Government

Another Trillion

It didn’t make major news, but it should have. The US government borrowed another $724 billion last week when it sold large amounts of government paper. The odd thing is that the Treasury and the Fed appear to be coordinating their efforts in transitioning US debt from long term bonds into shorter term T bills.

This means that the national debt has grown to $37 trillion. Six years ago, we were at $23 trillion. We hit $36 trillion in late November of last year, meaning that this last trillion in debt was borrowed in just 9 months. We are doubling the debt every 8 to 9 years, and have been for decades– since Nixon took us away from the gold standard.

Of course, this sort of thing can’t go on forever, and whatever can’t go on forever has an end. When is the end coming? In 1891 Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a short story called “The Bottle Imp” that reminds me of this.

The story is about a working class native of Hawaii who buys a strange bottle from a sad, elderly gentleman who credits the bottle with his wealth and fortune, and promises the imp in the bottle will also grant the man his every wish and desire.

Of course, there is a catch, as there usually is in these stories — the bottle must be sold at a loss, i.e. for less than its owner originally paid, or else it will simply return to him. The currency used in the transaction must also be in coin (not paper currency or check). The bottle may not be thrown or given away. If an owner of the bottle dies without having sold it in the prescribed manner, that person’s soul will burn for eternity in Hell.

The bottle was said to have been brought to Earth by the Devil and first purchased by Prester John for millions of dollars; it was owned by Napoleon and Captain James Cook but each sold it. At the time of the story the price has diminished to eighty dollars, and declines rapidly over the course of the story to a few pennies.

The problem here is that as the price approaches a penny, it will become harder and harder to sell the bottle, as the buyer will be in fear of being left holding the bag.

This tale reminds me of our current national debt. As our debt increases, the interest payments will balloon. They can only get so large before default is inevitable. At that point, anyone in possession of a US bond will be stuck with worthless paper. Because of this, the returns for these bonds will have to increase, so as to entice people in taking the risk of buying them, which will make the interest payments higher, thus making the end that much closer.

By Divemedic, ago

School

The headline reads “Florida school tackles chronic absenteeism with unconventional model — and it’s working,” but that’s a lie. This is a carefully written story that not only ignores the facts, it downright fabricates them.

First, let’s look at the most obvious lie- that the school is working. The school’s graduation rate is 9 percent, less than one in ten. Even with their “largest graduating class yet” they are graduating less than half of the students who are currently still there. The student body here is about 314 students, with more than 200 of them being 12th graders. Who cares if you graduate from a program like this? We have public schools who are graduating students that are literally illiterate. I once had a student in the 10th grade who wrote assignments like this one.

More than a third of Florida’s students are chronically absent. This school is intended for students who won’t go to school. That’s a real problem, especially when you remove the kids who at the top of the class- the college prep kids, the ones who are dual enrolled, the honor students. I don’t understand how this school makes a difference, since when the kids DO come to this school, they are only there for half a day. This is nothing more than a daycare center that awards a diploma for merely being present. The students can’t even meet that absurdly low standard.

Making things worse, students and parents actively try to get the teachers who DO hold kids to a standard fired.

One other thing that this article flat out misrepresents- 85% of the student body of this school is not white, yet the interviewed the white girl. I’m guessing it was to conceal the fact that it is a nearly homogenous school.

This entire school is a waste of money, and only perpetuates the cycle of poverty and lack of education. I have a more cost effective solution:

For students under the age of 15:

  • If a student misses more than 5 school days in a quarter, then the parents will be subject to a monetary fine of up to $250, unless they can produce a doctor’s note outlining an illness that prevents the child from coming to school.
  • If a student misses more than 10 school days in a semester, then that fine increases to a maximum of $1,000. If the 10 day absence is due to an illness of the child, then there will be a hearing where a panel will review the doctor’s explanation of the illness. Also: If the ruling is that the child’s absence is unexcused by illness, the parent doesn’t get any public assistance- no welfare, no food stamps, nothing. Get your kids to school, or we aren’t going to pay you to raise more little drains on society.
  • If a student misses more than 30 days in an entire school year, then the parent can be sentenced to up to 30 days in jail and additional fines. Additionally, the parent is not eligible for any public assistance for 3 years.

For students over the age of 15:

  • If a student is tardy to school more than 5 times in a semester, then the student loses campus parking privileges. Take the bus.
  • If a student skips or otherwise misses 15 hours of any single class in a single school year, they will automatically fail the course and their parents would be subject to a fine of not more than $500. The student’s driver’s license is suspended for not less than 6 months.
  • If a student misses more than 5 school days in a quarter, then the parents will be subject to a monetary fine of up to $250, unless they can produce a doctor’s note outlining an illness that prevents the child from coming to school.
  • If a student misses more than 10 days in a school semester, they will be subject to a hearing that will determine whether or not they are defacto dropouts. If they are ruled to be dropouts, the student will be removed from taxpayer funded school and will not be able to re-enroll in school at taxpayer expense. Wanna skip school and waste money? Do it on your own dime.
  • Dropouts are not eligible for any public assistance for at least 3 years, or until 21 years of age, whatever comes first. You already had public assistance in the form of a free education, and you aren’t going to use your failure as a means of getting money to be an even bigger waste of time than you already are. Stop being a loser. We are deporting tons of illegal immigrants, and someone has to harvest the crops- you can go pick lettuce or something.

Harsh? It’s no harsher than what the government will do to me if I refuse to pay all of the taxes that are the source of this wasted money. It’s time we stop wasting all of this money.

By Divemedic, ago

How I Became Homeless, Then Not

Yesterday, I talked about struggles and how we overcome them. I have had mine, and most of them were caused by my poor selection of female partners. This is the story of my journey from divorce, homelessness, on to success. Maybe it can inspire someone who is struggling.

I’m going to mention a song today. It’s a song from a genre that I typically don’t like- rap. This particular song was popular while I was in the military, and the reason why I mention it is related directly to a period in my life when I was really struggling: the summer of 1999. Most rap “music” is simply someone talking over music while loosely rhyming. Typically, they are talking about their genitals, drugs, gang violence, or some other antisocial drivel. However, every once in awhile, one of them displays a level of societal truth, proving that they are the exception to the rule of rap being an annoying waste of time.

I had just gotten divorced, and things were financially rough for me. I was making $8.25 an hour as a firefighter/EMT. As a firefighter, you work a 24 on/48 off schedule, and this results in three different sized paychecks:

  • The large paycheck has 106 hours of straight pay and 14 hours of overtime.
  • The medium paycheck has 106 hours of straight pay and 6 hours of overtime.
  • The small paycheck has 104 hours of straight pay.

The divorce was punishing. The judge gave her the car, the kids, child support, and I got all of the debts. Those debts would be taken out of my paycheck before I even saw it. By the time all of my deductions were taken out (including child support) I wound up making an average of about $525 per two week paycheck. Since the rent on my apartment was $535 a month, it wasn’t long before I was homeless. I just couldn’t afford rent, utilities, and all of the other expenses that went with living in an apartment.

I was sleeping on the couches of friends until I could save enough for a buy here/pay here car, then I began living in my car. This was probably the worst time of my life. It took more than 3 months to save enough for a down payment on a 10 year old Ford Tempo. I would go several days at a time without eating. At work as a firefighter, I would eat everyone’s leftover food, and for that reason, they started calling me catfish, because I was a bottom feeder (from the bottom of the pot, you see). I lost 25 pounds in three months. Finally, after 3 months, I was able to come up with the $1200 I needed for a down payment and for the first 6 months’ insurance.

That’s when the song came into play. It was “Bust a Move.” Here are the lyrics that really struck home with me:

Girls are fakin’, goodness sakin’
They want a man who brings home the bacon
Got no money and you got no car
Then you got no woman and there you are
Some girls are sophistic, materialistic
Looking for a man makes them opportunistic
They’re lyin’ on the beach perpetratin’ a tan
So that a brother with money can be their man

So there I was: homeless, broke, and living in my car. I was alone, and couldn’t even have my kids over for visitation, because I had no place to bring them. I was alone: no friends, no money, no place to live. Every day was a search for ways to make a better living. I got a second job, working as a janitor in a theme park. I had to keep that second job a secret from my ex-wife, so she wouldn’t take me back to court to have that extra income be used to calculate a higher child support amount. Things were a bit better, because the extra income from the janitorial work nearly doubled my take home pay. Things were hard, but I knew that I could make it.

I lived in my car for about six months, parking it in various places so I wouldn’t have the cops called on me. I showered at work: once when I got there, then again when I left. On the third day, I was able to shower at the city’s owned gym, because city employees got a free membership.

That lasted until I found a woman willing to rent me a room. She was s supervisor at the theme park where I worked who found out how much I was struggling and decided to help me out by letting me rent her spare bedroom for $200 a month. I lived there for about three months, until she moved to Montana. Now here I was, just over a year after my divorce, and had to find another roommate.

That brings us to the summer of 2000.

The place I was living wasn’t great- it was in the middle of one of the most dangerous, most crime filled neighborhoods in Orlando, but it was cheap, and it was all that I could afford. If I remember correctly, my share of the rent and expenses was around $400 a month, my car was another $300 a month, and by the time I was done with the “must have” expenses like gas, insurance, and the like, I had $200 a month left over for food and other things. While still rough, things were much better than they had been just a few months before. Sometimes, I would only have $30 to last from one payday to the next, and $15 of that went to gas to get me to work.

Meanwhile, I didn’t stop working to get myself out of the situation I was in. I was working two jobs and began going to school at the same time. I spent the next year getting my Paramedic license, and along with it, an AS in Emergency Medicine. That was a miracle for my monetary situation.

It was now the summer of 2001.

My pay in the fire department was so much better at that point. As a Paramedic, I was finally making $10.65 an hour. On the days that I was acting engineer, I got an extra 75 cents an hour. It was during this time that I moved out of my ghetto apartment, and moved into an apartment in a better neighborhood. I had two roommates in this new place, a woman and a man. It was a good arrangement for them, because my now three jobs meant that I only slept there one night out of every three. It was good for me because it was half a mile from my fire station, and I could have my kids over for visitation. I was still living there on 9/11. Yeah, that 9/11.

It was that experience that gave me a unique perspective on needs versus wants, as well as how to make your money stretch. I know what it means to struggle, I know what it means to know that your next meal is likely days away.

That’s why I become so offended when the current generation complains that the generations that came before had it easy, while complaining that they can’t buy a house. Bull crap, they just don’t have any idea what the difference is between a need and a want.

The world doesn’t owe you a thing. You can have the lifestyle you want, but you can’t expect others to give it to you, you have to earn it. Doing so requires hard work and consistently making good decisions. One of those decisions, perhaps the most important of them, is the person you choose to partner with. That is the decision that I have struggled with more than any other, and I am glad that I finally got that one right.

By Divemedic, ago

Handouts

As I see the people on social media who are angry because the government is changing the rules so that people on food stamps/EBT can’t use it to buy luxuries like soda and junk food, I am reminded of an argument that I got into with my ex-wife’s sister about 13 years ago. What started the argument was me being upset with this picture:

She said that she, who is on handouts, should be able to experience going out to eat like families anytime they want. She went on to tell me that I should stop complaining about EBT and be happy that I was getting paid to go to school and that I didn’t have to deal with struggles like some families do.

I hate this. The recipient class in this society sees the successful life that I have and thinks that I didn’t have struggles. This entire generation today (puts on old man hat) thinks that nothing happened before they were born, and they are the first ones who ever had to struggle or work for anything.

I was homeless- twice. Once, about a year after I was discharged from the Navy. The second time was just after my divorce. I didn’t receive, ask for, or want free handouts from anyone. Instead, I worked my ass off. Was I getting paid while I was in school? Sure was, but that was through student loans (which I paid back) and my pension (which I earned and contributed to while I was working).

Instead of sitting around on handouts and doing nothing, I worked hard. At times, I had three jobs AND went to school. I still have more than one job. Was it difficult? It sure was. I eventually earned several college degrees and got myself out of poverty.

What was my reward for all of that? Now I get to pay nearly half of what I earn and I am forced to watch as others post videos of themselves using my tax dollars to buy soda, steak, and lobster.

When I am watching those videos, a part of me is excited, thinking of how much fun it will be to watch them starve when it all comes crashing down. Then reality hits, and I think of how far I will fall as well.

By Divemedic, ago

Kangaroos Stealing Money

I once lived near a school zone with signs posted that read “School Zone. Speed Limit 20 mph when children present” and I thought it was too vague. The way that the sign was worded, a child nearby at 2 am on Christmas morning would trigger the 20 mph speed limit.

That’s the problem that many drivers have in Florida since a new law allowing traffic cameras to enforce school zones went into effect. The signs read “School Zone Speed Limit 20 mph when flashing,” but there is no requirement for the light to actually be flashing in order for a driver to get a ticket. In fact, the sign doesn’t even have to have a light on it.

But Weaver doesn’t dispute that it was him behind the wheel or that he was going over the 20 mph zone limit, he believes the violation was issued to him in error.

“I’m not happy, I’m not happy,” he said.

That’s because what the camera doesn’t show is the speed limit sign that’s posted warning drivers that the speed limit is 20 mph “when flashing,” wasn’t flashing at the time.

In fact, it can’t.

“There’s not a device that would afford a light to flash because they did not attach a lighting system or flashing system to this particular post,” he explained.

People are contesting the fines, but the judges are upholding them 90% of the time. The judges are claiming that the law says the sign has to either have times that the speed limit is in effect, or it has to have the words “When flashing,” but showing a complete lack of sense, the same judges claim that their hands are tied because the law doesn’t require that the lights be flashing, or even present.

A single company called RedSpeed is responsible for the cameras. So far, the company’s cameras have written half a million tickets. About 3,000 of them have been contested, and only 300 of them have been dismissed. Since the fine is $100 and the company gets 20% of it, it’s quite a lucrative shakedown.

The officers of the corporation? They are retired cops. One of them (a retired assistant police chief of Miami Beach) had this to say:

“I’m sympathetic with the ‘I didn’t understand the signage in the school zone.’ I’m sympathetic to that, but we have to implement and install in compliance with whatever [the Florida Department of Transportation] and the state tell us,” De La Espriella said.

When asked if he believes the law, as it’s written right now, is fair to drivers, he responded, “I think it’s an excellent law.”

I bet you do, you corrupt piece of shit. Where does the law say to entrap people by putting “when flashing” on the sign, but having no flashing light? We all know that isn’t what the law intended, you weasel. I am ready to vote against every single proposed law or politician who wants to make a law favoring any cop. I am on the verge of agreeing with the “defund the police” assholes.

Don’t forget that Miami Beach is where open carriers were arrested and won a lawsuit for stopping people who weren’t breaking the law.

If one of those signs in your area happens to get vandalized or destroyed in the middle of the night, you didn’t see shit.

By Divemedic, ago

Anchor Babies

Let’s just, for the sake of discussion, assume that birthright citizenship is actually the law. That doesn’t mean that any woman who gets creampied and pregnant before she sneaks over the border to have her child gets to stay. She isn’t the citizen, her child is. So when I see a video like the one discussed below, I have zero sympathy. She is getting deported. Her child can stay. If she wants to take the child with her, she can.

Her and her accomplice are caught stealing more than six thousand dollars in merchandise from all over the state of Florida. The police tell them that they are to be deported. One of them replies with, “You can’t deport me. I have a son who is American.”

Wrong. Your son is American. You are not. Get the fuck out.

By Divemedic, ago

Property Taxes Again

Governor DeSantis is pushing to have a ballot initiative on Florida’s 2026 ballot. The initiative would be to eliminate property taxes.

Those who oppose this claim that counties, school boards, and other government entities rely on this to provide essential services. That’s a load of crap. On average, counties only rely upon property taxes for 18% of their expenditures. Of course, if you ask the counties, they play a bit of a shell game with the facts:

“If you want to get it from sales tax, well, it’s really going to disproportionately hurt lower income,” Kroll said.

Each year Kroll’s offices collect more than $700 million from property taxes, he said.

“The majority of it goes to the school board that that’s about $248 million,” Kroll said.

The remaining revenue goes to the Seminole County Board of Commissioners and Kroll said they use most of that money to fund the budgets for the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office and Fire Rescue.

  • It isn’t going to disproportionately affect lower income. See, lower income will buy less stuff, so they will pay less in taxes. If a person spends ten times as much, they will pay 10 times more in taxes. That’s how proportionality works. What they really mean is that the poor are now paying nothing, while those who aren’t poor are paying for bullshit that isn’t necessary. There are so many carve outs and exemptions, that nearly half of the people in my small town pay NOTHING in property taxes. More on that in a minute.
  • Don’t look now, but $248 million isn’t most of $700 million
  • The Seminole county school board has an annual budget of just over $1 billion. Only 1 in 3 households in Florida has a school aged child, yet we are each paying thousands to send those kids to school, even though education is a giant failure. It’s a huge drain of resources.

Seminole County’s proposed 2025 budget is $1.2 billion, which includes a potential property tax increase for 2025. That amount also doesn’t include the money that goes to the school board, because that is a different budget. In fact, they are increasing the milage rates for property taxes by 10% over 2024 levels, as well as increasing the county gas tax from 6 cents to 11 cents per gallon, and increasing taxes on electric, cable, and telephone.

With property values climbing, there is no need to raise taxes, but they do like them some tax and spend. Government officials always like to blame the services that are popular for tax increases, even though there is plenty of room to cut other, unneeded services. People don’t want to see the fire department cut, so they fund things like free needles for drug addicted transgender unwed mothers, then cry poor when there is no money left for the fire department.

Let’s take a look at the Seminole County Sheriff’s budget: There is plenty of waste here. The SWAT team has 20 members, and spends $4.5 million a year on it. That is a lot of money. Perhaps there is some room for cuts there. The sheriff’s office is paid $4.4 million per year to provide school resource officers to Seminole county schools, but actually providing those officers costs the Sheriff’s office $9.9 million per year. The cheaper way to go is to have the schools participate in the Guardian program, allowing teachers who volunteer to go through the training to be armed at school. Most counties in Florida who are part of the Guardian program accept the grant money, but then pay cops to fill the roles while not allowing teachers to participate. It’s a HUGE waste of money to have cops there when so many teachers would do it for free. Then they are spending all of that cash, only to find out that school resource officers aren’t required to do a damned thing if, God forbid, there actually IS a shooting at their school.

I pay over $6,000 a year in property taxes. 28 percent of that goes to the county, another 33 percent to the town, 31 percent to the school board, and the remainder to police, fire, EMS, hospital, and the water authority.

Overall, the loss of property tax revenue would mean that government agencies would need to get rid of some luxury items and perhaps learn to stop wasting money. If I could vote more than once to get rid of property taxes, I would.

By Divemedic, ago

Why I Remain Opposed to the Death Penalty

I am in favor of the death penalty in theory, but after seeing the innocence project and the Duke Lacrosse case, I am of the opinion that our legal system is too corrupt to ensure that we are not executing the innocent. I first made this post 13 years ago:

Maurice Patterson was convicted of murder in 2002 for a fight where the victim was stabbed 14 times. Three people witnessed the fight, fleetingly and in the dark, and a fourth witness claimed to have seen a man with blood on his hand hiding from the police. All four witnesses identified Maurice Patterson in a live lineup weeks after the attack,
but they only testified regarding these identifications after being threatened with Contempt of Court.

A bloody knife was found near the scene and sent to Orchid Cellmark for DNA testing. Test results excluded Patterson, indicating a mixture of the victim’s profile and an unknown profile. Comparison to the State CODIS DNA database revealed that the unknown profile belonged to a drug addict with a history of violence. Though the State Police Forensic Science Center had been notified that the sample included the victim’s blood, this information was never directly communicated to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors continued with the case against Patterson despite the exculpatory results.

Robert Wilcoxson and Kenneth Kagonyera served almost 10 years in North Carolina prisons for a murder they didn’t commit before a three-judge panel overturned their convictions on September 22, 2011, based on DNA evidence proving innocence.

In this case, a man was killed during a home invasion, and police managed to secure confessions from the two defendants. Three bandanas and two pairs of gloves were located on the side of the road near the Bowman residence and were collected by deputies as evidence in the case. The bandanas and gloves found near the crime scene
were submitted for pre-trial DNA testing. Results excluded all six co-defendants, however this information was never turned over to Kagonyera or Wilcoxson’s attorneys.

There was the Duke Lacrosse case, where a woman accused a Lacrosse team of gang rape. Dennis Nifong, the state prosecutor, had DNA test results in his possession that showed the team was innocent. He didn’t disclose the existence of this evidence to the defense team.

Sure, we have DNA and such, but when the system is so corrupt that exculpatory evidence is “lost” or buried, we are executing the innocent. Knowingly allowing a flawed and corrupt system to kill people makes our entire society guilty of murder. I just can’t support giving the government the power to decide who lives and who dies. Even if the law were to be changed to punish crooked prosecutors, it will never be used. For that reason, I just can’t get behind the death penalty.

By Divemedic, ago

Fire Departments

I promised a post on fire departments, and here it is. Fire departments are a necessary government service, and no, they aren’t socialism. Some people wrongly believe that anything the government does is socialism, and they are retards for thinking that.

Whether or not it is worth having a fire department, what kind (volunteer or career), and how much service it will offer is something that is largely dependent on the particulars of each community.

It costs a bit over $2 million per year, per fire station to maintain a career fire department. There need to be enough stations so that all houses are within 5 miles or less of a fire station. A small city of 100,000 people that is about 20 square miles in size will cost you about $10 million a year. For that price, you will get a fire department with an ISO rating of 1, and this will save big money on fire insurance for commercial and industrial structures. A town this size will have 100 or so residential and 3 or 4 commercial/industrial fires per year.

A volunteer department covering 100 homes and a population of 500 or so will cost about $50,000 a year. If they have one or two fires a year, it’s worth it.

The average total fire loss in the US for a fire is about $85,000. (Direct losses about $25,000, the rest indirect losses) If your community is small enough that it only has 1 fire a year on average, it doesn’t make sense to have an expensive paid department.

Any department with an ISO rating over a 4 is spending a large amount of money to defend commercial properties. Residential property and their insurance rates don’t really benefit from a department better than a 4.

So my opinion is this:

An area that is mostly rural with low density doesn’t need much in the way of a department, with the largest benefit being a reduction in insurance rates. A volunteer or part-paid system will likely do well. Still, running such a department costs money, and that will likely mean taxes to pay for at least a portion of it.

A smallish city will benefit from a more expensive department, but the largest beneficiaries will be commercial real estate. In those cases, fire fees for commercial property should be what pays for the more expensive ISO 1 through 3 department.

In many cases, it is cheaper to reimburse those who lose a home than it is to pay big money for a fire department. Paying $5 million a year to a department that puts out less than 30 fires a year is a waste of money. It would be more cost effective for that district to be self insured.

By Divemedic, ago