Political thoughts

So, I'm excited about having Barack Obama as our next president. I did vote for him, just to be clear. I have been anti-Bush for eight years, voting for Gore and Kerry, and I feel that my distrust of Bush has been completely justified. That, however, is not the political thoughts I wanted to publish. I have been thinking about the "bailout" plans. Both plans, banking and auto industry.

It seems to me that the overall idea is to rescue businesses that have made poor business decisions, particularliy in the auto industry. If a small business owner makes a poor decision and has to go under because of it, he goes under. Nobody "rescues" him/her, despite people losing their jobs because of it. In the banking industry, we have banks making risky loans to home buyers, and the lending banks' bank making risky loans to the banks making the risky loans, right? If I put my money into stock of a company that I think will do well, and the company tanks, I take the fall. So how is this different? Sure it's on a much larger scale, but if they fold, doesn't that mean that newer companies will buy up the debt left for pennies, creating much less risk for the loan holder? What am I missing here, tat seems like the better way... and as a side not, if the government is going to pay for "troubled mortgages" to refinance, why can't my mortgage be troubled?

As for the auto industry, I have a hard time rescuing companies that continuously make bad choices. For example, when the Toyota Prius arrived on the market, it had such high demand that Toyota couldn't make enough. There were waiting lists at dealers. As the hybrid car entered the market, it grew even more popular. Now we have a "green" trend in the USA where many companies are marketing their "greenness", people are growing concerned about the health safety of plastics, and people are moving away from high fructos corn syrup so much that the corn growers association is paying for commercials promoting high fructos corn syrup. Yet despite these glaring trends toward personal and global health, the American auto industry continues to mass produce, and heavily market, gas guzzling trucks and SUV's. Even with the recent spike in oil prices, the auto dealers continued to rely on trucks and SUV's, and when their sales plummetted, they blame it on the economy and ask for money from the government. I say let them fail like any other business.

I know what you are thinking- "What about all the jobs that will be lost?". Well, again, we have to rely on the free market here. Let the other auto makers surge and pick up those employees. Despite being Japanese, Toyota and Honda have factories in the US, and with the fall of their competitiors, they will see a surge in sales. This in turn helps them grow and have new jobs available. Why wouldn't they hire the people that already know how to build cars? Very little training costs involved. If the government wants to help, they can support those people during the transition of losing their jobs at American auto makers, and being hired by the foriegn companies. The only real downfall is the loss of truly American auto makers, which seems to me is a perfect opportunity for a new auto maker in the US to grow as the economy comes back.

My other problem in this subject is the CEO's. Let's look at this from a small business owner perspective. Let's say I own a small business, and as the economy is strong and I continue to make the right decisions, I begin making a lot of money. As the owner, I decide to pay myself more for my efforts, and soon I am making $100,000 /yr, while the company continues to grow strong. Then the economy takes a downturn and my sales drop. I begin to make sacrifices and cut costs to stay alive. If I beg for money from ANYONE, I'm told to suck it up, most businesses fail, that's the risk I took. So getting a "bailout" is not an option. What's my next move? Cut my own damn pay, that's what. Take my $100,000 down to $60,000 because if I can just survive the economic slow down, I'll be able to take it back up eventually. Shouldn't CEO's be held to the same standard? Why are these businesses failing, but the CEO's are still making MILLIONS! Why aren't they made to cut their own pay- it's the risk of business! So they have to sell their mansions, big freakin' deal! If millions of people, including thier employees, can live on $60,000/yr and less, they can too.

I guess my point is, if we are going to bail out these companies, the people that let them get to this point, should be ousted. If the automaker can't get a sense of the market turning "green", then dump those that missed it. If a company makes risky loans that go bad, toss the people that allowed those loans to be made, then rescue the company. As it stands, we're poised to rescue these companies, and leave the same people in charge that got them there to begin with.

new job

Well, I got a new job. I am now the IT Manager for Fishbowl Inventory. We make an inventory managements software that can interface with Quickbooks. Check us out at www.fishbowlinventory.com (shameless plug you bet!!!!) They have been without an IT Manager for a couple months, so I have an enormous list of things to do, and some of them are major projects. We are moving our customer management database from ACT to SugarCRM. That should be entertaining :P I was going to build the Sugar machine on an Ubuntu LAMP server but I couldn't get all of the LAMP components to work together so I think I'll build it with the SugarCRM iso that configures everything on Red Hat. I hate Red Hat though...
I also got to install a BES server (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) onto our exchange. What a pain, but pretty useful now that it's up. :)
I do hope to start posting useful how-to's from the IT world, but we'll see how well I stick to it :)
I did find out from bleepingcomputer.com that the reason my new work laptop wouldn't display websites correctly was that the "Use High contrast" setting was set in accessibility options. I unchecked it an voila, I could see sites correctly :)

me

I think I should tell the world about myself (briefly). Without giving away any personal information :) I am the Security Administrator for an ISP in Utah. I have a bachelor's degree in Information Systems Security from ITT-Technical Institute, and an Associates degree in Business from Salt Lake City Community College (I'm reel learnt). I hold the Associate of (ISC)² certification (same test as CISSP, just lacking work experience), which I hope to upgrade to full CISSP in 2008. I juggle and ride a 6-foot tall unicycle for fun, and play World of Warcraft in my ever-diminishing free time (I can't help it, I love computer games- sad, I know). I am also teaching adjunct at ITT-Technical Institute now, which is a very interesting experience that I will elaborate more on in a later post.

I am happily married, and my first kid (son) was born October 3rd, 2007. I also have 2 cats (fat and lazy- not their names but should be)

Anyway, that's me in a dried-out-insect-exoskeleton. ;)

I hope that lends some credibility to my random comments (yeah right).

politics

As we draw nearer to the 2008 presidential election, I find myself pondering politics. In, Utah, or example, I am surprised that there isn't a huge Mitt Romney base, blindly following him because he's Mormon. Traditionally, Mormons are Republicans. I know this is a bit of a stereo type, but Utah hasn't been won by a Democratic candidate in a long time. Here's an interesting link for the electoral college. I tried to find out when the last time Utah was won by a non-republican party, but my attention waned. Anyway, in the last 2 presidential elections, Utah has been won by the Republicans by a large number of votes. My point I was trying to get to is that most Utahns that I have spoken to about their political affiliation, have been blindly Republican, not able to make clear reasons for being Republican. Also, mormons love to tell you the famous people that are also mormon, which led me to think, combined with the former statement, they would blindly follow a mormon republican candidate anywhere. Perhaps they are holding out to see if he wins the republican nomination.
What I have seen in Utah, that I expected, is a general hatred of Hillary Clinton. I have heard many things like, "If Hillary wins, I'll have to move out of the country". I believe this stems from the LDS religion's tendency not to trust women in positions of power. Couple that with Hillary Clinton being a Democrat, and to many Utah Mormons, she's the devil. If you ask these people why they won't vote for Hillary, they will generally tell you one of three things: She's a socialist, she's a liar, or she contradicts herself. To this, I say: To a Republican, the Democratic platforms are on the socialist side- the Democratic party has always been more for the laborer than the business owner, and their belief that good health care is a basic human right, flies against good Republican, billionaire, pharmaceutical and health care campaign contributers, so of course you think she's a socialist. Also, of course she lies, she's a politician. Contradict herself? Again, she's a politician. Anyone that thinks that any presidential candidate doesn't lie or contradict themselves, is an idiot. I, obviously, am democratic-leaning, but I will freely admit that all the democratic candidates lie and contradict themselves, because every candidate, regardless of party, does. If you don't believe me, spend a week listening to Sean Hannity and John Stewart. Hannity will point out the lies and contradictions of the democrats, and Stewart will point out the lies and contradictions of the Republicans
So what does that mean for the election? Am I going to vote for Hillary? I won't decide that until I see who the democratic nominee is. I'm not totally opposed to the idea anyway.

Just a quick note about health care. I was listening to Sean Hannity the other day, and I heard him say that the American Health care system is the best in the world. That's why people leave the country to get their health care. That's why Americans buy their prescriptions in Canada and smuggle them back. That's why elderly re-hab patients are sent home before they are able to take are of themselves, many dieing or needing to be rushed to the ER because they tried to get to the bathroom and fell. That's why millions of Americans can't afford to go to the doctor, or have to choose between seeing the doctor themselves, or having their children see the doctor. That's why millions of Americans can't afford life-saving medications and procedures. And that's why Republican politicians get free rides/trips on HMO and pharmaceutical private jets. Give me a break Hannity.
Forrestmage

First day of blog

So I've been meaning to start a blog for... well.. years. I just never did it. I do have one on my myspace page, but ...meh.... nobody sees it. At any rate, we'll see how often i manage to post to it as my attention span is .... I like bunnies, they're cute..... and I want a butterfinger..... anyway, here's to my future in blogging! Forrestmage