I would think it would be difficult to find anyone happy with politicians in DC, no matter their politics. The country is fed up with both President Obama and Congress. I'm fed up with them. And now? Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is fed up with Washington, too.
Schultz is so done with them, in fact, that he's encouraging people not to give political donations. In other words, instead of talking about your dissatisfaction, put your money with your mouth is -- or rather don't put your money anywhere near Washington, no matter the candidate.
Cut them off. Close those wallets. Hit 'em where it hurts.
According to Schultz, money is the way to get change from political leaders who have "chosen to put partisan and ideological purity over the well being of the people." He told CNNMoney: "All it seems people are interested in is re-election. And that re-election -- the lifeblood of it is fundraising."
Schultz, a Democratic donor who paid out $183,650 almost entirely to Democratic candidates, is recruiting other CEOs and even passed on a letter to the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ stating:
I am asking that all of us forgo political contributions until the Congress and the President return to Washington and deliver a fiscally, disciplined long term debt and deficit plan to the American people.
It seems fair. It seems more than fair.
Why throw good money after bad? The country is a mess. It's hard to find anything good about the economy, and I think it will only get worse until these politicians we elected truly start making very hard cuts and fiscally disciplined choices that will be very unpopular, including entitlement programs such as welfare, Social Security, and the like.
In my household, we are having tough conversations about how to decrease our own debt of school loans, mortgages, and credit card debt. Nowhere in these discussions are we raising "our debt ceiling" by applying for more credit cards or worrying about what the neighbors will think. Instead, we are making the following cuts to our family budget:
Refinancing existing debt? Yes.
My husband taking a risky new job and taking the bus to work to cut gas bills? Yes.
Drastically reducing dining out? Yes.
Cancelling our phone line, Blockbuster, and Netflix accounts? Yes.
What's more, we have a ZERO school clothes budget this year. We are getting creative and reusing last year's school supplies. I am cutting and coloring my own hair and everyone else's hair in our family. We question every grocery purchase.
Most important, living within our means has become our priority. We have become a cash only family the last few weeks. No cash? No buy. And most of the time that means: no buy. We are shrinking our priorities and cutting to the bone. I am sure we are not alone.
We need our politicians to do the same.
Our government has gotten too big and has not figured out the real priorities. Like my family, they've been accustomed to the "buy now and pay later" way of life. But eventually it has to stop.
Not only that, but we elected our lawmakers to lead, not just be re-elected. We need politicians to understand that they may not be popular and may not get re-elected, but they must makes cuts -- not make more debt. It will be the right thing to do. We need politicians that are focused on making change in one term rather than planning careers and starting their re-election campaign only months after elected.
We elected these leaders to do what is good for the country, not what is good for their political party.
Right now, with this debt over our heads, I truly feel our country is in a treacherously precarious situation that not only threatens this generation's well-being, but the future solvency and very existence of our country. Business as usual is not working. We need new blood or at least to exert pressure on the old guard by hitting them where it hurts in their campaign piggy banks until they think about their country more than their re-elections. That's exactly the sentiment behind Schultz's plan to cut off DC where it hurts.
What about you? Have you donated politically in the past and will you now? More important, are you cutting back in your household budgets and do you expect your leaders to do the same?
Image via quinn.anya/Flickr
Yep, another celebrity has said he will take his toys and go home if he does not like whomever the country elects. Sounds really mature, eh?
I'm a fiscally conservative mother of three, so President Obama would not have been my choice. However, never, ever did it occur to me to LEAVE the country I love, the country of my forefathers, just because my candidate did not win.
That type of partisanship disgusts me.
Watching George Lopez tell Piers Morgan he will LEAVE America if Sarah Palin wins just lost him a fan.
See this video on The Stir by CafeMom.
Seriously, whatever happened to believing in democracy? Believing in the will of many rather than the will of but one? What the hell are soldiers fighting for in foreign lands if our democratic republic can be so easily discounted and discarded?
Do not get me wrong. I am no fan of Sarah Palin. I can, however, appreciate how she has shaken up the Republican party a bit from its complacency. I see her as the Ross Perot of this generation. Energizing and unelectable, but definitely stirring the pot. She is a gimmick just like I assumed Obama once was with his now false claims of bipartisan leadership with debt ceiling disasters imminent.
So, yes, I admit to being dispirited with President Obama's hollow promises of "yes, we can" ringing in my ears while, over the last few years, our country has quickly become the land of "we cannot" to so many with homes foreclosed, jobs gone, over our head in debt to China, and lives lost in wars, rightly or wrongly, he promised to end. I cannot say that President Bush did much better.
Nope, cannot say we are better off than before.
However, what is done is done, and no matter our leader, I still value the freedoms and opportunities that makes this country great.
I value giving Mr. Lopez the freedom of speech to call Kirstie Alley a pig, although I disagree.
I value the best medical system (the same medical system removing my mother's kidney as I write this article) and most skilled doctors in the world who helped transplant Mr. Lopez wife's kidney to him that he so desperately needed -- the same wife whom he then so quickly divorced because America does not allow religion to dictate whom one marries or divorces.
I value that a kid such as Mr. Lopez, abandoned by both his father and his mother, against all odds, has attained success beyond most Americans' wildest dreams ... here in AMERICA.
I do believe, like Mr. Lopez, that candidates should have a strong political background, although we might quibble whether community organizer is much different than Alaska mayor when it comes to qualifications for President of the United States. I do however believe running the state of ALASKA does qualify Sarah Palin as "having a political background," right?
I even value the idea that a celebrity such as Mr. Lopez can believably say he will run for office as he promised he would, even though he seems unhappy with the idea in the above video that the U.S. is a "culture of personality."
Still I value that Mr. Lopez wants to and CAN run for political office. I am not sure how Mr. Lopez's sitcom background qualifies him as anything other than a "personality;" however, my biggest concern is that for someone claiming he would run for mayor of Los Angeles in 2018, won't that be a bit challenging from Canada? Personally, I have a hard time thinking anyone would want to vote for "a personality" who is a quitter living in Canada ... but each to his or her own.
So Mr. Lopez, please do! If you believe it is the sum of current politics or who resides in the White House that makes America, rather than the hard-fought for realization of freedoms, opportunity, and democracy over generations and centuries, then please do leave now ... and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
Photo by Barack Obama/Flickr
Commodes aren't something I think much about, unless I can't find one when I -- or one of my kiddos -- need it most. So I was shocked to learn that two-thirds of the world's population doesn't even have access to toilets. Worse? One and a half million children die every year because of diarrhea spread due to the same reason. Truly horrific. Can you imagine losing a child due to lack of toilets?
Enter the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has launched a challenge to reinvent the porcelain thrones of today to make them more accessible to the rest of the world.
You won't believe what's being proposed so far ...
The hope is that with a redesign of the 200+-year-old invention of today's modern toilet, some of the suffering of the world is all about to change. To get there, the foundation is offering up $41.5 million worth of grants. Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the foundation's global development program, said:
No innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of the toilet ... But it did not go far enough. It only reached one-third of the world. What we need are new approaches. New ideas. In short, we need to reinvent the toilet.
So why does the B&M Foundation not just donate a bunch of commodes? It's too expensive for people in the developing world; it requires water and a sewer-system hook-up, which aren't always available; and it does nothing to actually treat human waste, said the Foundations's director of water sanitation and hygiene, Frank Rijsberman.
Instead, check out some of the new inventions in the works:
Georgios Stefanidis, from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, is working on a toilet that will generate electricity from waste, which will be "gasified into plasma" using microwaves. That gas can be used to generate electricity, according to the proposal. Michael Hoffmann, from the California Institute of Technology, plans to develop a solar-powered toilet. Solar cells generate enough power to process waste and turn it into fuel for electricity. Yu-Ling Chen, from the University of Toronto, is trying to make a toilet that will "sanitize feces within 24 hours" so human waste doesn't transmit disease through a community. Chen plans to use a process of dehydration, filtration, and smoldering to render the waste harmless. Andrew Cotton, from Loughborough University in the UK, is making a toilet that will "recover water and salt from feces and urine."Some of these seem very inventive. I admit I was even a bit hopefully that they would have applications, not just for use for the third world countries that need them, but even for applications in my suburban Seattle home.
Seriously, with summer boredom hitting, who else has a kid that would get a huge thrill out of nuking his poop to power up his Xbox?
Photo courtesy of by RobW_/Flickr
Sergeant 1st Class Leroy Arthur Petry is the second living recipient of the Medal of Honor from the Iraq and Afghan wars. His story is the stuff of legends and epic movies. Shot in both legs, he seized an enemy grenade to save fellow rangers in harm's way. Having lost his right hand, he applied a tourniquet, and continued to give out orders.
Having proudly served my country in the reserves, with a husband who also served active duty attached to a field infantry unit in the Sinai, my heart bursts at such valor in such an exemplary soldier.
As a former soldier, I feel extreme gratitude for his service and sacrifice, but as a mother, one of my biggest fears would be if my own sons and daughter were to ever be called upon to make a similar sacrifice.
Call me a hypocrite, but how do military moms do it?
I had no problems signing that dotted line as a young woman. It was harder marrying an active duty man whom I loved, knowing he could one day face combat. Even more difficult was being left behind as my husband was deployed in the Middle East for six months to the Sinai Peninsula, just when Osama Bin Laden started his evil by bombing nearby American embassies in the '90s. It was wretched while I stayed behind with a toddler in subzero Fairbanks, Alaska, but I endured. I knew the deal when I married him.
Yet the thought of my babies being in harm's way slays me.
This is awful, I know, but I have told them it would absolutely kill me if they joined the military. Worse? As my teen son plays Call of Duty on Xbox, I suggest that choosing a nice desk jockey job in the Air Force might be acceptable to this poor mother's heart. His father and I agree he would not last long -- or at least that is my excuse.
As an aside, I also would not let my kids finish walking across the Golden Gate Bridge because I had an anxiety attack they would fall through the infinitesimal cracks between the railings. We turned back as I hyperventilated. I have repelled off six-story buildings, fearlessly, but the thought of my babies getting too close to the second story railing at the mall gives me a heart attack. Have I mentioned they are tweens/teens and I still have a heart attack? Seriously, ALL my nightmares revolve around my children being lost, hurt, or missing. We swim competitively because I used to fear if we went down in an airplane into an ocean, I would never be able to save all three.
I know these are irrational mother's fears, but I think that mothers are genetically pre-programmed to worry like this.
So as I watched President Obama award SFC Petry his medal, my thoughts wander to wondering how SFC Petry's mom feels? How did she get past the fear of her baby getting hurt? Or did she? I wonder if she urged him to choose a less dangerous profession. Or did she feel the call of duty to let her child serve his country as he saw fit, no matter the cost?
At the presentation this week, Petry urged Americans to keep service members in their thoughts. "The greatest reward any service member can get is a simple 'thank you,'" he said.
I absolutely agree. It is nice being thanked for one's service on veterans' days and 4th of July holidays. In today's climate, I feel very unworthy having served in peace time. I know many who have readily endured far greater sacrifice. These wars have taken their toll with soldiers deployed three and four times.
However, when is the last time you thanked the families and specifically the mothers of those soldiers who also sacrifice? Their fears and night terrors of having their babies in harm's way must be unbearable.
So to all you mamas of military men and women out there?
Thank You.
When was the last time you went into the doctor's office with a serious disease and he told you all could be cured with watermelon and hot tubs?
{eyebrow raise}
No, that never happened to you? Me neither, but just the thought of such quackery raises the hairs on the back of my neck.
Don't get me wrong. Alternative medicine has its merits when done under the trained, skilled hands of medical professionals. However, when the quack diagnosing you has no medical license, failed medical exams, and oh yes, your mother died under his care after he claimed she had Lyme disease rather than MS, don't you think just maybe you should seek a second opinion?
Let's see what lessons we can learn from this horrific story of the fake doctor who prescribed watermelons and hot tubs as a cure for a serious disease ...
It all started with a certain Yevgeniy Valentine Vasin, 54, who posed as a doctor and gave care at $300 an hour for a Belmont, California mother-daughter duo.
The mother, Ronelle Kotter, had a prescription for multiple sclerosis ordered by a doctor at UCSF Medical Center. He told her she could cut her dosage in half. Sadly, she died of MS eight months ago at the age 56 -- after he insisted that she actually had Lyme disease. It was not until she passed that her children contacted police.
In the meantime, Vasin continued to treat her daughter. Contrary to the diagnosis given to her by medical staff at Stanford Medical Center, Vasin insisted she REALLY HAD lupus and commenced treating her with vitamins and "convinced her that to help her kidneys, she needed to eat watermelon in a hot tub."
Yes, watermelon in a hot tub.
According to The San Francisco Chronicle:
An investigation revealed that Vasin was not a doctor, had flunked his U.S. medical exams, and had only "brief training in his native Ukraine."
Last Friday, Vasin did plead no contest to two misdemeanor counts relating to masquerading as a doctor.
His punishment for the daughter's treatment? Thirty days in jail, which I am sure will have him out in a week Paris Hilton-style. He did receive three years probation and was ordered not to "engage in any medical-related employment or to pose as a doctor."
Worse?
He faces no charges in the mother's death.
What a miscarriage of justice. Yes, the Lindsay Lohans of the world are not a threat to the public, but this man? He is a very real threat. He is a predator, preying on the hopes of very ill, desperate people. And there are likely others out there just like him, which is why this story is a reminder that you can never be too careful when it comes to medical professionals. My elderly mother has Lupus, and I can only imagine what I would feel if she succumbed to the disease after being told to eat watermelon and sit in a hot tub. I am sure I would give him his own dose of watermelon shoved up his ...
Do you think 30 days in jail was enough for this man's crime?
Images via sidknee23/Flickr
Modesty and religious head scarves known as hijabs are not what comes to mind when one thinks of teen fashion haven Hollister (a subsidiary of Abercrombie & Fitch). Rather, Hollister is known for its casual American beachy look -- micro shorts, tank tops, exposed midriffs, bare skin, and flip-flops.
And in fact, Hollister's corporate policy requires all its employees to adopt that look -- jeans, T-shirts, flip-flops -- while on the clock. When Hani Khan, a 20-year-old Muslim woman, was hired to work in the stockroom, the store manager said she could wear her hijab (in company colors). A district manager disagreed with that decision, and Khan was asked to remove her headscarf to comply with company policy. When she refused to do so, she was fired.
Usually, I would be right there defending Khan's right to wear and practice her religion as she chooses. However, I am flabbergasted at the inappropriate choice she made for employment in the first place. Hollister sells casual but very sexy clothing. Its employees, from sales clerks to stockers (who are occasionally seen in the front of the store), are required to represent that sexy, casual, beach look. A hijab as fashion simply does not say beachy. Khan shouldn't have been hired in the first place since her attire of choice didn't fit the company's image. Unfortunately, the store manager who hired her had either not been properly trained or simply chose to ignore the company policy.
Abercrombie states:
We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all individuals regardless of religion, race or ethnicity .... We comply with the law regarding reasonable religious accommodation.
I latch on to that word reasonable. Is it reasonable that a company be forced to make allowances to a policy that is directly related to its business? As a teen I worked in a local JCPenney, where I was required to wear skirts and pantyhose at all times. It was part of the job -- no matter how much I hated it. When it got to be too much, I quit. The fact is, employees represent their retailer's look. Hollister has every right to enforce a dress code, and as one commenter on the web rightly or wrongly says:
They sell an image, not a religion of suppression. There's nothing sexy about that.
The same dress code should apply to Ms. Khan. While a "misinformed" store manager may have hired her in the first place, the district manager gave her the opportunity to comply with the company's dress code.
Hollister sells sexy. Hijabs are the opposite. They are a form of extreme modesty. This is simply just not a good fit. I am not certain why a conservative, modestly dressed young woman wanted to work at a company whose image is anything BUT conservative. Honestly, it sounds fishy ...
She's suing of course -- it's the American way when you don't get your way, isn't it?
She claims it's religious discrimination, but is it really religion-based discrimination to be prohibited from wearing an article of clothing that clashes with a retailer's dress code? Is it discrimination to be asked to comply with what every other employee is asked to wear? What if a model for Playboy or waitress from Hooters pulled the same stunt? What if a Victoria's Secret model showed up for a photo shoot in a full-body burka or Amish bonnet for that matter?
There's a point at which religious choices don't trump a company's right to advertise and sell its merchandise as it sees fit or to hire employees who best represent their style.
Some say this has nothing to do with religious discrimination, but is more about fitting into a corporate culture. Do you agree?
Four sisters were recently raped by alleged pro-government troops in Syria. Normally these women would be senselessly killed by their OWN families in a twisted sense of honor. But for once, something is changing. REAL men are stepping forward.
A group of 15 Syrian men in Khirbet al-Jous -- recognizing that these women are "victims of the revolution" -- have vowed to protect them by offering to marry these women, who would otherwise be seen as unsuitable for marriage and killed.The field of suitors has been whittled to four.
While I am not sure marrying men they've never met is the right answer for these women, it's certainly a massive step in the right direction.
The Washington Post reports one rebel declared:
We sat and discussed that we want to change this. We don’t want to change just the regime in Syria, but also this kind of stuff. So we will marry them in front of everyone.
The rebels also said:
Rapes and other assaults on women signify an escalation of violence by the government and its allies, which have sought to discredit the opposition movement.
Quite a difference from the government's forcible virginity checks in neighboring Egypt.
This is what just utterly flabbergasts me as a woman. How can cultures and governments see their wives, daughters, and their mothers as such pawns and collateral damage? It has frustrated me for years, from reports of "honor" acid attacks, women stoned, and women beaten without protection.
So it is a bizarre sense of relief I feel that these women will marry men they have never met, after having been raped by other men, rather than being buried up to their neck and stoned by their own families. It is at least one baby step in the right direction, is it not?
Photos via Marc Veraart/ Flickr
I admit it. I am a ranty b*tch at times. Yes, I have ranted to the principal when I felt my kids had gotten a raw deal. I've also emailed and called corporations when I feel I have received less than stellar customer service. Having worked in retail management during college, I know firsthand that these rants get responses. I seem to recall one corporate training that said for every unhappy customer, 10,000 other potential customers would hear about it in a year. Hence it was more cost effective to apologize and comp the customer than try to ameliorate the bad publicity.
However, it seems Alamo Drafthouse Cinema has a rather different approach.
A young woman, who supposedly didn't know she shouldn't text in a movie theater, claimed she was using her muted phone's light to find her seat. After two warnings, she was ejected without a refund.
Her response was an angry, dim-witted, crass, and hilarious voice message ... which the theater has promptly turned into a PUBLIC PSA not only at their theater, but on YOUTUBE.
She texted? They justifiably kicked her out. She ranted? They used it as this harsh PSA. (Warning: profanity.)
See this video on The Stir by CafeMom.
Stabby Wackadoodles Much?!
Just to be clear, I try to use a few less F-bombs and try to be far more articulate than this lady. The entitlement in her voice was fridiculous! To be even more clear, texting in the theater is wrong and my 11-year-old daughter got an earful when she suddenly started "doing her homework," which she had "forgotten" about mid-movie last week on her phone! Not cool!
However, I question the legality of using this as a public humiliation show-down. Would you have thought your complaints could be used as advertising fodder? Is using her voice message justifiable fair use?
All I know is from now on ... Ranter Beware!
Image by HeyThereSpaceman via Flickr
We just do not how good we have it here in the U.S. until you hear how female protesters are treated in Egypt in the 21st century. It's more akin to the medieval ages, even amid peaceful protests aimed at democratic reform. A senior Egyptian general has reportedly admitted that female protesters were arrested and given "virginity checks" during the protests earlier this year.
This is in addition to Amnesty International reports that women protesters alleged that they were beaten, subjected to strip searches while being photographed by male soldiers, given electric shocks, threatened with prostitution charges, and forced to submit to said ‘virginity checks.’
So what of these forced medical exams that violated these women? These exams, in essence medical rape, at least in my mind, were supposedly performed to protect soldiers from being accused of raping them in the first place.
Yes, medical rape was used to protect male soldiers from being accused of rape.
Because we all know that women who (gasp) have been sexually active can't be raped, right? Is anyone else feeling sick to their stomach? Holding their daughter closer? Thanking their lucky stars they weren't given a forced pelvic exam when they went to their last political gathering?
It only gets worse. This senior general also told CNN:
The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine...These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and (drugs).
Again, gasp! How dare they!
Amnesty International has a different perspective. "Forcing women to have ‘virginity tests’ is utterly unacceptable. Its purpose is to degrade women because they are women. All members of the medical profession must refuse to take part in such so-called tests."
The general, who asked not to be identified, continued:
We didn't want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren't virgins in the first place. None of them were (virgins).
One of the alleged victims, 20-year-old Salwa Hosseini, feels the only purpose of these checks with male doctors and male soldiers looking on as supposed witnesses was to, "Teach us a lesson...they wanted to make us feel that we do not have dignity."
I have to agree. Even if not, does anyone else wonder if the women were not virgins because they possibly could have just been raped? Did I miss the memo where being a virgin was a pre-condition of being raped? The logic behind these exams and what they purport to prove, simply fails me. The handover to a civil government cannot come soon enough.
In the meantime, let's not let the Egyptian Army get away with this. Let's continue to shout out to the world that mistreating women, stripping their dignity, and violating their bodies is not and never will be okay.
Image via by ~Aphrodite/Flickr
I cannot imagine how it feels to lose a child. It must be so devastating and heartbreaking to feel the life inside you growing only to lose that fluttering, fragile life far too soon.
Heather Werth, a Cincinnati mother, lost her preemie newborn son Joey at Good Samaritan hospital after 16 days of life and has now taken legal action.
She isn't suing because of malpractice or medical mistakes. She is suing the Ohio hospital after photos of her dead infant were mailed to her. More than 150 photos of her posed baby, taken after his death, were sent to this grieving mother.
Werth maintains she informed the hospital multiple times she didn't want any photos after Joey's death. For Werner, the fact that they posed her infant goes against her wishes and dishonors his body. She, with her lawyer, has charged the hospital with desecrating a corpse.
Apparently, it's common for a bereavement team to snap some pictures to console a grieving family -- mementos of their lost child. However, everyone grieves differently and everyone's grief is different.
Werner maintains she made her wishes very clear and those wishes were ignored, and said of the photos:
He was treated like a doll. He was flipped, and he was flopped. He was dressed, and he was undressed. He was wrapped in a blanket. He was posed. He was laying on his belly. He was laying on his back.
In all, she was sent 154 photos in 20 poses. Worse for her, the photos were taken and developed at a local Walgreens, allowing access to the sensitive images to folks beyond the hospital staff. And to send them in the MAIL?
For sure, this was a huge gaffe. Maybe there was an overzealous bereavement counselor who thought she knew better than Werner, but is this really worthy of a lawsuit?
I am torn.
I find it horrifying that this mother, who had plenty of pictures of her child alive in the happier two weeks before his death, was tortured with unexpected and unwanted images of her dead child. I am doubly horrified that these photos, taken against a grieving mother's wishes, were sent BY MAIL, without care taken to ensure she had some support around her on first seeing them.
I am certain these images haunt her and are NOT how she wants to remember her baby.
I also cringe at the thought that a dead baby was posed in such a manner. Then again, I cringed at the family members who took pictures of my grandmother in her casket at her funeral. For me, photos and memories of my beloved grandmother while she was alive are the only ones I would ever want to see or remember. However, everyone grieves differently.
At the same time, I can see how a common practice of taking pictures of babies who die at birth might be a small comfort for parents who might not otherwise have pictures to remember their child. While researching this practice, I saw several stories of mothers who lost children who stated that while they insisted they didn't want pictures of their child at the time, they had nurses and grief counselors insist ... and now they cherish these photos as invaluable physical mementos of their child.
There are different ways of looking at this story. Some may say this mother is greedy and looking to blame someone for her child's death. Others may believe this was an egregious violation of her child's body and her family's privacy, which is worthy of a lawsuit.
Does this justify a lawsuit or a simple apology for insensitivity? Does she just need to deal with her loss -- not what some call an insensitive lawyer exploiting her loss on Dr. Drew? Where do you stand?
image via by sabianmaggy/Flickr
Like so many Americans in the United States, I have struggled with my weight. It's a day-to-day challenge. Stress makes it worse.
So I was shocked to hear it was proposed in the great state of Arizona that some of our most stressed citizens, welfare recipients, down on their luck, struggling to get by, might be fined for being fat.
Yes, there are hard choices to be made in this economy. With President Obama's health care extending coverage, states, whether they can afford it or not, may be forced to pay out increasing matched costs of tens of billions of dollars. To counter this, the state of Arizona is getting creative and a bit radical -- big surprise, Arizona being radical, eh?
It has been proposed that a $50 annual fine be imposed for overweight Medicaid recipients who don't follow a strict health regime developed with their doctor.
The good news is that people who are caring for children or who are overweight due to a medical condition would be exempt. Smokers and diabetics, however, would also be fined. Assistant director at Arizona's Medicaid program, Monica Coury, states the aim is to change behavior using a carrot and stick approach, in the same way that increasing cigarette taxes reduced smoking in some states.
However, that tax applied to every smoker coming from every walk of life, whereas these fines would pinpoint our most vulnerable, down on their luck, stressed citizens. I am not sure this fiscal strategy is sound. Smoking I understand. You need to quit. You need to stop putting the cancer sticks in your mouth. However food? You can never quit completely. Food can be a drug for some, but you must continue to eat -- which is completely different from quitting smoking cold turkey.
I admit, I was and still very much am against Obama's health care plan. I think it's too costly and forces a socialized medical system that I do not want for my family. However, this move by Arizona to cut health care costs just seems illogical -- my own experience has shown that eating healthy food costs way more money. In my mind, a fine would simply decrease the poor's already limited food budget. The month they're hit with such a $50 fine I would think would result in the poor gravitating toward cheap, highly caloric food to make ends meet. Dollar menu at McDonald's anyone? Top Ramen noodles? No one loses weight on that crap.
Sadly, these fines may be a sign of the times. In the past, my family's health plan offered cash incentives to lose weight. This year? It included a different plan with soaring costs for smokers. Yep, they are choosing the "stick" over the "carrot" too. I can only imagine a weight clause with higher rates is coming up the pipeline. Heck, if Arizona can do it, don't think for a minute that private corporations won't get on that bandwagon.
My thoughts? Arizona should take a page from universities everywhere, assume the carrot mentality, and pay out a little more short term for free gym memberships or empower people to lose weight through incentives. In the long run, I think they might have a better result saving costs from this epidemic of obesity with a carrot than a $50 stick, don't you?
Image via Phoney Nickle/Flickr
We're all guilty of doing a little stalking of high school exes. It's harmless enough, and Facebook makes it easy. But, some younger kids, not yet understanding the implications of their actions, have taken it a bit further.
Two sixth grade girls -- in my own daughter's Seattle-area school district -- defaced photos of their former friend and classmate Leslie Cote, and set up chats with boys in her name to perform sexual acts. Let's be clear: They are straight-up bullies.
Yet, they stand charged with far greater crimes. The girls -- ages 11 and 12 -- are accused of installing sexually explicit messages and photos on their classmate's Facebook page. More importantly, they have been charged with first-degree computer trespassing and cyberstalking. We have reached a new shocking low in the Internet age.
According to reports, after a falling out, the criminally charged tweens used the victim's password -- which she had inadvertently stored at one of the girls' home computers -- to deface pictures, plaster sexually explicit content all over her page, and the worst? They also "instant-messaged 'random individuals' under the alleged victim's name to arrange sex acts."
What a nightmare! When I was in school, "bullies" used to write a girl's name on the bathroom wall with a phone number. In today's world of suicidal teens and Columbines and once on the Internet-always on the Internet, this is harmless no more. Leslie Cote's bullies were given restraining orders and are being charged with cyberstalking and first-degree computer trespassing. If convicted, the girls face up to 30 days in juvenile detention.
I must admit, when I first heard of the case last month, I thought authorities might have been taking this too far. I was sure the harsh punishment for these first-time offenses was simply an example being made. However, for the Cote family, calling the police was their last resort and they watched helplessly as their daughter struggled with spiralling low self-esteem and depression after the bullies, pretending to be their daughter, solicited adult men to perform oral sex and made other offensive statements on family members' pages.
What really brought it home for me? As I followed the local news, I realized that I knew Leslie Cote's family (Leslie had asked to be identified). I knew her mother, Tara Cote, from our Army days, but we had since lost touch. Tara attended my baby shower in Alaska. We were pregnant with our girls together. Our daughters were born on the same post in interior Alaska. We were in the same play group. Our husbands deployed together in Egypt. Our daughters are just a few months apart and they both attended the same Daddy-daughter dance last year. Small world, eh?
The similarities continue. Our daughters both have Facebook accounts. This could easily have been my daughter being cyberbullied.
Leslie Cote said, "Some people looked at me differently, and then judged me differently now because of what happened ... I just couldn't control it and then I didn't get any sleep. I kept crying the whole time, and it's just all bunched up."
As a mother, this would kill me. My mama bear would be all out for justice and that's what Leslie's mom wants. Justice in the form of juvenile detention and, more importantly, a public apology in front of the school.
I can relate. Last weekend, there was a malicious attempt on my own daughter's Facebook account, and I started to reassess our decision to let her join. Luckily, my tech geek husband received alerts that someone was trying to change her login while we sat at a swim meet and we quickly changed passwords. Having a Daddy who watches her like a hawk and gets code alerts to his phone is nice, but we still were lucky to catch it in time as attempt after attempt was made to break in.
It's tricky being a parent in the cyber age. I see all over the message boards women blaming the Cote family for allowing their 11-year-old to have a Facebook account. I am sure they will indict me as well for making that parenting choice. Most of these commenters clearly don't have tweens or are in denial that their tweens have a FB account. They do. Believe me, they do.
We, as a family, have decided to be proactive and have allowed our kids from age 9 to have Facebook accounts, which we can and do closely monitor. Still, we miss things -- such as the time my daughter "liked" Victoria's Secret. I wrote about that honestly as a parenting mistake and just like Leslie's mom, I got comments censuring Facebook accounts for my tween.
My response?
Her father and I monitor her Facebook, but it is ridiculous to think we stand behind her, eyes glued to the screen, watching every keystroke as she makes them. We do have access to her FB and her password, and she and her brothers know we look daily and sometimes even hourly at their pages.
That said, she also has an iPhone and she has access to computers at the public library and at school. Better yet? Her friends whose parents don't allow Facebook accounts STILL have Facebook accounts!! They just use aliases. I much prefer to see what's going on rather than have her hide it from me.
A friend who did not allow her teen a Facebook account told me she had discovered he had set up a secret account anyway on his PSP, unknown to her. Most disturbing to her? She found he had a 65-year-old male friend. So what is worse? The cyberstalking in your face or the thoughts of who might be communicating with your child that you don't even know about?
What is your take on tweens and Facebook? Would you allow your tween an account where you can somewhat control whom she friends and what she writes? Or would you ban Facebook and face the possibility that she might set up a secret account over which you cannot supervise or control?
Image via Facebook
If you believe the news, now is the time to buy a new home. Prices are at all-time lows and mortgage rates remain respectable. Sound good? It sounded great to California resident Jack Hagerty. After going through a divorce, he took the bait.
He lucked out and found a condo perfect for him and his young son, in San Francisco, one of the most expensive places to live in the United States. Unfortunately, that's where his luck ran out.
No sooner had the ink dried on the closing papers and Hagerty made plans to rip out carpets due to allergies, than his new neighbors emailed him to prevent the carpet removal.
Why? The neighbor is into rough leather sex. "I am a sexual enthusiast and enjoy leather sex," the neighbor wrote.
I have to admit that I haven't had the pleasure -- or displeasure really -- to live in an apartment/condo in over 10 years. I am a private person and it was excruciating to live with strangers.
Whenever we shared walls or floors with neighbors, I was always stressed out and fretting that my children and two dogs were being too loud. My husband and I were constantly reminding the kids not to stomp. Hushing them. Training the dogs not to run or bark. Vacuuming when we thought the downstairs neighbors were not home.
Yes, we might have resented their cigarette smoking wafting through the floors and the sky-high thermostat levels that turned our apartment into a sauna, but we tried to maintain peace. It appears the Hagerty's new neighbor had a different take:
At times, it is possible and even likely that the sounds of leather sex will be coming from my bedrooms to your bedrooms without an effective sound barrier. While it is not my issue, you may find you need to explain things to your son as it could be confusing to him since it frequently doesn't sound as pleasurable as it is.
Let me repeat that: "Not my issue." What a @#$% fantastic way to be neighborly, eh?
My problem as a mom? It's not his lifestyle preference. Please, do whatever you want. You are an adult, but as an adult, be responsible for your actions.
I think it would be the source of said loud, confusing, steamy and maybe even scary sounds who is responsible for providing a noise barrier, don't you? How is this not the neighbor's issue? As an adult, how can you not take responsibility in ensuring your condo contains the sounds emanating from within? Don't you think Mr. Hagerty's child should have every right to live in a safe, allergen free home -- without the questionable sex education that his downstairs neighbor warns he might impart?
Sadly, Hagerty is stuck. He said, "I'm screwed...I put every penny I had into this place, and I'm still paying $2,000 a month in mortgage and homeowner fees. I can't even afford to pay rent somewhere." At the same time, he cannot in all good conscience put his son in such an environment. I wonder if any responsibility lies with the previous owner or real estate agent to disclose a ... erm ... pre-existing condition?
As a parent, his situation sounds like my worst nightmare -- being stuck between my children's welfare and the lack of funds to do anything about it.
So tell me your worse neighbor stories? Tell me your tales of woe of thin walls, rude neighbors, and lacking sound barriers? Better yet, do you have any helpful advice for Mr. Hagerty?
Image via by Steve Snodgrass/Flickr
Were you aware that there are transgender murderers and violent criminals with life sentences in prison who receive sex hormone replacement therapy on the taxpayers' dime? I was shocked to find out that in California, since 1999, it has been court mandated.
Now the boundary is being pushed by outrageous prisoner demands for sexual reassignment surgery. Lyralisa Stevens -- living as a woman and receiving sex hormones since 2003 when she began her 50-year-to-life sentence for murdering a woman in a dispute over clothing -- has filed a lawsuit demanding a sex change on the taxpayers' dime.
My friends, if you look at my past posts, I am more than supportive of GLBT rights, but this is absurd. These men took away the life of others and we are supposed to be concerned with their mental health and pursuit of happiness -- all supposedly solvable by expensive, elective plastic surgery?
Seriously? Yes, serious they are. California prisons incarcerate more than 300 inmates diagnosed with "gender identity disorder." Those inmates are 13 times more likely to be sexually assaulted in prison, according to a new study.
Stevens and her witnesses claim that surgery is medically necessary, and that "removal of her penis and testicles and transfer to a women's prison are the best way to protect her from rape and abuse by male inmates." Let's repeat that: After the surgery reassigning her parts to make her a woman, she then wants to be moved to a female prison for her safety.
Despite the study and her claims, California officials aren't buying it. They argue that the state should be required to provide only "minimally adequate care." I am inclined to agree with them. When did prisoners' rights trump the rights of their victims? Why should they be guaranteed the safety their victims were denied? What about the lives these criminals took? What about their victim's happiness?
Especially in these economic times, is it reasonable to provide better benefits and costly elective services to incarcerated inmates over that of regular citizens? Would this be an incentive for typically law-abiding transgender citizens who cannot afford the surgery they want to commit a crime to get Uncle Sam to pick up the tab? My thoughts are that the estimated $50,000 for a sex change per felon would be better spent on education to prevent young children from ever becoming felons.
In the wise words of Lady Gaga, yes, baby, you were born that way. However, there's no compelling argument that you deserve better than everyday citizens. You made your bed. You committed your crime as a man. Now live with it ... as a man. Man up!
Photo via by iambicpentameter/Flickr
This news just in, my friends. It seems that cursing to high heaven after cracking your baby toe on the door jamb will actually make it easier to bear.
Of course, we already knew that, didn't we?
It seems, however, that some researchers weren't as clued in to the powers of yelling four-letter words for excrement. Instead, they constructed a study with the assumption that using profanity with pain would make it less bearable. They found the opposite.
Swearing does in fact dull our perception of pain.
Well @#$%, as a woman, I could have told them they were wrong. We are queens of pain management starting with cramps and culminating in child birth. We may wash out our kids' mouth with soap for naughty language, but we all secretly know they learned it from us when we slammed our head into the @#$%lift gate of the minivan.
In fact, I think we mothers could start a revolution. Who needs epidurals when we can just scream yippee-ki-yay motha-f&^%$@. Peaceful births? Tom Cruise's silent births? Oh, hell no, let's f-bomb those babies into existence with a well deserved holy f**********cccckkk!
I jest, but part of me says there is something to this phenomenon. Another part of me tries to cut out the bad habit I picked up in high school and the military. You know, the one that takes away the pain of driving behind the 95-year-old grandpa cruising a perfectly paced 26 MPH on the freeway with a well-placed word or two that my little ones absorbed like thirsty sponges.
So the next time your preschooler comes crying with a bloody knee, why not encourage a nice resounding shout of [insert cuss word of choice]? It's way better pain management than a lollipop in this nation of obesity, eh? Well, except when your toddler calls his brother a mutter-effer. (I'm not saying this actually happened or anything [whistling innocently].) Just promise me you won't think less of me -- I mean I truly do exist to make you look like a better mother. And my husband thinks the use of a well-placed, in-context epithet is pretty darn funny coming out of our kids' mouths.
So, yes, I do admit an occasional four-letter word. However, I kid you not, I actually sang the Mickey Mouse Club song during the labor of my last 10+ POUND baby. Yes, the Mickey Mouse Club. I don't know why. It just relaxed me and triggered an emotional shortcut to distance me from the pain. Some say the same occurs with a well placed f-bomb. In fact, there is research that links the brain's emotional shortcuts to why Tourette's sufferers use so much profanity.
Back to the study results: "People withstood a moderately to strongly painful stimulus for significantly longer if they repeated a swear word rather than a nonswear word."
I find this sentence empowering. The next time you are suffering, I think a rather loud, resounding c@cksucking sonuvab$#tch would be a great deal better than a little too much wine or a handful of pills.
I call it Cursing Therapy. Who's the @#$ is with me? What, you are worried about the neighbors?? !@#$ the neighbors.
Image via GranniesKitchen/Flicker
When is enough, enough? According to court records, Dante Piggee has racked up 50 criminal charges since he embarked on the wrong path in elementary school. Fifty.
The Seattle Times reports Piggee's record included a conviction for second-degree murder of a woman outside a high school when he was merely 18 years old.
His latest offense, though, just breaks a mother's heart: Drunk driving with his two small children in the car. Reports state that after driving at a reckless speed, Piggee ended up forcefully hitting a parked BMW.
Instead of waiting for an ambulance and without knowing the full extent of any injuries his children might have sustained, a witness saw Piggee snatch his two children out of the car "and [swing] both of them on his shoulders like [a] sack of potatoes." With blood dripping from his nose, he ran.
He was arrested blocks away, confused and inebriated. He couldn't even remember the names or ages of his own children.
So my question is when do we say lock up these criminals and throw away the key? I would think that would have been when he was 18 and shot a girl in the back twice while getting off a school bus before classes? Or perhaps after one of his other convictions, which include second-degree assault, fourth-degree assault, and a violation of a protection order? Maybe his involvement in violent gangs and drug activity should have sent him to the slammer for good?
Or even after 30 criminal offenses? Forty? Honestly, I think we as a society are far too forgiving these days. We focus on rehabilitation rather than justice. I voted for the three strikes law when I lived in California just for this purpose.
Apparently in Washington, no such luck. Is anyone else reminded of Maurice Clemmons? Remember him? You know ... the murderer with an extensive criminal past who gunned down four police officers in cold blood last year. Clemmons was granted clemency for his 95-year life sentence, even though past crimes included aggravated robbery and theft, only to continue a life of crime. Just a short time before he ambushed the police officers, he was arrested and charged in Pierce County, Washington, for third-degree assault of a police officer and second-degree rape of a child. However (surprise!), he was released from county jail the week before his killing spree, despite facing eight felony charges.
Now with Piggee, it seems like deja vu. Authorities seem to have learned nothing from the Clemmons case. Washington is plagued with activist judges and there seems to be an unlimited number of offenses these judges will allow with parole. The latest judge let Piggee make bail on his 50th lifetime criminal charge, despite prosecutors' recommendations. Will it take until he kills another child -- perhaps his own -- before we say enough??
My friends, when do we as a society say enough is enough, lock the door, and throw away the key?
Image via amanderson2/Flickr
Smoking kills. We all know it.
As a social smoked-a-pack-a-year-in-college type, I was fortunate never to get addicted. Now as a parent, it horrifies me to think of being in a role where one's addiction takes precedence over one's child. I have known moms who were able to resist the siren call of nicotine while pregnant -- but puffed it up mere hours after delivery.
Do they not realize -- whether the child is in utero or not -- that they are leaving a horrific legacy for their children? Addictive personalities. Being labeled the smelly kid. Suffering the dangers of passive smoke.
That is ... if they even are around to make a legacy. Take Wall Street exec Keith Mastronardi, 31, of New York. He leaned out a window in his family apartment in Manhattan last Sunday to lessen the smoke around his 11-week-old baby and two other small children.
One minute he was there, another and he was gone. Five stories gone.
His wife, 32, turned to check on their baby, but when she went to face him again, he had vanished. When she realized what happened, she became hysterical and was taken to the New York Presbyterian Hospital for psychological evaluation.
Sure, police reported the couple had been "heavily drinking." (Another vice to reconsider when living in a home with waist-high windows.) Yes, we all wonder where the window guards were. They're required by law, and seemingly imperative considering three small children resided there. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development is investigating the case since city law requires that all windows in apartments with children under the age of 10 have window guards.
However, the simple fact is, without smoking, those babies might still have a father. Emotionally, my heart breaks for their beautiful young family. Mentally, I remind myself once again to talk to my kids about the unadulterated horrors of smoking.
Ironically, in a sad twist of circumstances, Keith Mastronardi's family announced funeral arrangements on the day he and his wife had planned on signing a deal for a new home.
Image via United States of Motherhood
Nine hours. Forty-eight minutes. Fifty-two seconds.
Grueling and awe-inspiring to some -- crazy to others. Is it inspiration or idiocy to run a marathon at 400 pounds?
I can't say for certain what 40-year-old Kelly Gneiting, a former national champion sumo wrestler with a 60-inch waist, was thinking when he planned this feat. All I can say is, despite naysayers saying it was dangerous to his health and joints, he is my inspiration.
He may even be the world's inspiration, having possibly set a Guinness record when he ran the L.A. Marathon last Sunday.
Over 26 miles in driving rain, we don't know what his thoughts were before, but we do know what he was thinking after. "I did it, but it was hell," Gneiting said, shortly passing the finish line. "Pure hell ... My feet were on fire," he said. "Twice, blisters popped and just about brought me to my knees ... but I kept going."
Even more inspirational? This was not his first marathon. He ran the 2008 marathon in a little under 12 hours. Anyone else feeling like they need to get up off the couch?
{Note my raised hand}
I used to be fit. Thin in early high school, I treated my body like a garbage dump, but was always moving. College and the Army were the same. Always moving. I could eat whatever I wanted and still shrug it off.
Now at 38, I drive everywhere. I sit while I watch my kids at sports practices. Somehow the act of actual moving has gone out the window. No surprise, my body mirrors my lifestyle. I'm exhausted. I have to lose 60 pounds before I could even be labeled a healthy weight. A hundred to get me back to my college weight. Add fatty liver disease. I feel empty. It's easy to give up and stuff myself. I have tried to stuff my soul like so many American women with white flour and fat.
It. Would. Be. Easy. To. Give. Up.
It was easy to watch Biggest Loser and drown my depression while munching on a handful of chocolate chips and almonds from the pantry last night. I can jokingly blame my husband for the dozen or so Paula Deen red velvet cupcakes he made and I binged on at Valentine's Day. But I can blame no one but myself for sitting at Starbucks last night while my kids swam for two hours when there was a perfectly good track a block away.
This is not the role-model I want to be for my kids. I want to be Kelly Gneiting.
My friends? Today is a new day. If a 400-pound man who is older than me can run for 11 hours and then do it again two years later, I can keep at it. I need to get off this couch and at my treadmill desk. You'll find me on the Daily Mile. Marathons may be a year or two off, but the Couch-to-5K Program is now my Bob Harper.
Who's with me? I'll keep you honest, if you keep me honest. Let's be Kelly. One mile at a time.
Image via Scouts Honor/UnitedStatesofMotherhood.com
Suppose a strange couple came upon you on the street and thrust their child in your arms. They ask you to care for the child for months upon months, feeding, protecting, and caring for the baby with much self-sacrifice, pain, and risk to your health. Would you do it? Would you do it for free?
Now imagine instead of on your hip, someone asks you to care for their child in your womb. It is not your egg nor your cells nor your DNA. You are simply asked to be a surrogate. You want to help, but pregnancy is work. It's a strain on any woman, yet this back-breaking, 24-hour-a-day, exhausting work is not valued enough to merit minimum wage in some states. You're just a vessel so that another couple may have the gift of parenthood.
Now imagine you have your own children -- which, in essence, qualifies you for this job in the first place. You have bills to pay, but your ability to work could be jeopardized by carrying another's child.
In fact, most people consider motherhood the hardest job they have ever had. Some, mainly lawmakers, male lawmakers, do not. Apparently to them, the burden and beauty of pregnancy are so under-valued in some states that women are expected to do it for free. It seems so unfair outside the womb and there are no questions of it being worth the hundreds to thousands of dollars that childcare costs. But caring for a child inside the womb? Supposedly, it's unethical to be paid a dime.
Some suggest it is akin to selling babies. Yes, you are supposed to give this gift to strangers out of the goodness of your heart. Rubbish!
Don't blame the strangers. They just want to be parents. They would do anything to have their own child. They'd gladly pay you for your gift ... except it's illegal to pay for surrogate mothers in Washington and many more states.
I found this out when I first came to Washington from California. It had long been a wish of mine to be a surrogate mother to a couple who could not conceive or perhaps someone who had triumphed over cancer. I even had the cutest little gay couple in my dreamy mind. They would provide the batter, they'd find themselves a juicy, fresh egg from a cute college girl, and I'd cook 'em up a baby as healthy as my three.
However, I thought it would be only fair to be recompensed for the physical stress not on just me, but on my young family. I slept a lot more while pregnant. I found housework impossible with morning sickness. And oh, the cravings. The extra food. The need for babysitters. The extra leaning on my husband. The risks. The deprivation of red wine and sushi. God forbid if there were complications, C-sections, gestational diabetes, infections, or worse ...
I'd like to see one of those male lawmakers try to carry a baby, much less labor 24 hours to push it out. My guess? Suddenly surrogacy would be a million-dollar industry.
Back to that dream, I found Washington was one of those states where it's illegal to recompense a woman for carrying someone else's DNA for 9 months. Luckily, six years later, that seems poised to change. Passed 57-41 in the House and scheduled for a hearing in the Senate, new legislation would finally legalize compensated surrogacy in Washington state.
"This takes a practice that is occurring out of state and underground in our state ... and moves it to a place where there's more protection for the intended parents, the surrogate, and the children being born," said the bill's sponsor, Rep. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle.
Finally, it appears a deal will be struck, supported by the National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood, which balances protecting and empowering women who have children for a fee with protecting parents.
The bummer? At 38 years old, I am too old to be a viable candidate anymore. Still, I am happy the bill looks close to passing. Child-bearing women should be paid just as men are paid for their sperm deposits and young women are paid for their egg donations.
So this bill? Win-win? To me, a moderate conservative, yes. The government really has no business putting their noses in this issue in the first place. To Catholic groups and some of my fellow more right conservatives, no. They shriek it's tantamount to selling babies!!
"We are treating children as a commodity; we have real concerns about the selling of a child," said Sister Sharon Park. Russell Johnson, representing the Family Policy Institute of Washington, compared surrogacy parenting to slavery. "It's based on an exchange of money rather than the best interest of the child .... Allowing women to be bought and sold as livestock should not be allowed," Johnson said.
Expecting women to bear children not their own, without payment, sounds more akin to slavery. Yes, it's a choice, but it's also work. Even paid, it's not going to rake in the money. Typical surrogates in the United States receive payments of $20,000 to $25,000. I reckon for a full-term 40-week pregnancy, that is still less than 50 cents an hour.
Yes, 50 cents or less an hour for grueling IVF treatments, bed rest, C-sections, stretch marks, and morning sickness.
And you? Do you think the risk and work of surrogacy should be paid? Would you take on the danger and exhaustion of a pregnancy for a stranger who couldn't have their own, for free? Do you object to others being paid? Is it baby brokering or fair recompense?
Image via Scout's Honor/United States of Motherhood
Tax season is upon us, my friends. Gah, I know. Shockingly, my family's tax return for this year is minutes from being filed. My husband did most of the work. I just need to check it over one last time.
We don't probably take all the tax deductions we could. We do itemize clothing deductions and household goods. We, of course, write-off mortgage and student loans and charitable donations.
We tend to generally over-estimate our taxes so we always have a big, juicy check come tax time rather than a giant bill (something we learned the hard way early on in our marriage). In fact, in my house, we refer to Uncle Sam as an enforced savings plan -- a piggy bank if you will.
It seems, however, that other Americans see it as their piggy bank to raid. To cheat. To steal from our children's future. My friends, you would not BELIEVE what people write-off ...
I suppose I first found out how creative people were with their taxes when my actress sister-in-law wrote off expensive make-up for auditions. Really? Make-up? Don't all women, no matter the job, generally use it daily?
I have soon found that writing-off make-up was tame. Yes, very tame considering there are strippers writing off their boob jobs and work clothes. Elvis impersonators who write off leisure suits. Junk yard operators claiming cat food for their pets and calling vet bills an "exterminator expense." A pro bodybuilder claimed body oil to make his muscles glisten during his competitions. (The tax court ruled that the oil was a business expense, but nixed his deductions for buffalo meat and "special vitamin supplements" to enhance strength and muscle development.)
Let's not forget the widower whose charitable donations included "a list of all the deceased's bras and panties priced quite liberally." YES, USED underwear from his dead wife -- and the IRS allowed it.
My favorite scammers, though, are the doctors who for obvious reasons were audited. One claimed a "time monitoring system," which turned out to be a ROLEX! Another doctor claimed 2/3 of his {ahem} "business" lunches at HOOTERS. Man, it must be tough to be a doctor!
However, the one that takes the cake? A man hired a arsonist to burn his building to the ground to collect insurance. Still greedy, he claimed the $10,000 as a EXPENSE on his taxes.
Who knew there were so many inventive ways to cheat the system--some of them even legal.
Do you know someone with a creative flair for taxes? What do you write-off on your taxes?
Ah, the life of a redhead. For some, it involves torturous dealings with bullies and being called "Gingers." For others, it's a charmed lifestyle. As an {ahem} enhanced redhead, I find nothing better. It suits my Irish temperament as my husband will attest.
It appears Texas 6th grader Stephanie Plato agrees. She got red highlights for her 12th birthday with her mom's consent. Who knew the bully she would have to worry about most would be her public school? She was suspended -- under the guise that her school district's student code of conduct lists items that may not be worn ... including inappropriate hair color, such as red.
Yes, my friends, apparently they've outlawed redheads as unnatural. Annie git yer guns!!
This. Is. War!
Now to clarify, we aren't talking fire engine red. Not stop sign red. Nope, not even a distracting Raggedy Ann red. Nor a drastic day-glo hairstyle or even a mohawk like my son has sported since he was 7. Straight-A student Stephanie Plato simply got some red highlights with some blonde thrown in, to spice up her rather unassuming light brown locks:
Maybe the colorist started out with highlights brighter than intended -- with the idea that reds fade fast -- but by no means are these as egregious as the school district alleges. Instead of allowing Stephanie a day or two of shampooing to naturally tone her hair down, she was punished with two days of missed education. School officials told her and her mom that her pretty tame highlights were a violation of the code of conduct and she was removed from the classroom. Stephanie was allowed to go back to school only after her mother paid money to change her color once again.
Funny enough, the Texas school district did not allow an on-camera interview, "nor would they specifically talk about Stephanie other than saying her red highlights were a violation of the student dress code."
Thank bejesus my baby girl with black lowlights, chocolate brown tones, and red highlights and my mohawk-sporting little guy live here in the Seattle 'burbs where education, not conformity, is the focus. I mean who knows what could happen? I shudder to think what my purple hair then BRIGHT red waist-length hair in my SF Bay Area high school could have led to ... oh yes, a 3.7 GPA at U.C. Berkeley.
Yep, that hair ruined everything. {snort}
Please tell me when our tax dollars became fair game for PUBLIC schools to become the fashion police? Shouldn't we be more concerned with what goes in this child's head that what goes on it?
Image via Scouts Honor/United States of Motherhood
Early in my marriage and shortly before kids, my husband (despite his views) and I made a deal to have no video games in the house. None. Nada. Zip. I firmly believed they were the true path to rotting out my future children's brains.
Fast forward 15 years later ...
Welcome to the land of Wii, Xbox, each child having a DS and iPhone filled with games! They thrive on it. I know, I absolutely caved.
One good thing? It gives me more leverage to get my spawn to obey. I've added games to my arsenal of parenting incentives. Sadly, such an arsenal was fatal to 37-year-old mom Rashida Anderson. Her son Kendall Anderson allegedly killed her with a claw hammer and tried to cremate her in the kitchen oven for taking away his PlayStation.
The 16-year-old confessed to police that he decided to kill his mother after a 90-minute argument that culminated in her taking the video game console away.
Even more horrific? Her son waited three hours before acting. This was no teenage impulse. This was cold-blooded, premeditated murder. After making the decision to kill his mother, he hit her 20 times with a hammer as she slept. But when that didn't kill her, the boy dragged his mom downstairs and tried to "cremate" her in the kitchen oven. Then he beat her in the head with a chair leg.
My mind reels at the sheer horror. How a video game, used for parental leverage, became a reason to kill is beyond me. I am hesitant to call it an addiction, but I can surmise that if the loss of something spurs you to brutally extinguish the mother who birthed you, it's an addiction.
Yes, I use video games for leverage -- which is why my 14-year-old has lost his Xbox privileges until November. We worked up to that punishment. It involves grades, talking back, disrespect, and the usual teenage attitude. I guess I'm lucky that it generally works. Video games are my last arsenal in my angst in raising a teenager. I fight back against my son because I do care. I imagine that Rashida Anderson had the same mindset.
Sadly, according to police, the consequences of his actions have finally hit the teenager. He stated to authorities, "If I could, I would not do it again. I really miss my mom ... she was the only person who cared for me."
How very sad is that: To kill the only person who cared about you ... all for a video game. Do you let your kids play games? Do you use them as leverage to compel good behavior?
Image via ScoutsHonor
rashida Anderson, Kendall Anderson, murder, PlayStation, Video games, crime, justice
Valentine's Day may have made me a bit addlepated. My day was perfect -- but then motherhood and 15 years of marriage have made me a cheap date.
Yes, I'm easy. I think most women feel similarly after a dozen or so years of marriage. There's a quiet assurance that doesn't need chocolate or grand gestures.
So imagine what love looks like after 60 years of marriage. I saw one such example in the form of a most adorable video recently. The love was so upfront and poignant.
Nothing remarkable you say? Expected even?
Well perhaps unless you consider that in that besotted couple, the groom brought to tears while reading decades-old love letters to his bride was President George H. W. Bush. Yes, the former leader of the free world.
Seriously, I am shocked that I found a snippet in the mainstream media that was at all positive, but especially for a member of the Bush family. Aren't you?
No ripping them apart like crows?
Attacking their painful miscarriages?
But something that makes everyone's heart go pitter-pat when they recognize the real deal:
Simply unheard of! I do not care what side of the political aisle you claim, is it not nice to see our elected leaders portrayed in a positive light for just once?
I never realized the stress I felt in my heart as I watch our leaders or former leaders picked apart for their personal lives on my home screen. This short little video, my friends?
It helped.
It tore away at the bitterness I feel sometimes as a conservative as I watch denizens of a conservative stance ripped apart. Do not get me wrong, American politics need a healthy, argumentative, and even examination of our candidates and politicians. It just doesn't need to be so divisive.
For the record, I feel the same with the glee some conservatives feel about tearing apart our current President Obama and his family too. The level of dehumanization is just heart-breaking.
So thank you, Today Show. Thank you for showing the Bush family in a positive light -- it is the first such example I have come across in a long time. As for us, I only hope we all can have a similar decades of love, yes?
Young love during wartime -- is there anything more romantic and timeless? So much love, and sometimes not enough time, with such danger.
Diane Potts, a 44-year-old mother of three, received a blazing sample of such a love on her answering machine. A soldier left a message on it declaring his love for the mother of his soon-to-be-born child. He mentioned the recent death of a buddy from his unit. He mentioned she couldn't call him back right away since he was going to be out of touch for 30 days. He told her how much he loved her and his unborn child. And then he proposed.
Sadly, the message was left on the wrong woman's answering machine. Yes, the soldier left a 90-second message on Diane Potts' machine, but that message -- and proposal -- was meant for a woman named "Samantha."
"I could tell he was speaking from a phone booth, the line was quite crackly. I was shocked, and had to listen to it again before the message sunk in," Potts told the Daily Mail. "I think he probably dialed incorrectly, and that his girlfriend’s number is similar to mine."
On the message, he calls the mysterious Samantha "the love of my life."
Heart-wrenching, no?
Here's what we know: The soldier is British. He's in Afghanistan. He recently lost a fellow soldier -- blown up in his unit. His true love's name is Samantha and she is having their baby.
Listen to his message:
See this video on The Stir by CafeMom.
{Sob}
I've been on the end of such a crackly call. My husband deployed in the Sinai, Osama bin Laden having just attacked an embassy a mere few countries away. I remember how much those calls meant. A life line is a desperate world. I sat in Alaska with my toddler, willing him to call.
I can only imagine what this call would mean to Samantha -- especially if something were to tragically happen to this young soldier before his tour is over. He sounds scared. He knows too well how much danger he is in. The mother of this soldier's child deserves to know how much she is loved.
Life is too short, my friends. Let's make sure this proposal gets spread around the world so somehow it finds it's way to Samantha. Share, Tweet it, email it, and Stumble it. Let's find Samantha!
Image via The National Guard/Flickr
There are always two sides to every story.
We've heard comedian and author Steve Harvey's side -- his happily-ever-after side upon meeting his current wife (whilst still being married to another woman). Heck, he's made it an art, even writing books with relationship advice.
His ex-wife?
That would be Mary Harvey. She feels cheated on, jilted, and sounds bitter. She claims after being together for 16 years, her ex-husband took her son, her home, and after being a chronic cheater in their marriage, left her nothing.
Unable to get anywhere via legal avenues, Mary has given a new twist to bitter divorce in these modern times.
Wanting to be heard -- and perhaps wanting revenge -- she took her complaints to YouTube. Yes, she spills her version of their entire relationship in three videos.
Considering they have A SON, this video and two others on her channel might not have been the best choice. She doesn't seem to rant. She does seem unhappy:
See this video on The Stir by CafeMom.
I admit, I am a grudgy bitch. I've jokingly told my husband that there would be nothing left of him if he cheated. I've seen friends stripped of their worldly comfort, their kids, their dignity when their wealthy husband cheated and they divorced. Losing custody and your home takes it to a whole other level.
Who really knows what happens in a marriage? I just would hope that the remnants of love and respect can be harnessed since children are involved. Yet, there is an elemental part of me that feels for her. She is fighting back with what she has -- the Internet -- to get her side of the story told.
Steve's lawyer had this to say:
We are appalled and aware of the videos and other fabricated documents ... which contained false, misleading, derogatory, disparaging, malicious, explicit, and slanderous information about Mr. Harvey, his current wife, and others.
The ex-wife is fully aware of the court's current orders and permanent injunctions which prohibit either party, their lawyers, or representatives from discussing and releasing information on the Internet and to the media. We are taking the necessary legal steps to rectify this matter to the full extent of the law and we will be seeking contempt and sanctions against her for such reprehensible and callous disregard for the court orders.
What do you think? Considering they have a child, was this airing dirty laundry or fair game? Inappropriate or the ultimate revenge?