News from the epicenter

Heeeeyyyyyyyy!!!!! I'm right here in Madison where the shit is going down. I wish I could say I was down on the square to join the demonstrations, but I'm not. My heart is with those people all the way.

Quiz: (Scores will be posted later)

Two tea baggers stand on a street corner with "Gummint keep yo hans off ma helthcare" signs and it is a mandate. 100,000 people show up at the state capitol of Wisconsin and it is

a) one of those crazy flash mob things that just went on too long. Like several days too long

b) hippies who thought it was the 60's all over again. Smelly hippies, mosh pits are for kids.

c) anti democratic muslim brotherhood funded egyptian whackery.

d) a schocked populace who bought the crap that republicans and democrats are just the same and who now soundly regret their vote.

e) democrats who warned all you stupid fuckers a long time ago that this is exactly the Milton Freidman-like politics we'd be thrashed with if the republicans who are a godamned ton worse than democrats were elected.

f) d and e above

Health Care Part II

We are being warned that if we get universal healthcare our own care will begin to suck like Mark Foley at a Fire Island hot tub party.

Say what?

My daughter needs a physical for summer camp a month from now. I can't get her in to see her doctor until sometime in September, several weeks after camp is over. (I admit that I should have scheduled this sooner, but who knew?)

A few years ago I was having some problems my general practitioner couldn't diagnose. I had to schedule an appointment with a neurologist. That wait was 3 months.

I never see an OB-GYN; to get to see one of those at my clinic would mean making an appointment ONE YEAR in advance. I'm supposed to see a physician's assistant for my annual exam, so in truth it's not even possible for me to go to a doctor.

The nurse at the pediatrician's office just called me and suggested one of those quick clinics at Walgreens or Wal Mart. Earlier, I called a free clinic and offered to trade time or a nice donation for my daughter to get a physical. The clinic said they weren't able to do that kind of exam.

A few years ago when I had very comprehensive and expensive health insurance I used to go to Planned Parenthood for my exams. I shudder when the conservatives fight to close those clinics just because they believe that crazy notion that parenthood should be planned. Crazy kooks.

Sorry folks. This is what we've gotten for the most dollars ever thrown at healthcare in all the world. I simply do not believe it will get worse.

Now I've got to find a Costa Rican directory so that I can schedule some dental work.....

How's About Some Health Care?

Lord, lord.

My brother in law is both a republican and an insurance agent. And yet, I feel that he might be drifting from his rock solid republican roots.

Here's one of the biggest reasons that I want to speak freely as a small business owner (yes, I actually am a partial owner of the business now, but I generally refrain from throwing that around. I get lots and lots of mileage from salespeople and others who assume that because I'm a girl that I'm the receptionist. So be it)

I despise the money that I spend in insurance. Republicans always tell you that the small business owner is choked out of new hires bytaxes, but I have found that is not true at all. Insurance is our own personal smack down.

You know how you hear stories about guys like Willy Nelson who didn't pay their taxes and oh, woe unto them? I find that Uncle Sam is alot more forgiving than the private for profit insurance companies that I have to give money to.

It comes down to this: Money that I pay in taxes is based on money that I have earned. It's a simple percentage. Granted, sometimes I hate paying my sales tax,when, as a contractor, my client may not pay me for 60 days.

What I despise are my fixed costs. And my biggest most fearsome fixed cost is health insurance. Also,I am required by law to carry worker's comp and general liability. These are charges that go up or down once a year based on my volume. The money essentially is private for profit in the way that, had GW Bush gotten his way, our social security money would have gone.

I ramble. The point is simply this: Don't believe anyone who tells you that the government can't run something better than the private sector, because they can.

Second, insurance simply shows us that the privatization of needed services that includes a profit motive will kill a small business 100X faster than a tax will

Third, small business owners who still believe in the Republican Party and/or Jim Cramer from CNBC will be flipping hamburgers next year.

Good onya lovs.

My Own WPA project

I've emerged again.

Let me say, I miss you and I love you.

Kiss. Kiss.

That aside, I dropped blogging simply due to time constraints. For the last six months or so, simply breathing had to be scheduled. Every time I even slightly considered a blog post it only sounded like whining to me with the added distraction of me spending time on the computer obsessed with me - a negative - so I've avoided you guys for well over two months.

Last week I picked up a book by a Wisconsin author, Michael Perry, who writes about himself and his life in his small town up Nort', as we say.

He is self deprecating and honest, which I admire. He's a bit worduluous which has put at least my father off of his books. (I made up wordulous. It mostly means using a bigger, off-putting word where a smaller humbler word would've worked. For the record, Mr. Perry NEVER overuses adverbs, and the overuse of adverbs is a sure sign of a horrible writer.)

Perry made me think that maybe I should stop shying away from my blog and just writstraight and true about the crap that has been going down lately. I think that if I simply tell you these stories without an agenda then maybe I'll have a record of how things went down ITE (cool people shorthand for "In This Economy")

Here's the deal. Or Chapter One.

One year ago I was a stay home mom. I put my two girls in all the rec. department classes I could fit them into. In the afternoons we went to the swimming pool and I knit mittens or socks or other small things while they played.

In September the guy who was runnning my family's company called me and asked me to come help him get caught up. I was really the perfect candidate since I hired him and trained him in the first place. My good friends will recognize that I first described him as the "Republican Dude".

The day I went in to discuss starting working for him he offered me $10 an hour. I knew that he started ( and I left at) a much higher pay scale ten years ago. I said I'd work for $15.

Then I came in on my first day and fired up the computer. Exactly three seconds after looking at our books I knew we were fucked.

But really, I spent the time between September and the end of November trying to save things through straight but silly will power alone.Then one day I went to work and the Republican Dude criticized a suggestion that I had.

At that point I already knew that he had fucked our company to the point that he knew he couldn't afford me on the payroll at $15 an hour. I volunteered to be a 1099 independent and I didn't take money until they had it.

So after two months of working for nothing, he criticized me in front of the accountant. I blabbed. I told everyone who would listen that he grew our company in half.

He should have been fired on the spot.

Rather, I was told to go home for the week and cool off.

I did.

But when my brothers who own the company looked closer, they realized this guy was killing us.

He's been a friend of the family for nearly 30 years. Did I mention that?

We decided that he should work as a salesman. We'd knock his salary back but kick up a comission. If he went out I.T.E (in this economy) and brought us new business he'd get the comission.

For some reason, this made him collapse.

Rather than fight for his life, or even the life of our company, which he had an ownership of, he just gave up.

More tomorrow.

National Day of Prayer....How's That Working?

The last eight years were the most prayerfyin' years in the history of the United States, or at least since the crackpots of the 1830's ran amok*. Yet, one would think that if praying for the United States had any efficacy, we'd be in a much different place today than where we are.

Unless of course Jesus thought the prayers of the last eight years were just kinda lame.

And he is punishing us.


*I seem to remember reading somewhere that in the early part of the nineteenth century people were particularly religious. But I'm too bored of the subject myself to google it, so if I'm wrong, suck it.

They Fear the Frankenspecter Monster

" The issue, he said, "really relates to ... whether or not in the United States of America our people want the majority party to have whatever it wants, without restraint, without a check or balance."


---Senator Mitch McConnell on Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic Party

Hey, Mitchie. Would that be like letting the majority party go into a trillion dollar war, tank the economy and ruin the environment?

Just wondering.

Every post same as the last post

Please don't think that I haven't thought that I ought to come over here and post some crap on my own blog, fer cri-yi.

I have thought that. It's just that for the last 100 days every post I've thought about in my head was of the same theme: "How fucking stupid do the conservatives think we are?'

And the answer is always "Pretty goddamned stupid".

Today's affront was caught by me on an am blather-radio station who's right wing harpie host was congratulating Fox for not broadcasting President Obama's next press conference, scheduled to mark his first 100 days in office.

They can't, she breathlessly remarked, possibly cave in to the Obama love fest. Really? Really?

This from the same network that would run as breaking news anytime President Bush got in a taxpayer funded aircraft to get himself back to Crawford for some brush clearing?

Further, thanks to the fact that I work in an industry that inexplicably hosts a lot of conservatives, I get loads and loads and loads of rightie crap in my inbox.

No. 1 - I would never discuss my political beliefs with suppliers OR clients, so the fact that conservatives always do just proves how unprofessional they really are, all the while claiming the superior end of business acumen.

No. 2 - George Bush didn't do press conferences. When he did, liberals watched. We prefer to be engaged in our government. Conservatives just prefer to be pushy. And god forbid, intelligent discourse.

S'okay. Their self-proclaimed "Know-nothingism" is turning off the vast majority of the American public.

Fortunately, self-identifying republicans are falling by the wayside day by day.

And as they fail, so they give off the stench of desperation.

And no one believes them anymore.