So despite being limited in some of our political activites, one thing that federal employees are allowed to do is to volunteer for various groups and speak our opinions on which candidate to support.

Tonight, I did a little of this myself. I vounteered for Moveon.org’s “Calling For Change” program. It’s interesting.

You get emailed a link to a web page. When you go to the page, you are given a very simple interface that has a couple of main boxes, one side for if you make contact with the person you’re calling and one if you do not. There’s buttons in each box.

A phone number appears on the top of the screen and you call it up and just talk to the people. Of course, a majority of the time you don’t get anyone; I only made contact with someone about 20% of the time. But surprisingly, of the folks I talked to, most were very receptive to the call.

As you click on what happened (made contact and they already voted, made contact and they expressed that they would vote for the candidate, got answering machine, bad number, etc) the page reloads and gives you another phone number.

It’s a great way for people to make contact with real people. I think that one thing that really helps is simply saying “I’m a volunteer, I’ve never done something like this before and I’m not a professional; I’m just motivated about what’s going on in our country”. People respond to honesty.

And even better, everyone I talked to who expressed an opinion is going to vote for the Good Guys.

If you care about this election, and you have a good phone plan (I use Vonage so all my calls are free, even long distance) or a cell phone with free LD calls, I strongly urge you to join into a program like this. You should support the Democratic candidates around you no matter what.

It’s an interesting experience and a way for the common stiff like me and you (well, I don’t know if YOU are a stiff, but I know I am) to take part- even a small part- in the election process.

Right here. (edit: a link to an article about the comptroller general of the United States, and how he is going around the country talking about the deplorable fiscal situation that our nation has gotten itself into.)

I frequently bitch about the government’s fiscal policy under President Bush. It’s horrible. And people just kind of nod, but most of the time they don’t really pay attention, because it seems like the government is running the way it always has.

The sad thing, though, is that it’s not. We’ve spent ourselves into a big old hole, and we’re getting further into it.

I know a thing or two about overspending and working from a negative worth position. I’ve done it in my life. Several years ago, I borrowed a lot of money and sunk it into a photography business I was starting.

Tragedy struck when Paula, my business partner (and life partner) died in a car accident, and suddenly I was stuck with tens of thousands of bucks worth of photographic equipment that I couldn’t utilize. I couldn’t hire anyone to take over and, having bought right before professional photography changed over from traditional film to digital, I couldn’t really sell it for much (although I gave it a shot and liquidated as much as I could).

I’m proud to say that I paid off every single debt. It took years and my credit rating was pretty shredded for a while, but I’m now back above-average in terms of my credit score, and it keeps going up every month.

The way to salvation? Spend less, pay off the debt. That’s what you have to do. Invest in solid things for the future. I got at least a little bit lucky (which, considering the bad luck that I’d had, I guess I deserved a little good luck) in the real estate runup and made some money there- but then buying real estate is, as a general rule over a long term, a good investment for the future.

The United States was on that path. As Bill Clinton left office, the US government was actually buying back more T-bills and retiring debt than it was selling for the first time in decades. The national debt was shrinking (assuming, of course, that you don’t count the debt we owed ourselves for the Social Security system) and the budget had not only been balanced, but had been turned into a surplus situation.

That’s what we need to do, right now. It’ll suck, because it’ll mean higher taxes, probably on nearly all of us. But it’s GOT to be done.

I got into it recently with a guy on another discussion board. At one point he said “I can’t debate with someone who wants higher taxes.” I said I don’t WANT higher taxes; I’m just a realist who recognizes the NEED for them. And we need to try and rein in some spending, too.

One way we could do this would be to end the Iraq war. That’s costing us hundreds of billions and isn’t working anyway- why stay?

We can, and we damn well should, make things better. We can fix this. We can turn this around.

But we’re not doing it- unless we wake up and smell the coffee.

Wake up, folks.

So you sign a contract saying you’ll do something for someone, and they’ll pay you $13 million dollars to do it.

That’s $13,000,000.00. Just in case you’re curious how many zeros that is.

Gary Sheffield plays baseball. Very well, in fact. And for doing that, the Yankees are going to pay him 13 mill next season.

And he’s not happy about it. He didn’t want them to pick up his option, because he wanted to be a free agent and get himself a multi-year deal.

What a moron. If he didn’t want it, why did he sign the deal three years ago? Doesn’t a man’s word mean anything anymore?

I’ve agreed to things that later I regretted, but you know what? I did ‘em anyway, because that’s how the world is supposed to work.

I guess I just don’t understand what goes through a guy’s head. I mean, I know that Sheff is thinking he can get a 3 year deal for 15 million a year, and if he’s a free agent next year (and a year older) it’ll be harder to get that kind of money. But he should have thought of that three years ago when he signed his LAST deal.

Sigh.

…they don’t have ladders in Mexico. Or shovels, to dig holes underneath stuff with.