Politically, I’m not as far left as I thought!
This afternoon, I read the following Bluesky post by John Iadarola of The Young Turks, who I generally agree with, but on this occasion, I vehemently disagree with him. The point is that it reminded me that in recent years, I have realized that I am center left, not firmly entrenched on the left, as I had previously thought. I realized this during the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primary elections, listening to some of Bernie Sanders’ ideas of what he’d like to do if he became president, which he ultimately failed to do.
Income over $1 billion should be taxed at 100%.
This is not remotely controversial, nor extreme.
— John Iadarola (@johniadarola.bsky.social) December 6, 2024 at 7:24 PM
First, I will address John’s skeet. I believe we need a complete overhaul of the US tax system, eliminating the tax loopholes that the wealthy take advantage of and ending tax breaks and subsidies to multi-billion dollar corporations. I want a fair and equitable system where everyone pays their share. Obviously, we have to consider the super low income, with a lower tax rate, but for most people, have a flat tax rate that everyone pays, so the more you earn, the more you contribute to the system. I don’t believe we should punish people for doing better for themselves, earning millions or even billions of dollars annually. Although John didn’t say this, I understand it will be a marginal tax, not 100% of the entire $1 billion.
One of Bernie Sanders‘ proposals I disagree with is a wealth tax. This wealth tax would tax people on their existing wealth, that has already been earned. Under Sanders’ plan, the logic is to tax a person’s wealth annually until it falls under the government’s arbitrary threshold, starting at $32 million.
Another proposal that Sanders had was free college for all. I believe that college must be accessible to all, but a means-tested system should exist. If you come from a wealthy family, why should taxpayers 100% subsidize your education? The linked page above covers student loan cancellation. First, I think we need to stop the predatory loan system. Then, if a person has already paid 125% of the original loan amount, I believe that should be forgiven; a 25% return on the loan amount is more than generous.
Don’t get me wrong; I liked a lot of Bernie’s messaging over the years, but some of what he proposed went too far into socialism. Most people believe that the wealthy and corporations need to pay more taxes to fund social programs, and we can do that without going to extremes. There has to be a good balance between capitalism and socialism. Other countries have found that balance; why can’t the US?
I have even heard people on the left claim that housing is a human right and should be free. This is absolutely absurd; yes, we need to find a solution to ever-increasing housing costs, maybe a socialized housing program where the government builds housing to rent to qualified people instead of relying on the private sector for housing, asking owners/landlords to lower their rentals’ prices. If the price is genuinely too high, the free market will dictate prices, as units will remain unleased, forcing a price drop.
US healthcare clearly needs a massive overhaul. The recent murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the lack of empathy from the masses have proven how angry the citizenry is with the current profit-driven healthcare system. The US needs socialized healthcare, where everyone pays into the system via taxation. The system is already in place for those aged 65+; it’s called Medicare, and most pay into it every paycheck, but may never see the benefit should they not make it to 65 years old.
Bernie Sanders pushed the idea of expanding Medicare to cover everyone during his presidential election campaigns and continues to do so today. Most countries have a socialized healthcare system. In my home country, the UK, we call it the NHS (National Health Service), and it is not perfect, but no one will ever walk out with a bill, unlike the US, where medical treatment can be financially ruinous.
For any of this to happen, we need to ditch Citizens United, which allows corporations and the wealthy to funnel billions of dollars into our political system. Congresspeople will say that the money does not affect how they vote, and I call bullshit. The wealthy don’t give vast amounts of cash to politicians out of the goodness of their hearts; it’s an investment, and they want a return on that investment.
Money in politics has created massive inequality in the US, shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle or working class. Until this changes, nothing will ever change because, except for a few Congresspeople, our elected officials are not looking out for the interests of the average American.
I wonder how these Congresspeople get reelected term after term when most constituents know their interests are not being represented. Is it simply a case of xASSHOLEx Congressperson hating the same things as them, for example, women’s rights, non-Caucasians, the LGBTQ community, and undocumented immigrants. But, whatever the reason, they are 100% voting against their own interests.
The Republicans like to brand the Democrats as socialists or communists, and the extreme left certainly does seem to want this sort of system; I do not. I think a hybrid capitalist-socialist system is the best for everyone and can work well. I used to believe I was further left, but where the left is at the moment, I definitely consider myself to be center-left, and an independent, not aligning with any party’s ethos.
My thoughts on the Google Pixel Tablet
After 10 years of use, the time has come to replace my Surface Pro 3. Over time, it has become slower and slower, no matter how many times I reset or clean-install Windows. About a year ago, the internal Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card started to work intermittently, so I replaced it with a cheap Wi-Fi USB dongle, taking advantage of the built-in USB A port. And in the last six weeks, the screen has started to delaminate from the tablet body. This is why I decided to get the Pixel tablet; a PC tablet was unnecessary for my use case.
I purchased the Pixel Tablet + speaker dock during Google’s annual Black Friday sale for $439 before tax. I wanted the 128GB version with the dock, but Google only offered the 256GB version with the dock during the sale, which is more than I need. I use the tablet on my bedroom side table as a screen to consume media and the occasional web browsing session, so I won’t be filling it with games, photos, or videos.
I believe an Android tablet is better for my video-streaming use case. Most streaming services do not have an app for the Windows store. My only option on the Surface tablet was to stream via a browser, which was a poor experience, with significant buffering and straight-up generic ‘something went wrong’ errors. Every streaming service has an app for Android (and Apple if that’s your flavor), which works much better than via a browser; I have had no streaming issues in the week I have owned the Pixel Tablet.
The Pixel’s sound is significantly improved over the Surface, especially when docked. The speaker dock has a much better bass response, although it could have been better in the mids and high frequencies; maybe adding a tweeter would have created a better overall sound. The Pixel Tablet itself has better sound than the Surface, with two ‘holes’ on each side where the sound comes from, and when putting my ear up to each speaker hole, the lower set of speakers has a lower frequency, while the upper set of speaker holes cover the higher frequencies. I don’t know what’s inside the tablet or dock regarding physical speakers, as I have obviously not pulled the tablet or dock apart; all the above is subjective.
The screen is fine, not anything amazing; this is one area where the decade-old Surface Pro 3 screen appears better and gets brighter. According to the specs, the screen size is 10.95 inches, an inch smaller than the Surface tablet. The Pixel has more pixels, with a resolution of 2560×1600, compared to the Surface’s 2160×1440; both have a 60hz refresh rate and a 16:10 aspect ratio. I would prefer a 16:9 ratio for my use case as no media is presented in 16:10; a 16:9 screen would allow content to fill the screen without black bars, but the same is true of the Surface Pro 3, so it’s a minor gripe, comparing like for like.
I like the docking mode. When set up appropriately, when not in active use, it will display a dock screensaver, which I have set up to display the time and weather with a graphical representation of the weather. However, when the lights are out at night, it becomes a black screen with a white clock display.
I hate the fingerprint reader setup, and I feel it’s unnecessary. It makes sense on the phone, as you are more likely to misplace a phone than a tablet, and security is more important. Also, the implementation on Pixel phones is better, either under the screen or on the back of the device. Maybe I would like it better if the Pixel Tablet fingerprint reader was on the back instead of the top of the bezel.
This is more than likely a YouTube app issue, but sometimes, when consuming a video in full screen and an advert is inserted, the video gets pulled out of full-screen mode, which means, in addition to skipping the advert, I have to make an extra screen touch to get back to full screen. This was never an issue on the Surface tablet using the browser version of YouTube. As I write this, this has me thinking maybe I should stop using the YouTube app and use the built-in Chrome browser to consume YouTube.
The bottom line for me is that if my Surface Pro tablet was not on its last legs, would I have bought the Pixel Tablet? No, but as a replacement, it’s fine. It does what I need it to do, which is all that matters, and hopefully, it will last another decade before I have to replace it, even if updates stop after 3 years.
If Medicare-4-All existed, the United Healthcare CEO would be alive!
Wednesday morning, the United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot outside the Hilton Midtown, where he was attending an investors conference that United Health Group, the parent company of United Healthcare, was scheduled to host on Wednesday at the hotel. I definitely don’t condone cold-blooded murder, but I understand why someone would want to commit such an act.
The title of this blog is very accurate; if America had a socialized healthcare model for all Americans, companies like United Healthcare would never have existed. Instead, these medical insurance companies have bought the government at local and federal levels to keep the system the same and continue to put profits over people’s health, systematically denying claims, prescription coverage, and huge deductibles.
How many people had to go into debt to pay out of pocket for essential healthcare. How many have died or had adverse health outcomes because they were denied treatment due to insurance companies denying coverage. Their policyholders pay hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars monthly for their health plan, only for insurance companies to deny claims, leaving customers with a substantial medical bill.
United Healthcare tops the denial rate charts with a whopping 32% denial rate, literally double the national average of 16%, which in itself is too damn high. My wife has Medicaid as she is disabled and has United Healthcare, and my health insurance company, Aetna, forced on me by my workplace, is worse than the national average, too, with a 20% denial rate, along with a deductible I will never meet!
This morning, Erin received a letter from United Healthcare denying her pain medication coverage. Of course, it was denied after careful consideration (sarcasm). Luckily, it’s relatively inexpensive when combined with a GoodRX prescription card. Other times, when picking up a 30-day supply prescription, the pharmacist says that insurance will only cover seven pills, and if it were not for GoodRX, that’d be hundreds of dollars out of our pockets, and unlike Brian, we don’t have deep pockets to dig into.
Another trick they use is ‘preauthorization,’ which delays patients getting their medication and often forces people to pay out of pocket, as they cannot wait for the sometimes weeks it takes for doctors to write to insurance companies to explain why the patient needs the medication, which will often lead to the aforementioned ‘after careful consideration’ denial letter, often for low-cost generic drugs. I guess doctors don’t know what a patient needs, and men in suits decide which medications we should have.
In addition, United Healthcare uses AI to decide which Medicare Advantage policyholders get covered and who doesn’t. For those who don’t know, Medicare is for Aged 65+ healthcare; how many grandmas and grandpas have died to line the pockets of people like Brian Thompson? United Healthcare has allegedly profited from this automated system since 2019 and has a crazy 90% error rate, according to a lawsuit.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA, colloquially known as Obamacare) is better than what we had before, but it was another handout to insurance companies after the public option was voted down in Congress. People were forced to get insurance or pay a tax penalty if they chose not to have insurance, although the individual mandate was eventually ruled unlawful during Trump’s first term. The cost has been ever-increasing. Before Erin was ruled disabled, she had an ACA plan, and we paid $240 monthly, with the government picking up over $1,300, that’s $1,500 monthly going to insurance companies.
For those reading outside of the US, you may well be asking, “Aren’t these companies regulated?” The simple answer is barely. In the US, money is speech, and corporations are people, so they can use their free speech to buy politicians and regulators. Those bureaucrats do their bidding in Congress, voting to weaken regulation. This is not partisan; both sides take bribes, so most votes will be a formality.
My thoughts on the US election
Where to start? Well, the Democrats and Kamala Harris clearly cannot read the room that is the US electorate. It started well after President Joe Biden finally removed himself as the Democratic candidate. Harris started out with a somewhat economic populist message and announced Tim Walz as her running mate. The polls showed a significant rise in her popularity, only to stop talking about that populist message, locking Tim Walz in the basement with Joe Biden, and switching back to the typical pro-corporate talking points and Trump fear-mongering, which anyone with eyes could see is the wrong path.
Harris started by saying she would clamp down on price gouging on food and groceries, giving the FTC new powers to come down hard on companies who use such tactics to increase their profits. She claimed she would create a $25,000 subsidy for first-time home buyers and a tax break to incentivize home builders to develop affordable housing. Harris also claimed that she would increase the child tax credit, including a $6,000 credit in the first year of a child’s life, and increase the number of drugs that Medicare could negotiate pricing on. All these things are popular and would help the average American.
But, she soon switched back to her corporatist roots, having corporate surrogates all over TV, dismissing Harris’ claim that she would do the things she promised, reassuring the top 10%’ers that they would still be able to profit at the cost of the average American. And moving back to the Trump will end democracy rhetoric, which is clearly the wrong message when people are struggling to pay their rent or mortgage, wondering where their next meal is coming from, or whether they can afford to put gas in their car. The Harris’ campaign dismissal of anti-war, Palestinian rights protestors didn’t help their situation either.
I cannot stand Trump, but his faux-populist message resonated with people, and it cost Harris big time; Democrats will say that Americans still have racial and misogynistic bias’ and that’s true to an extent, but the reality is that the Harris campaign relied on fear-mongering too much, that she lost all the base and independents. The Harris campaign’s message failed to resonate so severely that she lost all the battleground states, including all the blue wall states, and the popular vote. She is the first Democratic candidate to lose the popular vote since 2004. It’s evident that significant changes need to happen in the Democratic party; the question is, will any lessons be learned from this election? I severely doubt it!
Because Democrats have been deaf to what Americans want, Trump has the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, which means more tax breaks for the wealthy, increasing the deficit. Bad news for undocumented immigrants with Trump promising mass deportations, and if he follows through with 25—35% tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada, that’ll likely tank the economy. Trump has appointed Elon Musk as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which has promised to eliminate $2 trillion from the government budget. We could start with the defense budget, but it will be programs that regulate businesses and social programs that help middle and working-class Americans.
From reading social media, there seems to be a big misunderstanding of how tariffs work; ultimately, it’s not China, Mexico, and Canada that pay for it; it will be Americans; you can expect your retail prices to increase 25—35%. There will likely be retaliatory tariffs on American products, and America does not make anything you cannot get elsewhere, so it will likely hit exports. The US does not have the infrastructure to replace everything from Mexico, Canada, and most notably China. The US has been happy to allow cheap imports from China for decades, and more and more manufacturing jobs have disappeared from the US. It’s not even a tactical decision to increase American-made products as little is made here anymore, including all the Trump merch that his rabid base buys up; it’s all made in China.
My hope is that there will be a few adults in the room who will stop Trump from doing things that will destroy the United States. This may not be the case this time, as the US Supreme Court has ruled that a president is above the law while in office, and Trump has nominated many loyalists to his cabinet. I guess it’s a case of suck it and see, and hope that the sucker is not laced with poison.
Significant discrepancy between All in C:\ and Local DIsk (C:) space
I have a 250GB NVME drive installed in my system, which has been showing as red because of the shortage of available space for some time. I have run disk cleanup multiple times. It recovers a couple of gigabytes of space, but never enough to get out of the red, which struck me as odd as I don’t install hardly anything on this drive, other than the Windows 10 OS and a few core programs such as Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop and Dreamweaver, Libre Office, etc, everything else is installed on the larger (D:) drive.
I’m not sure what made me open the C drive, show hidden files, and select all files and folders to check the size of the files on the disk. Surprisingly, it returned 142GB of used space, not the 228GB reported in This PC. This sent me down a rabbit hole about why this could be, as that is a lot of drive space unaccounted for. As I just happened to be talking to my friend James that afternoon, he got dragged down the rabbit hole with me, and I think that I might have broken his brain a little bit with my explanations of how various storage-related technologies work, but I think he’d agree it was worth it!
I did a lot of Googling, but I didn’t find much to explain why there was such a large discrepancy. I had a feeling it was something Windows-related, and part of it was, but a more substantial part was not. I recently did a clean install of Windows 11 on my wife’s computer, and it was basically a clean install except for Chrome and Adobe Reader. There was also a discrepancy between Local Disk (C:) and All in C:/, albeit much smaller, which led me to believe it was related to hidden files that the OS could not see.
Some Google results led me to a freeware program called WinDirStat, which I installed and scanned my C drive, where I found large blocks of data in the visual representation of the data. Upon clicking on the data block, it was a 67GB dmp.full file in the Users/[username]/AppData/LocalLow/Adobe/CRLogs directory. I deleted that file and launched Lightroom, and it took a while to rebuild the log file, but the dump.full file was only 6.7GB this time. This file seems to have been appended to; since I reinstalled the OS in 2021, turning it into a monster file, 90% bigger than needed, based on the before and after sizes.
Another large file was Windows-related: a 29GB hiberfil.sys. This is a file to recover from hibernating your computer, which makes sense as until recently, I had 32GB of RAM installed. However, as I have never set this PC to hibernate, this seems odd. I guess this file is created regardless of the hibernation setting. After some more Googling, I found this could be disabled, which I did, as I could not delete the file. To disable it, I simply open a cmd prompt and ran ‘powercfg.exe /hibernate off’, after which I could delete the file.
My friend also ran WinDirStat and found huge files left over from games he had uninstalled a long time ago, just sitting there eating up large chunks of available disk space. I recommend that everyone download and install WinDirStat. It’s free and can literally save you hundreds of gigabytes of space, not to mention money, as the saved space could be the difference between buying a larger storage drive or not.
Seniors can’t afford that…
Working in property management marketing, I’m currently involved in the lease-up of a new senior property in Kansas City. The sheer volume of blanket statements like “seniors want…”, “seniors need…”, or “seniors can’t…” in the ad comments is truly staggering and, frankly, frustrating.
Our community is a tax credit property, income-restricted, and deemed affordable by KHRC. I disagree with the blanket assumption that “seniors can’t afford that.” It’s a misconception to believe that all seniors can’t afford the rental rates the owners are asking for (and KHRC has approved it as affordable).
Not all seniors have worked and accepted basic social security income at retirement. Some have invested, paid into 401Ks, owned homes, or saved money throughout their working lives. They have more than a basic social security income and want something a little more premium in their twilight years; this particular property targets this type of senior. There are plenty of income-based senior properties that cater to low-income seniors. If you believe the commenters, all seniors want property developers to create low-income communities without considering those who might want something better.
This is a very entitled attitude; Social Security was designed to supplement any retirement provisions seniors have amassed over their working years. If seniors want to be mad, be mad at the government for providing a Social Security income below the actual costs of living, for not building affordable communities for our aging population, or be angry at yourself for not making provisions for your retirement. It should not be up to private investors to build low-income housing; for them, it’s an investment, and even at the claimed prices, it’ll take a decade or more to see a profit. These properties don’t magically build themselves for free; they cost millions of dollars and time to build.
I like to use the analogy that no one complains that Ferrari sells their cars for $100,000+; where is the outrage that Ferrari doesn’t sell their cars for the same price as a Buick? It seems specific to housing, where property owners are allegedly ripping people off; the reality is very different. After costs, property owners make just a little money after property taxes, insurance, maintenance costs, management fees, any included utilities, and their mortgage payment. However, they should offer their rental units well below market value and wait a lifetime to make a profit so you can get your $250 rental rate, right?
Also, according to some people in the comments, seniors want a walk-in shower, a bathtub, or a garage, depending on who makes the statement. This shouldn’t irritate me so much, but it does. I dislike people making blanket statements as if they speak for everyone. Is it so hard to say, “I would like…”? Maybe the commenters think they are less entitled if they make it sound like everyone wants the same as them.
Crash + totaled car + more car issues
On Monday, September 16, 2024, I was involved in a car crash, returning from a photo shoot at one of my employer’s properties nearby, that totaled my car; more on that later; everyone was a little banged up, but otherwise fine, which is the most important thing, cars can be replaced, but people cannot.
It was determined that I was at fault. According to police officers attending the scene, I ran a red light, based on video from a church at the intersection. I thought I had a green light, and maybe I did when I looked, but it changed as the car I hit started accelerating into my path as I was entering the intersection, which would indicate this might be the case. I tried to avoid the vehicle by steering hard left, but they continued into the intersection, leaving me nowhere to go. My actions resulted in a lesser impact than it would have been if I had continued straight, hitting their driver-side front fender instead of T-boning them. Either way, the officer cited me for running the red light, which cost me $177.50.
Of course, the website link on the citation to pay the fine was wrong; I had to Google it to find the correct link. I guess it’s too difficult for the city’s IT department to either update the link on the citation or set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one, or better still, both; maybe they should hire me?
I was deemed at fault, so the following might sound like excuses. However, having multiple intersections with traffic lights every 400 or so feet creates a tunnel vision situation. You can see 3 or 4 sets of lights ahead of you, and you may switch off to the immediate set of lights and focus on the next set as you approach them. At a speed of 30mph, it takes just nine seconds to travel between each intersection. Back home in the UK, where there are multiple sets of lights close to each other, the lights have louvers so you cannot see the light until you pass the preceding set of lights; this does help with tunnel vision.
I have spoken to other drivers who freely admit (to me) to accidentally running a red light because of the abovementioned tunnel vision situation. This is why the UK implemented a simple solution that is so effective at preventing accidents. Will cities around the US implement this system? I doubt it, especially in the more depressed areas where these close-together intersections tend to exist.
It has been a crazy couple of weeks for fatal car accidents in Wichita, including a woman driving the wrong way on the K-96 highway colliding with a truck, which killed the father and son in the truck; the wrong-way driver also died. Thankfully, neither I nor the people in the other car added to the death toll.
Immediately after the accident, I thought I was fine, but I guess that was because the adrenaline in my body was masking my injuries. In the ensuing days, the pain in the right side of my ribs and lower back, where the seatbelt went across my body was much higher. As this happened during work time, my employer had me talk to the on-call nurse and was told to ice the area and take acetaminophen as needed, but nearly a week on, the pain is not subsiding, so maybe further medical attention is needed.
As you can probably assume based upon the featured image on this post, the car was totaled, not that it mattered, as I was forced to change insurance and downgrade coverage from full coverage to liability + fire + theft as Progressive was going to more than double my monthly insurance premium to almost $500. This was due to my son getting his driver’s license; the insurance company’s logic is that he had access to the cars because he lived under our roof; therefore, we had to add him to our insurance policy.
As the car was not economical to repair and the towing and storage fees were already over $750 in just four days, I just signed over the title to the towing company on Thursday morning to eliminate that bill. I recovered my license plate from the car, and I should be able to get some money back on the remaining registration, maybe $90. It’s not a lot, but it’s better than a kick in the teeth. The next step will be to remove that car from our car insurance; we don’t want to pay to insure a vehicle we no longer own.
Now we have an issue, like most people who live paycheck to paycheck, we cannot just stump up the cash to buy another car. Yes, we could more than likely get a car loan and be able to manage the payments, but the issue is that financial institutions require that borrowers carry full coverage insurance, which is more than we can afford. The net result is that we will be a single car family for the foreseeable future.
This has been compounded by mechanical issues on our second car, which is currently in the shop for evaluation. There is an intermittent check engine light, and ABS, traction control, and stability control lights. But the reason for being in the shop is because the accelerator pedal randomly stops responding and will not work again until we stop, put it in park, turn off the car, and restart. It will typically run for a handful of seconds, minutes, or sometimes 15 minutes; there seems to be no rhyme or reason. We cannot continue like this; it’s dangerous, a sudden power loss at highway speeds could be deadly.
We are waiting to hear back from the shop about the estimate for fixing the car. Due to its high mileage and age, the car is barely worth $3,000, and we have already spent close to the $12,000 purchase cost keeping it on the road. The cost of getting another used car during the pandemic made fixing it cheaper than buying another vehicle. Used car prices are finally starting to normalize in 2024, so depending on the cost to fix, we might scrap it and get another car, which Erin and I would have to share.
We are borrowing my mother-in-law’s SUV, which has its own issues. It has ABS, TC, and handbrake lights on. According to her mechanic, the part they need to resolve these lights is no longer manufactured; thanks, GM. It’s crazy that you can not get parts for a 17-year-old car? Despite the warning lights, everything seems to work fine, but the brakes feel somewhat soft and not confidence-inspiring. However, we appreciate the mother-in-law lending us her second car, bailing us out for the umpteenth time.
UPDATE: $4,155 TO FIX THE WIFE’S CAR
We got the bill for fixing Erin’s car, and it’s $4,155.12. The issue with the throttle pedal not responding is a bad throttle body, which has been replaced. The oil leak is considerable; the valve gaskets, oil pan, and front main seal are all leaking oil, and the water pump is leaking coolant. The high cost is due to how many hours it takes to disassemble the engine and replace the gaskets and seals.
This is much more than we really wanted to pay, but it’s more economical than buying a used car, which will cost $8,000—$10,000, and we might have issues with that car. Fixing our current vehicle makes more financial sense, and of course, we won’t need to carry full coverage insurance for the car loan company. We probably could have waited on the leaks, but we wanted to get it fixed while it was in the shop, hoping not to have any more visits to the shop in the near future. We had set aside $1,500 in cash, so we put $2,655.12 on a credit card; assuming we can make twelve $252.66 payments, the interest charged will be another $376.84. Of course, there is no guarantee we can make that payment, as life happens.
UPDATE: MORE POTENTIAL TROUBLE AHEAD
I received a letter from Geico stating that based on their preliminary investigation, the total liability might exceed my coverage, which is $25,000 for property damage and $50,000 for personal injury. Geico asked me if I had any funds to contribute to the claim. I do not; if I had more money, I would have had better insurance coverage; six months ago, I had double the liability coverage plus collision, which would have given me some cash to replace my car. But because of being forced to add our son to our insurance, we had to downgrade significantly and still pay about $40 more per month than we did beforehand.
Wave Outdoor, Wichita – not good for wheelchair users!
Last night, I had my first experience of Wave Outdoors in Wichita, Kansas, and my big takeaway was that accessibility for disabled people is not good due to their choice of using gravel in their GA area.
My wife is registered as disabled and cannot stand for more than 5 to 10 minutes, so she requires a wheelchair to attend shows. Because of the gravel, wheelchairs get bogged down in it, as the gravel is uneven and loose. I struggled to push my wife through the gravel, like trying to push a car uphill, so I don’t understand how a wheelchair user could propel themselves. I would imagine powered wheelchair users would also struggle, literally spinning their wheels in the deeper gravel.
As someone with stability issues due to diabetic neuropathy, I found walking difficult on the uneven gravel, especially during the show after sundown, when it’s hard to see the uneven gravel. The bottom line is that I believe the owners of Wave gave very little thought to accessibility and people with disabilities, which I think is unforgivable in this relatively new venue, which opened just five years ago.
OK, now that is out of the way, parking next to the venue, they were charging $10 to park, and it’s cash only, which in 2024 seems insane; why not have a card reader attached to a smartphone? I’m not sure if this parking lot is owned by Wave or not, but again, this plays into the lack of forethought in catering to people with disabilities. We got lucky and found a wheelchair-accessible parking spot just across the road, but on a busier event, this could have meant a significant trek to the venue.
Like all venues, drink prices are obscene. A bottle of water costs $5, the same bottles you buy a 24-pack for the same amount in the store. Beer prices are $9 to $11 for a can squeezed into a plastic cup. This is standard fair for live events, captive audiences, et al, so I cannot ding them too hard for this.
I’m not going to talk about sound as the venue does not have a permanent installation; bands bring in their own PA system. However, like all outdoor venues, the sound is massively affected by the way the wind is blowing, as the mid- and higher frequencies literally get carried on the wind.
I’d give it 6 out of 10; the lack of forethought regarding disabled people is unforgivable. Suffice it to say that we will not be returning to Wave unless they lay a surface conducive to patrons in wheelchairs. It’s truly sad that in 2019, when the venue opened, no one thought, “Gravel wouldn’t be good for wheelchair users,” or maybe just didn’t care, and putting gravel down was cheaper than asphalt or concrete.
How we almost bought a $10,000 water treatment system
A few weeks back, we visited our local Home Depot to pick up a new kitchen faucet, as the one that came with the house had sprung a leak. On the way in, an employee asked if we’d like to enter to win a prize. I said, “No, thanks.” However, Erin did fill out the card with her details. About two weeks passed, and Erin got a call from Moore Water Treatment. Suddenly, they were at my house, testing water and trying to sell us a $10,000 system as I was talking to a friend from back home on Skype. After being in my home for more than an hour, I finally heard the guy out and saw the benefits as Erin believed having cleaner, filtered water might alleviate some of her health issues, as we had recently identified chlorine as a contributing factor to her Fibromyalgia and Rheumatoid arthritis flares, which often end in the ER.
I should have followed my instincts and just said no when he pulled a “one-time deal” line when I suggested he give us some time to discuss it privately and determine whether it was financially viable. The deal was no downpayment, 100% financing, and free consumables, such as soaps, for a time period. Erin really wanted to try it, and the salesman said we had 3 business days to cancel if we changed our mind. So, I decided to apply for financing through their partner, taking a risk as it could improve Erin’s health.
We canceled the order first thing Monday morning when I received the contract with the credit terms and conditions. It was a 13.99% APR variable revolving account with no final amount listed and no final payment date, just like a credit card. I need to know how many payments there will be, how much each will be, and how much interest will be charged overall to make an informed decision.
The salesperson made it sound like it would be 75 interest-free payments of $132.87, which it would not be with a 13.99% interest rate. I did some calculations, and at 13.99% APR, paying $132.87 monthly, it would take 15 years, and we’d end up paying a total of almost $24,000, $14,000 of which would be financing charges. This is on top of the financing company, Time Investment Company, Inc., having a terrible reputation, scoring 1.5 stars out of five from customers at the Better Business Bureau.
The thing about the Moore salesman that really irritates me is that a paying cash option was never presented, despite not knowing anything about our finances, pushing us toward their choice of financing company. This was doubly irritating when, after canceling, we got an email from Home Depot, thanking us for our business and giving us additional options to finance through them instead, an option not presented by the Moore salesman. Moore Water Treatment as a “trusted’ partner of Home Depot, I would assume they are supposed to present this option. This is just speculation on my part, but if it was presented and Home Depot had better financing terms, we could have had the system installed already.
So, bottom line: Protect your personal information and never assume it will be used for the sole purpose for which you gave it. Marketers commonly use giveaways to gather information on people, as everyone likes something for free. Remember, there is no such thing as free; you’ll pay for it somehow. Usually, your information is the product, which can be used for marketing spam and even sold repeatedly to data brokers. This is truer in 2024 than it has ever been in the past; keep your information safe!
A Mixed Bag Life Update XVI
It’s been seven months since the last update, partially because we have been busy and partially because I have not felt inclined to write blogs. Today, I feel like writing an update on the last seven months.
The biggest thing that has happened in the past half year is we have bought a home, and we had to make some compromises. I always said that anything with an HOA is immediately out of consideration and that we were looking for a single-family (or detached) home. We bought a duplex (or semi-detached) home, and it does have a HOA. We broke our rules because it became clear that our budget would not give us something we could just move in and live in without needing immediate changes. We required minimal maintenance and had to have a living room, kitchen, primary bedroom, and bathroom on the main level, and this home fulfilled these requirements. The HOA dues are $150 monthly, but this does cover lawn care and water utilities, so we get much of that $150 back in savings, and it means I do not have to mow the lawn, which is becoming more challenging for me to do with my deteriorating health issues.
We had a significant additional expense within days of moving into our new home. The air conditioning stopped working, and in Kansas, not having air conditioning is not fun when the outside temperature is often in the high 90s °F and above for months on end. We had an HVAC company come out and assess the issue and ‘fix’ it, not once, but twice, for it to fail within days each time. We were told that our system was outdated and poorly maintained, and we were recommended to install a new HVAC system. This is what we did; we didn’t want to constantly call out the HVAC company for temporary fixes, and the total cost was $8,100, which we financed over 10 years, as we did not have $8k in cash in our back pocket.
We feel cheated on the mortgage, as two loans were taken out, one FHA for the mortgage and a second conventional loan for the deposit. We were under the impression that the payment would be $1,559.47, but the reality is that because of the second loan, which we found out about days before closing, another $73.65 was required. But, wait, there’s more, the $73.65 was basically an interest-only payment on the conventional loan, and when the loan matured after 10 years, we’d have to stump almost the entire original loan amount, so to avoid this, we are paying a further $40 monthly on top for a total of $1673.12. On top of this, we want to pay an extra $70 on the mortgage principle, saving us $53,000 in interest and have the mortgage paid off five years earlier, assuming we can afford to do so in the long term.
Outside of home-related stuff, we found out my daughter, Alya, was entitled to draw almost $800 monthly off my wife Erin’s disability. I don’t understand how any of this works, but an extra $800 per month will make our lives significantly easier; having kids is expensive, and this payment helps get our daughter what she needs. We learned about this decision from Social Security when $12,400 appeared in our bank account. And because of other experiences with social security, the first thing we did before spending a cent of this money was confirm that this is actually our money. And it is, indeed, our money; apparently, this is back pay going back about 18 months, which was a nice little bonus. Shame it did not come about a month earlier to pay towards a deposit on our home, reducing our mortgage cost further.
In related news, in April 2024, we finally received acknowledgment of our appeal, disputing Social Security’s claim that we owe them $8,700, stating that Erin would receive her regular payment instead of the reduced payment to pay back what Social Security claim we owed. We started the appeal in November 2023 and requested a repayment plan to withhold a lesser amount than taking 100% of her benefit for six months. Social Security can implement a payment plan that withholds $244 monthly in less than a month, but it took six months to even acknowledge our appeal; what the actual !@#$?
This happened because Social Security claimed that her eligibility date was wrong. They contended that Erin received benefits six months earlier than she was entitled and that her first benefit payment should have been 12 months after she was first determined to be disabled, not six months. Now, we get a letter dated July 2, 2024, which confirms that, in fact, the waiting period is six months after being determined disabled, but they have moved her determined disability date to September 1, 2022; the original date is February 11. 2022, which was stated in a notice of award on July 25, 2022. This would indicate that we still owe $7,786; however, the letter, dated July 2, 2024, states that from January 2024 forward, Erin would receive $1,592 monthly, which should mean the SSA owes her back pay as January 2024 through April 2024, she had $248 deducted from her benefit amount. Am I misunderstanding? Is this notice of award the result of the appeal, or are they still determining the outcome? All this makes my head hurt!
Erin is still struggling with Fibromyalgia and severe rheumatoid arthritis, meaning regular visits to the Emergency Room. This is because her pain medication is no longer working, in my opinion, leaving me frustrated. I have been to the ER probably fifty times with Erin over the years and have said that it’s time to change up her medication on many occasions, despite going from 2 ½ Hydrocodone tablets to 5 daily and her pain management doctor prescribing Hydromorphone, as needed for breakthrough pain, our visits to the ER have not decreased. Finally, Erin has taken note of my words and asked her pain management doctor to look into changing up her medication to manage her pain better, but an available appointment is not available until late August, so another 2 to 3 ER visits is on the agenda in that time.
My own health is also deteriorating; being a diabetic, I also suffer from diabetic neuropathy, which causes a lot of pain in my feet and legs, which, although minimally, limits my mobility. Also, in the past six months, sores have started to come up on my lower legs, which can be extremely painful and can take many weeks to heal, often leaving my legs scarred, majorly impacting my mobility, walking slower, as the pain can be excruciating at times. My doctor referred me to an ‘open wound’ specialist, and I have not heard from the specialist yet. And when I called the specialist’s office, they had never heard of me. Of course, I need a referral because insurance companies control the medical industry, not the doctors.
My vision deterioration is continuing, and I fear that I will become legally blind within the next decade. I brought up the issue of my eyes seemingly not dilating with sunlight being too bright and nighttime driving being challenging as my eyes do not adjust to the darkness with my specialist eye doctor. She confirmed that my eyes were not fully dilating, and she talked to another doctor specializing in the subject. The news was not good because both eyes reacted the same; there was little they could do. My visual acuity is not good either, I can read an eye chart at 20/35, but beyond the distance from the chair to the eye chart, there is a distinct drop off in vision sharpness, and my specialist doctor does not believe that laser eye treatment will help. This leaves me at a loss of what I can do to mitigate this, as my diabetes is well controlled; my last A1C came back as 5.7, and no higher than 6.3 in the past two years.
We had to switch car insurance and downgrade coverage, as because Conner had gotten his driver’s license through driver education, our premium from Progressive doubled as they were going to add Conner to our policy because he, technically, has access to our cars. It seems that all insurance companies force you to add any licensed driver in your home if they do not have their own policy or car; what is the actual !@#$? As a result, we now have Conner insured, but our policy was downgraded from full coverage to comprehensive (without collision), and it’s still more expensive. From my understanding, this means liability + fire + theft; if you have an accident and it’s your fault, you’re on the hook for repairs to your car.
My daughter Alya went to Paris, France, a couple of months back with eight of her school friends as part of a documentary about African American photographer Gordon Parks, who her school was named after. Alya said she didn’t enjoy it much because it rained almost constantly, and they had to walk just about everywhere in the rain. And Paris, being a real city, unlike Wichita, Kansas, was a bit of a culture shock to her, but overall, I believe it was a good experience for her to be exposed to another country and culture.
Then a month after that, Erin, Alya, and my son Conner all went to Massachusetts to visit a friend for a week while I stayed at home as I did not have enough vacation time, having taken a week off a month before to complete the move into our new home. Erin and the kids enjoyed their time in Massachusetts. I enjoyed having some time to myself, not having to be a carer for Erin when she is suffering from RA flares, and not having to clean up after the kids as they seem incapable of doing it themselves.
And this concludes this update; the next one will be… whenever I feel like writing it!
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