Monday, August 31, 2009

Califonia Fires

as seen from Pahrump. Rather than re invent the wheel I'll just point you to a fellow Pahrumpian blogger. Her blog Post is located here. She has some good pictures of it.
I'll just add that there is actual smoke rolling through the streets here where we live. You can see it and smell it. The mountains to the west are barely vivible.Its much worse than yesterday. At least in this part of town.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Twice the price

Today I was listening to a town hall meeting with a Democratic Rep and Howard Dean today.
The crowd seemed more or less a mixture of views.

They originally booked it for a place that held 500 people. They switched to a place that held 3,000 people, and still, not everyone got in. Anyone remember when you couldn't get 20 people to a town hall meeting???

A couple of points I'd like to bring out that they discussed.

1. Out of pocket expenses, under the House Bill 3200, will be limited to $5,000 per person or $10,000 for a family. So not only will I NOT be able to keep my insurance plan that I am VERY happy with, I will have the pleasure of paying TWICE the amount I currently pay. Thats a SWEET deal if you ask me!

2. President Obama has made insurance companies the "enemy" in this debate after realizing that "health care reform" didn't poll well because most people are happy with their health care. Yet, the insurance industry SUPPORTS the reform! Thinking people will ask WHY? It is because the insurance industry is looking at additional premiums from the government to insure 47 million more people.

3. Again today they tried to tell the people that this plan is just like Medicaid/Medicare or the Federal Health Care Plans for Federal employees. If thats so true, why not put everyone in it? Or why not just sign everyone up for the Federal Employee plan. Think of all of the savings to be made from not having 3 or 4 separate bureaucracies to administer health care! If its good enough for the American People, why is it not good enough for Federal Employees and the rest of the government? Because they wouldn't stand for it.

It was nice to see how popular Howard Dean is these days......

Some other broader points to consider:

1. We do have a shortage of doctors, esp primary care, in this country. Who, exactly, is going to care for these other 47 million people?

2. The claim is made that illegals will not be covered. But does the bill say that anywhere? Does it even address the issue at all? NOPE. This bill is, even at 1,100 pages, written very broad, and vague. No doubt, somewhere down the road, an un elected government bureaucracy somewhere, will determine that illegals should be covered. Then it will be too late.

3. Nowhere does this bill address TORT REFORM! Not in the least. Not even mentioned.
Just because we have Doctors, who we are short on, closing their doors because they can't afford malpractice premiums, doesn't mean we need tort reform! Nope, not even a little bit of it!

Now for an analogy...of sorts. Your mileage may vary.

I bought a bird feeder the other day. This bird feeder represents the "health care system". The birds, of course, are "health care consumers". The bird seed is "health care".

Now this is a pretty big bird feeder. It holds a lot of seeds. There are also many, many birds around here.

so I go and fill up my bird feeder with seed and hang it in a place to give birds easy access to the feeder. Then I sit in my chair and watch the birds eating the seeds and think to myself, "this is great".

So I come back the next day and my feeder is "EMPTY". I think back, yes I did just fill it up yesterday. So I fill it up again. The next day, again its empty.

So I try to figure out how to fix this problem. What to do?I go out and buy another bird feeder! I fill both of them to the very top. I think to myself, problem solved.
Since it is now beer:30 I dutifully crack one open and watch the birds eating away, thinking to myself that I should be good for a few days now!

In the morning, BOTH feeders are EMPTY!

After purchasing another feeder, plus one of those peanut butter type feeder, I think to myself, "This must fix the problem!"

I get up the next day to find ALL of the feeders EMPTY!

I have concluded that one of two things will happen:
1. I will go broke buying birds seed
or
2. I will have to start rationing the bird seed.

Which do you think I chose? More importantly, when faced with this decision, which do you think the government will choose? I guessing that, like me, they will choose the latter over the former.

While its true that everything in our economic system is rationed in some form or another, usually by price, very little is rationed by the government.
That is as it should be.

People who want to believe that we can have unlimited health care for everyone, for everyone, need to rethink that. It is not possible.

Mis information from President Obama:
1. You can keep your current insurance. NOT true. I won't be able to and I'm VERY happy with my insurance.

2. No health care rationing. Not true. Economics 101 should be enough to convince anyone that this is just not possible. Even today in this country, health care is rationed. But it NOT rationed in the way that other countries with "universal health care" ration it.

Dr Rawlins, who head the NICE in England said:

“be fair to all patients in the National Health Service (NHS), not just patients with macular degeneration or breast cancer or renal cancer. If we spend a lot of money on a few patients, we have less money to spend on everyone else. We are not trying to be unkind or cruel. We are trying to look after everybody.”




That is the truth of rationing in England. The problem is that there never has been, nor will there ever be enough money to provide unlimited health care to all people.
The only conclusion is that it will, in some form or another be limited.

England budgeted 6 billion dollars to build IT infrastructure to run their health system. It costs are now estimated at 30 billion and rising.
This goes to show how the government, theirs and ours, are often way off on the costs associated with its actions.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

More BLM exploration

This morning I took off to explore more of the BLM lands. Today, instead of turning right, I went straight!

This is the road. Roughly 13 miles later I was in the mountains you see in the distance.
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Along the way I saw some more wild horses. There are roughly 30,000 of them in Nevada. this is only the second time I've seen any.
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This little colt ran right in front of me. He was trying to get across the road to his mother.
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My private parking place in Spring Mountain:
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Then I ran into this:
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Ideally I would have picked a spot and sat for 2-3 hours and see what wildlife crossed my path, but I didn't have time for that today. I was happy to see some more wild horses!

There was

one set of photos I did not post from when I was exploring the BLM land last weekend.

I didn't really want to publish what I saw until it was resolved by BLM and the Nye County Sheriff.

Here are the photos of what I found out there:
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I didn't know if they were dangerous or not, but they were definately military munitions of some sort.


Now that they have been removed, I thought it was ok to post about them.
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When I called the Nye County Sheriff, who put me through to BLM Law Enforcement, I told them it was probably junk, but I wasn't qualified to determine that. I sent photos to the BLM Officer and gave him directions to find them. It took about 3 days for them to locate them and finally remove them. They told me they were either already fired or training rounds, but that they were happy to get them out of there. The BLM Officer was VERY nice. He called me every single day to give me an update on what was going on, and then called me and told me the final disposition of them after they had been located and removed.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

I'm so dumb...

when we move, we pack everything, rent a U-Haul and haul our prized possesions accross country and then un pack everything. If I was smart I would have done it like my sister-in-law Nancy, who is moving to Pahrump. She packed her stuff in a POD, seen below, and made sure it got to Pahrump a week before she did! Leaving "us" to un pack it for her!!! You have one month to pack a POD, but only one week to un load it.

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Pahrump knew she was moving in too! When she rented this place it was on a dirt road. Now it is paved!!
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Here is Betty and Karen trying to decide where to put stuff:
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Some of the clutter:
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A "storage" room:
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Betty and Tom dressing up the outside:
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More work:
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These shelves were stuffed with boxes at one point but we couldn't stand to look at them any longer so we re worked it:
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She will have a plce to lay her head tonight when she gets in:
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Its hard to tell in this photo, but she is a fan of Coke...lol
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Hazardous Living

My fellow Pahrumpian, if that's a word, blogger Lauren and her husband Paul discovered a rather large scorpion in their yard. You can read about it and see pictures of it here. Lauren said that when ready to strike it would just about fill the palm of a mans hand!



We have not had the displeasure of seeing one yet, and hope not to.



They have a very nice blog that gives more insight into living in Pahrump.



They also run MidwestWhips where you can purchase hand made whips in more styles than I ever knew existed.



They also run the whip blog where you can learn about whip making.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

86%

of Nevadas 70 million acres are controlled by the Federal Government.
Much of this is controlled by agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service and the National Park Service.

The Federal Governments largest acreage is in Nye County, the home of Pahrump. Nye county supplies the Federal Government with over 11 million acres. Yes, Nye County is huge! Our county government seat is over 2 hours away by car!

Clark County, where Las Vegas is, contributes only 4 million acres(Everyone knows they are slackers over there....just kidding). This includes Nellis AFB at 379,000 acres for the base. Nye county contributes nearly 2.5 million acres just between the Department of Defense and the Department Energy.

Today I went to explore the BLM land east of Pahrump. It is actually in Clark County but it is on this side of the "hump".

This is a view of the mountains I went into:
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Two years ago a young man died here:
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The road I was on is called Wheeler Pass. I can only assume it goes through the mountains to the Vegas side.
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Danger Will Robinson!!!
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I wonder if I can ttrade one of these beauties in for Cash For Clunkers?
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Somewhere along South Branch Wheeler Pass headed down into the wash:
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I think this is a Cresole Bush:
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A Red Tailed Hawk...I think.
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