How to Fix California's Budget Problems

I know how to fix the state's budget problems. It is a real easy fix. The problem is that most people do not want to hear it.

The real problem in our state is the mismanagement of funds. We are overspending on things that are necessary, but should not cost what our state and local governments pay for them. Many of these services are very necessary and most politicians pander to the unions that represent the employees of these services.

My first change would be to cut the pay for police and fire. There were a few articles in our local newspaper last week that pointed out the number of policemen and firemen that make more than one-hundred thousand dollars per year. That is an outrageous salary for the area we live in. The problem is that the unions who represent these two groups are very powerful. They always have politicians in their pockets. I think most unions are totally unnecessary any way, but these two are some of the worst. They play on the public's fear that we cannot be without there services. I agree that we can't, but we definitely don't need to be paying the price we do.

I see policemen from other towns driving their cars home. What is the benefit of that to the taxpayer in the town where they are employed? I can understand it to a certain extent if the officer lives in town, but to drive a city vehicle out of the city to your house every day is an unnecessary expense. And why couldn't that car be used by another officer on a different shift? How about a little cost sharing here.

As far as the firemen go, most of the time they are just on call. They are getting paid overtime every week while they just sit there and wait for a call. How does that make sense? Maybe they should be paid a small hourly wage for on-call time and then be paid a bonus per call. That might be one solution to get their pay back in line.

Military spending is another area that is out of control. This doesn't affect the state directly, but it is still an issue. I appreciate our service men and women a great deal, but at least some of them are overpaid. I know of a few that get large moving bonuses, for lack of a better term, every two years or so. They move their families on the cheap and then pocket the rest of the money. The few I know also own multiple houses. I know a lot more people who are not in the military and a much smaller percentage of them own multiple houses. I understand that some of these people put their lives on the line to protect us, but there are many who never even go to war who reap the benefits just the same as those who do.

Another area where spending should be cut drastically is in our prison system. We pay for a lot of things that these prisoners should not be receiving. For instance, if a prisoner is in the process of having a sex change, they get to finish the process in prison with tax payer money. Why is this the case? It is a waste of our tax dollars. The same goes for the rest of the medical and dental benefits that the prisoners receive. Most of these people would be on MediCal if they were not in prison, yet while in prison they receive better care and services than the correctional officers receive. It is absolutely ridiculous.

And these are just a few of the areas that I know about. I would imagine that there are many other types of spending that could be cut back just the same to help put our state back in the black. The politicians this election are focused on things like getting our farmers water and cutting taxes when they should be focused on the real issues to get our state back where it needs to be.

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Why We Do The Things We DO

We all have our own reasons for why we do the things we do. It is human nature to do things that get you some recognition. It feeds our egos. But some of us do it much more often than others. Some people truly want to do the right thing while others want to do the thing that gets them noticed.

There was an episode of Friends in which Phoebe wanted to do a truly selfless good deed. Everything she talked about doing or did was found to have some self interest in it. She got some satisfaction from it. If you really think about this, it is true that almost everything you do has some bit of self interest involved. You do something because you want to help people. You do it because it is the right thing to do, and that is what your parents taught you. In other words, you don't want to let your parents down. I am not saying this is wrong, but what is wrong is when someone does something because they want to get recognized for doing it.

You can't look at the public person and judge them by that persona alone. There are many people who lead double lives and are completely different at home and at work. There are many people who like to manipulate people into thinking they are someone they are not. These are the people who do good things for the wrong reason. Many politicians fall into this category.

I despise these people. I understand that if there was not some bit of self interest than nobody would do good things. I have a problem with the people who only do it to be looked at as good people. These people are living a lie. Nobody knows who they truly are and that is a sad thing.

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I Geeked Out on Saturday

I checked the mail on Saturday afternoon and was not very impressed with what I found. I did get something from the city solid waste department. I was bored, so I opened it. When I finally laid my eyes upon what was inside I was very excited.

My town is finally composting! I was excited because I have been thinking about doing my own composting for some time now. There is just so much "trash" that ends up in our landfills that does not need to be there. It is a waste of our resources.

The Queen and I went out to dinner for our anniversary that night. It was a great meal, but on the way back I told her how excited I was that our town was starting to compost. She made fun of me and then said that I should have been more excited about our ten years of marriage. I told her I was, but that this was bigger than both of us. This was a step toward ensuring the future our our children and their children.

On Monday night I went to Target and decided to buy a new trash can just for the compostable items. I ended up getting a nice Simple Human can that matches our existing can. I am trying to get everyone excited about separating their trash, but it has not been easy. They are all playing along for now, but I don't know how long that will last.

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I Received My New Camera

The Queen bought me a Canon 7D for our ten-year anniversary. (She is great!) I finally received it Tuesday night. I could not wait to try it out, so I just stared at the battery as it charged. It was finally ready at about nine o'clock so I popped it in and started shooting.

It was dark, which was a perfect test for the high ISO settings. I started shooting and messing around with different ISO settings and shutter speeds. All of my shots were taken in the house and some of them turned out pretty great after running them through Noiseware. The only downfall is that I only have the community edition so it does not save the images full size.

I will continue trying this great camera out until my trip to Chicago on October 30. I will really test it's low light capabilities on that trip. I will retake some photos around the Chicago River that I originally took in 2006. I can't wait to see how they turn out.

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The Tea Party

So The Queen was telling me all about Dancing With The Stars this morning. She is an avid viewer. So she was telling me that everyone expected Bristol Palin to leave the show, however she was miraculously spared the humiliation and remains to dance again.

Let me start off by asking, is Bristol is a "star?" I don't believe she is and think that she was a very cunning publicity stunt for the show. They roped in all of the Tea Party viewers with that one casting decision. I think the producers of that show are the most brilliant in all of TV. Year after year they put people on the show who us non-viewers question, but they bring the viewers.

So, Bristol is not a star. She is just a young girls from Alaska who got pregnant as a teenager and has a famous mom. Her mom is not a star either, by the way. But she is famous because John McCain was desperate to find a running mate that he thought would get him votes. That is the only reason she was chosen as a running mate. She is not smart. She is not good at her job. She is just a strong-willed, attractive woman and that is what he thought he needed to combat Hillary Clinton.

By all accounts, Bristol is not a good dancer. She was expected to be voted off the show last night, but the voters, er Tea Party, kept her on. I am not a fan of the Tea Party. I think they are a bunch of misguided individuals who are being manipulated for a bigger agenda. The right wing is always good at manipulating people and whipping them into a frenzy. They love to play on fear and racial issues and they do a great job at it. They create a loyal group that will not question right and wrong. They create a loyal group that will even keep a bad dancer on a TV show because she is the daughter of one of their own.

I hate when people stop questioning authority and become sheep that just blindly follow their leaders. That is what the Tea Party is whether you want to believe it or not.

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What a Great Day!

Today has been a great day so far. The Queen and I are celebrating ten years of marital bliss. If that is not enough, she called me a little while ago to tell me she got tenure. What a great day!

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It Has Been Difficult

I am not even going to sugar coat things. We have been having a tough time with our new larger family. B has really been testing us. She has also been testing Meg.

B has been very manipulative with regard to Meg. On Sunday she asked Meg to write mean things on a piece of paper. She kept telling her to write even meaner things. Yesterday she was throwing a fit about doing home work and then "tattled" on Meg. Meg got very upset. B eventually admitted that she asked her to write those things, but I told Meg that did not make it right. I told her that she knows right from wrong and that she needs to continue to make good choices.

B then told us that her therapist told her she can call her family. She said that Meg heard her tell her. Meg said that the therapist told her she would have to ask her social worker. We knew that was the case, but Meg confirmed it. B has issues with lying about everything. Last week she told us that she had an iPad at her house. Then later in the day she said, "I wish I had an iPad." She gets caught in her lies all the time.

I'm tired. And this week is my ten year wedding anniversary with The Queen. I hope I will be able to take her out so we can forget about everything for a while. I really wanted this to be a special anniversary, but that is not going to happen.

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A Better Week

This week has been much better than last weekend. I am hoping that is is a permanent change, but you never know what will happen when the girls spend the whole weekend together again. On the positive side, Chels will be home this weekend so hopefully she can diffuse some of the problems for us.

Yesterday K was bouncing off the walls when I picked her up from her after school program. I let her go for a while and then told her to calm down and she did. She was much better after that. She actually kissed my eyelid and my cheek at two different points last night. She has hugged me and called me dad plenty of times, but that is the first time she has kissed me.

B and Meg were having issues before soccer practice. Meg was in a bad mood and she just was not taking much from B. I had to speak to her a few times to get her to act a little nicer.

I had to tell all three girls that they need to treat each other better. I will need to remind them of that constantly until it all sinks in.

The first thing out of K's mouth on Wednesday when the social worker came over was, "can I have a piece of gum?" The social worker told her she was not in charge, which was a good thing. Last night after soccer practice we were walking by the assistant coach who was buying something at the snack bar and B asked him to buy her a soda.

I had to tell the girls not to ask people for stuff. B said that she was just joking with the assistant coach, but I told her it was not a funny joke. I told them that it is rude to ask people for stuff. I know for sure that we will have to keep reminding them of this fact. It just seems to be second nature for them at this point. Whenever someone has something they say they want it. I guess that comes from their upbringing so far. It might have been a form of survival for all we know.

These bad habits are going to be hard to break, but I am game.

On another note, the social worker told us on Wednesday that their family members have been calling to try to see them. All of their rights have been terminated, but they keep calling. That is a little weird to me, but I guess I need to get used to it.

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Tough Days

We met with our social worker on Friday evening and talked about a lot of things, but mostly about how lucky we had been up to that point. She told us that this was the honeymoon phase and that things will change as the kids get more comfortable with us. She was right.

Saturday was a very hard day for everyone. We had an early soccer game so our day was very long. It was B's first game so she was pretty excited. After the game we split up because I had to referee a game. The Queen and the kids went to her parent's house for menudo. When I got home she told me that she had to separate all three of the kids when they got back home.

We headed off to lunch with my family and then we went straight to the girl's counseling session. K was excited to be there and B was just roaming around the whole place like she owned it. She even yelled up the stairs to her counselor at one point. Once they were in the hands of the counselor, we went to go see Chels for her birthday.

When we got back to pick them up, K was eating some Doritos. That kind of annoyed me since we just had lunch before dropping them off, but I let it go. The kids seemed to be fine.

When we got home, The Queen had to go to the grocery store to pick up some things for dinner. We were having some friends over that night. The girls all went out into the front yard to play. I checked on them often. After a little while, Meg came in and said that K said a bad word. I asked her what she said and she told me she could not say it. I brought K in and started talking to her about what she had said. She would not tell me the word she said, but told me that her little brother taught it to her. I gave her a time out.

Meg and B had already told The Queen what had happened before she walked in the door. She had another conversation with K about what she said and we left her in time out for a little while longer. We made her apologize to Meg for calling her a name.

The girls all started picking at each other, so we finally just took Meg into our bedroom and had a long talk with her. She was crying and was very frustrated. The Queen felt very sorry for putting her in this situation. I told her that Meg was strong enough to make it through this and would become a better person because of it. The picking at each other continued after our friends arrived. The girls had to be separated several times.

B fell asleep in the family room before anyone else. K came into the living room and wanted to lay on me. I let her for a while, but then told her she would have to brush her teeth and go to bed. She had a little fit, but went to brush her teeth the second time I told her. She ended up throwing a major fit in bed and was trying to make herself vomit. She was gagging herself repeatedly. I finally got her calm again and she went to sleep.

I went into Meg's room to turn off her light at about eleven and I heard K talking in her bed. I went in to find that she had vomited. The Queen and I cleaned everything up and got her in the shower and back into bed. It was a long day.

When I got the girls home from school on Monday I had them start their home work. Everything was fine and then all of the sudden B started crying and ducking under that table. I asked her to stop and she refused. She just kept whining softly so that I could not understand what she was saying. I took her home work away from her and told her she was done and that I would write a note to her teacher to tell her that B could not complete the work. I told her to leave the room so the other girls could finish their home work. She stopped crying at that point and started trying her home work again.

The Queen got home and it was time to take the girls back for another counseling session. When we got there B just started roaming around again and we made her stop. She just refused to listen to The Queen and kept moving a sign in the lobby. The Queen kept talking to her and B started banging her head on the window softly. It seemed like it was just to get attention. When the counselor came out she decided that B would be the only one to go to the counseling that day. At the end of the session we told the counselor what had happened and she told us that happens all of the time. When we got home B was better.

I am starting to wonder if B's behavior is tied to the counseling sessions. I will keep and eye on it to see if there is a connection.

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First Soccer Game for B

B finally got to play her first soccer game today. She played midfielder and defense an plied very well for her first game ever.

B had some really good plays and some great kicks. She will develop into a great stopper with some more practice.

Meg had a great game as well. She always plays very solid.

I still feel like I need to work more with both girls to help them develop.

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