Energy Prices Sting US- Cripple Poor Countries

Many Americans my self included have felt the painful sting of energy prices over the last couple years.  It was over a year ago that I purchased a small motorcycle for commutting and later sold my gas guzzling Mazda 3 (guzzling at 27 MPG).

We have seen our heating bills, air conditioning bills, fuel bills, even prices for food and other goods have increased as a result of fuel stipends and transportation kickers.

That's nothing compared to the impact higher energy prices have had on poor nations around the world.

The Wall Street Journal ran a weekend edition report titled "As Fuel Prices Soar, a country Unravels" detailing the problems that have hit Africa's Guinea, a small and very poor on the Western (Atlantic) Coast of Africa.

To bring this home the article details how nurses at a hospital have to regularly pull premature babies out of the incubators and rouse resting mothers to hold the babies covered in extra blankets while the hospital and surrounding city experiences the regularly occurring power blackouts.

In poor countries energy prices are hitting the part of the population that could have been the most upwardly mobile.  City workers and people that are poor, but not still cooking on open fires suffer the most.  They rely on the city infrastructure and jobs in the community, but when those fail they fail.  As the nations cities go, so goes industry and the potential for the economies of these countries to support themselves.

This is rapidly becoming a serious problem for these countries that were already over burdoned with serious problems.

Consider how far Iraq has fallen and how its people were severely agitated by rolling blackouts and the collapse of government support structures.  Consider that many of these countries were not even as well off as Iraq and they are now failing too.

This is a world problem.  The people are suffering now, but as they suffer their anger will increase and this will increase the amount of instability throughout these regions.  We may have an unstable middle east and a civil war in Iraq.  The world will suffer many more problems if problems grow and more countries follow in Iraq's wake and start to fail and break down into civil war also.

Technorati tags: Energy Prices threaten civil war, African countries hit hard by energy prices, civil war, energy prices, oil, rolling blackouts

Gwinnett County Public Schools Outed by WhistleBlower Blog

As a whistleblower myself, I found this story rather interesting.  The local school board has been allegedly in a very round about way outed by its former CFO, who was forced to resign, after it was suggested by the school board that the CFO might be having some kind of relationship with a person that reported to him either directly or indirectly.  Now either the CFO or the person whom he may or may not have had a relationship with and or other persons un-named but that might be related to that person, have established a blog to point out conflict of interest issues and other skeletons in the Gwinnett County Public Schools system.

The blog in question is the Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) Insider and its been up and running for about a month and a half or since about October of 2006.  The blog appears to be running without any advertisements, so the blog owners are not currently receiving any financial benefit from their whistleblowing activities.

The Gwinnett Daily Post ran a front page top of the page story about the Blog as it has caught the attention of the local District Attorney Danny Porter.  He indicated that he had spoken with some of the blog contributors but had not as yet launched an investigation.  He also indicated that an investigation could commence in the future.

Three of the accusations include claims that the school system donated tax funds to the retirement of a pastor, that the county failed to bid out a computer and technology contract, and that a consulting contract was sourced to a member of the Board of Education.

The blog calls for more checks and balances of GCPS and the adoption of benchmarks found in Sorbanes Oxley but not required of school boards.  The argument for greater transparency to educate tax payers such that they can keep direct oversight of their tax dollars at work seems to be the theme.

Technorati tags: gwinnett county public schools, GCPS, GCPS Blog exposing potential misconduct or conflict of interest

Keeping up on the News and Current Events

I have neglected this blog since the election trailing off with some election day videos.  I'm working ot get back on track and wanted to offer my readers some access to a potentially helpful site.

MagsDirect offers people a clearing house of options for magazine subscriptions.  MagsDirect offers about a dozen political magazines plus hundreds more in other categories.  MagsDirect does not charge sales tax and they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee along with a promise not to market your personal information off to spammers or direct marketing groups.

John McCain Sings Barbara Streisand Songs

McCain sings Streisand Parody.

Parody of Rick Santorum ad about Bob Casey

Seems to be several layers of parody on parody in this one

Sherrod Brown on South Park

Here's Sherrod Brown on South Park in this parody mentioned in The Wall Street Journal

 

Sherrod Brown Parody - Oops Sherrod did it again!

In this mashup Sherrod dances as Britney with the backdrop of news headlines and scandals

Parody of Katherine Harris to the Waitresses' song 'I know what Boys Like'

Music video style of parody.

Ted Kennedy as Bluto Blutarski

Ted Kennedy was given the speech made by John Belushi in Animal House in this satire. Contains explicit language in video.

Let us Know if you experience this Deibold voting system

Diebold system in action

Political Satire for the Election today 1

Get out and vote today, and relax as the hard parts almost over.

Saddam Hussein Convicted- Sentenced to Death by Hanging

Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging at noon local Iraqi time.

He was sentenced for the willful execution of 148 men and boys as retribution for a failed coup attempt.  He will now receive an automatic appeal within 10 days.  If the sentence is upheld, and the country doesn't go ballistic the world will soon be without the presence of Saddam Hussein.

Now the important thing is to wait and watch and learn how the Iraqi people will react to this development.  He is still under trial for several other cases.  That will not delay his execution.

If the sentence is upheld, he will be executed and in the other trials, he will face trial by absentia.

Technorati tags: Saddam Hussein Sentenced to Death by heading

Monetize Your Blog with PayPerPost

This spot is paid endorsement of PayPerPost, but its also a personal referral from Gridlock On Rye.  If you are a blogger and want to earn money blogging, consider signing up for PayPerPost.

Through PayPerPost you can find article sponsors looking for blogs to cover their products or services.  You can pick and choose to accept any sponsor you like or disregard any sponsor that you do not like.

You recieve payments from PayPerPost via PayPal 30 days after you write an article for the sponsor. 

I have acquired multiple sponsors for several blogs over the last few monts with this service and it helps me focus on creating great content for all of my blogs.  If you would like to try it out, you can sign up and provide my email address as a referral for which I will receive $5.00 and you will have my thanks and appreciation. 

All you have to do to make money blogging is click on the link in this sentence and sign up. I'd appreciate the referral to help me keep bringing good content to this and other sites, and as a thanks for pointing out a great service to help you with your own blogging and writing endeavors.  My email address for the referral is brettbum at yahoo dot com. 

If you have any questions, you can contat me by email directly for a confidential response, or you may leave a comment on this blog.

Bush Administration Guilty of Providing Iraqi Nuclear Secrets to Iran upon request of US Congress

Just when you think that politics in the US can't get any more screwed up, the genius in the Oval office has found a way to make all of us feel pretty simple minded.  Who needs to worry about Kim Il Jong providing nuclear secrets and technology to Iran when our own White House is doing it?

The Bush Administration finally pulled websites that contained material and information seized from Iraq.  The information detailed information gathered by Iraq about nuclear technology and missile technology.

Here's where it gets crazy

You see the Republicans in Congress were complaining that the Bush White House was not declassifying material fast enough, and this led to the perception that the Iraqi War was launched on bad intelligence.  Republicans hoped that documents seized in Iraq might prove that the fears that launched the war might be justified somewhere in the stacks of documents, but they were too lazy to read the documents themselves and so was the White House.

Brilliance in Action

So they decided that this work should be outsourced!  What's more American than passing the buck on a tedious job?  (I say this with a lot of sarcasm, because there are too many lazy people in this country and sometimes things are outsourced for the wrong reasons.)

The Bush Team declassified the documents and put them online where anyone coudl read them.

Stop the Presses

Well it looks like there was some sensitive information in there and non-proliferation experts from around the world started baging drums and sticks and anything that would make noise asking the administration to secret those documents away before . . .

Iran figured out how to make a nuclear bomb or something.  This is a great example of how incompetence can lose a war.  The Republicans made a big show about Kerry's goof up in his speech the other day.  They needed something to raise a stink about, but this is giving away nuclear technology and declassifying sensistive information.  Those are treasonable offenses!

Technorati tags: Treasonable offesnes, Bush Gives Nuclear technology to Iran to prove Iraq war justified are we our own worst enemy

Can we Remove the Banker MiddleMan?

Hundreds of years ago as people started to move their money into vaults with the local blacksmith/goldsmith and take receipt for the precious metals they left on deposit, the banks began to form.

Almost as soon as they started to form, the politics of money began to change and evolve very rapidly in lock step with the ever increasingly dynamic economy.

Over the last 60 years banking has evolved at an even much faster pace.  WWII made the entire world realize that banking was definitely a global process.  FDR received a rude awakening when Pearl Harbor was bombed and shortly there after a task force was established to figure out how to freeze Japanese banking assets.

The following decades of the cold war saw electronic funds transfers, credit cards, PayPal even mobil electronic payments are moving into the transactional systems.

But what if we didn't need a bank?

Today, we store our money safely in a bank, and the bank uses our capital to make loans on it, paying us a pittance of a return.

What would the social dynamic be like if technology made it possible for people to lend directly to each other again?

Do you think Americans or people from any country would pay closer attention to their finances and their savings if they were making those loans directly, using the electronic safety of what is essentially a virtual vault for our money.

A company called Zopa has started to offer just such a service.  They allow people to make online loans to other people. 

A slightly related trend that is much less low tech was started in the late 1990's.  The concept was one of establishing micro loans to entrepreneurs in impoverished areas or countries.  The person that implemented that idea won a Nobel Peace Prize this year.

So what might happen if people could lend directly to each other?  Could you do better social justice and receive a better return than your bank provides?

Technorati tags: Evolution of banking, micro loans, direct loans, zopa

People are Demanding Gridlock in Politics and Progress in Life

At the end of the day, politics is not everything and its important to keep that in mind going into the election on Tuesday.  That said, politics is important.

More and more Americans are waking up to the concept that Gridlock works.  When there's friction between one or more parties, it becomes the only way to remotely keep the politics honest and fend off corruption.

Its still far too easy for lobbyists to pay off either party and to have two lobbyists on either side of an issue take natural sides or unnatural sides with either party and duke it out mono e money.

The US economy despite the blundering of this administration has been fighting off an all out stall.  The housing bubble is in mid burst, but the stock market has done well after the oil bubble burst.  Unemployment is at a 5 year low.  Keep in mind, we are still trying to get back to where we were in 2001.

To look forward and spot the path to move forward we need to make some changes in our governmental house.  I'm a former Republican and probably more Republican than anyone in office calling themselves a Republican these days.  We need a government to do some simple things for us.

1. Be realistic

2. Balance the books (for the present and for future budgets)

3. Lead with intelligence, forethought and guidance from experts

4. Be balanced in policy decisions

5. Start working to improve this country and the people in it as opposed to trying to defend the country by attacking those people around the world that stick their fingers in our face.

We could be so much better than we are being these days, if we focus on improving ourselves and our government and our country and leading by example, instead of preaching at people from a morally bankrupt bully pulpit.

Now relax this weekend and go Vote on Tuesday!

Technorati tags: improve yourself instead of preaching from a morally bankrupt bully pulpit, bully pulpit, balance the books, lead with intelligence, unemployment rates, Demand Gridlock