Why Social Security is broken!!

You know what, I think I may have found the problem with Social Security. I think there may be too many people out there taking Social Security payments that don't actually need them. According to David A. Lieb, an Associated Press writer, in his article you can find here, presidential candidate and current Senator from Arizona John McCain is currently receiving an average of $1929.75 a month in Social Security payments. WTF?!? This man is a United States senator, getting paid $169,300 a year not to mention the returns on his investments retirement savings etc. that the totals a yearly income for 2007 of $405,409, again I say WTF? Obviously this man does not need an extra $2000 a month so why is he taking Social Security payments? My parents are currently receiving approximately $1300 a month combined and neither of them work. Social Security was designed to help people that do not receive any kind of pension or retirement from their employer, so why are people like John McCain even eligible? This is probably yet another example that we see more often than not in federal government of "the left-hand not knowing what the right hands doing". Seriously, do you think that if I made over $400,000 last year and tried to claim Social Security benefits do you think they would give them to me? I don't I don't want to seem like I am just picking on John McCain. But he is the only Social Security recipient I have this kind of data for. But just imagine how many other people out there are receiving $1000, $2000 in Social Security benefits, while still making $100,000, $200,000, or even more a year! Maybe Senator John McCain should remove himself from the Social Security rolls and leave that two grand a month to someone who actually needs it. BTW, Cindy McCain, Senator John McCain's wife, filed a tax return reporting a total income of $6 million last year. Just because they file their tax returns separately does not necessarily mean they are not sharing their incomes as household community property. I think John McCain should start Social Security reform at home by removing himself from the system. Just a little more food for thought from your friendly neighborhood Ranter.

What on earth is going on with Google Trends?

What on earth is going on with Google Trends? I decided to try Google Trends to find a nice blog topic. Yes I know that only basing my posts on popular web searches could be construed as unfair. But if you look at the screenshot below you will see using Google Trends for this purpose is kind of useless.



I mean seriously have that many people searched for Leon Czolgosz within the last hour? For those of you who don't even know who Leon is, he is the man who assassinated President William McKinley. If you want to know more about Leon go ahead and click here to get to his Wikipedia page. Enough about Leon, seriously, how does Google Trends compile the data? Sometimes you have to wonder what kind of voodoo magic goes on behind the scenes at Google. Did every summer school kid in the world suddenly have to do a report on William McKinley or Leon Czolgosz? Oh well. Maybe I should just do a post on Leon myself...

Oil prices are falling! Oil prices are falling!

Check out this AP story written by Business Writer Tim Paradis. Oil prices are continuing to fall for a third straight day. Consumption of oil based products is lower and is probably also being affected by selloffs by speculators trying to reap the largest profits before the price falls to far. In my opinion, oil prices will continue to fall and if we are all lucky some of those speculators will lose a lot of money. Don't get me wrong. I don't want your average man to lose a lot of money, but some of those speculators do this all the time and deserve to take a fall. Unfortunately, we will not see a drop in prices at the pump for some time but there will be relief in the future, THAT at least is something to look forward to.

PETA Sucks!!!

You know what, PETA sucks! I will not even try to get in to all the reasons that I don't like PETA. I would just like to refer you to a website that you might not have heard of called PETA Kills Animals. I will tell you my one personal PETA story. A few years ago at a local branch of PETA decided to protest at a KFC. Obviously they were not allowed on the property. So, they used a parking lot across the street. As much as I may not like them I recognize their God-given and US government protected right to protest. But please answer this one question, why would a group who calls themselves. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals bring out an elephant, which everyone already knows has fairly tender feet and parade around on a hot blacktop asphalt parking lot in August in Arkansas, where the temperatures reach 105° in the shade. And by the way they did not provided with sufficient water, either. Just more food for thought.

The California Wildfires and How to Stop Them

Today I want to tackle the California wildfires. I believe the current cost of fighting the wildfires in California is currently estimated at $100 million. One estimate for fighting the wildfires last year was over $1 billion. And now Governor Schwarzenegger wants to start charging the average homeowner $12 a year or to pay for emergency services? What the hell? Aren't emergency services provided by the funds received through various taxes already levied against residents? I have a great idea, why not invest in a seawater desalination plant and use irrigation pipelines to irrigate the countryside. It does not take a genius to see that wet foliage is harder to burn then dry foliage. I mean come on, this year's wildfires were started by a lightning strike! I'm not stupid, I understand that this plan would be extremely expensive, possibly into the billions. But look at the massive amount of money that has been spent in just the past five years on fighting wildfires. The plan also has the added benefit of providing fresh drinking water to areas that are drought prone to begin with. A simple desalination plant, run 365 days a year would provide too much water for simple irrigation and the surplus could easily be used in areas like Los Angeles, which almost every year, have to deal with water shortages. Wake up California. I understand that not every single person in California is a movie star with millions of dollars to spend. A lot of my family lives in a small town known as Brentwood in California and they are not rich and neither are their neighbors. But I do know for a fact there are enough people with exorbitant amounts of money that could donate to help bring this plan to fruition. And for you global warming people out there imagine how much cleaner the air quality in California would be with all of those green plants growing instead of burning. Oh and by the way, all of that burning vegetation is generating uncounted tons of carbon that is being released directly into the atmosphere. There is some food for thought!

Charity, what it is and isn't

Have you heard about Hannah Salwen yet? This girl, while having a very touching sentiment, must be extremely confused. Hannah after seeing a homeless man sitting on a curb came to the conclusion as many of us do that "there but for the grace of God go I". So having analyzed her and her family's life, Hannah came to the realization that they had things fairly well and maybe they could do with a few less things in their life. So Hannah and her family decided that they would sell their approximately $1.8 million house and donate half of the profit to charity. This is all well and good, and anybody in their position would probably do the same. I do not have a problem with these good people selling a home that was much too large for them anyway and donating the money to charity. The problem I have is where they want to send the money. They want to give the money to the Hunger Project where it will end up in Ghana. I sympathize wholly with anyone who wants to help the poor people in Ghana. But shouldn't we be focusing on the problems here at home first. This homeless man that Hannah saw on the side of the road that started the entire "movement" for lack of a better word will not see any benefit from the sale of this house. Now we move from the gripe to the praise.
Have you heard about this guy named Troy Landwehr? Probably not. He is another one of those artists who like to perform public stunts. But this man chooses to be patriotic, and to help the needy. Troy chose to carve a 1 ton replica of John Trumbull's painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The Cheez-It company commissioned the carving to celebrate US Independence Day. The carving will travel for a few days, while it finishes aging, and then will be taken back to Wisconsin to be donated to food pantries. A good corporate citizen and a good artist have teamed up for what is honestly yes, a publicity stunt, but also an act of kindness and charity.

Oil prices, and what's wrong with them!

You want to know what's wrong with oil prices today. I'll tell you. For the last couple of years there have been numerous infomercials and regular television commercials advertising how to make lots of money in the oil futures market. These commercials almost always included a so-called expert telling you that oil prices were at all time lows and that these prices would only go up. Ask any economist, and they will tell you that buying stocks or futures instantly raises the prices of those stocks or futures. The only people that are getting rich from these oil prices are the ones that were running the infomercials, because not only did you have to send them money to learn how to buy the oil futures with their "exclusive system." But you know, they also owned plenty of oil futures of their own that were purchased when the price was $40 or $50 a barrel. Now that oil prices are over $140 a barrel these scum are now selling off their futures slowly to keep the price up, but still make a profit. All of these experts that are citing oil speculation as the reason for high oil prices are actually right but they are constantly shot down by people who would like to think that we do not have enough oil supply and that only increasing supply will ease the price increases.