DrewEckhardt

It only pays off on accidental deaths. Your heirs get zero if you kill yourself with a heart attack after eating too much fat and neglecting to exercise.

I have all my freefly suits made with reinforced rear and knees because the airplanes we crawl around in when sky jumping often have bits like cargo tie down tracks that can do a number on jump suits.

No. People tend to like what they own so reviews aren't balanced. Container/harness assemblies made to a person's measurements also have a lot to do with comfort so reviews of non-owned containers are likely to be inaccurate too. Beyond that most modern gear is very good and should net relatively similar positive reviews. Buying the right container for you is more about getting the main/reserve size combination, features, price, and delivery schedule which works for you and these things aren't reflected in most reviews. Canopy designs vary a lot more although much of that comes down to taste and is relative to experience. Some one who put a lot of jumps on Stilettos (where PD made all the following canopies less responsive to toggle input because John LeBlanc observed jumpers having roll axis stability problems when landing) may find a canopy sluggish while some one with a lot of jumps on rectangular parachutes may find it sporty. How much Spectra lines have shrunk has a _lot_ to do with how a canopy performs and some reviews are about canopies that are hugely out of trim.

It's about their ability to own a woman and the generic imperative to copy their genes. Once they get a woman knocked up and she gives birth she's more likely to stay in a bad marriage "for the children." After some time out of the workforce at home with the kids she'll have a much harder time surviving by herself and may stay for the financial security. Obviously that whole process would be easier if she couldn't get birth control to prevent pregnancy or abortion to end it.

If the rescission period hasn't lapsed under Colorado buyers' remorse laws (I'm guessing she's still there; although if not other states have similar laws) I'd run the numbers for trade-in value, retail price on the new car, and loan payments over five years from a credit union not making a profit on her and make the _strong_ suggestion you guys renegotiate.

She was naive when it came to trade-in value. She was ignorant about the new car's price. I'd speculate she knew about as much when it came to financing and let the dealer sell her that too.

Yeah, I did something like that a couple years ago. First I got the refund check which I expected. Then I got an additional check for interest at a higher rate than I'd have earned in my bank account! Later a 1099-INT followed from the IRS which amused me because I'm usually the one sending them tax forms.

Yep, it's all about the money. The Feds want it here just like the UK. No way. The UK NHS is a socialist program with tax dollars paying for government insurance, government hospitals, government doctors, and government pensions for those government doctors That's NOT how we do things here outside the VA. The Republican Medicare Part D program funnels a hundred billion tax dollars a year to privately owned prescription drug companies. As a little quid pro quo the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America made Billy Tauzin (the Republican Congress Critter who worked to pass the bill) their president with a $2M/year salary. The Democratic Obama Care program is expected to funnel a hundred billion tax dollars a year to privately owned health insurance companies (in the form of subsidies) and requires the citizens to make direct payments of billions more. It's still a little early to look for kickbacks but I expect they're coming. That's corporatism not socialism, those corporate interests want more spending not less, and if they can keep comatose elderly alive on machines for years longer they will to grab those dollars. If these American programs were socialism they'd be nothing compared to what we've already done in the form of our military which could be the biggest socialist employment program in the world. Of course they're not socialist and the military isn't either - that's for the benefit of our privately owned defense companies, with Americans getting a few million unnecessary government jobs just a side effect (with no body invading Canada with 1/30th of our spending or #2 China at 1/6th the excess is obviously not needed).

Not necessarily. As long as she wasn't under the influence at the time that sort of thing would be covered by a personal umbrella policy. $5 - $10M is easy to come by and much more is possible. With caps on non-economic damages and economic damage (loss of wages) adjusted for things like taxes and the time value of money one should be able to buy enough coverage for several wrongful deaths. My $1M policy (which obviously isn't enough now that I've thought about it) runs about $200/year. A cursory web search suggests that increasing that to $2M would add another $75 and each additional $1M would be $50.

No. Since getting a cellular phone I haven't needed a watch. In the unlikely event that's out of reach or the battery goes dead I can always look at my laptop, the clock in my car, or the clock in my bicycle computer. When vacationing in foreign countries with none of that time doesn't matter either.

It doesn't matter. A successful legal defense can be enough to bankrupt some one and it's usually less expensive to settle. I think it's very realistic. When there's a plane crash due to pilot or maintenance issues everyone tangentially related is named as a defendant including the engine manufacturer. It works fine for tandems. Given a choice I and other experienced skydivers will take an on-airport landing so we can make more loads. Obviously, where there's no nearby competition a dropzone off the airport is better than no dropzone at all.

that would make good taxmoney

Nope. Mexican narco gangsters should be eliminated along with the violence they cause by legalizing recreational drugs, eliminating the profits to be made from such drugs, and therefore getting rid of that business and all that goes with it.

I'm against prior restraint whether it's about guns or voting.

I'm glad you agree that it's a FANTASTIC law. Sometimes criminals may try to abuse it to their advantage like the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of guilt applied in US criminal cases, although that's the price we pay for living in a free country.

Skydive naked. You'll be a lot cooler without a jump suit.

Some one at the bank probably knew that real property values have been essentially flat in America since 1950 (there was a drop before that after we discovered mass production and went through the great depression) and in places like Amsterdam for centuries (with periodic bubbles like during the tulip bulb craze). No. The risk for most loans is assumed by some one else. Sometimes the loans are bought, usually by Government Sponsored Enterprises. Sometimes only the risk is assumed. There's a reason the banking industry invests money in lobbying for things like a higher conforming loan limit that lets them collect origination fees on expensive California properties and then resell the loan and risk to the GSEs which have the implicit backing of the US Government and its tax payers. They correctly assumed that they'd collect the origination fees on the loan in the spread between what they charged you and what the money cost them. They may have planned on collecting loan servicing fees until the loan was retired, sold, or foreclosed on. No one. OTOH, some smart asses do the deed once they've arranged for some one else to assume the risk. The top 1% shouldn't be dumb enough to have an appreciable fraction of their portfolio in residential mortgages.

"working for it" could also mean coming over on an H1B visa and having a company get you a green card in exchange for accepting a wage lower than an American with similar experience would take. Companies post jobs at salaries that are low by local standard with specific requirements, fail to fill them with Americans as one would expect, get H1B visas for foreign nationals, and pay for the following green-card process as long as the employees don't leave. This is probably better than off-shoring those jobs for 1/5 the wages plus management overhead which would be even less expensive than Americans although it's still an un-American deviation from a free market.

Right. America did not yet have the most progressive income tax system out of the OECD 24 where native born slackers contribute relatively little and hard working people (like those who might apply the same drive getting here) carry them. American costs of living and wages hadn't grown so big compared to those of people working in backwaters toured only by the wealthy like India and China so off-shoring was less viable. Those countries weren't yet in a position to challenge and eclipse us (China is about to pass us and have the largest economy in the world making us #2) so getting more of their good people wasn't as important. Less than 5.2 percent of the Continental United States (as of 2002) had been developed so there was more room for the newcomers. The welfare state was less evolved too; although the vast majority of that goes to native-born Americans and legal immigrants so we'll go a lot farther cutting them off than reducing the relatively small number of illegals which may be getting a piece of that pie often illegally. As a member of my town's white minority I don't think immigration is a big deal (as of 2010 my town was 40.9% Asian and 18.9% Hispanic). It provides more motivated people you can hire, the ethnic food is better, and apart from having to read around more languages on signs in public spaces there aren't obvious down-sides.

They went through the process to become legal U.S. citizens and worked for it. They didn't get it handed to them so some politician could (hope) to get votes. Chuck It depends on how you define "worked for it." When my great grandfather came "working for it" meant not being Chinese, getting here, affirming that you were not a criminal, and a doctor failing to find medical problems. The family story is that once here his contribution was limited to triggers because he didn't want to move the family to play a more significant role in the Manhattan Project, although that could be a spin because in a letter Openheimer commented he was not keen on my great grandfather's branch of physics. His son's work on classified RADAR projects doesn't make up for the deficiency although it probably made for interesting dinner table conversations surrounding what they were "not" doing at work. OTOH, those contributions would have been to Germany if he stayed home. That kind of makes you wonder about guys like Manuel, Ming, and Raghavender who'd go through the effort of getting here without our present immigration laws. Especially since those laws are harder on educated people who have more to loose coming illegally in the form of relatively well paying positions at home. A cynical person would suggest that's because our elected officials need a plurality of poorly educated and malleable voters easily convinced to put them in office plus a high paid (restrictions on competition help) elite to cover their spending habits. Little things add up - like a database employers can use to verify legality while the laws stop at requiring a driver's license that could be forged by a college student and typewritten Social Security card and much more rigorous licensing laws surrounding high-paid professionals like doctors.

The koolaid must taste great. http://www.newsmax.com/US/immigrants-illegal-texas/2012/04/04/id/434787 How are those illegal immigrants different from statistically similarly economically disadvantaged other people with low tax remissions? They're not in any significant way and since they're a lot less numerous and we'd be better off fixing the larger root problem than applying a Band-Aid to a small subset of it. Our income tax system is exceptionally progressive, topping the OECD 24 including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, The Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, The Slovak Republic, Sweden, Switzerland, and The United Kingdom. The legal low-earners are a much bigger share of the problem. Of course fixing this is unlikely since the politicians have an easier time staying in office when the majority who elect them isn't paying for their spending and many of the remainder are distracted by irrelevant issues like illegal immigration instead of their tax burden. Prior to 1913 there was no federal income tax. The 1913 income tax law allowed a $3000 exemption for single people ($65,331 in 2010 dollars) and $4000 for married couples ($87,108). The next $20,000 ($435,544) was taxed at 1%. Robber barons raking in $500,000 a year ($10,888,595) paid the top tax rate of 7%. You'll see the real problem if you compare and contrast that with your standard + personal exemptions and marginal tax rate.

Everyone who continues to own property pays property taxes because otherwise the tax-lien holder has it seized and sold at auction. Nearly all renters pay property taxes indirectly with the portion of their rent covering costs before the landlord's profit is collected (rent on a few rental properties does not cover costs where the owners were stupid and bet on appreciation to make up for it although the long term average after inflation is around zero). Homeless people don't pay such taxes; although that holds regardless of their immigration status. I've yet to run into a homeless person who was neither white nor black and likely to be from elsewhere and therefore conclude that immigrants are disproportionately non-homeless property tax payers regardless of their legality.

When the first of my ancestors came here everyone was welcome. When the last showed up everyone was welcome except the Chinese. At that time America was the greatest country in the world. As a True and Sincere Patriotic American who has travelled in a few continents and interacted with an atypically broad range of people I conclude "lax" immigration policy had a lot to do with our greatness. Changing the laws back to what made us exemplary is a lot harder politically than relaxing enforcement in some areas (Obama's Justice Department had almost prosecuted more Felony Illegal Rentry cases in one term than Bush 43 managed in two terms when I last checked and I'd guess he got there although I haven't looked at the latest numbers if they've been published). Most of the immigrants don't pay enough income taxes to cover their costs, although in that regard they're no different from native born Americans in the same situation who are a lot more numerous and that problem needs to be addressed as a separate issue. To grossly simplify: 1. I have problems intellectually reconciling that me being here is OK because the American entries in our oldest family bible date to the 1600s and the most recent immigrants among my ancestors arrived in the late 1800s which I had nothing to do with although people whose family showed up more recently with the same affirmative answers to questions like my family's such as "are you a criminal or sick" are not welcome. 2. We get more American drive and innovation from people who work to get here than people who lucked out and were born to the right parents and coast. If I wasn't such a propeller head this point would be first. I've hung out with American born hippies living in communal houses and doing the least work they could while still feeding themselves (I spent fifteen years in Boulder, CO and my sister joined me for a few of them while she attended a small Buddhist liberal arts college where students had assigned meditation times). I've dealt with oodles of young American born job candidates who were lacking and got flushed in the interview process because they were incompetent slacking light-weights. I've hung out with guys from Mexico working three jobs some under the table who were most certainly here illegally. I've hung out with guys from central America running their own businesses where I'd give them 50/50 odds. The guys who worked to get here but are likely "illegal" thanks to a few pen strokes are more American in a Jimmy Stewart sort of way than the rest of them. I've hung out with European drug addicts living on "social money." I live in America where about half the population are paying no income tax and conclude that's the direction we're headed. With the reticence of politicians to cut the bread and circuses to limit the teat sucking "americans" draining our country we need fresh "American" blood from elsewhere to stay on top. 3. We're better off when more of our competition must pay to live here instead of in an emerging market where the cost of living is ludicrously less and the wages can be proportionally lower than ours. 4. The "immigration" debate is slight of hand (reference Orwell's [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate]Two Minutes Hate[/url] from 1994) distracting us from significant real issues radically reducing our quality of life. As long as you're focused on hating "The Illegals" you're not going to notice that government policies passed on behalf of corporatist interests have doubled what you or your children will pay for a house, that the price of your children's education has increased at 4X the rate of inflation, that your health care costs have suffered similarly, that you're now paying banks a lot ($5000 a year for a prudent middle class couple living someplace expensive) to store the cash you need to weather unexpected events like unemployment, etc.

[B]NO[/B]. It only works that way for installment loans, like for buying a car, mattress, etc. where you're not about to cross the threshold for "too many" of those (jet ski, boat, bike, mattress, furniture, car, ...) in which case it would make a difference. It does not apply to credit cards which are revolving lines of credit on which the fraction you use WILL hurt your credit score. Especially if you have no other significant credit cards because the fraction of your total revolving line of credit is an additional factor. That being enough (or not) to make a difference in the loan rates you get on a home is a separate issue I could not speak to. [QUOTE] I have used the "buy at 0% as long as you pay it off before x months" option for big purchases many times. I have always paid it off before the "deadline" so it was like using their money for free for 12, 24, 36, or more months. [/QUOTE] As installment loans. Not on a new credit card with a $5000 limit of which you're using $5000 - $200 which is 96% and the same fraction of your total credit with no other cards.

Buying a new rig or used rig from a big gear shop at a premium price is a bad idea. You'd be better off using paypal with a credit card to buy used gear and reimbursing the seller for the paypal charges (about 3%). Beyond that you'll do better on interest paid with a 0% credit card than a personal loan. You'll do worse on credit score. That may (you're buying a house and get a worse rate or the back-end debt ratio disqualifies you for a good rate) or may not (you aren't buying a house, don't drop low enough for a rate change, and/or don't have income to debt service ratio problems) matter. The $3800 difference between airworthy for free fly and what you're proposing would net some balance between 150 skydives and 5-10 hours in the wind tunnel (you start doing 2-ways when you're able) which will do much, much, much more for your freefall and/or canopy skills than when it's spent on new(er) gear in your colors. Looking good on video is important, but not as important as being good enough that you're not ashamed to show your videos to other skydivers. I skipped buying a new rig in my colors for ~600 jumps until I was unlikely to downsize farther at which point $xxxx / xxxx jumps was not a financially interesting number. I didn't leave it on a credit card for a full month.