Brad's Tiny World » Late Breaking News

Environmentally Friendly Families

BradHart — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 22:16:42 +0000

Do you think you are environmentally friendly? Well not likely. How many kids do you have? How many kids do you plan on having? I hear every sort of answer here, but I must question your answer to the first few questions if you answer more than one. The hot topic of the moment is the looming energy crisis. Is it real or not? of course it is, even neocons doing fuzzy math should be able to figure out if we live longer and produce more children we have a growth in resources consumed. Even if they can’t rationalize it out on environmental concerns, surely at least one in their numbers can rationalize it into fiscal conservation. If anyone wants to save the environment and I mean truly save it, they should be advocating legitimate population control, by any and all means, along with energy conservation.

This doesn’t just mean brown, black, yellow skinned people in other countries either. This is something that must be advocated right here at home to white voting Americans. I don’t devalue the pleasure one gets from children, but like anything we have for pleasure there comes a point when enough is enough, just like the sex that produces them (or so I am told on that one). Sure, we will always have people who have no kids who help keep the population down, but any population growth is bad for the environment and the economy. if you want more than one child adopt, if you can afford to have one, you can afford to adopt.

Infill or Sprawl (eschatonblog.com)
Some Buildings Not Living Up to Green Label (nytimes.com)
Total Energy Concepts & V-Blox Recognizes Over 12 Companies for Going Green with Transient Voltage Surge Suppressors and Power Factor Correction Units (prweb.com)
Newest Green Stimulus Program: Cash for . . . Refrigerators? (treehugger.com)
Save the Earth, Don’t Have Kids? (takepart.com)

Spending Money You Should Be Saving

BradHart — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:39:01 +0000

We all do it and I for one would like to quit. It isn’t that I can actually save anything for very long, but the notion of having a few hundred dollars saved is rather nice. They say they want people to get off of welfare, but I am unsure how they ever plan on people ever being able to do that with the ass backwards way they look at money. If I save a few hundred dollar so I have an emergency fix the car fund they tell me my resources are too high and take away my benefits until I spend the money. Withdrawing the money isn’t good enough either, they want to see a detailed record of where it went. I suppose I could cheat the system like so many others but the costs of getting caught are really too high. Being a married white family we seem to be prime targets of investigation and internal audits already that I don’t see many other people in our county going through. It is almost as if they are saying as married white people there is no way we should need welfare because them good jobs are just waiting for us. Something is very wrong when I get flagged for an audit driving a twenty year old truck with 200k miles on it, the wife working part time and going to grad school full time, but the black woman down the street with no job, four kids dressed in the latest ghetto ware, and driving a tricked out four year old Hummer and has been on welfare since the birth of her thirteen year old has never been audited. We have been audited five times since Katy got hurt at work almost two years ago.

The scary thing is in some respects I am money savvy enough that I sometimes wonder if I really want to get off welfare. Katy had a decent job but no insurance before, but in the two years since she got hurt and lost the job I have had Medicaid’s free prescriptions and no copays or premium payments of my Medicare visits. I have felt better than I have in the last ten years. I no longer dread how much the next doctors visit is going to cost us and if I would be able to feed them reasonable well for that paycheck if I need prescription refills. I am angry too. Knowing I could feel well enough to go to work if I could afford my medical coverage is something that doesn’t sit well with me. Sure as shit though if I would go get a job making minimum wage and twenty hours a week both Katy and I would lose all our assistance and in less than a week I would be back to having excruciating joint pain, regular migraines, and my diabetes would be all out of whack again. Through those on me and a major bipolar swing would be on me for several months. Thanks but no thanks I prefer to be screwed up, rather than screwed over. Here is hoping in two years Katy can find a job with affordable insurance, or I start seeing some serious cash with my writing. The five hundred bucks for selling my first short story is great, but doesn’t go nearly far enough. Thank god one time payments aren’t considered part of our monthly income.

I bought more furniture for the house today and before any of my critics begin, we needed it and it was all thrift store purchased. I walked away with a vintage fifties table and chair set for twenty five bucks. The seats will have to be recovered and if I get the ambition will put new Formica down on the table assuming I can find anything as garish as the original. I also bought and refurbished a desk so Liam has some place to do his homework and can work on the computer where we can keep an eye on him. I am rather sad that he was ready for bed after dinner this evening I had been planning on reading him the first chapter of Mrs. Frisby tonight, another thrift store find. I don’t spend as much time as I would like to with him and I feel guilty about it, but there is only some much of him I can stand before I start yelling at him. I do my best to control my anger but he is a bipolar kid with OCD and I only have so much in the way of patience. I really do try, but I wonder if it is enough sometimes.

Miramichi’s economy could worsen: economist (cbc.ca)
Teamsters Strike Tool Maker Over Health Care (chicagoist.com)
Remembering the Man You Mourn (talkingpointsmemo.com)
President Obama is right: healthcare reform with a public option is a moral imperative (iflizwerequeen.com)

News Round Up 7-28-08

BradHart — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:46:42 +0000

Indian Police Raid American Ex-Pat:
Police raided the home of an American citizen living in Mumbai and
seized a computer from which an email claiming responsibility for an
attack that killed 45 was reportedly sent.

Homes Destroyed In Yosemite Wildfires:
Hot weather
hampered efforts to contain a fast-moving wildfire near an entrance to
Yosemite National Park that had already destroyed 12 homes and forced
the evacuation of nearly 200 others.

The DOJ Plays CYA:
WASHINGTON (AP) — A new Justice Department report concludes that politics
illegally influenced the hiring of career prosecutors and immigration
judges, and largely lays the blame on top aides to former Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales…. He knew nothing about this because he is as clueless as W!

Miles Driven In May Fell:
This includes the Labor Day Weekend. The high price of gas is finally doing the one bit of good it can cause. We still need to drive less though.

Credit Cards

BradHart — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 03:01:54 +0000

In this time of uncertainty during the holidays getting another credit card might be the furthest thing from your mind. Then again you maybe looking at the job that is about to be no more and know when it does your credit score will be trashed regardless of what you do, so why not make Christmas as good as you can. I have been there.

If you decide to go forward with getting a credit card, you need to be smart about where you decide to apply for it. Credit Card Applications are easy to fill out online and even easier to do it en masse now, but if you aren’t careful about where or who you are filling them out with you could be in serious trouble that goes well beyond the damage done to defaulted credit cards.

I am talking about identity theft. As someone who has been through the wringer on this and had people commit crimes while using my identity I can tell you that this is no picnic. I am still trying to recover from it more than a dozen years after it happened and will probably be paying for it for the rest of my life. So research where you give your information out before you do it, or you could have more problems than bankruptcy on your hands.

Worse Housing Crisis Looms

BradHart — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:03:24 +0000

NEW YORK – Home prices tumbled by the steepest rate ever in May, according to a closely watched housing index released Tuesday, as the housing slump deepened nationwide. The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city index dropped by 15.8 percent in May compared with a year ago, a record decline since its inception in 2000. The 10-city index plunged 16.9 percent, its biggest decline in its 21-year history.

I predicted this time would come back in about 2003. I saw the signs of a looming crisis and told everyone I knew. I wish I had this blog then so I had something to point back at, but alas that isn’t the case. Things were pretty good then and no one believed me. Such is life. There are those who haven’t forgotten, I won’t let them.

The pendulum is swinging the other way at the moment. With home prices falling and financing even harder I predict we are about to screw up again. The worst problem with lending during the prelude to the sub prime crisis was the bottom end limit. Katy and I tried several times to get mortgages on properties we could afford even in our present economic situation. Despite good credit we lacked enough cash to make the twenty and thirty percent or higher down mortgages under $50k required. Oddly enough these same lenders kept offering us pre-approved zero down auto loans for upwards of $60k but wouldn’t finance a $25k four bedroom house that had been appraised at $100k. With falling home prices they are in even worse of a bind.

After some investigation with local lenders and real estate agents specializing in foreclosed properties what I have found doesn’t prove promising. Where the bottom end of the standard mortgage lending limit was $50k locally this has jumped to over $65K now. With falling home values and large numbers of foreclosed on homes, these lenders seem to be backing themselves into a corner. In a quick local foreclosure search I found more than a hundred homes that sold three to five years ago in the $80k to $100k range. The current appraisal is now in the $50k to $70k. The asking price of these homes, mostly from lenders shouldering the burdens is in the $25k to $40k. These lenders say they want to sell these properties, quickly but refuse to write mortgages at the level they are selling them. I was directed to several low price specialists who are no asking as much as 50% and none lower than 30% on these homes. This is too much for many people.

It appears the greed of the sub-prime crisis has not abated. Simply put people who could afford monthly mortgage payments for ten or fifteen years are being left out in the cold because they lack sufficient cash down payments. Mark my words if something is not done, soon to sell these properties to people that will live in them there will be an even worse crisis.

New Economy Stores Part II

BradHart — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:49:04 +0000

In part two of our New Economy Stores series I look want to take a look at one of the more inventive ways you can make money. If you have been online more than a year you have probably heard of games like World of Warcraft. These types of multi-player online games exist only in the virtual world but have real world economics attached to them. Just like our desire driven physical world where patience is rarely seen as much of a personal virtue many online gamers, want to start out with as much as they can. If you have the money you can buy world of warcraft account with characters already made awesome by someone else’s labors.

I know many of you who don’t play games will see this as sort of cheating, and to be honest it is. I much prefer to start from scratch and do it myself. On the other hand I have the time and the patience to learn a game system and the type of personality that wants to figure these things out. That said of me I am also the type who supplies these online retailers with new characters and virtual gear.

Is this going to be a money maker for your average joe? Probably not, but if you have the time and the patience to learn the rules of the game you can set yourself you can learn a game like World of Warcraft or a social environment like Second Life and begin to make money.

Win $25.00 With Brad's Tiny World

BradHart — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:09:55 +0000

I wanted to take the time to thank everyone who visits Brad’s Tiny World on a regular basis. I am offering a one day contest today.

Here are the terms. If I get 100 new sign ups below by the end of the day, I am putting up a a $25.00 gift certificate to Starbucks, Ebay, Amazon or iTunes (winner’s choice). All you need to do is sign up for the eSurvey site below and leave a comment. As a bonus if I get 500 sign ups by the end of the day I will offer five $25 gift certificates and a $50.00 gift certificate. Prizes awarded on Feb 2, 2009. See Confirmation method at end of page.

For those interested in joining up with the company that makes it possible for me to offer such a great contest join Monetize It

Signups Confirmed by MonetizeIt

Resolutions Carried Out

BradHart — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:44:36 +0000

I have been promising myself for some time to start trimming the excesses in my blogging life and you are certainly seeing one in action now. I am effectively closing The Other Blog for a variety of reasons, mostly because of the amount of time spent verses the financial gains, but that’s not all. I wanted to focus more time on Brad’s Tiny World as a valid news site and entertainment news is something we already cover here in limited quantity. That limited quantity will change. I am in the process of merging these two sites now the the visible Google PageRank update has been completed.

Here is what you can expect from the merged site:

Regular What’s Hot in the entertainment world posts.
More movie and music reviews
More Pop Culture Video Posts and links
Like all newspapers we will be adding a celebrity gossip column
I might continue with the celeb photo galleries but nothing guaranteed

What would you like to see included?

Tax Cuts Won't Fix The Economy

BradHart — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:48:25 +0000

I have heard “tax cuts” enough that I think my ears are going to bleed. The next time I hear those words out of the mouth of someone who neither understands the economy or will be directly affected by those “tax cuts” I might bitch slap them. Personal tax cuts don’t pump money back into the economy. While business can be positively affected by tax cuts and should be considered, that is not the issue here. Personal tax cuts are simply the means by which those who aren’t having financial problems have to pay less into the system. These people don’t turn around and say, “look honey, we are going to owe the IRS a thousand bucks less this year lets go spend it on something to boost the economy.” The people who get “tax cuts” are more likely to save that money or pay off some debt rather than spend it immediately. If you want to stimulate the economy you institute tax credits that affect everyone across the board, those who do specific things, or even on the low end of the income scale. The upper middle class aren’t going to change their spending and savings habits, and a two thousand dollar tax credit isn’t even going to be noticed by those who are rich. However if you hand a family with a couple of kids making thirty grand or less a few thousand bucks they spend it quickly and they spend it locally.

If I got two grand we would immediately put it towards a car, being without sucks right now and makes it damned hard for Katy to find a decent job. If I didn’t need a car, two grand would be gone within about two weeks, and most definitely within a month. The economist says I should pay off some debts, but the realist knows it will be a long time until I have another two grand to plunk down on anything. So where would two grand go? First it would be spent on a new TV probably something in the 42″ or larger category. I might buy that online depending on the deals I can get, but a lot of people would head right over to Wal-Mart and get the biggest they can get in their car. There goes half my money. The rest would be split into two categories. Immediately used items that I haven’t bought because we could get by, things like clothes, out to eat food, and beer, would get probably sixty percent of the spending. Things that I consider non immediate, but frequently used items like laundry detergent, trash bags, light bulbs, etc would be in the next group.

What would you spend your money on?

Post 54 of Today

BradHart — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:42:14 +0000

In posting the previous 53 articles today as part of the Scribefire Challenge I came some realizations about the country as a whole. Though we seem thoroughly different when we are talked about as red states and blue states and even urban versus rural, we have much more in common than not. I have been all across the country in my years lived in the east, west, south, north, and the midwest. In living in all these places I usually noticed what made me different from the people I met there. Part of that I am sure was trying to hold on to my identity, but part of it I am ashamed to say was often my unconscious disdain for those less intelectual than myself. Older and wiser I can see that I really missed out by not embracing what we had in common.

This is a quick list of what I have learned from the local news of the day. No matter what poltical party you belong to, what state you are in, or if you come from a small town or big city, you are worried about the economy and just want the damned government to fix it rather than worrying about political ideology. The biggest sport story on any Friday in the fall will be your high school football, whether you live in the US Virgin Islands or Alaska your local football team is important. A wrong that i tried to right today also holds true, no matter how much better high school girls are doing locally, they never get as much exposure as the boys. Last but not least we have some fine men and women in this country who should be recognized as such.

My hat is off to you America and look forward to doing another news around the country day a couple of months from now.

Below is a listing of all the stories that were blogged around the country today.