The Tax "Rebate" Is Voter Manipulation

In June, 2008 Americans are due to receive tax rebates whether they paid taxes or not. This is what I think of it.

Do you like being manipulated? That is what this tax rebate is. It is pure manipulation of the voting public being passed off as economic stimulus.

Guess what? The economy doesn't need a freaking stimulus. All this mortgage "turmoil" that we are seeing is nothing more than a market correction. Unemployment hasn't shot up, hourly earnings are up $0.04, Fuel is hovering around $2.70 and $3.00, and industrial productivity is up 1.8% (Bureau of Labor)! What signs are there that America needs an economic stimulus?

What signs are there that this is a vote gathering ruse and not a strong economic savior? Many.

1. The estimated cost of the "rebate" is 150 billion dollars. The only way that 150 billion dollars is going to make a difference in our economy is if everyone spends it. Is everyone going to spend it? No. I am not. I save my extra money. For some reason I don't feel like sacrificing any part of my financial stability so this country can have its stimulus.

The 150 billion would be much better spent on infrastructure that would increase productivity, generate jobs, and otherwise create tangible economic growth.

It's not like we have an extra 150 billion laying around anyways. Which leads me to my second point.

2. Inflation. The government did not cut 150 billion in spending so they could "give" this money back to the taxpayer. They are simply issuing more bonds and printing more money. So now that some of us are $300 or $600 dollars richer the value of our dollar has fallen that much more. The dollar is already getting crushed by the global economy and mass consumerism in America. Lets just print some more!

3. Wealth redistribution is a great subject to attract voters with. When poor people hear that they are getting the rich people's money they think it's great. If you make more than $150,000 you will not see a dime of this money. Granted if you make $150,000 you probably don't need an extra $300 but the fact of the matter is clear. IT'S FREAKING COMMUNISM! If the lower class get this rebate then there is no reason why the rich shouldn't. I think it's already been established that communism doesn't work and won't work. So stop encouraging the moron politicians who pander to the uneducated masses of America by voting for them. Republicans and Democrats.

P.S. Socialism (what Canada has) is simply a lesser form of communism and doesn't work either from an economic standpoint. However much the poor love free medical, it doesn't make for a strong economic base.

4. The fact that the lower class get the rebate and the upper class doesn't only proves my point that it's only for votes. This is an economic stimulus package right? So if a person who make $150,000 spends $300 it should have the same effect on the economy as a lower income person. Right? Nay, the richer person would probably help the economy even more because they have a proven record of spending their money so they get a greater return. But it does not get to be so. The upper class is a very small minority. They have very little voting influence other than their dollars. Plus, they tend to vote for republicans because republicans tend to be more business friendly. So why would a *cough* democrat *cough* politician bother with a true, fair, economic stimulus package when they can pander to the much larger and gullible lower class and get votes at the same time? It's just a game. And they are playing with our money.

5. The tax "rebate" is not a rebate at all. It's simply a forward on your taxes for next year. You get to report an extra $300 or $600 in income next year. If anything it's like a advance on your tax rebate that you get taxed twice on.

6. Why do people feel so good about the government taking to much money and then giving some back? Why don't we demand that taxes simply be lowered? The advantages are huge:

• The government doesn't get to borrow your money tax free till you get your refund.
• It would be a genuine economic stimulus boost. Less money going to taxes equals more money being spent more precisely in the economy.
• It would force the government cut excess spending and start working on the national debt (Anybody else think it's odd that a 150 billion dollar "stimulus" package is hailed as huge but our enormous national debt is hardly mentioned?).

So here is what I propose. Get your $300 dollar rebate (or more if you are married and have kids) and enjoy it however you please. Spend it, save it, burn it, whatever. But when you hear some moron singing the peachy praises of Pelosi for "empowering" the lower class or even for just padding their wallet, remind said moron that they are being kept in that class by that same "empowerment". Sure, you may be able to go buy an Xbox or some toy, but is it really going to change anything?

Go here to discuss or leave a comment!

The Best Way To Build Good Credit

1. Pay all your bills on time and never let your credit card be charged more then 30% of your limit. Even if you have to pay it off multiple times a month. 

2. Get some online monitering system. It can be through a bank, mint.com, or anything. Just so you can see where your finances are. I recommend mint.com but some people have problems with having finances on the internet. Understandable. Just be informed. 

3. Open up some lines of credit and try to be diverse. Department store credit cards are great when you are starting out but if your are really serious about great credit then you need to have a diversified portfolio of credit. credit cards, car payments, personal loans, etc are great ways to build that credit portfolio. 

4. Use someone else's credit. Ask them to add you as an authorized user. This will give you all their payment history for that card. :D

5. Don't get yourself into a lot of debt. A high debt to income ratio is a sure sign of irresponsibility and a lender won't like that. 

To better understand how lending works I suggest you start a Prosper.com account and do some of your own. Now that is a real eye opener. 

Buffalo 500 GB External Hard Drive Review HD-HS500U2

Cheap and quality don't go in the same sentence. You don't say "I love the cheap quality of this external hard drive." You just don't do it. Except if you have a Buffalo 500 GB External Hard Drive. Then you would say "I love the cheapness of this quality hard drive." Smiling of course.

Simply put it is great value for money. The build quality is good, the USB speed it good, the ease of use is spectacular. All I did was plug it in and my set up a backup plan and my HD was busy making babies of all my files.

This is also a great external hard drive for a server or your network. It's not that great if you store all your digital backups in your bedroom. Why?

Cause it's loud. Don't buy this hard drive if you sleep on, next to, parallel, or divergent to your computer. If your computer decides it wants a new "it" and starts backing up your are sure to wake up with two thoughts running through your head. "Where is my hammer and where is my computer?" Not really safe if your know what I mean. The fan is ok but when the drive makes that loud clicking noise as it writes data it can drive you up a wall.

Once the initial backup is done and you only periodically have to put stuff on the drive it becomes significantly less annoying.

Despite the noise I like my hard drive. It backs my computer up by itself, it was cheap, it works with both Mac and Windows, and I didn't have to do any trouble shooting.

It just worked.

Go here to view the buffalo hard drives on Amazon.

How To Buy A House When You Are Young

I just graduated from highschool. I have had a credit card for 4 months. I am going to buy a house. My parents are not cosigning. How?

1. Get some of your parent's credit. Ask them to add you to, at the most, three credit cards as an authorized user. You don't actually have to have one of their credit cards to use but all that payment history will go on your credit record and give you a better score.

2. Take care of your credit. Don't miss payments, max out your card (30% is optimal), or open up to many accounts.

3. Go to your favorite bank and get a CD for any amount of spare cash you have. Then get a personal loan for the same amount and secure it with the CD. This gives you a line of credit with the credit bureau (important) and the CD helps pay off the interest.

Since three lines of credit are optimal for getting a good score you can duplicate this process. Get a CD, borrow, go to another bank, get a CD, borrow against it, go to another bank, get a CD, and borrow against it. That will give you three lines of credit. The bureaus like seeing that.

Note: This method must be done in advance of the house and must be fully paid off. Don't pay off this loan in less then a year, otherwise the credit bureau won't recognize it.

4. Get a secured credit card. It's basically a debit card but the credit bureaus see it as a line of credit.

5. Check with a local real estate agent and see if there are any government grants for first time home buyers. Here in Idaho I can get up to $20,000 for my downpayment. Free. Of course there are some stipulations. You can't rent the house out and for every year that you occupy the house your obligation to pay the grant back is reduced 20%. So it's really more like an interest free loan that turns into free money if you live in the house long enough.

You will also get a better interest rate with the government program.

6. If you are in debt or need to go into debt then try to keep your down payment greater than half the loan value. If you already have the debt work hard to get on the "greater then half" portion of the loan.

Remember. Credit card companies don't want to see use of credit as much as they want to see good management of credit (i.e. don't max out your credit cards).

The best way to qualify for government aid when getting a house is to have an income less then $48,000 and have a very low (read non-existent) debt to income ratio.

If Microsoft Bought Yahoo and Google Bought Ebay...

This is what is going on in this picture.

Yahoo shareholders: *seductive* "Lets pretend we are interested in being bought."

Ebay: *indignant* "The next one to screw with me and my Paypal gets the bullet!"

Google: *Hungry gurgling* "Which one first?"

Bill Gates: *frantic* "I'll pay anything to make Microsoft competitive! $40 Billion? you got it!"

Skype: "Getting money out of my users is like drinking out of a salt lick."

Ok. Not really. But there are some interesting potential corporate combinations coming up.

A buyout of Yahoo by Microsoft would be a massive blow to Google and help consolidate Microsoft's tentative position in the search industry. Not to mention giving Microsoft access to the Yahoo faithful.

But if Google got it's paws on Ebay that would give it impressive control of a very loyal user base and a fantastic payment system.

Then if someone could figure a way to turn Skype into a cash cow to fund these ventures...

Microsoft doesn't exactly have a great track record of making huge waves with aquired companies. In fact, I have wondered just what kind of acquisition it would take to put Microsoft ahead at something other then operating systems.

Mac Security App Keeps Your Mac Safe At The Coffee Shop

I leave my computer everywhere now. Just to see if someone will try to steal it. Of course there is a method to my madness. I have iAlertu.

iAlertu is perfect for those frustrating moments in the coffee shop when you need to relieve yourself in the facilities but don't want to pack up the collage of paraphernalia you have spread to and fro. You set the alarm and walk away care free, all the while hoping someone gets frisky with the lappy so you can see it in action.

The way it works is to use the built in movement sensor or any user input to alert anybody nearby that someone is doing something they are not supposed to. A loud alarm sounds for up to 2 minutes, the built in iSight camera snaps a photo of the offender and emails it to you, the computer locks down, and the screen pulses white and black. A tasteful screensaver informs any criminals pondering their flight with your Mac that chaos shall ensue if they do so dare.

The movement sensor can be dialed to whatever sensitivity you choose so that a innocent brush will not trigger the collective gazes of the room.

A password is required to disable the alarm. However, an intelligent thief (Ok, ok. Maybe even a dolt) can push the power button for 5 seconds and it's lights out.

Obviously this alarm only works to deter a thief once the alarm has been triggered. Don't expect the burglar to care about the racket he is carrying if you leave your lappy where no one can inquire about the noise.

Click here to check it out!

iAlertu in action.

Yahoo Says "Nuts to you Microsoft!"

Do you think Yahoo is worth $31 a share?

That would be:

1.34 billion times 31 = forty-one billion five hundred forty million

That is 41,540,000,000 Dollars.

Would you pay $41 Billion dollars for Yahoo? That would most likely be quite a bargain. At least that is what Yahoo is saying, who is currently trading at $28, up from $19 on January 31st, 2008.

Microsoft offered Yahoo $31 a share for the company. A memo was issued to Yahoo employees that no decision had been made at this point.

It is completely likely that Yahoo doesn't care if they are bought out and they simply want to jack up the offer price by getting Google and Microsoft into a bidding war. It seems far more likely that a final price would be around $45 per share. If Google does get into bidding war expect a sharp increase in prices.

This is probably a great opportunity for a short term trade. Of course, with all short term trades, trade on your own wisdom, not on mine.

Quit it all right now

If you are as disorganized as I am then you often have a lot of programs open at all times. Going through all of you apps to shut them down can be slow and frustrating if you need to be shutting down your Mac quickly.

But there is a solution. Qall.

Qall does one thing. Mazzive shut downs. Everything gets shut down right now. Of course if you need to save your Pages document or have multiple tabs blasting away in Safari you can still take the appropriate measures to ensure their safety.

It takes me about 2 seconds to shut down my mac, slip it in it's case, and be on my way.

Once again in case you missed it: Qall.

Update: I email the developer of Qall, Nobuatsu Sekine, and asked if Qall could damage any part of the system by shutting down a program improperly. Here is the answer

Is Qall safe for programs? Is the way that it shuts things down safe for the program and your computer?

QaLL quits the applications in the proper way that Mac OS X provides,

so I believe it's safe for the standard applications.

For example, if the TextEdit has unsaved document,

it shows the alert and doesn't quit.

In other words, QaLL doesn't force quitting,

just asks the target applications to quit in their own way.

There it is. Straight from the horse's ,err, keyboard?

Importing .AVI files into iTunes

Movie2iTunes has released a niftly small app for Macintosh that imports .AVI movies into iTunes effortlessly. I could not think of a better way to do this.

All you do is drag the desired movies for importing and drop them into the Movie2iTunes icon. The app does the rest. Next thing your know is your movies are in iTunes. I love it that you can do multiple movies at a time.

Click here to be magically transported to their internet tube porthole.

UPDATE: Well I guess I am behind the curve. Once of the astute readers has pointed out that Movie2iTunes doesn't actually convert the .avi's when it adds them. So you can't sync the movies to your iPod. 

iSquint is the solution. You get to convert and put it on the iPod. 

We Have A Forum!

After intense negotiations with buydomains.com we have acquired Actuation.com! The blog is joining forces with the forum for more complete coverage of our topics. 

We are hoping to encourage more reader participation with this blog and eventually recruit readers to contribute and share earning from advertising. 

Gone Are The Textbooks! Enter The Digital Age!

Amazon has rung the death bell for text books with the introduction of the Kindle, a portable book reader, it is now possible to have all you books on a simple and easily portable device.

The Kindle uses integrated Wifi to connect with local networks or if none of those can be found then the free Sprint Data Network goes into action. Since nothing in life is free Amazon picks up the bill for any use of the Sprint Network. They can afford it to since you will be buying your digital books from them.

You can buy books, subscribe to newspapers and magazines, and access Wikipedia. It's an information hub!

Electronic paper has been in the works for several years now and Amazon is one of the first to begin utilizing it. The screen is very unlike a computer screen. Where reading text on a computer screen can be hard on the eyes the electronic paper is no worse then paper. And since the font size can be manipulated it's easy to adjust for your eyes.

I have always been skeptical of products that used book as a launching platform for sales because I have always seen books as being obsolete. Just as libraries are being used less and less. Why travel to get the info when it's all on the internet? The Kindle bridges the gap between books (compact information) and modern technology. It moves every portion of it's market forward.

Amazon has now opened up a market to offer digital versions of textbooks for students at a fraction of the cost of normal text books. All that is needed is a kindle and all text books can be easily carried.

The Kindle may not be the most amazing piece of hardware to be sold this year but it does represent a huge step forward in eliminating paper books; and more importantly, the waste.

To take a look at the Kindle on Amazon click here.