Author Archives: Travis Birt

Broken system. :'(

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I find it frustrating that our government has been taken over by a bunch of elite rich people, who now spend most of their time convincing people that the minimum wage should remain low. The minimum wage should be high enough to pay the minimum in bills and food for survival. That was the entire point of minimum wage. So that corporations could not keep workers working for next to nothing wages while filling the guys at the tops pockets.

So here we are. 2018 and CEO pay is up 997% since 1978. ( https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-has-grown-90-times-faster-than-typical-worker-pay-since-1978/ ) The part that confuses me is that there are people who are making very little money claiming that the little guys making less than them getting more money will raise costs?? So the fact that the CEO is making 997% does not raise costs? But raising the minimum wage so that the kids just getting started can go to college and pay their bills will break the system? Really? Nobody else sees a problem with this? And, to really make it easier on that poor rich guy who has gotten a huge continuous raise since 1978, we needed to lower taxes on them.. because you know, they have only gotten 82% of all wealth in 2017. (http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42745853) It would not be fair to them to expect them to use some of that wealth to either pay for services for the people that work for them, or to pay the people that work for them with a decent wage.

I am confused why we do not expect more out of our businesses? Who gave them the rights to our world?! Oh yeah, our government is… As fast as it can. :’( So here we are, a country that has become an Oligarchy, claiming to be a Republic, claiming to be a Democracy?!? The whole time, our current government parties are running campaigns against Socialism of any sort, but the last time our country actually made progress on infrastructure and such was during FDR’s 4 terms.. The tax on the rich and corporations was pretty high.. ( https://www.thebalance.com/fdr-and-the-new-deal-programs-timeline-did-it-work-3305598) ( http://federal-tax-rates.insidegov.com/d/a/Franklin-D.-Roosevelt )

Why, after an even bigger crash, and a worse period of time in some peoples minds financially, are we still allowing them to remove more safety nets, and build bigger corporations that we can not afford to have fail?!? What the hell is our government doing to protect us? We are still paying for the recovery of the last failing by the ultra rich, and they have been given a pass with their tax rates dropped.. and our future is sold.. and here we are, voting in more rich old people?!?! WTF people?!?!

Mom’s Obituary

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Priscilla C. Walker

Priscilla C. Walker, 22 year resident of New Port Richey, Florida, formerly of Jamestown, NY, lost her battle to cancer Saturday(February, 17th 2018) at home with her family.

She was born April 2nd, 1951 in Frewsburg, NY the daughter of F. Enos Johnson and C. Barbara Adams Johnson.

She was an animal lover who enjoyed spending time in the sun and reading Fantasy books.

She played on pool leagues in Jamestown and worked at several bars over the years in the area.

She worked at WCA for many years before moving south to Florida. She worked as a Radiology Technician for more than 25 years between WCA and her place of employment in Florida.

Priscilla is survived by Steven C.(Kathy) Birt, Travis R.(Emily) Birt, Michael Q.(Tiffany) Birt; 9 grandchildren and 1 great-grandchild; 3 siblings, Karen Wingate, Susan Johnson, Leroy Johnson.

She was predeceased in death by her parents.

She asked for and received a private family Celebration of Life on a beach in Florida. In lieu of flowers, you can donate to the American Cancer Society in her honor.

Losing my Mom. :(

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Been really hard for the last couple of years to watch my Mom slowly lose her fight with Cancer. 🙁  She, being the private person she is, told all of us we were not allowed to talk about it. So we have been dealing with this quietly between all of us. Just the immediate family.

It all started in March 2016 when we went out for dinner with Aunt Susie and Mom.  Aunt Susie told us that my Mom had mentioned having some problems since January. We asked Mom about it, and she said she was getting ready to call the doctor to make an appointment. The problem had been going on for 2 months by then. She finally got to the doctors at the end of April, and they discovered cancer.  They scheduled for June to do Surgery, a full 6 months after she started having problems. 🙁 Never let anything that could be cancer wait this long. 🙁

By the time they did the surgery to try and remove it, they were to late, it had already spread.  Then due to complications from surgery chemo was postponed as well for like 3 months.  🙁  It finally started in like October.  She finally had the chemo rounds and then the radiation which took about 5 months and they finally did another scan. At that point they discovered it had spread. 🙁 She had already had the limit of radiation, and they decided they would try another type of Chemo as a last resort to try and buy her time. They told her the best hope was just to try to control how fast it spread. 🙁   Around the end of the year, they told her there was nothing else they could do.

 

We stopped over around my birthday to see her, and she had started to lose weight already from getting the flu and fighting that also.  Well, in visiting her, I managed to get the flu.. So it was 2 weeks before we got over again.  I then got a call from my brother telling me I needed to start stopping over regularly, because she was going down hill quick.  I was unsure how much could change in just 2 weeks, but we of course went over the next day to see how things were going.   Just 2 days shy of 2 weeks since I had seen her, and it brought tears to my eyes seeing my Mom in that condition. 🙁 It is horrible to see someone you care about take a down hill dive like this.  We are basically left waiting for her to die.  She does not have any hope left, and she has given up.

 

As much as I do not want to think about this, or really have to look at this regularly, I do feel that the warning should go out for people.  If you think there is even a chance that you have something wrong with you, do not put off getting checked. In 2 years, my mother went from being reasonably healthy for her age, a few aches and pains, but nothing serious, to laying in a bed, barely moving, and it hurting horribly to move, just waiting to die.  For the sake of those you love, and those who love you, please do not put off getting checked.

She passed peacefully in her sleep with Aunt Susie by her side on 2/17/2018. 🙁

Social problems across the nation

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So looking at the news, I see more and more gun and drug problems. Anyone stop to think that maybe, if people could make a living off from their jobs, that maybe, just maybe, they would not be so quick to turn to drugs and violence? I mean seriously? Minimum wage is supposed to be the minimum wage someone can live on in our country, how the hell do they expect you to live on 7.25 an hour? So figure if you are working a 40 hour week, which most part time positions do not, as they do not want to have to pay benefits like insurance and such, you make roughly $290 per week before taxes.. So call it $210 after taxes. So figure, they are making roughly $800 to $1000 per month? Ok, so now lets look at the US National average for rent.. http://www.deptofnumbers.com/rent/us/ Hrm, so call it $900? So you can almost pay rent for 1 month on average with your minimum wage job.. Ok, lets say you live somewhere that you can get an apartment, even a dump for half the national average.. so $450. Now lets figure that you like food.. Food prices have went up a lot over the last few years. but, for the sake of argument, that you manage to somehow eat for $50 per week, far below the US average, but 8% of Americans say they manage it http://www.gallup.com/poll/156416/americans-spend-151-week-food-high-income-180.aspx. So you are spending $200-$250 a month on food. That is bare basics considering I know we can easily blow $100 on food for 2 bags of groceries if we are not careful. So now, out of that $800 per month, we have spent $650-$700 depending on 4 or 5 week month, and looking at an apartment that is half the national average and looking at spending less than 92% of Americans do on food per week. So now you want a phone? TV? Electric?($111) Water? Mandatory health insurance? Car? Public Transportation? You are looking at least one more job, just to cover basic costs.. and that is not even looking at if you are one of the many who actually took college classes and have student loans to pay for that left you still working a minimum wage job.
I see all these people arguing that we need more gun control. No we don’t. We need people who are not desperate to survive. What would you be willing to do to survive? Sell drugs? Hold up a store? Ok, so how about if you have a family and your child is sick? What would you be willing to do for your sick child? Still think it is a gun problem? In a time when corporations are making record profits, why is the middle class dwindling and the lower class growing? I still say they need to tax the crap out of corporate profits for a few years, and tax the crap out of any salary that more than three or four times the national average of $44k. Then raise the minimum wage. If they can not give all the money to the executives without paying huge taxes, and would have to pay large sums of taxes on profits, they are less likely to raise the costs of goods to maintain a high profit margin. I am not saying they should not make profits, but when profits come at the expense of the people doing all the work, maybe it is time for things to change?
Corporate welfare needs to stop. Creating a new slave population by giving people barely enough to live on needs to stop. Everyone taking their share of profits from the basic necessities of life needs to stop. You wonder why our society has a drug and violence problem? I am surprised we do not have more of a problem. They are doing everything they can to make it so we have no choice but to work for them cheap to survive. Seriously. Many places are making it illegal to collect rain water.. Many are making it mandatory that you are connected to the power grid. Gee, I wonder why they wanna take our guns away? It is not a gun problem. It is a desperation problem. We put our mental patients on the street by cutting social programs, give more corporate subsidies, and then the corporate runs news about the guns and violence problems and how we need to cut more social programs so the country can quit losing money. I have an idea, how about we stop paying house and senate 4 times the national average of $44k, stop giving 92 Billion a year away to corporations making Billions and seriously look at making a single payer health care system. All of which will never happen as long as corporations have lobbyists in DC bending our elected officials ears, while the American people do not. Consider this, Corporations can now spending huge amounts of money getting someone elected, then send a lobbyist to Washington DC to hang with them and influence them.
We need to take back our government from big money and big corporations. We need to change the laws again to not allow big corporations to donate to get public officials elected. Our government should not be for sale. Then we can see about making sure everyone has a living wage and decent health care. Then maybe we can fix the “gun and drug” problem, of course, at that point, maybe there will not be one, because people will not be so desperate just to survive.

The new Corporate Reality of America today.

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Anyone else bothered by all the big corporations running our country? I mean, seriously, I see people complaining about not being able to live off the grid, not being able to collect rain water. Who do people complain about? The Government, but then they continue to vote the same ways. I would like to point out, it is not JUST the government, it is the corporations that with the new political campaign laws are now pretty much legally allowed to buy and pay for our government officials. Do not see how money can make something happen that we do not want?
In the last election, Las Vegas casino owner Sheldon Adelson bankrolled the campaign against medical marijuana in Florida. It worked. In May, before the election, Medical Marijuana had a 90% approval rating. By election time, he had shaved more then 40 points off that and it failed. Seriously? Here is a little story about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdqZY53AQv8 and you can also read more about it http://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2014/11/04/las-vegas-casino-owner-sheldon-adelson-is-bankrolling-florida-campaign-against-medical-marijuana where he is quoted as saying,”I’m against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections. But as long as it’s doable I’m going to do it.”
Yet, we keep voting for politicians that continue to give our rights and powers as a people away to the big corporations and the super wealthy? Why? Do people ever take a minute to actually look and see how the people they vote for actually vote? Read up on the laws that they are passing, or at least trying to pass? How do those laws actually help or hinder us? To many of them seem to be limiting our abilities to survive freely, without giving huge amounts of our incomes to big corporations, who actually get a large part of our money already from government subsidies. http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2014/03/14/where-is-the-outrage-over-corporate-welfare/ and http://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/corporate-welfare/corporate-welfare-statistics-vs-social-welfare-statistics/ give you some ideas on where our money is really going. But if you watch the news, they will happily send you to the social welfare programs as our problem with the budget in this country. Seriously? Corporate subsidies help make the rich richer. Social Welfare helps poor people eat. Yes, they may get some toys with it too, but it is meant to help give them a place to live and eat. I do not disagree that it could use some reform, but as we are spending about half the price on social welfare that we are spending on corporate-welfare, I really do not feel like someone buying an iphone who is on welfare is our major budget problem in this Country.
Now, we have corporations who are out to patent things you can find in nature as a cure to cancer? Seriously? http://medicalmarijuana411.com/drug-maker-will-soon-hold-patent-on-thc-cbd-as-cancer-cures/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork Is anyone else getting real sick of corporations running our country and our lives? Anyone else ever looked at health care costs in any other country? How about costs of medications? http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/health-costs-how-the-us-compares-with-other-countries/
and this gives you an idea on medications. http://www.drugwatch.com/2014/10/15/americans-pay-higher-prices-prescription-drugs/  So what we see if you actually read this is, they charge us outrageous prices for Insurance, they charge us outrageous prices for healthcare, and they charge us outrageous prices for medications, and they patent even things that are grown naturally so they can charge us high prices for those things? Wow. They have us coming and going.
I have a lot of friends who are very conservative, and they complain about the cost of medication, they complain about the cost of medical care, they complain about the government, and taxes, but they do not complain about the fact that the corporations charging all this money are able to contribute huge amounts of money to get leaders that are sympathetic to them elected. The corporate media continues to spin the left against the right, but there really isn’t a big difference. What really starts to bother me is when you look at who owns the majority of many of these corporations. http://www.businessinsider.com/these-10-corporations-control-almost-everything-you-buy-2012-4
Really rather disturbing.
They really want to control everything right down to our water. http://www.nestle.com/aboutus/ask-nestle/answers/nestle-chairman-peter-brabeck-letmathe-believes-water-is-a-human-right

Been a while since I posted..

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So many things have happened since my last blog post..

January 2011, lost my mother in law to COPD related problems.. If you smoke, I sincerely hope you can find it in yourself to quit.. Watching my mother in law suffer from COPD is what convinced Emmy and I to quit.

November 2011, we jumped out of an airplane again! It was awesome! We flipped out of the plane, and because we had done it before, we got to drive the chute longer and everything! It was great!

We went to Bern’s Steakhouse finally! It was great! Love that aged beef! Mouth watering good!

Emmy Proposed to me on Valentines Day! After 18 years of being together, she decided she wanted to be married! So now we are planning a big wedding. I am both thrilled, and ….confused. A lot of extra expenses, but she is the woman I know I want to be with for the rest of my life, and she deserves to be married if that is what she wants. It is just one more expense, and one more thing we have to plan. Scary, but exciting.. More so then the skydiving in some ways. 😉

We got a new car. I love it! A Toyota Prius C Model 2. It is awesome! 50.6 MPG average since we bought the car.  I have gotten as high as 72.5 MPG.. So with a bit of effort, you can save a lot of money with it.

 

 

UFC 101

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Was a good card! We decided to goto Ker’s WingHouse to see it. Was a fun night! Although, it is much cheaper to stay home to watch it on Pay per view. The fights mostly went how I expected, if not how I hoped. I was VERY surprised just how easy Anderson Silva made it look with Forrest Griffin. Was an awesome display of skill. I look forward to his future fights.

UFC 100!!! Lived up to the hype!

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So we ordered UFC 100, because well, we are fans, and it is THE CARD. Seriously, every one of these matches could have been a Main event. Well, maybe not as much with Belcher and Yoshihiro Akiyama. Just not popular enough for main event yet. That being said, I think Belcher was robbed. It sure felt like he was in the lead all the way through. I will have to watch it again tomorrow, but it sure seemed like Belcher should have won to me.
Henderson vs Bisping was was all I could hope for. I liked Bisping in the Ultimate Fighter Series. However, he just talks to much trash, so it was fun to see him get quieted. I am glad he is ok though don’t get me wrong. I just think fighters improve a lot more with a defeat then with a win, and Bisping needed this loss to wake him up. (in a put you to sleep type of way. :P)

GSP vs Alves went about how everyone expected. It was amazing to see GSP dominate that much though, especially when he pulled his groin in the 3rd round. It was a great match! I would have loved to see GSP actually finish him, as that makes more of a statement. GSP has not been as much of a finisher as I would like to see.

Brock vs Mir bums me out. I really wanted to see Mir win. Just because it would have been nice to see Brock get knocked back a little. He is a dominate force though. He just man handled Mir, and Mir was in the best shape I ever seen. Who knows, maybe Frank will get another shot eventually, and they can do the rubber match? Frank needs to get a better plan though.

All in all, a great show! I loved it and think it was very worthwhile!