weissblog

Okay, I procrastinate. We all know this. I’ve been doing it all my life. I keep saying I’ll break the habit… someday. So for years I’ve put off starting an IRA because I always figured it would cost too much or be too much of a hassle.

But I came across a post yesterday that I wanted to share with everyone; How to open an IRA for $1 in 15 minutes. Talk about easy. Given how great compounding interest is, you could open one for your kids with $5 in it and they could be millionaires by the time they retired.

Anyway, it’s a good article, well worth the read.

The Department of Homeland Security has admitted to Congress that it has had over 800 hacker break-ins, virus outbreaks and other computer security problems over the 2005 and 2006 fiscal years.

Okay, there’s two sides to this one. On one hand, they’re supposedly in charge of all the intel info that our great nation has and they really need to protect that information. On the other hand, they are THE target because they do have all the information. What I’d like to see is the # on how many attempts there were that didn’t make it. Then we could see if it’s just the shear number of attacks that some are slipping through or if it’s really that the DHS is just dropping the ball here.

In the end, though, the DHS knows it’s a target and should better protect the information that they have. And that starts with training the employees, not with hardware. Most security breaches are a result of someone doing something stupid, anyway.

Okay, we all know that the government wastes money. But this on really has me upset. A report by the Minority Office of the Federal Financial Management Subcommittee examines how CDC has been managing it’s money. I’m just going to list a couple of points here, but you can get your own pdf of the CDC Off Center report.

• $1.7 million — including terrorism funds — on a Hollywood liaison program, which happens to be run by a former employee (pg. 87);
• $45 million for conferences, including those featuring prostitutes, protests, and beach parties (pgs. 48 – 60);
• $250,000 spent so two former employees could help build staff morale, (pgs. 100 – 101);
• $128,000 in CDC bioterrorism funds spent by L.A. County on trinkets such as letter openers, whistles, magnets, mouse pads, flashlights, pens, and travel toothbrushes (pgs. 106 – 110).
• $5 billion spent over seven years on HIV/AIDS prevention funding, with no decrease in infection rates. The U.S. still sees 40,000 new cases each year (pgs. 23-37);
• HIV/AIDS prevention funds spent on a transgender beauty pageant (pg. 45);

For those wondering why this bothers me, you have to realize that I used to work for a non-profit in Arkansas that assisted people infected with HIV/AIDS. In addition to helping those infected we also did abstinence based presentations in the schools and offered classes and retreats to help educate people on how to live with this disease. And, in all this, we dealt with the CDC on a regular basis. However, we could never get the CDC to give us a grant to help pay for anything. We were always having to go to private foundations to fund our projects. If it wasn’t for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation we would have never been able to help as many people as we did. Anyway, that’s why this issue got me fired up.

Also, please realize that the CDC isn’t a business. Its money comes from the federal government and thus from your tax dollars. So in a indirect way, we all just paid for a transgender beauty pageant.

</rant>

Well, I’ve finally bit the bullet and launched a new blog. I’m finding it harder and harder to try and shoehorn everything into this one. Not physically harder, of course. I just find it harder to focus on things because I feel bad about leaving all those other areas untouched.

So, for those who follow this blog just for the Internet news and SEO type information, you’ll need to update your bookmarks. From here on, all the Net stuff will be on my new blog, EasyBusinessBlogging.com. Basically it’ll be a place for me to archive all the things I’ve learned and will learn about building a business online. That includes everything from planning a new business to copywriting to SEM. In addition I’ll be posting reviews of any related ebooks that I come across.

For those who couldn’t care less about the tech stuff, here’s what you have to look forward to. I’m going to try and start posting some Bible studies that I’ve done over the years. I’ll continue to make comments on any news that I find provoking, including Police stuff.

As for the finance category, I know it drew the bulk of my traffic for a long time, so obviously I don’t want to drop it. However, I really haven’t been staying up with things. So all I can do is say that, as time allows and I see something worth writing about, I will.

Of course I’d really like it if everyone would read both blogs.