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Saturday, June 25, 2011

More Ways to Score Deep Discounts, China's Rise-Our Demise



Bruce’s Poor Man Survival Bulletin

A digest of urban survival resources


ISSN 2161-5543



In This Issue:

1.   More useful ways to get online discounts

2.   Make some cash selling domain names

3.   How to use a compass while hiking

4.  China’s Rise, our demise – Feeding the beast



"If you look at Washington, you see permanently camped on the banks of the Potomac spread around in concentric circles an army representing thousands of selfish interests. The sole purpose of their presence is to plunder, by hook or crook, the public treasury for the benefit of their particular people or corporations."
-- Charlie Reese

One easy way to cut government waste -

Despite promises to cut spending, Politicians have increase their ‘vacations’!


  Mrs. Obama and children (and huge entourage) visited S. Africa this week.  How nice.  The Obama’s take more expensive vacation than just about any other President (except for perhaps Clinton who visited something like 52 countries).  It cost a ton of taxpayer bucks to visit Africa, Spain, Europe, etc.


Indeed, all politicians spend a boatload of our money on fancy trips, often supposedly to “see first hand’ what the situation is in - You Name the Country.


What a load of horse manure.  What the hell do we pay generals, and ambassadors for?  Pick up the damned phone and call to find out what’s going on!


Politicians are driven around in limos, eat at nothing but first class restaurants, have the best health care and clubs and more…all at taxpayer expense.  Talk about cutting waste, start with Washington.


Although the White House refuses to share the actual cost for a trip to HI, here’s a breakdown we found:


>Mrs. Obama’s early flight to Hawaii: $63,000 (White House Dossier)

>Obama’s round trip flight to Hawaii: $1 million (GAO estimates)

>Housing in beachfront homes for Secret Service and Seals in Kailua ($1,200 a day for 14 days): $16,800

>Costs for White House staff staying at Moana Hotel: $134,400 ($400 per day for 24 staff) – excluding meals and other room costs

>Police overtime: $250,000 (2009 costs reported by Honolulu Police Department)

>Ambulance: $10,000 (City Spokesperson)

TOTAL COST: $1,474,200


Then there are the unknown costs:

-Rental of office building in Kailua on canal

-Security upgrades and additional phone lines

-Costs for car rentals and fuel for White House staff staying at Moana Hotel (Secret Service imports most of the cars used here to escort the president)

-Surveillance before the president arrives

-Travel costs for Secret Service and White House staff traveling ahead of the President

Source:  The Blaze.com


“This is an important issue for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that millions of dollars are spent on flying lawmakers all around the world,” says Craig Holman of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group. “It is a form of influence peddling when sponsored by private entities. When the government pays for it, we need to know that tax dollars are being used wisely instead of funding junkets.”

Lawmakers can travel at taxpayers' expense or accept free trips to symposiums paid for by academic institutions and think tanks. The latter often gets lawmakers and their family members to exotic destinations for a little food for thought and a whole lot of wining and dining.  Each trip costs taxpayers an average of $220,000!



Our Washington ruling class cost a fortune.  Tell them to take a bus!


Use Listerine to disinfect your home and get rid of mold.  Spritz a solution of half water and half mouth wash on surfaces including grout.  Let stand a couple of minutes and wipe clean.



PM’s Betty Shocker Compendium of Useful Stuff…

 



FEMA has an excellent booklet titled Risks and Hazards: A State by State Guide. It is a state by state guide covering tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes, snow and extreme cold, tsunamis, nuclear power plants, and nuclear attack (the "Big One" not terrorists/small scale attacks). The booklet will give you an idea of the possibility of these threats for your state/region.


 FEMA-196 Risks and Hazards: A State by State Guide




Another Method of Making Some Extra Cash


 The Poor Man probably owns close to 25 domain names.  Although I’ve never attempted to sell them, there are plenty of folks making money by selling domain names, some with a website already attached to them (plenty of examples on eBay).


You may recall stories of entrepreneurs who owned WalMart.com and other major names before such retailers decided to increase sales through a web presence.  Imagine their surprise when they learned had already been taken (along with several variations)!  Nearly all of the major retailers ponied up some big bucks to buy back their domain name and it was all perfectly legally.


Most domain names can be reserved for about $10.  You can find such registrars by going to Google and typing in “domain names’ into the search engine.  I use NameCheap.com and GoDaddy.  You’ll often find specials for less than $2 as I did recently on GoDaddy.  The ‘com’ domain names are becoming somewhat scarce and there are many others to use now such as ‘Biz,’ ‘US’, ‘Net,’ ‘Org,” ’Info,” etc.


Once you own the name and wish to sell it, you can use eBay or via sites such as:

SEDO.com or BuyDomains.com


If you have some basic website building skills, create a basic website to enhance the value.  Many of the domain names I own are similar to PoorManSurvival.com and/or deal with frugal living.  All of them use ‘redirects’ to steer folks to my main site as a traffic builder.



Clean your keyboard with a cotton swab dipped in rubbing alcohol; use rubbing alcohol to clean TV and Computer monitors and other electronics too (we use it to clean DVDs too).



More Ways to Get Discounts

Bargain masters already use the internet and such sites as Groupon to grab great deals.  More and more such sites seem to pop up each week.  The ‘local deal’ has been a huge hit among the frugal living.  Sites like Groupon and Restaurant.com negotiate special discount rates with merchants and then resell the vouchers to the public.


Back in the day, I did the same thing with newspaper publishers.  I’d buy full page ads at deeply discounted rates (usually getting their best customer rate) because I’d pay cash upfront.  I’d then resell blocks of those ads to other merchants at a discount.  Made some nice cash in that fashion.


Consumers buy the vouchers online with a credit card and print it out and then use it at the local merchant.  Even small cities are getting in on the act.  Some of the newer sites include:


>>LivingSocial.com - which is now in 182 areas and offers the same kinds of deals as Groupon but with a twist…convince three of your friends to buy the same deal and you get your voucher free!


>>BuyWithMe.com - Although not widespread yet, their vouchers last a full seven days.


You’ll also want to check out some aggregator sites which monitor individual sites and consolidates their current offers into a single list.


Here are some aggregator sites to look at:

>DealNews.com   >DealRadar.com  >8Coupons.com  >Yipit.com


Helpful note:  be sure to use the voucher before they expire or try reselling them on a site such as:  Lifesta.com


Use deodorant to stop the sting of an insect bite.  The aluminum in it counteracts the pain and stops the swelling.


How to Use a Compass and Map


The Poor Man does not own or use GPS.  I’m not sure how one would use it and the few times I’ve driven within someone using such a system, it was wrong as often as it was right..  You can be your own compass, which is better for backpacking and hiking, especially when there are no marked trails.


1.  First, determine your relationship to true north by first finding your location on the map and placing the compass over it.

2.  True your north by locating a visible landmark, such as a hill or stream which is shown on your map as being due north, south, east or west of you.  Use the landmark to adjust for the difference between true north and magnetic north, which is what the compass needle indicates.  In the US, magnetic north can vary by up to 20 degrees from true north.

3.  Find midpoints - note the compass bearing of your desired destination.  Choose an intermediate landmark located along the same line, and start hiking toward it.



Any Boy Scout handbook will provide a more in-depth course on using maps and compasses and more.



Polish your wood furniture with a few drops of baby oil.  Apply to a clean cloth and wipe the surface - no toxic chemical residue and cheap!  Use it on wood picture frames…On old frames, use GoJo to clean and revitalize the wood.



China’s Rise, Our Demise - The Parting Thought

 Feeding the beast that destroys us…


   Many Americans, except for celebrity gossip and sports, do not follow the news that matters to this country.  Few realize the extent of our national debt due to out-of-control spending by Washington during the past thirty years.



Even fewer seem to be aware of how our educational system is failing us, despite massive amounts of public funds poured into public schools.  America has fallen behind China in every meaningful category from education to spending on infrastructure.  It’s being predicted that China will surpass America as the number one economy before 2020.



It’s been reported that China is now opening economic zones in the United States, beginning this year in Idaho.  The Washington-Wall Street Cartel has squandered our national resources.  Through an outdated tax system, bureaucratic red tape, the criminalization of almost all behavior and porous borders, Washington has rendered our country impotent.



State-owned Chinese energy giant CNOOC is buying a multibillion-dollar stake in 600,000 acres of South Texas oil and gas fields, potentially testing the political waters for further expansion into U.S. energy reserves.



With the announcement Monday that it would pay up to $2.2 billion for a one-third stake in Chesapeake Energy assets, CNOOC lays claim to a share of properties that eventually could produce up to half a million barrels a day of oil equivalent



China has recently surpassed Japan as the world’s number two economy and despite skepticism from some.   Although internal scandals and a slowdown has hampered China, they have no national debt.



China’s rise to economic super power has dire consequences for the American way of life and will give rise to a new economic global order.  It will alter the cultural, ethnic and political structure of this country.



What is truly ironic is how mainstream Americans have fed the beast that is destroying our jobs and way of life.  A visit to any WalMart, Hobby Lobby or Harbor Freight Tools, for instance, will tell you we no longer make anything in this country.  The manufacturing sector is what built our middle class, something I now call the ‘Whittled Class.”  That too is being destroyed and any economics or political science professor will tell that when a country stops producing things, its destruction is assured.



It’s no secret that we have the best money government can buy and the industrial complex has been selling, leaking or losing technical information to the Chinese for years beginning with Nixon and Clinton.  Special interests rule this country, not our elected representatives.



Some have suggested our demise has been planned as a part of the New World Order, under which American workers have been sacrificed to ‘compete’ with the global society.  As I began writing in the mid-1980s when US corporations began to outsource US workers to those of sweat shop countries, “burger flipper cannot afford $40K cars.”



Fortune 500 firms such as General Electric pay no US income taxes and were at the forefront of shipping US jobs overseas.  As our debt continues to climb, housing prices sink and few decent jobs are found, you might consider stocking up on Renminbi’s.



Yours for ‘living in America’, the Poor Man



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