Thursday, October 31, 2013

Empire Electric and a two hour plus outage!

At least the outage was in the wee hours of the morning!
I just have to give it up for Empire Electric. They win the outage race hands down! I've lived for decades in other locations and could count the power outages on one half of one hand. Living here, in Forsyth Missouri, it's like living in the Wild West! 'You just never know when that pesky old sub station will up and quite on you'! Dag nab-bit!

And so it was during the morning hours of October 31, 2013 that the power went out yet again... this time for over two hours! Was it a sub station problem? I don't know. Empire doesn't make it a point to let its customer base know what's going on, unless there is another rate hike in the offing, that is...

Well, perhaps this state of affairs won't last much longer. I'm sure that Obama and Hilliary are even now looking at a National Power Bureau that will allow for our government not only to be a single payer entity for healthcare, but which will also allow them to become your only source for power. What a wonderful world we are living in....

Friday, October 18, 2013

Empire Electric rates up 7% for 2013-14 winter season!

Along with rising food prices, you can now figure in a 7% rate increase to about 149K customers by Empire Electric partially due the fact that they did not bother to get full insurance for that twister that hit Branson in May of 2011, and courtesy of the EPA who raised the mercury standard for coal fired plants (more of these increases yet to come on the heels of Obama's pending carbon tax). But wait! there's more! Look for another rate increase in October of 2014.

Here's the nitty gritty of figuring your bill for the winter season (Nov thru Jun):

Old rate: 0.1070 cents for the first 600 kWh and then a rate of 0.0871 cents for anything above that. 
New Rate: 0.1149 and 0.0934 cents respectively.

They also levy a surcharge of $12.52 per month on top of that! Oh, and White Rive has also....

"White River Valley Electric Cooperative, which also provides service to Tri-Lakes Area customers, increased its rates effective March 1. That increase of approximately 9 percent totaled an average of $10 per month for residential customers. It last increased its rates 8 percent in April 2009, a year after a 17 percent hike." [Source: Branson TriLakes News]
 

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Only a penny more tax at McDonald's? So, why am I gripping?

Click on this picture to enlarge

Just recently, I had occasion to stop at a local McDonald's for lunch where I ordered a cheeseburger and a medium fry. I'd stopped there and ordered the same thing back in mid September, but what to my surprise, the cost was a penny in tax more! Now, I know that in a world of trillion dollar deficits, where no one cares about a single penny, this might not mean much! But, maybe that's exactly the problem with those who rule over us – maybe it no longer cares about the pennies or the dollars or the billions of dollars of tax payer money that is unaccounted for each day! So, I wondered what gives? Was this a mistake? Was it a rounding error. Was a new tax being applied, and if so, by whom?

I contacted McDonald's Corporate to ask them for clarification, but have not heard back yet. If I do, I post their response, if I don't I'll post that too.

Update: A friend named Josh Smith informed me that the 1 cent tax was one the citizens approved in a ballot to help support the fire departments. Well, that actually good to hear. No maybe they won't have to stand around at street intersections begging for money....

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Don't go to that park - its been closed by your government!

Imagine my surprise when I left home to go shopping and found that my street had been closed! True it went through a small park called River Run , but on reflection I've become suspicious none the less....

 You see, this barricade is really state of the art including a recessed locking system that makes breaking the lock next to impossible.  The Corp of Engineers installed these at both entrances over a year ago and it makes me wonder why....

In the old days a simple wooden barricade would have sufficed and would have allowed for emergency personnel access in case of a problem. Now this public access road is closed and I'd be willing to wager a bet that none of the emergency services have been notified of this fact - something that could prove costly to someone in desperate need of an ambulance.

FYI, I understand that the Corp runs this park at a loss. That's why it and thousands of others were apparently closed. The government can't afford to keep them open. Now, if the State or a local city were to run them, I'm sure that a profit could be made. Just look at River Run (closed) and the Shadowrock Park just across the river which is run by the City of Forsyth Mo - it's open for business and thriving!

[Obama! I pledge to make it my life's goal to help bring you and your party down. You and those egg sucking Democrats are a disgrace to the Republic you were elected to serve]!

Update: On October the 17, the River Run park near Forsyth MO was re-opened, but things have now changed for me. No longer will I consider the park to be part mine to share with all the other citizens. It has been clearly demonstrated that it is wholly owned and controlled by the government and that it can be taken away at a moments notice. This time, it was taken away on some pretense that the government needed to in order to fix major problems we face as a nation. In the end, however, nothing got done at all. Everything is just the way it was as that battered old can was kicked down the street once again...