Well…another night and another Wings win in a shootout and Michigan even beat Michigan State in basketball so that was an okay night. It was a no cocktail night but I went to bed late and got up early so I don’t feel that much better…or as good as I should but that could be the calorie reduction…who knows? There were lots of dreams but I really don’t remember any of them so they must not have been that interesting….not much to do today….I’ve been waiting to do the grocery run until later in the week since I am doing a no cocktail week to rest the body….so, it will be cleaning and that’s about it…more later….
All posts by James DeVol
One last thing for today…
Well…it has been a prolific day for me and I wish I knew why so I could repeat it….this will be short one and probably should have been put in the musings one that I did previously…but I didn’t so here goes….the one reason that companies always give for sending jobs overseas is the huge difference in labor costs between the US and China, but a new study that has come out in the past couple of days is that the difference is only about 20% of the total product cost…so, for example, if you have a 200 dollar flat screen made in China….it could be made and sold here for 240 dollars and would put many of our neighbors back to work and start to restore the American dream. I, for one, would happily pay the extra 20% if that would mean one of the unemployed here in Michigan (maybe me) could get a good job. One of the things we all must remember is that, with the hollowing out of our manufacturing base, we have permanently lowered demand so much that we can’t grow our way out of the malaise the economy is in….geez…
Some musings…again…
Well…..I did get caught up today so I wasn’t too motivated to do another one but I think that boredom is starting to work backwards and make me want to do more…so, I’m going to just noodle around here for a few minutes and see where it goes. I wonder what the attraction is for people to want to know their heritage so much that they are willing to pay sites like Ancestry to find out that stuff….personally, I’ve never really cared where I came from…I’m more interested in where I’m going instead….what does it do for you to know who your great grandparents were? But, then again, there are lots of things I don’t understand so maybe I shouldn’t single this one out….I am a little depressed that the car is going to be a block of ice again in the morning with all of the rain and falling temps…I guess I haven’t started the dull, numbing, winter coping mechanism yet and I hope it starts soon…it is going to be almost 50 by Monday so I’m a little concerned that it is not going to work this year….okay, that’s about it for now…it’s going to be another no cocktail night tonight but there is a quite a lot of sports on that should keep me at least a little amused….
I was right about Romney…
Well…if you were here a few days back, you heard me make the assertion that one of the reasons that ole Mitt wasn’t releasing his tax returns was that it was going to reveal a dirty little secret of those whose income is derived from investment; not from wages….that those who live off securities and investment income only pay about 15% of their income in taxes…and that is exactly what happened today when ole Mitt’s campaign revealed just that. Now, I don’t know about you, but I just don’t think it’s right or fair that the 1% can buy tax laws that allow them to avoid paying their fair share while the rest of us pay 25% or more..even in my case, where I am living on savings from my lifetime of work and I pay more than the multi-millionaire Mitt…c’mon Mitt…let’s see the pretzel you are going to twist yourself into trying to justify these facts….I hope you can now understand why the 99% is so pissed off…geez…
Been thinking about this for a while…
Well…a nice article by Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post this morning kind of crystallized something that has been rattling around in my head for quite a while and highlights something that I think has been downplayed in the whole Bain Capital/creative destruction argument that has been presented as justification for the destruction of companies and lives by the right. While the entire emphasis has been from the investor side and the rightful assertion that people should make money from their investments, what about the investments of the people that work at these companies? The investments of time, loyalty, and forgone opportunities that came from listening to the promises of management and choosing to contribute to the growth and success of those companies has largely been ignored in the calculus of how the rewards should be distributed. Why should the investor class walk away with 88 percent profits yearly on their investments (as happened in one 10 year span at Bain) while the workers whose companies were gutted and ransacked by Bain walked away with nothing to show for their decades of service? It is just the latest manifestation of the contempt that the right has for labor and anyone who is not in the 1 percent…geez…
January 17th
Well…another day just like the rest yesterday but I did get to go out and have a couple with G so that made it a little palatable…and I had weird dreams about cooking and cleaning…but mostly cleaning last night…not sure what that was about but it was fun to have some again, finally. It was nice to have some of the snow melt yesterday and if we would get one more day like it, I might be able to get back on the bike later in the week…but we’re not getting it so I probably should just resign myself to waiting until spring…that means I should take it over to wash it but I’m not motivated to do that yet….not much to do today…I may go out to get some veggies for snacks…have been thinking about replacing a whole meal with veggies to counteract the lack of exercise but I’m not sure how to do that yet…looks like something to do anyway….more later…
Need to set a few things straight…
Well…this one is going to kind of fit with the title but not all of it….so here goes…first, the only reasonable person dropped out of the repub race today when John Huntsman decided to quit…but I can understand why…the repub party is so far to the right now the John Birchers would be to their left and I never thought I’d see that. I do miss the reasonable repubs like Jerry Ford that got things done for the country, not just their party. But that was then, and this is now and I don’t think we’ll see the “big” politicians again…those whose only thought was to try to do the best for the country and it’s people no matter if they were dems or repubs. Oh, one of the things that I want to get straight is that I’m not really against business or capitalism per se…it is unbridled and unregulated capitalism that I can’t stand and rail against almost constantly as you know. There is nothing wrong with companies making money, but why do they have to squeeze every penny out of their workers and give it to those who don’t really need more? I think one of the questions that people that already have so much should ask themselves is “how much is enough?” Once you have millions, why do they have to continue to take when an extra 100 bucks week would mean a lot to one of their employees? Where were these people raised? And, who taught them that to care about others and fairness is a bad thing? I wasn’t brought up that way but I see the trend in a lot of younger folks today…I wonder why…and how can we fix it? Just thinking….
January 16th
Well…another Sunday and it was nice to get out and see K for a few minutes…or to just get out of here for a while and do something different….didn’t sleep well or dream so that was quite a disappointment but I guess I’ll live through it…even the football games were kind of boring but there was the Michigan/Ohio State outdoor hockey game that Michigan won so that was something…Not much to do today…I do have to meet up with G later for a couple but that is about it…I’ll be back later to try to catch up…
Ole Mitt and his tax returns…
Well…just have to comment on the new flap over the refusal of ole Mitt to release his tax returns…and you and I know why that is…I’m sure they are going to show that this person who has over 250 million dollars is not paying his fair share of taxes like the rest of us. You can see that this will be the case if they are ever released since much of his holdings are in tax havens like the Cayman Islands where his rate will be around 15%…when was the last time you paid only 15% in taxes on your wages? Never is the answer…and that is the problem with people like ole Mitt…the rich are treated differently in this country and it is just that sense of entitlement that is rife in the 1%’ers that is shown in his campaign…he has felt since he was little that he was owed a Harvard education, that it was his birthright to have whatever elected office he chooses….that’s elitism at it’s worst. geez….
January 15th
Well…another day and way too much vegging so I think I’ll try to not do that today…but it is kind of hard to get motivated for some reason that I will try to figure out and change. There was some good football on yesterday so that made the lack of a Wings game a little more palatable and helped the time pass but that is the problem…making time pass so I don’t feel like I’m just wasting it…I do need to get moving forward again…and it is 8:23 and I am already getting into the boredom of the day…it did help to re-read the papers yesterday so that might be a plan for today, too….all this snow is a pain and running the car for 20 minutes just to go out to get the paper is not the best use of resources…I’ll bet I’m getting about 4 miles to the gallon while I wait for the windows to de-fog…oh, well…not much to do today…might try to see what K is doing and have a couple with her but will probably just hang out here and continue to veg…I will be back for one more today since I am struggling to get caught up…