A simple idea for increased government revenue...ONLINE POKER!!

Legalize online poker.  The end.  Nothing can fix our national debt problem overnight, but the prohibition of online poker isn't helping either.  The actual numbers are huge, $30 billion dollars were gambled last year, 2.5 million players alone just in the US.  The biggest website and the only one I will support, Poker Stars, had $1.4 billion in total revenue last year, with over $500 million in reported profits.  The total gaming revenue for Las Vegas' 23 strip casinos was $4.68 billion, with the average casino earning just $203 million.  The average casino total revenue was $526 million, and that's including food, beverage, and rooms. 

Clearly online poker is more lucrative than the best casinos Las Vegas has to offer, and common sense would tell me it's only been targeted because someone wasn't getting their "fair share".  I would like to have hope, because of the bill Rep Joe Barton has proposed to legalize online poker, but there has been a bill proposed every year since 2007.  As far as I can tell, no bill has actually hit the floor for a vote.  Even so, the bill the Rep Barton is proposing falls far short of actually legalizing online poker.  Sometimes, something is better than nothing, but I don't think this is one of those times.  As I understand it, the bill states only American players would be allowed to play against other American players.  Also any state would be able to opt out, so likely not all 50 states would even be involved.  Anyone who has spent more than 10 hours playing online poker, would know some of the worst players come from overseas, more specifically Russia(and drunken Aussies). 

So as Congress argues over the debt limit and banning light bulbs, here's one bill they should just pass through without thinking twice, better known as the Nancy Pelosi process.

The really important stuff... light bulbs...

An easily overlooked story in the middle of national debt talks, and two lockouts in professional sports, is that the incandescent light bulb is going to be banned starting in 2012.  While it is easy to throw Energy Secretary Steven Chu under the bus for his comments, this proposal actually got started under President Bush's watch.

Steven Chu:   “We are taking away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money”

Maybe Mr. Chu I like wasting my own money, although my real problem with this, is the government telling me what I can and can't do.  As an online poker player who had to deal with black Friday, I know how inconvenient it is to have the government involved in your home life.  It's easy to think, who cares its just a light bulb, but I think this opens the door for other things to be banned.  Where would it stop, too much cell phone use can lead to cancer, should the government ban those?  What about sun bathing, too much of that could lead to skin cancer.  The really sad part is  incandescent light bulb can't lead to cancer, but compact fluorescent light bulbs(CFL's... not typing that again) have mercury in them.  It may be a small amount of mercury, but any mercury is extremely dangerous and poisonous. So if you break one of these light bulbs, please call poison control right away, or Steven Chu.

It shouldn't be up the government to tell us what to do in our everyday life, good choices and bad choices are a fact of life.  The more we let them restrict, the more they will continue to do it.

Casey Anthony sticks it to the system... while others get the opposite

This is not another Casey Anthony blog, but knowing that she likely had something to do with her own child's death, and is only going to spend 3 years in jail, will make you sick when I tell you about these other offenses.  The first is an 18 year old, Tyell Morton, who brought a blow up doll(not a bomb, just inflatable) to his school, on the last day of his senior year as a prank.  Now he is facing felony charges and a possible 8 years in prison, on charges of disorderly conduct(a misdemeanor) and the felony charge of institutional criminal mischief.  The prosecutor claims he won't be seeking a prison sentence, but stands by the charges.  I fail to see, how not seeking a prison sentence, and still giving Tyell a felony for a harmless prank is the "right thing" to do.  It should be up the school to discipline him, such as not letting him walk for graduation, but possible jail time and having to explain to every employer for the rest of your life why you got a felony for a blow up doll is beyond my understanding.(Here's his facebook page, like it, and his own webpage)

The second case, while not involving a felony charge is equally as disturbing.  Ikenna Njoku, received a rebate check from the IRS, for being a first time home buyer.  But because he had overdrawn his account, instead of directly depositing the check, chase paid off the fees and sent him another check.  So when he finally received the check, he took it back to chase, keep in mind the check was written by chase, and because they didn't believe him he got arrested for forgery, a felony.  So they threw him in jail on Thursday, then on Friday, chase realized they had screwed up, and left a message, yes a voice mail on the county police line, and therefore he had to spend the rest of the weekend in jail.  So in all he spent 5 days in jail, but here's the kicker, because of it, he lost his job, and had his car towed to the impound lot.  When he couldn't pay the fee to get the car released, his car was AUCTIONED off.  This happened in June of 2010, and just YESTERDAY, a year later, Chase decided to apologize.  Here's the statement from chase:

"This is a very unfortunate and unusual situation," wrote Darcy Donahoe-Wilmot of Chase Public Relations. "We apologize to Mr. Njoku and deeply regret what happened to him. We are working quickly to understand all the details so we can reach a fair resolution."

Really?  After a year, that's the best you can do Chase?  Pathetic and inexcusable.

So while Casey Anthony walks free next week, it's these other stories that make me wonder, why can't they get the same media attention she got.  Is it because of race? Or is our MSM just that sad, they would rather get their kicks making someone famous who deserves nothing of the sort.  Here's a song from a friend who agrees.

Mindless Government Waste... Just the tip of the Iceberg

An Iceberg that isn't being affected by global warming, would be that of the government waste.  As we watch the news over the next month about the battle over raising the debt limit and which programs to cut or not, keep in mind some of these wonderful government programs that aren't in the MSM news.

"You've probably heard of shrimp on the barbie, but what about shrimp on a treadmill?
The National Science Foundation has, and it spent $500,000 of taxpayer money researching it. It's not entirely clear what this research hoped to establish. "

"It's not just shrimp on a treadmill. The foundation spent $1.5 million to create a robot that can fold laundry. But before you try to buy one to save some time, consider that it takes the robot 25 minutes to fold a single towel. "

"The list goes on. Lots of people love to use FarmVille on Facebook, but lots of people probably don't love the government's spending $300,000 in taxpayer money to study whether it helps build personal relationships. "

"The National Science Foundation has its headquarters in Arlington, Va., just across the river from Washington, D.C., a building it pays $19 million a year to rent. But now that the 20-year lease is nearly up, it has decided that it is time to move; into a new building that will cost $26 million annually to rent. "

I'm clearly in the wrong business, I need to buy land and sell it to the government.  $19 million a year to rent??  That must be some property, I hope it comes with a happy ending, just not for the American taxpayer.


"We have 12 different agencies doing pure research, and we're duplicating and we're not sharing the information across and it's siloed," he said.

In response to Coburn's report, the National Science Foundation launched a vigorous defense of its projects. Agency officials said they "have advanced the frontiers of science and engineering, improved Americans' lives, and provided the foundations for countless new industries and jobs."

You can read the full article here.

I can attest to this, my life has dramatically improved since I found out they were testing shrimp on a treadmill, just don't ask me for specific examples how.


"A federal audit reveals that the U.S. government’s dysfunctional system for annually dispersing hundreds of billions of dollars in grants lacks transparency and is rife with waste, fraud and abuse.  

As a result, federal agencies reported an estimated $125.4 billion in “improper payments” for fiscal year 2010 alone. Just what taxpayers wanted to hear in the midst of record-high unemployment and a daunting $14 trillion national debt."

"Grants account for one-fifth of federal spending yet the awards process is a disaster and the government doesn’t even bother to monitor if the money is being spent properly, according to a report issued this week by the investigative arm of congress, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO)."
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11773t.pdf (extremely long boring article on the grant waste)

I wonder if they have a website to sign up for "improper payments", I sure could use a few of those. Update- they don't, I googled it.

"This year Obama’s Labor Department also dished out $76 million in grants to give low-income juvenile delinquents a “second chance” by helping them get high school diplomas and jobs. The Department of Health recently issued more than $100 million in Obamacare grants to “reduce health disparities” between minorities and whites and the Department of Agriculture has distributed millions to revolutionize the inner city diet by providing affordable, healthy foods in poor neighborhoods."
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2011/may/76-mil-give-poor-juvenile-delinquents-second-chance

It's all good, pay no attention to the 9.1 unemployment rate, or the 24 million people underemployed(part-time or less), because America's juvenile delinquents are going to save our country.

"The program, the Federal Employees’ Compensation Act [FECA], which the government launched in 1916, is supposed to cover lost wages for federal employees who suffer on-the-job injuries.

But many federal workers stay on the program for decades, well into their retirement. Those federal workers on disability can get nearly 75% of their salary tax-free for the rest of their life if they have one dependent, with annual cost of living adjustments.

That compares to regular federal retirees with 30 years of service who get much less, 56% of their gross wages, which is taxable. “FECA has no limits on the amount of time spent in the program or the amount of money given to recipients,” the Senator notes in her statement, and adds: “FECA has no caps or cut-off periods, which is why there are reported cases of recipients in their 90s and 100s still receiving workers' compensation benefits.“

Stunningly, the program does not require regular third-party certifications of continued need for payments, which “expose the FECA program to possible fraud,” the Senator, ranking member on the Senate Homeland Security panel, said in her letter to the GAO."

 

Full article here.

 

If I had only known, when I got in my car accident, if I was working for the government, I would never had to work again. 

 

So while the WCW like pro wrestling continues on Capital Hill, as they fight over medicare, SS, and our national security.  I would like to offer my services to the government to help weed out the obnoxious waste, for a smooth $500K per year, clearly a bargin.

Blame the media

So much outrage over the Casey Anthony verdict, and I would like to think it's because a young child is still dead and we have no one to blame.  But I would like to take a different point of view.  I blame the media, all of them, every channel.  Because for 2 months that's all we have heard, is she is guilty, she has to be guilty.  No one has ever given us the other side of the story, well except Geraldo Rivera, but who actually watches him(ok I did).  Seriously though, the media never let us think anything other than she has to be guilty.  Maybe she is, but just maybe it was an accident.  Am I condoning her for lying and taking a month to tell anyone that her baby died, no of course not.  But for one second put yourself in her shoes, your young, and your baby dies because of an accident, and more than likely your own neglect.  Are you really 100% sure you would report it as soon as it happened? What if you found her an hour after it happened, and there was no way she could be revived.  Am I really to believe that everyone that is outraged would turn themselves in and let the "judicial process" take place? 

So I blame the media, because in the court of public opinion Casey was found guilty 3 years ago.  But in America public opinion and jury opinion are not the same.  If the jury says she isn't guilty, then I will listen to the jury.  Because as 2Pac would say, only God can judge her.  If she did it, she has to live with it, and if she didn't she still has to live with that, either way she will live with guilt for the rest of her life.

My take on Global Warming

I am certainly no scientist, but I would like to think I have the ability to use common sense and logic, so here goes.  Ever notice how if you watch one of these shows, that believes global warming is about to end the world, and they show "compelling" evidence of glaciers melting.  Do you notice that the water around the glacier are not ice?  Do you think it's possible they only show the glacier's melting when it's "summer" in the Arctic?  I know it's been a long time since I was in school, but I do remember being taught that when it is above 32 degrees, ice melts, or at least doesn't freeze anymore.  So you will have to excuse me if I don't find glaciers melting, when the temperature is above 32 degrees, to be hard facts for global warming.  And since, most of these shows don't actually show real factual numbers of the glaciers decreasing, my common sense tells me they are only showing the side of the argument that fits their story.

Another major talking point for global warming is Co2 levels, and honestly I don't have the numbers to show what they actually are, instead I would like to use common sense.  Anyone ever hear of  photosynthesis, probably right?  It's the process in which plant life breathes in carbon dioxide, and releases oxygen back into the air.  Using common sense, isn't it possible that plant life helps reduce the carbon levels that we are told are causing global warming?  I wouldn't necessarily know because when you listen to Al Gore talk about global warming, somehow that topic doesn't come up.

These are just two of my opinions on why global warming doesn't make sense to me, but being that I'm not a scientist, your probably thinking, well what does he know anyways.  So let me use some factual evidence from wikipedia.

  "Carbon dioxide is essential to photosynthesis in plants and other photoautotrophs, and is also a prominent greenhouse gas. Despite its relatively small overall concentration in the atmosphere, CO₂ is an important component of Earth's atmosphere because it absorbs and emits infrared radiation at wavelengths of 4.26 µm (asymmetric stretching vibrational mode) and 14.99 µm (bending vibrational mode), thereby playing a role in the greenhouse effect.^[3] The present level is higher than at any time during the last 800 thousand years,^[4] and likely higher than in the past 20 million years."<sup>[5]

Typical in the global warming argument, that you have two sides of the story contradicting the other.  In one sentence it says carbon dioxide is important to the earth, and it has a very small overall concentration.  At the end of the statement, it tells you that it's higher than it's ever been in the past 800 thousand years.  So which is it?  I would believe both to be true, but the first part is the more important part of the story, that you normally don't hear.


"The Earth's oceans contain a huge amount of carbon dioxide in the form of bicarbonate and carbonate ions — much more than the amount in the atmosphere. The bicarbonate is produced in reactions between rock, water, and carbon dioxide. One example is the dissolution of calcium carbonate:</sup>

CaCO₃ + CO₂ + H₂O ⇌ Ca²⁺ + 2 HCO− 3

Reactions like this tend to buffer changes in atmospheric CO₂. Since the right-hand side of the reaction produces an acidic compound, adding CO₂ on the left-hand side decreases the pH of sea water, a process which has been termed ocean acidification. Reactions between carbon dioxide and non-carbonate rocks also add bicarbonate to the seas. This can later undergo the reverse of the above reaction to form carbonate rocks, releasing half of the bicarbonate as CO₂. Over hundreds of millions of years this has produced huge quantities of carbonate rocks.
Ultimately, most of the CO₂ emitted by human activities will dissolve in the ocean,^[26] however the rate at which the ocean will take it up in the future is less certain."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmosphere



Did wikipedia just say that most of the Co2 emitted by humans will dissolve??  Of course the rest of this page ignores that, and talks about how Co2 levels are so high they can't be reversed and global warming is upon us.  So what are to we believe wikipedia??  I think ultimately we don't know, but instead of saying that, they would rather use the evidence to further an agenda like pushing green energy sources.  So maybe global warming is real, maybe it isn't, I think that trying to better the earth we live in makes sense on any level.  But I think that the majority of people pushing the global warming theory(a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural, in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact), are generally just doing so to improve their bottom line, and not because they care so much about the earth and the enviroment.

Why pay attention?

When I was in school, history was always my favorite subject.  The farther away I got from school, the less I paid attention to politics.  I felt like, why would it matter if I paid attention, I am no one important.  Not to mention, I just assumed, the people in DC knew what they were doing, and would do the right things for the country.  Then April 15th happened, considered black Friday in the online poker world.  The DOJ decided to act on the UGEIA and enforce it by shutting down the 4 major online poker websites.  With my new found free time, I figured I better start paying attention, and find out the what and why of the shutdown. 

Since then, the mainstream media has basically ignored the poker shutdown, so I was forced, to pay attention to subjects, at the time I knew little about.  Between the debt crisis, the Arab spring, and the general state of politics today, I didn't know much.  But with the help of DVR, wikipedia, and even facebook, it didn't take long to get caught up.  Once I did, I certainly didn't like what I was seeing.  From my viewpoint, there's so many things wrong, I can't even begin to hit them all in one blog post.  After getting over my initial shock and depression of the online poker shutdown, I realized I had been sucked into politics.  Honestly, it's not nearly as boring as I thought for the 10+ years, but it doesn't bring much joy either.   

So why pay attention, to something you probably care about as much as I have for the last 10 years.  Because, no matter what your party, republican, democrat or independent.  I believe the time has to come to start holding our leaders more accountable.  And with the technology we have, it's incredibly easy to pay attention and get involved with out actually having to do much to change your normal routine.  Facebook and twitter are incredible tools at our disposal.  We no longer have to sit down and watch some boring 6:00 pm newscast, that by the end of it your probably on facebook anyways and not listening.  This blog is the beginning of me getting involved, and I challenge anyone who reads this, to get involved in your own way.  Follow your congressmen on facebook, like the page of your favorite news organization, or do whatever your supposed to do on twitter(I don't have it yet) to follow someone other than Anthony Weiner.