The Land of Ozz

I have been considering this for a while and I believe now is the time.  I will begin a series on “The Father’s Mandate” as defined in Chapter Four of Growing Kids God’s Way.  I will be cross posting these articles here and on GrowingKids.org.  Follow me on Twitter to get notified when the posts go live.

I suggest that we send a $13 check or money order to our Senators and Congressmen to make a point on how serious we are as average Americans in opposition to this bill.  A commenter on one of my other posts has inspired this idea.  Bill says:

I assume that you Christians will return any money that will be sent to you per the stimulus bill. it only right that you do not accept this money but rather send it to a a person in need. Your gift will help those in need may the good lord bless you kind republicans.

In response to Bill I would argue that “you Christians” are already personally giving more to those in need than President Obama.

Although liberal families’ incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227). RealClearPolitics

Most of us are already giving to the needy and will not be hurt by giving back just one weeks’ worth of what the average American is going to see from this stimulus in tax credits.  Join me by mailing a $13 check or money order to your Senator or Congressman within the next week.  We need to make sure the checks are made out to someone who can actually see that the money is used for those in need of help.

Stand by for more information.  Follow me on Twitter or subscribe to this blog by email or RSS feed for further instructions.

UPDATE: Obviously Senator Jim DeMint and his aids are too busy to respond to constituants.  I did try to contact him to see if such an effort as mention above would do any good? While Senator DeMint has been on the right side (no pun intended) of all the spending bills, he has done a poor job on constituant serviecs.  He must be thinking more naitonally in terms of the 2012 presidential race.  It should not be too hard to give Obama a run for his our money in 2012 since he barely beat McCain and is not fairing so well out of the shoot.

The perfect storm is brewing and few people can read the signs. Many in Washington wrongly believe the root of the economic problems are in the housing market. I believe that the root of the entire economic meltdown is rooted in greed and no amount of government programs, tax cuts, or funny money from Washington with fix that root cause. A lot of people and businesses are going to have to feel some real pain before this problem goes away.

As the news slowly trickles out of Washington on how the stimulus/bailout/rescue will actually be spent, we are learning more every day that very few politicians expect this bill to create or save a mass of jobs within the next two years. As a government civil service member I can assure you that major infrastructure projects will not translate into jobs very fast. The programs have to be staffed and then the contracts have to written and then the contractors have to develop plans, etc, etc. Most of the benefit of this stimulus will likely begin to be realized in U.S. economy in about three years as admitted by most of Washington. Yes that is very convenient timing for a presidential reelection bid but I think the economic problems could correct themselves in about that amount of time even if congress does absolutely nothing. But by doing nothing they will not be able to claim credit for casting a vote for “something” which they think “is better than nothing”.

The disturbing reality of the state of the U.S. economy came to me in a headline titled Visa Reports Profit Rose 35% with Increased Use of Cards. The NY Times did not explain this news in the same way I perceived that headline at first glance. The first thing I thought was that record job losses plus lower retail spending equals a high likelihood that folks are using their Visa credit cards and “convenience” checks to pay their mortgages, utilities, and car payments. So the “Increased Use” of Visa is probably not good news for our economy if you get down in the weeds of how that credit might be being used. Since the magic carpet (stimulus) from Washington is not expected to land in a neighborhood near you any time soon to create or save jobs this makes for the perfect storm. The more jobs that are lost the more likely we are to see non-traditional expenses put on credit credit cards. Then when the credit limit is reached before the new jobs reach the unemployed credit card owners, well you get the picture I am sure. The exact timing of when this storm will hit hardest is dependent on the amount of credit the average jobless head of household has available after the loss of their job. Once the income stops and the bottom is reached (top of credit card limit) then there will be no ability to get refinanced and you might start seeing homeless rates rise like only a small sample of the U.S. population is old enough to remember from the 1930’s. The notion that fixing the housing market will solve all the problems is a fantasy. A borrower without a job is not going to be able to pay mortgage payments even at 0% interest. No amount of mortgage system overhaul, tax cuts, or infrastructure projects are going to solve the rapidly rising unemployment numbers.

The stimulus programs implemented by President Bush did not prevent this economic meltdown and the stimulus being sold by President Obama and his friends in congress will not fix the economy. What exactly this country will look like once the perfect storm comes ashore is impossible to forecast but you should prepare to witness some extreme damage.

Higher unemployment + increased use of credit = more foreclosures to come

Gingerbread Train 2007

We are building our shopping list for our annual Osborne Family Gingerbread Train. You can see the 2006 Gingerbread Train on Grill’n Time. I realized tonight that I never uploaded pictures of last year’s train. You will have to follow me on Twitter or Facebook to see more detailed pictures of last year’s train.  I will be posting them later tonight.

No, we have not jumped to the Attachment Parenting camp.  My wife jokingly admitted to co-sleeping with our 15-month old for an hour or so each morning during our recent trip to Washington, D.C.  Josiah was sleeping through the night in a pack-n-play in the same room with our two older boys, but he was waking when I left for work.  Sherry brought him in an had him lay with her for a little more than an hour until it was time for the rest of the gang to get up.  Both she and Josiah were able to easily go back to sleep this way without waking Riley and Caden.

Babywise and Preparation for Parenting are pretty clear on the subject of co-sleeping and we completely agree with the Ezzos on this subject. That said, there might be a night or two when you can safely deviate on the co-sleeping issue with an older kid without messing up all the great nights of sleep you have been given by following the priciples taught in Babywise? An yes, I know that a 15-months old is well out of the ages covered by Babywise but I thought the title would be cute and catchy.

This post is really not about co-sleeping an, but it is about the two big C’s of parenting.  The two big C’s are Context and Characterization.  What is the context of the situation?  Are you characterized by this as a parent?  The context of this situation was pretty obvious in our case.  Sherry was considering the preciousness of others and wanting to allow our older boys to get the amount of sleep they needed.  I am sure this was also the easiest way to get Josiah back to sleep for an hour or so without having a big power struggle.

We are certainly not characterized by having our children sleep in the same room with us even though there have been some (a lot of) occasions where Sherry or I would bunk in the same room with Caden for health and safety reasons.  Caden has got very congested with a cold in the past and he has required frequent suctioning at night to help him avoid aspiration of his secretions.  At four years old Caden still does not swallow at all, not even his own saliva.  If we didn’t help him keep his airway clear then we could have ended up in the hospital with pneumonia.  We ended up in the hospital a few time anyway, but I am sure there would have been many more hospital stays if we had not taken the extra precautions.  Other than those occasions I can probably count the number of times we have slept in the same room with our kids on my fingers. Most of those other occasions happened when we were visiting relatives or friends.

So it is not unheard of for a Babywise mama to co-sleep with a child, but you can be assured that in our family it will only happen on special occasions based on the context of the circumstances.

I got my most recent edition of Dad’s and Mom’s Corner today and found that the Maxwells have added Charleston as a stop on their Southeastern tour this winter.  MrsOzz’s bestest friend, better known in our house as Aunt Addie is th primary contact if you want to come get some encouragement from the Steve and Teri Maxwell from over at Titus2.com on the subject of Homeschooling.

You can see the Maxwell’s full schedule at Titus2.com.  Aunt Addie said I was the first to RSVP for this event.

The Post and Courier advertises on the front page of the Sunday edition of their newspaper that you could save up to thousands of dollars by using the coupons and value savings in their paper, but the numbers don’t always add up.  This week’s edition of the Sunday paper claimed up to $4,531 in savings.  Our family began using coupons from the Sunday edition of The Post and Courier a little over a month ago.  My wife and I have been clipping coupons every Sunday and redeeming between $50 and $100 in coupons per week.  My wife joined TheGroceryGame about a month ago to help her maximize the value of the coupons by catching items when they are on sale and applying the coupon at that time.

The value we have been getting for our dollars by using coupons has brought me back around to being a newspaper subscriber.  The problem is that one copy of the coupons does not maximize the savings for a larger family.  To solve this problem we have been picking up a second copy of the Sunday paper.  The extra $1.50 was well worth it today alone with the additional $96 in coupons that I clipped this morning out of the extra copy.  The coupons will not all be redeemed this week because we follow the recommendation of TheGroceryGame which tells you when to use the coupons to maximize their value.  This week we have redeemed $65.25 worth of coupons already and we have not finished all of our grocery shopping yet.  MrsOzz came home with well over $200 worth of groceries for barely over $150 today. She is already getting comments from the cashiers who are amazed at the amount of money she is saving.

Now that I have given a very long explanation for why we bought two copies of the local newspaper today, I will explain something that caught my attention in the Parade insert paper.  One thing that we learned very quickly about coupons is that they are not always in the most obvious places.  While I will admit that I do not read the paper, I am only in it for the money (savings), I do make my way through things like the Parade paper.  Today’s edition of the Parade inserted into The Post and Courier delivered to my driveway was not the same as the version in the newspaper machine at Dunkin Donuts in Goose Creek, SC.  One version of the Parade was $24 short on coupons while the article content was the same. The two copies are shown above.

The first half of the Parade appeared to be exactly the same.  It was on page 21 that I found the first difference.  Both papers contained an advertisement for Delmonte Fruit Naturals, but only one copy came with a $1 off manufacturers’ coupon.  The other copy of the Parade had the ad on a different page and the coupon was not there.  This was the only coupon of interest to me, but finding this one missing peeked my curiosity.  I went on to find that there were an additional $23 worth of video and toy coupons missing from page 19 (see below) of the same paper that was missing the Delmonte coupon.  That is a total of $24 difference in possible savings in the Parade paper alone depending on where you got your copy of The Post and Courier this week.

So which copy of my newspaper was correct?  Both copies said on the front cover, “Inside You could save up to $4,531 in coupons and value savings”.  One of them is incorrect unless The Post and Courier placed those coupons somewhere else in the copy of the paper that was delivered to my house today.  Want your missing coupons?  Contact The Post and Courier at Charleston.net.

The word socializism (some spell it socialisism) is not found in dictionaries or even on Wikipedia. Simply put, it is the value system that results from being socialized. Americans parents will eventually reap what they sow. The 2008 Presidential election win for Barack Obama will likely be credited to the young Americans in this country. Parents who have sent their children into the government run schools and universities without a second thought about what their children were being taught should not be surprised with the values that are appealing to the young voters of this country these days. I went through a spell of detox after I left public education as did my wife. Had this election been held ten years ago my wife and I would have likely voted for Barack Obama based on the beliefs that had been given to us oh so subtly through our country’s public education system. It took a maturing process and a realization that I did not want the government deciding what if any moral character training would be given to my own children. I believe that parents make the best choices for their own children. A liberal democratic run government has proven that they think they know better than parents what is best for children. I will remind you of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision in 2006.

“…parents of public school children are not possessed of a constitutional right, either under the
Substantive Due Process Clause or the related right to privacy, to restrict the public schools from providing information on the subject of sex.”

These are the types of decisions you can expect from judges appointed by liberal democrats.

A majority of the children in this country are growing up in a system that teaches them that the system knows what is best for them.  Joel Belz wrote in the November 1/8, 2008 issue of World Magazine in an article titled Children of the state and said:

” Socialized medicine? Most of us recoil at the idea. Socialized airlines? Reminds us of Aeroflot. Socialized banks? When it happened last month, it terrified us.

But socialized schools? Nine out of ten of us patronize them regularly…

…With a nine-to-one edge in value shaping influence, why shouldn’t the government be producing products who think government-sponsored-everything is best?”

We see Barack Obama chosen as the next president of the United States even though he is likely to fight to have the government decide for Americans:

• When a person dies (abortion and euthanasia)
• How much can be earned and still be fair (wealth redistribution)
• Where children go to school (limited choices in private or home school)
• What children learn (including things like sex ed at very young ages and evolution only science)
• What talk show hosts are allowed to say (fairness doctrine)
• Who provides you medical care (nationalized health care)

Let us hope and pray that Barack Obama does as he says and not as he has done in the past. He has made some fairly appealing promises about uniting the country during his presidential campaign. However his voting record leading up to his presidential bid does not line up with what has been coming out of his mouth.

“Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was the most liberal senator in 2007, according to National Journal’s 27th annual vote ratings.”

That is a quote from the National Journal annual assessment of how politicians vote during their terms of office in Washington.

The liberal Democrats tend to lean towards a philosophy of allowing the government and public school systems to prepare children to make wise choices on issues like the ones mentioned above.  I disagree.  I believe that parents do a better job of preparing thier children to make wise choices on these subjects.  What do you think?

Many Americans, especially those without health care coverage are concerned about how they might be able to get health insurance coverage.  There are a lot of promises being made about health care insurance and I want to take a close look at the one that looks the most appealing to many Americans.  I want to break down the cost of health care insurance for small business and their employees based on some conversations I have been having with small business owners who do not currently offer their employees health care insurance.  Barack Obama is quoted as saying, “since 1990 companies with fewer than 20 employees have created 80% of new jobs in America”.

Small Business Health Care Cost Example

To set the stage, let’s say a services related business grosses $500K and makes $50K profit after the expenses, taxes, benefits, and salaries (including owner/operator) are paid.  This business employs 16 people who average making a gross wage of $12 per hour.  Before we go too far let’s take a realistic look at what an employee’s household budget might be in this small business.

Employee’s Household Budget:

* Misc includes clothing, toys, cable, phone, entertainment, gifts, charity, savings, etc.

I created the above household budget example based on a single income family of four including two preschool age children where the mom cannot obtain a full-time job to make enough to pay for childcare for two young children.  I added $250 per month that might come in the form of overtime or an evening part-time job by mom or day that supplements the budget.

Barack Obama’s Promise for Health Care Coverage

Barack Obama’s says that his health care plan would provide small businesses “tax credits to cover up to 50% of employee insurance” premium costs.  How will that work for this company and the employee’s family listed above?  Let’s pull data from a very popular health care plan offered to federal government employees that is available throughout the United States.  Since that is what Barack Obama offers as example in his speachs it is only fitting.  One of the standard plans offered to feds is by Blue Cross Blue Shield and costs a total of $1027 per month in premiums.  That plan costs approximately $12,000 per employee in premiums per year.  Please note that the federal government picks up 70% of the premium and there are thousands of employees in this group plan.  To get this level of coverage for a company of 16 employees, you are almost guaranteed that employee coverage in this company will cost well above $1027 per month per employee.

Health Care Cost:

Now remember that the business only has $50k profit to apply to the Net Premium Left to Pay.  If the employer decides to purchase as much premium as possible, each employee will still be required to come up with at $256 for in premiums.

With Company Help (No profit left to grow company)

$98k prem – 50k profit = $48k remaining

$48k remaining / 16 employees = $3k per employee per year

$3,000 per employee / 12 months = $250 per employee per month

No Company Help ($50k profit used to grow company)

$98,592k prem / 16 employees = $6,162 per employee per year

$6,162 per employee / 12 months = $513.50 per employee per month

The employee’s household budget will not support this premium and will likely not choose to purchase health care insurance in a similar scenario.  This is not just a speculation for small business employees that I know, but this is a fact.  These are the Plumber Joe type of folks who are already running on tight budgets and will likely pocket the $250-500 per month and pray that they don’t have health care issues that cost more than they have stuffed in the mason jar.   Every employee who has been offered health insurance where they would have to sacrifice premiums out of their check has passed on this option. The result shows that the average small business employee cannot afford health insurance even with Barack Obama’s health insurance plan for small busniess.  The average family making wages in the range listed above simply cannot afford to fork out $250-$500 per month in heath care premiums if, IF the employer can get decent health care coverage at this price per employee.

Barack Obama says that for small businesses he will “help them not just create new jobs but good jobs with health care”.  What we can clearly see it that Barack Obama is out of touch with reality when it comes to how many small businesses and households operate in this country.

References:

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/healthcare/
http://www.opm.gov/ [PDF] – U.S. Office of Personnel Manaement