Free $200.00 Dinner

If you think it's really free then we need to talk

Today's investment climate is sure to make you poor
Chuck Thompson of TTC Media




You are invited to a free dinner at Crystal's Diamond Palace. The catch, you must own your home or must at least be actively and presently looking to buy your first home. Plus you must have an asset portfolio of one hundred thousand dollars and have an additional thirty thousand in cash conversion equivalents. (How else do you expect to pay our fees?) Welcome to the money store jingles raging across the nation. Self proclaimed financial experts implying they know money better than you do. Well at least they know how to get their hands on other people's money better than you do anyway.

If you are a sucker enough to buy into the storyline, you can expect a great night of constant low pressure sales techniques designed to show you how dumb you are and how smart they are. You will be sold on concepts that show you how to part with your money under the guise of making and keeping more of your money and building a sounder nest egg for when you retire. Good luck on that. One recent person we heard was advocating taking your 15 year mortgage and turning it into a thirty year one to free up monthly cash flow. Wait there is more. If you roll your high interest credit card debt and even your car payments that is not tax deductible into the new 30 year mortgage and it now becomes partially tax deductible, you will save a fortune.

Sounds smart huh? Wait there is more, but you have to come to the free dinner to get the entire scoop. Have you figured out the con yet or are you hungry for more? If you are hungry for more, go git yer free dinner. We have freed up over $500.00 monthly cash for one of our clients using this technique alone. (Costing that poor sap a huge fortune). Let's break this down just where we are now and see how you will loose a ton of money on what sounds like a very smart idea. First off, re structuring your mortgage is going to cost money. I don't have to have any financial interests in any mortgage company to make a big fat fee from steering you towards them.

Second, extending any credit, even at longer and lower terms costs more than paying them off sooner. You think buying a house is a wise investment? You bought that house thirty years ago for fifty thousand dollars and now it's worth two hundred and fifty thousand dollars? Smart investment huh? Until you add up all the monthly payments you paid during the lifetime of that mortgage and found out that you paid three hundred and twenty thousand dollars for that two hundred and fifty thousand dollar house. What? You didn't think the bank understood appreciation of assets when they wrote that loan thirty years ago? So you are still upside down in your smart investment. You would have been better off buying that corvette.

A fifteen year loan does not carry as much of an interest bearing burden as a thirty year fixed lower interest loan does. The sooner you get rid of any loan, the better off you are going to be. What is more profitable, a four year twenty five percent loan or a thirty year four percent loan? Answer, a thirty year 4 percent loan is more profitable to the bank and more expensive to you. Higher interests rates are charged for depreciating assets. Lower interest rates are charged for appreciating assets. So rolling over a depreciating asset and refinancing it into an appreciating asset insures the bank against loss while you pay more.

But hey, after paying those refinance fees that just put you deeper into debt, you have more cash to play around with. So now these financial experts are going to show you how to make money with your new found money. (Ah, more finders fees paid to them). You are shown the way to financial freedom and are instructed to cut up all but maybe one of your credit cards. Smart no matter what your situation is. I recommend cutting them all up and not even saving the one. So now you are directed into the investment market. Account setup fees and transaction fees abound. But you are building your nest egg now in sound financial instruments. How smart you have become and how good it's been for you to listen to these folks.

And the choices. Not one when truly researched sound no matter how good they look on paper. Let's look at market portfolios that invest in everything from pork bellies to stocks to bonds. All spread out over an entire array of fields. Cuts the risk. Well, it cuts the risk of the managers, not yours. These portfolios may make a huge amount of money, but by the time everything is cut up and their fees taken out and costs divided up, you are lucky if you stayed just below inflation. Turns out what is on paper is not what actually comes down to you. But now you have more fees to pay that are not covered by your meager profits that eat further at what you are trying to build. Those fees are your account fees and have nothing to do with your investments except where your investments are held. But hey, next years market will be better. And remember, your investment friends can not be held responsible for market corrections that are going to wipe you out next year before you pay more administrative fees to your broker along with account fees.

Your new mortgage in the mean time has been sold several times to other companies that have created derivatives out of it. Your last payment as it turns out went to the wrong company and now you are a month behind on your mortgage and your credit takes a hit. More fees and higher rates because of this. But hey, your investments will pick up the difference. Now that you are in the hole deeper than ever before, at least you had more spending money and still have some of it left over even though you have gotten even deeper into credit debt and are now potentially facing being laid off as your company moves operations overseas. But hey, your a smart perso0n and these strategies came along at a great time, so maybe there is hope for some new strategies. Well I have just the perfect opportunity for you. Turns out there is this bridge in Brooklyn for sale.

So let me just finish by saying that I am more than happy to spend two hundred dollars up front to show you that I am smarter than you with the use of charts and knowing that by the end of the night I have you hooked into bringing me about two thousand dollars in fees all the while selling out your future. Yup, your a pretty smart person for buying into this. By the way, that two hundred dollar dinner only costs me thirty five dollars and I have just structured a deal to pull an additional eight hundred dollars out of one in five that I get on board. Cheers.

Scott Petty With The US Coast Guard Update

We have just learned that Scott Petty with the US Coast Guard, a division of Homeland Security, works in the legal department in Norfolk, Virginia. This is the guy we have been reporting about with all the illegal fireworks and the way he uses them as well as our last report where he tried to pick a fist fight with a female neighbor. Here is a guy that should obviously know better based on the fact he works in the legal department. Apparently this guy thinks he is above the law? This is frightening.

Gloucester County man arrested for soliciting sex from a minor on Facebook, Story From WTKR News

This Story from WTKR News

A Gloucester County Sheriff's Office investigation led to the arrest of Werter Gregory Wright, 43, who has been accused of communicating with a minor on Facebook and making inappropriate, sexual comments to the teen.

He was arrested at his Newport News home in the 12700 Block of St. George Street and has been charged with three felony counts of use of a communications device to solicit a minor for certain sexual offenses.

A 16-year-old female told police that she had been communicating with Wright, who took school pictures at several schools on the Northern Neck, through Facebook. The teenager indicated that Wright made several inappropriate comments of sexual nature to her.

Police went undercover and started communicating with Wright where several conversations between and undercover investigator took place.
Authorities searched Wright’s residence and seized several items including a computer, external hard drive and a cell phone.

Wright is now being held without bond at the Gloucester County Jail.

Wright was using the Facebook account “facebook.com/GnGImages” and the Yahoo Account

steelersfan882002@yahoo.com.

Anyone with information on Wright or has had any juveniles who may have had contact with him on any of these accounts is asked to contact Lt. Little at Gloucester Sheriffs Office at 804-693-1100 or Investigator Taylor with Richmond County Sheriffs Office at 804-333-5646.

Man Charged In burglaries, Story From The Virginia Pilot

By Cindy Clayton
The Virginian-Pilot
© September 14, 2011

GLOUCESTER

A 24-year-old man has been charged in connection with several larcenies and burglaries last month.

Christopher Michael Hatton, of the 4100 block of Cappahosic Road, was charged with two counts of burglary, two counts of grand larceny, two counts of misdemeanor credit card fraud and one count of petty larceny, a news release from the Gloucester County Sheriff’s Office says. He is free on a $10,000 bond.

Cash, credit cards and GPS units were stolen during overnight larcenies and burglaries in the 6700 block of Havers Hall Road and the 6700 block of Paramount Court on Aug. 21, the release says.

Surveillance cameras later captured video of the stolen credit cards being used at area convenience stores.

Gloucester County Public Events Calendar Now Up And Updated

On the top right hand side, that little calendar you see there is a public calendar that shows upcoming events for and around Gloucester County. At the bottom right hand side of the calendar is a Google Calendar button, if you click on it, it will take you to a full size page of the calendar itself and you can go through it based on a single day, one week or one month. The calendar can be printed out as well making life very easy should you want to make sure you want to remember a given event.

Coming soon will be a way for you to sign up for text messaging for upcoming events. Plus we will be making announcements here on this site and when we can, we will include pictures and video from previous events to give you an idea of what the present one will be like. Now having attended many events here in Gloucester, even though the event title may be the same year in and year out, the event structures are usually a bit different than from previous years.

Almost forgot a very important feature. Google maps is embedded into the calendar so if you would like directions to the event, just click on the Google map button and it will map everything out for you. Now how is that for simple? Plus we have our own Google Map embedded into this site, so you can always use that to find anything in and around Gloucester.

Because this is a free public calendar, we will be happy to post other events not listed either through Gloucester County's government web site or Gloucester Main Street's calendar. We will also be happy to post pictures or video or both if you have them. Just send us an email and we will get back with you shortly. There is an email section on the right hand of this site towards the bottom so contacting us is very easy.

Guinea Jubilee Starts Friday Night September 23rd, 2011 At 7:30 PM

The Guinea Jubilee will begin Friday night at 7:30 PM in Bena and will remain open until 10:00 PM. Saturday the day kicks off early starting at 7:30 AM and lasting throughout the day until 9:30 PM. This is a top notch seafood festival that many look forward to each year and this year should be no disappointment. For more information, click the link above to go to the official web site for the event.

Civil War Re Enactments, Historic Courthouse Circle, September 24th, 2011

Being held at the Gloucester County Historic Courthouse Circle September 24th, 2011 from 10:00 AM until 4:00 PM will be a Commemoration of the African American's Fight For Their Own Freedom event. Above is a list of the days events. From personal experience, Gloucester does an amazing job building and hosting events throughout the county. The issues are getting the word out to the public about these events. Well there are a number of us now working on fixing that issue. The major problem is budget constraints within the county. We promote Gloucester County and county events for free. This particular event will probably be a one time shot being the 150th anniversary of the Civil War here in the United States. So everyone everywhere has been producing unique one of a kind events throughout the nation because of this fact.

This is a great time to see a different side of history not often portrayed in other Civil War re enactments. The event itself is historical and deserve great support. So send this information on to as many people as possible and help spread the word.

Heading For Guinness World Records With Fife and Drum Videos

We are Heading to Guinness World Book of Records. We have already registered on the Guinness web site and posted our new challenge. What are we shooting for? World Record of the most Fife and Drum videos shot, produced and published in one year. We already hold the title for producing and publishing the most Fife and Drum videos on the Internet today. It's time to take it to a new level. The start of the new challenge begins January 1st, 2012 and ends on December 31st, 2012. We have set up a new blog site to chronicle the events, will be adding a new calendar to the site to show where we will be shooting on any given day and we will also launch a new video channel on You Tube to host all the videos for 2012.

Our goal will be to shoot and produce no less than 300 videos during the year. One camera, one person, one goal. Winner takes the title.

US Coast Guards Scott Petty In The News Again

The above clip is of Scott Petty of the US Coast Guard blowing off illegal fireworks. This is just a partial clip but shows the illegal fireworks going off in his back yard. We have some updates to this story and another one coming soon. First we want to thank Congressman Rob Wittman for stepping up and sending to the Coast Guard our complaint on this guy. We received a letter from Congressman Wittman's office along with a letter from the US Coast Guard informing us that they are now holding an ongoing investigation regarding Scott Petty.

Well our own continuing investigation shows that this guy stoops to some very low levels. I mean really low levels. What we learned. Scott Petty tried to pick a fist fight with one of his neighbors. Okay, no big deal you say? The neighbor is a woman. This woman decided that instead of trying to fight back, she would report him to the Coast Guard. What she got for reporting this guy was backlash from the US Coast Guard. Joseph Sedoti, US Coast Guard RAC, started a harassment campaign against her in the name of a so called investigation. When the woman's husband stepped in a week later, Joseph Sedoti claims he never opened nor was looking to open an investigation.

Wait, the US Coast Guard got involved but had no intention of doing an investigation? This guy harassed a civilian just because he was conducting backlash? Well we have sent this information to Congressman Wittman's office so that he may forward it to the US Coast Guard as part of the ongoing investigations they have against Scott Petty. If you think this is over or that you have seen how low this guy really sinks, you have not seen anything yet. We are finishing up yet another news story on this guy that is even worse than this one.

Scott likes to use and abuse his friends in the wrong places. One such case was sending a police officer to investigate the so called illegal video we did of Scott shooting off illegal fireworks and then giving us permission to show the video to his boss. The police officer was not acting under authority of his boss but instead on his own behalf using his uniform to intimidate. He claimed to have seen the video but yet it was clear he hadn't. This isn't the next story we have for you. It's just one of many sideline stories we have on this guy.

We said it before, this guy is a neighborhood terrorist. Our next story will show you how deep it all goes. Do we really need people like him serving in Homeland Security? That should scare everyone.

Green Cleaning Products You Can Believe In

As any of you whom have been following this site for some time know, we are anti green. So much so that we use the term that we are orange. You have to see our other post on this for further details. With that said, one of our arguments forever and a day has been that most manufacturers that claim to be green or going green are far from green at all. The products still contain harmful chemicals and they ship a lot of water with them which we already have enough of thank you.

Once in a while we actually see a company that has made serious in roads to true green technology and are making products that make sense even to us on the orange side. Two companies come to mind. Amway with it's LOC product also known as Liquid Organic Cleaner, sold in concentrated form where they are not shipping a lot of water and now Shaklee who ships even less water with their new H2 product. http://www.shaklee.com/category.php?main_cat=homecare&sub_cat=GetCleanHousehold&type=sub This is the link to Shaklee's page for their H2 organic cleaning product. We have no connections to Shaklee nor do we want any. We were just very impressed with this offering and it makes true sense. Non toxic. Bio Degradable, highly concentrated, not shipping a bunch of water, multi use product with zero sum side effects.


http://www.amway.com/Shop/Search/SearchResults.aspx?searchkeyword=LOC Now L.O.C. has changed since we were last aware of what it was called, but they still make the same product but have expanded on the product line and now call it Legacy of Clean. The Multi Purpose Cleaner is the one that was always a favorite. Again, we have no ties to Amway and we do not want any either. We can not stand the Multi Level marketing game. Places products cost to high in order to pay everyone out on the various levels. If I wanted to sell these items at retail, the markup on them isn't there to make it worth our time. Selling the items wholesale to any business makes zero sense as then there is no markup at all. You have to sell at your own cost which makes no sense at all.

You may get a bonus at the end of the month because of volume? Big deal, no thanks. These products make sense for what they are and what they do, but for buying them through a network? Again, a pain. I don't want to buy from someone who will try and sell me a lousy business op all the time, or sell me at full retail. I'd rather buy it on line without the hassle of having to deal with any dealers or buy it in a store. So there you have it. If you want green products that make sense and work, you have to deal with a bunch of other stuff you may not be able to stand.

One day maybe someone will get it right. In the mean time, here's to the orange revolution sticking our thumbs down to the green movement.

Affordable Ink Cartridges For HP, Kodak, Lexmark, Epson, Canon And Others

One of the issues that has bothered us as of late is the constant rising costs of ink cartridges without competition to slow the prices. There was a time when you could go into most retailers and find an off brand cartridge for your printer that didn't cost nearly as much as the name brand cost. Most retailers these days have made deals with the manufacturers though to no longer carry the off brand cartridges leaving us no choice but their own high priced offers. Kodak and HP lead the field in the best prices for replacement ink on the market today, but that is not competition. Competition is when there are competing manufacturers of the same product.

So we have done our research and found that Ink Grabber is one of the best deals around to find alternative manufacturers for ink cartridges made by alternative manufacturers for the printer you presently use. A fair enough argument can be made that the off brand manufacturers do not use the same quality inks as the name brand uses, however, it makes little to no difference if you are printing text pages with minimal pictures and will only be using the pages for a short period of time for your work. Now if you are printing say top end pictures that you want to last for years to come, then you may want to consider the higher prices, otherwise why would you bother to spend more for less?

Another alternative that we will mention is that Walgreen's refills ink cartridges for a fair price. However, I rarely find that they can refill the ones we use the most such as Kodak. If they can refill yours, color is usually only $12.00 per cartridge. If you find a better deal on line, buy it on line then.

Again, we like Ink Grabber because they carry an alternative manufacturer for our Kodak ink at a cost of only about $8.00 for a number 10 color ink cartridge as opposed to paying $20.00 retail for Kodak's offer. So we can buy 3 color ink cartridges for slightly more than the cost of 1 from Kodak. We have decided to start advertising Ink Grabber on this site for exactly that reason. So here is to leveling the playing field and starting to tell the world that we want real competition and not forced products at inflated prices.

It Is Now Illegal To Feed Deer In Virginia

As of September 1st, 2011, it has become illegal to feed deer in the state of Virginia. Click Here to see the official state notice. Feeding deer may just harm other species of wildlife according to the state department. In fact, they say that there is movement to see the deer population decrease. Poor Bambi does not have a prayer here. So if you have a bird feeder outside your door and the deer sometimes come over to it to eat the seed, you may now be guilty of breaking the law. According to what we have read, it is alright to kill off deer to save other species of wildlife. ?????


You also can not use feed as bait for hunting deer as that too is a violation of Virginia law. Seems that this is what brought about the present law. Gotta love the people who spend how much money of our tax dollars to come up with this stuff?

Irene Updates, Gloucester, Virginia

Just some quick update news. For the most part Irene was not as bad as it could have been. We have seen much worse. We lost internet access to the site for posting just after we posted the video Saturday. We have tried to get back onto the site for several days but had no luck as servers were still down in numerous areas. Everything seems to be fixed now. A fair amount of trees went down along the main roads and plenty down all over. We heard that the Courthouse area was hit especially hard in relation to Isabelle. We never lost power at the command center. We have traveled all through the Northern Neck and damage overall is minimal. Not to make light of those who have suffered extensive damage to their properties, overall it was minimal for the area as a whole when compared to the damages seen by other storms and this past spring's tornado's.

This year we have seen a number of strange behaviors that are not normal to the area. Massive tornado's and numerous earthquakes. We hope we have seen the worst of the year and that we can now begin to write it all into history. We hope that those of you here in Gloucester get your power back on soon and we have learned that many of you have. There are still a few without lights and we know that this is no fun.

Hurricane Irene Video, Gloucester, VA

Irene is now really starting to pick up strength now here in Gloucester. The winds have picked up quite a bit and in the distance it even sounds like a tornado is hitting. This video was just shot moments ago along route 17 just outside our present command center. Branches are now being pulled off of some of the trees behind and along side of us. Power has been flickering on and off. But still nothing major. Dominion Power trucks are still traveling along 17 so that is a good sign. The worst has not even begun yet. Maybe we were wrong about this storm? It might just be a bit stronger than what we have been expecting.

Nicks Spaghetti And Steak House Open Today Even If Power Goes Out

The folks over at Nick's Spaghetti and Steak House wants everyone to know that they will be open today to serve you even if the power goes out. Good to know should the power go out. A fine menu over at Nick's.