One year ago today: March 6, 2018, financial experts, my eye.
Five years ago today: March 6, 2014, present, and a majority.
Nine years ago today: March 6, 2010, useless hobbies, huh?
Random years ago today: March 6, 2004, McDonald's morons are better.
Tax time always does its best to let the citizens know who is in charge. Of course, they gripe at the moment, but do nothing the rest of the year. The system relies on such apathy. That means I have some good news and some bad. Start with the good, I got the toll fine overturned. Bad news is I can’t tell you how or it won’t work any more. Essentially, you cannot dispute the ticket, they’ve got that sewed up same method as the courts—they make it more expensive to win than to lose. Unless they realize that you know they have no budget to go to court. Yeah, with those clues, the more astute of you can figure out something.
And yes, the abuse has begun. I’m getting collection notices from some outfit in Ocala, the American capital city of illegal robo-telemarketers, that unless I send them $25, they threaten me with the “imposition of a Vehicle Registration Stop”. The State, of course, will do nothing to stop this activity, because corruption cannot thrive unless it is in-depth. They never know when they might need these private companies. It’s an entire system. They need crooked printers to make the fake notices, a cooked DMV to hand over the registration for purposes never declared, they even need the collusion of the post office to deliver mail that is on the questionable side of the law. But such activity is in compliance with the law, therefore, by definition, it is not corruption.
My compulsory auto insurance not only went up, there are more exclusions in the coverage section, and the wording of the fine print has become harsher. Where I used to decline certain coverages, it now states I rejected them. My rate is also based on a credit history that for me does not exist—except that I pay their insurance on time in cash every six months—and they somehow maintain that is credit. The bankers have America by the short and curlies. Here are the changes (on my copy) this period.
a) anti-Uber clause (insurance companies love regular taxis)
b) anti-delivery clause extended to include newspaper delivery (gotta crack down)
c) any passengers if car-pooling (that amounts to nonsense)
The company has a disgusting procedure of telling you your payment is much higher, but nice guys that they are, they’ve extended me “loyalty awards” such as small accident forgiveness and teen driver discounts. They also include a paragraph that I am not so sure about. But I leave it alone because my rates are in line with what others day they pay, and the paragraph makes it clear the insurance company does not know a blessed thing about me except what’s on the original application, not even my marital status. Good, because we know where they tried to get that information.
Not that I’m against all advertising. Passive is okay. A dental office aware of my medical insurance included a card in the envelope with my regular statement. Name and address, they will give you a free checkup and six months discounts on non-covered treatments if you sign up your insurance with them. I can probably do that. The scary part is I’ve not seen a dentist since I left the phone company. What? Well because I had every last thing done to perfection before then, I mean they had the dental plan you could cry for. And everything is fine since then. Not even a cavity.
Europe's tallest smokestack.
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THIS SEGMENT IS WIP. GOOGLE IS TINKERING WITH THE PICTURE POSTING SEGMENT AGAIN.
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ADDENDUM
I’ve got two minds about that AIDS patient with the bone marrow transplant. His blood cells no longer show the disease. Fine, but it’s only been a week. But I’m not about to accept AIDS, considering how it is spread, as a major public threat just yet. What’s more, I would like to see the bill for these transplants. It’s fine and dandy for the likes of the Gates Foundation to promote specialized medicine, but it is usually not they who pick up the tab in the long run. It is not lost to the taxpayer how many of these cures have a nasty penchant for transmogrifying into publicly-funded health departments with headquarters on Park Avenue.
For the Oscar in the unintended revelation department, watch “The Jensen Project”. It’s a fantasy about a society of teenage geniuses who solve thorny problems for mankind. The movie is copyrighted 2010 so this “greatest generation” has failed even to create its own idols. I mean, whiz-kids is a 1980s concept. A few young people got lucky on the early Internet, but it was indeed luck because half the civilized world was glomming onto it. I still got my reward out for anybody who can introduce me to a real whiz-kid. What? You want me to repeat the criteria? Okay.
Show me the whiz kid. Now, if he is a kid, he must be younger than me. If he is a whiz, he must know more than me. I will pose a few basic computer knowledge situations that he must answer correctly. An example would be, “Count to five in binary.” If he passes the questions, I give you a thousand dollars.
The revelation was the decadence of the American education system. In real education, you are taught the tools to figure things out for yourself. Ideally, there would be lab time to practice, but if not don’t, relax. Real life will provide a lab of infinite dimensions. In one scene, the teacher describes a satellite in geosynchronous orbit, but manages not to use the big word. She asks the class how long it will be in range of a ground antenna. So far so good. Except, she hasn’t given them enough information, and all of the students reach for calculators. That is the crime of it.
They don’t know how to figure it out. Instead, they’ve been trained the formulas are inside the calculator. That’s why American students place 23rd in world academics. They not taught how to think, but where to look for answers. They are not taught formulas, but to trust the correct formula is inside a calculator. Without knowing what the elements are, it is impossible to check the answer for reasonableness. And that, folks, is where you’ll find future joys like an entire colony on Mars suddenly asphyxiating. Somebody used the wrong formula.
I won’t profile the offender, but I could. Instead, I’ll profile his liberal parents who trust the school system to indoctrinate little Lance. Right now they are getting ready to leave their rented townhome, get in their car they still owe $25,000 on, and drive to the coffee shop. They will arrive there moments before I do, and waddle up to the counter, top-knot and all. They will order some concoction so laced with ingredients that you can’t taste the coffee. And they will be miffed to notice that I came prepared and instead of waiting behind them in line, I used the five minutes to set up my computer, boot, log-on, and then make my order in less than 45 seconds. Yes, I do it on purpose, and why not? It isn’t like they have some right to slow others down.
