The Stony Brook Meal Plan is like Health Care Reform

When I went to college for my first semester they required you to sign up for a meal plan. There were three choices and they all cost the same. You could have 3 meals a day for five days at one of five locations on campus and $500 in extra spending cash to spend wherever you wanted. You could have 2 meals a day for five days and $1000 in spending cash or you could just have $2500 on your card and spend it where you like and when you liked. I took the middle plan. I liked the meals. They were buffet or restaurant style meals. I ate a lot of salads and lost weight. The next year they came up with a new plan. The new plan was they added up all the cost of all their facilities, people and shipping costs, divided it by the number of students on campus and asked you to pay up front the costs of all of the food service. Then whatever extra money you chose to put on would purchase food at cost. So the plan was whenever you went somewhere to eat you'd pay $1 for a hamburger and $0.25 for a drink. For one, no one believed these to be the true costs but putting that aside all of the buffet/restaurant places closed down and were replaced with fast food joints like taco bell, burger king, pizza and Chinese. No more salads and chicken for me. I gained weight. The quality and quantity of the food went down. Looking back I realized that they had no incentive to sell good food. They already had your money. The more you bought the more they lost and the less you bought the more they gained. What a great scam. The only good place on campus and the place I usually ate was the student activity center which only accepted cash.
The Stony Brook meal plan is analogous to the current Health care reform. They will have all your money up front and dole out medical care at a supposed bargain without any need to be competitive, cost effective, efficient, or effective. You will not be the customer any more, you will be the end user. The government will be the customer. In fact the worse the state of health care the more people will join the government plan and the more they can control how we live. Good luck with that.

Sarah Palin made the decision we should all make in that situation

I have always said that if it came between my job and my family I would choose my family, you can always get another job. I work hard for my job and I am willing to go the extra mile but if comes to never being home for my kids so I can get that extra 2% raise or promised promotion, forget it. At least my kids will remember my birthday.
The media and the political hounds were not satisfied that Palin lost the campaign last year, they want to see her personally and professionally destroyed. None of us normal people can understand the immense pressure that they must feel being followed and bombarded with frivelous lawsuits. Unlike movie stars political servants don't ask for attention they are trying to lead. All leaders need to be challenged now and again to keep em straight but this was ridiculous. They were attacking her character because she was one of those non phony balony people. She is honest, intelligent and capable but she's not witty. You can't have it all. Obama is also under several lawsuits but he has a lot more wealth and resources to fight them including a upfront huge down payment on a book deal when he leaves office. No other president has gotten away with the kind of route the rules he has.
So, Sarah Palin under immense legal and social pressure decided to take care of her family. She still has a young child. It may have been the Letterman comment after all that sent her over the edge. I fear the the dogs of hate will continue their relentless attack on this nice woman who ran her state well and bowed to pressure and stepped aside.
I don't think anyone including her knows her political future. I don't think she will go away forever but maybe she will be a behind the fence force for change. I think she would be best suited as secretary of state.

WHEN DREAMS DIE

Dreams are not just those sequence of weird events you have at night. Dreams are the life long goals you form as a kid that seem impossible but nothing is impossible when you are a kid. Several guests attending a wedding wanted to share pictures and videos more easily and YouTube was born. A bunch of guys wanted to search for "select videos" easier and google was born, a lone nerd wanted to show the world he could make them need him and Microsoft was born. It has happened and we all have some impossible dream.
My dream? I wanted to have a team of crackpot engineers and scientists inventing various inventions, some of my design some born of those who worked for me. I wanted to bring these inventions to light and expand. I wanted to be in control but also to create something that would live on with those who worked in control of a sort of employee controlled empire (Bill Gates is a sellout as they all are). I wanted to have an invention company.
There comes a point when you realize your dreams are likely (a near certainty) not to happen. I guess for the ones who come to the conclusion it's truly never going to happen it's easier, they pierce their ears, get a tattoo, buy a corvette or get a mistress. But for those of us who's dreams die hard, it's another matter all together. We can never really give up the dream but realize how impossible it really is. What are we going to do? Invent the next Google or Microsoft in our spare time at 10pm at night when the kids go to sleep? Are we going to invent nuclear fusion or discover time travel on our train ride to work. Likely not! We are over worked and under appreciated. We love our spouses and our children and God knows where we'd be without them but our dreams life locked away on some dusty shelf like our high school year book.
Childhood's end, where our dreams come to die. Who knows, some come back from the dead after years past but not many. You come to the choice between family and career and if your career is booming like a captain Kirk's you choose adventure but lament never having a family and if your family is booming like little house on the prairie you choose family and lament adventure. I guess you can't have it all.

HEALTH CARE REFORM

There is a woman I know who worked her whole life as a home maker and then when her children were grown her husband died. She had never learned a career so she didn't have the skills needed to obtain a job with medical insurance. She was a previous cancer survivor so she wasn't qualified for private insurance. She had money because her husband was prudent and had a good insurance policy in place. Her husband's company whom her husband had worked at for 30 years dropped the family like a hot potato a month later. This woman and several million like her need help. However, the package that's being put forth will not only help this woman but will also pay for tens of millions of others who can't or don't work, tens of millions of more who are here illegally and attempt to "socialize" our medical system and I'll show you how.

The Idea.
(1) Let's start by creating the best insurance the world has ever seen.
(2) At a price that's more expensive then company sponsored insurance (that will be taxed) and less expense then private insurance.
(3) Let's offer free to anyone who is at or below poverty level (15% of the country).
(4) Let's provide subsidies for up to 400% above poverty level.
(5) Let's tax the population to get back half of this money by a National Sales Tax (VAT), an energy tax (climate change), and a host of new more subtle taxes.

The Problem:
This sound great but #1 the government can't pay for it. It is estimated to cost 1.7 Trillion dollars in ten years and as we know things always cost more. The cost will just keep rising. People don't believe Barack Obama when he says he can save this money by cutting other costs down. Remember the two trillion he "saved" after spending two trillion? Remember the 150K jobs he "saved" after we lost 2 million. You can fool all the people sometimes and some of the people all the time but you just can't fool all the people all the time.

#2, most of us who have jobs will keep our own coverage. Those don't have jobs will get this new insurance for free and now you will have a situation where not working is better than working. If you are not working and are a single parent you can stay at home get nice checks, food stamps and free health care. What is the incentive to ever go back to work? When you reward the lazy, incompetents and scammers you get more lazy incompetents and scammers.

#3 jobs will drop insurance every time you switch and rather just pay into the government pool.

So what's the answer?

(1) Let's great three categories of government sponsored but not government run insurance, bronze, silver, and gold. Bronze is an HMO like insurance which sucks but at least it's insurance. Silver and Gold, well you can probably guess what those are like. Most of us have silver.
(2) Let's give away bronze to all CITIZENS below poverty level.
(3) Let's provide some subsidies for silver up to some appropriate level.
(4) Charge $50 at the door of every clinic and Emergency Room.
(5) We will waive the charge if you are unconscious and in need of immediate emergency life saving care.
(6) Do not allow insurance companies to deny coverage based on pre existing condition or age.
(7) Companies can change price structure based on #6. They have to balance out their costs somehow.
(8) Flexible Health Savings accounts roll over and go from company to company. They are like 401k's you can save up from the time you're young till the time you're old. They earn interest by investing in bonds or cd's. Hey how about that?

These solutions and many other are just so glaringly obvious and while you may or may not agree with some or all of these our congress cannot seem to see past their big heart to help everybody with everything.

"Why are we even talking about the details when we don't know how to pay for it?" -John McCain

"Everyone deserves some type of health insurance but not gold plated." -Michael Savage.

THE NEW SOCIAL SECURITY

The problem with social security aside from being insolvent is it's a social welfare program instead of a savings program. It's pyramid scheme that is about to end. It needs to be fixed and not just patched. The goals of any restructring should be long term solvency, ownership, and savings. Here is how I would restructre the plan for NEW RETIREES.

• Add up, calculate all the money someone has ever actually put into the plan. THAT IS THEIR MONEY. When they die it gets inherited.
• No spouse payments/payouts. They get their inheritence. They have their own money if they have worked.
• Payout is calculated by dividing up current amount by years and months until you reach 85.
• You can take money out due to medical emergency.
• When your money is depleted (you live a long time, med emergency) you are placed into welfare at perhaps a lower rate. Current retirees continue receiving their money.
• You have a choice where your money gets invested in only a GUARANTEED vehicle. Federal bonds, state bonds, or CD's (you choose the bank). Guess what, we have a choice whether to fund washington, our own state or a bank which will lend the money out. People will naturally have some variation of return.
• A tax is applied to simply pay for those who don't have money or who run out, ect. 1-2%
• Limits of taxation are raised to 150K/300K married.
• Allow people to save more then 7.5 / 15% currently. Whatever they save over that amount is tax free (not just tax deferred, TAX FREE) up to some % and some $$$ amount.

This will take away the advantage of early retirement because your money doesn't disappear. It will allow people another vehichle besides 401K's. It wil provide people with a safe safety net and allow people some choice and therefore some control on who gets to do what with the money.

Put GM out of our misery

Can someone please explain to me how a company that is probably the most unprofitable company in the history of the world is going to make a profit when it takes the following steps.

(1) Continue paying for 650k retirees pensions and healthcare when you only have 65k employees workign for you. that means for every employee you actually pay for you have to pay 1/2 salary for 10 more.

(2) Sell of your most popular brands and keep only the least popular brands.

(3) Close down the most profitable sales locations and keep only those sales locations that are in areas that agree with your political affiliation.

(4) Shaft real lenders thereby soley relying on the government.

(5) Keep the unions that destroyed you.

I predict they will lose twice as much money next year as they did this year.

What's the solution? Sell everything, give the government 60% of the sales, the union 20% and the bondholders 19% and the stock holders 1% of the proceeds and call it a day. Forget Canada.

People will continue to be employeed they'll just wear different hats.

Rich vs. Poor, we're all buddies here

I don't think the moderate and below moderate income begrudge their better off's inherently. When someone sees someone else drive a better car or have a better job I don't think there is a natural inclination to dislike them. There might be a momentary flash of jealosy but it is quickly fleeting and filled with a sense of pride of being the working man or woman. What does anger regular people is those wealthy who take advantage of us regular folks. Those who preside over companies who go bankrupt and walk away with bundles of money or those who lend with high usuary and unfair business practices. When we hear of practices to tax the rich we applaud because we think of those who take advantage of us unfairly and not those who build buisnesses and employee people. I worked once for a company that was started by two men in a garage fifty years ago. He employeed almost a thousand people at the companies peak. The original owner owned 51% of the common stock therefore he pretty much called all the shots. I had nothign against the man. In my current company they had a 1-2% raise this year followed by a two week unpaid furlogh. That means employees lost 2-3% of their salary this year. We actually earned less this year than last. We all understand that we need to make sacrifices in this tough economy and we got to keep our jobs. Then we find out that the CEO made a 30 million dollar bonus which was 50%+ more than last years bonus. This is kind of a craw for us who are making sacrifices. It could be said that our sacrifice made his bonus. So, in that way the moderate of income begrudge the top class. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe he deserves his big bonus for saving the company from financial ruin. The interesting thing is this particular man is bosum buddies with a certain President by the name of Barak Obama. Oh, he's been to the press conferences and been lauded for creating jobs. From what I see we are constantly buying companies here in the states, closing them down, laying off employees and moving those jobs oversees. My company is a net exporter of jobs. Why would the stimulus man applaud a job exporter?

Why I agree with credit card legislation

I've heard many people call this piece of legislation socialisitic and I think people are a bit confused about what socialism is and isn't. Socialism is a system whereby everybody takes responsibility for everything. In it's extreme it's a horrible system to govern and even worse to regulate the economy. That doesn't mean all regulation is socialistic if it seeks to put limits on what companies and consumers can and can't do and make business more transparent. Credit cards are esentially un secured debt so they should be at a higher rate with some fees but what credit card companies have done is make the fees difficult to understand, easy to trigger and kept many in a never ending cycle of debt. They also have targeted young adults on college campuses and given out more credit than should have been given out. They weren't forced as in the case with some of the mortgage lenders they willingly gave out credit cards with high balances and misleading advertisments in some case bribing college officials. Here are some examples of credit card abuses.

0% for one year on a credit card from a store (if you don't pay it back on time you acrew all the interest at 24% for a year). I applied for a $500 tv and received a $5000 credit limit.

Pay off a credit card 4 days in advance and they apply it the day after it's due and charge you a $40 fee.

Pay off a credit card in full but they apply interest every half cycle so you're left with a small balance.

Pay the minimum for 40 years to pay off a credit card.

There are many many more deceptive advertsiements. The bill in congress is a way of establishing standard practices and making the business of credit cards more reasonable.

I am VERY UNHAPPY with Barak Obama's spending and over involvement in various industries but that doesn't mean everything he does is bad. It's not about give the guy a chance, it's about say what he does good and what he does bad and why.

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