

Even the State-Journal Register seems to deny the truth about Springfield by focusing on the score.

Springfield needs to stand up and say "Hi. My name is Springfield, Illinois, and I'm an alcoholic.

A multitude of voices will cry out in the darkness.

Opening a bar in this town is impossible. There's too much competition.

Two Springfield officers among top 15 in state for DUI arrests - Springfield, IL - The State Journal-Register

Rod and Judas

2010-06-10T05:09:00.001-07:00

Reading the article this morning at the SJ-R website about the trial of Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois who was impeached after being arrested on corruption charges. [ http://www.sj-r.com/carousel/x1932554589/Blagojevich-awaits-testimony-of-FBI-agent-ex-aide ]

I was suddenly struck by thoughts of Judas Iscariot. I have to break down why I thought of Judas while reading about the former governor.

While being raised a Christian I was taught that Judas betrayed Jesus to the Romans which eventually led to Jesus' crucifixion. I hated Judas. I think everyone else did too. But logically the dividend of the betrayal of Jesus was allegedly the salvation of everyone, so Judas really wasn't such a bad fellow after all. So what does this have to do with Rod Blagojevich? Not what you think.

The metaphor I'm going for here is that Rod Blagojevich is Judas, not Jesus. Jesus in this metaphor is actually the state of Illinois, but not literally. The Jesus metaphor here is the public perception of the Illinois government.

Judas (Blagojevich) is betraying Jesus (the public perception of Illinois) to the Romans (the reality of Illinois government).

Ultimately, since the Rod Blagojevich trial is tearing the veneer from Illinois government, I think we should give our former governor a little credit. Sort of like Judas, because Illinois government needs to be crucified, and it looks like this trial is starting to get that ball rolling.

Monetary machinations and media sorcery.

2010-06-07T17:47:00.000-07:00

I was browsing through the tv listings at tv.yahoo.com and came across an advertisement that claimed that The Wall Street Journal reported the end of Walmart. Since the ad was a graphic image and not actual text I figured it was bogus, so I thought I would check it at wallstreetjournal.com. When I got there it was a page that requires a user to subscribe for a fee.

I almost considered paying for a subscription to The Wall Street Journal, but I was reminded of my experience taking economics and accounting in college. The books were old, and I was taking economics and accounting in the spring of 2008, during the worst recession since the great depression. What part of ironic is missing from that? If enough people who studied economics and accounting actually got the correct information, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

So I wondered how many people read The Wall Street Journal. They appear to be the authority on financial news. The publication has been around since 1889 and has a reputed circulation of 2.1 million copies and nearly half a million online subscribers. So, why are we in a huge recession?

Wait a minute. The subscriptions and circulation don’t cover the entire population of the United States, around 307 million people. So now the question is this: Did everyone who subscribed to The Wall Street Journal come through the recession smelling like roses? How many people who took college economics and accounting survived the recession?

Every day I opened my books I wondered if the information I was learning was any good at all because of the recession. Now that I thought about it for a while, those who participated in the marketplace deserve all the credit for the recession. Two million or so people out of three hundred million read The Wall Street Journal, and very few people are studying for their MBA degrees. I imagine that they weathered the recession very well indeed, but businesses failed, so there are those among the financial experts who know something more than just the old economics and accounting textbooks.

I studied communication too, so I recognize that certain information is for public consumption, and other information is deliberately convoluted. Should you get all your investing ideas from watching CNBC or reading the Wall Street Journal, or should you go to the trouble of looking up a company’s annual or quarterly financial report using EDGAR at www.sec.gov?

I figure most people regard the mass media with such validity and credibility that they don’t question the sources and dig themselves a recession, while others analyze the mass media to predict the behavior of the public reaction to it for financial gain.

Such examples of public behavior to media would be the “Oprah Effect.” [http://www.cnbc.com/id/29961298/ ] Oprah Winfrey one day might mention a product and the next day the person who created it could be a millionaire. That example is one of the clearest. Another example is the recent jobs report put out by the White House on Friday that showed most of the recently created jobs were temporary census workers. That information combined with the BP oil spill and Hungary being added to the growing list of European countries in financial trouble, caused a massive sell-off of stocks in Wall Street, which in turn dragged down the stock market.

Monday, some traders on Wall Street will swoop in like vultures to buy up stocks that suddenly became cheap, causing the market to go up, but less. The trend from February through April was a steady increase in stock values, but ever since, the industrial averages are stepping down. Two steps down, then one step up. Some bit of information keeps changing the game week to week.

To find out what happened I went to Google Finance and looked at the index timeline. [http://www.google.com/finance?q=INDEXDJX:.DJI,INDEXSP:.INX,INDEXNASDAQ:.IXIC ] Google saw fit to place news releases along the timeline and one source that looked appealing was found at Bloomberg.com published April 28, 2010 ” S&P 500 May Drop After ‘Ultimate Squeeze’: Technical Analysis”. [http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-28/s-p-500-may-drop-after-ultimate-squeeze-technical-analysis.html ] The headline itself predicted the current trend, and it doesn’t look likely to change anytime soon.
The uptrend appears to result from slightly improving earnings reports, while the downtrend follows news from Europe, employment numbers, or some other news related to government, like new regulatory legislation in the works.

One might think that the stock market is punishing the country for having elected a Democrat President of the United States. Either that or deregulation throughout the eight years of the Bush administration is meeting its karma in the form of bank failures, financial bailouts, E-coli and Salmonella outbreaks, coalmine and oil rig explosions, lead and cadmium in consumer products, and who knows what else lurks on the horizon. Either way, the layoffs started soon after the election of Barack Obama.

When I look at a news story, I wonder it was published literally for its own value, or intended to move the public or some audience to a certain action. Real stories about events concerning individuals aside, news about trends, numbers, or groups of people have the potential to be falsified or distorted to motivate the public.

REVOLUTION

2010-06-02T09:42:00.001-07:00

Massive layoffs in government. Politicians relieved of all authority. Government buildings closed permanently. There's no longer a need to vote between two evils or between the good, the bad and the ugly. For the new full-participation democracy, just go to http://www.godofradio.com/ It's the new government.

The Computer TV Conspiracy Theory

2010-05-23T06:59:00.001-07:00

I was up late one night and noticed that my Windows media player had a new function that streams television programming online. I shook my head and thought 'there go the broadcasters and cable distributors,' now I don't need them to see the shows I want. So I tracked down an old episode of Twilight Zone, the one with Burgess Meredith in "Time Enough" where all he wants to do is read books. I'm not going to spoil it for you. I sat down and began to watch the episode on my laptop. Gradually, a strange feeling crept over me.

As I was sitting there watching this character on the screen in his wildly magnified eye-glasses trying to make change for a customer in his role as a bank teller, my thoughts drifted toward my own imaginings of what I might do to show someone that my laptop was now a T.V. I imagined myself speaking in a twang characteristic of someone severely educationally deprived: "Hey! Look whut I diyid! I turnt my laptop into a TeeVee.!"

My first reaction was to hit the 'Esc' key, and then I went for the 'x' icon with my cursor and closed that window. I never want to see that again! I was filled with horror, not from the content of the video directly, but because of the distraction it represents from the relevant information I need to survive and compete in Western society.

I was given the book Freakanomics for Christmas 2009 and I'm still reading it. It's taking me so long because my life is filled with information input from other sources, but a key point the authors make is the subject of "information asymmetry," the difference of information between the "experts" and the "consumers." While studying communication at UIS, I discovered the secret information war being waged since the railroad barons in the 1800's hired journalists to write propaganda. The authors point out that the Internet has so severely narrowed the informational advantage of "experts" over "consumers" that it is costing businesses billions of dollars a year in profits. The playing field of information is becoming level thanks to the Internet, and now AT&T and Verizon seek to capitalize and control the flow of information to regain the advantage, but that's another story for www.safetheinternet.org.

For the businesses most affected by the closing information gap, the remaining tool is distraction. Newly relaxed rules on advertising alcohol and sexual aids on television during prime time, newly relaxed rules on profanity and obscenity, the treatment of political reporting on television as if it were a sport, more programs containing unscripted or real violence, more advertising of sugar, salt, fat, and caffeine aimed at children, NASCAR, and myriad other appeals toward baser instincts and emotions that trigger wasteful consumerism, heaved up into the main-stream media information flow like Mount Saint Helens. Internet search results are returning ever more frustrating useless results. Somewhere, kids are graduating from high school and going to work for the corporate media vomit machine, spewing such bullshit as the Pepsi ad where everyone is showing printed posters of green grass and plants in their little video squares.

It's Sunday, May 23, 2010. I'm going to get my camera and my Tom Tom, pick a nice scenic spot using Google Earth, and go take some photos today.

Non-tourism and non-entertainment related businesses should move from downtown.

2010-05-19T10:18:00.000-07:00

When Springfield was smaller, downtown was the primary draw, but now with sprawl, the places one visits for entertainment are scattered all over. The venues should be centrally located so they offer a full range of stimulating activity within walking distance.

MOST LAW BOGUS

2010-05-18T05:35:00.001-07:00

This blog is in response to the article "Dove proposes less-severe noise law" in the State Journal Register

In the comments at the SJ-R website I continue to suggest ad nauseum that the products with no other purpose but to generate loud sound, interfering with the peace and tranquility of the community, be taxed. I will therefore make a direct appeal.

The lack of response will indicate that some laws are aimed at symptoms rather than causes, which means that the intent of those laws is to retain punishment and its related bureaucracy, instead of aiming at a problem that might result in no longer needing that bureaucracy. In other words, some laws are created for the benefit of making busy-work to keep someone in a job that might otherwise be eliminated because a problem was solved by dealing directly with a problem rather than its symptoms alone.

A high recidivism rate, for example, is symptomatic of certain laws benefiting bureaucratic perpetuity rather than solutions.

This noise ordinance serves as a perfect example, focusing at the act of public nuisance rather than the key components that instigate such nuisances.

All crimes are symptoms of greater problems, but the laws of the land are fixed in a psychological medium of stone solid dogma. This dogmatic approach to the law is known in communication circles as "argumentum ad antiquitatem" or an appeal to tradition, a logical fallacy rationalized under the wildly conservative and blatant term "precedence."

The worship of precedence should be a determining factor of failure to pass the bar exam or denial of public service employment. In other words, anyone who refuses to question old law should not be allowed to serve as a judge. That includes the bible. Preachers who do not engage in questions or debate about old laws in any ancient tome, are unworthy of the pulpit, just as any judge is unworthy of the bench, who refuses to doubt a law on a regular basis.

Mayor and Aldermen should tie their income to the economy, the local economy, not the Chicago economy.

2010-05-16T07:45:00.000-07:00

This is in response to Mayor, aldermen may tie their raises to economy in the Illinois State Journal-Register:

Mayor and Aldermen should tie their income to the economy, the local economy, not the Chicago economy.

According to the Illinois Workforce Info Center, Sangamon County ranks at number 9 of the top ten highest average wages in the state of Illinois. The average weekly wage is $861.00 and the average annual salary is $44,772. T he mayor’s salary being nearly $120,000 places the position so high that reality is just a bad dream fading over coffee in the quiet morning light.

This business about tying wages to the consumer price index has nothing to do with the unemployment rate or average income based on current taxable income. If they are going to talk about adjusting their income based on the performance of the economy, they should start thinking of their income in terms of percentages of current tax revenue. They need an incentive to raise the standard of living for everyone so they can reward themselves with the increased tax revenue that results from the increase in everyone’s disposable income in the community.

So fix the ceiling of public employee salaries at the average annual salary or average weekly wage of everyone in the community, and get busy finding a way to raise that average, or find someone who can.

Illinois has top-heavy over-paid government bureaucracies.

2010-05-08T06:35:00.000-07:00

The Illinois State Journal Register didn't post the following editorial on the Internet for reasons you may determine for yourselves, so I saw fit to take care of that for them.

district186_illinois
Source -- The Illinois State Journal-Register

Civilization cycle nearing bottom

2010-05-07T07:23:00.001-07:00

German Parliament agreed to bail out Greece, but Portugal may be left twisting in the wind. It's been said that a retired banker from Chicago fears the economic situation in Europe is contagious and will spread to the United States within a few months.

According to Marketwatch.com, Citi is predicting a market correction down by 20%. There seems to be no other direction but down, however, I plan on holding my stocks for at least a couple of years, and I plan to trade my shares manually, not setting a trailing stop to sell, because the market is too volatile.

Employment is up over 200K jobs, but those jobs are very low paying jobs that cannot sustain the economy because the lowest housing rates are still well over 50% of median income. Notice that nobody in the news ever mentions this fact? This, plus fuel and utility costs will reduce disposable income to bare essentials such as food and clothing. People who recently purchased a new car or mortgage will soon find themselves upside-down and desperate for someone to purchase those goods.

The local economy is supported by business owners, government workers and health care professionals. Springfield is somewhat shielded from the rest of the state because of such a high concentration of these kinds of workers, however, finding help at a retail store or other private service will be extremely difficult and time-consuming because the merchant labor class has been reduced to mere skeleton crews, rendering the workplace unbearable for the few workers who remain.

Managers are finding themselves sneaking into work off the clock to play "catch-up" out of fear they may be accused of poor management, while in reality the shortage of staff is entirely to blame.

The sudden increase in income for the newly employed creates a temporary surge in frivolous spending that leads into indebtedness. The celebration of getting a job by eating out and buying new clothes will be very short-lived. For those who do not have debt and find themselves with a slightly larger amount of disposable income may be tempted to upgrade their housing, and then find themselves trapped by future increases in utilities and fuel costs.

The solution is simple: Create a solid foundation of disposable income at the bottom of the economy. Bring profit margins down to ten percent and pay your workers enough to stimulate the economy from the roots up. You will have a much safer society with fewer people in prison or otherwise draining the economy through taxation.

Illinois has a banking problem

2010-04-25T06:07:00.000-07:00

Illinois seems to have too many problems.
Ranking in the top three of bank failures?

*States not listed are those with only one bank failure in the last ten years.

Illinois has a tax problem

2010-04-22T19:58:00.001-07:00

Ten states exclude all federal, state and local pension income from taxation. These include … Illinois...

Many states exclude Social Security retirement benefits from state income taxes. The District of Columbia and 27 states with income taxes provide a full exclusion for Social Security benefits -- … Illinois....

States with the highest sales tax are:…and Illinois (6.25%).

Illinois and Mississippi exclude income from qualified retirement plans.

Source: http://www.retirementliving.com/RLtaxes.html

More mobile

2010-04-13T10:40:00.001-07:00

I'm more mobile now. Right now I'm using this post as a test of Microsoft Word 2007's blog post program. I already crashed it once by adding a bunch of accounts and then closing the blog post file without saving it. Don't worry, I won't be blogging and driving.

Tea Party Express comes to Springfield

2010-04-05T18:36:00.000-07:00

TeaPartyExpress2010

The Tea Party Express came to Illinois State Fairgrounds in Springfield, Illinois tonight. I took a few photos. I started to look for ant-tea party protesters but I couldn't see any. I assumed from the main-stream media that the Tea Party was strictly Conservative and run by the Republicans. I was duped by false propaganda.

The Republicans would love everyone to believe that they are the power behind the Tea Party, and the Democrats would love everyone to believe that the Tea Party is made by right-wing wackos.

These two political parties do not want you to believe that the Tea party is unique and a threat to both Power Bases of Republican and Democrat parties, which have ruled this country as a duopoly that excludes such independent thinkers as Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, and other political parties such as the Libertarians, Green, and Independents.

The Republicans and Democrats point fingers at each other in front, while willfully passing the baton between them behind their backs, and playing "Keep-Away" from anyone with a notion of balancing the power between the people and the government.

The revolving door between high government staff positions, and corporate boards of directors on Wall Street is a chief indicator that politicians have only the interests of their closest advisors, which happens to be strong-arming more money out of the pockets of workers and into the pockets of government contracted industrial complexes.

Unfortunately, the podium tonight at the Illinois State fairgrounds was populated with speakers who chose to target Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, when they should have been targeting Henry Paulson, Ben Burnanke, Alan Greenspan, Tim Geitner, Paul Wolfowitz, and others involved in financial advice that resulted in the current economic situation.

While the speakers at the Tea Party activities continue to mislead the public away from the cause and place blame on mere actors and rodeo clowns in marble rings, not much will become of them.

Product Failure - Wire shelves

2010-04-01T08:53:00.000-07:00

This product was purchased at at Target in Springfield. You will need to open the package in the store and check the pipe threading to be sure you do not have a defective product.

Proactive or Reactive government

2010-03-13T13:16:00.000-08:00

A government is illegitimate if it is reactive instead of proactive. A proactive government will plan ahead, while a reactive government will plunder the coffers and then make excuses.

Here is a partial example of how a proactive government works:

During good times, when unemployment is at least below five percent and most businesses are thriving; raise taxes, cut spending and save enough money so your government will have an emergency fund to stay fully operational for at least three years.

During bad times, when a recession hits, spend the emergency fund, lower taxes, increase the ranks of the social service and workforce development workers, and freeze salary increases.

Here is a partial example of how a reactive government works:

During good times, when unemployment is at least below five percent and most businesses are thriving; hire more workers because there’s more money for it, give regular salary increases, hire employees at three times the rate of the private sector, create new jobs for political patrons, and spend money on beautification projects.

During bad times, when a recession hits, layoff line-level workers, increase taxes, cut funding to social services and education, keep the high-salaried political patrons on the job. Cut firefighters, police, teachers and other line-level workers.

GOV 101

2010-03-07T09:37:00.001-08:00

Today I’m playing the role of the bad magician who gives away the secret to probably the biggest illusion in human history, Government.

Most of us know what’s really going on but it’s a problem we can’t articulate. Conspiracy theorists and paranoids in general continue to voice hatred and fear of the government, and people are still lining up at the polls every election season. These indicators serve as a barometer that the government still appears to have teeth and influence with the public. It’s well beyond time to stop this illusion.

Year after year, president after president, governor after governor, nothing changes. Everyone is wondering why they have to scrimp and scrape their way through life along the precipice of life while a few people or entities are dolling out five and six figure salaries and pensions.

One key element is that government has become a tool of industry. Government on its own merit is merely a decoration behind which a handful of bankers and other industrial oligarchs hide and push buttons like the Wizard of Oz.

Legislation, without fail, distorts from its original intent and public promise, into a cash cow for an industry special interest group, or distorts into a tax-funded bureaucracy to be populated by political patrons and their cronies, who then take revolving doors into industries that benefit from that bureaucracy.

Another point of evidence is the disparity of priorities that local state and federal governments have regarding taxes.

Municipal, State and Federal budgets rely on taxes to stay afloat, but businesses treat employees as an expense they try to keep as low as possible or cut entirely, not realizing that by doing so, businesses are reducing the volume of tax contributors, causing governments to increase the tax rate.

In other words, there are less people able to contribute taxes, so the tax rate is increased to compensate. There are more people dependent on social programs that require tax expenditures because they are unemployed.

Municipalities that depend on sales taxes are doomed unless they do away with sales tax and shift to only an income tax.

If government was interested enough to increase the volume of tax contributions (increasing the number of people who contribute more to taxes) rather than increasing the tax rate, governments would reform education so individuals could be self-sufficient instead of learning to become dependent on an employer in the future.

This is bad for business because it would inject too many competitors into the marketplace. Education has long been dampened and controlled by dysfunctional mandates and curriculum to maintain a certain level of control in the marketplace.

So, government served its purpose as a distraction for terrorists and mentally unstable gunmen long enough. You can stop giving government credit for anything and treat it like the tool that it is. Start looking behind the curtain folks.

Computus Interruptus

2010-03-03T08:10:00.000-08:00

You get frustrated when you have to do work, especially when you have one of those really boring jobs at a state agency and you don't feel like quitting in the middle of computer solitaire or World of Warcraft, The solution becomes old-school.

You write your assignments long-hand on paper and pass them to an office clerk to type for you. It's that simple! You can continue your awesome hand in Solitaire, position in chess, or battle whatever. You and your computer can while-away the hours until theclock strikes three-thirty, then off you go to enjoy the rest of the sunny day.

So what if the office clerk has assumed more responsibilities due to budget cuts, or that even your own boss and everyone else types their own memos because they have computers! It's your life to take by the reins and galivant.

The problem is you are wasting valuable taxpayer dollars, and wasting paper. Ruining the environment by using excess paper and performing redundant tasks adds up to serious waste over time.

So stop it!

Stop tearing off a sheet of paper, writing something that should be typed by you, then handing it off to someone else to repeat what you just wrote, on their computer. Type your own damn Shit!

Consequences of laying off employees.

2010-02-27T08:07:00.000-08:00

People are getting laid off so they can be replaced by entry-level low wage workers who will have absolutely no spending power, and from whom the city and state won't be able to extract tax revenue.

Businesses are collectively sinking their own ships to try and economically reduce government.

The timing is different for each business, between the time a business cuts it's costs by laying off employees and when the negative consequences occur, but in every case the delay is long enough for the cause of those negative consequences to be vaguely blamed on "the economy," rather than the businesses own practice.

The state and city cut a tiny bit deeper into it's own throat by laying off highly paid government workers. The tax loss won't be felt for a while, but it's inevitable.

The shock to the local private sector economy is three-fold for every government worker laid off, by virtue that most government employees are paid at least twice the private sector average wage, even more if you include benefits.

No customers, intermittent fire and police protection, utilities rendered unreliable, If you own your own business and you own the building too, you've doomed yourselves.

My advice is to continue to hype the local economy long enough to sell your business. Oh, sorry about giving away that secret.

DEPRESSION CONTINUES ADVANCING, lets look at the end.

2010-02-21T05:36:00.000-08:00

Dave Bakke's column in the State Journal-Register is a testament to my previous blog post.

•Illinois State Journal-Register 2/21/2010 [ http://www.sj-r.com/bakke/x723437528/Dave-Bakke-I-like-living-here-but-why ]
•SPFLDnet.blogspot.com 2/10/2010[ http://spfldnet.blogspot.com/2010/02/depression-advancing-at-imperceptible.html ]

The downward spiral of the economy is self-sustaining.

Laid-off private-sector workers = less consumerism = less tax revenue = laid-off public-sector workers = less consumerism = laid-off private-sector workers.

The cycle repeats. This cycle will continue to repeat until there is nothing left but land owners with natural resources that are still in demand. That is unless those who control the government begin to arbitrarily seize land so they can pay their own ridiculously high government salaries and pensions.

Government salaries in the upper levels will increase drastically because they can see this coming. Once they retire they can sit back and just let the money flow into their coffers.

DEPRESSION ADVANCING AT AN IMPERCEPTIBLE PACE

2010-02-10T10:05:00.000-08:00

The business news media keep reporting claims that the economy is slowly climbing out of a recession. It is for a few companies that managed to cut their costs temporarily enough to report an upward trend in their profit-expense ratios; just enough to get more investors the same way Enron did shortly before its fraud was discovered. Unfortunately, this is more than just Enron, it’s the few businesses that are used in calculating the gross domestic product (GDP) for the entire country.

Several stories published in the Illinois State Journal-Register (SJ-R) combine to foretell the doom of our economy, more so than any temporarily distorted PE ratios; a tale of greed so strong that long-term consequences are ignored for instant gratification and knee-jerk reactions.

Public universities are depleting financial reserves in order to make payroll, according to a story by Deanna Bellandi of the Associated Press. “the state isn’t giving them the money they’ve been promised,” Twelve public universities are in trouble, even after raising tuition, the state owes the universities nearly three quarters of a billion dollars.

The souring economy and consequent layoffs, increased temporarily the number of enrollees at colleges for re-training, but for some reason, the increased enrollment and tuition combined still has the universities operating at a loss. The universities apparently are not self-sustaining. The income from tuition is going somewhere, but where?

It was reported February 3, 2010 that enrollment was up at the University of Illinois at Springfield, however, one commenter online referenced the economy and stated “More kids are staying home and commuting rather than going away. SIU-C is taking a pounding for the same reason.”

The state of Illinois is running a deficit, climbing toward thirteen billion dollars.
Sean Driscoll of Gatehouse News Service reported today that without help from the U.S. Congress, sixty five thousand Illinois residents are slated to lose their unemployment benefits in March and two hundred and thirty five thousand by June. Tim Landis reported a twenty eight percent increase in the number of unemployment claims between 2008 and 2009, in Springfield, to about sixteen thousand claims. The unemployment rate is the second lowest in the state behind Bloomington-Normal, according to Landis.

Springfield is not a microcosm of every medium sized town across the state because it’s the state capital, has colleges, a major medical district, and international historical notoriety.

On February 4, 2010, Dean Olsen reported that the Illinois Supreme Court overturned the cap on medical malpractice claims for constitutional reasons, making Illinois very unattractive to medical practitioners because malpractice insurance premiums will skyrocket, consequently so will health care and general health insurance costs in the state.

On February 9, 2010 it was announced in the SJ-R that the local power and water company, City Water Light and Power (CWLP), issued six pink slips to employees, with the promise of fifty four more pink slips if the union rejects concessions for furlough days and pay or benefit reductions.

On February 5, 2010 it was reported in SJ-R that another twenty-one layoff notices went out to other city employees who are members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) if they don’t concede to furlough days and smaller pay raises.

On February 6, 2010 it was reported that The Springfield Police Benevolent and Protective Association Unit 5 announced that ninety seven percent of its organization voted against conceding to furlough days and lower salary raises. According to SJ-R the police union rejected the proposal because there was no guarantee that if accepted; no police officers would get laid off.

On February 8, 2010, it was reported that approximately half (two of four) of Springfield, Illinois City Clerk employees were issued notices of “possible layoffs.”

On February 4, 2010, it was reported that Springfield city alderman approved a spending budget that closed all but one of the city’s public libraries.

On February 3, 2010, Chris Dettro wrote in SJ-R that in Central Illinois Foodbank’s twenty one county area, over a hundred and five thousand people, including thirty-nine thousand children already receive food assistance annually, over seventeen thousand in a given week.

While all this is taking place, management at state and municipal levels are being promoted so they get higher pensions when they retire, often as an incentive to retire early, such as the outgoing Springfield, Illinois police chief, as reported on February 10, 2010 in the SJ-R.

What does this mean? Well, remember the promise that a lower prime lending rate would translated into lower credit card interest rates for customers? Remember that it never materialized and that all the profits were pocketed instead of being passed on to customers?

The same goes for your taxes. You aren’t going to see a dime of tax savings because management will be enriched further at the expense of laid-off labor. They are currently gorging themselves on what little is left of federal, state and local money.

Soon there will literally be nothing left, and they will be long gone. The baby boomers are gutting the economy and hoarding cash. I hesitate to suggest electing a new generation because it will be another generation of the same people, and the same type of people.

If you look at all the hoops you need to jump through to get elected, it’s not much of a stretch to conclude that the whole system is completely rigged.

Looking on the bright side, Scheels super sporting-goods store will be coming soon to compete with Gander Mountain and Dick’s Sporting Goods. This could mean that tents and sleeping bags at K-Mart, Target, and Shopko will be even more affordable for the rest of us.

Snow Geese on Lake Springfield

2010-02-04T13:02:00.001-08:00

Give the Green Party a chance.

2010-01-24T20:57:00.000-08:00

The Democrats and Republicans have been around long enough. It's time to give them layoff notices. Let's see how the Greens do.
http://www.ilgp.org/

End of Democracy

2010-01-22T05:40:00.001-08:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Massachusetts Voters

2010-01-20T07:35:00.000-08:00

What were the people of Massachusetts thinking when they elected Scott Brown on Tuesday? CBS News reported that Senator Elect Scott Brown denied that his election was a referendum of political gridlock in Washington. Is it true? Could health care reform have passed long ago? The Democrats have sixty seats in the senate, but now only until Brown gets sworn in.

The TV pundits claimed that the Democrat Martha Coakley, running against Brown, was disinterested in the obligatory campaign functions herself, but Politico blogger Ben Smith presented a memo from a Coakley adviser stating that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and “other Dem organizations” failed to contribute early in the election, and “didn’t engage until a week before the election.”(i)

Jon Stewart on the Daily Show exclaimed “The Kennedy legacy is going down to a naked guy that owns a truck?” Referring to a long-ago nude magazine photo of Scott Brown and a campaign commercial where Brown introduced his truck. Later Stewart asks “how does the Democratic candidate, a one Martha Coakley, state attorney genera, lose to this cat?” proceeding with a series of clips.
CNN: “Martha Coakley may have made a big political gaff here in Boston when she referred to Kirt Shilling, the former Boston Red Socks Pitcher as another Yankees fan.”

Stewart: “That doesn’t sound like much but let’s put it in some perspective here for non-sports fans. Uhh, that would be like saying that John Lennon’s favorite Beatle was Mickey Dolenz” [of the Monkeys].

The Boston Globe reportedly once asked Coakley if she was being too passive in campaigning to which she replied “As opposed to standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands?”

More damning clips followed, but the point is the Democrats either thought they were going to get a landslide victory or they had no interest in maintaining the majority votes necessary to pass health care reform. The Democrats have a bigger majority in the senate than the Republicans had since 1923, yet the longer health care legislation lingers in limbo, the more it continues to mutate and deform into a cash cow for the insurance industry.

“The people of Massachusetts already have a more progressive health care system than anything in the current health care bill” Stewart said.(ii) One could conclude that voters typically don’t see beyond their own state borders when they vote for someone who is supposed to make decisions that affect the nation as a whole.

It’s not surprising because most senators and representatives are lauded for “bringing home the bacon.” Earmarks are okay when it’s your own state, but if it’s another state, it’s called “pork.” The short-sightedness of the voters should not be further exploited by politicians, but the voters have a responsibility to the country as a whole too.
-----

i. Ben Smith, - Politico.com – Coakley adviser memo: D.C. Dems 'failed' Coakley 01/19/2010 [ http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0110/Coakley_adviser_memo_DC_Dems_faled_Coakley.html?showall ]

ii. The Daily Show – Mass Backwards – Video air date 01/18/2010 – [ http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-january-18-2010/mass-backwards ]

The News Problem

2010-01-17T10:05:00.000-08:00

Since long before the founding of the United States, the printing press was the primary means by which literate people decided their vote for a politicians and public policy referendums.

People have come to depend on the news media so much for their daily lives that owning a major newspaper meant you had more power than the government because you could make or break politicians.

The newspaper’s original free market model was entirely based on the quality of the product. There were no advertisers and the newspaper was allowed to survive based on its pure appeal to subscribers. Much like the original newspaper model, cable television once upon a time also had no advertising and was entirely subscriber based. Today, Internet service is supported by subscription to the telecommunication companies.

In the free market phase, the media is a product that relies purely on its own quality to sustain itself. A news organization should survive well in a society where affluence and literacy abound.

An appealing product of information should be easily produced in a society which is taught in a regimented and homogenous manner. An audience educated with proper critical thinking skills should require only facts with which to make decisions.

News was produced that only affected the daily lives and futures of its subscribers.

The current trend toward gentrification of literacy, by raising tuition at private schools and state colleges, the closing of public libraries by cash-strapped cities like Springfield, the shielding of teachers and administrators from Freedom of Information Act requests, is changing the course of society’s future.

Once news organizations began to depend on advertising for survival, they began to shift their appeal toward those who would advertise rather than those who would read or watch. The continued positive messages about the stock market and economy leading up to the banking collapse in 2008, and the continued positive messages about economic recovery during the current recession is one example.

The once-respected news organizations by virtue of only their continued circulation, present ideas that are of no real value to anyone, but which are perceived as being valuable merely by their presence on the printed page or television. The use of the word “popular” became more frequently necessary, as does the subtle presentation that someone or some thing is popular.

The perception of integrity and journalism has shifted from presentation of facts, to speculation and hyperbole. Reporters who adapted were kept employed while those who did not were eliminated or rejected. Media personalities who could garner the highest ratings through pure emotional appeal are paid the highest.

The owners of media decided who gets employed. The potential for an editor to gain employment may depend on how close his or her ideological agenda matches that of the owner. One might claim that an editorial board makes decisions, but how is the board selected?

Suddenly, the Internet became declassified and accessible to the public. The media “gatekeepers” no longer control the flow of information. There is no one to edit or censor communication, and everyone can research for themselves, the stories they are told.

But nobody has time. Everyone is too busy to recognize their livelihoods being gradually eroded away through subtle distortions in their values.

Hiring freeze over at UIS?

2010-01-17T06:49:00.000-08:00

Shortly after announcing a hiring freezes(1), the University of Illinois posted an employment ad in the classified section of the Illinois State Journal Register.

One may suspend dissonance by taking account of the fact that during an election year, it is wise for incumbents of offices capable of positioning patrons in such employment, to dangle before the public such golden nuggets of aspiration that yield sacrificial political campaign contributions.

Such behavior is common as evidenced by past state and municipal contradictory and illogical actions of a similar nature. The State Journal-Register reported that the city of Springfield once hired 18 new employees despite facing an 8 to 12 million dollar deficit.(2)

Let the race begin.

(1) http://www.sj-r.com/breaking/x1689191444/Budget-woes-forces-U-of-I-to-start-furlough-plan

(2) Published on December 18, 2009, State Journal-Register, The (Springfield, IL) Our Opinion: City should implement hiring freeze

The Union Problem

2010-01-14T09:56:00.000-08:00

Unions have become big enough to be a problem not only for their employers, but for the economy as a whole, inevitably including unions themselves. The resources used to placate the unions and enrich the owners of production and owners of resources are inequitably removed from the rest of the population which has no political clout.

You may raise an accusatory finger and say, “everyone has a vote” which is true, but the vote has no value because money, not the public, controls who gets publicity and ultimately who gets on the ballot.

Groups who have the most money can prop up all the puppets they want because the money that goes into political campaigns must inevitably put food on the family tables of “credentialed” editors, producers and journalists.

Illinois has a small variety of very good private schools, but the quality of teaching and administration at public schools is now shielded from inquiries under the Freedom of Information Act.

The teachers union worked to protect their own upper echelons from public scrutiny, despite the fact they receive public money. Parents are interested in the quality of their child’s education.

The public can’t scrutinize the quantity and quality of information collected in the minds of students. Students’ grades are confidential. The public can already easily scrutinize unclean facilities, incorrectly prepared food and clerical errors on non-confidential documents, they should have a right to know what kind of teacher or administrator their kids are getting.

The state of Illinois has left itself exposed for criticism that says “Illinois hides the performance records of teachers, principals, and school superintendents. Anyone who can’t send their children to private school should now to find another state with more transparency in their education system.

Months after approving what was billed as a sweeping reform of the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, legislators, at the behest of teachers’ unions, on Wednesday barred disclosure of performance evaluations for teachers, principals and school superintendents.
The measure doesn’t affect evaluations of janitors, secretaries, teacher aides, bus drivers, cafeteria workers or any other type of school employee, nor, as written, does it have any impact on municipal, county or state workers. – Illinois State Journal Register. 01/13/2010. [ http://www.sj-r.com/education/x1409374740/Lawmakers-exempt-teachers-from-FOIA-rules-on-disclosure-of-evaluations. ]

Unions refuse to look over their own private white-washed fences at the crushing poverty experienced by the rest of us. They have become the very thing they sought to overcome. They seem to have no consideration for the apparent lack of tax revenues caused by the economic collapse in the private sector. Without any acknowledgement of the economic pressure on the rest of us, they continue to fight for more money still, and even suggest increasing fees or implementing new fees on the public, parallel to tax collection.

To suggest new fees or increasing fees is to put an idea in the politician’s mind that he can later easily claim that he did not raise taxes.

Ron Stone, the police union’s attorney, said the union has offered the city a number of alternatives to furlough days, wage reductions and layoffs — from charging a fee to businesses for false alarms to seeking a greater fee or full reimbursement for special events when police presence is required.
“With the city council that’s not willing to increase revenue, it’s going to be difficult,” Stone said. – Illinois State Journal Register 01/13/2010 [ http://www.sj-r.com/local/x1689204972/Union-officials-City-has-ignored-their-savings-ideas ]

Unions have such a tight grip on their states and municipalities that even suggesting to suspend raises for unions brings threats of lawsuits for breach of contract, while non-union labor has no choice but to accept minimum wage increase that is far below the poverty level.

Davlin also is asking employees to accept smaller raises, saving $1.25 million for the corporate fund and $1.1 million at CWLP. All of the city’s union contracts call for employees to receive 3.5 percent raises during the next budget year. Davlin has proposed that all employees receive salary increases of only one-half of 1 percent. – Illinois State Journal register 01/13/2010 [ http://www.sj-r.com/local/x1689204972/Union-officials-City-has-ignored-their-savings-ideas ]

Ultimately, unions will self-destruct simply because they refuse to adapt with the rest of us to ebb and flow of the economy. The first to suffer are services to the elderly, developmentally disabled, public libraries, elementary and secondary education among others, including those of us with no voice and no political clout.

Unions, already paid extraordinarily high wages and whose jobs are protected, are now getting a thank-you gift from the Democrats for helping them get elected, in the form of an exemption from paying a tax on their “Catdillac” health care insurance plans.

The best chance for compromise legislation on health care may be a plan under construction in the Senate Finance Committee that would pay for a public plan in part by taxing some worker health benefits.

But the union workers who helped Democrats win Congress and the White House and whose support will be key in getting a health bill signed into law would not pay the tax.

With cost estimates already as high as $1.6 trillion, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., has proposed paying for the bill in part by taxing health care benefits for workers who earn more than $100,000, or $200,000 for married couples, according to those familiar with the discussions.

Baucus is also weighing a tax based on the value of health care benefits that exceed a yet-to-be determined cap. A tax on benefits that exceed the cap by a mere $3,000 could amount to $750 in taxes annually for a worker who earns as little as $34,000, say experts. -- Ferrechio, Susan, Chief Congressional Correspondent - Washington Examiner June 23, 2009 “Union workers would be exempt from Dem health care tax” [ http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Union-workers-would-be-exempt-from-Dem-health-care-tax_06_23-48810402.html ]

When you hear the likes of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow decrying the “Teabaggers” understand that they are talking about people who live paycheck to paycheck, people who are qualified and interested in working at a government agency, but who cannot even get an interview because the city or state is borrowing money to pay union salaries and pensions, the non-union elderly and others unable to afford their taxes and fees for property and vehicles, people who can’t afford to send their children to private school and must gamble on the quality of their child’s education.

Congratulations to INB

2010-01-12T06:58:00.000-08:00

I went to http://www.moveyourmoney.info (Move Your Money) and entered 62704 and the list of local banks to which you should move your money was topped by Illinois National Bank (INB).

Congratulations!

This morning's classified section

2010-01-09T05:21:00.000-08:00

Capitol Radio Group is looking for someone to hire so I thought I would look up their address on Google Maps. Nice work.

What is a "Straw Law?" a story you should save for educational purposes.

2010-01-07T06:59:00.000-08:00

Luckily I get the actual printed version of the Illinois State Journal Register. I had to do a search to find this story online, even though it was in today's paper. Hmmm...

There's a story about how lobby reform legislation is being cut down by judge in Chicago who ruled it unconstitutional. It's important because it demonstrates what I like to call a "Straw Law."

Basically it's legislation that gets almost unanimous popular support, that works against organizations which are the backbone of political campaign financing. In classic textbook fashion, a quiet little rule is tacked on that will sabotage the law, but only long after the law is passed, when nobody is looking. A lawsuits against it will later be filed, and a judge can easily rule it unconstitutional.

Here now is the glaring example of such a "Straw Law:"

http://www.sj-r.com/news/x1689193760/White-puts-lobbyist-registrations-on-hold

Be Careful

2009-12-31T13:46:00.000-08:00

This road has two solid inches of compressed snow that melted and refroze into solid ice.

Today's weather was just warm enough in the morning to melt some of the snow on the road which later re-froze this afternoon.

By around 3:00 PM the temperature dropped into the 20 degree range. I was out walking the dog and slipped on what I thought was wet pavement, but was really a thin layer of clear ice on the pavement, also known as "black ice."

Tonight is New Years Eve. What we have here is a near perfect storm. A large amount of snow followed by a thaw, then a deep freeze followed by drunken revelry followed by driving.

Drive safely and have a happy new year.

We Got Fooled Again!

2009-12-30T05:23:00.000-08:00

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was going to have a quiet sun-filled ocean-side tribunal in Guantanamo Bay Cuba, but someone had the audacity of hope for justice and decided that, to be civilized, KSM should be tried with the full benefit and weight of the U.S. Justice System.

Well, he's getting the full weight of the U.S. Justice system all right. He's getting a whopping security detail that will cost U.S. taxpayers more than seventy five million dollars. Since security is only part of the whole ordeal, imagine what the rest of the iceberg will cost.

This magnanimous gesture of civility filled the hearts of liberal progressives with warm fuzzies, the rest of us with gnawing pains of hunger in our stomachs, and the pockets of New York's legal industrial complex with our cash. What is up with New York Anyway? Didn't Wall Street get enough of our investment money? Didn't they get enough of our bailout money?

Well, it's always just about the money. The next time you feel your heart-strings getting tugged, take a breath and really start thinking about how much it's going to cost.

Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5gPwET3Km7O5QWUyXSTmqSLb7SQ4w

GOP News Control Plan C - A and B didn't work out so well.

2009-12-15T07:10:00.000-08:00

GOP Event at Hoogland Center on Monday evidently Hush-Hush

On the evening of Monday, December 14, 2009 my mother wanted to go to a GOP event because she had a really good question for them. I wanted to go so I could take notes and compare what I heard with how the news media reported it later.

A while ago, perhaps weeks, my mother wrote the event down on her calendar. How or where she found that information was forgotten. Monday evening she wanted to confirm it so she looked it up in that day’s Illinois State Journal-Register. It was not in the “Happening Today” section.

I looked up the schedule for Hoogland Center for the Arts and they had “Geppeto and Son” on the 13th of December, followed by “Every Christmas Story Ever Told” on the 19th of December. Nothing on December 14th.

Mom was frustrated because it was on her calendar, but neither of us could find any supporting evidence that the event was still going on. The Illinois Times dated December 10-16 didn’t mention anything for the event either.

Tuesday morning’s Illinois State Journal-Register has an article titled “GOP candidates against Thomson housing detainees” [ http://www.sj-r.com/news/x1479446421/Five-GOP-gubernatorial-candidates-against-Thomson-housing-Gitmo-prisoners ]

According to the article, the event was hosted by the Springfield Citizens Club. I went to their website [ http://www.citizensclubofspringfield.org/ ] to see if they had any information about the event, and the latest event they had on their website was a public policy breakfast they had on November 20.

“Friday, November 20: Public Policy Breakfast, Tom Cavanagh, County Treasurer and Jim Langfelder, City Treasurer, Hoogland Center for the Arts, 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.”

So, we have an event discussing public policy by candidates running for public office, but the venue holding the event does not have it in their schedule, the hosting organization of the event does not have it in their schedule, two of the largest local news publications don’t have it in their schedule. What are we supposed to assume from that?

We can assume that any news reported the following day about the event was completely fabricated because the event itself was entirely controlled and held secret by collaborating organizations.

IS this GOP news control plan C? Plan A was planting a blogger with press credentials in the White House press pool who would ask softball questions. Plan B was paying Armstrong Williams to write GOP leaning news articles during the Bush Years. Plan C appears to be staging top secret press conferences for the purpose of fabricating news. As bad as A and B turned out, C is really the only way to control the situation from start to finish.

Seasonal Affective Disorder is man-made.

2009-12-07T07:18:00.000-08:00

‘Tis the season to watch others express joy and love.

Do jewelry advertisements capitalize on the gift-giving season? Not really because the primary function of jewelry is reward. The secondary function of jewelry is expression of wealth, and finally, investment. The order might be different for everyone, but that’s another story.

During Christmas, the perceived context of the act of giving, changes from a wide variety of rationalizations throughout the rest of the year, to a sharp focus at Christmas. At other times of the year I could think of a dozen other reasons why some guy would spend a few months salary on a diamond for his wife or girlfriend.

During that time it doesn’t become personal for me and so the advertising slips away into oblivion after the commercial is over. It’s like that for me because I’m single, but also because one advertisement I see most frequently is the one with the jealous GPS device that won’t let the man out of the car. The other non-Christmas ads portray women talking about some other woman who received jewelry.

But at Christmas, the frequency of jewelry advertising increases, and the context of the advertising shifts from a variety of scenarios to one sharply focused, unambiguous global ritual to which we men measure our own value.

The commercials shift directly to the source of the commotion the other actors were talking about the rest of the year, straight to the couple. And I watch as others are able to give and receive love and joy this holiday season.

I can’t give someone a diamond. I can’t give someone a car. Maybe that’s why nobody calls. According to mass media hype, if I could give away diamonds and cars I would have a massive entourage. If you ever watched shows like “Where Are They Now” or any show about lottery winners, you would understand that the entourage disappears when the money runs out. It’s really sad when you’ve got nothing else anyone wants.

It is my perception that others’ expectations are beyond my reach. I feel this way most of the time but especially during the holidays when it seems like everyone else is capable of giving something that someone else appreciates.

Happy Holidays.

Product Alert: Sony Movie Studio 9 Platinum Edition

2009-12-04T16:01:00.000-08:00

Sony Movie Studio 9 Platinum Edition comes with a program called Cinescore Studio that is alleged to generate music for your videos. This program is not supported for Windows Vista 64 bit systems, and will crash on Windows XP systems after about four or five uses.

Tech support is absolutely lacking. The worst experience with tech support I ever had was with Sony products. You get that when you deal with a company that has adopted an arrogant self-image.

Sony totally fails in the software area. They should stick with stereos and cameras and stay out of the computer software business.

S.A.P. Sapping the state retirement fund.

2009-12-01T08:27:00.000-08:00

Did you know that the Illinois Supreme Court has a historic preservation program? Back in August of 2007 an act was passed that funneled five million dollars ($5,000,000.00) of state funds into the program (705 ILCS 17/20-c).

I never heard of the program, but the fantastic thing is that it creates nine jobs, all of which are appointed by the Governor, President of the Senate, and Speaker of the house (705 ILCS 17/10, 1-5).

But don’t worry, nobody gets a salary (705 ILCS 17/10 – 5(g)) “The members of the Commission shall receive no compensation for their service, except for their actual expenses while in the discharge of their official duties.” What ever that means, they get to hire staff (705 ILCS 17/20).

I suppose that’s the point leading to my next little steaming nugget.

I heard many times about a bad habit from inside sources, (yes, I have inside sources) there’s a bad habit going around the state I call the State Accelerated Pre-Retirement Promotion method of draining the state’s pension system. People who are close to retirement are getting promoted so their pensions will be much larger than they would be naturally through normal merit based promotions.

It’s not enough that state employees already make such incredibly rich salaries on the backs of poverty level private sector taxpayers that make up nearly one-third of the state’s population; they need to rub it in by appropriating funds away from social programs that subsidize corporations that pay low wages.

Besides that, why is there a separate historic preservation commission away from the Illinois State Historic Preservation Agency? Is that not a little redundant? How many other redundancies are there like this?

Source: (705 ILCS 17/) Supreme Court Historic Preservation Act.
http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=2924&ChapAct=705%26nbsp%3BILCS%26nbsp%3B17%2F&ChapterID=50&ChapterName=COURTS&ActName=Supreme+Court+Historic+Preservation+Act.

Financial Crisis Lurking

2009-11-16T16:50:00.000-08:00

The Real News Network has a video series on "Casino Capitalism" which exposes the web of banking confidence schemes, wild speculation that will continue to another crash.

Everyone who is against the public option for health care keeps complaining about the government taking over health care.

What those idiots don't realize is the government was taken over by super-rich business interests years ago. So stop wasting your energy by fighting a distraction (the government), turn around, and start going after those who feed cash to the insatiable politicians.

History skipped over

2009-11-09T09:51:00.000-08:00

In your history books you skipped over some history following the Vietnam War and guess what...too many people died. History isn't just for testing students memories on the names and dates of American "heros."

The following is an example of history that should be taught in school so that it is not repeated. Something our current and previous few presidents seem to have completely ignored, or implemented as some form of stimulus package custom designed for the military industrial complex.

First. the only requirements for completing the mission in Afghanistan are the following original list of demands made to the Taliban on September 20, 2001:

1. Deliver to the U.S. all of the leaders of al-Qaeda
2. Release all imprisoned foreign nationals
3. Close immediately every terrorist training camp
4. Hand over every terrorist and their supporters to appropriate authorities
5. Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps for inspection. (1)

Beyond that, everything else is just plundering of lives and tax money. The war in Iraq was distracting enough to make everyone forget about the above list and then assume the two wars were some kind of massive mission to free people from "tyranny," and spread democracy around the world, turning the whole mess into some mystical endless aspiration, like the "war on drugs."

What happened after the Shah took power in Iran in 1953? The links are there.

OPERATION AJAX	OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM

RESULT: IRANIAN REVOLUTION 1979	RESULT: The natural course of historically consistent results of nation-building.

So, lets start a pool, shall we? How long does Hamid Karzai have as ruler of Afghanistan before he winds up like Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, living in Exile somewhere in the U.S?

Have we no decency?

----------
(1).Wikipedia: Operation Enduring Freedom, US-led coalition action [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Enduring_Freedom ]

Restoration versus Preservation

2009-10-29T05:30:00.000-07:00

I'm no expert in historic preservation but something is bothering me about Abe Lincoln's neighborhood.
Does historic preservation include restoring a structure to its original detail? or is there a difference between preservation and restoration?

Hey, it might be alright to preserve something by encasing it in Vinyl, I don't know much about the integrity of vinyl.

With restoration I imagine one would need to restore every detail of an original structure's architecture. This must be the difference between preservation and restoration.

Photoshop Phumble

2009-10-28T12:35:00.000-07:00

If you're thinking about importing a 3D object into Photoshop CS4 so you can make a quick animated GIF file, you might reconsider. When I created a new frame and manipulated the binoculars, the binoculars angle updated in all of the frames of the sequence instead of changing slightly frame by frame. The x/y position is referenced by the animation panel, but not pitch, yaw, or rotation.

I modeled the binoculars in Lightwave and exported them as an .OBJ file. No texture or transparency data survived the transfer.

Political Correctness and the language of marginalization.

2009-10-27T10:12:00.001-07:00

Once again a local radio host has fallen back on the old gripe that some people try to get attention by riding in on the coattails of someone else who was the subject of a politically incorrect remark.

He calls them “wimps” and a few other choice words. This topic was started because ESPN broadcaster Bob Griese was suspended a week for a remark he made about NASCAR driver Juan Pablo Montoya.

[ http://www.mercedsunstar.com/236/story/1135242.html ]

The point this local radio talk show host was attempting to make is people are either too darn sensitive to these remarks or some people take the opportunity to exaggerate the situation in order to draw attention to their organization that sustains itself financially on the belief of victimhood and martyrdom.

When you make fun of someone because they chose to affiliate with a certain political party, chose to dress a certain way, chose to behave in a manner they could have chosen not to, then it is okay to make fun of them, such as people who are powerful but use it destructively, bigots, misogynists, chauvinists and predators.

When you make fun of someone because they were raised in a culture that is closed or distant to such a degree that he or she is unaware of how different they are from yourself and perhaps are content in their society, then you are out of line.

When you make fun of someone because they have certain physical traits they can’t change, or are from another country and speak a different language, then you are the one who fits into the category of people it is okay to mock.

The whole point of political correctness is to stop the perpetual behavior of marginalization. The biggest culprit of social division and marginalization is the history lesson.

We are led to believe that we must learn history so that it does not repeat, but what does repeat through history is fear and guilt, directly along the lines of race. Race is an arbitrary product from the minds of imperialists.

The word “race” is from the bygone era before the human genome project. Those who continue to use the language of marginalization are capitalizing on hate or martyrdom.

Priority Care on MacArthur

2009-10-19T15:58:00.000-07:00

I was scraping old stickers of the back of my car today when my hand slipped. I drove a razor blade into the knuckle of my fifth digit on my right hand. You know, the pinky finger.

It was a deep cut, so I drove out to Priority Care because I thought it might need stitches. Luckily, they only used Dermabond adhesive, splinted my finger and gave me a Tetanus shot.

I had to pay out of pocket because I'm unemployed and have no insurance. The visit cost me $335.00

Do you accept that? I think it's a little excessive, but the alternative is to go home and wait for the infection and tetanus to set in. Then I would probably go to the emergency room and have my rotten finger amputated among the myriad of other expensive treatments needed to save my life.

My emergency room bill, had I decided to postpone the Priority Care treatment, would cause me to declare bankruptcy.

If I was earning $10 per hour at a part-time job with no insurance, I would have to work 33.5 hours, plus time to cover taxes and other deductions, just to pay for this one visit.

I consider myself lucky to have the money available, but soon it will all be gone.

Sub-Woofer Woes

2009-10-18T07:07:00.000-07:00

Sound Violations are one of many ordinances that might be considered a solution for waning revenue from sales and income taxes, despite calls by the public for cuts in government salaries.

Like I said before.

2009-10-14T15:53:00.000-07:00

Wall Street is making money hand over fist based entirely on the illusion of recovery.[AFP]

My August 4, 2009 post laid out this false recovery in diagram form. Basically, companies are reporting record profits not only due to the influx of stimulus cash, but also by shedding all but the very few necessary jobs, enough to run a skeleton crew until Christmas Eve.

Remember Enron, the Worldcom Bankruptcy, or the Health South scandal?

You can't look back on this and not see that Christmas 2009 will be the worst in history, and then your 401(k) will evaporate into a flurry of snow flakes in January 2010.

The Slow Pace of Government.

2009-10-07T16:47:00.001-07:00

Way back in December of 2007 ABC ran a story about a woman who was gang-raped while working in Baghdad.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/halliburton-employee-jamie-leigh-jones-testifies-senate-rape/story?id=8775641

Senator Al Franken was motivated to present an amendment in response to this incident.

U.S.

Senate Roll Call Votes 111^th Congress - 1^st Session

as compiled through Senate LIS by the Senate Bill Clerk under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate

Vote Summary

Question: On the Amendment (Franken Amdt. No. 2588 )
Vote Number:	308	Vote Date:	October 6, 2009, 04:37 PM
Required For Majority:	1/2	Vote Result:	Amendment Agreed to
Amendment Number:	S.Amdt. 2588 to H.R. 3326 (Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010)
Statement of Purpose:	To prohibit the use of funds for any Federal contract with Halliburton Company, KBR, Inc., any of their subsidiaries or affiliates, or any other contracting party if such contractor or a subcontractor at any tier under such contract requires that employees or independent contractors sign mandatory arbitration clauses regarding certain claims.

Vote Counts:	YEAs	68
	NAYs	30
	Not Voting	2

Grouped By Vote Position

YEAs ---68
Akaka (D-HI) Baucus (D-MT) Bayh (D-IN) Begich (D-AK) Bennet (D-CO) Bennett (R-UT) Bingaman (D-NM) Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Burris (D-IL) Cantwell (D-WA) Cardin (D-MD) Carper (D-DE) Casey (D-PA) Collins (R-ME) Conrad (D-ND) Dodd (D-CT) Dorgan (D-ND) Durbin (D-IL) Feingold (D-WI) Feinstein (D-CA) Franken (D-MN) Gillibrand (D-NY)	Grassley (R-IA) Hagan (D-NC) Harkin (D-IA) Hatch (R-UT) Hutchison (R-TX) Inouye (D-HI) Johnson (D-SD) Kaufman (D-DE) Kerry (D-MA) Kirk (D-MA) Klobuchar (D-MN) Kohl (D-WI) Landrieu (D-LA) Lautenberg (D-NJ) LeMieux (R-FL) Leahy (D-VT) Levin (D-MI) Lieberman (ID-CT) Lincoln (D-AR) Lugar (R-IN) McCaskill (D-MO) Menendez (D-NJ) Merkley (D-OR)	Mikulski (D-MD) Murkowski (R-AK) Murray (D-WA) Nelson (D-FL) Nelson (D-NE) Pryor (D-AR) Reed (D-RI) Reid (D-NV) Rockefeller (D-WV) Sanders (I-VT) Schumer (D-NY) Shaheen (D-NH) Snowe (R-ME) Stabenow (D-MI) Tester (D-MT) Udall (D-CO) Udall (D-NM) Voinovich (R-OH) Warner (D-VA) Webb (D-VA) Whitehouse (D-RI) Wyden (D-OR)

NAYs ---30
Alexander (R-TN) Barrasso (R-WY) Bond (R-MO) Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Burr (R-NC) Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Corker (R-TN)	Cornyn (R-TX) Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) Ensign (R-NV) Enzi (R-WY) Graham (R-SC) Gregg (R-NH) Inhofe (R-OK) Isakson (R-GA) Johanns (R-NE)	Kyl (R-AZ) McCain (R-AZ) McConnell (R-KY) Risch (R-ID) Roberts (R-KS) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA) Wicker (R-MS)

Not Voting - 2
Byrd (D-WV)	Specter (D-PA)	Source: Senate.gov

Those who voted against this amendment have a serious problem. Are they pro-rape?

Driving at D'Arcy's

2009-10-07T07:47:00.000-07:00

As we were pulling out of D'Arcy's parking lot one windy dark evening, we drove passed a car that was ready to back out. The car's engine was running and the reverse lights were on. The car was in reverse and starting to move.

Out of the darkness some children ran and opened the car door to get in. There was a small boy and girl trying to get into a car that was in reverse gear.

Drivers please! Before putting your vehicles in gear, make sure everyone is already in and buckled up.

FTC Blog Compliance

2009-10-06T03:56:00.000-07:00

This site is not sponsored commercially and never received compensation for any commercially beneficial communication.

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION
16 CFR Part 255
Guides Concerning the Use of
Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising
http://ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005endorsementguidesfnnotice.pdf

Propriety at the Gas Pump

2009-10-05T10:43:00.000-07:00

I was at the Shell gas station up by Dixie Trucker’s Home yesterday and there was a serious human failure happening. There were four or five double-sided pumps. Every pump was occupied with a vehicle, but that wasn’t the problem.

Only about three of the pumps were actually in use. There were two vehicles sitting at pumps, either empty or with just a waiting passenger. It’s understandable that some people prefer paying with cash so they must leave their vehicle to go pay. If they tried to move their car out of the way they might alarm someone into thinking they were about to just “pump-and-dash.”

Then something happened that irked me. A woman approached one of the cars sitting at a pump, but she didn’t have just her keys and a receipt in her hand, she had a foot-long sandwich from the next door Subway restaurant. Instead of moving the car to one of the many empty parking spots in front of the building, she decided she would save herself some time and go get a sandwich.

Oh, that’s not all. She then got into her car which was still sitting at the pump, and proceeded to eat her sandwich, without a second thought about the other people waiting for a pump.

Meanwhile, I was finally able to pull up to another pump where a man had just finished filling plastic gas containers. He was driving a pickup with a large trailer that would not fit well next to the pump. At least he had the decency to keep his larger vehicle and trailer from blocking the access.

But, it was not only the woman who lacked the courtesy to move her car out of the way between the time she paid for their gas and going to eat lunch or browse the convenience store. There were at least two other people who failed to grasp the basic details of the situation, and it takes all genders, classes and races.

Some people assume a right of personal property to where ever they park their car. Wrong. Its okay to leave your car to go pay for the gas, but you better be right back to move your car to a parking spot if you’re going to stay and eat lunch at the restaurant next door.

Stumbling Social Security shows potential for Health Care Reform

2009-09-29T08:07:00.000-07:00

The Associated Press reported that Early retirement and job losses is causing the tide to go out on Social Security over the next two years. More benefits will be paid out than revenues will be collected for the fund.

This raises the spectre of free-market manipulation of public programs such as social security, medicare, and a health care public option.

Public programs are supported by taxes paid by people who are incapable or are not knowledgeable enough to hide their wealth off-shore.

Employers on the other hand, specifically those savvy enough to hide their money off-shore are typically corporations with the largest number of employees.

Theoretically, corporations such as these could lay-off just enough employees to bankrupt Social Security and other government social programs within a few years.

Ironically, laying off more employees makes the corporation's bottom line look better, and consequently creates the false impression that the economy is recovering, drawing investors, employees looking for 401(K) opportunities and first-time home owners into a deadly trap.

Since the larger multinational corporations have their risk spread around the world, they can go country by country, systematically manipulating governments that rely on income tax.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h6BfoloJOnV0TeI7eIHC1ZWuBxygD9AVS0202

Laptop bandit strikes again

2009-09-13T07:29:00.000-07:00

The State Journal Register reported this morning that another apartment on Seven Pines road was robbed of at least $2000 worth of computers and cash. Last October, another laptop was stolen from a different apartment in the same neighborhood.

This time the door was left unlocked. In the previous case, the front door was forced open.

In another nearby incident occurring in December of 2008, a tenant was visited by some men who suddenly turned on him, beating him and robbing him of various electronic equipment.

The options of escape from this area are plentiful, and the level of activity at these apartment complexes is high, perhaps because of the youthful demographic, which means burglars might not be noticed, even in broad daylight.

One might wonder if the laptop bandit looks at night for windows glowing with the blue haze of computer monitors, or might be a returning student at UIS or Lincoln Land who happens to notice someone at school with a nice laptop and then targets them not by befriending them, but by befriending others around them and then getting invited to parties where they get more and more information. Too much.

It might be someone posing as a lawn care specialist or maintenance person, checking the doors every few days until one is finally left unlocked.

It might be some punk kid who lives right nearby in one of the other buildings. My grandparents were robbed by a kid who lived right across the street.

View SPFLDnet in a larger map

Real Health Care Reform.

2009-09-10T18:33:00.000-07:00

It's unfortunate that insurance is still on the table. Health care reform would mean removing insurance entirely from health care. Costs go up simply because insurance companies dangled the bait of their wealth in front of pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment manufacturers, and hospital administrators.

Those companies jacked up their prices to favor the need for insurance. Insurance companies in-turn convinced the public that their drugs, wheel chairs and oxygen tanks cost so much "because that's just the way it is. Live with it or die without it."

Freaky Fringe Groups.

2009-09-08T11:20:00.000-07:00

What do weird fringe groups have in common with Republicans?

A “Birther” is someone who doesn’t believe Barack Obama should be president because they allege that he was born in Kenya and not the United States of America. Despite the publication of Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate, and confirmation by WorldNetDaily.com that Obama is indeed a U.S. Citizen, “Birthers” still insist that Obama is Kenyan.

A “Deather” is someone who believes that the public health care option will involve panels of people who decide whether or not someone should receive treatment because they are beyond a certain age. They called these fictional panels “Death Panels.” They do not exist in any form, and there is no plan for any such panels.

A “Secessionist” can reside in either Texas or Alaska. They want their state to become a nation separate from the United States, independent of any federal taxation or intervention of any kind. But they still want Medicare and Social Security, and their governors, despite supporting the idea of secession, went ahead and spent the federal stimulus money anyway.

What do these groups have in common? They are all narcissistic. In other words, they have an inflated sense of self-importance. However, it’s not really their fault that they think their beliefs are more common than reality.

The news media is responsible for picking up these tiny freakish mind-sets and creating groups out of them. The news media latches on to the bizarre and insignificant, inflates the idea to create the impression that these twisted views represent almost half the country’s opinion. How do they do that?

The media continues to associate these fringe groups with conservative Republicans.

So the liberal left wing news media is lumping freaky fringe groups together with the Republicans, but why are no Republican congressmen distancing themselves or making an effort to correct the media about what it really means to be a Republican?

Perhaps because the media doesn’t cover it. The last time the media covered a Republican correcting a distorted belief was when John McCain corrected a woman at one of his campaign stops. She thought that Barack Obama was a Muslim and he shut her down immediately.

After that, not a whimper of corrective action from level-headed Republicans can be heard in the media.

Now the news media is all-over President Obama’s speech to the kids today. They are focusing on those few schizophrenic parents who don’t want their kids to hear his speech. But they never report the actual number of people who are protesting Obama’s speech.

There may only be as many as a thousand in the whole country.

Springfield Clinic needs Healthcare Reform quick!

2009-09-03T14:38:00.000-07:00

I know someone who is going on a trip to the Amazon later this fall. We'll call him Hal. His doctor is a physician at Springfield Clinic.

Hal needs to start taking an anti-malaria pill weeks in advance for it to be effective against the disease should he encounter malaria infected mosquitoes while he's on the Amazon River.

Hal only needs a prescription for the anti-malaria. There is Doxycycline which is reported by a post at Yahoo Answers to be the cheapest at around "$50 for 6 months" whatever that means.

Springfield Clinic wants $400 up front for nothing more than the appointment, and Hal's doctor won't prescribe the medicine.

Ashland Incident poised to bring down Illinois

2009-08-26T13:44:00.000-07:00

The subterranean infrastructure of Illinois politics is about to get another exposure.

The dirty dealings that got former Governor George Ryan Convicted and then former Governor Rod Blagojevich Impeached, is about to be exposed again through it's lack of action regarding the murder of Steve Watkins in Ashland, Illinois over nine months ago.

According to DIMFI.com, the Cass County State's Attorney passed the case off to the Illinois State’s Attorney’s Appellate Prosecutor’s Office, which is said by some people to be a place where cases go to die.

Where they thinking Steve Watkins had no next-of-kin?

The Appellate Prosecutor's office is currently occupied by an individual who, while a Sangamon County Assistant State's Attorney, charged someone with murder who was then incarcerated, but not prosecuted. The state supreme court let the suspect go on for being incarcerated for too long.

This case will grow to include questions about the higher-ups who employed those responsible for investigating and prosecuting this case. The relentless vine of justice climbs higher every day. Every day, Mark Thoma updates the status of the Steve Watkins case from 3 to 6 P.M. on WMAY AM 970

Predicted “Staycations” didn’t include IL State Fair.

2009-08-24T09:54:00.000-07:00

Soon after the economy pinched a loaf last winter, the news media started repeating the trendy new word "Staycation" until it became a cliche. It was an accurate prediction for Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio and possibly Kentucky, that local state fair attendance would go up.

Not so for Illinois and Michigan.

I went to the Illinois State Fair last week, and spend most of my money on the admission and parking fee. $12.00 Attendance was reported down by 15% on WMAY this morning. They must have gone to the Missouri State fair which was up by the same amount from last year.

While Michigan’s state fair is not expected to start until August 28th and run through Labor Day, The Detroit Free Press reports that Governor Granholm is faced with a $1.8 billion deficit, plans to cut the fair’s budget. Eviction notices have been sent to the tenants, apparently scheduled for immediately following this year’s fair, freep.com reports.

The admission fee is broken down into the categories of “Super Saver Combo Pass,” $25.00 for gate admission and all day rides per person; $25.00 admission of 2 adults and 2 children; $9.00 for one adult; $4.00 for a child 3-12 years of age; $4.00 for a senior 62 or older. Groups of 25 or more get in for $7 per group member.

Meanwhile, Missouri’s state fair attendance was up fifteen percent, according to kansascity.com. Governor Jay Nixon’s office reported that nearly 110,000 people attended the Show-Me State’s fair this year, nearly the population of Springfield, Illinois. Missouri’s state fair had an admission charge of $1.00

Indiana’s state fair this year was 17 days long and so far had an attendance record of 905,645. This past Saturday the attendance was announced at 73,645 according to ChicagoTribune.com.

The Kentucky State Fair is currently ongoing and attendance numbers are not yet available.

EPA Fails to Inform Public About Weed-Killer in Drinking Water

2009-08-23T19:01:00.000-07:00

By Danielle Ivory
Huffington Post Investigative Fund

One of the nation’s most widely-used herbicides has been found to exceed federal safety limits in drinking water in four states, but water customers have not been told and the Environmental Protection Agency has not published the results.

For the full story - click this link:
http://huffingtonpostinvestigativefund.org/2009/08/epa-fails-to-inform-public-about-weed-killer-in-drinking-water/

Food at the Illinois State Fair

2009-08-19T11:39:00.000-07:00

It's irresistible!

Railroad Closures and Bypasses

2009-08-19T06:50:00.000-07:00

Here is a map of the proposed railroad closures that also includes routes that bypass the tracks.

View Railroad Closings in a larger map