Blog by Aleostax

I recently saw a post about a guy in Illinois that is charged with “eavesdropping” on cops as they go about confiscating the guys property due to a violation. Apparently he is now facing 5 counts of up to 15yrs in prison each. That’s 75 years potentially for recording cops going about their “duty”. That’s bullshit, he even pointed out that he wanted a record in case of harassment etc. They are punishing it as if it were the the same level of heinous crime that rape is. That is complete and total bullshit!

We are all being recorded constantly without our prior knowledge. Cops have their dash cams and buildings have security cams, hell even google earth has caught naked people sunbathing. If you aren’t inside your home or hotel room you shouldn’t expect privacy. Hell, there was recent articles about software rootkits that provide tracking and even the ability to remotely enable the mic and camera on your smartphones. People can spy on you anywhere and it’s unreasonable that someone should even have to go to court for recording police doing what they do. Granted it’s not nation wide but this is ridiculous, we the people need just as much protection from police as they do from us.

Look at the OWS movement and the numerous cases of harassment and bullshit that cops are doing. Putting Americans in jail hasn’t fixed your problems in the past and it won’t now. Pepper spraying students for being on the sidewalk, seriously? Isolating press away from incidents so they can’t record the “good stuff” is bullshit. I’m not an activist, I don’t get involved in movements. That being said I am pissed and everyday I get more pissed about the state of affairs in our country.

Pot isn’t something that should be forcing people into jail. The public knows this but the politicians refuse to legalize and tax it. Listen to the people that you govern, you dicks. We are putting people in jail that could be otherwise productive citizens. You choose to put them in prison systems where they can only come out worse than they went in. Our prisons aren’t about reform, stop kidding yourselves. Why is America so focused on summary judgement of the issues. Take some fucking time to look at the issues in depth and work to satisfy all parties as much as possible.

Like many of you I have a facebook account and I have my family on there. Every once in a while I think of some old friend and wonder what’s going on with them. If I’m lucky I send a friend request and they actually remember who I am and add me.

Recently I managed to contact an old girlfriend from when I was like 15 years old. She added me but we didn’t exchange any words beyond the invite. It wasn’t until a few days ago that I decided to go ahead and message her. Partly because I was busy previously but also because I was afraid of the possible response or lack thereof. You see we were “something” and I left things in a bad way when I left her and the area. I had abused the relationship and in general made her feel unwanted. We never said our goodbyes and I moved out of state, way out of state.

Shortly after that I was forced into personal growth due to my circumstances. I had plenty of time to reflect on my actions and I soon realized how much of a dick I was and how badly I wanted to apologize for it all. Unfortunately I didn’t have the means to contact her. I would look for her on the Internet periodically but I made no progress. It would be 15 years before we would speak to each other again.

As it turns out, I had forgotten over time how many ways I had wronged her. We spent hours just talking, at first in long Q and A private messages and then over fb chat. As we would talk about old events and feelings I would remember more and more. The curious thing is we talked and talked about everything. It wasn’t like I just met this person, it was like we had been confidants for decades. It’s unreal the type of conversations and depth we would cover, neither of us shy or bashful about anything.

In my mind I had put her in this box from when I used to know her (which apparently wasn’t all that well as it turns out) and she is completely different now. In so many ways I am just meeting this person but it seems so very familiar and comfortable. Covering as many topics as we did and at length, we had a few jaw droppers on both sides. It’s weird though, I didn’t drop one and then feel like I wanted to go crawl away. It’s just out there and it was okay. I think it may have even helped with some of the unresolved issues of old. I think a great much of the issues we had is because we weren’t communicating. To paraphrase something she said – Oh, if only we could have talked like this 15 years ago.

I’m unsure how long this open dialog can go on without changing but it’s good while it lasts. Last message received was, “Drama.” If her husband of 12 years is freaking out it may already be over, but I hope not.

If nothing else is gleaned from this post, sometimes you need to get out of your head and say what needs to be said.

As a side note, Korn is perfectly fitting my mood as I wait to see what’s going to happen with the Drama.

– Update —

Turns out it was nothing and things are going along swimmingly. It’s great to have my friend back. I’ll be visiting her in the next month or so and it will be great to hang out again, if only for a few hours. I foresee some bowling in our future!

What I do is for reasons unknown to you. Don’t presume to know my reasons. Most people don’t understand how my mind works and none of you know me fully. Hell I don’t even know myself. All you fucking pricks that keep pushing my buttons really need to quit. I am getting to a point now where I’m becoming annoyed with other peoples childish antics. Grow the fuck up. If I have to say that to you, you have problems that need to be dealt with.

My wife is probably freaking out right now because I have been in an odd state the last week or two. Today I’m in a silent state. Ha, well internally I’m not fucking silent. I just don’t have a goddamn thing to say to you fucks.

I almost want to start over with everything. I work and people bitch, the more I work the more people bitch it’s fucking amazing really. What the fuck people!

I’m falling into that obsessing and nostalgic mode again which is fucked up because that usually happens when I’m having a hard time in life and I’m not. My wife is good to me, very good to me. My job is paying the bills then some and I don’t have any debt. Life is good, except it’s not. What the fuck!?!

Oh god, I can just hear you fucks with your, I’ll pray for you bullshit. First, it’s unlikely you will actually remember me in your formal prayers and even if you do that’s fucked up, because you actually believe something is going to come of it. Things come and go and I really don’t think prayer has anything to do with it. Whatever, to each his own. Just do it in silence and leave me the fuck alone.

People that need religion to work out their problems are weak. Yes, yes, lets just not do anything about it and hope He takes care of it. How selfish are you fucking people? He is the creator of the universe and you think he gives two shits about your daily life? You selfish little fucks, He gave you life and you are going to bother him because your friend was listening to secular music? What the fuck is happening in that brain of yours.

Thank god for music though, it transforms moods and can help people work through the good and bad times. Music is one of those things in life that can take your mind places. Enya, Queensryche, 80s, Ill Nino (sorry don’t recall character code for N with tilde and I’m too lazy to open character map), Van Halen and Pink Floyd. I appreciate your work even today.

My first love/crush/obsession/fantasy is having a baby boy. To be fair she’s really my only obsession, one I’ve carried for almost 20 years through years of marriage and probably to my grave. Circumstances didn’t allow for me to be with her and a childhood crush lingers on. She seems pleasant from what little interaction I’ve had with her but who knows how we would get along in person. I’m pleased to know her and keep up with her life as she updates her social networking sites though. She actually seems pretty normal, which is more than I can say for myself. She’s been with her boyfriend about as long as I’ve been with my wife. It caused me a moment of pause but it’s an interesting coincidence.

I think I’m going to try to keep a journal online but like most things that will require maintenance and I fail at that. We’ll see what happens. These will all be pointless personal journal blogs probably short and irrelevant but we’ll see.

As an IT outsource guy and one that generally gets to interact with a variety of company networks I notice things. Usually the first few things I notice is how little documentation is available and what is available is often not specific or updated. Sometimes people use low quality hardware, perhaps create workarounds that work but are difficult to understand or limit the future growth of the network. Typically it’s under-informed employees that “make things work” but don’t understand how or why. Which inevitably leads to poor performance and “freaky” issues down the road. You know, things like the piggybacking of switches, hubs, wireless routers and so on.

Every once in a while you’ll get to touch a network that has had the touch of a real professional and it’s obvious. I had such an opportunity this week. In fact I know the network professional that maintained the network and I presume designed the majority of it. There are several things about this war veteran that I respect, but after seeing the fruits of his labor with this network, I’ve gained a whole new respect for him. The network is very well documented and was great to work with.

If we could afford him, I think our company would benefit from putting him in a IT Manager type role. We are good at what we do, but those kind of organizational skills could really be beneficial to us. I guess that was a skill he picked up from years and years of military, but the effect is noticeable.

While I’m sure I don’t want his crazies from having been in the military during several wars, I sometimes regret not having put in some time with the military. Maybe just two years or so, I wouldn’t want to get overly intense. Just enough to gain the self-confidence and orderly behaviors, and perhaps some shooting skills. All that America’s Army gameplay keeps me interested in using an M16 and M4.

Best wishes, wherever you are these days Jeff.

I’m a homophobic and there isn’t anything I can do about it. I can’t understand gay, bi, or tranny. Because I can’t know what it is to be attracted to the same sex or feel like I’m in the wrong sex body. It feels wrong to even look at the same sex in that manner. Generally speaking, I try to understand where people are coming from, by putting myself in their position, but sexual “deviance”, like feeling your in the wrong genitalia, isn’t something I can replicate myself. Therefore I can’t reduce or eliminate my distaste toward it.

That being said, my sister is gay and engaged and I will be attending their ceremony, even though the majority of my family is in denial about her sexuality. You might wonder how is it that I can be a homophobe and still go to the ceremony? To which I say, haven’t you ever done something that made you extremely uncomfortable for the benefit of another? Someday I might get over it and I would hate to have missed out once that finally happens. Besides maybe being around it more will make me more comfortable. I love my sister regardless of her sexuality and I’m doing it to support her.

I can’t understand gay and at times it may make me extremely uncomfortable. Two dudes kissing is nauseating for me and can invoke violent reactions, but then again white trash heterosexual PDAs cause me to feel unclean and extremely uncomfortable. Two girls has the potential for sexual arousal or that unclean/nauseating feeling, directly proportional to the hottness and girliness factor of the two girls involved.

Interestingly I notice that I kept wanting to put something in here about trust. How if you are gay, I don’t feel like I can trust you. Not in the way that I thought you might steal my coat or go blabbing about my secrets, but more in that you might be lying to me about your sexuality. Sort of like this is a big April fool’s prank the “gays” are trying to convince the rest of the world about. That whole tell a lie long enough and loud enough and people will believe it. It’s like that. It’s like I feel that it’s a lie because I can’t experience myself, so I am constantly in a state of do I fall for it or not. I hate being the gullible one. I like to believe that what people tell me is the truth. Life doesn’t need any complications from lies. Unfortunately there is some indoctrination that I think is preventing me from fully believing that it isn’t a known uncomfortable act to those that practice.

Is there a homophobics anonymous?

I believe the US should implement a policy of mandatory military service. I personally have not had any military training but from my perspective the military adds several positive aspects to a young person’s life. Naturally some will reject the concept of serving as I did earlier in life. I rejected for two main reasons. First, I have no interest in dying for a country that is quick to insert themselves in hostile situations, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Secondly, I have little American pride.

Do I think it was right to go into those countries, yes. I just don’t feel we should have taken them both on at the same time. Nor do I feel the concept of a few soldiers here and there will effectively solve anything. If they want Iraq stabilized, issue a half million soldiers to the region and get shit ironed out. I can’t see it taking 100 years, but it very well could take 5 to 10. Oh you don’t like Americans in your country, did you prefer your genocidal ex-president? We are spending tons of money on their country and it’s stability. No we should not be hoarding their oil, but I highly doubt they intend to repay the cost of their liberty at 1:1 ratio. As such, I believe we should be able to recoup over time 50-70% of our losses from their exports, in this case oil.

Why do I have little or no national pride? Well, why should I? People always talk about how great America is. Sadly I don’t see these awesome differences between the US and say France or China. I see an America that fails many of it’s people and continues to divide it’s classes. The electoral college is bogus as is the health system. Education sucks across the board and our dollar continues to dwindle. Sure we are the global police, but nobody asked us to be. If you want pride in your Americans show us why we should be proud. Why show the government respect when it doesn’t seem to respect us?

Back to the mandatory military service thing. I purpose we issue the following:

Every citizen must begin serving 2 consecutive years in the military between the ages of 18-25. By default, mandatory service would be non-combatant in the branch of their choice with additional benefits for serving in combat or potentially hostile environments. Citizens would receive training in their preferred fields and serve in their preferred state. Financial aid would be available for any post-service college education.

I apologize for this post. This was something of a simple and poorly constructed post, but that is in part, due to the fact that I think this link summarized the majority of my views on the subject.

Consider that having a trained nation allows for fast response militias to be formed for local defense and overall military awareness of the public.

I find it interesting the sums of money we pay our athletes and CEOs. What dictates the size of our paychecks? Why is it that athletes in different sports get paid such a wide array of money? Furthermore, how is it that people get paid more to play a game on TV than those that save lives, educate our nation or invent new technology that affect future generations? Oh that’s right we are Americans, it’s all about the individual and getting ahead of everyone else. Money is a means, it’s not an end.

There is something to be said for those willing to take the chance to bring something new to market. Willing to put in 16 hour days to make a business a success or leave their homeland to try and make something for themselves. It’s a whole different thing when money motivates you to do immoral, irrational, or illegal things. This happens on both sides of the spectrum, the poor (think Alladin) and the rich (think Enron). How someone can sleep at night knowing they literally took the life savings of multiple people is beyond me. I’m thinking some public flogging should take place on that one.

In my head I came up with a concept that could be used to help dissuade that type of activity by removing the motivator, greed. Set an income cap so that when you hit max wages all excess income is a tax liability, such that you must then donate it to charity or be penalized the amount in the following year’s tax. This would include all taxable income such as: Capital Gains, Investment growth, and any gift that can be used more than once. Imputed Rent and unpaid work would not be counted. This would be a fixed value say 1 million per year. This forces something of an umbrella effect where moneys beyond that will then fall to the non-profit organizations helping those in need. This will help businesses focus less on the individuals payroll and more on R&D or employee benefits. Without the ability to wave large sums of cash at a competitor’s employee to bring them on board, they will have to make a case for themselves by providing a better work environment or other non-monetary incentives. Granted this would only affect a small portion of people but given compound interest with investments it could help equalize the economy.

That being said, these two main posts regarding taxation may be for naught. I believe I have found a solution considerably more simple and effective than the flat tax solution. It even has my (what I thought was a semi-original) idea of not taxing Exports but raising taxation on Imports. It’s called the Fair-Tax Resolution and I’ll post on this more in the future.

A friend of mine was discussing my first post about flat taxes and was in fact one of the people that pointed out that poor people are more greatly affected by these concepts than the rest. He seemed to think I had no concept about what being poor was or that I was dismissing legitimate claims. Later in an effort to enlighten me, he sent me the following link: http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/003704.html

This is a good look into the life of a poor person, so much so that it stirred some memories from my own childhood. Although some of these lines are particularly disturbing, none quite so much as this.

• Being poor is having to live with choices you didn’t know you made when you were 14 years old.

This is the one line that has incredible truth for me. I made many mistakes around this age and looking back I did a great deal of teetering and somehow managed to avoid the pitfalls I toyed with. A great deal of things “worked out” for me for no apparent reason. Was it karma, upbringing or perhaps God? I can’t say, but I can say having been through some of that shit, it sucks…Hard!

It’s not fair to say I know being poor, because every degree of poor is different and we all have personal weaknesses in specific areas. However, before any more of you start thinking that I had it easy and that I don’t fully appreciate the poor’s position in life, let me give you a few gems from my life.

• Being poor is having to crap in a hole in the ground and when the tp runs out, use a leaf.
• Being poor is eating ramon noodles for three meals a day.
• Being poor is learning the park ranger schedules so that you can take a shower with warm water.
• Being poor is taking cold showers under a spring fed water fall when the park is closed.
• Being poor is sleeping in a tent 4 feet from a dirt road, with a nice comfy tree root for a pillow.
• Being poor is having to walk 8 miles home after the 1.5 hour bus trip after school.
• Being poor is feeling fortunate enough to be treated to a fast food restaurant for my 16 birthday.
• Being poor is behaving yourself when all the adults go to work. Social Services be damned!!

Perhaps because I was a kid it was little different for me, but I’m going to take a wild guess and say that besides the stress of having to provide for others, I experienced some pretty bad shit that most people never know. It’s one thing to have roaches in your home, it’s a whole other thing not to have a home. Even so, my short time being houseless is nothing compared to those that spend decades that way without the use of a tent and reasonable personal safety.

• Being poor is people who have never been poor wondering why you choose to be so.

I am guilty of thinking this about the poor. Perhaps it’s because I’ve  seen people dismiss their opportunities over and over.  Others completely mismanaging what income does come in. People complicating their lives by making bad choice after bad choice. The great majority of poor people I knew were victims of their own behavior. People that blew all their money on name brand name  junk food, cigarettes, alcohol, TVs, movie rentals and Lotto tickets.  People that seem to seek out the worst possible people to be around and get taken advantage of. People that can’t keep a job they are perfectly capable of doing. People that keep producing offspring even though they can’t provide for those already here.  Get a clue people, if you can’t afford clothes you can’t afford to pickup Sonic for the family!

Now, I’m not saying all poor people are this way but a great many I’ve known have suffered from one or more of the problems listed above.  The other poor people? In my experience these are generally the people that life smacks in the face. Sometimes it’s one big thing like teenage birth or perhaps cancer in a spouse that leaves a lifelong struggle to recover from. Other times it seems that whatever they do they just can’t get ahead. Loss of primary provider’s job, divorce, medical problems, loss of a child, loss of retirement funds, subsequent foreclosures, bankruptcy, perhaps even a victim of Hurricane Katrina. There will always be legitimate cases that need assistance and special circumstances to account for but it seems to me if you allow these cases to create the focal point of your decision making you are losing focus on the big picture of making the best decision for the nation as a whole.

The best way to approach the poor is to become facilitators and not just throw money at the problem. I perceive the government is treating the symptom and not the problem.  The government should create methods and agencies designed to provide for those that are trying to get out of the rut. Heavily regulate those businesses that feed on the suffering of the poor. Educate and provide carefully constructed solutions per individual.

I don’t think poor people want to be poor and I’m sure if you ask one, they’d much prefer to be rich. The thing about a poor person winning the lottery is that often within a few years they are back in trouble because they didn’t have the tools necessary to maintain and grow their finances.

It is my opinion that the tax system should be changed to a flat tax system.

I believe simplifying income tax so that 5% of your annual income goes to the state and 5% to federal is an excellent way of providing equal taxing to all classes of people while providing appropriate funding to your local and national governments. That’s 10% regardless of how rich or how poor you are. This would apply to the individual entity and would not be effected by many of the irrational tax breaks given currently. The only break I would think might be feasible is the low/no-tax poverty line.

Opponents of Flat Taxes have expressed that in reality the poor people feel the tax burden more than the rich, due to the fact that products and services cost more (percentage wise) for the low income persons than that of the higher income. However the reality is that we are all being taxed the same and while it doesn’t feel fair, it is. For those that are particularly underprivileged the poverty line would help them maneuver into a better income situation with a low/no-tax solution. However we have a lot of people in the poverty level and comfortable. Poverty should never be comfortable and creating tax breaks and welfare systems that promote laziness and incompetence isn’t the best solution. We need a solution which promotes education and self-motivation.

While I believe the costs of some products and services should be regulated differently, it isn’t part of my flat tax solution.

Businesses are entities and they too should pay taxes. They should be paying the same 10% income with 5% to state and 5% to federal just like any citizen.

Naturally there would need to be a period if transition, where those taxed above and below the mark would slowly move toward the middle. I’m thinking this should be doable within 10 years but again that’s a fairly arbitrary number, I don’t know if the economy could sustain that much change that quickly.

Due to the nature of this blog, you may find that I don’t post often or that my posts may become contrary to previous posts. Please disregard this inconsistency and post any comments on the opinions I present.

Thank you for visiting.