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You Will Be Serfs! UPDATED!

This was written right before we walked away from Maplehurst and got this beautiful house in Tucker in June 2014. We are happy as clams and have not one single regret about deciding to rent. And we will NEVER buy again. FUCK THAT. Thanks to not buying, we now have investments, a fat savings account and NO DEBT. Buying a house will make you house poor. It’s totally not worth it to me. I’m always amazed when I STILL hear that old saw “renting is throwing away your money.” Really? Well, since we bailed on a $75k underwater house that would NEVER be worth what we paid, we are in the best financial shape of our lives! Seems to me that renting has SAVED us money, not “thrown it away.” But whatever, you suckers want to be indentured to the banks, y’all go right ahead and buy. Ain’t my circus.  – Angela April 2 2016. 

Yesterday we watched some financial revenge porn in the form of the movie Assault on Wall Street. It was FABULOUS. All the asshole brokers got what they deserved – and I don’t mean more money. Then we watched Office Space to round out our day of Fuck This Shit.

We did not get the house we coveted (THANK THE GODS!!) due to various mortgage lender jackassery.

On top of that aggravation, the mortgage guy, Murray, is all about reminding us about how hard it is out there for a pimp of the mortgage industry and how the investors suffered. I held my tongue, but I’m telling you, it was hard not to tell him to fuck right on off. WHY anyone would feel the least bit bad about an industry that broke the United States’ economy, then took trillions MORE of our money and never lost a penny is beyond me. Actually, the banks and mortgage industries are just fine and dandy, thanks for asking. They have shown record profits since the bailouts (read: extortion money).

Speaking of the bailouts and what’s happened since, here’s some reading for you:
We’re almost break even on the bailout. Sept 2013
Why Fannie and Freddie remain a big threat. Aug 2013
Wall Street bonuses to top 2009. Aug 2013

I love how most people in the mortgage industry own at least one rental property. That goes for Realtors®, too. I also love how they can look you in the eye and with a straight face, tell you how hard it’s been for them. RIGHT.

Really, motherfuckers? I fail to see how buying up property for pennies on the dollar to rent back to the people who were fucked in the ass and tossed out on the street by bad and/or underwater loans is “hard”. ??

It is my assertion that the main goal of the mortgage industry is to reduce Americans to being serfs. It is practically impossible to get a loan now (despite all the Obama bullshit about “Making Homes Affordable” with HARP*) and if you manage it, you’ll be saddled with a $200/mo fee (called “insurance” by FHA) for the life of the 30 year loan. That comes to $72,000 of additional fees that go straight to the FHA coffers. In the past, PMI (private mortgage insurance) was only until you gained some equity or refinanced – NO MORE. Now it’s forever on FHA loans. [*HARP is still going on. If you are stupid enough to TAKE an offer of extending your mortgage for another 10 years, you deserve what you get. That is TEN YEARS more interest and mortgage insurance that goes DIRECTLY to the banks and insurance companies. Anyone who takes a HARP refinance on an underwater home is a fucking moron. -A 2016]

And yes, you’ll have an FHA loan unless you have pristine credit and 20% to put down. And don’t think that your parents can help with that down payment. NOPE. You can’t use any gifts for down payments. If you do get a gift, then it must sit in the bank for six months and you have to get written proof of where that money came from. Cash is frowned upon in this brave new world. It is frightening the threats you’ll hear if you have cash. We know, we were threatened because we wanted to use our rainy day cash money for a down payment. You would’ve thought we asked if we could use dead babies.  INSANE.

When real estate crashed, the rich white people and corporations moved in to buy up every available foreclosure as “investment property”. What that means is that most of the good deals that might have been had by first time buyers were snapped up and turned into rental property. This reduced inventory of homes and made it harder to find a home for sale on the low end. It’s now mostly high end homes that a first time owner cannot afford. Now, add that to the near impossibility of getting a home loan in the first place and you are a society of serfs. People who own very little and pay rent to our rich overlords.

What the mortgage industry and its rich white owners aimed to do is push America back to the early 1900s, when the rich were rich and the rest of us were serfs who paid them rent. They were successful in that aim. Home ownership is at an all time low. The economy is stagnant and not looking very promising. There is little job creation.

Fortune: What happens if nothing changes at Fannie and Freddie?
“Without the discipline of a private market, we are in danger of creating another speculative housing bubble, which would again result in massive losses and economic hardship when it bursts.” – Hank Paulson, Fortune magazine, Aug 28, 2013. [linked above]

The 1% have won, my friends. Most Americans have been beaten back to early 20th century standards and no one is doing a thing about it. Rich white men and large corporations have seized the biggest indicator of individual wealth: real estate. Owning a home is the epitome of the American Dream. Thanks to these rich people, who continually get richer, the rest of us are little more than indentured servants. Serfs.

[Take a look at the building industry right now – especially here in Atlanta. All you see are apartments and McMansions being built. NOTHING in between. Moderate housing, like our neighborhood, is on the market for a couple of weeks and the seller gets what they ask. It is insane. There is little available for first time buyers. So people rent.  I don’t see why anyone would want to buy right now, the market for buying kinda sucks unless you have a fat down payment.  -A 2016]

It’s infuriating and demeaning to be reduced to a society with little personal wealth for 99% of its citizens. It’s sickening to see the 1% cheerfully declare the rest of us its serfs. It’s in the background of every pompous, rich landlord’s assurances that it’s OK to rent, listen for it: “You WILL BE Serfs! And you will like it!” “Oligobble our balls!” Which is also pertinent to the Comcast takeover of Time Warner this week. OLIGOBBLE. You’ll take what we give you.

We are bitter and resentful of the way we were treated by these rich fucks in the mortgage industry. We are sick to death of hearing how hard it is for the poor beleaguered banks, investors and corporations.

If you, too, need some revenge porn to lessen your bitterness and resentment, DO rent Assault on Wall Street. It is the story of desperation that SO MANY Americans deal with (it hits on healthcare, housing and investing), but the hero gets to give it back to the fuckers that so deeply deserve it. It won’t change anything, but it’ll damn sure make you feel a bit better.

Ok, back to your regularly scheduled serfdom.

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I don’t WANT insurance!

This fucking Obamacare bullshit is on my last nerve. It’s a lovely idea, but it will NEVER work as long as insurance companies are involved. Period. End of discussion.

Forcing Americans to pay insurance companies whether they want to or not is crazy. Insurance and big pharma got us INTO this mess, why on earth should we REWARD them for it? It’s like everything else in this fucked up country: fueled by greed and politicians. It’s insurance and pharma’s wet dream! Hand over the American people and let the money flow.

Have you looked at what it’s gonna cost you yet? Hop on over to Kaiser and take a gander at the subsidy calculator. Like what you see? They expect us to pay almost $400/mo for insurance – NO subsidy, of course, cuz we rich. FUCK THAT. I just had a bout of nasty bronchitis and it cost me $150. Our meds cost us about $25/yr. A Dr visit is $45, when we need it – which is not often. Now, in what reality would paying $400/mo make sense for us?

Obamacare is a grandiose idea that simply will not work as advertised. I love how the cheerleaders are becoming more and more quiet as they begin to realise just how much this shit is gonna cost. It ain’t FREE you dumbasses.

If Obama, or whoever is in charge, wants to help out Americans, then BAN INSURANCE. Let the market be TRULY free. Make Doctors run their businesses like a BUSINESS, where customer satisfaction and practicing medicine are the priorities, not how many cattle can be shoved through in a day. Without dealing with the insurance bullshit, doctors could run their offices with fewer employees – rather than the legions of medical secretaries required now to file the fucking insurance paperwork. Removing that whole layer of bureaucracy would save millions! Billions!

I’ve been saying this for years: the way to “fix” healthcare in the US is to get rid of the problem: insurance. No other countries in the world have insurance screwing up their systems. None. Until the people of the US realise this, the clusterfuck will continue.

Healthcare costs in the US are absolutely out of control. Why? Because of insurance, that’s why. Take a look at the costs of various items in the US vs other countries. $178 for a Dr visit? Fuck! Glad my doctor is mostly cash based and $45. Just look at this crazy! And keep in mind, this is what is BILLED to insurance, not what the Dr actually gets. Are you starting to understand the flow of cash now? INSURANCE makes the money. NOT the Drs. Here’s another article about costs and who actually benefits.

Providers largely charge what they can get away with, often offering different prices to different insurers, and an even higher price to the uninsured. -Ezra Klein, Washington Post, March 15, 2013

If the American people had any sense (they do not) then they’d notice that these same fucking politicians who are cramming this expensive plan down our throats are the very same ones who have voted to opt themselves OUT of it. Does that not bother anyone besides me? Oh, this expensive ass plan is FINE for the peasants, but not for the royalty, eh? Politicians are out of control. They ARE the 1% and they don’t give a rat’s ass about their constituents. They are all about getting paid and living large. Why should they, the elite, have to pay for insurance? Or travel? Or postage? Or anything, really? I mean, they are SO IMPORTANT.

This whole Obamacare scenario is just one big show. It’s not to actually help anyone other than the insurance companies, who will then “help” their friends on Capitol Hill. If it’s so fucking awesome, then the assholes in our government should be forced to do it, too. We can’t vote ourselves out of this clusterfuck. But we CAN vote out every motherfucker who currently holds office. It’s all we got, folks. The power to vote OUT these assholes who are getting rich at our expense is our only recourse.

So, NO, I do NOT want insurance. What I want is a relationship with my Dr and to pay her what she needs to run her business and make money. Luckily for me, I’ve got a situation that’s very close to this ideal. Our Dr has reasonable rates and she is all about prescribing generics rather than expensive meds. She knows us and she cares about us. We are not just more cattle to run through the system. I wish everyone could have a Dr like ours. My advice? Find an independent Indian doctor. The best doctors I’ve had have been Indian doctors with their own practices.

No, we won’t be participating in Obamacare. We’ll pay the fine. I’ve got better things to do with that $400/mo, thankyouverymuch. It won’t be around long, anyway. Once the politicians start losing votes, they’ll get rid of it soon enough. And it’ll be back to the same old shitty system we’ve always had. I am happy to not be a part of it.

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Why Obamacare is NOT the Answer

Look, I think everyone deserves to see a physician when they are sick, regardless of their economic status. I’m not saying fuck the poor. Far from it. Hell WE don’t have insurance per se. We have AFLAC and a dental/vision discount plan. But there are some very real consequences of Obamacare that no one is addressing, right OR left.

First and foremost: this healthcare tax will crush small businesses. It’s not some crazed right wing conspiracy theory, it is a FACT. Companies with 50 or more employees must raise prices (A LOT), layoff employees, cut everyone to part time (less than 30 hrs/wk) or at the very least freeze hiring. Think of all the small businesses you patronise. Think about that family owned restaurant chain with a couple of locations. THOSE are the businesses facing bankruptcy or harsh measures to stay afloat. Go read this article from the New York Post, Nov 17, 2012. I’ll wait. Does that clarify it for you?

Many companies will likely choose to pay the penalty instead, which is still expensive — $2,000 per worker multiplied by the entire workforce, after subtracting the statutory exemption for the first 30 workers. For a 50-person company, then, the tax would be $40,000, or $2,000 times 20.

That might not seem like a lot, but for many small businesses that could be the difference between survival and failure. – Michael Tanner, NYPost, 11.17.12

All the dumbasses bitching at John Schnatter (Papa John’s) for his plans to adjust for this tax, saying “well, I’ll pay 10¢ more per pizza!”, are just being reactionary and not seeing the full picture. Sure, raising prices will be one part of the adjustments, but so will cutting employee hours and/or layoffs. The liberals screaming “BOYCOTT” to companies who have publicly stated their plans to add surcharges and cut hours are clearly missing the point. This WILL happen across the board. Just like raising the minimum wage causes price increases across the board, so will Obamacare.

But it’s not the higher prices that we should worry about. It’s the ripple of layoffs, hiring freezes, cut hours and small business closures we should be worried about. You don’t think small business matters? Read this. I’ll wait. This particularly sticks out:

The latest figures show that small businesses create 75 percent of the net new jobs in our economy. -SBA Report

Obamacare will push this country’s fragile economy even further towards collapse. This tax will rot our economy from the inside out. It’s a very bad idea. The restaurant industry will be particularly hard hit. And this is the industry I want to go into, so, yah, it’s important to me.

So, what to do? I propose we do nothing – other than STOP Obamacare. Of course, it’s too late for that. Obama’s raison d’etre is to be remembered as the President Who Gave Everyone Healthcare. Fuck everything else, this is his goal. Fuck the economy, fuck the small businesses, fuck the people who will be laid off or have their hours cut. Fuck all of it, he wants his place in history.

If we could stop Obamacare, then what have we lost? NOTHING. Everything remains as fucked up as it is.

Well, you ask, how is that helping? I’ll tell you: concierge doctors. That is the fancy name given to doctors who don’t take insurance, just cold hard cash. Some offer monthly fees, sort of like a retainer, others just charge you for whatever service you need. They are often not cheap like this 82 year old Illinois doctor that charges $5, but paying $500 for a treatment or even $5000 for a surgery beats the shit out of your $12,000/yr insurance payments with a $5000 deductible. Look at the numbers! Even if you pay only $6000/yr w/ a $2500 deductible, it is still cheaper to PAY CASH. But no one will have cash because we’ll all be paying for coverage we don’t necessarily want with Obamacare.

In one fell swoop, our chance of eventually having a real choice of who we want to take care of us and another small business model is demolished.

Continue reading “Why Obamacare is NOT the Answer”

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American Politics and Other Follies

First off, Americans are notoriously uneducated when it comes to politics. Most don’t even know about third parties and most don’t even know who they are voting for at all. It’s a sad state that this country is in, my friends.

Politics in America have been increasingly encroached upon by religion. This is a disturbing fact and it’s one that can lead this country to ruin. If you’ll read some history, you’ll notice the influence of religion leading to the downfall of many empires. The Roman empire is a notable one. It astonishes me that a country founded upon separation of church and state has ended up almost as much a theocracy as any country in the Middle East. There’s a very detailed book about this: American Theocracy by Phillips. It’s a dry read with lots of statistics, but an eye opener nonetheless.

While we’re on the subject of reading, another book I’d HIGHLY recommend is Reckless Endangerment by Morgenson, et. al. This book is a detailed account of just how we ended up getting screwed by our own government, who allowed the greed of banking and Wall Street to run rampant. You Democrats out there who seem to think that the whole of all evil is rooted in the Republican party need to understand that it was Bill Clinton and his cronies who allowed this to happen in the first place. ALL the events that came down in 2008 and brought us to the brink of destruction as a country go back to the Clinton days.

If Americans would READ and educate themselves, perhaps our government could be held accountable, but as it is, the politicians know that by bringing in religion and class warfare they can keep stupid Americans distracted and do as they please. Continue reading “American Politics and Other Follies”

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Why the First Amendment is Important

Freedom of AND FROM religion is the core of the United States of America. It’s why the Puritans left England and it is the foundation of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Ever wonder why it is the FIRST THING our founding fathers wrote down?

Amendment I: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It amazes me that this Republic is on the fast track to becoming a theocracy. The last two decades has been a watershed for the religious right. Their plans to take over the Republican party have certainly succeeded and they have changed the political landscape of the United States in the worst way possible.

Why does this matter? Well, first, let’s look at the other theocracies in the world; in particular, the Islamic ones: Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Oman and Iran. Ring any bells? Yes, you’ll notice many of the places where the most strife in the WORLD is caused. And that’s just the Islamic ones.

I love that Americans are so oblivious to the obvious. All the whackjob far right Christians choose to think that because they are Christian, taking control of this country is NOT creating a theocracy – because that’s only happens to Islamic states! We can’t have Sharia law here! We’re Christians!

I hate to point this out, but Sharia simply means “the path to follow”. It can just as easily refer to ANY religion.

The United States is a laughing stock amongst its peers. England, the rest of Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the other First World countries find it odd that American politics is basically a religious fight. In secular countries, a politician spouting religion as a platform would be drummed out immediately. But here? They are presidential frontrunners. WTF? If that doesn’t sound like THEOCRACY to you, then you are either dumb or avoiding the truth.

“By mobilizing eager volunteers down to the precinct (and local church) level and handing out 33 million voter guides — often in church pews — prior to last November’s election, the Coalition is credited with providing the winning margin for perhaps half the Republicans’ 52-seat gain in the House of Representatives and a sizable portion of their nine-seat pickup in the Senate.” (Time, May 15, 1995 – from Theocracy Watch.)

The steady creep of religion into American politics should be a very real cause for concern for all American citizens. I think it’s safe to say theocracies are bad, ummkay? This is happening because Americans have become so lazy and uneducated that few know anything about the Constitution at all. Which is why the religious whackjobs have taken over the Republican side and the nanny government slackers have taken over the Democrats. Never the twain shall meet. Both sides have completely different agendas, but both have the same goal: to control the citizenry. The right wants to control your religion, your diet, your behaviour, your reproduction and pretty much everything you do. The left wants to control your behaviour, your diet, your income, and everything other than your religion.

The bottom line with ALL politicians is CONTROL. It doesn’t really matter any more which party you identify with, both want to control your life and behave like monarchy. Our “public servants” make millions, pay no taxes, get free insurance, travel, meals, everything. Does that sound right? I think not.

Anyone who thinks that it’s only Republicans to be feared is seriously drinking the Kool Ade. Who do you think has renewed the Patriot Act three times? That would be Democrats. Who wants to rewrite the Constitution, allowing the government to force citizens to pay a PRIVATE COMPANY or be fined? That would be Democrats. Who gets millions from banks and mortgage companies and hands them BILLIONS – only to have them continue destroying the lives of millions of Americans? ALL OF THEM. Politicians are granted far, far too many perks and are overpaid. They have made themselves royalty while Americans are busy bitching about the latest Facebook change.

The First Amendment matters. It matters in ways that are obvious and subtle. Just like Obamacare is trying to subtly rewrite the Constitution to allow pretty much unlimited government power, the Republicans are trying to rewrite the First Amendment to create a theocracy to get unlimited power. See the correlation?

My point is that our current political situation is dire. Americans have no idea who they are voting for and don’t seem to care. Allowing this perversion of the Constitution to continue will only result in disaster for this Republic. Short term thinking is pervasive in our government and society. It’s a big factor in what got us here in the first place.

If you’d like a primer of how things will look when religion takes over and this Republic falls, may I suggest The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Yes, this is fiction, but it’s also plausible when compared to the push for theocracy that is our current political agenda.

I implore everyone to brush up on your Constitutional knowledge. Learn why it’s important to refuse the politicians’ desire to control us. BOTH parties are equally guilty. It’s time to toss the bums out and create third or fourth parties or NO parties and take back our country from the corporations who currently own it by way of our broken and corrupt political system.

It’s not the Constitution that needs to be rewritten, it’s the government. We are the ones who must do that. I’m just not sure Americans have the will to do it. I’ll say it again: I fear for our Republic. The rest of you should, too.