Open Letter to Americans: US Fiscal Crisis

I bought a house I could afford. I borrowed less than I was offered. I paid my mortgage. I never missed a payment. I paid extra in the first year and every year after wards (even in years when I was unemployed.) I have watched my property taxes inflate to match the market value of my home for community services I couldn't use. I paid my taxes on time. I paid my house insurance on time. I paid Personal Mortgage Insurance to the banking institutions on time. I keep my house in good repair.

I didn't make any mistakes.

So, America, why didn't you? I'm not "above average" guy; I'm not a super genius. But I did think about what I was doing 6 years ago when I bought my house.

Why didn't you?!

Rescue plan seeks $700B to buy bad mortgages

$700 Billion dollars! Did you even blink? Do you have any idea how much money that is? Here, maybe this will help:

• $700,000,000,000 of your, MY, your children's and grandchildren's tax money
• Laid end to end, that's 141.9 round trips to the moon and back!
  

Round trips to moon math taken from here, note 5:
Avg distance to moon = 238,907 miles
x 5,280 ft/mi = 1,261,428,960 ft to moon
* 12 inches = 15,137,147,520 inches to moon
/ 6.14 inches (length of dollar) = 2,465,333,472 dollar bills end-to-end to reach the moon one-way
* 2 ways = 4,930,666,944 dollar bills end-to-end for a round trip to the moon.
/ $700,000,000,000 = 141,9 round trips to the moon

$700 BILLION paid to the same banking institutions that made stupid loans to stupid people. More than you and I, your children and your children's children will pay for this. Selling your children into national-indebted financial slavery (so you can have a giant, gas guzzling SUV and a super wide LCD/PLASMA TV ) IS CHILD ABUSE! This is "additional stupidity" from the last 3/4ths of a decay of mental and intellectual decay.

My daddy taught me: "Well, if it hurts, stop doing it!"

Isn't this stupidity hurting enough yet? Turn off Jerry Springer, Oprah and everything else that has kept you from being a thinking American and GO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

If lost your home, I'm sorry but maybe a better way to state the situation is "you (mis)managed to lose your home." If you lost your bank, I'm sorry. Hard for me (as a regular person) to know how to determine a good bank from a bad one before they fail. But, after wards, yes, it's easy to tell.

$700 BILLION dollars?! No, let the bad banks fail! Require them to close their doors, bar them from that line of business in the future and, if appropriate, litigate their leadership with fines and prison time.

DO NOT SAVE BROKEN BUSINESSES! Doing so defeats the nature of a "free market system" - the right to succeed and the right to fail isn't the governments business (and neither is financial enslavement.) If bad banks make bad loans, they deserve to have the market place drive them out.

Why is that so hard to swallow? I don't buy anything from anyone that has broken trust with me and certainly don't give them my money to "hold on to". Why would I then ask the government to be rescued failed/failing banks from their deserved fate? Just so they can make the same mistakes again?

The message brought to by someone that HAS been paying attention, IS outraged and is continually DISAPPOINTED by stupidity.

(Followup) A little side work for a "Mom and Pop" store in Texas

I've been working on a banner logo for a local Texas "Mom and Pop" store. Learned some new skills, like animated images and better web styling techniques (things I new but never really put into practice.) I also had to keep in mind that the target demographic for this shop are slow modem connected internet users so the site had to load quickly. Check out the results below. Better yet, stop by the store!

Click on the banner ad above for more information about BEARS WATCHN’




Follow up: Due to financial panic on the customers, my parent's store had to be closed in late 2008. Small business is always a risk but it is not assisted by a jittery customer base, poor media-reporting responsibilities and event worse American leadership.