January 15, 2012 in Cutting Costs, Real Change
Living Without Money – trailer from Without Money on Vimeo.
Is it possible to feel rich without possessions? Can you live happily without money? In the documentary Living Without Money, we meet the German woman Heidemarie Schwermer who made a deliberate choice to live without money 14 years ago.
April 14, 2011 in Cutting Costs
Aldi, a German Supermarket is making inroads in the USA. Aldi is 15 to 20 percent cheaper than Wal-Mart, and 30 to 40 percent cheaper than local supermarkets, according to studies by industry experts. In America, this could be the decisive factor.
Cheaper shopping has become a necessity for Americans. Aldi obviously sees this development as an opportunity. Since the crisis began in 2008, Aldi has opened about 100 stores throughout the US each year. It will open about the same number in 2011 as well. Altogether, the German discounter operates about 1,000 stores in 31 states from Texas to Connecticut. With annual sales of $8 billion (€5.5 billion), Aldi is still tiny in comparison with the largest US food company, Kroger, which has $77 billion (€53.4 billion) in annual sales. And it’s nothing compared to Wal-Mart with $260 billion (€180.5 billion) in annual sales.
Aldi accomplished what Wal-Mart has not been able to do: They have a store in New York City
Recently New York got its first Aldi supermarket and with it, the German discounter has achieved a foray into the world’s center of consumption. Wal-Mart, the dominant US big-box chain, has been so far kept at bay because it doesn’t allow labor unions. But the much smaller Aldi, which is also non-union, has been able to slip into the market without the kind of fuss created by Wal-Mart.
Aldi’s claim that “Our products are on average 45 percent cheaper than at other supermarkets.”
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QUEEN’S COMMENTS
We have several Aldi stores all over the Dallas area. I shop at one and I like it. It is nice to have a choice other than Wal-Mart. Because of the way Wal-Mart treats their suppliers and employees and because of their harsh right-wing ideological stance, I avoid shopping there. I am happy to have other choices.
At the Aldi store where I shop, eggs are 99cents a dozen and they are always fresh and soy milk ranges from $1.50 to $2.00 a gallon. Bread is 99 cents to $1.50 a loaf. Avocados are never more than 69 cents each. Frozen Pizzas are on average $2.99. Just about any shopping trip to and Aldi story saves me $10 to $20 more than I could save even at Wal-Mart.
Yes Aldi is a German Store and Wal Mart is an American store. However Wal-Mart stands for a business legacy of greed and political bullying that I would like to see end. Also I love the fact that Aldi stores force people to be socially conscious. They supply no bags. You must bring your own bags. When you get your shopping cart you must put a quarter in to release the carts that are chained together. When you return the cart to where it belongs instead of leaving it in the parking lot to ding other cars, your quarter is released back to you.
April 8, 2011 in Class War, Cutting Costs
From time to time, the Queen deems it appropriate to bring out Tim Waits and his song: Hang onto St. Christopher.” This Friday on the brink of a no funding for our troops and Seniors to even get their meager monthly checks I think this is another fitting time for the song.
Here it is in the hopes that it will cheer everyone up.
REMEMBER! BE ON THE ALERT FOR REAL NEWS ANY TIME AFTER 5 pm ON FRIDAY AND BEFORE 5 PM ON SUNDAY. There is sure to be plenty of it this weekend.
February 16, 2011 in Congressional Antics, Cutting Costs, Wall Street
Please tell your friends that it is NOT “BIG” government who have robbed them blind of their ENTITLEMENTS. YES! ENTITLEMENTS. When workers pay into a fund for all their working lives, they are ENTITLED to get a return on their investment–just as any investor. But there are rules for the rich and there are rules for the rest of us.
Our only hope for 2012 is that we can better educate the majority on what the rich in Washington DC and on Wall Street are doing to the MAJORITY. “Big Government” is just their smoke screen. It’s not “big government” it’s BIG GREEDY INDIVIDUALS like most of the 261 millionaires (almost half) of our Congress. It’s the greedy CEO’s on Wall Street like Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, James Dimon of JP Morgan and others. It’s the billionaire Koch brothers who fund the Tea Party. Please pay attention. The first thing that three of the elected Tea Party Representatives did was to hire Washington Lobbyists as PAID members of their staff!
While American workers have been paying into social security for the past 30 years, our millionaire elected officials (not Big Government, but real people and most of the Republicans, so called “conservatives”) have been taking money out of the piggy bank for the people, replacing it with their worthless IOUs and then using money that we the people paid for our own retirement security to make up the difference in the gap that their tax cuts for the rich made in not being able to run our nation’s business.
YES! THIS IS JUST ONE MORE SAMPLE OF HOW THE WORKERS OF AMERICA HAVE BEEN SERFS FOR THE RICH!
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It is time for this to stop. In case you have forgotten about the principle of MAJORITY RULE, look back to only a few days ago. We saw a perfect example of it in Egypt.
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Rich individuals–NOT BIG GOVERNMENT–real people have robbed us. These real people happen to be all those who have served in Congress for the past 30 year and including those who are there today.
THEY ARE THE ONES FROM WHOSE HIDES WE NEED TO MAKE UP THE DIFFERENCE.
1. CUT ALL PENSIONS TO ALL FORMER CONGRESS MEMBERS IMMEDIATELY. Instead of their $60,000 a year, they can receive $12,000 a year which is what the average Social Security recipient gets.
2. CUT ALL SALARIES OF ALL CURRENT CONGRESS MEMBERS TO $100,000 A YEAR. That is still more than 8 times the income of the average Social Security recipient.
3. FIGURE OUT HOW YOU ARE GOING TO REPAY THE MONEY THAT YOU HAVE STOLEN FROM THE PEOPLE’S SOCIAL SECURITY FUND WITHOUT BORROWING. They might start by looking at the ridiculous defense budget which accounts for 58% of our national Budget.
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BUT WHAT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE
1. IT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE TO TELL US THAT “WE ALL MUST SHARE IN THIS” Our elected officials and the rich are the ones who have literally robbed us. THEY MUST BE MADE TO RETURN THE MONEY AND WITHOUT CREATING ADDITIONAL DEBT. They stole this money. That is what it amounts to. They violated the trust of the people. It was not “big government” . It was greedy rich politicians. All elected officials since 1983 should be made to return their pension money except for $12,000 a year and going forward, no pension of any elected official in Washington can exceed the maximum amount awarded to Social Security recipients. THAT IS JUSTICE. Part of the problem in Washington is that the destiny of these politicians is tied to Wall Street instead of to the people on Main Street where it belongs. We need to change this.
2. IT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE FOR MILLIONAIRES IN OUR HOUSE AND SENATE TO VOTE TO RAISE THE RETIREMENT AGE AND/OR TO CUT THE ALREADY UNACCEPTABLE AVERAGE SOCIAL SECURITY CHECK OF $1,000 A MONTH.
MY GOD! THESE PEOPLE WE HAVE IN WASHINGTON DC MAKE SIMON LEGREE LOOK LIKE SANTA CLAUS!
January 25, 2011 in Bailout, Cutting Costs, Obama, Peace
Both the President’s as well as Paul Ryan’s speeches were vague; however while Ryan’s was thoroughly predictable, the President did have a few surprises. President Obama’s speech was vaguely hopeful while Paul Ryan’s speech was vaguely fear mongering. Addendum to this Post by the Queen: In the clear light of morning, I see that perhaps I was not so precise as I could have been with my vocabulary. (Blame it on the fact that I’m a Texan and I might have caught something from George.) It really wasn’t that either government official was being “vague”. They were being “subtle”. There really wasn’t that much that was vague about either of their speeches. For example, Ryan wants to gut Social Security for all people under 55. Neither he nor the Republicans want you to stop what amounts to paying taxes, they just want you to pay them to Wall Street where they can get at it easier because people like Lloyd Blankfein will be the gatekeepers instead of the voters of this nation.. They want to privatize Social Security and that is not the same as stopping you from paying taxes. They want you to continue to pay taxes all right–to them. If you have forgotten Enron, Stanford, and Madoff, then let me remind you how secure your money will be in Wall Street.
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President Obama’s speech and talk about American innovation was real and hopeful because he provided living examples of it in the audience. We had the example of the small roofing company in Michigan who recently reinvented themselves with solar shingles. We had the great example of the small drilling company from Pennsylvania who worked night and day to design the drill bit and drilling process that saved the miners in Chile. That is so quintessential American not only because that man dared to dream it but that he was so humble about it. He went home when he was sure the miners would get out. That is Main Street America! Quite frankly, I was shocked to learn of that tonight. Somehow in all the media coverage about the miners in Chile I missed this story. What a great story for the whole world to know about what “real” Americans do and who we are. These stories also spoke to the reality that as a nation of innovators, we are alive and well. That was the part I loved the best about the President’s presentation tonight. I also was surprised and liked the idea that the President spoke of combining government agencies whose functions overlapped. I liked his support of teachers. I liked that he spoke of closing tax loopholes for corporations. Taxes for businesses are a lot like taxes for individuals. The biggest and richest Wall Street Corporations don’t pay a dime of US income tax (in 2009, fifty of the largest corporations in the USA did not pay one cent). Yet smaller businesses, particularly those on Main Street pay through the nose. The very rich don’t pay near the percentage of their income in taxes as most Americans (The upper 2% pay 15% while most Americans pay between 21% and 30%). The loopholes do need to be closed. The system that we have in place is a system that rewards the rich and punishes the middle class and working poor who live on Main Street. We are not looking for handouts, but we are expecting justice and fairness. When we have the situation where corporations like GE ($10.8 billion profit) and Exxon Mobil ($15.2 billion profit) don’t pay a dime of US income tax in 2009 and citizens like me who earn well under $100,000 a year pay $11,000 in income taxes for 2009–we have a problem.
He was nice enough and I did like his spirit as a person. He seemed sincere and nice. However, he offered no hope whatsoever. Just more of the same Republican BS. Cut taxes and shrink government. He spoke of health care premiums rising, but he did not bother to ask why. If he had he might not have brought up the fact that health care premiums are rising because that only points once again to the fact that at the least Americans need a public option that does not have the middle man investor to pay off. The six largest investor-owned health insurance companies saw a 22 percent increase in combined net income in the third quarter, putting them on pace to break profit records for 2010. According to S.E.C. figures compiled by Health Care for America Now (HCAN), which lobbied Congress to pass March’s healthcare overhaul, the top six insurers made a total of $3.4 billion in profits during Q3, or $611 million more than they did during the same period last year. SO WHY, MR. RYAN ARE THEY RAISING THEIR PREMIUMS? AREN’T THESE HEALTH CARE CORPORATIONS AMERICANS TOO? IF SO, THEN WHY DOESN’T THE REPUBLICAN STANDARD OF “CUTTING BACK” APPLY TO THEM?
October 29, 2010 in Cutting Costs, Democracy, Democrats in Action
That’s right! John knows the meaning of small–and it’s not Washington’s definition of “fewer than 500 employees”! John knows that “small” is more like “fewer than 10 employees.” I thought about John today as I waited at AAA Tires and Wheels to get the new tires put on my car.
AAA Tires and Wheels is owned by Cosmo, a Kurdish immigrant who has been in the USA for almost 20 years. Cosmo was one of the first people I met in Garland when I moved here five years ago from California. I went to him to get my car inspected. Cosmo treated me as if I were royalty–but I’ve since noticed over the years that Cosmo treats all his customers that same way. Every year for the past five years I’ve had my car inspected at Cosmo’s business.
Here is another good thing to know–not only about Cosmo’s business but all small businesses: We have been brainwashed to think that things are more expensive at the smaller businesses than at the larger businesses. That is not always true. It certainly isn’t for Cosmo. A few months ago I called around for a friend who needed tires for his car. I called one chain store and they gave me a quote and guarantee of $820 to have the tires installed and aligned. I called Cosmo and he gave me a quote and guarantee that was the same, and the same brand of tires for $520.00 Now who do you think got the business?
Today as I was getting four new tires installed on my car I told Cosmo about John and how John will stand up for small businesses when he gets to Washington. Then Cosmo let me put one of John’s signs right there at his place on the busy corner of First and Buckingham in Garland.
TO GET YOUR GOOD DEALS AT THIS GREAT SMALL BUSINESS: CALL 972-496-6566 AND TELL COSMO THAT LIZ AND JOHN LINGENFELDER SENT YOU.
You will not be able to not like Cosmo! He is engaging, polite, fun and extremely intelligent. AND HE WILL GET YOU THE BEST DEAL FOR TIRES IN THE DALLAS AREA!
The address is: 101 East Buckingham Garland 75040
January 13, 2010 in Afghan War, Class War, Cutting Costs, Democracy, War, War in Iraq
FROM Janine Wedel’s brilliant new book, “Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government and the Free Market” GO TO HUFFINGTON POST TO READ THE COMPLETE REVIEW
” . . . “Making a Killing: The Business of War“, we identified 90 private military companies operating in the world, hired by governments or corporations. In early 2003, we reported that nine out of 30 members of the Defense Policy Board, then chaired by Richard Perle, had ties to defense companies with $76 billion in Pentagon contracts in just the preceding two years. In late 2003, the Center issued “Windfalls of War“, first revealing that Kellogg, Brown & Root, then a subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company, Halliburton, was the top recipient of U.S. war contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq. That report, which won the first George Polk award for online reporting and was produced by 20 researchers, writers and editors, also revealed that the most of the major contractors had close employee or Board ties to the executive branch for Republican and Democrat administrations and cumulatively they had contributed many millions of dollars to the political process. Fascinated and alarmed by the Tammany Hall feeling of political favoritism or cronyism I was getting, we launched into another epic investigation and published “Outsourcing the Pentagon: Who’s Winning the Big Contracts” in the fall of 2004. . .”
December 11, 2009 in Afghan War, Cutting Costs, Obama, Obama Administration, War, War in Iraq
The HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES–not the Senate and not the President of the USA–THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ALONE has the power to end the useless wars. IT IS THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES WHO DETERMINE WHETHER FUNDS WILL BE PROVIDED–NOT THE SENATE AND NOT THE PRESIDENT.
If the President and the multimillionaires in the Senate don’t have the funds to go to war, then they cannot.
Write to your elected official in the House of Representatives and tell them to vote against funding Afghanistan and Iraq wars NOW–not two years from now, not five years from now, not twenty years from now but NOW!
November 3, 2009 in 2011 Republican Pasture, Congressional Antics, Cutting Costs
Is there anyone in Congress with the guts to publicly reprimand the DOD and demand that these jackasses reimburse the U.S. taxpayers for what they did which is actually illegal?
HOW MUCH DID THAT PIECE OF RIGHT-WING IDIOCY COST THE AMERICAN TAX PAYERS?
April 15, 2009 in Cutting Costs, Economics and Ideology, Pop Culture
QUEEN’S COMMENTS: I read an interesting article this morning in the Christian Science Monitor by Peter Grier. In it Mr. Grier lists and discusses ten ways in which he believes the new economy will look different. Following are excerpts from three of them that I found especially interesting. Be sure to read Mr. Grier’s full article in the Christian Science Monitor. A lot of what he writes about validates what others are saying as well: forget about returning to things as they were–it just “ain’t” happening.
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1. VALUE AS THE NEW VIRTUE
This is a given: the BC economy (the one we had Before the Crash) had too much of many important things. Too much debt. Too much consumption. Too much speculation in complicated financial instruments by bankers blind to the bubble inflating around them. That’s not coming back.
Housing prices are not going to rebound 20 percent soon. The Dow is not getting back to 14,000 this decade, and maybe not the next. Circuit City, Linens ‘n Things, Lehman Brothers – they’re all extinct, like Studebaker. “We are never going back to the way we were,” says Paco Underhill, chief executive officer of the retail consulting firm Envirosell. . .
2 RETURN OF THE TIGHTWAD
The new value rules have been reflected for months in that most sensitive of indicators of consumer attitudes – marketing. The sign of the times is a sign in the mall advertising “65 Percent Off!”
Those placards are going to be up for a while. Many retailers are desperate for cash as much as profit, just to pay their suppliers – and buy the next season’s line of goods so they can stay in business. Having experienced those deep discounts since last November, consumers may now expect them as a matter of course, says Stephen Hoch, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. He thinks a new logic now pervades the US marketplace. . . .
3 EBAY AMERICA
One quality that almost by definition reflects value is the state of being second-hand. And in the economy to come, the sale of used goods may increase as secondary markets surge in importance. This means Goodwill and Value Village will become more and more peoples’ idea of places to shop for vintage fashion. People who previously preferred new cars now might buy used.
At Twice as Nice, a consignment shop in downtown Tuscaloosa, Ala., Leslie Stallings stares up at wedding dresses hanging from the ceiling. She and her mother, Debbie Stallings, drove nearly an hour in torrential rain to find the perfect dress at a reasonable price. The dress she really likes, the one she can imagine shimmering in the candlelight as she says her vows, is $1,200 at a local bridal boutique. This one is only $300. Still, they decide to keep looking.
One reason eBay and similar outlets will take on greater importance in the future is the nervousness of consumers. About one-third of US residents feel at immediate risk of downward mobility. One-third know someone else who is threatened. One-third is fairly secure but understand conspicuous consumption at the moment seems like bad manners. . . .
