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...that the Republican party is in any way shape or form for "small government".
If you vote for the GOP this November, do so with full realization that they have expanded and are continuing to expand the federal government far more than the other party has done in recent memory.
Also don't be distracted by disastrously inexperienced and corrupt women from Alaska who conveniently forget whether or not they wanted a bridge.
I'm certainly no fan of the Democratic party, but giving any vote to the GOP is a vote for more government in your life and more government in the world.
There are third parties available, despite the fact that both the GOP and the Dems would rather you forget that. The absolute vice-grip that the two major parties have will never be broken until you start voting your conscience and not the "lesser of two evils".
You don't have to vote for Kang OR Kodos. |
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As Kiva.org recently added support for teams, I just created a team for pleonast users who are also Kiva lenders. I have already invited several of you that I know of, but if you are interested please visit our team page at http://www.kiva.org/team/pleonast.
If you don't already know about it, Kiva is a website that facilitates lenders who want to support microloan transactions in developing countries. It's super easy to invest money in development in countries that really need it, and it's a /far/ superior method to actually help people than just blindly giving money to foreign governments or to people, creating a dependency which is not healthy for growth. Since they are actual loans, the beneficiaries are required to pay the money back, and thus must have a valid business plan.
Kiva itself is very transparently run, with 100% of money loaned going directly to the beneficiaries, and operating costs being paid for by separate donations directly to Kiva.
I've been a lender for about six months now and so far about 50% of my loans have been repaid and the rest are still in repayment. Kiva works with institutions in the developing countries and they boast across the board a very low default rate.
You can start with as little as $25 to really make a difference, and you can choose where and to whom the money should go, based on location, gender, business, etc.
For the month of September, if you sign up for Kiva for the first time and join the pleonast team, I will match your first $25 loan with my own $25 loan to the "closest" person to your beneficiary (kiva loans usually get completely filled within minutes, so I can't promise to be able to loan to exactly the same person :) ).
With interest rates being lowered steadily, this is a real way to actually invest your money in making the world a better place!
Please drop me a line at kennon(at)pleonast(youknowwhatcomeshere)com if you have any more questions!
NOTE: If you make a loan for a first time and have it credited toward the pleonast group, please drop me an email the first time so I can know to login and match your loan. I can't view all of the information from your loans and the activity log lags a bit. Just let me know who you loaned to so I can match it - it's kind of spammy and I want to make good on my promise :) |
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I've been using Google adsense for the advertising on non-gold member blogs for awhile now, but their payout has been steadily decreasing over the past year and so I decided to try something different.
Today I turned on ads from "Project Wonderful", which is a transparent marketplace for ads which is based on an auction.
Basically I set up the ad spots and then on anyone can bid to show their ad in that space. Bids are based on a cost per day (regardless of click through) and is always given to the highest bidder.
Right now the high bid is $0.02 a day, but I'm hoping that competition will drive it up a bit.
The bidders only pay for each second that the ad is the highest bidder, so if you're outbid you only pay for the time that you were actually being shown.
One thing I like about this is that I can approve all ads that are shown; on Adsense you can only ban ads that have already loaded but you can't approve them beforehand.
If you, for instance, are interested in advertising almost anything across pleonast (and helping support the site!) you could do it right now for as little $0.03 a day. Just go here to sign up!
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