Test Post

Test File

Test Video

Powered by Fundly

Test

Occupy Wall Street? Try Occupying a Mental Hospital

A political activist at heart, I suppose I should get a warm fuzzy feeling inside when I see people trying to take part in the democratic process. There is a new movement in America that you might have heard about: “Occupy Wall Street”. At first I thought this was just a fad, a conglomeration of people that would at best be thought of as populists. Populism reigned supreme in 2008 with the election of Barack Obama, so such a movement of “anti-rich, anti-Wall Street” sentiments is entirely possible.

So it made me curious. What exactly are the demands of these people? A quick overview of what these people want is quite startling, not to mention quite costly. The following is a breakdown, and you can be the judge if these people are legitimate or certifiable. Be forewarned, this is the most socialist propaganda I have ever seen come out of these United States. I would go so far as saying this is borderline communist what they are asking.

Demand 1: $20 per hour minimum wage. There is a jobs killer if I ever saw one. That is the fast track to killing small business. I’m not sure whether I should laugh or throw up in my mouth at that one.

Demand 2: Universal single payer healthcare system, banning private insurance carriers. Who is going to pay for that, and do you want the government being the ultimate decider of your healthcare needs? If businesses cut back on employees due to the $20 minimum wage, then no one is going to pay for this anyway because everyone will be out of a job.

Demand 3: Guaranteed living wage regardless of employment. So what you are saying is someone who chooses not to finish high school or college should be guaranteed a living wage in spite of the fact they are lazy. Way to de-incentivize the “if you work hard you will make more” mentality that has been the cornerstone of the capitalist spirit. Everyone will be paid money to survive regardless of how hard you work. We tried this with communism, and it did not work.

Demand 4: Free college education. Yes, more free money. Everything is free! If that is the case, I am in arrears for 5 years of college education and I want reimbursed the full amount I paid. And I am tagging the government for interest because technically I shouldn’t have paid that money in the first place. They owe me. Again, who is paying for all of this free stuff?

Demand 5: Bring the fossil fuel economy to an end and fast track green energy. Find a viable source of energy that is not going to cost the government billions in tax credits and maybe we will have something to talk about. I am all for finding cleaner energy, but it needs to be cost effective.

Demand 6: One trillion dollars in infrastructure improvements. I see we are taking a page out of the FDR playbook with this one. Let’s spend a trillion dollars to put people to work on a very temporary basis. That is a great plan, let’s spend more of the money (that we don’t have I should point out) to create a momentary bubble of employment. When that bubble ends, let’s spend a trillion more!

Demand 7: Decommission all of our nuclear power plants and let’s spend a trillion dollars on forests and wetlands. First, lumber companies reforest. That is a known fact. Second, this creates no jobs whatsoever. And third, are you serious? Decommission the nuclear power plants? Why not invest in some better ways to eliminate the toxic output of these plants. There are plans in the works to help take care of these problems, but they lack the proper funding. Democrats have a burr up their ass about nuclear power, and it is starting to annoy the hell out of me.

Demand 8: Racial and gender equal rights amendment. Not even going into this one. I’m not sure how much more equal we can make things. You be the judge of that.

Demand 9: Open border migration. Great idea, let’s let the drug dealers in, the terrorists in, and why not just annex the entirety of Mexico while we are at it. You can’t account for these people now. How the hell do you plan to account for them with an open migration policy? Are they paying taxes? Will they be covered under this new socialist healthcare system? Do you people know anything?

Demand 10: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system. Our system of elections is fine in America thank you. As an officer of the Board of Elections locally, I am happy to say our system is pretty good.

Demand 11: Debt forgiveness for all! Whoo!!! Free money! I was irresponsible, and now I am getting a bailout! I see personal responsibility has no meaning to these people. The bailout was wrong for the financial companies, and it is wrong here.

Demand 12: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies. Blah blah blah.

Demand 13: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union. Oh yes, we can’t forget the unions. No comment.

Judging by this author, these people are certifiable. They want everything under the sun free and they have no concept of money or personal responsibility. They want the great socialist state where the government is the answer to all of their problems. What a sad situation this has become.

Shame on them. If you want to live in a socialist or even a communist country, there are plenty of them out there that are doing pretty terrible that you can go live in. Yes, America is facing hard economic times, but the answer is not to turn this country into a socialist nanny state.

The Mang
Conservative Capo of Youngstown

CPA Exam Edition

Today my letter came from the CPA Examination Services confirming I passed the CPA exam. I had been waiting for this letter since getting the unofficial results back in June, but finally three weeks later the Examination Board finalized those results, proving that I have not been dreaming. The mill stone is no longer around my neck, and my head is no longer on the chopping block as fears of losing an entire summer to studying to make the September deadline fade into memory.

Tonight I hung that letter on the wall next to my degrees from Youngstown State and Ohio State (and my really awesome picture of myself and Karl Rove). The Youngstown State degree had not seen the light of day for almost three years, and the Ohio State degree had not been seen since graduation day 2010. I swore never to put them up until I passed, and a few years later, I can actually see what they look like now.

Coming into June, I honestly did not think I would pass this exam. I cannot sit here and tell you truthfully that I planned on breezing through this because I doubted every step of the way.

After coming out of the Financial Accounting part of the exam feeling like I completely blew it (especially since taking two months of studying nights and weekends to get prepared), I was ready to throw in the towel. I had convinced myself in my mind that I failed because never had I prepared for an exam so hard only to leave feeling like a complete failure.

After taking a month off in preparation for the May Primary and to get mentally back on track, somewhere I found some strength to come back to the studying table for Auditing. Like Rocky in Rocky III, I went back to basics after taking a severe ass kicking by a gigantic Clubber Lang sized exam. I remembered studying for accounting at YSU with my friends Hanna, Angela, Anthony, Cecil, and that entire crew and the time we put in on study guides. Study guides never failed me at YSU, and I knew they wouldn’t fail me on the CPA exam if I applied them correctly.

As an aside, I watched a lot of Rocky during May, as well as Star Wars and the Karate Kid—people doing impossible things. A steady diet of that actually can be a healthy thing.

In the end the study guides did work and Auditing turned out to be my best exam of the four. Financial Accounting was truly the shocker—75 right on the nose. As a near 4.0 student, it is the first time I can honestly say I was happy to get a score that low. If I was a bookie, the odds on my passing that exam in my books would have been 99 to 1. Somehow everything came up Mang that day in Columbus.

I do owe a lot of thanks to family and friends who have been supportive over the last two years. You all believed in me even when I did not believe in myself. We finally got there and it means a lot that you stuck by me when things did not always look so optimistic, both in respects to this license as well as things of a more personal nature. I will not forget those people, and for that (as is custom in Italian culture) there will always be that loyalty.

As another aside, there is more than one young professional in the Mahoning County Republican Party and I did it because I think it is important to have a young professional who is not a lawyer. Sorry lawyers, but there are too many of you in Mahoning County. And in that drive to get a non-lawyer young professional into the Mahoning County GOP, I did that one for my own personal satisfaction.

Of course, a great deal of thanks goes to my Lord and Savior. I may not be the best Christian, but I try to see the good in people and treat people with respect (except when I am driving and people need to be told how badly they do so). Church is important, and someday I will get back into the routine, but I have found too often some of the worst offenders of treating people with disrespect and being nasty have come from the people who refuse to miss a weekly Mass under any circumstance. It is part of why I struggle with the faith to this day.

In some strange way I need to thank Congressman Bill Johnson. We have had our differences, and we still do have our differences. But supposing the 2010 Primary went differently, I might be in Washington today without my license and looking at an uncertain redistricting plan. In retrospect and looking down the road, I might go so far to say that losing that Primary (as hard as it was to swallow) might have been the best thing after all.

But I do wish Congressman Johnson and his staff well in this year and in future years. What’s done is done.

Well, that is the CPA Exam Thank-You Edition. I will leave you with this inspiring quote from a movie we all know and love.
“I do have a test today. That wasn't bullshit. It's on European socialism. I mean, really, what's the point? I'm not European. I don't plan on being European. So who gives a crap if they're socialists? They could be fascist anarchists. It still wouldn't change the fact that I don't own a car. Not that I condone fascism, or any ism for that matter. Isms in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon: "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me." Good point there. After all, he was the Walrus. I could be the Walrus. I'd still have to bum rides off of people.”

The Mang
Conservative Capo of Youngstown

South Park Has it Right

Perhaps it has been a little while since last writing, but I think this article is long overdue. After watching the mid-season finale of “South Park” last week, I guess Trey Parker and Matt Stone pretty much hit the nail on the head about some things I have believed for some time but really couldn’t express in words: everything is crap. To quote Randy Marsh, “It’s like the same story keeps happening every week, only it keeps getting more ridiculous”. Ignoring the double meaning of this line to the alleged ending of the show, the application of this line to life is remarkably on par to how things continue to progress today.

It amazes me that in 2011 you can learn more from a cartoon than any other program on TV (the news included because regardless of what side of the aisle you are on, it is one opinion and point of view after the other, the actual news end of it be damned). South Park, as crude and outrageous as it can be, is more culturally and politically relevant than anything else you will find on television today, and 90% of the time I usually come away agreeing with the underlying point they are trying to make.

“It’s like the same story keeps happening every week, only it keeps getting more ridiculous”.

Take your pick of topics on this one, but it holds true for everything. Politics—Anthony Weiner? That is both ridiculous and pointless, not to mention just plain sick. And he will not step down despite his sick behavior. Thanks Anthony for setting a new artificial rock bottom, because in politics rock bottom is shattered on an increasingly frequent basis. There’s one more in the book for sexual addiction. A sexually addicted male, yeah, there is a real shocker. Hate to break it to every media figure, political, athletic, or pop cultural, but wanting to have sex is not a medical condition. Rather most guys can control their impulses from doing extremely stupid things. I take that back—many guys can, because there are a lot of guys out there that do extremely stupid things and I am unsure if they are the majority or the minority anymore.

What about sports? What about LeBron James getting his own TV show to determine what HE is going to do picking his new team? You can chalk that up to narcissism and one more self-absorbed, selfish player in sports continuing the trend that we have seen over the last ten years. Plaxico Burress, Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson, Terrell Owens, yes, people I think we all aspire to seeing as great role models.

Popular Culture. I’m not even going to talk too much about this, because I think this angers me more than most. I believe it is a major contributing factor to the cultural decay and amoral wasteland of what we see here in 2011. The media since the late 90s has given people the means, abilities, and licenses to be complete assholes. Respect and courtesy is gone. The family structure has been shot to hell. There is moral flexibility in everything, especially in the professions that claim to adhere to a moral code. It is a complete joke. And as far as the quality of the mass media market, if God had any sense of pity he would come and strike us down to prevent us from seeing one more ridiculous, overblown, and low budget reality TV show.

Technology. In a nutshell, this is my feeling about technology. Yeah, it is cool, and yes, I can use it. But is there really any point? I think technology has gone beyond the point of utility and has crossed into the plane of “ridiculous”. I think the obsession with these new technological “toys” is unhealthy. It doesn’t produce anything, it doesn’t create anything, it is just some form of equipment that we stare at for hours on end.

South Park had it right. Each week things get more and more ridiculous. Sure, some of this stuff may look all glamorous and impressive on the surface, but deep down it is what it always has been for the last two decades: crap.

You can call me a cynic or a pessimist, but forgive me if I look around at the world today and am completely unimpressed with where things are heading. We may live in a small corner of the world, walking around completely oblivious to others, what is happening in our towns, and what is happening in the world, but in the rest of the world things are in complete shambles and it is a very dangerous place. And yet no one seems to know or care, and they go back to listening to their iPod.

The Mang
Conservative Capo of Youngstown