Opinions and News shared by Jerome Trent

[Jerome Trent]

It is my intention to use this BLOG to share with you noteworthy articles of news and my comments or opinion on these and other such items or articles.  You are welcome to express your own opinions with your comments here or on your own BLOG here on www.MoreDat.com.

[Jerome Trent]

The so-called government shutdown is now over.  So what changed?  Is life better now for us?  Did they improve anything?  Did they reduce their out-of-control spending?  Did they reduce your taxes?  Did they improve any sort of government services for you?  I'd like to know.  I welcome your comment on my blog at http://moredat.ning.com/profiles/blogs/opinions-and-news-shared-by-... or on my facebook page.

As I understand it, there were two major parts of what was being discussed in congress.  There was discussions about changes to Obamacare and there were discussions about spending and debt limit.  You can call that three things if you want to.

First let's talk about Obamacare.  I heard an ad on the radio yesterday from a company that provides services to other companies.  The service they were touting yesterday was about how they could help you with implementing and following the law of Obamacare.  In their message they said that they could help with the "added complexities and burdens of Obamacare".  That sounds to me like they are saying that Obamacare is so complex that businesses will have to use more employee hours to deal with them, thereby costing them more money.  They also say it is a burden to these businesses and the burden they are referring to is the additional employee hours and expense to their business.  You and I should know that if a business has more expenses they can pass them along to their customers or they can reduce other expenses by cutting back on what they pay their employees or cutting back on their number of employees.  Neither of these is a good thing for the business or the employees of that business or the customers of that business.  Bad, bad, bad all around.  There is very little good that you will find in the thousands of pages of Obamacare law.  If you are a responsible person who is employed and trying to take care of your family, it's going to cost you.  Eliminating Obamacare or making major changes to it could reduce the increased cost to you and most of your neighbors.

Now let's talk about the debt limit.  Federal government spending, of your money, has gotten so out of control that they continually need to increase the debt limit to continue to spend more and more of your money.  If all of you ran your household budget the way the Federal government runs their budget, you would all be filing bankruptcy.  So ask yourselves, how long is it going to be before the Federal government has to file bankruptcy?  If they went in and talked to a bankruptcy attorney about how they continue to spend more than they make and that their credit cards are maxing out, I'm sure that attorney would advise them to file for bankruptcy.  What do you think?  I don't think the solution is to continue to request higher and higher limits.

Now let's talk about spending.  The Federal government spending is out of control.  They spend way more than they take in.  Let's compare that to you and your spending.  You have a certain amount of income from your job or your business or your retirement or wherever it may come from.  Then you spend it on things such as housing, cars, utilities, gas for your car, electronic gadgets, birthday presents, Christmas presents and various other things.  If you don't have the money in your bank account then you have to borrow it.  Much of our borrowing is done through revolving credit accounts such as Visa and MasterCard, but then we get the bill and we have to pay that.  If you are responsible with your spending then the credit limit on these accounts may be increased so that you can spend more.  At some point though, the revolving accounts say enough is enough.  No more credit limit increase.  They don't care what it is you need to buy.  When your credit cards are all maxed out and you try to buy a car with a loan on it, guess what; you may very well be turned down for the car loan or the house loan or the loan for whatever it is that you were trying to buy.  You reached your limit and you get no more.  At this point you can either pay your debt down or you can file bankruptcy.

A lot of things are going to have to change.  Spending has to be reduced.  Programs have to be cut back or eliminated.  The Federal government needs to get out of our business.  We don't need them in our healthcare.  We don't need them in our educational systems.  We don't need them in many things that they are involved in.  They have proven to be failures again and again and again.  We don't need more and more failing programs.

These are my thoughts.  I welcome yours.

Jerome Trent

[Jerome Trent]

U. S. Companies are growing and expanding but at a very slow pace.  You might think that this would mean our economy is growing and that unemployment is dropping, but I’m afraid you would be dead wrong.  The manufacturing sector in the U.S. has been shrinking.  They decided several years ago that it would be cheaper to make their products in another country where they can get very cheap labor.  If you work in a manufacturing facility you should be very concerned that sometime in the near future you may very well be out of a job.  The high labor costs, pushed up by unions and ever increasing minimum wages, are pushing you out of a job.

Getting cheap labor in other countries means you can buy products at a lower price.  That’s good for you and me the consumer.  It also means more products will be purchased.  Life is good but everything you own or buy says “Made in China”, or “Made in Taiwan”, or “Made in Thailand”.  With more and more U.S. companies moving their manufacturing facilities to other countries, we are becoming a nation of consumers.

Many of the people losing their jobs to cheap foreign labor are trying to move into a service job.  Of course there are only so many service jobs, and with so many people trying to enter the service industry, there are affects.  Good affect is that the price of the service goes down.  Bad effect is those people have to work harder and get by with less since the prices are lower.

Now to my biggest concern with sending our manufacturing jobs to other countries, our military.  Where are the airplanes built?  Where are the trucks and jeeps built?  Where are the bombs, guns and ammunition built?  We’d better not get into a conflict or war with a country that builds these things for us.  A lot of the reason we won WWII is because we had a strong manufacturing industry to build these things for our military.  We no longer have that.  We don’t build our own cars.  We don’t build our own cell phones.  We don’t build our own computers.  We are, however, building up to a problem.

I would love to hear from you on your thoughts.

[Jerome Trent]

I hear an awful lot about how the sequestration is hurting.  There are various news articles about how nearly all government agencies have to cut back because of the sequestration.  Really, all it amounts to is that our government has to live within it's means.  You and I have to do it.  Why shouldn't our government have a budget and live by it?

This is not a hard thing for them to do, in fact one part of the government has demonstrated that they can make huge cuts in their expenses and still get the job done.  Have you heard what the United States Postal Service has been able to accomplish?  In 2012 they had a loss of nearly $16 Billion.  There is no way that the administrators of the USPS should have let this happen, but losses for the USPS this year have only reached about $4 Billion and their fiscal year is almost over.  Their losses have been cut by nearly 75%.  Now that sounds like a lot of pork to me.  Where was all of our money going?  There is a huge problem with wasteful government spending.  Taxes would not need to be increased if they would just get their spending under control.

If the Postal Service can cut back this much and still get the job done, imagine how much wasteful spending could be cut from many of the other government agencies and organizations.  Sequestration is just one step toward living within their means like I do.  You live within your means don't you, or do you have a printing press in the back room or maybe in the basement printing out more money for you to spend?  Or maybe you have an unlimited credit card with the Bank of China.

I'm for less government, less government interference in my life and less wasteful spending.  Those folks in Washington were put there by us, that is if you voted.  They can also be replaced by us since they don't seem to be doing the job they were sent there to do.  Please make your vote count any time you have the opportunity.

Your comments are welcome.

[Jerome Trent]

NO PRIVACY OR SECURITY

Issues of the NSA, the current Administration and possibly other organizations about collecting phone call and internet data is much in the news and seen on lots of media sources.  It is my understanding that the government of the United States has initiated and/or sanctioned the collection of all US phone records.  This information would include the phone number and location where the call was initiated and the number and location of the recipient of the call.  Length of call, time of call, everything except the content of the calls are being saved.  I may be wrong about the content.  They may also be saving it, just in case they need it.

Also, as I understand it, All of the data moving around on the internet is also being collected.  Correct me if I'm wrong.  This data would include this BLOG, your blogs, your internet searches, your emails, your videos viewed, your facebook updates and pictures, your linkedin updates, your cloud computer backups, your dropbox and other cloud services and basically everything that flies through the internet.

All of this data storage does concern me as it should you.  There are privacy issues but it seems that any electronic communications you use is not private.  Your government has just ignored your privacy and the privacy laws of the US.  Oh, and by the way, if you are using a computer, device or internet connection at the company where you work, then your employer can see all your data, email, internet searches, text messages and videos.

We don't have any privacy, not even at home.  Though I am concerned about my employer and our government reading everything I wright, they are not my biggest concern.  You know, the internet is worldwide.  I believe it travels to every continent and country on the globe.  That means there are many, many other governments or companies around the world that could be collecting your electronic data.

What scares me is that China, Russia, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and many others could also have huge data mines.  If I were running these countries I would want to be collecting any data I could use against a potential enemy.  I'm sure you have already read about China hacking into the computer systems of many American companies to steal their technology, research or developments to use it for their own gain.  Is there anything to stop them from collecting data just like our own government?

It appears that there is no security for any of our electronic communications, domestic or foreign.

Your comments are welcome.