Unless you have cut yourself off from all methods of communication, you know that Michael Jackson^W has passed away. He started his career at the age of 4, thanks to his controlling ass of a father. I don’t think Michael was ever allowed a childhood and that is the reason he did the things he did as an adult. In seven years time, Michael and his brothers managed to release 11 albums before Michael went off on his own to become the King of Pop. Before the 1980’s were through, Michael would put a defining stamp on pop music, music videos and dance moves. Like or hate the man, he create a lot of excellent music that will stand the test of time. There might be other super stars to come, but none will be like Michael Jackson.

As I listen to one of the local radio stations pay tribute to Michael Jackson, which probably could last all day without a repeat, I remember a particular fond moment that relates to his music. When I was in 7th grade at Martin Middle school, I was taking my first year of French class. As part of the class, we all took French based names. I don’t remember if I was assigned the name “Charles” or if I picked it. I do know that a girl in my class named “Monique” always called me “Charles” and I could never remember her real name either. Well, one day while we were doing a quiet lesson, probably trying to translate some French passage, P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)^W was playing in the hallway. I have no idea why anyone was playing the music, but it was echoing all down the hallway and could be heard in our classroom. For some reason, I had got up and went across the classroom and was proceeding back to my desk chair. Our desks where the ones that combined a desktop and a chair together, so you could only get in on one side. As I walked by “Monique”’s desk, the music apparently took hold of me an I did a quick knee up, put my foot down, spun around, did a split down to the floor, popped back up (with the help of a desk), turned my back to my seat and moon walked into my chair. Monique exclaimed “Charles!” in a surprised, yet admiring tone of voice. I think I just shocked the rest of the class, because they were silent. This is one of those childhood memories that always makes me smile. And I have Michael Jackson to thank for it. As anyone who’s been out on a dance floor with me knows, I have some fancy footwork. I have always enjoyed dancing and being silly when I dance. I was never good at break dancing^W, but I am able to move my feet fairly well.

Rest in peace Michael. Thank you for the music.

written by Dean Logan \\ tags: dancing, Michael Jackson

The geniuses in the NC House have decided to top themselves. Not only can they not balance the budget, they are still trying to pass laws that will cost the tax payer even more money. This time they are focusing on home insurance. Specifically home insurance for houses on the coast of North Carolina.

The coast of North Carolina can expect to receive a tropical storm or a hurricane once every four years, while a tropical cyclone affects the state every 1.3 years. ~ NC State University – State Climate Office

For anyone who is not aware, the North Carolina coast is pretty long. It includes 300 miles of barrier island beaches. “Barrier islands”, let’s examine that. Why do we call them barrier islands? What could they be a barrier against? Well, that would be the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic Ocean is powerful and has the tendency to tear up man and nature made objects where ever it touches. The ocean also produces things called “hurricanes”. Hurricanes are very powerful storms that almost certainly cause damage when they hit land. Between 1886 – 1996, 28 storms hit landfall on NC coast. While that doesn’t seem like a lot, it would tell you that you can’t go 100 years without a hurricane hitting the coast. These are 100, 200, 500 year floods, these are weather events that happen on a regular basis. Basically, if you live in North Carolina for more than a decade, you can expect to prepare yourself for a hurricane. It’s just a way of life.

Now, let’s can back to numb nuts in the legislative building. The lawmakers on the coast are complaining that they don’t want to pay higher insurance premiums. So, they are getting together with their spending buddies to “fix beach insurance“. See, they created an insurance company a few years back to cover houses when real insurance agencies said; “Are you crazy? You’re putting a house on a moving sandbar. Yes, it’s a big sandbar, but it’s still a sandbar.” and wouldn’t insure morons that built houses on the beaches. The brilliant plan these idiots have come up with to cover another state run bad idea, is to tap ALL N.C. homeowners insurance. Which means, if you decided to not live on the coast because you’re smart enough to know that the ocean hates humans, you still have to help cover the coast for the people who do not have a clue. They have proposed to make things a little easier on us poor schmo’s footing the bill by

cutting the maximum property value for a Beach Plan residential policy from $1.5 million to $750,000

Wow, that is so nice. That means I don’t have to pay for a multi-multi-millionaires beach home, just a multi-millionaire. Of course, it could just be some government employee who got a Fannie / Freddi backed mortgage on a home they can’t afford to buy or even insure. Apparently some insurance companies have dropped North Carolina customers out of fear of having to cover the Beach Plan’s losses. Which means we could be looking at people in other parts of the state unable to get home insurance because the companies that are left won’t cover there home. This of course would lead to another outcry and probably a Piedmont Plan, a Foothill Plan, and a Mountain Plan to make sure that those who can afford their own insurance bear the load for those who can’t do so.

written by Dean Logan \\ tags: beach, insurance, North Carolina, taxes

I find there are two ways for me to learn something, either by doing it myself or learning by the mistakes of others. And, in reality, the lessons learned by the mistakes of others aren’t truly learned until I try to do something that would have prevented the mistake made by someone else. I know that some people learn by watching others or by example, but it is important that the person you are learning from is actually doing what it is to be learned correctly. A particular group of professionals seem to know how to do things poorly, yet seem to think that they can provide for others the correct way to do things. Most of the time this group provides answers to others that they themselves should implement in their own actions. We know of this as the case of pointing out the sliver in another person’s eye while ignoring the plank in our own eye.

This morning I went to my favorite local news source and saw the headline “NC’s Hagan to introduce bill on financial literacy“. I didn’t even have to click through to the story to have the feeling of “Good grief” come over me. Irony abounds in this news report and the full details of Hagan’s bill haven’t even been released. The obvious “whateva” moment is how anyone could take any politician seriously about anything financial. Having no statistics to back me up; I would guess that the majority of the people in the U.S. of A. would not call politicians financially literate, savvy, or responsible. With mountains of debt, budget deficit, pork spending and waste rampant throughout all levels of government, politicians usually forget the basic part of finance, the part that starts with having your own money in order to spend that money. The proper way of planning a budget is to have income coming in and then work out your expenses from there, not work out your expenses and steal from your neighbor to cover the cost. The expense column shouldn’t have more than the income column year after year. Therefor, politicians forcing 6th through 12th graders to take financial literacy courses seems highly ironic. To top this, the bill plans to offer grants to states to provide these classroom lessons. Would the first classroom lesson be, not to spend money you don’t have? I won’t get into why this shouldn’t be a Federal program. I would have thought this would already be part of any states curriculum, but I don’t recall having any “financial literacy” classes in middle or high school.

The one hope of this program is that Kay Hagan has determined that politicians are not financial literate and that she hopes to educate youngsters in the understanding of mortgages, dividends, derivatives, 401ks, IRAs and the rest of scary financial world would prevent future financial illiterate politicians.

I recall back in first grade that I learned some math lessons by determine how many pennies or other coins were required in order to buy one or more toys provided by the teacher. I don’t recall if I brought in the money or if she provided the money. My memory only provides the highlight that I would finish the assignment correctly before all of the other kids in my class and I got to go outside and watch the big kids play. I’m sure I could have played along, but it was probably safer for me to just watch. While the lesson might have been about learning the different coin amounts and basic addition skills, the lesson I got out of it was; you had to have money in order to buy stuff.

Maybe the government lesson plan will be simple:

• If you work hard and don’t spend all of your money, you can buy things you want, if you save up for it.
• If you make $30k a year, you can’t afford a $250k house.
• If you spend all of your paycheck, that you cashed on Friday, by Sunday morning for the cab ride back from the street corner you passed out on the night before, you won’t be able to eat for the rest of the week.
• If you are already living in government assisted housing and have one or more government assisted children, you can’t afford to have more government assisted children.

written by Dean Logan \\ tags: education, government, Kay Hagan, spending

The local news site has reported that N.C. Groups Rally for More Taxes, preserve services over at the NC State Legislative building.  Not knowing anything about this, I’ll just have to take WRAL’s word about this.  I guess they really didn’t report on this, since it was handled by the Associated Press and it was barely a dozen sentences long.  Of course, how much can you write on insanity?  Rallying for more taxes.  The interesting thing about this “news story” is that they reported on at all.  According to the report, there were “serveral hundred” people at the rally.  At the Take Back Our State rally, I personally counted 500 people under the main tent and others told me they estimated 1 to 2 thousand people in attendance.  There were a half a dozen speakers at the Take Back Our State rally, I don’t think they were any at the Save My Taxpayer Funded Job rally.

The rally was billed as a “state of emergency”, which we are sort of in.  The state has a whopping $800 million short fall, which in DC terms is just a drop in the bucket, but in State terms, it’s a big issue.  But, even with that short fall and cities and counties doing their best to balance their budgets all around the state, you have people wanting to balance those budgets with more taxes.  It makes you wonder how these people would handle private sector jobs.  Do they think that they could go to their private sector bosses and demand that the company raise prices so that they can keep their jobs?

The country is in an economic downturn, which means tax revenues decrease and services should be cut.   The sad part about this reduction of tax revenues is that locally the county had just increased their tax revenue by reevalution of home values just a year ago.  The reevalution had the home values increase by such a high percentage that the county reduced it’s tax rate from 67.8 cents per $100 of valuation to 50.9 cents.  But now, they had to raise it up to 53.4 cents to make the budget.  To some,  this move would be seen as a huge tax cut.  But, when your houses’ property value jumps at a minimum of 40%, getting a 14% tax break doesn’t add up.   The Wake County commisioners managed to get some cuts through on their budget, but with the help from only one Democrat.  They even managed to keep a couple low usage libraries open, but had to cut some programs and jobs to do so.

When times are good, governments like to provide more for the people.  Unfortunatley, times are not always good.  Long term planning does not seem to include the posibility that taxes might go down.  It would be nice to be able to pay for any improvements or buildings upfront, instead of creating bonds.  It would be nice if the only on going cost were items like salaries and utilities.  It would be nice is people could think about what the cost might be down the road to maintain and staff government services before deciding that it’s something we really need.  However, it looks like some people are riding the unicorn and pixie dust train as far as they can take it, while those of us who carry the load are itching to shrug.

written by Dean Logan \\ tags: North Carolina, rally, taxes

[Re-play : tales of the man with no game.  Moments when I wish I could go back to the start of the conversation and say the right thing.]

Scene: Take Back Our State rally on Halifax Mall at the start of June close to 6:00 pm. Heat storm clouds off in the distance.  A breeze is blowing in between the tents.  One of the hand full of guest speakers is starting up his talk to the crowd.  Our hero, Dean,  has spotted a lady of interest and she has walking over to where he is and is getting an update on her schedule.

Dallas : So, you are up after the next person, so you won’t have to be ready to speak until 6:40 pm.

Mary Katherine : That’s good. [turning towards our hero in hopes he'll say something acknowledging her presence]

Dean : Uh huh. {Is that all you can come up with?  Speak man!! Speak!}

Dallas : So, you are up after the next person, so you won’t have to be ready to speak until 6:40 pm.

Mary Katherine : That’s good. [turning towards our hero in hopes he'll say something acknowledging her presence]

Dean : Hey, you’ve got time for a beer or maybe a Captain on the Rocks.

Mary Katherine : Definitely, a Captain and Coke would hit the spot right now.

Dean : Well, you have plenty of places to choose from. [pointing out towards the distance and sweeping to left] Unfortunatley it would take you about 15 minutes to walk there in those nice orange heels of yours.  You  know, the state government hating drinking and all.

Mary Katherine : Yeah, bunch of tea-totalers!

Mary Katherine : I’m Mary Katherine Ham.

Dean : I’m Dean Wesley Logan, nice to meet you.

Mary Katherine : Ha ha.  So, Dean Wesley, are you going to show me a place to get a drink?

Dean :  Well, unfortunately, I have to leave at 6:00.  I run a singles social group and we are meeting over at Tir Na Nog at 6:30.  But, I would gladly share a drink with you later.

Mary Katherine : Give me your phone. [Dean hands Mary Katherine his phone and she dials her own number]

Mary Katherine : There, when I’m done here, I expect you to answer and direct me to where you are.

Dean : Fair enough.  I’ll see you in a short while.

written by Dean Logan \\ tags: Captain Morgan, no game