A Real American "Horror" Short Story – Meet Mr. United States

Meet Mr. United States, he is a big wig in his neighborhood of Earthly Delights. He is President of the the neighborhood HOA, called the EDUN. Many other homeowners respect Mr. States because he seems to be honest and hardworking. Unfortunately, his confident demeanor hides someone who has secrets.

His secret is that he is in debt, and that debt keeps getting worse. He owes many people on his block, mainly his neighbor on another street, Mr. People's Republic-of-China also know as 先生 China. 先生 China seems pretty cool about the loan, but United has to keep asking for more money. And sure, the loans are at a fairly low interest rate, but they keep stacking up!

Mr. United States works for millions of people, and his bosses ride him hard. They are a confused, constantly infighting boss who can't keep their story straight and always want more for them. He keeps asking for loans for a multitude of things his bosses want, but they don't want to pay for it. He keeps asking for a pay raise so he can pay these loans, but the bosses don't want it coming out of their pockets. But there is something else about his bosses...

He has some pretty nice neighbors on Americana Street. Monsieur Canada is an outdoorsman and hippy type and his half-brother. Señor Mexico has lots of kids and is always having fun fiestas with fantastic food. It is sad that Señor Mexico's son, seems to be growing and selling drugs, United is worried that his son will buy the drugs. He tells his kids “Just Say No” but that does not mean they listen.

Mr. States' Dad is Sir United Kingdom. He is a bit stuffy and lives on another block called Europa Lane. There was some trouble earlier in their relationship. Dad wanted United to live with him and to be called Colony. United HATED that name and rebelled as many young do. They now have a rather cordial relationship, but it can be tense at times despite their common language.

Europa lane is a bit of the nicer street in the neighborhood. But lately old Kiros Greece has had the same type of debt problems and has not been keeping up appearances and Herr Germany has said he would help him keep up his yard. Crotchety old Kiros Greece does not like the changes mainly because it might mean he would have to move to the nursing home, called Mount Olympus. Signore Italy, Señor Spain and a few others in the neighborhood have also been not keeping up appearances on Europa Lane, it is expensive!

Oriental Road has 先生 China as well as gọi bằng ông Viet Nam. Whom Mr. States had a rather nasty car crash with a while ago. It did not go well for either parties. Mr. Australia owns a large McMansion on the end of the road, after he was kicked out of Europa lane, it was a terrible scandal!

So Mr. States has to make a decision. His bosses demand he keep up appearances, but he has to cut back, but on what? Some want a wall around the house, especially on the side with Señor Mexico, but that does not seem very neighborly.

The scariest thing about Mr. States life are his bosses. Because they are also his children. How can you say no to children, especially when they act like children?

But pretty soon he will have to tell them no to the BMW and no, we cannot get the iPad mini. They may have to look at universities more within their budget, yes it would be great to go to university on Europa Lane but we are not made of money. Especially because it is your money that runs this house!

There was a scare when many of his children had to stay home from school, it reminded him of the major illness his kids had called the great infection. It was terrible. Lately, his kids have been quite sick but it was not an infection, just a sniffle. Every time this happens things financially get worse and therefore United needs to use his loan money even more. Medicine is expensive for his family, many in his neighborhood don't have to pay as much cause they have a special deal with the medical providers, but United's bosses/kids don't want to pay for it, so they still have to pay more.

Someday this whole mess is going to come to a head. It will probably happen when someone else gets elected President of the HOA. United is worried that China will run and not just to make sure he has an opponent, but for keeps. Then he can up the interest rates, so Mr. United States had better get his stuff together and get his bosses/kids in line with the new situation.

It will take something drastic, more than just taking away the wifi.

Poor Mr. United States...

Well duh. But the real situation is much worse...

The 99 Cent Club – Part 2 - Meet Crazy Erin...

My prices are insane! ...to make a living so I am going to have to lower them. Yes, I said I wasn't, at least until my next book came out but I am not King or Pratchett, a.k.a., I am not a writing machine.

So, guess what you lucky shoppers: for the next week the e-book of“The Chronicles of IDIOT” is going to be FREE at Smashwords.com. Zip, zero, nada, nothing, $0, but this is only till November 7th and only at Smashwords. The insanity of the election including all those nasty ads that I try to avoid have made me CRAZY.... I am practically giving this book away, wait, I am giving this book away!

If you are too slow, then on November 7th (unless I am crazy enough to forget) the e-book will go to it's new price of $0.99. Yep, I am officially joining the 99 cent club. For real this time... I guess it is a never say never situation.

Amazon.com and many other places will not let me go crazy, so I am going to the craziest price for them: $0.99, thanks to their KDP exclusive nonsense. I have already distributed the book to other sources, that genie cannot be put back in the bottle, and Amazon won't let you give your book away unless it is through KDP!

If you want the paper book, sorry but those prices are staying the same. I am too insane to change the prices all over town and maybe am just a bit lazy. It does not matter anyways, those are going the way of the dinosaur anyway!

So to recap: “The Chronicles of IDIOT” my satirical novella will be FREE as an e-book for the next week at Smashwords.com! Then it will be sold for the insanely low price of $0.99. Hopefully BN, Apple, Diesel and the like will get on the stick but for now they are still at $2.99. By next week they should be $0.99 along with Google books. Now it is time to get back on my meds!

If You Are Registered - JUST VOTE!

Thanks memethevote and Tumbler for the pic!

My hubby and I turned in our ballots last week! In Arizona, we have this wonderful mail-in voting system. You can still wait in line and vote on election day, but I certainly prefer making my mind up at home and mailing that sucker in!

This is my hubbies first presidential election since he has been a baby US citizen. He was so excited to vote that he got started within a few days of getting the ballot. Me, being mildly competitive, got started a few days after he did and finished my ballot that same day. Here are some web resources we used to help make our decisions.

Get the facts:  factcheck.org

If you don’t like reading then look at the truth-o-meter at: Politifact.com

If you accidentally threw out the ballot measures pamphlet there is this resource:  Ballotpedia

http://www.ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

And since they NEVER send you anything for Judges (but you are still supposed to judge them) here is: Judgepedia

http://judgepedia.org/index.php/Main_Page

or for AZ Judges (with bios, opinion surveys from attorneys, etc.)

http://www.azjudges.info/

You can also google your county registrar to get information for your local elections. Also, your local paper should have bios on most candidates of local elections, such as school boards, etc.

I am glad we mailed our ballots in, since we have gotten semi-official information that our polling place has changed. I am not sure if it is legitimate or is some sort-of shady ruse. Sorry, don't need to wait in line in the possibly wrong place, my vote is already in!

Another thing – I avoid and ignore all TV and mail propaganda. Video streaming and Netflix allow us to live a fairly commercial free lifestyle that I have grown accustomed to. With the mail crap, I just recycle them with a tiny bit of a glance.

Try to make an informed decision on the facts, not the propaganda! Have your voice heard (especially if you are in a swing state) and good luck!

By the way, BIG ANNOUNCEMENT NEXT WEEK! It will be a two-for-one blogs, but not till next Tuesday!

The T Word - Part 3 - Who’s Jobs Are They?

You got a job? Congratulations. You are like most of our country. Working to live.  About 7% of us work for the government in a direct way. Even more work in the private sector for government contractors. This has been in the news lately, due to the cuts that are going to be implemented in January 2013. Yet another part of our fiscal cliff is that not only will taxes be raised but the government will cut money to contractors. These cuts will be about 1.2 trillion over a seven year period, starting in January.

Now usually the right wing is all for that, except that $500 billion dollars in cuts will cost jobs in the defense industry. That includes quite a few jobs here in Tucson at Raytheon Missile Systems. They are crying in their leather seats about how unfair it is.

I do find it ironic that they are all for cuts unless it is for defense. I agree that the defense of our country is important, but the cold war is over. We are only fighting small regional conflicts and we need to be a powerful but more flexible and nimble fighting force. We also have allies, many allies who have our backs when we have a serious issue that needs to be resolved. Remember the first Iraq war? So, last year it was Libya. Last year and this year it is Syria. These are small countries, we do not need to maintain a large fighting force for this. We have left Iraq, and are leaving Afghanistan soon. We never should have even invaded Iraq and we should have put those forces to better use in Afghanistan because that place is a huge military quagmire. Yes, there is still terrorism but having a large and expensive fighting force for them since Osama Bin Laden is dead, it is like swatting a fly with a ballistic missile.

My point is we are finishing our large scale battles. Some are rattling their sabers about Iran, but I hope to God that gets resolved by it's own people, because when we get involved, it gets complicated and expensive.

Back to what I wanted to talk about: government job cuts. It seems like there is a disconnect between anti-large government groups and their concern for the economy. They say: “Cut spending now! But the unemployment rate is too high! And lower our taxes!” Sorry folks, but you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

When you cut spending someone is losing their job, and maybe they will get a private sector job right away, but maybe not. That adds to the unemployment rate, which worsens our economy. So even if we are scaling back our defense or any other department, we should do it more slowly, to help our economy recover.

As Senator McCain says "Now, I agree strongly that we could have reductions in spending in both defense and non-defense, but it must be done with a scalpel, not a meat ax."

Now, I don't know if those 1.2 trillion cuts will be made or if congress will kick that can down the road. To “kick that can” would help our current economy, but it would also hurt our future. Soon, I am going to give what I hope could be a solution. Not that anyone would listen, cause what I would propose would hurt everyone. Yes, a compromise is in mind and something that would have to take decades and would span legislative and presidential eras. We have the need, we just need the political will.

I would like to end with a political cartoon which I find especially funny because I am somewhat of a political satirist and am not paid anything for it. My husband pays our bills and because he works for the University of Arizona doing biochemistry research, we depend on the federal government for that rather small paycheck. So you may see why cuts to the government can directly effect our lives.

It is a sad day when this stuff can't be made up: a story about a country that wants huge tax cuts but has a huge debt and deficit. I swear nobody would believe me!

The T Word - Part 2 - We Are On A Fiscal Cliff...

Last year our do-nothing congress and anemic president could not agree on increasing our debt ceiling.  So they passed it on to a bipartisan committee that gave us two options.  

To state what our government did with these options, I quote Fareed Zakaria of CNN:

“It's a punt. I mean, it's one more occasion where Congress has basically punted, kicked the can down the road, use what metaphor you want. It cuts $21 billion out of the 2012 budget, which is the only budget over which this Congress actually has any authority ... The Democrats are saying no cuts to entitlements. The Republicans are saying no taxes. That's great except we all know the only solution to our long-term debt problem is cuts in entitlements and new taxes.”

They punted and now we are on a fiscal cliff.  We have to do something but are faced with a congress that would rather blame the other party than actually compromise.  That compromise would have to be like Mr. Zakaria states “cut entitlements and new taxes.”  No, my tea party friends, he does not mean to cut taxes but to repeal the Bush era tax cuts.  We need to a balanced approach that will have to be longer than any term in office to work.  

Below is a chart from the Congressional Budget office which shows what will happen if we do or do not repeal the Bush era tax cuts:


President Bush started these tax cuts because we had paid down to the point where we did not have a budgetary deficit.  According to him, we had earned them.  Then we got into two wars.  It is no wonder we are in this fix. But to solve the deficit and therefore the debt we need to do things slowly. Do it quickly and we will be on the road to recessionville again.

What do they say to people on the edge of a building or of a cliff?  Back away....slowly.  Doing things slowly involves compromise, are you listening, congress?

America has to be for the people, not for the parties.  Our parties have gotten us in trouble.  That is one of the reasons I am an Independent, therefore I am an American first and foremost.  Taking oaths to NEVER increase taxes is doing a huge disservice to our country.  Democracy depends upon compromise.  If there is no compromise, there is no progress.

Lastly, I will quote ousted Republican Representative from Oklahoma Mickey Edwards from his book “The Parties Versus the People”:

“In a sane world, in which the men and women we elect to Congress apply their own research and intelligence to the important decisions that confront them, we would expect some number of Republicans to vote with Democrats and some Democrats to line up with Republicans. But on the big issues, the ones that matter most, solid blocs face other solid blocs, unmovable, unflinching in their loyalty to the party "team." And that is because of the framework within which our politics unfolds. As we will see, party leaders control important committee assignments, provide or withhold money for reelection campaigns, and advance or block team members' legislative priorities; in our political system, one often pays a significant price for exercising independent judgment.”

The T Word

Taxes. Benjamin Franklin is famous for saying "in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes."  So, I ask you, would you prefer more money and less infrastructure? Would you like fewer policemen and just get a big fence around your yard? How about fewer working bridges and everyone just own SUVs. Would you like fewer public schools and just have to hire idiots, or worse foreigners?

These questions are not to piss you off (although it may do that for some of my family). It is to show you a small fraction of what our taxes pay for. In every other first world country taxes pays for universal health care. But I am not here to promote that, just give it as an example of what taxes can do.

There are people who take advantage of the system.  I am more upset about a company that dodges taxes than the welfare cheat. Because we are talking about a lot more money. Lately, there seems to be a lot of sympathy for these 'job creators' but I don't have much sympathy for them when they get lots of tax deals from our government but still don't do much hiring. But I digress again, what I am really here to talk about is education funding.

In Arizona, we have Proposition 204 on the ballot in November, which would make permanent a one cent per dollar sales tax for education and jobs. I am all for it because our state legislature has slashed education spending to the bone. Would you like an example?  Every year my sons class sends out a list of needed items such as paper towels, soap, glue and pens, ect.  We never had to provide those things when I was a kid.  Also, my son’s school does these fund raisers that use peer pressure to help get the school more money.  Peer pressure?  Yes, they have posters in front of the library with all the classes and each kids name with how much they have “sold.”  In other words, how much they have gotten their parents and grandparents to give.  This would be unheard of in a church or for a political fundraiser where amounts and names are hush hush.  When our school superintendent says we are using the funds more wisely, what he means is they are paying the low salaries and for some supplies.

So kids (like mine) need these dollars to keep their schools better funded.  What really gets my ire is that the opposition to this proposition is saying it will fund “special interests.”  So education has become a special interest?  Well it is of special interest to me to make sure my children are not idiots and education has everything to do with that. Education is an investment in the future economy of the state.  You want a crappy economic future?  Don’t fund education.

Lastly, I would like to ask; do you want this country to be more like the USA or more like a third world country?  It seems that many uber-rich wouldn’t mind turning the USA into a third world country as long as they don’t have to pay.  Well, if you are not fighting for your country, then at least you could help keep the country running.  Freedom isn’t free and if you are not going to pay with your blood, then you should at least pay your fair share of the green.