The Leaf Saga is now complete!

Car pool lane, here I come!

Drivers of fast cars who expect me to go zero to sixty in 4 seconds when you come behind me.... you can now relax! I will be in the far right lane on expressways.

On a side note, why does the DMV make us wait for 6 weeks to get license plates, then put the plate number in a separate form, mail it to Sacramento with a check and make us wait another 6 weeks to get the Access okay stickers?!

In this day and age, can't we just apply for both at the same time so you can update your records simultaneously? Would have been glad to pay that extra 8 bucks for the access stickers along with the hundreds I paid for the registration! At least an electronic submission for the sticker would have saved another few weeks.

This wait for access thing kind of takes the fun out of having bought a car knowing you get to use the car pool lane but only with a sticker! It is kind of "duh"!!!

Double Trouble

Let us say your house is worth $x in your opinion (based on square footage muliplied by the going rate in your area)

Now you get a property tax statement from the county that says your house is worth x+300k !!! and you now owe the county a bigger tax amount.

You figure that if your house is worth that much, then you should be able to get a really nice interest rate on a loan.. afterall your risk is low considering how much your house is worth and how much money you have put in the house already!

So you start the process and to your surprise and anger, the guy who came to appraise your house values the house at x-200k. You are now scratching your head...

The banks want to keep your mortgage high by lowering house value
The county wants to keep your tax high by raising house value

This whole country is run by crooks at every level!

Maybe we should sell our house to the state of California and repay the bank loan and start renting?

If the above mentioned weren't true, I would be laughing.

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Rewards

The radio did the usual spewing of Obamisms along with the standard string of words that is a must for any news item today

1. economy
2. deep recession
3. jobs
4. congress
5. bill
6. law
7. bailout
8. green
9. reward

every day you hear about one more bad decision that gets a pat on the back.

The reward of the day news was

People who got gas guzzlers are to be offered a check for 3500 bucks to give up their guzzlers. funny thing is that this is going to be based on the age of the car.

that is soooo ridiculous. people who bought gas guzzlers did so out of their own choice. the people who decided to market that product knowing that those vehicles are a blatant assault on the environment, did so knowingly. the people who sold that product to the people who sought that product did that knowingly.

now a string of bad decisions gets rewarded.

this is like offering heroin growers cash to grow something else. okay, that was not a perfect example as heroin is a lot more expensive than corn or wheat.

why?

Why should I work so hard and be responsible? why is the system tempting me to make irresponsible decisions so I can be rewarded?

why not levy a tax on the next round of DMV registrations on any vehicle that doesn't meet 20 mpg?

why not say "you pay 20 bucks extra for every mpg drop below 20mpg as part of a clean air tax" . Chances are if you got that hummer or Jeep or sports car that has ridiculous gas mileage you will pay an extra 200-250 bucks a year back. That can at least go towards subsidizing the bailouts of companies that make these vehicles.

It appears as though there is no sense in being sensible anymore!

You borrow way beyond your means knowing you might never repay a loan.. no problem. You are a voting consumer. You will be taken care of.

You lend money without any scruples to people knowing you will make a commission for giving away literally free money.. no problem. You will get bailed out with taxpayer dollars.

You keep making vehicles that are not competitive in an open market and sell your vehicles by linking it to car loans which you control and sell to people who buy the vehicles for all the wrong reasons.. no problem.. we will give you more money to keep making more of the same.

you buy vehicles that blatantly violate effective cost of ownership, environmental impact, no problem.. we will give you some cash so you can go buy a relatively more fuel efficient car made by the same dudes who made your current car.. and when that car becomes a gas guzzler in 10 years, we will give you more money to get rid of that car.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Time to go buy that third hand hummer for 2000 bucks so we can get 3500 bucks to get rid of it!

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Somebody stop this.. please!

Read this..
If this goes on, I would seriously ask why I should pay any taxes at all?!

Enough is enough!!

Somebody, stop this!

This government better not let this one fly. Time to put some people behind bars and stop this bleeding!

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No Lap Left Behind

Apparently the Indian goverment is learning from President Bush.

They have come up with a "No Lap left Behind" policy.

A laptop on every lap, they said and to top things off, the thing was supposed to cost 10 bucks (500 Indian Rupees)!

There has been a lot of hoopla around this over the years.

The most common reasoning out there was that it would still cost 100 bucks to make, but it could be sold by the government for 10 bucks. Well cost and price are two different things, especially when regulated by a government.. any government! You only need to look at ethanol based fuels and cars which claim to use ethanol based fuels (also) in the US to understand this!

Now where were we? Ah, the laps, sorry.. laptops!

Let us for a moment say this thingy does get called a Laptop.

It should have

a. a processor (at least the same thing in a digital watch or a basic electronic calculator)
b. some memory (lets say they have no hard drive to store info and that is an extra)
c. a keyboard to communicate to the outside world (no mice required)
d. a monitor of some sort
e. a power source (or module if it runs on batteries)
f. an outer plastic case to hold all these together as opposed to a ziploc bag

if you have to divvy up these 6 things under 10$, you are looking at some amazing manufacturing!

Truly amazing, state of the art, cost effective manufacturing as well as state of the art distribution which is free or nearly free!

Obviously a billion laps would need to be serviced here and that means cartons and cartons of laptop devices need to be shipped and transported and distributed and that should all be included in the ten buck cost!

Plus you need top {bolly,tolly,kolly}U(Wood) actresses, former desi Miss Worlds, Universe, etc. posing with "tzis device" to make it appeal to the masses.

Somehow I feel my brother is being cheated. The government officials in India are smoking some high quality pot and they are not sharing it with the tax paying people!

$ 40, very much possible. $30 is pushing it with today's manufacturing! I am serious here. You can get a plastic case, working keyboard, a simple processor that possibly does basic text editing, calculator, clock, etc. etc. a pixelized monitor without color, 128MB memory , batteries sold separately device for 40 bucks including distribution, advertising etc.

My BIL got Jr. a laptop that comes close, and it cost $50 and it is pretty educational!

In a world where a langot costs 10-15 rupees and a VIP brief for that same lap, goes for 50, a laptop at 500 rupees is too good to be true!

Who knows, maybe some day there will be a ten dollar laptop, for real!?!

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