Wednesday, February 18, 2009

That goal didn't last long! Another visit re: Branson

We awoke this morning to what surely looks like another nice day, but that old adage “Calm before the storm” quickly comes to mind. The weather people tell us today won’t be too bad, but watch out for tonight? At least one forecast said that from three to six inches of snow could fall after dark tonight making tomorrow morning’s commute rather tricky. I understand inland areas could get a rather big bunch of snow tomorrow while we along the coast probably will see a changeover to rain.

My fellow blogger, and the youngster who helped me get started in all this, Sheepish Annie, will probably get a nice storm day off tomorrow. Oh, wait! The teacher is on vacation this week, isn’t she? Too bad. Tomorrow could be one of those days teachers and their students look forward to. Speaking of Sheepie, her blog has a clean, neat new look. If you like knitting and haven’t been there for awhile, give it a visit. Along with knitting, she lets us follow the travails of a teacher through work days, too. Sheepish Annie is always a fun read.

I was going to try to avoid mentioning the government spending package as long as I could and that attempt lasted only one day. Yesterday. I am mentioning it today, however, but not the package itself. Wife Gator and I were half listening to the Today Show on NBC yesterday morning. The show’s resident economist pointed out some interesting pieces of information.

Now, please, understand I was only half listening, partly because I don’t like the Today Show because of its extremely biased presentations and partly because I was reading news on the Internet. So what I think I heard isn’t gospel and I wanted to be straight forward with that at the outset.

But the lady said that one good thing that will come from the spending bill is a tax cut. Every taxpayer will have an additional $13 dollars/paycheck to spend. Imagine how big of a hole those thirteen dollars will burn in your pocket! I’m already working on my list.

Then she said that this spending package coupled with the rest of the budget deficit will leave every American with a $36,000 dollar debt that will eventually have to be paid back. Let’s see. If I pay that back with just one paycheck tax savings of $13, I’ll have my portion repaid in just 2,769 years.

Since I was only half listening, I probably have this all wrong.

It might also appear my saying the spending package wouldn’t create jobs was a little off, too. Several states have already announced they are hiring people to manage the state’s portion of the package.

Just a quickie update on yesterday’s post regarding Branson, Missouri. During the morning, the head of the Branson Chamber of Commerce commented saying not buying into the pitch was probably the right decision; but, he wrote in his comment that Branson was a great vacation destination and encouraged me to take a look at it.

You can read his comment at the end of the yesterday’s post below.

I also got an e-mail from my Fearless Friend about Branson. He said his sister and her husband have spent some time in Branson and they had a wonderful time.

I hope I didn’t paint a negative picture of Branson as I’ve never been there. I was only poking a little fun at the phone call. I did take a quick gander at the Chamber of Commerce web site and I must say I just might give it another look and some serious thought for a future vacation.

It certainly didn’t take newly elected Congressperson Chellie Pingree to get on the free travel bandwagon, did it? The Maine Democrat is on a “fact finding” mission in Asia.

I’m not up too much on things financial. I should be as it’s things financial that keep me solvent. At least so far. Then last week I had an occasion to visit with the person I trust does know about things financial to watch over my investments and my retirement account. I’m down nearly 30 percent. Now even financial ignorants like me know that can’t be good.

I heard on the news yesterday afternoon that Wall Street dropped another near 300 points after President Obama signed the new government spending package. From what I learned last week coupled with this week, the stock market has now lost about two thousand points since the President was elected.

I guess the point of this is that you should look over your things financial to see where you stand now. I don’t like what I see. Do You?

GiM

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