Help Oppose the Bailout!

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

I know, yet another post about the bailout. Why is this such a big deal to me? I sincerely feel that passing this ridiculous $700 Billion taxpayer-funded bailout will only wreck our economy. We would create money from thin air to bail out rich businessmen who don’t want to pay for their mistakes.

Yes, the DOW will likely drop quite a bit (although it’s pretty fickle and won’t stay down for long… it went back up 500 points today!). Yes, some stupid banks will fall, and it will likely ripple down to main street where we’ll have a few tough years in a recession. Loans will be hard to come by for a while and things will be difficult. But we’ll recover and move on.

The alternative is continuing to prop up a corrupt system with money from your pockets that you will never see again. This will likely further destroy the dollar as a currency and lead to massive inflation, causing a deep recession and possibly a depression that would last for years.

I just don’t feel comfortable letting the government steal my money to bailout a broken market so their hedge funds don’t implode. This bailout IS NOT for us.

To be honest, I enjoy discussing politics and government, but rarely feel the urge to get personally involved. This time I feel different, and it sounds like I’m not the only one. Many media outlets say that representatives have been receiving phone calls and emails from those they represent that are strongly opposing the bailout 300:1. I think the few sane representatives in both parties heard us on Monday.

So what can we do now? Dave Ramsey, along with some leading economists have developed what they’ve coined as the “Common Sense Fix.” You can read all about the plan in this PDF, and read what he’s asking everybody to do here. Basically, it’s the right way to help the market to get out of this mess, and it will cost us 93% less.

Read up on the topic, then wear out your senators and representatives (by the way, their sites have been down all day because we’re busting their chops about this). Tell them that if they even think about passing this scam of a bailout that you’ll fire their butts in the next election. They represent US, and we can’t let them forget it.

Here’s the form letter I’ve been using if you would like to copy it and make it your own…

“Please do not support the $700 Billion Bailout plan in any capacity! This is a TERRIBLE plan that will continue to wreck our economy and hurt our nation for years to come.

Alternatively, I’m asking that you review and support “The Common Sense Fix” proposed by financial guru Dave Ramsey and other leading economists. This will add massive liquidity to fix the current crisis by providing insurance, suspending the mark-to-market accounting rules for a short time and removing the capital gains tax. It is estimated to cost $50 Billion in tax payer dollars, only 7% of the proposed bailout!

You can find more details about this plan along with a statement of our concern here: http://www.daveramsey.com/media/pdf/the_common_sense_fix.pdf

If you support the $700 Billion Bailout plan in any capacity, I WILL NOT vote you back into office.

Thank you for your time.

Your Name”

A closing thought: it should wake us up that BOTH of our major party presidential candidates are supporting this garbage.

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By Eric in Life, Politics

Adventures in Landscaping

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Whew! After lots of hard work and more dirt than I ever want to see again, our weekend landscaping project is complete! Click here to check out the before and after.

A HUGE THANKS goes out to Lauren’s parents, who came down here just to help us out with this this weekend. Also, my Dad worked with us on most of his day off… man, we really couldn’t have done it without you guys!

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By Eric in Life

More Discussion About the Bailout

Thursday, September 25, 2008

**UPDATED** Dave Ramsey has been consulting with a leading economist and they’ve come up with a great plan to get the economy back into gear and into shape WITHOUT giving the government hundreds of billions of dollars out of our wallets. Check it out here and call and email your congressman and senators to get it the attention it deserves!

If you have a few minutes, take a look at the clip below. Now, I need to preface this by saying that I don’t agree with Ron Paul on everything he stands for. I think he’s pretty isolationist and don’t agree with his foreign policy, but I do tend to agree with him economically speaking.

Just some food for thought before our government spends 700 Billion more of your tax dollars propping up a broken economy instead of letting it correct itself so it can start growing again with sound business practices.

Look, if this legislation passes, I hope it works as much as the next guy. I’m just afraid that they’re going to keep prescribing tax payer bailouts to keep a broken system (that makes money out of thin air) on life support instead of letting bad practices and decisions fail so we can all just move on. I think we can handle a year or two recession, but not a huge depression because the dollar has been destroyed.

Just something to think about. Here’s the link to the youtube clip if you’re on facebook and can’t see the video above.

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By Eric in Politics

Hooray for Free Stuff!

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

In an odd turn of events today, I received an unexpected package in my mailbox at work. Unbeknownst to me, I apparently won a free super high tech solar powered flashlight that I entered to win months and months ago on Gizmodo (see kids, it pays to waste hours of time on a poorly written blog ;-) ).

The device itself is deceptively simple and is actually pretty cool. Apparently a guy made lots of money conducting business in Africa, and wanted to give something back to the developing nations he saw every year. Along with some self-funded research and technology shared with NASA, this guy created a powerful flashlight that uses solar cells to charge some super-bright LEDs.

The package says the light is designed to run all night after being left in the sun most of the day. From playing around with it a little today, I’d say that this thing definitely works as advertised. Fresh out of the box and after laying in the sun for just a little while, it produced one heck of a glow and would definitely be usable as a flashlight at night, although probably better suited for the indoors than outside.

I think it’s really cool that folks are developing significant energy these days to creating stuff where the main purpose is to genuinely help people. Check out the LifeStraw for another good example of technology used in an extremely valuable way.

For those of you involved in mission work… wouldn’t it be cool to visit a heavily impoverished area and be able to distribute life necessities like the SunLight and the LifeStraw? What a great way to really meet people where they’re at.

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By Eric in Interesting, Reviews

Panic on the Streets

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Anyone else kind of freaked out by the current state of the economy?

A few years back (right around the time Lauren and I got married) I became very interested in economics and began eating up a lot of Dave Ramsey’s stuff. Ever since then, we’ve been trying to save a little for retirement, which in turn makes you much more interested in the stock market since you see your hard earned cash go up and down every week.

Needless to say, the market is an absolute mess right now. Making it worse is the government leadership that won’t let the market correct itself and keeps “bailing out” idiotic companies making stupid loans, using tax payers’ money (or money it just makes up out of thin air).

I don’t know what you guys think about plan right now to designate $700+ Billion to buy up crappy debt from these stupid companies, but being a social conservative, I’m hoping the bill fails to pass. Yeah, it’ll probably help the market get better for a little while, and a lot of banks will be able to stay in business; the problem is, there’s absolutely no financial accountability these days or even a sense of cause and effect. We’re just putting a bandaid on gaping wound and digging a deeper hole for ourselves in the future instead of letting the market just crash so it can rebound and start growing again.

With that said, I don’t know who in their right mind wants to give our government more taxes and more control over the economy (and everything else!) when it obviously has no idea to handle money or run a budget itself. The more it stays out of my way and my life, the better.

Speaking of the market crashing, are any of you planning on taking your money out of the bank? I know several that have, but it sounds to me like the FDIC insurance is still in tact, so I’m not too worried yet.

What about the gas shortages in Nashville and some other parts of the South? Isn’t it scary how vulnerable our country is to an energy crisis?

Crazy times.

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By Eric in Life

For Your Amusement: Milk Chugging

Saturday, September 20, 2008

I finally got this clip up on YouTube, so here it is for your viewing pleasure. I believe this is from the Fall of 2002 at Union, so keep an eye out for lots of old faces. The video’s a little stretched out (I need to fix that in VisualHub), but I think you’ll enjoy it.

Oh, it features lots of puking, so if that makes you sqeamish, you probably shouldn’t watch this :-)

If you’re viewing this post on facebook, you may have to click here to watch the clip. Sorry, facebooks note importing is kind of buggy.

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By Eric in Funny

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