I’ve dated a few women who were just a couple inches shorter than me. When they strapped on the high heels, they were taller. I didn’t have a problem with it at all. In fact, I liked it when they wore the high heels. They loved being able to toss on the high heels and feel that extra level of sexiness that comes from rocking the stilettos. They dated men previously who were upset if they were as tall or taller than them.

Sack up men! If you’ve got a tall woman in your life, treat her like the beautiful woman that she is and encourage her to sport the stilettos and be taller than you! Chances are you aren’t George, but you can at least try to be as cool as he is and be ok with your woman being taller than you.

And women, get over the guy being shorter than you thing. I’m not talking about a 4 foot difference here. We’re talking about less than a foot. If you have some problem with a guy being shorter than you when you’re in six-inch stilettos, then get your insecurity in check. Chances are, the dude is an awesome guy who is going to treat you better than you ever have. Don’t let those stilettos get in the way! If he’s not ok with it, then tell him to sack up or move on!

Anyone wanting to fool themselves into believing that there has been a legitimate alternative to iTunes on the market over the last several years is just fooling themselves. Now, I’m sure some might be thinking, “What about Spotify?” I’m not a hipster, sorry.

So, I haven’t been listening to much music lately. My music collection has stagnated at just under 500 tracks for the last couple of years. I’ve made numerous attempts with mp3tunes and other software to reclaim my music rights from Apple to no avail. That is until Google Music & TuneClone saved the day!

First, Google Music got me interested in music again. I had really gotten so used to not having easy access to music, so much to the point that I didn’t really care too much about music. I didn’t even know about “Party Rock Anthem” until months after it had been out. Sad tangent there… My 10-year-old nephew kept saying “Everyday I’m shufflin” one day when we were going somewhere. I had no idea what he was talking about. Google Music is so easy to access and use on my Android phone. It’s like the days when I had an iPod like everyone else who doesn’t know better about the evil Apphole empire

Second, TuneClone makes reclaiming your DRM music possible. It’s pretty simple how it works (although, it’s going to cost you $35). It creates a virtual CD on your computer that iTunes reads as a regular CD and will burn disks to. You burn your DRM music as CD audio with test and TuneClone takes care of the rest! The result is a single directory of your playlist (in my case, my entire collection) as MP3 files that you can then drop into your Google Music folder, sync, and listen to anywhere!

A few clicks here and there, and I have my full music library back… Well, throw in a couple of hours of converting the music too, but the main point is that I finally regain my music rights AND have a music interface that’s not a pile of junk that requires multi-step syncing or doesn’t have my full music library available.

My last couple of breakups have been fairly tame. Both were missing attempts on my giant teddy bear’s life, so in my book they were calm. Today I saw one of the recent exes. We had arranged a meeting for her to get some Christmas gifts for her dad and brother that my company makes. I didn’t think I’d have a moment where I was going to fall madly back in love with her, but I wasn’t sure if I’d look at her and realize that maybe I should have made more of an effort.

There was a knock on my door… I opened the door and there she was. She’s still a great looking woman, but the one thing that just killed it for me was still there: She fake smiles. She fake smiles a lot! I’ve dated a few faux smilers in the past, but it wasn’t until this recent one that I realized for sure that I just can’t do the fake smiler thing.

I can’t fake smile. It’s almost impossible for me to do it. I’m sure there are photos that exist of me with a fake smile, but I don’t have any and don’t know of any for certain. This ex though… Almost every smile is a faux smile. The sad thing is that when she really smiles, it’s a great smile! I just can’t do the fake smile. That makes it much easier to accept the end of the relationship for good.

It’s not to say that this woman is fake. She’s quite genuine. She’s very real and down to Earth. She has a great genuine smile, but you get a faux smile more often than the genuine one.

Here’s how our Federal government can quickly solve energy problems as well as stimulate the economy in a real manner. We all know that Obama and Congress love spending money. Heck, throw W into the spending mix too, and you have the largest deficits and national debt in the history of the world! Unlike most spending our Federal government does, this spending would actually bring about some real value to America.

Our Government Just Prints More Money Anyway

Spend another $700 billion dollars to install the $21,600 systems on homes in America. Now, the first argument might be that we need to evaluate whether there is enough sun coming in to make this worthwhile. Well, good news, someone has already done that! There is plenty of sun hitting the majority of the United States to make this worthwhile.

The $700 billion investment would put solar systems on approximately 32,407,407 houses. Now, that’s not taking into consideration economies of scale. Manufacturing that many solar panels and performing that many installations would considerably drop the costs associated with the installations. We could easily see a 20-30% drop in total cost, but I’ll stick with the 32.4 million installations for easy math. That’s roughly 24.93% of the estimated 130 million houses in America. With these solar panel systems producing an average of 85% of the house’s energy needs, that means a drop in existing energy consumption by 21.19%

What would happen if our need for energy from existing sources dropped by 1/5??? Well, simple economics would shift the price of energy down. For global warming worriers, it would mean production of 1/5 of our energy now comes from solar. Of course, it wouldn’t really mean a drop in household energy cost by 20 percent. Production from other sources would decline to keep prices from plummeting by 20 percent, but there would be a substantial decline in the cost of energy for the end consumer. Even if it was a 10% decline, I’ll show you at the end just how substantial this could be!

True Trickle Down Economics

Now, let’s get into the worker value! Solar panel production would skyrocket. Solar panel producers would need to hire more employees, put more people to work, order more materials from their suppliers… It’s true trickle down economics. But that’s just the production side of things! There’s the installation side as well. Thousands of workers would be put to work making good, hard-working money! These workers would be driving, eating, buying clothes for their families, etc. True trickle down economics. Local economies around the US would greatly benefit from this massive rise in employment and their subsequent spending!

Now, let’s talk about the true economic savings as energy costs in the United States drop by 20% I’ve mentioned in Energy Based Inflation that rising energy costs have an impact on EVERYTHING. There’s no escaping the cost of energy in our current economy. Every company and every job requires energy. For some companies and some families, energy is a massive expense! For someone like me with a house but no kids, my electric bills are very low. Still, my house could produce enough energy for me and half of what the family that lives across the street from me needs!

But wait! There’s more!!!

Electric cars will become viable global warming worrier alternative energy vehicles. Currently, electric cars don’t really save much (if at all) in greenhouse gas emissions because of the fact that America gets so much energy from coal… This solar panel plan would make electric cars much cleaner than gasoline cars, since American would not be getting 21.19% of our energy from solar. Greenies rejoices!

So, what would the ROI be for our Federal government to print another $700 billion dollars? Well, we can start with the amount that Americans spend on electricity (Retail Electricity): $350,438,000,000. Yes, that’s $350 billion Americans spent on energy in 2009. Now, earlier I reasoned that while there is a 20% energy savings, our costs would only drop by maybe 10% because production from other sources would adjust to compensate for the sudden massive increase in energy production by solar. Even at just 10% that means Americans will be saving $35 billion (yes, BILLION with a B) in energy costs/year.

Collectively, we can go spend that money on other things, save it, invest it in retirement funds/stock market/kitchen remodel, etc. The savings for $35 billion dollars would significantly stimulate the economy because we aren’t just going to sit on that $35 billion. We’ll spend/invest it! We, the people will stimulate the economy from a legitimate and long-term value add from our Federal government. Much better than a couple of $600 “stimulus” checks we got from W! Or the great W/Obama bank/auto bailout.

While I think we should be on a bond-only system for funding our government programs, there’s an interim solution to getting there. One that wouldn’t be so radical: opt-out taxes. I’m not talking about being able to opt-out of Federal income taxes like my friend Jimbosway is likely to support. I’m talking about giving tax payers the right to opt-out of funding Federal programs with their tax dollars.

Where The Money Goes

This doesn’t mean you get a tax refund right away and the government losses all it’s money because nobody is going to want to fund any program. It just means that your tax dollars don’t get spent on something you don’t want them spent on. For example, if someone wants to not fund farm subsides for sugar in Florida, they opt-out of that program. If someone doesn’t want to fund NPR, opt-out. Etcetera.

We could even take it a step further and allow someone to change their funding from say sugar subsides to NASA, so NASA would have additional funding. You’d have to lock in your choices for a year at a time. This way, each program will know what it’s budget is for the coming year.

Now, what happens to the opt-out money? Well, let’s just face it. That’s a problem we’re not going to have to worry about for another $1+ trillion dollars. However, eventually, there could be a budget surplus as government programs are defunded. There’s nothing wrong with a government surplus. When that happens, and if it runs surplus long enough then the government will know how much money each taxpayer should receive back. That’s pretty simple and fair.

Accountability

This will also put a tremendous amount of accountability onto the shoulders of US (that’s an emphasized us, not United States – well, United States citizens…) If we don’t want to support programs like TARP and bailout programs, we don’t fund them. Now, people will say things like: TARP was an emergency. We couldn’t wait a year to get that funding. I’ll just laugh at that argument. Unless you were John McCain, you saw it coming!

Transparency

Another HUGE benefit of this is that it would give us massive government transparency. Rather than transparency being a punchline in an Obama speech, it becomes a reality! We’ll know what programs are receiving how much funding, and more importantly we’ll know what the hell the programs are! If someone is spending your hard earned money, don’t you think you should know where it’s spent? It’s not like the government agencies need to send us postcards or pictures of the kids we’re helping like a charity does. But we will at least know that our money isn’t going to fund a program that we don’t support.

Technology has advanced significantly over the last few decades. Yet, our political system and taxes are way behind on utilizing technology to better themselves. We can create and easily maintain massive databases that would house this information and allow our budgeting to be based upon democratic taxation.

Other Ways the Government Can Still Steal Our Money

And Congress members who love to spend money like it’s going out of style need not fret. They can still work on pork belly programs! Pass whatever spending they want with the existing methods they now have. Fund it just like they do now. If we the people decide to provide them with the funding, the program can continue on. If we don’t, the program dies.

Congress could also go about imposing “fees” instead of using income tax dollars. Just look at your cell phone bills or airplane tickets to see examples of those. They could go about imposing other use taxes (perhaps a national sales tax, since they’re already talking about it anyway).

None of these worry me because if we did have an opt-out system in place and Congress did try to go about stealing more money from our pockets, we’d be more educated about what is going on with our government on a greater scale than we do know. We’d have a much greater vested interest in where our money is being spent/wasted. The second Congress tried to implement a national sales tax or additional fees, we’d put a stop to it.

More Accountability

I also think that our greater involvement with the spending of our taxes dollars would turn the tables on today’s political thinking. Right now, Congress can just go pass any spending bill they want without much accountability to their constituents. With an opt-out system in place, Congress is going to have to go back to the people they serve and ask them to support their decisions. Congress is going to have to explain why they’re voting yes on spending more money. Opt-out make Congress accountable to the people they serve!

First, it has been our governments pushing vehicle manufacturers to become more fuel efficient. Didn’t they consider that if you push the vehicles to go from and average of 15MPG to 30MPG you’re going lose half of your gas tax revenue??? Did that not cross anyone’s mind? It’s simple math!

Second, and most importantly, a pay-per-mile tax is a bad idea because it taxes those who drive vehicles that put less wear and tear on our roads (e.g. small vehicles) at the same rate as vehicles that put more wear and tear on our roads (e.g. large vehicles). Unless the government plans on taxing large vehicles differently than small vehicles. Gas tax doesn’t have this problem. Larger vehicles are inherently lower MPG than smaller vehicles.

Third, certain roads require more maintenance than other roads. Weather conditions really dictate how long a road is going to last. So, some poor sap living in a mild climate region is going to be subsidizing someone living in a inclement region.

Raise gas taxes! Or better yet, make roads toll roads… Or even better! Issue Highway bonds (and make the purchase of them 100% income tax deductible)! For those traveling the open road, I’m sure they’ll be more than willing to plop down some money on highway bonds. It’s a good investment!

So, the solution is to start taxing Amazon, right? WRONG!

The solution is so much easier and better: get rid of the sales tax on your local stores!

You’re not going to hear something so like this come out of Sacramento though. That would be too simple and intelligent. Of course, that would obliterate a massive revenue stream for cities, counties, and states, right? Of course it would. They count on that money for their services. So, they just need to make up for it with an increase in property taxes. WHAT?!?! Can’t we just get rid of taxes altogether? Well, one could argue that point, but it would take decades to completely get rid of all taxes and replace them with bond measures and an opt-in taxation policy. And that’s definitely beyond the scope of this blog article.

Video must be viewed first.

Now, I’ll agree with her a bit on the first part about how we piled up a portion of our mountainous debt…. The second part about “Fair Taxation”… On the surface, this is a very “common sense” speech she makes. Talk about misinformation! Let’s dissect!

“You moved your goods to market on the road the rest of us paid for” – Exactly who is “the rest of us”? Let’s really analyze this a bit. The Factory Guy (we’ll call him Fred) builds a business and theoretically has a fleet of vehicles to move his products. This fleet of vehicles requires registration fees to be paid, which is used by the state to administer transportation infrastructure. When the fleet of vehicles fills up at the gas station, they are purchasing gasoline and paying taxes (that’s $0.18/gallon + 6% state sales tax and 1.25% county, plus additional local sales taxes and 1.2 cents per gallon state UST fee).

While Warren gets a nice hurump with her analogy, it’s completely misleading. It’s like Fred (the Factory Guy) doesn’t pay the same taxes that everyone else does.

“You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate” – Again with the whole “rest of us” nonsense. I really would like to know who “the rest of us” actually refers to, especially about education. Since the vast majority of school districts receive their funding from property taxes, she can’t possibly be referring to folks who live in apartments and don’t own their own property. Of course, she doesn’t mention that, does she. It’s an ugly truth, but if you don’t own real property, your kids are getting a free ride!

So, who exactly, besides Fred (the Factory Guy) and other property owners are paying to educate the folks that Fred hires?

“… because the police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for” – More of “the rest of us” going on here. Again, Fred (the Factory Guy) must not have ever had to pay property taxes. Furthermore, when Fred applied for building permits and paid tens of thousands of dollars to the city where he built his factory, none of that money went to pay for city workers such police?

“You didn’t have to worry about marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did” – “the rest of us” do a whole lot and Fred (the Factory Guy) doesn’t do anything except for make widgets and hoard profits I guess. First, anyone who has a factory is going to have a security company that they hire to protect their business. Anyone who has ever owned a business and called the police about something suspicious knows that unless guns are blazing NOBODY is showing up at your business for at least 30 minutes. Businesses employ the services of companies that provide alarm services as well. So businesses do hire people to protect their business outside of “the rest of us”.

I’m really interested in knowing what “the rest of us” did to help Fred that Fred didn’t pay for.

What’s even more astonishing about this video are the responses that are showing up on YouTube and the people who are buying into this rhetoric. There is nothing accurate about her fair taxation speech. She either didn’t think things through to understand what the sources of revenue are, or she made a highly calculated choice to misinform and misguide her constituents to rouse the folks she was speaking to.

On the comedy side of things…

But the best seems to come from a dog and squirrel…

But the best one I received from a friend…