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Pay Attention Politicians ! I hear you, Now Hear Me !

You Cut Taxes ?

Don’t tell me you cut taxes since mine were not cut. They even went up. You lowered taxes for Some, but why not everyone ? You tell me they are to high. Why did mine go up when I made less and the stuff I need for life cost more ?

You give tax breaks for many of the ‘JOB CREATORS’ and yet we have less jobs and my share of the payback to the national debt has went up. It seems to me that by giving a tax break to some, you have afforded them the automation to eliminate jobs. Especially when you have allowed them to buy/merge most of the competition in any perspective field. Now how do you say TO BIG TOO FAIL and TOO BIG TO NOT BE BOUGHT OFF BY THEM.

Is there a price to be paid by corporate America for the roads citizens build, the wars we fight that many of these big corporation’s get us into in the first place. They shed no blood. Don’t they benefit for them. I never see them talking against a war when there are things to sell to the warring parties.

I see nobody speaking on my behalf. Just those that try to put words into my mouth that I am not the least bit interested in. Talk about a disconnect of politicians.

I see that Trump stated that he was going to pay for his agenda of paid maternity leave with the elimination of unemployment compensation fraud. Does this not open the door to more fraud in maternity leave ? Especially with Tax Breaks ?

Just one problem with that….

It’s not a federal program but a state program. But on occasion, the federal government puts some money into the state’s till when things are really bad like just after the bank collapse of 2007/2008.

So where is the fraud ? It seems to me that you probably are just interested in eliminating it to force many to flip burgers at McBurgerWorld just to eat and drive wages lower while still collecting the withholding money from everyone’s paycheck so the money goes into some general fund so you can spend it at will. It’s just a code word for more wasteful spending that they say they do not want in the first place. I see it calculated that there is $3B in fraud in UC. Why not just go after the FRAUD if it is there. So you are telling me that you will only go after it if you can spend the money somewhere else. What kinda logic is that. Show me the fraud. Sounds like all the voter registration fraud that allowed them to put more rules on to keep some from voting does it not ? … or does it sound more like the ‘Social Security Trust Fund’ that does not really exist. One more tax break is not what I want to hear. Where is my carrot ? Everyone seems to be getting them except me !

Exception is the rule for everyone except me !

So why can’t anyone ‘COME CLEAN’ on what the TPP trade deal means to American’s.

If it is going to cost us jobs but less jobs than no deal, I don’t think it is such a complicated subject that it can not be explained to the public since the media is not telling us much. They just tell us a few things that the folks say that want it or don’t want it. The cheap option with no research.

I’m sure there is a lot of ‘LOBBYING’ going on for those that benefit and those it would hurt but who is really going to tell me what it means to me ? Today, Next Year ans perhaps to my son/grandson.

One should be asking better questions of their Representative government, Like…

Who in congress agrees with their candidates positions and would likely to pass legislation supportive of their platform. It’s one thing to say you are going to build a WALL and get someone else to pay for it, but it does require the other branches of Government to pass legislation to make it so.

A president is not KING.

I could say I want to give every American a $500 check to spend as they see fit, even borrowing from China and/or India to pay for it (oh… wait, that’s been done several times before hasn’t it), but it does take legislation from Congress to do that since they control all spending. Even if it is borrowed.

So what are you going to do to make my life better you liars ?

Earn MY Vote !

By default, there is a NONE OF THE ABOVE OPTION !

Looking better all the time. But I will at least show up and cast my blank ballot !

It’s a NO CONFIDENCE VOTE in my government and it’s the easiest to do.

Sends a clear message.

Elections are like a war… Plenty of dis-information !

We listen to it all the time but do you recognize it? Probably not if you agree with it.

But you really have to have enough disconnect from what is stated to see it.

More often than not, we are told what our ache’s and pain’s are from and you agree,

…then they tell you who to blame for them ! and most follow that !!

While for several years I listened to some local power plant that had 7 units burning coal that shut down many of them. A large number of lay-offs occurred. The powers that be in the plant blamed it on Obama and his war on coal. The same for many coal mines in the next state across the river from it.

Having listened to that for 3 years, I started to actually look at the case for it.

Obama had not had (nor the EPA) any new regulations for coal, and even new ones that could come in the future do not take effect for some time even after draft proposals are made and they eventually get passed. So it was not from that despite several things he may have said about coal that even I did not exactly agree with. Words and rules are 2 different things.

So what was the real reason for the huge lay-offs…

It appears that while the plant drug it’s feet on the last wave of environmental standards that took place 10 years ago, they thought it cheaper to pay the fines than to do the upgrades like all the other local plants had done.

The increase in the construction costs went up in a large way with the price of oil while waiting so long. Concrete and steel doubled in price and those are the main ingredients for industrial construction.

And the plant had a larger plan to create a huge waste dump for fly ash not just for their plant but for many area plants that burn coal. It was a investment opportunity for them to be able to handle the hazardous waste of others.

So what happened since they did eventually do the upgrades and created a profitable waste dump for the area fly ash ?

It failed miserably because of one thing… …De-Regulation (that means less regulation) and Shale Gas helped.

The price of new natural gas from shale deposits were making natural gas prices less than 60% cheaper than they were at their peek.

Why does that matter ?

Because of a de-regulated market, the power stations were competing against each other to suppliers within the region.

Gas plants build cheaper, operate cheaper and are more efficient in production and have no heavy environmental clean-up.

Everyone was running their gas fired plants near full capacity and shutting down their coal fired plants as they were unprofitable with this low-cost gas.

If this was Obama’s fault, we must have worked his magic in China also since most of the coal miners over there have been out of work the last few years. Gee, that’s almost funny because when coal was at it’s peek price, China was one of the largest buyers and they could not get it out of the ground fast enough for them, hence, the many safety disasters in the coal mines we had during the time from 2004-2012 till china stopped buying the coal.

Now with nobody burning as much coal, the investment they made in the newly constructed fly ash dump was a waste.

So this is just a example of the herders leading the sheep if you listen to them. Be a good sheep and cork your ears. The only way you will find the truth is to look for it. Most of us are to lazy for that. It’s just easier to let them tell you who to blame for your pain. They already know where it hurts because they most likely inflicted your pain before you knew you had it.

Deregulation and not regulation created this mess. And a unseen surplus in natural gas fueled it’s start. You would think a energy company would know it’s own markets better than anyone. How did they drop their own ball ?

The energy deregulation rules were created by the energy company’s themselves during Bush Jr’s tenure and a Republican held Congress. Go figure !

Money is not always smart, just always powerful. That is enough power to tell you how to think.

It always seems to have it’s way, and sometimes you have to be careful of what you wish for.

You will never fix a problem when you do not correctly identify it. Let them point the finger to lead you to more of the same.

Personally, I see the energy company’s falling off the same cliff that Enron did once they allow them to merge to just a few company’s to hide their own stupidity. 10-15 years ? But someone will make money from it and it will not be the shareholders, since they will bear the losses to come. Pension funds still at risk from that stuff, but that’s a new Moot Story.

The American President

Some things are timeless.

Reflecting current political disposition, I am reminded of these clips from the 1995 movie, The American President. ENJOY !

Just think some more on it.

I just had to add one other from “Fair Game” – Sean Penn

Republicans TRUMPed on Immigration

Why is it the Republican Party has so much adverse to say about the new leader of their party?

One issue stands tall against the base that have supported the party for a very long time… It is Immigration.

Quite simply it is about cheap labor and taxes… Let me explain the longer version…

The Republicans have never wanted a change in the immigration policy. They go to some great effort to keep it the way it is.

When it looked like they might have some agreement about the issue from some on the right with the majority of the left, the far right injected a monkey wrench by saying that you can not give legal status to those that are here now.

So when Trump says “Just Deport Them All”, why are the Republicans not for that since that is what they have been promoting without saying that directly.

They don’t want legal status, they don’t want to deport them. What exactly do they want to do with them ?

KEEP THEM WORKING AT SUB-MINIMUM WAGES AND PAYING/COLLECTING NO BENEFIT FROM THE GOVERNMENT.

Do to improper use of tax code, those that hire them set them up as a statutory employee where the employer is not responsible for paying more than 50% of their Social Security or any of the other taxes that a normal U.S. citizen would pay that works in the United States of America.

In effect, it makes it cheaper for them to operate here than anywhere else in the world because the hiring company, receives plenty of subsidy and tax breaks from the government in the field of agriculture.

So if you look back at the last 30 years of policy from the Republicans, it is about maintaining the status quo. Anytime it looks like they could change things, the Republicans will inject something new to bring outrage in the mind of the public.

So, you are either for Citizenship or you are for Deportation,

But you can not create a new 2nd class citizen -OR- we are all doomed to the same when it’s convenient for the money !

So now you can see why Trump is potentially damaging to the party on this issue.

He wants to deport the cheap sub-wage labor that should not be legal in the first place. I don’t think Trump understood what high water he was wading through when he spoke of it only for popular support.

But to the Republican Party, it is a cancer to the fund raising and support that goes straight to the heart of the party. How do the Republican Senators and Representatives counter that ? With What ?

Don’t deport them ? Leave it the way it is again !

Escape Reality, Read/Watch The NEWS

Now I have to prove the title of this page.

Everyday we see the news of the latest on a celebrity court case.

We see the latest on what some political player has done… or not.

We see some company complain about the over regulation or tax of them.

We see the stock market reports swing up or down and speculation on why.

We see the latest celebrity or former politician who died today.

Most of what we see or read has little to do with what really happened today that has any meaning in our lives that we really need to know to better navigate tomorrow.

It is no wonder there is a disconnect from the politicians to the people they represent.

People can be told what is important to them and they don’t seem to question it.

Before I started to wright this, I started to research the number of Americans murdered everyday.

I could not get a flat number. Only a percentage per 100,000 of population that would be hard for many to break down to get a real number.

So, to try to make it simple, I then wanted to know how many were murdered last year.

I was working with the best source for that information. The folks that are charged with keeping the record of it.

The FBI

It is not impossible to do but you must do work the average American is not able to do without a error.

Why can’t I just know the number of people murdered last year. It has to be a percentage of a percentage so that it looks smaller.

Look for yourself (this being the best representation I could find)

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/table-4

News, I thought was to be a representation of the events that unfolded in the past 24 to 48 hours that would be most important to me or anyone for that matter.

We are presented only with what would make our blood boil or make us feel bad for a single child.

There are many more people getting hurt, ripped-off, murdered. We know not how many or how bad.

Why is it that Bill Cosby’s court Case is more important than a few of the same that nobody knows their names. The only difference is that the prosecutor is less likely to make mistakes or be able to railroad Bill Cosby’s case because of the media attention. While it is nice to know that nobody is above the law (so we think) in Bill Cosby’s case, it does nothing for the same kind of cases that happen all the time.

Don’t know about those ? Ask the FBI for some statistics on it.

Who really cares how many times Tiger Woods cheated on his wife and how does that warrant 12 minutes of a 30 minute news broadcast nearly everyday for months. Why is that any of my business. Not much else happened today… really ? Is it the most important thing that happened today ? Not the dozen products that were recalled today because they could poison someone.

Hey… I don’t want to be scared.

I would just like to know that there is a problem and be assured it is in capable hands dealing with it.

Someone is going to tell you what is important for your life and it is not you.

And most are not just buying it, they are married to it.

And if you are curious to the facts, you will be presented with charts and graphs that diminish the facts.

Don’t be alarmed,

Yes, there is a alternate reality for you. It is sanitized everywhere for your protection.

Did I make the title ?

Apple vs FBI – Just The Facts

A new ongoing battle is in the making between the FBI and Apple Inc. over the FBI’s constant badgering of Apple to re-gain access to what they once had. The ability to hack your phone and read contents at will.

While the FBI or other law enforcement is to have a legal wiretap court order, often this information was ease-dropped and not used in court so nobody is the wiser without the court order. They just can’t use any information gathered in court.

At the heart of this particular issue is the FBI wanting Apple to re-code the phone to disable the 10 incorrect tries you get before pass-code failure that will lock the device and delete all data inside.

Because with the governments super-computers, they would be able to try all pass-codes until they get the correct one, perhaps in as little as hours. This method is known as a ‘brute force attack’.

The issue at it’s core is the know-how to do such a thing is not limited to just one phone and could reasonably be preformed through cellular data-on-air. without the notice of the user.

What it means for Apple’s Core…

Apple has went to great lengths to create a secure system that had business in mind to keep corporate secrets, secrete. Much as Blackberry has done for them and the government itself. If you had to worry about ‘secure today’ but ‘not tomorrow’, you might not want to make the investment for all your staff as these are pretty pricey devices.

To Apple’s credit, they have spent millions and years developing this security and now the government is saying you must spend more undoing what you did.

The government is not really loosing anything that they should have in the first place despite the fact that it can be valuable to them in fighting crime.

The problem with the governments argument is that never does the government stop at what we are told. And when anyone in the government has access to anyone’s personal information, how do you keep that from being used with or for political malice. Reading ones phone is as close as you can get to reading their mind or intentions.

And it might be also good to point out that the FBI was not trying to hack the secure encrypted BlackBerry phones owned by the chief executives of the BANKS TO BIG TO FAIL THAT DID. Hmmmmmm……. A national security issue that just about brought the nation to it’s knees and not a hacked phone when it was completely legal under the Patriot Act. Can we be assured there is not and will never be a double standard here. It’s doubtful.

The start of any checks and balances that does not presently exist would be a log every every hack or ease-drop that is public information after 2 years from the event.

If they were to tell you they want a camera in your workplace and your bedroom to help stop crime, would you give them one? A smartphone is a camera and a microphone that goes where you go along with anywhere you go on the internet. When it is possible to get into the phone by anyone, it is possible for anyone to do the same without your knowlage.

While public opinion is only relevant to the point that the government needs to have the appearance of legitimacy in the light of the Patriot Act and Edward Snowden. In which they may have today, but how do you know they will have it tomorrow. Nobody is going to announce they are changing the terms of use and even if they would, it would be to late to change what will be done.

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