What? You're surprised? Surely you remember Clinton? Fortunately with Clinton he was too busy laying sausage to spend time screwing up the country. I can only hope that, like Clinton, Obama will keep himself busy continuing to campaign even though he has already won and won't have time to fulfill the promises he made. Promises which the populace seems to be excited about, but frankly scared the hell out of me.
The article neglects the fact that lazy companies like ADT already use primarily wireless devices so that they don't have to run wire, and yet they charge the same price that they used to charge for wired installations.
My experience with wireless devices is that they cost a small fortune in lithium batteries every year and since they have the need to transmit over RF, they are more complex than a hardwired installation and more prone to failure.
But just because wires are involved doesn't mean it can't be DIY. There are plenty of modular systems you can buy and peice together for about the price of an ADT system which will have about 4 times the functionality that a typical ADT system would give you.
This is why I hope that the election is heavily weighted one side or the other. If it is close and has to be decided in the courts again, I do fear that people will start flinging the race card. Of course, I think that the race card DOES figure heavily in the election in that many black people are voting for Obama simply because he appears to be black, with no thought to his policies, which completely oppose the ideals that conservative Christian blacks believe. Not to mention the fact that Obama is really just a rich white dude in black skin. If he saw a homeless black (or white) guy walking down his street, I'd bet he'd draw the shades and peak out between the slats until the guy went away. No, Obama does not represent the black man. But his party knows that America is so politically correct that they would be afraid to be called racist by voting against a black man and they are playing to that big time.
There's some racist bigots on the white side too who will vote for McCain simply because he's white, but the most racist whites are usually poor, and Obama's got those guys drinking the kool-aid, too. Yeah, he's gonna take all the money from the guys earning 300k, I mean 250k, uh, 200k, that's right 150k, and give it all to the poor working man. Well, heck, suddenly race goes out the window, because now we're talking about money in the pocket.
As for me, I don't care about race. If the candidates switched skin colors and kept their same policies, I'd switch my vote in a heartbeat. Not that I'm swooning over the guy I'm voting for, I'm just sort of neutral toward him, but the other guy basically stands for everything I'm against. So I'm not voting FOR someone this election. I'm voting against someone who opposes my views.
Just to clarify, I'm voting for the guy whose momma was white.
Well, if McCain wins, then you will hear "It's McCains fault", so that is what you should hope for. Because if Obama wins, then when he starts screwing things up, they will just say it is lagging from when Bush was president.
With new "Vote Hero". It doesn't matter if you know the issues, or even know how to vote. All you have to do is click the big blue and red buttons at the right time.
I think he should just start beating his head against the wall repeatedly, it's a much more efficient means of self torture.
Plus it feels so good when you stop.
Anything can be excessive depending on what you personally believe something is worth, regardless of what your disposable income is, or at least it should be. $70 a month on M&Ms would probably seem excessive to you. $70 a month on iphone service seems excessive to me. Of course, in another thread I indicated that I don't have $4000 a month in disposable income, but let's pretend I did. I STILL wouldn't buy an iphone. Because for me personally, $70 a month is too much for a cell phone. Sure it does internet and e-mail and whatnot. But I already have devices that do that and do it better. I would either not use the data service or use it rarely. Some people may use it a lot because of their job. I have a similar job to a lot of people in my office who say they need it for their job, yet I don't seem to need it for my job. Most of the time when they are using their iphones (or blackberries in this case), they are just looking at incoming e-mails during lunch, a pursuit which can be much better performed back at the office AFTER lunch. After all, that is where all my data is to actually answer these e-mails. I have yet to see any of my colleagues do anything useful with their devices. They just have them because it is something they wanted. Well, I'm not going to bash them for it. That is how they prioritize their lives. I personally don't put any value on the service, so they would pretty much have to give me the data service for free to get me to use it.
Well, although my income is nominally the same, I only bring home about $5,000. After the mortgage, car payment and feeding the kids, our disposable income is actually negative. Fortunately, I have rental houses and and my wife is working as a receptionist, so we are able to get by from month to month. Kids seriously affect the budget, especially when you are "blessed" with accidental twins, when you had already had one and a stepchild. I figure to properly raise 4 kids, you need to make at least $120,000.
But I would not consider an iphone to be a service that most people need. I wouldn't even consider a cell phone a service that most people need. I didn't have one when I grew up and nothing horrible happened. I would probably budget for the iphone if it was appropriately priced for the service. $199 is a reasonable price for the device, but $70 a month for the service is outrageous. Even $70 a month for two of us to have plain old cell phone plan is ridiculous. We have 6 people using the home phone for less than half that and THAT service is overpriced as well.
Nobody who can afford to eat regularly at McDonald's is going to have problems affording healthy food.
My sister, her baby and her baby's daddy used to live with me back when I was first out of college. I asked her to help out by paying some rent and she told me that she was so broke that she had to eat at McDonalds. That statement almost caused me to choke on my ramen.
The poor whites I know don't go in for diamonds and necklaces. They go in for personal watercraft, big pickups, dirtbikes, recreational vehicles and such.
Well I for one make pretty close to $100k and I can not imagine spending several hundred dollars on an iphone, nor the $70 a month cost for the service. But yes, pretty much half the people in my office have one, and they take delight in pointing out how they have one by complaining about how it won't stay synced with Outlook or how it is difficult to view such and such webpage on their iphone (though it would probably be easy to view it on their 21" monitor right in front of them. And of course, since they have all this texting and e-mailing and other automated junk sending to their phone, important e-mails occasionally slip through the cracks, but no more than a couple of times a day.
Being from the U.S. myself I don't see any reason to defend charging for incoming calls. My landline doesn't get charge for incoming calls. Neither should my cell phone. I don't mind if they charge enough for outgoing to make up the cost (I would guess they already do this anyway). The worst offender of all is having to pay for incoming texts. I have never sent a text in my life, and I only receive a few a month, and those that I receive are generally accidents, or are from someone at work who doesn't realize that dialing my number and calling is cheaper, easier and less time-intensive than dialing my number and typing in a text message.
Unlike you I am not hopeful for the election to change anything. I have not heard anything from either candidate about this issue, nor would I want the government to get involved. I simply want consumers to stop laying down and taking it, which is probably a shallow hope since they are so addicted to text messaging.
This is somewhat the premise of 'high deductible' health plans, and is very similar to how they work.
Except I had one of those before and it was still something stupid crazy expensive like $500 a month with a $5,000 deductible. It should be only about $50 a month since you are unlikely to ever hit that amount.
Lucky. I have no pre-existing conditions and yet I pay about 50% more than you and make south of $100,000 and my insurance still doesn't ever want to pay anything.
I love how employers list insurance plan as a benefit. How is it a benefit when I foot the bill? I could just as easily get Insurance through IEEE, AOPA, partners of my mortgage company or any of the other organizations that I am a part of or could choose to be a part of. It is interesting to note that none of the higher ups in my company have insurance through the plan. They all magically have it from some other source. Probably what that means is that they have a different plan where the company foots the bill and the plan actually pays for claims.
Yes, a whopping 2% or so depending on the index you look at. Which when adjusted for inflation is down about 25%.
Your 401k advisor loves to talk about how the stock market historically averages 10% per year. How Wonderful! Except that it departs so bad from the mean that there are rarely any years when it comes close to ACTUALLY making 10%. In fact there are DECADES at a time where it is flat or loses money, followed by decades of growth much higher than 10%. I would recommend that you now put your money in the market unless you watch it very closely or you have 50 years to wait to ensure a profit.
I myself have never had a problem as serious as cancer or heart disease, but I can speak to the fact that I have been involved with certain insurance companies (BCBS Wisconsin) with whom I would have to spend hours on the phone for EVERY SINGLE CLAIM before they would pay dime one. I would have to chase down doctors to get letters of medical necessity for standard tests such as the ones performed on my wife when she was pregnant which are done on every single pregnant mother. Eventually they paid what they were supposed to pay, but if I had not been vigilant to spend thousands of dollars worth of my time and theirs, then I would essentially have had to pay both for insurance, my co-pay and co-insurance, all the stuff that they contractually did not cover AND for the stuff that my insurance claimed to cover.
I guess my complaint is that I currently pay for a trendy sports bar level of coverage, and I receive a trendy sports bar level of coverage (at least if I am vigilant about making sure they take back the water glass with dirt on it and recook the hockey puck that I asked to be medium). However, it seems that the country would like me to pay Chez Paul prices so that I can receive McDonald's level Health Coverage. And everyone else can as well, but that is of little consequence to me, when I now have to pay much more for much lower service.
Of course, I have to question whether a lack of health insurance really means a lack of medical service. I know some poor people, and they receive medical service much more frequently than I do. They receive free medical care and free medicines. Ultimately, you and I pay for that. I, on the other hand, have insurance that I have to pay for, and if I go to the doctor, I have to pay for that too. Since I can't afford to pay for both insurance and medical service, I just don't go.
The price of medical service is partly due to the fact that many people choose not to pay their medical bills, so the rest of us have to cover the cost. Another part of the price of medical service is the fact that many of us choose to sue the doctor when a procedure goes wrong that we were told multiple times could go wrong X percent of the time and we signed a paper acknowledging that we were aware of the risk and agree not to hold the doctor liable if it does go wrong. Note that I think you should be able to sue for gross negligence, but not because you were a statistic.
In short, get rid of the deadbeats and the people suing for easy money, and the cost will go down.
My ideal health plan would be where I pay everything out of my own pocket BUT I also pay $50 a month to an insurance company. The insurance company doesn't have to pay dime one, but when I go to the doctor, they still submit the claim to the insurance company, the insurance company marks it down to their contracted rate with the doctor, and then puts that amount down as my responsibility.
In other words, I don't want them to pay, I want to pay myself, but I want to do it based on their contracted price with the provider.
According to the article, the chord Harrison played had the 1st and 6th string muted, which means he could easily have played the F on the 6th string 1st fret, in fact since he was playing the 1st fret C on the 5th string, he would have been muting the 6th string on the F. He was probably already getting the "thunk" of the F and just not letting it ring!
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What? You're surprised? Surely you remember Clinton? Fortunately with Clinton he was too busy laying sausage to spend time screwing up the country. I can only hope that, like Clinton, Obama will keep himself busy continuing to campaign even though he has already won and won't have time to fulfill the promises he made. Promises which the populace seems to be excited about, but frankly scared the hell out of me.
You also can't claim that running out of space on the Mayan calendar was a claim that the world would end anymore than using two digit years was.
Don't worry, it would be worse if it was an idiot lawyer.
I disagree.
As for me, I am claiming racism already. And it isn't the rednecks I'm complaining about.
Seems like the Mayans were a bit off...
A bit off? The end of the world for them was over 1,000 years ago.
The article neglects the fact that lazy companies like ADT already use primarily wireless devices so that they don't have to run wire, and yet they charge the same price that they used to charge for wired installations.
My experience with wireless devices is that they cost a small fortune in lithium batteries every year and since they have the need to transmit over RF, they are more complex than a hardwired installation and more prone to failure.
But just because wires are involved doesn't mean it can't be DIY. There are plenty of modular systems you can buy and peice together for about the price of an ADT system which will have about 4 times the functionality that a typical ADT system would give you.
(in best McBain voice)"Dat's da joke"
This is why I hope that the election is heavily weighted one side or the other. If it is close and has to be decided in the courts again, I do fear that people will start flinging the race card. Of course, I think that the race card DOES figure heavily in the election in that many black people are voting for Obama simply because he appears to be black, with no thought to his policies, which completely oppose the ideals that conservative Christian blacks believe. Not to mention the fact that Obama is really just a rich white dude in black skin. If he saw a homeless black (or white) guy walking down his street, I'd bet he'd draw the shades and peak out between the slats until the guy went away. No, Obama does not represent the black man. But his party knows that America is so politically correct that they would be afraid to be called racist by voting against a black man and they are playing to that big time.
There's some racist bigots on the white side too who will vote for McCain simply because he's white, but the most racist whites are usually poor, and Obama's got those guys drinking the kool-aid, too. Yeah, he's gonna take all the money from the guys earning 300k, I mean 250k, uh, 200k, that's right 150k, and give it all to the poor working man. Well, heck, suddenly race goes out the window, because now we're talking about money in the pocket.
As for me, I don't care about race. If the candidates switched skin colors and kept their same policies, I'd switch my vote in a heartbeat. Not that I'm swooning over the guy I'm voting for, I'm just sort of neutral toward him, but the other guy basically stands for everything I'm against. So I'm not voting FOR someone this election. I'm voting against someone who opposes my views.
Just to clarify, I'm voting for the guy whose momma was white.
Well, if McCain wins, then you will hear "It's McCains fault", so that is what you should hope for. Because if Obama wins, then when he starts screwing things up, they will just say it is lagging from when Bush was president.
With new "Vote Hero". It doesn't matter if you know the issues, or even know how to vote. All you have to do is click the big blue and red buttons at the right time.
Recently released on the Diebold platform!!
I think he should just start beating his head against the wall repeatedly, it's a much more efficient means of self torture.
Plus it feels so good when you stop.
Anything can be excessive depending on what you personally believe something is worth, regardless of what your disposable income is, or at least it should be. $70 a month on M&Ms would probably seem excessive to you. $70 a month on iphone service seems excessive to me. Of course, in another thread I indicated that I don't have $4000 a month in disposable income, but let's pretend I did. I STILL wouldn't buy an iphone. Because for me personally, $70 a month is too much for a cell phone. Sure it does internet and e-mail and whatnot. But I already have devices that do that and do it better. I would either not use the data service or use it rarely. Some people may use it a lot because of their job. I have a similar job to a lot of people in my office who say they need it for their job, yet I don't seem to need it for my job. Most of the time when they are using their iphones (or blackberries in this case), they are just looking at incoming e-mails during lunch, a pursuit which can be much better performed back at the office AFTER lunch. After all, that is where all my data is to actually answer these e-mails. I have yet to see any of my colleagues do anything useful with their devices. They just have them because it is something they wanted. Well, I'm not going to bash them for it. That is how they prioritize their lives. I personally don't put any value on the service, so they would pretty much have to give me the data service for free to get me to use it.
Well, although my income is nominally the same, I only bring home about $5,000. After the mortgage, car payment and feeding the kids, our disposable income is actually negative. Fortunately, I have rental houses and and my wife is working as a receptionist, so we are able to get by from month to month. Kids seriously affect the budget, especially when you are "blessed" with accidental twins, when you had already had one and a stepchild. I figure to properly raise 4 kids, you need to make at least $120,000.
But I would not consider an iphone to be a service that most people need. I wouldn't even consider a cell phone a service that most people need. I didn't have one when I grew up and nothing horrible happened. I would probably budget for the iphone if it was appropriately priced for the service. $199 is a reasonable price for the device, but $70 a month for the service is outrageous. Even $70 a month for two of us to have plain old cell phone plan is ridiculous. We have 6 people using the home phone for less than half that and THAT service is overpriced as well.
Nobody who can afford to eat regularly at McDonald's is going to have problems affording healthy food.
My sister, her baby and her baby's daddy used to live with me back when I was first out of college. I asked her to help out by paying some rent and she told me that she was so broke that she had to eat at McDonalds. That statement almost caused me to choke on my ramen.
The poor whites I know don't go in for diamonds and necklaces. They go in for personal watercraft, big pickups, dirtbikes, recreational vehicles and such.
Well I for one make pretty close to $100k and I can not imagine spending several hundred dollars on an iphone, nor the $70 a month cost for the service. But yes, pretty much half the people in my office have one, and they take delight in pointing out how they have one by complaining about how it won't stay synced with Outlook or how it is difficult to view such and such webpage on their iphone (though it would probably be easy to view it on their 21" monitor right in front of them. And of course, since they have all this texting and e-mailing and other automated junk sending to their phone, important e-mails occasionally slip through the cracks, but no more than a couple of times a day.
Being from the U.S. myself I don't see any reason to defend charging for incoming calls. My landline doesn't get charge for incoming calls. Neither should my cell phone. I don't mind if they charge enough for outgoing to make up the cost (I would guess they already do this anyway). The worst offender of all is having to pay for incoming texts. I have never sent a text in my life, and I only receive a few a month, and those that I receive are generally accidents, or are from someone at work who doesn't realize that dialing my number and calling is cheaper, easier and less time-intensive than dialing my number and typing in a text message.
Unlike you I am not hopeful for the election to change anything. I have not heard anything from either candidate about this issue, nor would I want the government to get involved. I simply want consumers to stop laying down and taking it, which is probably a shallow hope since they are so addicted to text messaging.
This is somewhat the premise of 'high deductible' health plans, and is very similar to how they work.
Except I had one of those before and it was still something stupid crazy expensive like $500 a month with a $5,000 deductible. It should be only about $50 a month since you are unlikely to ever hit that amount.
Lucky. I have no pre-existing conditions and yet I pay about 50% more than you and make south of $100,000 and my insurance still doesn't ever want to pay anything.
I love how employers list insurance plan as a benefit. How is it a benefit when I foot the bill? I could just as easily get Insurance through IEEE, AOPA, partners of my mortgage company or any of the other organizations that I am a part of or could choose to be a part of. It is interesting to note that none of the higher ups in my company have insurance through the plan. They all magically have it from some other source. Probably what that means is that they have a different plan where the company foots the bill and the plan actually pays for claims.
Yes, a whopping 2% or so depending on the index you look at. Which when adjusted for inflation is down about 25%.
Your 401k advisor loves to talk about how the stock market historically averages 10% per year. How Wonderful! Except that it departs so bad from the mean that there are rarely any years when it comes close to ACTUALLY making 10%. In fact there are DECADES at a time where it is flat or loses money, followed by decades of growth much higher than 10%. I would recommend that you now put your money in the market unless you watch it very closely or you have 50 years to wait to ensure a profit.
I myself have never had a problem as serious as cancer or heart disease, but I can speak to the fact that I have been involved with certain insurance companies (BCBS Wisconsin) with whom I would have to spend hours on the phone for EVERY SINGLE CLAIM before they would pay dime one. I would have to chase down doctors to get letters of medical necessity for standard tests such as the ones performed on my wife when she was pregnant which are done on every single pregnant mother. Eventually they paid what they were supposed to pay, but if I had not been vigilant to spend thousands of dollars worth of my time and theirs, then I would essentially have had to pay both for insurance, my co-pay and co-insurance, all the stuff that they contractually did not cover AND for the stuff that my insurance claimed to cover.
I guess my complaint is that I currently pay for a trendy sports bar level of coverage, and I receive a trendy sports bar level of coverage (at least if I am vigilant about making sure they take back the water glass with dirt on it and recook the hockey puck that I asked to be medium). However, it seems that the country would like me to pay Chez Paul prices so that I can receive McDonald's level Health Coverage. And everyone else can as well, but that is of little consequence to me, when I now have to pay much more for much lower service.
Of course, I have to question whether a lack of health insurance really means a lack of medical service. I know some poor people, and they receive medical service much more frequently than I do. They receive free medical care and free medicines. Ultimately, you and I pay for that. I, on the other hand, have insurance that I have to pay for, and if I go to the doctor, I have to pay for that too. Since I can't afford to pay for both insurance and medical service, I just don't go.
The price of medical service is partly due to the fact that many people choose not to pay their medical bills, so the rest of us have to cover the cost. Another part of the price of medical service is the fact that many of us choose to sue the doctor when a procedure goes wrong that we were told multiple times could go wrong X percent of the time and we signed a paper acknowledging that we were aware of the risk and agree not to hold the doctor liable if it does go wrong. Note that I think you should be able to sue for gross negligence, but not because you were a statistic.
In short, get rid of the deadbeats and the people suing for easy money, and the cost will go down.
My ideal health plan would be where I pay everything out of my own pocket BUT I also pay $50 a month to an insurance company. The insurance company doesn't have to pay dime one, but when I go to the doctor, they still submit the claim to the insurance company, the insurance company marks it down to their contracted rate with the doctor, and then puts that amount down as my responsibility. In other words, I don't want them to pay, I want to pay myself, but I want to do it based on their contracted price with the provider.
According to the article, the chord Harrison played had the 1st and 6th string muted, which means he could easily have played the F on the 6th string 1st fret, in fact since he was playing the 1st fret C on the 5th string, he would have been muting the 6th string on the F. He was probably already getting the "thunk" of the F and just not letting it ring!