What the President said...

I actually listened to the President this morning, talking about the budget battle he is engaged in with Congress.  Okay not Congress, but the Republican leadership in Congress.  He (the President) said a couple things that made my jaw drop. 

One of the things he said was that he's going to be 50 soon and is starting to look at how Medicare is going to affect him.  He said something about getting his AARP card and the discounts he'll be getting with it. 

The problem I have with that is HE IS NOT GOING ON MEDICARE WHEN HE GETS TO BE THAT AGE.  And he will not be going on Social Security when he retires.  Government employees have a different system that IS NOT IN TROUBLE like Medicare and Social Security is.  DON'T BE FOOLED!  Research it.  Congress is not required to pay Social Security taxes in or contribute to Medicare.  If they were, THEY'D FIX  THEM.  Unfortunatly most of the American People don't know this.  I also know that just me putting it here is not going to educate very many (if any) people at all.

Another thing that the President said was that we (meaning the government) need to treat the budget like a family deals with their budget.  If you're maxed out on your credit cards you don't stop making payments to your bills and such. 

What do you do?  I know what I do, I CUT MY EXPENSES.  I don't go out searching for more income.  I've found that if I make more money, I spend more money and I don't get better off.  Obviously if I need a raise, I'd ask for one, but during rough economic times, I wouldn't expect to get one especially if the business I'm working for has been cutting expenses and been having a rough time (the typical American worker), he won't raise his expenses by giving me a raise.  That'd be bad for him.   So I cut out the unnecessary expenses or the ones I can do with out.  Raising taxes at this time would be a bad idea.  It discourages growth.

Another thing he said was the phrase "job killing tax cuts".  Tell me something.  If you were running a business and your taxes went down, would you lay off employees or would you reinvest the money to get your business growing, which would include hiring more employees and putting more money in your pockets?  As for me, I would be reinvesting the money and growing my business so I can make more money.  If that involved hiring more people, then I would do it.  If my taxes were raised, that means more money leaving my pockets and it may require me to cut more expenses which may include laying off employees. 

Is this not just common sense?   Am I missing something?  I remember the economic years of the Carter administration and the recovery and BOOM from the Reagan years.  Reagan got Congress to cut taxes and it put more money in pockets, that money was spent which meant that businesses had to produce more and they made more and hired more people.  That was the result of JOB KILLING TAX CUTS. 

Well, that's all I had to say for now.  If I'm wrong on those things, don't hesitate to point it out. 

Thanks for listening to my ranting.  I will modify this or add to it if I find I'm wrong or missquoted.  I'm going to see if I can find a transcript of the President's remarks today.  If I can find them, I'll post the actual quotes from that in this post or in a comment to this post.

By the way, here is the link to the transcript of today's press conference:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/07/15/press-conference-president

Go ahead go there, look at what he said and form your own opinions.

NetFlix and money

Well, Netflix is raising their rates as of Sept 1 by 60%.  The current pricing plan of $9.99/month for unlimited streaming of movies etc and unlimited DVDs (one at a time) per month will be split and charged separately at the rate of $7.99 for unlimited streaming and $7.99 for unlimited DVDs.  This makes your new bill to be 15.98 an increase of $5.99 per month.  Personally I don't like the idea and will be cancelling my subscription with netflix before Sept 1.  In doing so I also understand them doing it.  The only thing a company is in business for is to make money and a company will do what is necessary to make that money.  They will raise their rates for their products and/or services to the point they believe the market will handle.  If they guess wrong, they lose too many customers and lose money.  I can't fault netflix for this decision, they are in business to make money after all.  I'm not going to complain about it, I'm just going to quit using them because the new pricing prices me out of what I feel is reasonable and affordable to me.  Yeah I'm saying $5.99/month increase is too much.  I have read numerous comments to Netflix on their facebook page and on their blog.  Lots of people are seriously ticked off.  I say this is nothing to get torqued about.  Relax, lower your blood pressure and just deal with it.  In the grand scheme of things, a $5.99/month increase to view movies online AND get unlimited DVDs per month (one DVD at a time) is not, or should not, be significant enough to raise your blood pressure.  Save some of that hostility for things that matter.  Just cancel your subscription and move on.

Well that said, I hope that Netflix either decides not to go through with it or to grandfather the current subscriptions in at no change.

The day after...

Well, it's the day after the 4th. I hope everybody had a good time. I know we did. We got to see some fireworks from where we were and the weather held up until it was all over. By 10 last night the wind had picked up, there was some cloud lightning and the possibility of a storm seemed pretty real. I think it was just playing with us though because when I got up this morning nothing looked wet and everything looked in order.

We watched the Cake Boss marathon yesterday (well part of yesterday) and I kept thinking how he made that stuff look easy. Made me think I'd like to do some of that stuff, on a much smaller scale mind you. Of course you have to have a creative and artistic mind. My mind is sort of half-way creative as for artistic? Well, I can draw stick figures and flys. I can see my first cake now. It's chocolate with white buttercream frosting with stick figures and flys all over it. I'd call it my "Stick with me" theme.

Enjoy your day and stay safe.