Maybe I'm splitting hairs here but the GP said the charges were bullshit. The charges aren't bullshit because they follow the law. I 100% agree the law is bullshit as it is written, but cops aren't supposed to ignore laws that they don't agree with and either are citizens.
I worked for a law firm ranked in the top 40 firms worldwide for 8 years and spent $50,000 to keep my teen step-son from going to an adult prison for shooting a pick up truck and school bus. Clearly I do have experience with this.
I think you need to be repsonsible for knowing what your rights are. You also need to know the basics of the law. I know the difference between battery and assault for example. I also know that violating an order from a cop who is investigating a possible crime can get me arrested. If my buddy has gotten in a fight and the cops show up and tell me to leave, I'm going to leave. They have the right to do that.
If a cop wants to give a "bullshit ticket" of some kind well then I also know how to find a good lawyer and file complaints. Expand on your "I've known of similar situations where the officer said he would charge a friend of mine with resisting arrest or verbally assaulting an officer if he didn't agree to whatever bullshit ticket" example. What's a "bullshit ticket"? Getting a ticket for public intoxication for being publicly intoxicated? That's not bullshit. That's probably being pig headed and drunk and causing your own problem.
I won't admit to something I didn't do under the threat of additional charges. They can pile all the bogus charges on that they want and I'll buy the best legal representation I can find as well as do my best to bring their unethical actions to light. I know cops who will vouch for my character, I've never been in any kind of trouble with the law, and I'm a lot smarter than some crooked cop. Chances are, the prosecutor would never prosecute and the cops involved would end up with troubles of their own.
How you react to a cop while being a protester at a protest is a lot different than how you should react in other situations. Protests have media coverage and other protesters who are usually recording events. You can play games with cops all you want but usually the best outcome for anyone dealing with the cops comes from being polite and cooperative...especially if you don't have shit to worry about in the first place. Driving drunk? Got drugs in your car? Have an illegal weapon on you? Well, then you already screwed yourself in the first place didn't you?
"THEY ARE ***NOT*** YOUR FRIEND. They will LIE, CHEAT, and do anything they can to get you to give yourself up."
If they can get you to "give yourself up" then you must be doing something wrong. I can't give anything up if I haven't done anything. I'm glad that you know all of the cops in the world so well that you can indict them all as corrupt and evil. Personally, I know a few cops who just want to make the world a better place for their families and for us and our families. Sure there are some who just want the power trip that comes from being a bully and sure some of them are willing to be unethical in doing so, but cops don't have to tell the truth.
I've never heard of any regulation that says they have to tell the truth to or about a suspect they are investigating. If they can get information from someone by lying to them that's fine...as long as they tell only the truth in court. Suppose they tell you your neighbor is suspected of being a crack dealer? You may know he smokes dope and you're cool with that but now you think the neighbor is a crack dealer and that bothers you so you tell the cop you've smelled pot coming from his place. The cop gets a search warrant and busts your neighbor and there is no crack, just pot. The cop lied to you and busted someone breaking the law and in court he can say he got the information about the pot smoking from you by lying to you about the guy being a crack dealer. Is that wrong? In what way? Maybe it sucks being lied to but you didn't get harmed in any way. The neighbor was breaking the law and knew he could get busted for it so he doesn't have any legitimate complaint. Now if the cop planted an additional couple of pounds in guy's place when searching that's a different story but how often do you think that really happens?
But we're not talking bullshit charges here. The way their law reads this guy was violating it. The charges weren't bullshit, he broke the law. I actually read the article when Slashdot first covered this. I also read the New Hampshire wiretapping statues. The idiots who wrote and passed their wiretapping law are stepping all over their citizens' rights. How can it be illegal to record audio and video on your front porch, with or without notifying those being recorded? There's no expectation of privacy while standing on SOMEONE ELSE'S front porch. The only reason they didn't charge him with anything is because there was no way they would get a conviction. The detective was a dick and it's on tape. The negative publicity the police got from this encounter would continue and flow on to the prosecutor's office for prosecuting. It's highly unlikely that any jury would convict the guy for taping audio and video on his front porch...no matter how their fucked up law reads...especially if they got to see the tape with cop being an arrogant bully. If there is any bullshit here it's the fact that the law was passed in the first place not that the charges are bullshit. The charges would be legitimate under New Hampshire law.
"Cops bring up surreptitious charges and laws fairly often"
I'm not sure "surreptitious" is the correct word here. Spurious might be a better one. Surreptitious implies something is hidden. Laws are defined and publicly available. It is a citizens duty to know the laws and obey them. When in doubt, check it out. I always carry a pocket knife. It is a tool that comes in handy often. I know the concealed weapons laws of my state to ensure that I don't carry a knife that violates the law.
There are cops, who if they are unhappy with you, may try to pile on charges. That is their right. If you are violating the law it is their duty to do something about it. A better route is to not make them unhappy in the first place but it you do, know your rights and don't give them any additional ammunition.
My personal opinion is that you can record anything in any way you wish on your own private property. The caveat being that visitors of course have some reasonable expectation of privacy in your bathroom or similar situations. Your front porch should be free ground for recording without any warning of any kind. If their state law says what he did was illegal then the law is wrong and should be repealed or corrected.
Actually, he's a smart old chap isn't he? Most noise ordinances are based on excessive decibels. A lawsuit is most likely to be effective but you should probably hire a good (expensive) lawyer and hope for a very young judge if you go that route. Of course, the simpler but more dangerous route of putting the thing out of commission. Gamo makes some pretty serious air rifles. Stick to a non-powder gun to minimize the risk of jail time in case you get caught. Or, you could even try to steal it and chuck it in a lake. Take precautions to hide your identity in case the smart old cuss has video too. I am not advocating that you break any laws. I've just listed several options.
It's just around your price and prints like a champ...color too. I'm using it at home to print tri-folds for my wife's business and the price per hard copy isn't bad. We print several thousand tri-folds per month and only have to replace the black cartridge on a regular basis. I have it hooked to a Linksys wireless print server so we can print from anywhere in the house. We've already gotten our money out of so if it dies tomorrow I may just buy another instead of having it repaired. Can't beat HP laser printers as far as I'm concerned. The 4000 series is great for just black and white but somewhat more expensive. I've watched them at work, at work, for years.
AOL is offering services for free that they used to charge money for. They can't afford to employ everyone they used to with that business model. If you work for AOL, I hope your resume is current. Still repeating myself...users have too many other options for ISP's to spend money on AOL without any real benefit. The non-techies don't need AOL anymore.
Charlotte is a great area. You have to search a little bit for jobs because the VLB's (very large banks) are outsourcing to India but I got my current gig because of that fact. The customers don't like dealing with people who don't speak English as their primary language or people who's accents are mostly indecipherable so I get to help them migrate to a new version of an application they consider very important to their business. It's a well paying contract position, which is new to me having worked 8 years for my previous employer in DC and 10 years for my employer before that. It's kind of cool being able to be focused on one main task instead of wearing way too many hats on a daily basis because of the historical knowledge I had gained over the years.
The job market looks really good here for the future. Big banking isn't going to suddenly go away from Charlotte and there is starting to be signicant bleed over from the Raleigh area in other IT centric businesses.
Other Charlotte benefits are good schools, real estate where you can get twice the house for half the price of the DC metro area, people who are mostly civilized (unlike the uptight pricks in the larger metro areas to the north), and almost none of the crappy winter weather of the north but still get the change of seasons. The mountains are an hour to the west and the beach is a few hours to the east.
There are plenty of larger city type recreational opportunities in Charlotte while a lot of the negatives of major metro areas are absent. Crime isn't too bad and despite locals' complaints the traffic isn't nearly as bad as the DC or areas further north. You also have all of the rural type recreational activities failrly close to civilization.
Life is good here. Don't screw it up for me.;)
If your degree is not computer related but you want a tech job you will probably have to build your resume from the bottom up. Most companies want a tech related position to be held by someone with a technical based degree OR...wait for it...lots of experience in the field. Many of us don't have a degree at all but have worked our way up through the ranks. The position we apply for may say a degree is required but the job is available to those of us without any degree because of our prior experience. Helpdesk to desktop support, to applications support, to programming or network admin, to developer or network engineer is the route many go through to get one of the really cool jobs where you can play with the big boy toys. Even with a CS degree you still have to pay your dues. Most folks with CS degrees can't walk into a high level support, research, development, or management position after graduation without some solid relevant work experience on their resume. You may have to start a lot lower than you like and work your way up.
Ahhh. Must have been.22's. Then I guess that doesn't surprise me too much. I think if it had been.45 or.357 it might have been a different story. Shotgun shells and.22's they don't seem to care as much about. Pistol and larger caliber rifle rounds seem to be more strict, in general. I remember having to let them take driver's license info for 30-06 rounds at a K-mart in Maryland 15 or so years ago. Not just show the license, they wrote particulars down in a log they had.
Thank you for an intelligent reply and not claiming all of the minimum wage earners are lazy. I agree with most of what you said except a couple of items. More than half of them ARE old enough to vote. And, minimum wage is not a heart string issue. It is about adults who can't afford to feed, house, and get medical care for themselves because the important jobs they do don't pay enough. Politicians beholden to big business interests are the last ones to consider minimum wage issues. Why in the world would they ever push for higher wages when their election financial resources come from businesses who want a minimum wage that is as low as possible? I think we as group here at Slashdot often forget that we (well most of us) are at the top rung in IQ, education, and abilities. There are many who just are not as capable and never will be. That's why they end up cleaning toliets. Just because they aren't able to function at our level doesn't mean they shouldn't have the basic necessities of food, shelter, and health care.
Someone has to clean the toliets. That's a shitty job (pun intended). If they are willing to do it and do it well, why shouldn't they earn enough to live on? They would probably be happy to live in a studio apartment and put food on their table and maybe have some reasonable access to health care. Why do you assume they are lazy? Because they are not smart enough or well educated enough to be able to get a better job? That doesn't mean they are lazy. Your prejudice is showing strongly. Didn't you ever have a menial job when you entered the workforce or did mommy and daddy give you everything? Did you even have a job in high school? Personally, my first legal job was at McDonald's at the ripe age of 14. My first non-legal job at the ripe age of 12 was at pet shop cleaning shit in order to be able to pay for things my parents wouldn't/couldn't...that doesn't include my paper route which I did at the same time. That wasn't under the table. I made the most of my public education and paid for my higher education by doing menial jobs. Of course I'm lucky, I had the IQ to be able to benefit from post high school education. Not everyone else is. Just because they aren't doesn't mean they are lazy and certainly doesn't mean the jobs they work are worthless.
This ended up being a much nicer post than I felt so I'll say this in closing...YOU are an arrogant fuck.
And it's not even on the shelf. You have to take a card to the pharmacy and then show your ID. They want your phone number too. Like I need all that extra hassle when I feel like shit from having a bad cold.
No ID? What state do you live in? You must obviously look over 18. Most ammo at Wal-Mart is behind the counter. The only ammo I can think of that isn't is shotgun shells that are on sale.
So if there are many other real-world, "legitimate" examples of our freedoms being eroded how can you not have sympathy? Are your examples more important than the ones he considers important?
"What's a guy that doesn't even consider himself paranoid to think of the current state of affairs?"
First thought...more educated and informed than the masses of sheeples?
Seriously, I think a lot of us feel the same way and see that we aren't on a slippery slope any more. We are plummeting down a sheer drop off. The way I see it the government and big business will control more and more of our every day life as we lose more and more privacy and individual choices. Some of us will get sick of it and cash out and go live off the grid in the most remote boondocks we can find and some of us will suffer in relative silence and reminisce over the "good old days" before we lost so much of our privacy and constitutional rights. Others will never notice they lost anything. Maybe there will be another American revolution some day to try and put back into place a government whose altruistic ideals can be effected indefinitely. Hell, 200+ years is pretty good when looked at in the big picture of history but eventually power and money corrupt those who should be looking out for the good of everyone. I guess this sounds kind of defeatist but take the federal minimum wage as an example. How come 30 million people have to try to live on $5.15 an hour? How are their voices not heard? How are our voices not heard?
Money talks and the politicians and big business have the money.
Find a house...a fixer upper in a neighborhood that is gentrifying and hopefully a short commute to the local big business offices. Buy that house, stop paying rent, fix it up, and almost certainly you will see your equity in the house appreciate better than anything else you could do like stocks, funds, or CDs. Plus, the mortgage interest is a great write off. I cleared more than 50% over my original purchase price on my first house and more than doubled my money on my second. I'm completely debt free and temporarily living in a rental while my next house is being built. The development is already asking $30k more for the same house in the same development than when I signed my contract. And, in the next five years this location will become more and more desirable. Remember though...location, location, location.
And what do you do when the oil bubble bursts? That will happen when oil stores fill while the oil companies wait for their futures to mature. You can only store so much and when you reach your max you HAVE to let the rest go into the market.
A bachelor's from anywhere may not mean anything. Hell, 20 years ago I knew a guy who graduated from Stanford, with honors, with a bachelor's in physics. I met him working at Macy's. He sold clothes in the men's department and I was working stock in electronics department (they sold Apple computers way back then). I've done VERY well for myself without finishing my bachelor's by climbing the ranks and not job hopping. I've only worked for 2 different companies in the last 20 years. A degree of any level means nothing without some real world smarts and experience.
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Maybe I'm splitting hairs here but the GP said the charges were bullshit. The charges aren't bullshit because they follow the law. I 100% agree the law is bullshit as it is written, but cops aren't supposed to ignore laws that they don't agree with and either are citizens.
I worked for a law firm ranked in the top 40 firms worldwide for 8 years and spent $50,000 to keep my teen step-son from going to an adult prison for shooting a pick up truck and school bus. Clearly I do have experience with this.
I think you need to be repsonsible for knowing what your rights are. You also need to know the basics of the law. I know the difference between battery and assault for example. I also know that violating an order from a cop who is investigating a possible crime can get me arrested. If my buddy has gotten in a fight and the cops show up and tell me to leave, I'm going to leave. They have the right to do that.
If a cop wants to give a "bullshit ticket" of some kind well then I also know how to find a good lawyer and file complaints. Expand on your "I've known of similar situations where the officer said he would charge a friend of mine with resisting arrest or verbally assaulting an officer if he didn't agree to whatever bullshit ticket" example. What's a "bullshit ticket"? Getting a ticket for public intoxication for being publicly intoxicated? That's not bullshit. That's probably being pig headed and drunk and causing your own problem.
I won't admit to something I didn't do under the threat of additional charges. They can pile all the bogus charges on that they want and I'll buy the best legal representation I can find as well as do my best to bring their unethical actions to light. I know cops who will vouch for my character, I've never been in any kind of trouble with the law, and I'm a lot smarter than some crooked cop. Chances are, the prosecutor would never prosecute and the cops involved would end up with troubles of their own.
How you react to a cop while being a protester at a protest is a lot different than how you should react in other situations. Protests have media coverage and other protesters who are usually recording events. You can play games with cops all you want but usually the best outcome for anyone dealing with the cops comes from being polite and cooperative...especially if you don't have shit to worry about in the first place. Driving drunk? Got drugs in your car? Have an illegal weapon on you? Well, then you already screwed yourself in the first place didn't you?
"THEY ARE ***NOT*** YOUR FRIEND. They will LIE, CHEAT, and do anything they can to get you to give yourself up."
If they can get you to "give yourself up" then you must be doing something wrong. I can't give anything up if I haven't done anything. I'm glad that you know all of the cops in the world so well that you can indict them all as corrupt and evil. Personally, I know a few cops who just want to make the world a better place for their families and for us and our families. Sure there are some who just want the power trip that comes from being a bully and sure some of them are willing to be unethical in doing so, but cops don't have to tell the truth.
I've never heard of any regulation that says they have to tell the truth to or about a suspect they are investigating. If they can get information from someone by lying to them that's fine...as long as they tell only the truth in court. Suppose they tell you your neighbor is suspected of being a crack dealer? You may know he smokes dope and you're cool with that but now you think the neighbor is a crack dealer and that bothers you so you tell the cop you've smelled pot coming from his place. The cop gets a search warrant and busts your neighbor and there is no crack, just pot. The cop lied to you and busted someone breaking the law and in court he can say he got the information about the pot smoking from you by lying to you about the guy being a crack dealer. Is that wrong? In what way? Maybe it sucks being lied to but you didn't get harmed in any way. The neighbor was breaking the law and knew he could get busted for it so he doesn't have any legitimate complaint. Now if the cop planted an additional couple of pounds in guy's place when searching that's a different story but how often do you think that really happens?
But we're not talking bullshit charges here. The way their law reads this guy was violating it. The charges weren't bullshit, he broke the law. I actually read the article when Slashdot first covered this. I also read the New Hampshire wiretapping statues. The idiots who wrote and passed their wiretapping law are stepping all over their citizens' rights. How can it be illegal to record audio and video on your front porch, with or without notifying those being recorded? There's no expectation of privacy while standing on SOMEONE ELSE'S front porch. The only reason they didn't charge him with anything is because there was no way they would get a conviction. The detective was a dick and it's on tape. The negative publicity the police got from this encounter would continue and flow on to the prosecutor's office for prosecuting. It's highly unlikely that any jury would convict the guy for taping audio and video on his front porch...no matter how their fucked up law reads...especially if they got to see the tape with cop being an arrogant bully. If there is any bullshit here it's the fact that the law was passed in the first place not that the charges are bullshit. The charges would be legitimate under New Hampshire law.
"Cops bring up surreptitious charges and laws fairly often" I'm not sure "surreptitious" is the correct word here. Spurious might be a better one. Surreptitious implies something is hidden. Laws are defined and publicly available. It is a citizens duty to know the laws and obey them. When in doubt, check it out. I always carry a pocket knife. It is a tool that comes in handy often. I know the concealed weapons laws of my state to ensure that I don't carry a knife that violates the law. There are cops, who if they are unhappy with you, may try to pile on charges. That is their right. If you are violating the law it is their duty to do something about it. A better route is to not make them unhappy in the first place but it you do, know your rights and don't give them any additional ammunition. My personal opinion is that you can record anything in any way you wish on your own private property. The caveat being that visitors of course have some reasonable expectation of privacy in your bathroom or similar situations. Your front porch should be free ground for recording without any warning of any kind. If their state law says what he did was illegal then the law is wrong and should be repealed or corrected.
Build a giant electronic dragonfly to eat it!
Actually, he's a smart old chap isn't he? Most noise ordinances are based on excessive decibels. A lawsuit is most likely to be effective but you should probably hire a good (expensive) lawyer and hope for a very young judge if you go that route. Of course, the simpler but more dangerous route of putting the thing out of commission. Gamo makes some pretty serious air rifles. Stick to a non-powder gun to minimize the risk of jail time in case you get caught. Or, you could even try to steal it and chuck it in a lake. Take precautions to hide your identity in case the smart old cuss has video too. I am not advocating that you break any laws. I've just listed several options.
That's kinda why I suggested the 2600n. It's now an "old" model so it's closer to the price point. They're on sale everywhere.
It's just around your price and prints like a champ...color too. I'm using it at home to print tri-folds for my wife's business and the price per hard copy isn't bad. We print several thousand tri-folds per month and only have to replace the black cartridge on a regular basis. I have it hooked to a Linksys wireless print server so we can print from anywhere in the house. We've already gotten our money out of so if it dies tomorrow I may just buy another instead of having it repaired. Can't beat HP laser printers as far as I'm concerned. The 4000 series is great for just black and white but somewhat more expensive. I've watched them at work, at work, for years.
I know where the bulge came from. The moon has been consuming massive amounts of cosmic beer. It's nothing more than a big beer belly folks!
AOL is offering services for free that they used to charge money for. They can't afford to employ everyone they used to with that business model. If you work for AOL, I hope your resume is current. Still repeating myself...users have too many other options for ISP's to spend money on AOL without any real benefit. The non-techies don't need AOL anymore.
Charlotte is a great area. You have to search a little bit for jobs because the VLB's (very large banks) are outsourcing to India but I got my current gig because of that fact. The customers don't like dealing with people who don't speak English as their primary language or people who's accents are mostly indecipherable so I get to help them migrate to a new version of an application they consider very important to their business. It's a well paying contract position, which is new to me having worked 8 years for my previous employer in DC and 10 years for my employer before that. It's kind of cool being able to be focused on one main task instead of wearing way too many hats on a daily basis because of the historical knowledge I had gained over the years. The job market looks really good here for the future. Big banking isn't going to suddenly go away from Charlotte and there is starting to be signicant bleed over from the Raleigh area in other IT centric businesses. Other Charlotte benefits are good schools, real estate where you can get twice the house for half the price of the DC metro area, people who are mostly civilized (unlike the uptight pricks in the larger metro areas to the north), and almost none of the crappy winter weather of the north but still get the change of seasons. The mountains are an hour to the west and the beach is a few hours to the east. There are plenty of larger city type recreational opportunities in Charlotte while a lot of the negatives of major metro areas are absent. Crime isn't too bad and despite locals' complaints the traffic isn't nearly as bad as the DC or areas further north. You also have all of the rural type recreational activities failrly close to civilization. Life is good here. Don't screw it up for me. ;)
If your degree is not computer related but you want a tech job you will probably have to build your resume from the bottom up. Most companies want a tech related position to be held by someone with a technical based degree OR...wait for it...lots of experience in the field. Many of us don't have a degree at all but have worked our way up through the ranks. The position we apply for may say a degree is required but the job is available to those of us without any degree because of our prior experience. Helpdesk to desktop support, to applications support, to programming or network admin, to developer or network engineer is the route many go through to get one of the really cool jobs where you can play with the big boy toys. Even with a CS degree you still have to pay your dues. Most folks with CS degrees can't walk into a high level support, research, development, or management position after graduation without some solid relevant work experience on their resume. You may have to start a lot lower than you like and work your way up.
Ahhh. Must have been .22's. Then I guess that doesn't surprise me too much. I think if it had been .45 or .357 it might have been a different story. Shotgun shells and .22's they don't seem to care as much about. Pistol and larger caliber rifle rounds seem to be more strict, in general. I remember having to let them take driver's license info for 30-06 rounds at a K-mart in Maryland 15 or so years ago. Not just show the license, they wrote particulars down in a log they had.
Thank you for an intelligent reply and not claiming all of the minimum wage earners are lazy. I agree with most of what you said except a couple of items. More than half of them ARE old enough to vote. And, minimum wage is not a heart string issue. It is about adults who can't afford to feed, house, and get medical care for themselves because the important jobs they do don't pay enough. Politicians beholden to big business interests are the last ones to consider minimum wage issues. Why in the world would they ever push for higher wages when their election financial resources come from businesses who want a minimum wage that is as low as possible? I think we as group here at Slashdot often forget that we (well most of us) are at the top rung in IQ, education, and abilities. There are many who just are not as capable and never will be. That's why they end up cleaning toliets. Just because they aren't able to function at our level doesn't mean they shouldn't have the basic necessities of food, shelter, and health care.
Someone has to clean the toliets. That's a shitty job (pun intended). If they are willing to do it and do it well, why shouldn't they earn enough to live on? They would probably be happy to live in a studio apartment and put food on their table and maybe have some reasonable access to health care. Why do you assume they are lazy? Because they are not smart enough or well educated enough to be able to get a better job? That doesn't mean they are lazy. Your prejudice is showing strongly. Didn't you ever have a menial job when you entered the workforce or did mommy and daddy give you everything? Did you even have a job in high school? Personally, my first legal job was at McDonald's at the ripe age of 14. My first non-legal job at the ripe age of 12 was at pet shop cleaning shit in order to be able to pay for things my parents wouldn't/couldn't...that doesn't include my paper route which I did at the same time. That wasn't under the table. I made the most of my public education and paid for my higher education by doing menial jobs. Of course I'm lucky, I had the IQ to be able to benefit from post high school education. Not everyone else is. Just because they aren't doesn't mean they are lazy and certainly doesn't mean the jobs they work are worthless.
This ended up being a much nicer post than I felt so I'll say this in closing...YOU are an arrogant fuck.
And it's not even on the shelf. You have to take a card to the pharmacy and then show your ID. They want your phone number too. Like I need all that extra hassle when I feel like shit from having a bad cold.
Maybe they aren't. I can't buy Day-Quil at Wal-Mart without showing ID.
No ID? What state do you live in? You must obviously look over 18. Most ammo at Wal-Mart is behind the counter. The only ammo I can think of that isn't is shotgun shells that are on sale.
So if there are many other real-world, "legitimate" examples of our freedoms being eroded how can you not have sympathy? Are your examples more important than the ones he considers important?
"What's a guy that doesn't even consider himself paranoid to think of the current state of affairs?"
First thought...more educated and informed than the masses of sheeples?
Seriously, I think a lot of us feel the same way and see that we aren't on a slippery slope any more. We are plummeting down a sheer drop off. The way I see it the government and big business will control more and more of our every day life as we lose more and more privacy and individual choices. Some of us will get sick of it and cash out and go live off the grid in the most remote boondocks we can find and some of us will suffer in relative silence and reminisce over the "good old days" before we lost so much of our privacy and constitutional rights. Others will never notice they lost anything. Maybe there will be another American revolution some day to try and put back into place a government whose altruistic ideals can be effected indefinitely. Hell, 200+ years is pretty good when looked at in the big picture of history but eventually power and money corrupt those who should be looking out for the good of everyone. I guess this sounds kind of defeatist but take the federal minimum wage as an example. How come 30 million people have to try to live on $5.15 an hour? How are their voices not heard? How are our voices not heard?
Money talks and the politicians and big business have the money.
I had a funnier post but it never transmitted after I held it up to my monitor and pushed on my foot pedal thingie.
Find a house...a fixer upper in a neighborhood that is gentrifying and hopefully a short commute to the local big business offices. Buy that house, stop paying rent, fix it up, and almost certainly you will see your equity in the house appreciate better than anything else you could do like stocks, funds, or CDs. Plus, the mortgage interest is a great write off. I cleared more than 50% over my original purchase price on my first house and more than doubled my money on my second. I'm completely debt free and temporarily living in a rental while my next house is being built. The development is already asking $30k more for the same house in the same development than when I signed my contract. And, in the next five years this location will become more and more desirable. Remember though...location, location, location.
And what do you do when the oil bubble bursts? That will happen when oil stores fill while the oil companies wait for their futures to mature. You can only store so much and when you reach your max you HAVE to let the rest go into the market.
A bachelor's from anywhere may not mean anything. Hell, 20 years ago I knew a guy who graduated from Stanford, with honors, with a bachelor's in physics. I met him working at Macy's. He sold clothes in the men's department and I was working stock in electronics department (they sold Apple computers way back then). I've done VERY well for myself without finishing my bachelor's by climbing the ranks and not job hopping. I've only worked for 2 different companies in the last 20 years. A degree of any level means nothing without some real world smarts and experience.