What the $^@# is Wrong?

Shortly after the news broke that Chip Cravaack moved his family to New Hampshire, it made me think…. is he using the taxpayers to secure his retirement?  I think yes.

To receive a pension for life in congress, members must serve a total of 5 years. (source) However, the exact amount is not listed on the official site.  It does state that the salary must not exceed 80% of the final salary, which is currently $174,000.

So, it is obvious that Chip will try to reach that 5 year goal to ensure health benefits and a pension for his family.  That  explains perfectly why he is running for another term in 2012.

Mind you, this will be on top of the disability that Chip is currently receiving from Northwest Airlines, which totals $92,273/year due to the disability benefits he receives from Northwest Airlines. (source) He is receiving this disability until 2024 for a treatable condition, sleep apnea.  Treatment for this condition is as easy as wearing a mask while you sleep at night.  Can you say “Thank You Union?” Ironically, Chip has been standing along with his party to try to squash unions (source), while a lot of his main constituents in Northern Minnesota are hard-working, union iron workers that have put many hard years in the mines. Mind you, he was also the union steward while he was with Northwest. (source)

Add onto this, his Navy retirement for his 24 years of service.  He currently does not receive these benefits, due to him being a member of congress.  But he will start getting these benefits after he is done with being a representative.  This salary can vary, and it is not clear on how much he will get.  But I do know it is comfortable enough for a modest living in our area. (source).

Adding it up: He might get a congressional salary (if he serves 5 years), keep getting his disability, get his Navy retirement, and get health benefits for him and his family for life.  Most of which, will be paid for by us, the tax payers.

Chip – you are welcome and congrats on setting yourself up for a healthy retirement on my back.

Hopefully you will have a nice retirement in New Hampshire.  I know I will be paying for it.

Time to debunk yet another facebook viral staus that I have been seeing lately….

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in Delta Airlines one year ago, you would have $49.00 today! If you purchased $1,000 of shares in AIG, you would have $33.00. If you purchased $1,000 of shares in Lehman Brothers, you would have $0.00 today. But, if you purchased $1,000 worth of beer, drank all the beer, turned in the aluminum cans for recycling, you would have $214.00. Therefore the best current investment plan is to drink heavily & recycle. It is called the 401-Keg Plan!

Assuming there were no broker’s fees or taxes, it’s easy to show that this is very false, expect for Lehman Brothers, that’s true.

Aug 10, 2010 shares of Delta were 11.80 a share, so that would be 84.7458 shares.  Aug 10, 2011 1:40, the going price is 6.84, therefore that would be $579.661. (google finance)

Aug 10, 2010 shares of AIG were 40.19 a share, so that would be 24.8818 shares. Aug 10, 2011 1:40, the going price is 23.39, therefore that would be $580.99. (google finance)

Assuming you bought a 30 pack of the cheapest beer (best value for best case scenario) for $10 a case, you could get 100 cases (before taxes).  That would be 3000 cans of beer.  There are about 30 cans per pound of aluminum (wikipedia), and the going rate of aluminum is currently $1.08 per pound (metalprices.com).  So you would then have $108. 

The calculations are good as of writing this article, and will change constantly with the markets.

And Liberals…

And Gays…

And Women…

And the Enviroment…

And our future…

Last night marked the last day of the 2011 Legislative Session in Minnesota.

This legislative session has been full of promoting bigotry and hate towards women and gays by passing bill after bill against abortions and also attempting to ban gay marriage through the state constitution.

The MN GOP also attempted to redistrict the state of Minnesota to solidify the conservative voting districts that have been close in votes the last few year, which would have affected 5 democratic disricts and only one republican district.

My state senator, Roger Reinert, said it best on Facebook:

It’s 10pm. There are 2 hours left in the 2011 Legislative Session. And the Minnesota Senate has been in for a total of two hours today.

Closing speeches are being made. It’s now official. The 2011 Legislative Session failed to do Job #1 – balance the state budget.

It looks like Jonathon Seidl, who write’s for Glenn Beck’s site The Blaze, decided to take a bold step and wrote an opinion piece on Reddit.com. (Article)

If you are unfamiliar with Reddit, it’s a social news site similar to Digg.com, but without the crap.  I personally switched over to Reddit from Digg after the Digg v4 fiasco and I’ve never looked back.  With Reddit, you can personalize your front page by “subscribing” (+frontpage) to categories which are called subreddits.  You can find a subreddit for almost anything, because subreddits are user owned, operated, managed, and content driven.  That is what gives Reddit such a dynamic feel, and you can make it give you the exact content that you want to see. What amazed me the most about Reddit, is that one person was running the whole operation, and just recently, he hired a second person.

That being said, Mr. Seidl’s article focuses on how you can find adult material through subreddits and how there is offensive language on certain subreddits. What a revelation… there is porn on the internet /s.   This is nothing new. It’s not on anyone’s front page by default, and you would have to actively go and look for it to find it.  Just like anything else on the internet, if someone wants to find it, they will find it. Mr. Seidl, have you used Google lately? Rumor has it you can find bad things on there too.

With all subreddits, there is a subscriber count so people can keep track of a subreddit’s popularity.

(numbers are as of publishing this article)

/r/jailbait has 14,739 readers

/r/porn has 1889 readers

/r/ni**ers has 175 readers

Compare these to the subreddits I subscribe to

/r/funny/ has 584,007 readers

/r/WTF/ has 521,997 readers

/r/science/ has 517,763 readers

/r/politics/ has 484,832 readers

/r/IAmA/ has 199,633 readers

/r/todayilearned/ has 183,355 readers

/r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu/ has 121,620 readers

Are these numbers that anyone needs to be concerned with in the grand scheme of things?  I don’t think so.

Here are some of the “best” comments from Glenn Beck’s site.  It still suprises me how painfully ignorant these people are.

(Link)

(Link)

And here is what I would imagine Reddit’s response to be