Double Trouble

Let us say your house is worth $x in your opinion (based on square footage muliplied by the going rate in your area)

Now you get a property tax statement from the county that says your house is worth x+300k !!! and you now owe the county a bigger tax amount.

You figure that if your house is worth that much, then you should be able to get a really nice interest rate on a loan.. afterall your risk is low considering how much your house is worth and how much money you have put in the house already!

So you start the process and to your surprise and anger, the guy who came to appraise your house values the house at x-200k. You are now scratching your head...

The banks want to keep your mortgage high by lowering house value
The county wants to keep your tax high by raising house value

This whole country is run by crooks at every level!

Maybe we should sell our house to the state of California and repay the bank loan and start renting?

If the above mentioned weren't true, I would be laughing.


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Rewards

The radio did the usual spewing of Obamisms along with the standard string of words that is a must for any news item today

1. economy
2. deep recession
3. jobs
4. congress
5. bill
6. law
7. bailout
8. green
9. reward

every day you hear about one more bad decision that gets a pat on the back.

The reward of the day news was

People who got gas guzzlers are to be offered a check for 3500 bucks to give up their guzzlers. funny thing is that this is going to be based on the age of the car.

that is soooo ridiculous. people who bought gas guzzlers did so out of their own choice. the people who decided to market that product knowing that those vehicles are a blatant assault on the environment, did so knowingly. the people who sold that product to the people who sought that product did that knowingly.

now a string of bad decisions gets rewarded.

this is like offering heroin growers cash to grow something else. okay, that was not a perfect example as heroin is a lot more expensive than corn or wheat.

why?

Why should I work so hard and be responsible? why is the system tempting me to make irresponsible decisions so I can be rewarded?

why not levy a tax on the next round of DMV registrations on any vehicle that doesn't meet 20 mpg?

why not say "you pay 20 bucks extra for every mpg drop below 20mpg as part of a clean air tax" . Chances are if you got that hummer or Jeep or sports car that has ridiculous gas mileage you will pay an extra 200-250 bucks a year back. That can at least go towards subsidizing the bailouts of companies that make these vehicles.

It appears as though there is no sense in being sensible anymore!

You borrow way beyond your means knowing you might never repay a loan.. no problem. You are a voting consumer. You will be taken care of.

You lend money without any scruples to people knowing you will make a commission for giving away literally free money.. no problem. You will get bailed out with taxpayer dollars.

You keep making vehicles that are not competitive in an open market and sell your vehicles by linking it to car loans which you control and sell to people who buy the vehicles for all the wrong reasons.. no problem.. we will give you more money to keep making more of the same.

you buy vehicles that blatantly violate effective cost of ownership, environmental impact, no problem.. we will give you some cash so you can go buy a relatively more fuel efficient car made by the same dudes who made your current car.. and when that car becomes a gas guzzler in 10 years, we will give you more money to get rid of that car.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Time to go buy that third hand hummer for 2000 bucks so we can get 3500 bucks to get rid of it!


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Somebody stop this.. please!

Read this..
If this goes on, I would seriously ask why I should pay any taxes at all?!

Enough is enough!!

Somebody, stop this!

This government better not let this one fly. Time to put some people behind bars and stop this bleeding!



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No Lap Left Behind

Apparently the Indian goverment is learning from President Bush.

They have come up with a "No Lap left Behind" policy.

A laptop on every lap, they said and to top things off, the thing was supposed to cost 10 bucks (500 Indian Rupees)!

There has been a lot of hoopla around this over the years.

The most common reasoning out there was that it would still cost 100 bucks to make, but it could be sold by the government for 10 bucks. Well cost and price are two different things, especially when regulated by a government.. any government! You only need to look at ethanol based fuels and cars which claim to use ethanol based fuels (also) in the US to understand this!

Now where were we? Ah, the laps, sorry.. laptops!

Let us for a moment say this thingy does get called a Laptop.

It should have

a. a processor (at least the same thing in a digital watch or a basic electronic calculator)
b. some memory (lets say they have no hard drive to store info and that is an extra)
c. a keyboard to communicate to the outside world (no mice required)
d. a monitor of some sort
e. a power source (or module if it runs on batteries)
f. an outer plastic case to hold all these together as opposed to a ziploc bag

if you have to divvy up these 6 things under 10$, you are looking at some amazing manufacturing!

Truly amazing, state of the art, cost effective manufacturing as well as state of the art distribution which is free or nearly free!

Obviously a billion laps would need to be serviced here and that means cartons and cartons of laptop devices need to be shipped and transported and distributed and that should all be included in the ten buck cost!

Plus you need top {bolly,tolly,kolly}U(Wood) actresses, former desi Miss Worlds, Universe, etc. posing with "tzis device" to make it appeal to the masses.

Somehow I feel my brother is being cheated. The government officials in India are smoking some high quality pot and they are not sharing it with the tax paying people!

$ 40, very much possible. $30 is pushing it with today's manufacturing! I am serious here. You can get a plastic case, working keyboard, a simple processor that possibly does basic text editing, calculator, clock, etc. etc. a pixelized monitor without color, 128MB memory , batteries sold separately device for 40 bucks including distribution, advertising etc.

My BIL got Jr. a laptop that comes close, and it cost $50 and it is pretty educational!

In a world where a langot costs 10-15 rupees and a VIP brief for that same lap, goes for 50, a laptop at 500 rupees is too good to be true!

Who knows, maybe some day there will be a ten dollar laptop, for real!?!


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Government

A word that taking on an increasingly negative connotation by the day, across the world. A word for which we will consult the Dictionary, nay Wiki..

Obviously Wiki tells you the meaning as understood by the lay internet person, ergo the LCM of this blogs readers..

"A government is the organization,
that is the governing authority of a political unit,
the ruling power in a political society,
and the apparatus through which a governing body functions and exercises authority.

Government,

with the authority to make laws,
to adjudicate disputes,
and to issue administrative decisions,
and with a monopoly of authorized force where it fails to persuade,
is an indispensable means, proximately, to the peace of communal life.

A compulsory territorial monopolist of protection and jurisdiction equipped with the power to tax without unanimous consent.
Statist theorists maintain that the necessity of government derives from the fact that the people need to live in communities, yet personal autonomy must be constrained in these communities.

Thank you Wiki for the definition !!

If you look at the ground reality

We work hard
We pay taxes (no choice there!)
The taxes go to the government
That tax money gets redistributed to things that the majority of the governed would not approve of
The folks who do the redistibuting get compensated for doing this and

the redistribution of tax money has the following effect

a. we work more
b. we get paid less for working more
c. we pay more taxes on the smaller amount we make while working more

Sometimes I wonder if the last eight years in the USA were under "government" or some kind of dictatorship.

These days it is hard to find a few people with a clean tax record to run the country!

Bah!

As a dude who has always worked his butt off and paid his taxes, maybe I should go for a government position?

Then again, will the government corrupt me? If yes, then it is better to stick to my day job, no?

San asked me innocently "I don't like how our tax money is being given to people who make lousy cars, fraudulent banks etc. How can I make sure my tax is used properly?!"

Gave the longest Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh I could remember. My innocent lovely wife, if only we could control how our tax money was spent!!!

Maybe just like they ask us in the IRS 1040 EZ in the

Presidential Election Campaign section:

"Check here if you, or your spouse if a joint return, want $3 to go to this fund" You (check box) | Spouse (check box)

they would also ask

"Check here if you, or your spouse if a joint return, want 15% to go to the Lenders bailout" You (check box) | Spouse (check box)

"Check here if you, or your spouse if a joint return, want 10% to go to the Insurance Bailout" You (check box) | Spouse (check box)

"Check here if you, or your spouse if a joint return, want 10% to go to the Bank Bailout" You (check box) | Spouse (check box)

"Check here if you, or your spouse if a joint return, want %5 to go to the Big3 auto Industry Bailout" You (check box) | Spouse (check box)

"Check here if you, or your spouse if a joint return, want 1% to go to the Porn Industry Bailout" You (check box) | Spouse (check box)

etc.

etc.

That would be some day!

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SSDP an update..

Same Shit Different Place : An update from the previous post.

I was reading the links provided by the anonymous commenter on the area that is the center of the controversy over the new Chennai airport location. I also got an update on the situation of the immigration protests on a followup news item on NPR today!

This is Deja vu of SSDP in slow motion. You wouldnt believe the similarity of the way people are treated by governments across the globe and how people treat the government !! Maybe most of you readers are worldly wise to know this. But I can write about this because I am just growing up!!

Why the comparison ?

Apparently the people in Chennai in that area were encouraged by the local politicians and MMDA (Madras Metropolitan Development Authority) to put their life savings and build houses in that governmnent owned land! How could people build houses with their life savings in a land where they do not own "patta's" a.k.a "title deeds". Maybe I should find some spot in Madras and start building!! I thought it was the poor people erecting tatched huts (something that can be done in a day or two), but NO! There are brick and mortar buildings that would take months to construct. How could someone be so naive and build a house in land that they couldnt possibly own? And if they have been given some certificate by the government or its agency, they should be able to defend themselves legally against any attempts to evict them. But I am really torn because,
a. Today, the bad guys seem to be able to manipulate gullible folks with effortless ease!
b. These guys could have been led on by the same local politicians who are tryiing to make it look like they are protecting these people today!

Anyways, the links were informative. Next time please put your name when you comment.

Now back to San Francisco :

Apparently the IRS has set up a website, hotline so that the "illegal aliens" like a commenter pointed out, can PAY THEIR TAXES !! We dont want these guys in the US but we want their money!! These folks are paying their taxes to show that they are "law abiding" and they do it to win some brownie points with the INS in case they are legalized later! They actually played a piece from the automated IRS (Internal Revenue Service) which says "if you are unable to get a TAX ID number because you are here as a ....., do ....". The article also interviewed some dude who spoke in Spanish and said "no American wants to do what I do here. I have been working here for 10 years because of that". Then the reporter went on to say that if only these people could be legally brought into the US to do these jobs ("sheetrocking, painting, washing dishes in restaurants, etc.), there would be no issue!

I thought we get our news from the media. Looks like they will take alternate sides every other day on issues like this!! One day they will do an expose on the poor folk. The very next day on the government!

I will toss a coin for tomorrows news updates. In the meantime the lesson from this for me is "Governments will be governments, and gullible people will stay gullible! The poor (including the lower middle class today), will always get the shaft!".

I think I have finally figured out why I still have these takes on these "isssooos"! All said and done I have "lower middle class values", something that was pointed out a few years ago by a friend in the USA!! Now that will be a post for another day, when I am fully awake and in a good mood and can proofread before I hit the publish button!!