Bad customers

I recently had a post from one of my followers who had a disagreement with my stance on who I’d service as customers.  I brought up an article about a tow truck owner that refused to serve Bernie customers.  I completely agree with the tow truck owner’s stance on the issue.

Here’s my top 10 list of why I agree with him:

  1. No business owner should be forced to do business with customer’s they hate
  2. As a business owner, we have a RIGHT to deny service for any reason.
  3. As a business owner, we don’t want all the customers.  Just because you are paying us some money, doesn’t mean that you are bankrupting us.
  4. If I feel like a customer is going to sue me, I will drop them faster than you can say “I’m dropping you as a customer”.
  5. Us business owners are human and we are not slaves to the general population.
  6. The dumbest argument I keep hearing is, “But what if you are the only one in town?”  That argument was valid back in the 1700’s when they had no Internet.   Back then, the people had more morals when dealing with businesses as well.
  7. I’m not a doctor and I wouldn’t take an oath to serve all customers.
  8. I don’t care if you want my services if I don’t want yours.
  9. As a business owner, I’m in it to make money.  If you’re killing my business, prepare to be dropped.  It’s harsh, but it’s a reality.
  10. Bernie Sanders followers are the type who want everything for free and are cheap anyway.  They have very little education on business and are the type of customer that just wants a freebie.  On top of that, Bernie followers are the type of people who don’t care if the economy is destroyed to get Bernie elected.  Why would I want to have them as customers again?

Bernie Sanders stickers on vehicles say one thing to business owners and that is, “I hate your business and the economy and this should be free”.  That type of customer is the exact type of customer all us business owners want to avoid.

Bottom line, don’t be a bad customer.  If you are, I’ll send you over to my competitors.  The U.S. has way too many choices these days to be forcing anybody to bake a cake against their will is both un-American and stupid.

12 Step AGW Climate Change Program

Because of all the government propaganda recently about AGW and because of all the debunked scientific data from several sources, it can be difficult to see the truth in these hard times.  Know that you are being duped by propaganda every time the government says we need to act now or else.  To help sort through the confusion, we’ve provided a free online program to help you overcome it.

Here are the steps.  Let the steps sink in to help you get over your problem with AGW and you will feel better each and every day.

1) Admit you have a problem and that AGW isn’t the problem.  Your life has become unmanageable worrying about the propaganda created by your own party.

2) Come to believe that there is a power greater than yourself that changes the climate.  We refer to that power as “The Sun”

3) Make a decision to accept the fact that we exhale Co2 and emit methane gas and that it really isn’t a big deal for the environment, despite what fear-mongering losers out there might think.

4) Make an inventory of what you’re not doing to produce more Co2.  Think of Al Gore while you are creating this list and how much hot air he’s producing every single day.

5)  Admit to yourself and to somebody else that AGW is a massive scam.

6) Become ready to realize you create Co2 and it is OK.  Also become ready to admit that gasoline and coal really aren’t that bad for the environment, but bad government policies are.

7) Humbly sit down and watch “denier” videos and start looking at the credible science.  It will help you see what’s really going on out there instead of the B.S. that you are fed by this government.

8) Make a list of scientists that have been activists and stop watching or reading their material.  Trust me on this one, you’ll feel better in just 1 week.

9) Make amends by buying gasoline in your car and not by buying a prius.   Exhale deeply for 20 minutes realizing you are helping the atmosphere by exhaling.  Recognize that the plants love you and you should embrace that too.

10) Every time you see a video promoting AGW climate change, promptly shut it down and spit at it.   Recognize promptly that it is cheap propaganda and should be treated as such.

11) Seek through meditation other alternatives to the AGW propaganda like writing a mean-spirited tweet or sharing what you’ve learned on social media about Al Gore or about Mann’s faulty math hockey stick graph.

12) Have had an awakening as a result of these steps, bring this message to other AGW activists.  They need a lot of help as they are literally denying science and reality.  Bring them back to the fold!

Democrat/Liberal hate speech and America today

One recent and dramatic change in the left is the dramatic increase in the amount and type of hate speech that they are trying to make acceptable.  This hate speech is proving to be a real problem as it is causing rioting, hate, killings, and intolerance on a massive level never seen before.
One particular site had a long list of documented hate speech by left Democrats, liberals, and every other form of the left you could find.   On Twitter, us as conservatives get called names daily.  The left equates conservative as automatically stupid, even though many of us have engineering degrees and are prominent leaders  and teachers.  Names such as #TeaBagger, RWNJ (Right wing nut job), Uncle Tom,  stupid, terrorist, and a wide range of other names.  The left believes that, if you don’t agree with them, you are racist or a Republican as well.  As a business owner, I get called names such as greedy, slave owner, and other awful names.  It makes me laugh when I read such misguided information, but also makes me scared that there are people out there that would like nothing more than to see us hurt or worse.  It’s gotten so bad that the left has now started redefining the term Capitalism to fit their agenda as well.

Article after article from left leaning individuals and organizations are filled with absolute hate about the GOP and about businesses.  Sorry about linking to some articles that are absolute garbage, but I feel it’s necessary to point out the absolute craziness that’s going on in the country.  Hate from the left was also the main factor in contributing to the death of two New York cops and the police are not happy with our politicians and agitators who are inciting the violence.  In some cases, the left even thinks it is ok to kill Republicans simply for being Republican.   The misinformation from the left is getting so bad, they even blame Republicans for creating Ebola.  It’s sad to see bloggers such as those from thinkprogress.com and salon.com get so biased and so bad, that they should be considered parody sites.  I won’t provide those links or even link to the crazy articles because it’s really that bad.

The bad part about these attacks is what they are doing to people inside the U.S.  First, it is dividing the country on almost every topic.  Some of them accuse Republicans of using this as politics.   It’s absurd to think that politicians weren’t involved in agitating the people against the police using the #BlackLivesMatter tag.  Even after the killings because of the hate speech, the Democrats tried blaming it all on, you guessed it, Republicans!

Democrats and Republicans used to get along a lot better in the past.  Now, we see Democrats and the left actively attacking and killing people in the name of a political agenda.  Republicans are called “terrorists” just for not wanting awful laws created like Obamacare.   There isn’t anything more sad to see than people forcing their ideals on each other inside America.  This is the land of freedom and choice.  We’ve never needed massive government programs before and we don’t need more of them now.  Second, the left has used the term “racist” so many times that it no longer carries weight or meaning.   The word alone carries a lot of hate in their minds, but in the process they are undermining and ruining the positive changes we all were making in that area.  Does anybody even know what the word racism means anymore?

We saw this last year how the left demonized anybody who spoke out against Obamacare.  Us who were negatively affected were told we were liars, evil, and a number of other names.  The left didn’t like hearing that somebody doesn’t like the law or doesn’t like to be a part of it because of how it affected us negatively.  Why can’t they just accept that fact?

It’s amazing how the left won’t even try to understand reality any more.  They don’t try and talk out the issues and instead fight anybody who gets in their way.  The destruction the left has created is immense and will take years to fix.  The left made sure that every single black person who got elected were not even mentioned in groups like the NAACP.  Several awesome senators such as Mia Love were elected and deserve recognition instead of being shunned by racist and intolerant people.

All Americans should stop catering to the left.  We need to not retaliate with poor words, but instead need to put our foot down and be firm as a nation against their deplorable behavior and actions against common sense.  The left got the government they wanted.  They asked for more programs, more laws, more politicians in their lives.  Now they are complaining about it and trying to make it our issue.  Their hate words are quite literally turning into deaths and rioting.  This sort of behavior costs the nation as a whole and isn’t helping anybody.  It is a deterrent from peace and is not a way to create communication.  As a nation we need to move forward, stop the fighting, but get back to the common roots of free enterprise, free market, and real freedom with responsibility.   The government won’t save us.  It was never designed to do that from the beginning and only enslaves us as it gets larger.  Hopefully, the left will cool down its rhetoric and start talking.  Until then, we don’t need to do anything or even act on what they would like us to.

How to Fix the Economy by Fixing Business

Our economy and small businesses need a jumpstart.  We all should be concerned over the fact that small businesses are being destroyed faster than they are created.  Small businesses are at the heart of the U.S. economy and 70% of all new jobs in the U.S. are created by small businesses.   In order to jumpstart the economy, we need to focus on making sure small businesses can make it and flourish.  Here’s how we do it in 4 easy points.

  • Significantly lower or end business taxes
  • Cut  red tape and regulations
  • Stop creating damaging laws that make life harder for small business owners
  • Reduce government spending

Taxes for small businesses are probably the biggest killer.  Essentially, all business taxes are another tax on all of us.  This is a difficult concept for many people to understand because they believe all taxes are good.  Most small businesses pay a considerable amount in taxes.  There are several types of taxes that they pay like income, payroll, insurance, healthcare, and other items.  Payroll taxes are paid each time we pay an employee.  Payroll taxes are due at specific times for each company.  The larger your company gets, the quicker you have to pay the payroll taxes.  Businesses get a hefty fine for paying these taxes late even if they don’t have the money to pay it.  This fine comes even if they are two weeks late on the payment and it is usually accompanied by a very nasty IRS letter that threatens to take the money by force.  To understand why this affects businesses negatively is because sometimes the businesses are waiting for money to come in for work they did and are paid slowly or they had to use that extra payroll money to pay for the employees salaries just to make payroll and not lose their employees.  The other bad part about payroll taxes is they have to be paid even hasn’t generated a profit and must pay the employees to stay in business.   If a business draws from their credit line and pays the employee, it is taxed on that money.    On top of payroll taxes, businesses get taxed on what they earn.    For everything that is paid out in taxes, small businesses get very little back from the government if anything at all.  The ROI on the payout is not worth it.  Businesses need that money to hire, innovate, and keep the business running and it should not be taken away in taxes.   Because businesses pay more than the average American in taxes, shouldn’t they get more benefits from the government?  By paying more should they get more access to the infrastructure and roads than anybody else?   Unfortunately, that is not the case and they continue to get taxed more and more every single year.

Businesses are no longer free to run the businesses as they see fit.  There are so many laws and regulations associated with businesses that not only don’t make sense, but are counter productive to building the business.  Here’s just one example of a draconian business regulation.   A contractor is an employee that is hired from outside who gets paid by the hour to work.  A full time employee gets paid on the job and comes with a lot more restrictions for businesses.  The minute the employee becomes full time, the business is responsible for all the taxes associated with the employee at that time.  When it comes to contracting employees and full time employees there are a lot of problems in that area when it comes to red tape.  Some businesses are “contract only” businesses and get paid when they complete contracts for businesses.  Other businesses are product based businesses that have a product to sell.  It doesn’t make sense to hire people full-time when the business itself only gets part-time work.   Unfortunately, one of the regulations from the government forces you to hire the employees after a certain period of time whether you can afford it or not.   This can cause a problem for the owners of the businesses as they find themselves working 18 hour days just to keep up with the work load when business is busy and starve or go into debt when the cash isn’t coming in.   This means that you could go through slow periods of time and to stay alive as a business you are forced to pay the employee as well as payroll taxes.  The only way to survive during a scenario like this is by using a credit line.  In other words, it makes you go into debt to maintain your employees  because of non-friendly business laws.  Removing the majority of the restrictions and laws like these for small businesses would go a long way to help us run the companies as we see fit and innovate without killing jobs.

As if it weren’t hard enough, the government has started with new laws that negatively affect small businesses.  This last year alone 2500 new regulations appeared.  The healthcare law is another red tape law that is negatively affecting many of us who pay for our own insurance and we don’t know what is going to happen with the government.    The part that has affected many of us business owners is the health care law forces us to get more expensive insurance that we don’t want and don’t need as well.  The extra money we lose from it is generally used and contributed to building the business or feeding our own families.  Most of us were happy with our previous plans and would more than willingly go back.  Every year we get new unnecessary regulations and now this year we’re all fighting against the voting public for a law that will hurt business again called “The Minimum Wage Increase”.  Why not let competition play out like it did for the IT industry?  Competition in business works and we should stop stifling it with the pretense that government involvement is beneficial.

Reducing government spending is essential to move this nation forward.  We need to cut programs and spending.  Too much money is wasted on pension plans, healthcare programs, and a myriad of other programs.  Too many programs are failures and need to be reduced or cut altogether.  Most of the private sector don’t have retirement set aside because of all the wasteful spending with our tax dollars.  Isn’t it about time we started cutting the public programs that don’t make sense?   We need to be compassionate to people, but we also need to be wise and realize when we cannot keep supporting ideals that will hurt everybody in the U.S.  We can’t keep spending in government like we are and think that everything will be ok and that we’re “doing the right thing”.  In order to preserve our freedoms and our future, we need to stop the out of control spending.  It’s time to reduce government spending to help innovation, creation, and help America become the great nation it used to be.

Too many people who don’t know anything about business are those proliferating articles that not only don’t make sense economically and are damaging to the economy and small businesses.   There are far too many people out there who think businesses are sitting on a big pile of cash and they are just hoarding it.  The writers of those articles and blogs are lying and are being deceptive.  It is making many people hate the rich and hate business owners because they don’t think like what they have to say.  Don’t the rich have just as much right to be here as the poor?  Bad people are pushing an agenda and not being honest about what is happening out there.  Time to stop that practice.  If you read an article that pushes those practices, close the article or post a negative comment on the site.

We all want a better future for America.  The only way to do that for me, you, and our children is to start being wise and fiscally responsible.  That means making sacrifices and not paying the way for some people that should be.  Our government isn’t going to be the method that will help us become fiscally responsible.  It’s up to each of us to do our part to make it happen.  We’ll all have more freedom if we help our small businesses thrive and flourish.  It’s time for real change.

For more facts on small businesses, take a look at this article.  Lets focus on our future and saving it.  We’ll never tax our future into a better one.

The Venezuelan Prison

Venezuela is in a massive prison.   They don’t have bars around their border.  There aren’t any police guarding them 24/7, but the people are stuck.  The people there have lost their rights.  They are under constant scrutiny by their own government.  The people are basically forced to work, or they do not eat.  They are forced to march during the day during work and chant in favor of their corrupt government.  The people have to register their thumbprints on scanners just to eat.  The government dictates what they get to eat and controls even what they buy.

Venezuela started out like most countries.  They had a working constitution just like the constitution in the U.S.  Venezuela has a large supply of oil that they sell to many countries in the world.  They had freedom of speech and had food in the supermarkets.  Today, just 15 years after Chavez started, they no longer have freedom.  Venezuela should be an oil-rich country with no want for food, however, that is not the case.

Most of the problems started when Chavez first came into office.  He was popular.  The people loved him and would get upset at anybody who thought otherwise.  He created a giant rift between the people politically.  Little by little, Chavez started taking away basic freedoms from the people.  The entire time he would tell them he was helping out the poor.  It was popular because people thought they were honestly helping the poor, but in reality, they were creating an entire country of the poor.  One major thing that Chavez did was he started taking properties from the rich people.  He redistributed the properties to the poor.  Many of the rich in the country did not like that for obvious reasons and left the country at that time.  The poor were happy and everything seemed to be going great.  The government started regulating shops to make sure they obeyed and voted for Chavez.  Some shop owners who voted against Chavez and had Capriles stickers on their windows were raided and the items were seized from the shelves.  Tight controls were placed on the small businesses.

A food voucher system was implemented that made sure everybody got an equal amount of money to shop for food.   Again, the poor loved the program.   They received free money and didn’t even have to work for it.   Second, the government paid all ex-convicts and pregnant teenagers a healthy sum of money as well.  The problem resulted in skyrocketing crime rates and teen pregnancies.  This practice only lasted one year as the country started really running out of money.  One program introduced recently was an abomination of a program.  http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/21/biometric-venezuela-food-shortages-smuggling-fingerprints .  The government is forcing the people to all register with fingerprint scanners in an attempt to ration the food and they are cracking down on all suppliers so that the food can only be obtained if the government approves it.  Now the government tells you when you can purchase items and at what time.  It cuts down on the 4 hour lines they have to stand in, but now they only get a small portion of food.  15 years ago, they had all the food in the supermarkets you could handle.

The Venezuelan government took away the guns as well.  In 2010 a bill was passed to disarm the people.   The government blamed guns for the high crime rate they have there instead of their own failed policies.  Some people were once again caught in the awful lie that it would help them.  Now, the people not only don’t have guns, but the crime rate is still extremely high.    When the people tried to stop the dictatorship, all they could do was riot in the streets.  The government even supplied and paid for people on motorcycles and gave the people on motorcycles the guns to scare the people into submission.   The Venezuelan government bought tanks, guns, tear gas, and everything to shut the rioting down.  Their government was so prepared, they seemed to have all this planned since the beginning.

The people are oppressed heavily in Venezuela.  It seems like justice and peace are so far away right now.  If you speak out in Venezuela, you are made a target by the government.  If you write on Twitter, the government is targeting the people who say anything negative against their president, Maduro.

#PrayForVenezuela.  They still need it and will some day overcome and overthrow the powerful dictatorship.

The ACA, Obamacare, and High Premiums

Despite everything we try to get rid of Obamacare, the parasite continues to infest the U.S.  The Obamacare law didn’t pass with honest intentions, nor did it pass with agreement from both sides.  It passed with lies, fraud, and deceit.  How much longer do we have tolerate Obamacare before we decide it is a complete failure like it is?

Democrats  continue to believe that premiums have gone down with Obamacare and that Obamacare is working.   The truth is that prices are just now starting to go down after they skyrocketed.  Prices are just now going down because of competition and because people are losing their insurance.

Obamacare isn’t working because we’ve spent well over 4 Billion dollars on the program.    It hurt many people just to implement it.  People lost their jobs and many lost full time work because of Obamacare.  We hear excuses how Medicaid was even worse starting out as well.  The problem with that is Medicaid is still a huge drain on the population and is very problematic and Obamacare is expanding that problem.  It too being a socialized program is a big cost drain to every citizen and non-citizen in the U.S.

Medicaid gets worse every year and covers less.  Doctors don’t like Medicaid due to the small payments from the program and other problems associated with it.  Don’t be fooled by the Gallup polls showing insurance coverage has increased either.   Most of the newly insured have just been added to medicaid or they have lost their business coverage, which will put further drain on all of us.  Many people working for corporations are worried about their future because corporations are covering a lot less now due to Obamacare as well.  It hurts the middle class who have insurance and isn’t working.

Here’s what happened to me with my insurance and the problems I faced.   Like millions in similar situation as my own, I found that the price of insurance skyrocketed beyond anything imaginable.   My insurance was through a company called “Humana” and I was paying $359.05 before the ACA was forced on us all.  The price that Humana quoted me was $483.90 if I were to go through the exchanges.  The price was not accurate when I went to the ACA exchanges and searched for myself.      My total out of pocket expenses prior to the ACA was $5000.00 if the entire family had gotten sick or hurt.  I had decent coverage and insurance, especially for the price of $359.05 per month.  To this day I don’t know how Humana came to their numbers unless they were offering me a broken bronze plan for $483.90 a month.  (See below)

nate

After looking around one day on the exchanges, this was the lowest priced insurance I could get.   Even having this plan would bankrupt me in the future.  (See below)

bronze_plan_ACA

This was one of the worst plans I had seen in my life.  The price was set at $557.00 a month with a $12,700 dollar deductible!  That means that I would not receive any help by insurance until I had paid $12,700 out of my own pocket.  The other problem with it is it was 60/40 coverage making this insurance the worst financial decision I could make in my lifetime.

Looking further through the online plans on the exchange, I found another plan on the silver plans that got closer to my current plan, but still had really high out of pocket costs at $11,600 per year.  (See below)

silver_plan

 

Another thing to note is the deductible “per individual”.  That means no coverage for that individual until the deductible is met.  My old plan was at $5000.00 total out of pocket expenses but would cover things before the deductible was reached as well.  I would have to continue shopping for a higher priced plan to match what I currently had.    In order to get a plan that would match what I had, I would have to pay around $750.00 – $800.00.  That’s just shy of another house payment where I live.

The U.S. needs to wake up and stop trying out socialist programs such as these.  We don’t need these crazy programs to be like all the other countries.  Instead, doing the right thing would be to open up the competition and truly make it work.    We’re hurting everybody in the name of “compassion”, which is phony compassion at best.  Obamacare is headed to the disaster program known as single payer which is a government ran health care system.  It’s the equivalent of putting the entire U.S. on medicaid and then trying to say it’s still good health care.   It’s a program that will erode our freedoms and will make our once good insurance into a government owned disaster.   Most of us liked our insurance we’re still frustrated about the changes we’ve all had to make to accommodate  these poorly written laws.  Many of us want the ability to opt out or see the plan removed.   Why not open up the free market so we can buy a custom health plan to fit our needs instead of having it unnecessarily regulated by the government?   That’s the way I would solve this problem as well as removing health care from being connected to businesses to promote healthy competition.

As a reminder, here are some of the biggest lies we were told to pass this law:

  • “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. ” – Lie
  • “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” – Lie
  • “Obamacare will cut the cost of your health care” – Lie

You can see more lies about Obamacare here.  If a business lied like the government did, they’d be sued to oblivion.  Time for real change and that is full repeal.

 

How to Fix the Economy

Stop focusing on Walmart, Apple, and Microsoft and start focusing on the companies that really need it.   80% of the companies that provide jobs are small businesses in the U.S.  The key to jumpstarting the economy is by getting money into the hands of small businesses.  The way to do that is through serious tax reform.  Small businesses can pay up to a full month of wages or more in taxes.  There are many small businesses that are dying because of this fact.  America doesn’t need another great depression, we need leaders with common sense who understand businesses.  With more jobs and more work, we can certainly pull U.S. out of where we have been.

Income equality won’t be solved by adding more business restrictions either.  It doesn’t work that way and never will.

Liberal Business Tax Denial

I woke up this morning to this:

Screen Shot 2014-08-27 at 10.33.06 AM

Where did all those tax cuts go?  It amazes me that the lefties are still believing the articles they read about the imaginary tax cuts businesses have gotten.  Surprise!  Businesses haven’t been getting tax cuts, you’ve been lied to.

Business and Taxes and Burger King

funny-spongebob-taxes-imagination

 

Businesses in the U.S. today are having a hard time competing with other countries these days due to the really high taxes that are pushed every single year to businesses.  What that means is us individuals are paying those taxes.  Businesses don’t pay taxes.  Meaning, they charge us as customers.  Burger King did an interesting thing today to help its bottom line and it was the right thing to do.   Burger King is moving to Canada.

The savings were so good that it was most likely impossible for Canada to pass up.  Unfortunately, that same scenario is happening all over the U.S.  China is a safe haven for businesses and even makes them build a headquarters or factory there as part of the move over.  It makes it hard for businesses to leave and it excellent business practice for competition.  I personally know businesses that have moved the headquarters to China.  Who loses?  Us…the American people.  We need a strong government that knows business and will try and compete with other countries.  Until then, the U.S. will always be behind in competition, innovation, and being a leader in the world.

 

 

The Myth and Purpose of White Privilege

White privilege. To sum up White privilege it is a non-existent problem, made into a problem, that now is all the sudden a massive problem to deal with. Sound familiar?
How many times have we had this propaganda from the left come around. Global warming and climate change were touted as being the same big huge problem and we needed to act really quickly or it would we the most dangerous thing on the planet. We are told that if we don’t act, we most assuredly will destroy our planet as well. I’m sorry I don’t buy the propaganda, but that’s exactly what it is.

White privilege is being pushed the same exact way. Is it a real problem? Lets put it in perspective. It is like going to a party with a lot of different groups of people. Each group of people all have similar skin colors and they’ve mixed in a few races in between. The leader of the party then announces that all white groups must intermingle and consider the other groups first, or they will be faced with a fine or kicked out.
That is exactly what the Democrats/Socialists want to accomplish and want to get done. It will be much like affirmative action, this time affecting everything else and only affecting the white race. The problem with the law is that it in itself is a racist law. It doesn’t consider the fact that the other groups are also ignoring the white group. It ignores that fact that we need to teach our kids to be kind to the other races. This law would be nothing that gross overreach and would cause so many more problems than it would solve in the U.S. It won’t help your kids be more tolerant of other races and it certainly won’t help the already racist people grow over their racism. Lets stop trying to solve non-existent problems with the government because it won’t be solved with the government.