Friday, September 16, 2011

Minnesota Republicans to Send Vikings Packing

Curt Zellers, the speaker of the Minnesota House, said this week "“There is absolutely no way we’re going to be able to go to the finance commissioner and say, ‘would you write out a $300 million check to (Vikings owner) Zygi Wilf, and put in the little memo section ‘roof for the new stadium. It’s not going to happen."

I'm not thrilled about my "outstate" tax dollars going to fund a stadium and improvements 250 miles away. Billionaires are favorite and easy whipping boys for pols during stadium debates.

But you know what bugs me even more?

Politicians like Zellers who think "there is absolutely no way" that government can be part of a creative solution to any problem.

Zellers thinks there's no tax base in Minnesota.  The truth is, the Republicans clownish management of the state's tax base has forced up local property taxes and forced school districts to borrow against their promised funding. Minnesota will continue to run $5 billion+ deficits as far as the eye can see, because of Minnesota Republican's mismanagement of the tax base. They fix our "deficits" with accounting gimicks instead of structural long term solutions. They refuse even to shift taxes around to compensate for lack of revenue due to the recession. 

So now the Republicans are going to send the Minnesota Vikings packing to Lost Angeles. This is the consequence of voting not for a political party,  but a political philosophy that insists that the citizens of Minnesota can never accomplish anything good by working together, and by the way, let's not even try.

Friday, September 02, 2011

Appealsale.com Scam

This morning I awoke to find about 30 messages from Craigslist alerting me to new postings in the Broward County, FL Craigslist. Overnight, my Craiglist account had been hacked, and dozens of messages advertising mobile phones were posted from my account for a website called Appealsale.com. They use the email addresses appealsale@yahoo.com and appealsale@msn.com. The company seems to be based in China.
I alerted yahoo and MSN, but really, what can you do? Now I just want to get the word out on the web to NOT do business with these guys. I highly suspect that if they will hack my Craigslist account, then they will gladly accept your money and not send you the merchandise.