Jinxed Universe

I don't own a business, but I have always had the desire in my heart to do so. Every so often I will "test" the waters to see if the time is right, and as you can see it hasn't been, yet!!

This last year I did a lot of thinking on this subject and here is why I believe that small businesses are struggling and Obama is taking the wrong view on this.

I love guns, I love the acrid smell of burned gun powder, the large holes punched in my bowling pins by passing ammo. My dream is to open a gun store. We are in great need of one here in Bountiful, especially one with an indoor range. But, I have been hesitant to make the plunge for a few reasons and I will outline them below:

1. Gun dealers require a permit to buy and sell firearms. I put in a request for an application in January of last year, mind you this is a request for an application only. It took the BATF until May to fill my request for just the application. Once I got the application here is what they wanted to get the permit.
a. What the name of the business? You cannot just have a personal permit, you must have a business in order to buy and sell guns.
b. What hours are you open? You must provide them with your working hours, no problem except they get to do random searches on your business because they don't like your business.
c. Two sets of fingerprints, one copy will go to your local police chief, who gets a full copy of your application also. The other set goes to the BATF with the second copy of your application.
d. My initials stating that I will sell gun locks at my business.
e. That I will fill out a firearms form and do a background check on anyone who doesn't have a dealer permit and purchases a gun.

Now I will jump through all these hoops if it means that I can have my own guns store, that is how bad I want it.

2. They don't want a home-office business. I was thinking of doing this to start, but with the whole provision in #1.b, I don't want to allow the BATF into my home and scaring my kids and wife.

2. I don't have the money. I am working on saving money for a business. But, with all of the taxes you have to pay as a business owner, taxes on the business itself, all of the various government regulations on a business, then on top of that because of #2, to start my business I would need to buy/rent a building to run my business. To have an indoor range will cost more to meet the standards for safety, but even if I waited on the range I still don't have the money for a space.

3. Who knows what the future will bring. With all the crazy garbage our democrat run government is doing, I have no confidence in them or their abilities. Who isn't to say that tomorrow they won't jack my taxes through the roof and put my business into bankruptcy. So, why would I stick my neck out and take a chance with the odds are it will get cut off.

Sometimes I feel I am too cautious on this subject, but with #3 being so big, I just can't do it. Here is where Obama is out of touch. He has never had a real job, his experience is in politics only. With the policies he and his friends are pushing through, we are going to be in for a long haul. There is nothing in his policies that is friendly to the small business.

In my current job I would like to get some additional help, because I'm so busy. But, will our government put into effect Healthcare, Cap and Trade, or some other law that will whittle away at those funds that could have provided a job for someone who needed it?

The answer is who knows, as for now me and my dreams will play it safe and wait and watch.

So, with my two daughters growing up, I have been forced to spend my money on new car seats. Now, I admit my daughters are young enough that what I'm writing about hasn't made an impact yet on my wallet. But, I do see and plan for it on the horizon.

It wasn't but just a few years ago that our local state government passed a law requiring that all children are required to be in a booster seat or a car seat until they are for 8 yrs of age or taller than 57 inches. This is good news for the car seat industry because in Utah our state is overflowing with children and many are now of need of a car seat. This is bad news for anyone transporting many children, especially anyone that is strapped for cash. What makes this even worse is many of the car seats made at this time take more room than a single seat. So, if you have more than 2-3 children under 8 yrs, it is difficult to seat all of these children in a single car. Which then compounds the problem of what car these people can drive and can fit all of their children.

So, as you can see the financial burden that is placed upon the citizenry is a little much, and why would I dare say would our state pass such a law? Well, its "for the children!" they say. I say anyone that uses that phrase has an alternative motive and is trying to generate a feeling of emotion in the other party.

By passing such a law the government deems to save us from ourselves. For the government to tell me what I can or cannot do only restricts me from my successes and my failures. By forcing me to purchase specific cars and car seats the government is confining my success to a set of car seats which must be replaced because car seats have an expiration date. Think of that, car seats expire just like a piece of cheese or a quart of milk. Or forcing my payment on a car that may not really suits my needs, besides transporting my children.

Now what could anyone do with that extra money? Well, many things;
Start a business, invest in stocks/bonds/mutual funds, save for retirement, any amount of things. But, for the government to force my hand in a specific direction may have some benefits, but what are the costs?

In my estimations, once I have four children, I must trade in my current car for a new one. But, what kind of car can I get, well what I can figure I have only a couple of options.

One, would be to go with a suburban. Now this car is the most appealing to be because it comes with four wheel drive and is very roomy. But, being four wheel drive it gets less than ideal gas mileage and the insurance costs are more expensive. Most importantly this vehicle is manufactured by the all-so-famous GMC, aka Government Motors Company. I refuse on principle to be raped again by the government in supporting them in this company.

The second option is to go with a van of some sort. These can range in looks and styles and I despise these in all their variety. Some of these vans cannot seat 5 car seats, so only a few of these are an option.

So, as you can see I'm hurting in this situation. I am not currently in this position, but I do see this problem surfacing and all thanks to government intervention on behalf of my children's welfare.

So, because I know many of you are finding my blog so tedious, I wanted to talk about a topic that I haven't really understood and hopefully will help some people.

As far as I can remember my family has grown a garden. Our expertise lied in growing weeds, we had an uncanny knack for growing even some of the most strange looking weeds. When we moved to my parents new house, my father layed out a garden that probably can be see from space. It was from this point on that we got "serious" and gave up our talent for weeds. We even bought a book to help us know what we were doing. We were blessed to have had a dairy on the land we had, so their had been a lot of natural fertilizer on it, which had changed the type of soil we had.

We have been able to grow anything that our land and climate would allow. Every Fall I'm amazed with how many piles of dead plants I see in garbage cans being thrown out. We have always tilled under all the leftovers/plants that were in the garden. This is where I don't understand some people. Soil only has a limited amount of nutrients, so putting those nutrients back in is important. If these people have so much money to buy fertilizer for their garden, they need to start giving me their extra cash.

A year ago we moved out of our apartment and into our house. Our new place didn't have a garden, so we made a place for one. We marked out a place and I began to put all of our grass clippings and yard debris into this area. By the next spring most of this stuff had broken down and we tilled it under. Our soil here was horrible, it is hard clay, but where we had gone and put all of these clippings it had become soft and the tiller just sunk in it was so soft.

When we grew our garden we had no problem growing anything. We actually ended up with loads more than we had planned and couldn't eat it fast enough. We even got a few compliments and questions on how we have been able to grow such a great garden.

This Fall we put the whole years worth of clipping AND garden material on the garden area. We have about 1-2' worth of yard debris on our garden. So, I'm hoping for a great year next year. I've put all the grass clippings, fallen leaves, and anything else I could get my hands on. The only thing I wanted that I didn't do was to see if I could get my hands on some chicken/turkey, or some kind of manure, would have been ideal.