Missouri Govenor: Jay Nixon To decide on Helmet Law

I have blogged about the liberty stealing affects of laws like this stupid helmet law as well as seat belt laws. Well, the Governor of Missouri has an opportunity to change the helmet law and give us back some of our liberty. He has not yet made a decision and if you are a Missouri resident, I urge you to click on the heading for this post to send an email to the Governor to let him know how you feel about it. If you don't quite know what to say, I'll post what I wrote to him as an example:

"Good afternoon,

I wanted to right to express my support for the changes in helmet laws. I don't believe they make sense, except for as suggested (on highways) and this law as well as others like it (seat-belt laws) have failed at achieving their intended goal which was to lower the cost medical insurance as a result of uninsured motorists being injured and being treated for their injuries. In spite of these laws, insurance costs have still soared and all we, the people, got out of it was less freedom and higher costs associated with living in this State. Change the law, give something back to us.

Thank you for your attention,"

Get Envolved, OverStanders!!!

Gripe of the Day: Bad Credit "Get A Computer" Rip-Offs

Have you heard of those "poor credit" computer offers such as "Help Me To Buy" or "Blue Hippo"? These companies offer credit towards the purchase of "top-of-the-line" computers or other electronics, for people with bad credit. While these programs will get you a computer, there are a lot of catches and they actually further assault the credit of people with poor credit rather than help re-build it. Here's what these type of programs say they offer:

1 - Help Re-establishing and rebuilding credit for people with poor credit.
2 - Guaranteed credit approval for everyone.
3 - Top of the line equipment.
4 - Large assortment of High-end software bundles.
5 - Free extras (MP3 player, Printer, Digital Camera, etc.)

Here is what you really get:

1 - First off, they don't help you re-establish your credit because they DON'T report your credit history with them to any reporting agencies.
2 - Credit is only guaranteed because it is "secured" credit. In other words; they require a substantial deposit towards the purchase before they will accept your credit application and they require that you give them access to make automatic payment withdrawals from your bank account.
3 - The equipment is often refurbished (used but rebuilt).
4 - The software is often sub-standard (instead of MS Word, you get Corel Office).
5 - The free extras often don't come until you have completely or close to completely paid for the purchase. So if you would like to actually print anything you type up on your "new" refurbished computer, you'll have to wait a year or more, which is when you're expected to have paid off the purchase.

Here's what else they don't tell you:

1 - Your computer will end up costing you substantially more than its actual retail value as a result of high interest rates and an inflated retail value. They get away with this because they know you have no where else to go if you have poor credit.
2 - The so called "Name Brand" equipment and software can be substituted for anything they determine to be of equal value at any time, for any reason and without prior notice to you.
3 - You are expected to place a down payment (over the phone) on the purchase BEFORE you have seen a full contract outlining the details of the agreement that you are entering into.
4 - It's a head ache getting tech support because the equipment is often registered under a different name on the warranty. In other words; the company (Blue Hippo or Help Me To Buy) is not the name the company uses to register for tech help.

If you have poor credit, the best thing for you to do is pay cash. Save the money you would be spending every month on one of these schemes and buy the equipment yourself from a real store with NEW equipment that you get right there on the spot. It will take you far less time to save the money you need to buy the equipment at actual retail value, than the year or two it will take to pay off the inflated value equipment through one of these programs.

Gripe of the Day: Digital TV

This whole, switch to digital TV, thing is nothing more than a power and money move. This thing came out of nowhere and hit us like a brick smack in the face. They announced this crap and then gave us a matter of months, in a weakened economy, to get ourselves on the ship or basically, be left behind. Why would they do this? Why would the FCC do this? What were they telling us was so urgent that they had to force this down our throats right now!? What they said at the time was that digital is so much better but those of us who have had digital satellite TV knew that, that was a crock. Every time it rains, snows, gets cloudy or the wind blows too hard, you're left with a chopped up mess of a signal that leaves you all of the sudden wondering whey the hell you're paying for it. One thing is certain and that is that my old analog signal with my old rabbit-ear antenna worked perfectly, rain, sleet or snow and when it didn't, all I had to do was adjust the ears. Not with this digital crap! You either have a good signal or you don't. This is more of the same old same with these large industries in America. There used to be a time when a red blooded American man could roll up his sleeves and fix just about anything. That isn't good for business however. If you can fix it, why would you buy another? In case you haven't noticed folk, the ship has been overtaken by money men with numerical souls who see and think in digits. That can't rule your world but they want to be kings so they're changing your world into something they can control. Back to the topic.

This was definitely a back room deal with a "rush" stipulation attached to it. That's the only explanation for why this thing was done in such a hurry. Then they realized that the economy is failing and people (every single person with a TV) probably can't afford to do this right now, so they offered us coupons. These coupons expired before the national deadline date for the changeover to digital TV. What the F**k was that all about?! People were in the middle of trying to survive a recession and this was the best they could do? What a load!

As the deadline drew nearer, they realized that no where near enough people were ready for it so they had to extend it but notice that they didn't extend the life of the coupons. Then they began to drum up new reasons to explain why this will be so good for us all and why they had to make this change. One such reason was that each of your local networks would now have more than one channel on which to broadcast which should mean more diverse programming and a larger set of options to chose from. I thought to myself, "that could be good. Perhaps now I can actually have some good choices for the terrible weekend lineups on most network channels". And they asserted that emergency responders needed the old analog frequencies for national emergencies such as that of 9-11. I though, "that could be good. They could use a dedicated network".

So I, being one of those with a useless expired coupon, went on line and found myself a cheap converter box for one of my televisions. I no longer have satellite TV so I had to do it. I already had a pretty good antenna so I hooked it all up and got it all up and running. First thing I did was scan through all of these great new channels to find all of this wonderful new programming they promised. I wasn't all that surprised to find nothing but crap on top of more crap followed up by supportive crap! To add insult to injury, it's been cloudy or raining since I got the damn thing and I haven't been able to watch a show without interruption, yet! Then I thought a little deeper and now I'm wondering why, if this digital thing was so great and had the potential to send out so many various frequencies and bands within bands and whatnot, why the hell didn't they leave us alone and let the emergency responders use it?! Wouldn't it have been easier to let them set up their new systems on this new technology rather than forcing the entire freakin' nation to throw away millions of dollars unnecessarily?! Is it me or is there a dirty, dead stinkin' smelling rat in the room? Anywho, I'm vented.