Back to Basics

The old Druid is back to doing email readings.
A standard general Tarot reading is $50.00.
A single question or issue Astro Dice reading in $15.00. I use the format of past, present and future influences, what will move it ahead, stop it and where to use extreme caution. They are amazingly accurate. Since I actually use 6 sets of 3 dice each, you can see the connections between the events.
Paypal is the paying medium to my email at cosmicjanice@gmail.com
You have to email the question or your addy to send the reading to because FB mssg just is not reliable for me.

How to cut social security & medicare

The Real Cuts to Social Security & Medicare

Make no mistake about it, tRump and Moscow Mitch intend to cut Social Security and Medicare and there is nothing you and the Dems can do about it. Here is how it works.

The new budget shows cuts to both programs in the amount they will pay out. The Dems will rally against the cuts, GOP'ers will get on board and a budget the same as last year will pass with everyone murmuring, “just wait until we get him out of office and we will fix this.”

So, the checks remain the same but here is where the money gets cut. The amount Medicare pays for a procedure and whether it pays, is not determined by Congress but by a private agency which has been stuffed with Insurance Providers and the AMA Doctors, all appointed. That agency sits under the control of one Eugene Louis Dodaro who is the comptroller of the USA. He was appointed for a 15 year term in 2010. He was already serving as the acting comptroller so it was a no brainer for Congress and you know how they love no brainers. His service as second in command of the agency actually started under George W. Bush. Mr Dodaro is a conservative who has been screaming the government is going broke since the beginning of his career and proposing massive cuts to programs to save it. What you do not understand is this is the second most powerful man in the country because he controls all the money, where it goes and what information is presented to the president and Congress. He is appointed for a 15 year term! You never see that appointment. You probably never ever heard of him. You probably had no idea what his office does.

He controls who gets paid and how much, who know what and how much.

So to cut Medicare all you have to do, for a totally hypothetical example, is decide not to pay for diabetic testing supplies. This is the second most expensive item in diabetes. So the last little cut, decreased the amount they would pay for Type 2 diabetics strips. Type 1 coverage remained the same. You never even saw that bus coming at you. Don't cut the amount paid for insulin, but cut the amount paid for syringes. Suddenly, your diabetic uncle is trying to figure where his social security check is going because he has no money for food. By limiting the amount paid for items they effectively cut Medicare and since you are paying more for your supplies, copays and medications, your social security check now covers less expenses because the expenses on one side of the equation just got larger.

NOW, you remove the deduction of medical expenses from your income taxes and abracadabra, you have cut Social Security and Medicare without doing it in the budget you present to Congress and no one is any the wiser.....because they aren't even adding up those figures any more since they can't deduct them....

How to permanently kill the Dragons of Greed

The main story today is about a poor Amazon worker in Ohio who dropped dead of a heart attack and wasn't found for 20 minutes. During that time he could probably been saved. Bezos issued a statement that he was found quickly and taken to the hospital. The surveillance tape disputes that statement. Someone watched those cameras so the question I ask is, did they think the employee was taking a nap on the floor? Does this happen so regularly they ignore it? Are they really working their employees to death for minimum wage? Keep in mind around a half dozen employees have died on the job at Amazon this year.

The real question is what to do about behemoth companies that don't give a damn about their employees and are perfectly willing to work them death so the owners can put a few more dollars in a bloated pocket. The answer is not as simple as you think and legislation and taxation is not going to solve the problem.

You see, they all think they are self made men that didn't need anyone but themselves, a garage and the willingness to work 24 hours without sleep and not mentioned, a degree in computer science. I would really love to kick them in the Twinkies because that is not how it happened. How it happened is the key to fixing the problem once and for all, so pay attention.

Some dude got the brilliant idea that if people loved auctions and paid exorbitant prices for junk they didn't need in a room for of other idiots trying win a prize they were paying for that they would love it on the internet and Ebay was born. Around the same time someone noticed college students were getting ripped off buying text books and not every professor in every school was updating the textbook every year so if the students at universities could buy from students at other universities, he had a winner. Half was born.

Let me point out that the difference between a merchant starting this and the people who did was that the people who started these companies were programmers creating a one of a kind online platform not some guy moving into a building with some shelves and cash register. Ebay was the place to sell the crap in your garage and half quickly became an online platform for small bookstores because you did not pay to list books and you only paid a commission when the book sold. Your shipping was a fixed price. Ebay noticed some people liked Half and they expanded their platform to small stores for merchants to list new products without the auction process. It was a success and they tried to entice the Half merchants who noticed right off that Ebay was way more expensive. Ebay acquired Half. If you can't beat them, buy them. Ebay acquired PayPal. Ebay soon noticed what all computer platforms notice, you can't have dead wood because space is money and they set about to get rid of the small merchants and the Half platform. As is the customary in the industry, you make it hard for the small merchants to sell on your platform and they start going out of business. Since the American people are dumbed down, particularly in the areas that have to buy online they didn't notice that a book selling for 2.00 with 2.33 shipping and handling was actually cheaper than the same book selling for 1.00 with 5.00 shipping and handling. Half merchants started migrating to Ebay and losing money because now they not only had to pay a commission when they sold but a listing fee and store front fee. Ebay in the mean time was moving to large merchants and giving them all sorts of breaks while bankrupting the small merchants and legislating them off the platform.

The big publishers had gone into selling directly to the customers at a discount and they were putting the small bookstores out of business. Now they were finding it was more trouble than it was worth and Ebay was there with waiting compatibility to take their inventory into their waiting gigabytes. Ebay began to close Half down. Most small merchants had already had the Ebay treatment and were looking for another platform.

This is the point at which if you believe him, an oblivious Bezos started Amazon in his garage offering lower rates to liquidate the big publishers inventories of left over books which had been created by the giant book chains overbuying and then taking advantage of the publishers' return policies. When the publishers put the small book stores out of business they killed the stores that bought the overruns and returns from jobbers. All of this blew up at once and Jeff just happened to be sitting in his garage with an online platform at the right time to scoop them up. It wasn't hard work and foresight it was simply luck. Etsy did the same thing with the artisans Ebay was putting out of business. Now Bezos is trying to put Etsy out of business with his new artisan division offering better visibility, at a higher price.

It wasn't foresight, luck and hard work as much as being able to do something you and I, as merchants, can't; write a program for an online platform. It was filling a niche that be it on the Internet or in the neighborhood exists; creating a space for small merchants to sell their products be it a bazaar or flea market. Most neighborhood governments limit garage sales to one or two a year.

As each of these behemoths rises to suck the wealth from you and I, they carefully close the door to the people under them by paying less and less and demanding more work or money upfront for their products and services.

Bezos had a garage. How many 20 year olds have a garage or are most of them living in their parents garage? As these greedy dragons increase prices and decrease wages they make it impossible for anyone else to do what they did.

So instead of making it impossible for someone to start a business without a 60,000.00 investment (it is probably 100,000.00 plus now because that figure was over 30 years ago), we need small enterprise flea market zones that require the investment of time more than money from people. That is how we can keep the wealth shifted to the middle class and the poor can lift themselves out of poverty. That is the only solution to automation and constant job loss whether it be in the neighborhoods or online. Give the small guy a place to showcase their work and a way to sell it.

Expect a lot more from this blog as I leave that face place

I still cannot post anything to any of my pages or homepage. It appears to be widespread and getting worse. I have 12 messages pending from Facebook and when I got to my page where you get the messages, it says I don't have the right to access to the page. Yes, I have complained about each instance. I have even complained to Farmville. Oddly, the one place I can post is the Ask The Dirt Farmer. It is the only place.
And then it gets worse. I am co moderator on a number of groups with George. Someone posted something FB said was against their standards in a group of several hundred people over 7 days ago. They removed the post and just now notified George of it. He can't dispute or access the removed post because it is over 7 days old. They are threatening to close the entire group down if it happens again. They refuse to allow him to place the offending party on approval only for posts. He has to either kick the person out or snooze them for 30 days. No one knows what the person posted.
Now I have a notice on my page that I am not posting. Really.... I wonder why.
Things I hear but can't verify. Farmville players using the standard template to share items from Farmville have been put in FB jail and at least one person sharing trees was kicked off FB and just now got permission to open another account. They lost everything from their page and game. All of this is over "violating community standards".
The odd thing about all of this is the timing. Who do you think met with tRump, came back and authorized a massive update that started this whole thing? I'll let you research that one.
The odd thing is the whole problem revolves around "community standards",
Dare I say, this is the end my friend, the end.....
Keep watching in odd places because I have been preparing for this for a long time. Eventually I will migrate everything to a commercial web page that can't be censored.