However this is just the beginning.  Forming in September, the next round of $1.5 trillion in cuts would be decided by a committee of 12 lawmakers evenly divided between the two parties and two chambers. This so-called “super Congress” would have to present its cuts by Thanksgiving, and the rest of Congress could not amend or filibuster the recommendations.

BUT:  if the super Congress somehow failed to enact savings, the measure requires automatic cuts worth at least $1.2 trillion. Those cuts would be split equally between military and domestic programs. Social Security, Medicaid and programs for the poor would be spared, but Medicare providers — not beneficiaries — would take a hit.

Let’s face it, this is nothing but a “Super Cop-out”.  Based on what we saw over these last few months, why should we think that this “Super Congress”  will get ANYTHING  done?  6 Republicans and 6 Democrats agreeing on how to cut spending?  Get real.  Boehner already said he will not appoint anyone for this committee that is pro tax (er, I mean “revenue”).  Obama still thinks he can get some tax revenue.  No way.  So, let’s just go ahead and ASSUME they will resume their infantile bickering and  fail.   Then, “Plan B” goes into effect.

Plan B will gut domestic spending -  read: minimal spending/investment in our infrastructure (dams, levees, etc.), government oversight of industry (i.e., Wall Street and their corporate friends that love to pollute),  and anything else that has to do with maintaining our life support system (i.e., Earth).

So who gets the real hit?  Once again, our Mother Earth takes it on the chin.  Goodbye life support system, you’ve been great.

One has to wonder how legal this thing is anyway?  The congress forms a forth branch of government to make decisions because our legislative branch is incapable of doing so?   So our representatives can go home to their constituents and say “hey, it’s them, the committee, not me making these unpopular choices”.    Our founding fathers have to be spinning in their graves (or laughing their asses off).  Can anyone say “dysfunction”?

Sure this might sound a little surly but hear me out

Cue rant in 3, 2 …..

As you all know the economy is a little tight and we thought that we could come over to craigslist to drum up some business

We are developers and designers who really live and work in Los Angeles not freekin’ New Delhi

We’re also English fluent and some of our guys are really named Jeff, Scooter & Dave not Punjab a.k.a. Jeff, Scooter or Dave

You then get these techno-tards who think LAMP is something you put on your nightstand and just because they have a computer they know stuff

They figure “Hey Nephew Joey spends A LOT of time on the computer let’s have him do our Corporate site”

Sure Joey is just lifting music and watching porn but he must be some kind of freekin’ expert because he spends SO much time online and yet no one has ever checked his browsing history

They offer him like 7 bucks an hour because “that’s more than he’s making now delivering newspapers plus he still lives at home”

Then all too soon they figure out little Joey is a little unreliable.

Between after school sports, popping zits and being locked away in the bathroom for “extended” periods of time he can’t get the job done

Sure Joey can’t get the job done because he doesn’t have any experience in programming, business, life or ANYTHING outside the comforts of mommies house

So, what do the Corporate techno-tards do who have a launch date next week and about 3 months worth of work to get done?

They come to craigslist with some really unhealthy and UNREALISTIC expectations

They figure they offered Joey 7 bucks an hour so they’ll offer a WHOLE BUCK more and want

1) A Resume

2) A Masters/Ph.D in Computer Science or similar with a minor in like sandscrit (look it up) to narrow down the field of candidates a little

3) Whatever done yesterday with little or no direction let alone an ACTUAL request for proposal

4) A creative flair like with EVERY freekin’ neuron in the right hemisphere firing

5) A programmers OCD to write code like a machine with every neuron in the left hemisphere firing at 150% of capacity

6) You to work on site because the trolls they hired in the past couldn’t be trusted to come back from lunch – EVER

7) You to be fluent in EVERY flippin’ computer language to include Fortran IV

50 WPM typing skills

9) You to accept a promise of payment sometime in the future when they “hit it big”

10) SEO experience so no matter what you type their site shows up number 1 on Google

11) Something about being a ninja

12) You to give a c**p more about their business then they do

13) You to be a self starter, friendly individual with multi-lingual capabilities being a plus

You then have to “compete” with EVERY freekin’ idiot from the 623, 435, 902, 817 and other area codes from gawd knows where

I think you get the picture…

He’s what I think I’ll do the next time one of these d-bags offers 8 bucks an hour

I just tell them it’s going to take 10 to 15 times longer to get the work done

Maybe I can tell the property management company for our office space

I’ll give them 5 cents a square foot triple net and see if they go for it

Plus the sad thing is there will be some dillweed from the 623 responding to this telling us they’ll “take the job”

AAAAHHHHHHH!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming

A new year, a new decade, a time to trim the spending.

We have had Time Warner Cable as our cable television, internet and phone for the past few years under the “all the best” plan. According to Time Warner the “all the best” plan is a cheaper alternative to have TV, Internet and Phone service, bundled though them as aposed to having three service providers.

We have 4 tvs two of which are HD, and two are SD we had 3 digital cable boxes and one tv on basic cable. For the internet we have a wireless router, and a gigabit wired LAN. The phone was

digitalphone using the cable network. All of this was costing us about $170 a month.

Now that would not be to horrible if it worked all the time, but there was always issues with our service. During the time we have had Time Warner Cable we have made probably over 10 service calls and had just as many techs out to our house to fix the same issue over and over, weak signal…

Our neighborhood was built in the 1940′s and its aging infrastructure is starting to show its age, the city is constantly working on improving services and ripping the road up replacing sewer, and street lighting. But you rarely see Time Warner Cable upgrading there hardware.

Our tv’s where constantly breaking up and showing blocky digital snow, the internet was slow and unreliable especially during peak hours (6 – 10am and 5 – 12 pm), the phone service was working fine but it would hard to mess that up.

The last few techs to come to help with the low signals said that the level from the pole was marginal but just good enough for them to not send a maintenance crew out to fix the issue.

So now that it is the new year we wanted to see what services we could give the axe and ways we could save some of our hard earned money.

I spent a few days researching and came up with a solution, cancel Time Warner Cable and get DSL for internet and Satellite TV, we will not have a home phone as we primarily use cell phones.

Here is the setup we just finished installing:

• DirecTV, two HD receivers, two SD receivers. $56 a month with 12 month promo and AAA discount
• DSL Extreme, 6/768 DSL month to month no contract for $37 a month
• Phones, for now we will not have a land line, but an alternative would cost $11 a month from VoicePulse Connect

So we have taken our bill from $170 a month to $93 a month that is a $77 a month savings, and we really arent sacraficing service quality.

DirecTV is 100% digital unlike Time Warner Cable that uses analog for all their standard channels, and we now have a tuner box on all the tv’s in the house. The picture quality on the DirecTV is so much more crisp and the blacks are not fuzzy like Time Warner Cable was.

DSL Extreme is a slower rated speed than Time Warner Cable but it is a dedicated ADSL line that will not slow down during peak hours, and from my line tests it provides a lower ping and better line quality. Even with the slower rated speed it appears faster then Time Warner Cable.

If we had chosen to sign up for phones it would have been $11 a month using a VOIP solution designed for businesses, I would have to run a PBX but i can get the sof

tware for free (trixbox) and i would have a lot more freedom than I ever would with Time Warner Cable.

To end this post I am happy to have finally cut the cable and try something new.

I shop on eBay about once a month and normally pay with PayPal in the last 6 years making and receiving thousands of transactions, using PayPal I have had a few small issues but nothing that could not be cleared up by a phone call. But my last experience with PayPal will change the way I look at that company, and may influence the ways I purchase online in the future.

On Dec 22 2009 I had purchased a 1.75″ shackles & spacer lift for my jeep cherokee, during checkout I wanted to use a new credit card. So like most people would do I clicked on alternate payment sources, and entered my cards information, and then hit save and submit. Little did I know that once I hit the submit button all hell would break lose…

To my knowledge the transaction worked as planned the next day my credit card showed a pending charge from PayPal, but it was for only $1. At this point I still thought it was working as I see a $1 charge all the time as merchants use that to authorize the card.

About four days later I get an email from my bank that I have been overdrawn and has over $100 in NSF fees, this is when I discovered PayPal made a big mistake.

I logged  into my PayPal account and reviewed the transaction and sure enough it says instant bank transfer, but then why would they be charging $1 to my credit card? I thought it was time to call PayPal and get to the bottom of this mess.

Calling PayPal was a challenge, it asks for a code that I did not have, but after screaming operator and pressing “0″ multiple times I got a person that was able to help me. After about 5 minutes on hold I was told that I had not selected the credit card as the payment source, I responded by asking if I had not selected it why is was $1 charged? Again I was put on hold and this time got a more real answer  from the representative  ”after adding a new credit card you must wait 1 to 5 minutes before using that payment method and you clicked submit order only 15 seconds after adding the card, so our system used the payment on file”, “our system must validate the card is not stolen and that it is valid”. As a web developer I have worked on and managed many online shopping and payment systems, one of the tasks is to make sure it verifies payment and “then” charges the payment, if it cant charge it the transaction will fail.

I then asked if they can see what payment method I selected and the response was “Our system does not keep that information”, a payment processing system the size of PayPal does not store the payment method the user selects!?

I find this a huge flaw in the PayPal system, one large enough that I will not be using PayPal in the near future.

But what to do about the NSF fees and the fact that they took the money out of the wrong account, I ask PayPal what they will do about it and they said “you will have to contact your banking institution” basically saying that they are not the ones that messed up and that I am out of luck.

Well little did they know I dealt with issues like this before and know that the bank will always side with the customer, I decided the way PayPal handled this required action. I called my bank and said this transaction was not authorized and that I would like to put a stop hold on all PayPal transactions.

This is where it gets tricky, if I had wanted to use my bank account for the purchase I legally would not be able to do what I did as it would be perjury. But because  I had wanted and tried to use the credit card this bank charge was technically unauthorized.

I tell the bank the story and after only 5 minutes on the phone I get a Stop Payment order, and they are doing an investigation for the ACH withdraw she says it will take ten days to complete and I will get the NSF fees back like nothing happened.

Ten days later I logged into my bank and the money was returned to me along with the fees, so now that I got my money back the seller is probably wondering where his money is. This seller is a company and takes credit cards so i give him a call and explain the story and then make the payment over the phone, and we both hang up on a good note.

But this leaves me wondering how safe PayPal really is, I easily got my money back from a bank transfer and put a permanent block on PayPal transactions. What is stopping people from buying using PayPal and then taking the money back and disappearing? I actually found the whole process faster and easier then doing a credit card dispute.

In my mind this is a major flaw in PayPal system and makes me wonder how safe my money is when I sell on eBay. What do you think about this PayPal issue?

If A = B

and A = C,

Then B = C

Instead of ranting and raving illogically at various town hall meetings, let’s try using a little good old-fashioned logic (that we were all bored-to-death with in high school, but, let’s face it, can come in handy now and then).

Now consider the following statistics:

When asked in a new Harris Poll how strongly those polled support 14 different government services, five services receive strong, or a fair amount of support, from about three-fourths of all adults or more. The five most popular services are The National Parks Service (85% support), Crime-fighting and prevention services (77%) Medicare (76%), Social Security (76%), and Unemployment benefits (74%).

Medicare came in with a strong 76%, over 3 out of 4 people polled by Harris.  (REMINDER: Medicare is a “single payer” system, with the government as the payee).  I think it is safe to say that overall, Medicare is a success, and, if we can say that success is “good”,  it logically follows that:

Medicare (A) = Single-payer System (B)

Medicare (A) = “good” (C)

then, Single-Payer System (B) = “good” (C)

Now, that wasn’t so painful was it?

How "healthy" is our health care in America today?

It’s difficult to understand why the word “socialized medicine” strikes such fear in Americans.  It’s almost a visceral response, negating what most of us know and have heard about other successful plans in other countries that most folks here would brand “socialist”.

Let’s take Canada for instance.  If we look at the numbers, we see that  spending in Canada is projected to reach $160 billion, or 10.6% of GDP, in 2007. This is slightly above the average for OECD countries, and substantially below the 15.2% of GDP taken by up healthcare in the United States.  This should go aways towards quieting some of the accountants amonst us, and should be looked at by congresspersons that are freaking out about “cost”.

Canada’s system is known as a single payer system, where basic services are provided by private doctors (since 2002 they have been allowed to incorporate), with the entire fee paid for by the government at the same rate. Most family doctors receive a fee per visit. These rates are negotiated between the provincial governments and the province’s medical associations, usually on an annual basis. A physician cannot charge a fee for a service that is higher than the negotiated rate — even to patients who are not covered by the publicly funded system — unless the physican opts out of billing the publicly funded system altogether. Pharmaceutical costs are set at a global median by government price controls. Other areas of health care, such as dentistry and optometry, are wholly private.

Considerable attention has been focused on two issues in Canada: wait times and health human resources.

There is also a debate about the appropriate ‘public-private mix’ for both financing and delivering services. Studies by the Commonwealth Fund found that 57% of Canadians reported waiting 4 weeks or more to see a specialist; 24% of Canadians waited 4 hours or more in the emergency room.  I’ve heard many horror stories from friends and family here in Los Angeles, where they spent more than 12 hours waiting in an emergency room at local hospitals.  A 4 hour wait seems trivial.  I also know from first hand experience that getting into see a specialist is often just as difficult.  One of my family members needed to go to a specialized clinic rescently, only to find out that “new patients were no longer admitted” due to the current waiting list of existing patients.  Hmmmmm. Of course, this doesn’t even address the issue that close to 50 million Americans can’t get access to health care at all!

In regards to health-care professional shortages, their is some issue here,  With 2.1 doctors per thousand population in 2006, Canada is well below the OECD average of 3.1. Canada’s 8.8 nurses per thousand was also below the OECD average of 9.7.  However, here’s an interesting statistic: According to a 2007 article from CTV News, the Canadian medical profession is suffering from a brain drain. The article states, “One in nine trained-in-Canada doctors is practising medicine in the United States.

Now if the U.S. implements a plan similar to Canadas, and health care costs become more contained, it only seems logical that Canada’s “brain drain” will slow considerably.  Doctor’s in Canada average an income of $202,000/year.  I think that kind of income should go a long way in keeping the financial incentive alive for new, young doctors.

And Canada’s system, although better than ours, is still ranked below other “socialized” countries, such as England and France.  So what part of a “socialized medicine” approach here in the U.S. is so worrysome?   That statistics stated above are a vast improvement of what we have going right now.

The Car Allowance Rebate System is a US federal program that helps US citizens to purchase a new, more fuel efficient vehicle when trading in a less fuel efficient vehicle.

Thousands of Americans are rushing out and trading in their old cars to receive a $3500 or $4500 discount towards the purchase of select new cars. This may sound great at first but there are many hidden facts the majority of the population may not be aware of.

• The program is designed to get old cars up to 25 years old with under 18 MPG off the road and replace them with brand new cars that have a higher MPG rating.
• Depending on the age of the vehicle you will ether qualify for $3500 or $4500 off of the purchase price of the new car.
• The old car must have been owned, registered, and insured for the past year.
• The dealer is required to disable the old cars engine by draining the oil and replacing with a water and silica solution, permanently destroying the engine.
• The old car must the crushed and the engine and drivetrain cannot be sold for parts, this prevents the sale of the car in the United States and elsewhere as a vehicle.

Many of the cars being turned in as “Clunkers” to this program are still perfectly fine and are being turned in just so the owner can get a new car, but because the car is required to be destroyed hundreds maybe even thousands of cars are being destroyed. But is this really the best way to get people to buy new cars? Why go to the effort to destroy perfectly fine cars that may only be 4-5 years old.

Let’s say all the cars that went to the program that were newer then say 1998 were taken into a low income car program, helping get the “real clunkers” off the road.

It could work as follows:

• The total household income is less then a certain level.
• Each household would qualify for only one vehicle trade.
• The traded vehicle must need more then $500 in repairs to qualify.
• The car must be less then 35 years old, but mileage does not matter.
• The car must be owned for the last year but is not required to be registered or smogged.

This would help get the “real clunkers” and unsafe cars off the road and help clean up the roads. But why was this not the way the Cash for Clunkers program was designed? We can only guess that it has to do with the fact that the Government has recently bailed out both GM and Chrysler. By requiring people to purchase a new vehicle they are protecting there investments.

Another theory about why they don’t want to have a low income program is “Keep Them Stupid and Poor” consperacy that has been floating around the internet. I think the government has been brainwashing the population, there is so many stupid laws and programs right now and the majority of the population appears to be going along with it.

I see this first hand as I am an unemployed, student. Like many others I have been in search of a job for many months, but because of the current economy there has been very little interest. Another major issue is the cut to education budgets, just this summer I had a class I was attending get canceled after the first week was over because they were two people short of the twenty person quota. I feel that as an American I am not getting what I should, if I pay my taxes I should be able to use that money, and I feel it unfair to allow this program to only benefit the people capable of making monthly car payments. What about the rest of the population?

Silicon Valley's unemployment rate -- which was below California's average and largely tracked the national average last year -- has soared, surpassing the state average in May. By June, the area's unadjusted unemployment rate was 11.8%, worse than California's 11.6% and the national rate of 9.7%, according to the latest figures from California's Employment Development Department. The rate of job losses was particularly steep in sectors such as semiconductor manufacturing, where employment dropped more than 13% in June from a year earlier.

in teaching or financial consulting. People are leaving tech as “more tech companies are offshoring and some are shrinking, plus people are burned out and tired from having been there and done that,” says Ms. Brock.

Community colleges and job centers in the area are reporting a increase in enrollment of out-of-work techies, and many are looking to move into other industries.

Others are happier to leave tech. Minda Cutcher, 53, was laid off as a finance manager at telecommunications company Covad Communications Co. last year after a decade at the San Jose, Calif., firm. In May, Ms. Cutcher launched her own financial-consultancy business for the elderly.

Ms. Cutcher says she doesn’t regret leaving tech after working in the industry for 30 years. “I did a real re-examination of my priorities,” she says. “I’m done with high tech and fancy titles. Now I’m going from high tech to high touch.”

Life in America