Economics and Politics

I am probably the most apolitical person you've ever met.

But our new president is trying to get me involved, and the economy is making his attempts very personal.

If you're a knitter looking for knitting news, it probably won't make it into the post, and the same goes for science fiction news (except that David Hewlett will be on the Closer episode that's less than an hour away). Edit: it's taken me a while to write this, so it's now half over.

Anyway, I have a problem with people who think they're helping out, but they're really helping the people who don't need it and/or are able to take advantage of it.

President Obama put a link up on Twitter to this page on YouTube. It's about healthcare reform, and he wants to know what questions people want to ask.

But in order to ask a question, you have to have a movie camera, the ability to make a movie, and the ability to get it up on YouTube! That means that the poor and homeless have no way of asking a question!

Yeah, it's great that technology has made it possible for some people to take advantage of this opportunity. I mean Lincoln couldn't have gotten an answer from the citizenry of the US about anything. And I do respect and admire the fact that he's the first president who's asked!

But once again, the only people who can ask a question or register an opinion are people who are already reasonably affluent!

By the way, if you want to contact the president about anything, you can use the contact form at this website. I just asked some questions about healthcare.

I was in Safeway the other day, and they had a sale. That sounds good, so far. But the sale was "Buy three, get three free." And it was an item that I'd buy more than six of in the next month.

That sounds good, on the surface, but these were large, bulky, heavy items. For someone who is rich enough to have a car, that's a good deal. But for someone like me, who doesn't have transportation other than my own two feet, it's an impossible situation.

Anyway, I went over there today, and brought along a cart to lug stuff home in. 

And they had sold out of it!

Which was a problem for them, because I walked out of there and bought two of the items elsewhere. Which means that I didn't buy a whole list of stuff that I planned to buy while I was there. So, they actually lost sales because of that sale.

Oh, and the other thing is Yowza!! Please note that the two exclamation points are part of the name, not a punctuation problem on my part. You can get coupons and sales and all sorts of savings, but they haven't bothered to make it widely accessible. If you have an iPhone, or iPod Touch, then you can save money. So, once again, you have to have money to save money!

Sorry to gripe at you!

I hope you're having a great day!