The Rusted Musket

This story is frankly rather frustrating. The gist of it is two Wisconsin men decided, 28 years after the fact, that PepsiCo illegitimately acquired their idea for bottled water (Pepsi’s Aquafina). The lawsuit stinks because of the numbers. First off this is 28 years after the fact, so IF Pepsi did steal the ideas why did these people not sue sooner? Also Pepsi had a bit of a mixup and missed the court appearance and a more than $1billion dollar judgment was made against them. That is a absolutely absurd amount of money in the first place. Thankfully Pepsi will be able to appeal the process and if they have to pay it’ll most likely be a lot less. Larger companies are willing to make a few million dollar payments in cases like these just to settle the thing…

The other rather stupid aspect of this is that there is a lawsuit such as this in the first place. It is these types of things that are clogging are courts instead of legitimate concerns we have money hungry people grubbing for cash. Its a waste of time and money.

I can’t help but poke fun at this article because the university system costs so much and its funny how expensive school is and how little we students seem to get. I mean they are getting these millions and millions of dollars and school is costing students 10k+, 15k, 20k, a year and many classes have 200 students which are essentially being taught by a TA. Yeah right that sounds like a great school! Where is all the money going then? Why do they *need* this money to “save” jobs in the first place?

Anyway, back to my original idea. College jobs are important, they can help to instruct people and ease them into the working world. However, State University jobs do not create jobs, where as that amount of money as grants or loans to small businesses would most likely create many more jobs. Why is that? Because a business, wants to and need to grow, to increase revenues and to eventually hire more employees. A College isn’t in the same class, the can become a money sink and don’t generally return a profit, or much of a revenue increase.

Its funny how, with all this stimulus, little of it found its way into small businesses’ hands. My wife and I wanted to get a small business loan and it was a royal pain to even apply and there is a very limited amount of funds available. And these are loans too, not grants or anything. It seems to me that the government needs to re prioritize.

Obama isn’t trying to fix health care, he is trying to give health care away on tax payer’s dime. Read this article by Bloomberg…. You see, the real problem with health care isn’t that some people don’t have it, the real issue is rising costs in health care and the lack of proper legislation. We don’t need a “public” option, what we need is for a cap on malpractice lawsuits, we need better consumer education about health care options. We need doctors to be paid not based on how many patients they see, but on the level of service they provide. Last time I was at the doctors office I was charged $150 and I only saw a doctor for 10 minutes and a nurse for about the same. They ran some basic tests and that was it. A visit like that shouldn’t cost so much.

Don’t get me wrong though. Doctors should be paid well. They had to go to school for 11ish years and they can have a high stress, risky environment. They ought to be paid well, but $150 for 10 minutes of a doctor’s time is absurd.

It’s fine that there are those who think government sponsored health care is all good, will only bring fair low prices, and won’t smash small private health care providers out of business if they can provide the same value.  In order for you to be consistent though, I never want to hear or see you picket or complain about Walmart’s symbolically similar business model ever again.  Ironically, I shop at Walmart so maybe government sponsored health care is for me after all…

This is not a partisan jab as no one in office the last decade, mainly guys I voted for, seemed to think our debt load was a big deal.  But ladies and gentlemen we’ve reached a landmark sum and I’m simply afraid of the fiscal trajectory our spending is headed towards.  It is possible that one day we’ll wake up and find ourselves spending ever last penny of our GDP on national debt interest payments, what then?…

The President this last Monday gave his opinions on health care reform in front of the American Medical Association.  He actually received boos from some of the less than captivated doctors in the room when he said he still didn’t support caps for malpractice suits.  If I was in the room I would have raised my voice right then and there asking the President how he could expect the health care community to lower health care costs when he doesn’t support a cap on the extant to which his lawyers rape and pillage the ones trying to save our lives.  With jury’s tacking on zero’s to the end of settlements as if afterthoughts you’d think this would be a no brainer because unlike government, private practises have to actually pay off their debts and lawsuits without the benefit of being able to print more money…

Click here for a freakin amazing analogy of the 100 million dollars in savings Obama cut out of the budget.

Image courtesy of aforementioned link

President Obama is looking to put a lid on nefarious credit card practices according to this article. I personally think that credit card companies have had it coming, they generally don’t care about their customer and often levy fees and/or raise rates for either no reason or little reason. I don’t have any credit card debt right now, I pay off my card every month on time and I’ve been with the company since 2005. But if I was to carry a balance it would cost me 19.9%. Oh and did I mention that I have very good credit as well? That kind of percentage is crazy and way out of line for someone like me, at least in my opinion.

One thing that the article fails to mention though is consumer responsibility. I consider myself a relatively responsible consumer/spender, but many people are not, and those people need to be held to a higher standard instead of laying the blame on the credit card companies. People need to realize when they have a problem and take responsibility and the actions the President is taking don’t require more responsibility from consumers.

Sounds like a lot doesn’t it? Obama is certainly hoping so, at least thats how it seems after reading this article…

You see, Obama isn’t stupid and he has noticed that people are not happy about this nation’s spending and so he is doing his part in making cuts… So lets look at this number. Obama proposed a budget of $3.6 trillion dollars for the next fiscal year… The problem with this budget is that it would increase our debt by more than $9 trillion over the next decade… So the seemingly large $100 million he is “saving” amounts to a fraction of a percent of just next year’s budget. And the thing about government spending is that it never really goes away, sure they may cut, 1%, 5%, even 10% but when the government starts spending money on something they don’t really stop.

So although he’ll be focusing on his great cost savings, and the number does look good on paper, in the end it is nothing more than propaganda to get his agenda through. Why doesn’t he propose a smaller budget and introduce billions in cuts instead of increase the budget deficit by record amounts?

Internet is under attack, I really can’t understand why this is being done, unless it is because TW is a money hungry, badly managed company…

Interestingly enough this article says that TW changed their ideas after “testing” it out and they now offer a very reasonable $150/month plan that allows you unlimited use of the internet… Yeah, right! This is all a bunch of BS and just TW’s way to screw consumers over and profit more. Bandwidth should be getting cheaper, not more expensive. The equipment is cheaper, the wires are laid, so why this backwards thinking? Some people have mentioned that its probably related to all the videos being streamed online and how this is threatening their cable internet division… Also, they will offer things on their website that are bandwidth free… Monopoly anyone?

The sad thing about all this is that unless people start trying to do something about it, like calling their congressmen and threatening to switch providors, stuff like this will just go on. So, give your congressmen a call, or send them a email and let them know that this is unacceptable.