Conservatively Liberal

Muckraking

2012-01-31T10:54:00.002-05:00

There are a lot of muckrakers out there.

But a lot of people don't seem to realize it when they do it, let alone when they see others do it.

Here are some good signs of muckraking.

1. Guilt by Association. Pick someone else's sins/crimes and assign it to your target. (Example: Blame the president for the Fast and Furious gun program, as opposed to the Attorney General. Similarly, blame McCain for Bush's wars, etc.)

2. Treat any bad result = corruption, without any evidence, as opposed to a mistake or even bad luck. Example: Use Solyndra's bankruptcy to assume that someone in the administration was corrupt as opposed to a single person made a bad decision Similarly, assume that Cheney must have helped Halliburton get the sweetheart deals and help them get away with over-billing (but they got caught).

3. Assume correlation = causation. I.E. Unions supported the President Obama and Unions came away owning a majority of Chrysler, after the restructuring. Not to mention the fact that the GOP gets most of it's money from the wealthy and it then supports tax cuts for the wealthy (Note the DNC gets a similar amount of money from the wealthy but ALSO gets cash from the poor, the GOP does not.).   Or treat gas prices as being caused by the president. Or treat the economy as if it were under the control of the president. Congress has more power over it than the President does, and even they can just nudge it.

4. Assume facts not in evidence (i.e. calling the health-care bill 'unpopular' - most polls show that with un-biased wording more people like it or think it did not go far enough - but that 'unbiased' wording is hard to get - see #14 below), and taking one example and treating it as common/average when it is in fact very rare.

5. Misrepresenting the opinions and goals of your opponents.   I.E. For example, saying x hates blacks or saying gays want to force others to be gay. Using the word "socialist" or "nazi" on someone that does not self-identify as one.

6. Making ridiculous symbolic claims over minor actions, or expanding a small statement to a large one. For example, claiming that Bush tried to sexually assault German Chancellor Angela Merkel when he gave her a massage, or that Obama is 'submissively bowing' or 'apologizing' to other countries. In general any discussion of sexual sins is muckraking unless we are talking about a position that deals with sexual peccadilloes, such as Human Resources. Similarly, taking a statement that says they will raise taxes on a few people and claiming it means everyone.

7. Talking trash about people that praised their opponent - either saying they would change their mind or insulting them. We discuss the candidate, not those that support them.

8. Blaming one person/side for a failure to cooperate. Cooperation takes two.

9. Blaming someone for something that clearly was not their fault - for example accusing Obama of causing the historic financial mess that started before he became elected. No it is NOT good enough to say "he didn't fix it fast enough" after you first imply he created it.

10. Attacking someone for doing something that you (or your allies) insisted they do. Happens more often than you would think, despite the obvious stupidity.

11. Making unsupported comparisons (i.e. apples to oranges)

12. Treating off the cuff statements as 'promises'.

13. Claiming something is a failure based on no/limited evidence. Almost every single politician does this one.

<b>But the biggest and most important sign of muckraking is simple: 14. An insulting tone. </b> Either in voice or in wordage. The difference between "government provided health care" as opposed to "government run healthcare". It is how "push polls" (Karl Rove's the master here) work. It is the difference between asking "Are you pro choice" and "Do you favor killing babies".

Both parties do these dirty tricks during election season. Democrats and republicans running for office do so in their political ads. But there is a party difference.   The Republicans do it ALL THE TIME, not just when running. For the past 10 years, it has been easy to find Republicans doing this kind of thing. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Fox news has made careers/businesses out of doing it. Democrats don't as a matter of course muckrake outside of the election season.

The reason is simple:

The Democrats have staked out the center.

Which leaves the GOP nowhere to stake out except the far right.    The only way for the GOP to show they are different from the DNC is to be an extreme conservative. But they know the country is at heart moderate with a slight conservative lean, not a radical conservatism. So they have to portray the moderate democrats as ridiculously left. But that's not the case.   How do you lie to the public? You muckrake. All the time.

A great example is health care. A real socialist government provides the health-care - just like England or Canada. They don't allow corporations to provide i - they insist on doing it themselves. Socialists have the government do it, moderates countries require citizens to do it, radical zealots say we don't need to require anything at all. Note some of the far left Democrats wanted government provided healthcare - but they lost that battle to the moderate DEMOCRATS as the GOP refused to deal. The DNC is a house of moderates, which really upsets the GOP.

Defining Success.

2012-01-29T15:16:00.001-05:00

In private industry it is easy to tell if you are successful or not. If you make money - and don't go to jail - you are successful. If you go to jail and/or fail to make a profit, you are not successful.

In government, their is not one measure, but several. This is part of what makes government so complicated.

Here are a list of the three major possible goals (That is these are the ways some people MAY judge it, not necessarily why they created it or how they should be judged):

Purpose: Achieve the stated purpose - such as defend the United States
Money: Under budget and/or cheaply
Partisan: Push the administration's world view

Now, sometimes there are obviously failures - when money is spent and zero change is done. These are incredibly rare. However, that CLAIM gets made an awful lot - usually by listing huge amounts of money and and cutting short the time frame.

It's sort of like saying "We have allocated $1,000,000 per child and it's been 8 months and we do't even have a child yet."

Yeah, it takes 9 months to give birth and the $1,000,000 you allocated is over 25 years, including everything you are going to pay including Medical School tuition.

Here is a list of general spending categories, including the post office. In no particular order:

Social Security
Healthcare (Medicare/Medicaid)
Military
Agriculture
Education
Anti-Terrorism
Housing
Crime
Science
Environmental Protection
US Post Office.

Let's go over these things:

#1: Social Security is a huge success in achieving it's stated purpose. Budget wise the GOP tries to call it a failure, but honestly that is debatable. Slight changes (such as eliminating the cap on SS taxes) can handle that issue.   Old people like it, and it successfully keeps the older generation in favor of the Democrats.   From the Democrat's point of view, Social Security is hugely successful in all three measures. Overall success = 9/10

#2. Healthcare Medicare and Medicaid are generally liked by the people that use it. They do their stated purpose. Veterans health care is not as well liked, but generally accepted.   Money wise they are OVER budget and not cheap - except when compared to private insurance which is much more expensive.   Partisan wise again, the Democrats get a big push from it.   From the Democrats' point of view government healthcare is moderately successful, but the GOP tries to claim it is a big failure. But everytime the GOP tries to change Medicare, they get laughed at.   Obamacare has not yet kicked in yet, so we can't really judge it.   On the other hand, if our old healthcare did everything we wanted, we never would have made Obamacare.   Overall, 7/10

#3. The US is the undisputed military leader of the world. But we did lose Vietnam war and we may not have made Iraq any better. We also spend a crap load more than anyone else and it took us a decade to kill Osama Bin Laden. Partisan wise, it is a big GOP stronghold.   While the GOP likes to push our military as successful, honestly, our record here is mixed. The recent cuts that will almost certainly be support the view that we spend too much, just like in healthcare. At best, it is a 8/10.

#4. The US is the breadbasket of the world. The programs work. They also cost a lot of money - often spent paying people not to grow things. Partisan wise, no one wants to truly support it. Rate it a 6/10.

#5 Education. We routinely badmouth our education system. But honestly we let the states fund them. More importantly, our higher education is still the best in the world.   Partisan wise, it is a punching bag.   Give it a 5/10

#6. Anti-Terrorism. Not many attacks get through. But the TSA overspends a huge amount.   Partisan wise it is a huge success - the GOP loves to use it as a weapon. 7/10

#7. Housing is a failure. We spend a ton of money and get crap for it. Moreover it is a punching bag.   At best it gets a 2/10

#8. Our legal and justice system is remarkably good.   Yes, we arrest 1% of our population, but at the same time we give people many rights. While it can be expensive to participate in it, the government costs are not unreasonable - except when we pay to keep minor drug offenders in jail. Aside from the fact that we don't always pay enough for defense - or force legal abusers to pay court courts, it does well. Partisan wise, it's a huge success. People love to claim to be law and order politicians. I rate it an 8/10

#9. We don't overpay for science.   The amount we pay for Nasa, the National Science Foundation, etc. is trivial. We get a lot for that little bit of money. The few problems tend to be dramatic (Challenger disaster), but are a necessary part of discovery. But partisan wise, often people ignore the science. Call it an 8 out of 10.

#10. The EPA is notoriously short changed on cash. They don't cost a lot. But they also have a reputation for letting people get away with stuff - particularly because of Bush's 8 years of "no enforcement".   Partisan wise, it is useful to the Democrats and even the GOP doesn't want to eliminate it. A solid 7/10.

#11. The post office does a great job for a cheap amount of money. Their current monetary problems are entirely due to Congress forcing them to be more conservative in their pension budgeting than any business has to be.   They don't really have a partisan function. A solid 9/10

To me,t he surprising part is first of all how MANY government programs come out looking good.   Only Housing is a real failure (2) - although Education is not that great (5)>

Even if you add Agriculture (6) as a 'failure', that is a 70% success rate.   Honestly, while the EPA, anti-terrorism and health-care could do better, but so could a lot of businesses.

Start up businesses have a failure rate of 50%.

In other words, government does a better job than most businesses does.

Ginrich wins South Carolina

2012-01-25T12:15:00.000-05:00

Newt Gingrich, which a lot of people had thought dead (and I thought could have won Iowa: http://conservativelyliberal.blogspot.com/2011/12/iowa-caucus.html), has made a major comeback.

I think he is likely to be the GOP Nominee. This is not just because South Carolina has historically picked the nominee. Frankly, Romney has repeatedly failed to turn his solid, dependable 25% following into anything above 35%. Too many people are suspicious of Mitt, and Gingrich has gathered the support of most of the wings of the GOP. He is moderate enough to attract the moderates, talks the religious talk (if not faithful to it), has enough T-Party support (even though they would prefer some of the off beat women - Palin/Bachmann.), and has enough of the old time reputation to get the wealthy. More importantly, he has a rep of being a tough fighter.

All of which makes for a good thing for Democrats. Romney is more of a moderate and does better against Obama. The most recent polls has Obama beating Gingrich by 11% (51 to 41). This compares with a virtual tie for Romney vs Obama (47 to 45) (Source)

Yes Santorum won a single state. But only barely, and it is a rather conservative one. The rest of the country isn't going to support his brand of religious insanity.

Honestly, as we have already pretty much got rid of the crazier folk, it won't turn out too bad. Santorum, Bachmann, Cain, etc. were more about radicalizing the government, than Romney or Gingrich. They wanted to make major changes. Mitt and Newt on the other hand are for small evolutionary changes, even though they talk a big revolution.

As a final note, I believe Newt is the likely GOP nominee. The T-Party has enough power and is zealous enough to reject anyone moderate. Romney is more moderate than Newt, so I expect their support to push Newt Gingrich into a failed presidential bid against Obama. The T Party cares more about pushing their own radical agenda then about winning the election - and are not political savvy enough to understand just how many people dislike their agenda.

Supreme Court Decisions

2012-01-23T18:55:00.001-05:00

Recently, the Supreme Court of the United States gave two decisions that are particularly interesting.

They unanimously ruled that GPS surveillance requires a warrant.
The federal judges did not give the GOP enough leeway when it redistricted Texas.

The first is an outright win for the country. There are a lot of reasons why cops should have to get a warrant before they GPS you, not the least of which is that with most cellphones, they can do it to your person, not just your car. Note that this specific ruling did NOT talk about the legality of GPS tracking your phone, as the ruling explicitedly stated the search was rejected because it it involved touching the car. But it is an indication that the court will not look kindly to phone GPS tracking.

The second is a minor win for the GOP. The Supreme Court did not tell the Federal court to use the original, evil, discriminatory gerrymandered districts the Texan GOP had created. But nor did it approve the court's version which gave 3 of the 4 new districts to Hispanics. Hispanics population growth is the entire reason why Texas got any new districts, and the GOP, in their passion to give themselves more districts, managed to ensure that none of the new districts were Hispanic majority. Probably because Hispanic districts tend to vote Democrats.

Still waiting for the big decision that should come by July: Will the court put GOP politics ahead of history and law - blocking the Health Care mandate - or will it allow Obama to do exactly what the founders did in 1798. (Text of 1798 law)

Low tax rate for Investments

2012-01-22T14:46:00.002-05:00

It has become common knowledge that Warren Buffet and similar wealthy people pay a lower tax rate than poor people. This happens for several reasons:

Tax rate on capital gains is 15%, much lower than the tax on ordinary income. This is done to encourage investments.
Up until the end of this year, the "Qualified Dividend Tax Rate" is either 0% or 15% (really 15$, to get the '0%' rate you basically have to be so poor you won't have significant dividend income.) Again, this was done to encourage investments.
They can choose to give money to a charity instead, reducing the taxes they owe. Usually they have to give more money to the charity then they save in taxes - but they have more control over what the money does. This is done to encourage charitable donations - which often do things the government would have to spend money on themselves if the charity didn't do it.
They can pay for extreme accounting. Often this involves accounting tricks done solely to lower your taxes, For example, they can move money to another country and pay that countries taxes instead of American taxes. Or they can declare their car/vacation home/plane to be owned by their corporation, and have the corporation write it off as a business expense that LOWERS the total taxes paid. There is some danger to this - if the corporation goes bankrupt they lose the car/home/plane.

This post is about the first two.

First, do we need to encourage investments? In general there are just three things we can do with money - A) spend it. B) bury it or C) invest it. If you give it to a bank, that is an investment - the bank invests it and takes most of the profit. Oh, sometimes for short periods of time, banks hold extra cash (= bury it) but they HATE doing that.   It cuts down on their profit.   Usually banks bury only as much cash as the law requires them to have on hand. So they only do it for extra money for short times, when they are scared. More importantly, tax rates do not affect that decision.   Honestly, like banks, not many people bury the money.   That's pretty rare. We don't dig holes and bury the money, nor do we put it in a mattress. So we don't need to worry about that. We either spend it or save it.

The question is, is investing cash or spending it better? Well, when the economy is doing poorly we generally want people to SPEND the cash, rather than invest in it. If you invest it, it helps the future, while spending helps the present.   The economic theory is a bit complicated, but that's what it comes down to.   Businesses need money from purchases more than they need cheap loans, at least when the economy is doing poorly.   If you have high profitability, you can always get loans. When the economy is doing better, we prefer investments, as investments keep progress coming.

So we don't always want investments - we often want people to spend the money.    But honestly, that isn't very important. For the sake of argument, let's assume that we really do want to encourage investments.

Does a lower tax rate significantly increase investments?   Well, not everyone has money that they don't need to spend.   For our purposes, there are only 3 types of people. The middle class (99 per-centers), the "Virgin" wealthy and the "Experienced" wealthy.

The 99% of us that are not wealthy have about 50% of the investments (Source). The wealthy 1% have the other 50% of investments.

Those 99%? They need and like that lower tax rate. Otherwise they might not invest at all. It makes sense to give them a lower tax rate for capital gains and dividends.   But they don't invest huge amounts because they don't have it. About the only time they have more than $10,000 of investment income is when they sell a home - and homes are already treated differently for capital gains purposes. Let's keep that rule about home sales.

But lets talk about the other 1%. They are split between the Virgins and the Experienced. The Virgins are lottery winners, Athletes, Musicians etc. These are people that, while they may be phenomenally competent (or just lucky) in a particular field, did not have to develop business expertise.   Honestly, they don't know how to handle money. They may have earned it with lots of hard work, but that is not what we are talking about. The point is that while they don't know about money - or tax rates. If they get good advice, or simply are intelligent, they will invest a lot of their money - regardless of tax rates.   Because a good adviser knows that the virgins tend to lose money. We see it all the time.   If on the other hand they get bad advice and are stupid, they won't invest.   It won't matter what the tax rates are because these people (or their advisers) won't know that it is important.

Next are the "Experienced". These people may be stupid and may be incompetent - but they either know how to handle money or trust someone that knows how to handle money.   Otherwise they would have lost their money (just like about 50% of the Virgins do after a couple of years). They (or their adviser) knows that investments are more important regardless of tax rates. They will invest even if tax rates match normal income rates because that is the smart thing to do. You want your money to do the work, not you.

So the solution is simple.   Each year, have the first $10,000 (adjusted for inflation) of capital gains/qualified dividends be TAX FREE.   Keep the current exceptions for the primary house you live in (and/or a secondary home). But all other capital gains/qualified dividends after the first $10,000 are taxed at your NORMAL tax rate. Same as anything else - your salary, the gambling winnings, the alimony you receive, everything.

This still encourages the 99% to invest. In fact, it is even BETTER than the current system of a set 15%, as they pay no tax. It even encourages the 1% to invest a little bit.    Those of them (virgin or experienced) that are smart enough to keep their money, at least.

Most importantly, it is pretty much identical to the system we use for regular money. If you just make $10 grand a year, we don't really tax you on it. It's called a standard deduction. So in effect, if all you do is investment income, then you get two standard deductions - the regular one plus the 'investment income deduction'.

(Note, this analysis assumes that the housing exclusions for capital gains is kept. Real estate sales are an exception to the rule about people making investment decisions based on taxes.)

The Value of a Human Life.

2012-01-18T04:09:00.002-05:00

There are lots of ways we value a human life - monetarily.

The EPA uses a value of $9.1 million (2010 dollars - under Bush they used $6.8 million).
The FDA says $7.9 Million (up from $5 million in 2008, under Bush)
The Transportation Department uses $6 million now ($3.5 million under Bush)
Lumber companies apparently value their employees life at $1 million. (Source)

The Department of Homeland Security seems to think they are more important, claiming that preventing terror deaths is worth far more than normal deaths. Estimates range from as low as $12 million to an incredible $180 million spent to save a single life.   They need to make this argument, because frankly, the machines and methods they use are incredibly expensive and provide little to no benefit.

We think that valuing a human life is a bit macabre. Could someone kill a person on purpose and pay this amount to get off? No. So they call it the "Value of a Statistical Life" instead of a human life, and then abbreviate it to VSL to add even more emotional distance.

Why do these VSL numbers vary so much?

Part of the changes are mere inflation (they are set at different times), but quite a bit is simple philosophical differences. Liberals apparently value human life more than Conservatives (except against terrorists). We think corporations should have to pay more money to ensure our safety.

A complicating issue is 'Quality of Life'. Frankly, a life as a blind, deaf, quadriplegic, has a lot less quality than mine.   If someone were to blind me, make me deaf, and cut off my arms/legs I would definitely demand compensation, even if what they did was accidental. Moreover, it is not just physical.   The quality of life of a homeless person with no education is lower than what I have. Similarly, I hope my quality of life is greater than that of someone with severe, untreated Schizophrenia.

Lawyers argue that if you get paid a certain amount for maiming, etc. then killing a maimed person means they only owe the difference between a healthy person and the maimed award. While this seems particularly heartless, it makes more sense if the same event caused both - with the death delayed. That is, you get shot and are paralyzed and they can't remove the bullet. You get a payment, then 1 year later, the bullet moves and you die. The insurance company claims they already paid you, so your family (and their lawyer) can only get the difference.

But if that logic works, than you can argue it applies all the time - even if the maiming had nothing to do with the death. Age is a similar issue - the older you are the less life you have left.   But we won't don't use quality of life or age to lower the cost equivalent of a human life. Corporation making hip replacements are not allowed to use a value of only $1 million because mostly old people get hip replacements.   Nor do we want drug companies to use a value of only $1 million because their drug helps blind people. We expect companies to treat all (regardless of age, health, sanity with the same regard for life. On the other hand, most of us are willing to let someone dieing of cancer to take medicines with higher side affects, but this at heart the same as paying more than for a healthy person than for a sick person.

To complicate everything, sometimes compensation for injuries will cost more than a human life. That is, 24 hour care, for life, may cost $100,000 a year. That's not counting medication, equipment, and surgery. A 3 year old child with a nasty brain cancer that ends up paralyzed can easily end up costing 20 million dollars over his life. Of course, the more expensive the treatment the less likely they will live that long. But we expect them to pay millions for initial treatment plus hundreds of thousand each year.

I don't have a good solution for the quality of life and injury issues. But I am offended by the variance in VSL values used. We should need a single official VSL value, set at about 8 million, with automatic inflation increases. Require all government agencies to use that number - the EPA, the FDA, the Department of Transportation, and yes, Homeland Security.

This takes the fear and illogic out of the TSA's silly, foolish use of money. It also takes cheapness out of the Transportation Department's value.    Because honestly, I can't see how dieing in a car accident/plane accident is less bad than dieing in a terrorist attack. Yes, the terrorist attack makes for scarier news shows, but we shouldn't let media appeal affect how much we pay.

Consistency makes for a better argument.

Cognitive Biases and politics

2012-01-12T17:04:00.003-05:00

A cognitive bias is a method of thinking that certain logicians consider to be flaws or errors. I myself am a strong believer in "Adaptive bias" as an explanation for Cognitive Biases. That is, what we call Cognitive Biases are methods and 'tricks' to come to decisions given minimal information. Take "False Consensus" - because most people you talk with agree with you, you think everyone does. Guess what? if 80% of people believe something, then 80% of people will be correct when they think most people agree with them, and only 20% of people will be wrong. In fact, given zero information beyond your own opinion, the False Consensus Bias is an intelligent, logical way to guess what the majority believes.

Moreover, the comprehension that other people think the same things you do is in fact one of the hallmarks of intelligence. It's called empathy. The knowledge that other people could think like you - and therefore want the same things as you and therefore you must protect things you like - is essential to modern life.

Similarly, a Normalcy Bias protects us from wasting money on false fear. The Normalcy Bias is when we don't plan for something that we never experienced. We don't plan for giant tsunamis - but we also don't plan for bees to develop tiny little guns and kill us all.

Some of the Biases have to do with the cost of being wrong, more than the truth behind the issue. For example, in Bandwagon, people believe what is popular just because it is popular. If you are a 'heretic', others think you are strange. It causes social problems. So given zero additional information, it makes logical sense to choose to believe what everyone else believes. Unless of course you are trying to be different - to be leader, the inventor, the discoverer.

The "Cognitive Biases" listed here are valid "guesstimate" methods, that people would be stupid to stop using. But the logicians are correct when they claim these guesstimate methods do not belong in a strict logical proof.

Most cognitive biases are heavy influences on politics. It affects who and what we vote for, and what we believe. Here are a few of the cognitive biases that particularly affect politics:

Actor-observer - Good I/my friends do is intentional, bad I/my friends do is accidental. BUT good others do is accidental, while the bad they do is intentional.
Anchoring - We give extra value to one specific event, fact, or piece of information.
Backfire - Evidence against our belief enforces it because we think our belief is under attack.
Bandwagon - People are more likely to believe something because most people around them believe it.
Bias Blind Spot - We see ourselves as less biased than others (This one does not apply to me ;)
Confirmation Bias - W seek out information that supports our point of view or interpret neutral information as supporting our point of view, ignoring information that contradicts it.
Distinction Bias - We compare two options we think they are much more different than we do if we throw in more options as comparisons. I.E. Calling Obama a socialist because you never compared him to say Stalin, Mao, Castro etc.
False Consensus effect - Everyone thinks most people agree with them.
Illusion of Control - The belief that you (or someone else) has more effect than they really do.
Moral Credential Effect - If he/she/I was good in the past, it lets him/her/me get away with other stuff now.
Normalcy Bias - Refusing to plan for something that has never happened before/you never experienced before.
Omission Bias - Judging harmful actions as worse than failing to act - even if the harm is the same (A guy that puts poison in your cup is worse than a guy that leaves poison in a sugar jar and never tells you about it when you add 'sugar' to your coffee)
Outcome Bias - Judging an action by it's outcome instead of the reasoning - he shot and killed a man because he made eyes at his grandmother. If the guy turns out to be a child rapist, most people won't care - until he does it again to a non-rapist.
Semmelwis Reflex - Ignoring new evidence that proves an old idea you believe in wrong.
Zero risk bias - Believing that reducing a small risk to zero is better than reducing a very large risk to a small one.

There are others, but these are some of the more common one found in political arguments. Take the anti-terrorist actions taken by the TSA. Illusion of Control - surely the TSA is why there have been no more terrorist acts. Right? Only, they haven't actually arrested a real terrorist.

Another reason I prefer "guesstimate methods" as opposed to 'biases' is that I don't think the human mind has in-built flaws, but instead in-built features. We need to make decisions, even about things we lack information about. In fact, those are the primary things we argue about in politics - things we don't have enough information about to make an informed decision. Sometimes that is an artificially created situation (as when people try to prevent evolution from being taught in school), but most of the problems involved in politics, we just don't know the solution to. If we knew the solution, we would test it, prove it right, and implement it.

So, politics is full of these shortcuts. Keep that in mind when you argue. Don't stick to just traditional logic, work on these shortcuts as well. Recognize why people think things, and work counter to them.

Among other things, this explains the mud throwing. When a politician (or their proxy - usually a SuperPac now a days), engages in Mud Throwing/dirty politics, they are trying to counter the Moral Credential Effect. By destroying their moral authority on one issue, they hope to lower the amount of respect others get. That doesn't make mud throwing OK, it just explains it.

Hypocrisy

2012-01-10T08:37:00.000-05:00

Hypocrisy in politics generally means pushing specific rules/laws that counter the basic principles you believe in.

When you ask for smaller government, but demand a big military, that is hypocrisy.   When you complain about government being too big - but push for regulations about abortion and gay marriage, that is hypocrisy. Conservative legal theories claim they are limiting governmental power, but when the conservatives like the governmental power, they are all for it.

But the same goes for the Democrats. When a politician that objects to racism calls NYC "Hymie-Town", that's hypocrisy. When the Democrats talk about the "right to unionize" - and then force people to pay for a union even if they don't want to, that's hypocrisy. Feminists legal theory demands equal rights - except when it comes to the right to give children up for adoption.

Part of what is going on is that people have secret reasons for believing certain things - and lie about it.   You don't want to outright say you are against government being too involved in business, but are for it being involved in religion and sexuality. So you say you are against 'big government' in general. Similarly, you don't want to outright say you are in favor of unions because they vote for you, so you talk about 'rights'. In both cases, people modify the statements of their beliefs, focusing on things that are not their real reason but close enough to it. It makes for better speeches - but more hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy is founded on the inherent subconscious knowledge that our own personal beliefs are not ethical. We create ethical public reasons to convince others we are right.    Then we argue based on those ethical public reasons.

This makes winning an argument hard.   If you attack the stated principles, you can't win - because those are not the real principles. You can convince some independents that honestly believed the stated principles, but not the core believers.   If you attack their real, hidden principles, they say you are insulting them, as opposed to arguing.

Now, this only applies to specific principles. On a more abstract level, things are different. Generic ideas are more straightforward. So often the key to converting the core believers is to strike for the very heart of their beliefs.

Originally, liberals were about progress. Originally conservatives were about conserving the good old ways.   Now, things have changed a bit.    As I posted earlier, liberalism is currently based on the core belief that people are inherently good, but bad things happen to good people. Liberals want to help the unfortunate get over the tough times, not protect them. Conservatism is based on the core belief that people are inherently sinful, but can overcome this with solid planning and hard work, turning good.   Conservatives want to protect weak willed people from temptation, not help them.

But those ideas, because they were so abstract, are harder to argue.   It takes a remarkable event to change them, or years of exposure to real life.   You need a Job (bible Job, not Apple) like series of events to convince a conservative that even with good planning and hard work, bad things can happen to you. Similarly, it takes a horrible evil act to scare a liberal into thinking that all people are sinful, and that it takes work to become good.

But these events happen.   September 11, 2001 was just such a tragedy and it scared some liberals into conservationism - at least for a little while. Similarly, Bush's economic disaster took the homes and jobs of enough conservatives to turn people liberal - at least for a little while.   Some of those conversions became permanent.

2016 Presidential Candidates, GOP

2012-01-05T10:17:00.004-05:00

Recently I heard a republican state they wished they could mix and match their candidates and make a 'super candidate', using the best qualities of each.

This would not work. Oh, you might get a good candidate, not a great one.

What makes a great candidate is not their values.   The Bell Curve ensures that the far majority of people have values that are close enough to one end of the liberal/conservative spectrum that you can fit in one of the major political parties. The Democrats are a little bit more inclusive, but even the GOP has a big enough tent to include all the conservatives. You might have some of your less popular views, but you 80% of people could win a primary if it were just about values.

Nor is background a killer.   The GOP has accepted a black man running as the front leader for the primary, and had a white woman running as Vice President. A gay presidential candidate would still have an uphill battle, but give us another 10 years and that may change. President Clinton showed that even affairs are not a career killer.

What makes a great candidate is a combination of charisma and negotiation. And by negotiation I specifically mean you need to be able to compromise.   It's not just being the ultimate used car salesmen.   Negotiation is the ability to charm people into giving you what you want in exchange for something you are willing to give up. That means you must be willing to give up stuff. Reagan and Clinton did this remarkably well.   None of the current GOP candidates have it.   If they did, they would be leading the pack. Romney comes closest, but if he truly had it, he would overcome the Mormon issue and the Health care issue.

Part of the reason why is that a charismatic negotiator can LEAD. Lead, as in go where no one has gone before. As in move the party towards what he believes, even if they did not start out agreeing with him about everything. As in overcome prejudices against blacks/women/Hispanics/Mormons or gays.

That said, I expect Bachmann, Romney, Santorum, (and even Huntsman, assuming he gets some support), if they lose the primary, to run again in 2016.   If they win the primary and lose to Obama, they won't try again.   Gingrich and Paul are getting old. Paul is already 76 and I don't expect him to try and run at 80, Gingrich is 69, and not as fanatical as Paul so I doubt he would run at 73.    Perry would need to take some serious debate classes to try again, but he might. Cain is dead - unless he manages to win a Senate/Congressional/Governorship race in 2014 - in which case he might tray again.   But even if one of them wins, they won't have a serious shot in 2016.

The serious players in 2016 will probably be:

Marco Rubio
Senator from Florida, Cuban, Tea-Party favorite, Roman Catholic. He will be 35. Think of him as a republican JFK - young, charismatic, catholic. He stole the Republican nomination for Senate away from the presumed heir apparent, Ex-Governor Charlie Crist..   He has the capacity to get the hispanic vote for the GOP - something they desperately want and aside from their ingrained anti-immigration, anti-hispanic prejudice, would be a good fit as hispanics tend to be a bit more conservative than non-hispanic. Among other things, if the GOP choose him, they get a lock on Texas, but without him, they very well might lose Texas in 2016.   In my opinion, he is the Democrats toughest competition.

Mike Huckabee
Ex Governor of Arkansas, GOP presidential primary candidate in 2008, lost to McCain, who lost to Obama in the presidential election. He is a southern baptist, will be 61, and currently hosts a Fox news show. Huckabee and Romney share some of the same supporters - but Huckabee is a Southern Baptist, not a Mormon.

Chris Christie
Governor of New Jersey - first republican to win statewide election in New Jersey in 12 years.   US Attorney for District of New Jersey, law-order type candidate, budget cutter. Has angered Democrats by cutting money for their programs.   Favored by the wealthy, he has endorsed Romney. Christie is overweight and always dieting. If he can lose the weight again, he will make for a very impressive looking candidate. He will be 54.

2016 Presidential Candidates: DNC

2011-12-31T11:17:00.003-05:00

Yeah, I know, we haven't done the 2012 elections yet. But I am pretty Obama is going to win, and I think the GOP candidates are not very interesting. More interesting to talk about who are going to be the 2016 candidates.

On the Democrat side, Biden and Clinton are the old dogs. We like VP's, they already look presidential and have contacts.   But he will be 74. If he gets elected and re-elected, and doesn't die, he would leave office at 82. Hillary Clinton almost became the Democratic Nominee (and probably would have beat McCain if he made the same stupid comments about the economy). But she is only 5 years young at 69. Which explains why she has said she won't run again.   I don't think she is going to change her mind.

Frankly, neither of these look likely. Usually presidential candidates come from popular Governors. They have the support of their entire state and have executive experience, that congressman and senators lack.   But Senators and Representatives also run.   In addition, democrats don't like to pick North Eastern democrats, as southerns are more likely to vote for a liberal if he sounds and thinks like them.   Besides the DNC likes moderates (unlike the GOP).

So here are five good choices for the Democratic Nominee in 2016. I bet at least two of them will run, if not win:

Jack Markell
Highly popular jewish governor of Delaware. Can a jewish man win the Presidency? Well, not that long ago, we thought a black man couldn't win. On the other hand, there are a lot more black voters than jewish ones. He has a deficit fighting, pro education history. Delaware is a small state (only 3 electoral votes), but it may be just south enough not to be tainted as "North East".

John Hickenlooper
Colorado's governor. He is a Quaker that opposed Colorado's pro-marijuana public referendum, but abided by it when it passed. Colorado's 9 electoral votes was won by Obama, but also by Bush. Their votes are definitely up for grab.

Sherrod Brown
Democrat Senator of Ohio.   Defeated a Republican Incumbent for Senate - in a big (20 electoral votes) swing state.

Kay Hagan
Female Senator from North Carolina. Defeat a female incumbent Republican Senator. North Carolina has 15 electoral votes - votes that Bush won.

Claire McCaskill
Female Senator from Missouri. Defeated a male incumbent Republican Senator - in a tight race. Missouri has 10 electoral votes - and the state voted for McCain in 2008 and for Bush. She may be the only way the Democrats could win Missouri - although it is only a medium sized set of votes.

These are the 5 most interesting candidates I know of.   I would expect that at least one of the women will run in the primary, if not win it, and at least two of these people should try for the nomination.

Money - cause or symptom of winners?

2011-12-29T10:21:00.001-05:00

If you have read my previous posts, you know I think money accrues to the most popular candidate, rather than makes them the most popular candidate.

One of the reasons I think that is the case is primaries. We are going to have a test right now in Iowa.

If money buys you an election, then if you spend more money than other people in an primary, you should win it - even if the other guy collected more money from that state. But if money goes to the popular guy, then people that spend all of their nationwide collected money on the first primary will still not win. Another possibility is that money has neither affect. So lets check the numbers.

Lets' assume that people give as much to the actual candidate they prefer as to a Super Pac that supports them. Not a definite fact, but a reasonable assumption.

So we need to see how much each candidate RAISED in Iowa, as opposed to spent there:
(source):

Romney: $61,800
Paul: $59,435
Bachman: $26,674
Santorum: $22,400
Perry: $8,950
Gingrich: $7,650

(Comparison purposes: Obama $165,603)

Note, that is not a lot of money. It does not include the money given to Super Pacs that support a candidate - which unlike direct contributions are effectively private - no one knows who gave to who.

More importantly, is in fact far less than than MILLIONS they spend in Iowaw, estimates are they spend about $11 million in Iowa - mainly because it is the first primary.

Using this method, (as opposed to my last post that attempted to determine who will win by looking at their supporters), Gingrich comes in last, instead of the potential leader.   Note, Gingrich has been severely lacking in cash raised in part because of a early problems with his campaign (mass quits). that may be anomaly, that we may ignore for the most part.

Now lets look at time in state. Visits take the candidate's most valuable and irreplaceable commodity: face time. This indicates how badly the candidate thinks they NEED to win the state.
(Source):

Romney: 14 trips
Paul: 67
Bachmann: 184
Santorum: 245
Perry: 71
Gingrich: 58

Clearly Santorum wants it bad.   He has publicly stated that if he comes in last, he will quit. It looks like this is working out - his standing in the polls is rising in Iowa. Bachmann needs Iowa almost as bad - without an early strong showing in the primaries, she knows her campaign will end quickly.   Romney, Paul and Gingrich are feeling secure. Perry prefers to spend cash rather than time(see below). Apparently Perry believes you can buy an election. We will find out.

We won't know real spending totals in Iowa till January, as unlike trips and fund raising, you can easily spend a wad of cash last minute. Worse, they tend not to break down spending by state. That said, most of the current spending is concentrated on Iowa (with Florida close behind), and nationwide, the spending is as follows: ((Source for above and below):

Romney: 0.6 million
Paul: 1.1 million
Bachmann: 0.1 million
Santorum: minimal
Perry: 1.6 million
Gingrich: 0.1 million

Santorum is short on cash nationally. He is hoping the face time will make up for cash.

Clearly, if money buys an election, then Perry will be the winner, followed by Paul, then by Romney.   If face time is that important, than Santorum, Bachmann, then Perry.

If fund raising is the indicator, rather than spending, Romney, Paul, and Bachmann.

I think fund raising is the indicator, but that Gingrich messed up earlier. As such, I think it is going to be Romney, Gingrich and Paul in the top three, with Bachmann behind.

Iowa Caucus

2011-12-27T10:49:00.002-05:00

On January 3, the first GOP primary will happen in Iowa. Well, in Iowa it is a caucus.

What's the difference between caucus and primary?   Caucus are public. You debate, you publicly state who you vote vote for. Primaries are secret ballot, just like the general election.

As a side note, there are open, closed, and partial open both caucus and primary. Closed is the standard - it means only members of the party can vote on who their party's candidate will be. Open means anyone can vote - even democrats. Partial opens are rare - Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Ohio, Texas, are the only states that do them. Texas is even worse - they do both a caucus and a primary.

Massachusetts and New Hampshire lets anyone that is a member of the party OR an independent vote in the primary. Registered democrats can't vote in the GOP primary and vice-versa.

Ohio lets you vote in any primary - but demands you officially switch your party registration to do so - and you can only vote in one. It lets you do so on the spot.

Texas is incredibly complicated - suffice it to say that their primary lets some independents vote, but not their caucus.

Back to Iowa.   At this point there are three major candidates, plus a bunch of also-rans. Mitt Romney, Mr. Steady, who's been there from the start, but people keep looking for anyone better.    Then there is Newt Gingrich, Mr. Not Romney.   A Washington Insider with a lot of baggage (corruption, cheating, etc). Finally there is Ron Paul. Mr Libertarian. The fact that he is doing so well is strange. Not because he is strange - he isn't. Instead it is strange because he clearly is not a Republican. He is a Libertarian. The only reason he does well at all in the GOP is because the GOP has done a PR campaign to claim they are libertarian. This blatant lie has attracted some libertarians into their fold, who now wonder why no one else in the GOP votes for the only Libertarian candidate running in the GOP.

The also rans are Huntsman, Cain. Bachmann, Perry, and Santorum.   (not counting the unknowns - Johnson, Karger and Roemer)   None of these can seriously beat Obama.

There are now four legs of the GOP, the libertarians, the Tea Party, the Religious conservatives, and the fiscal conservatives.

The libertarians vote Ron Paul - and if he loses the primary, they won't vote in the general election. The Tea Party is leaning towards Newt Gingrich - but may select one of the also-rans - Bachmann is a possibility. The religious Conservatives like Santorum, Bachmann and Perry, but konw these three can't win against Obama. They wish they could vote for Romney or Gingrich, but Romney is a Mormon and Gingrich cheated on his cancer-ridden dying wife. The fiscal conservatives would have liked Cain, but he is out. Without him they may like Gingrich, but could decided that Romney has a better chance to win. They tend to be more practical than most other GOP believers.

Which explains why no one has emerged as a clear winner.   On paper, Gingrich has a slight advantage, getting some Tea party and some fiscal support. But Romney has a better shot of winning, which gets those Republicans that care more about defeating Obama than about principles.

My prediction is, in order: Gingrich, Romeny, Paul as the leaders, but no one having more than 33% of the vote.   Honestly, Run Paul may surprise everyone - at least he has strong believers supporting him.

Texas Redistricting

2011-12-23T15:13:00.008-05:00

Texas is growing. Well, their Hispanic population is growing. The whites, not so much.

Total population (from 2000 to 2010) started at 20,851,802 and rose to 26,145,561. That is a rise of 4,293,741 people, or about 20.6%. This is a lot - the US as a whole grew only about 9.7% (source). When one state grows more than the rest of the country, they get extra congressman - at the expense of those states that lost. In Texas's case the 2010 Census gave them four new congressmen.

Those congressman get assigned to districts, which are set up by the state legislatures. They get rid of all the old districts and make new ones - that may or may not bear any resemblance to the old ones. This is called redistricting. The state legislatures are pretty free to do whatever they want. They could keep everything simple and make a bunch of regular shapes - squares, rectangles. But that would simply be doing their job, without taking into consideration their own personal interests.

Instead they are almost always very partisan. They come up with wierd shaped districts to do things like put all their opponents in one district, and let themselves get other districts that are easy for them to win.     That is, if you are creating 5 districts out of 3.5 million people, 1.5 million of whom are liberals and 2 million of whom are conservatives, you could put 700 million liberals in one one district, and then create 4 other districts, each of which has 200 million liberals and 600 million conservatives. The districts generally have to be continuous - you can't put one house of liberals surrounded by 10 houses of conservatives in separate districts, but they can be very weirdly shaped, like a spiral. This version of redistricting is called "Gerrymandering".

In fact, there is also one vile practice, legal in Texas (but not all states - New York does not allow it), of counting criminals in prison as 'residents' of the county they are imprisoned in. Other states, such as New York, use their legal residence, - i.e. where they lived before prison. Since the prisoners can't vote, are largely non-white, and usually are put in rural areas to save on money, in effect a small white area can count as a district because of all the black and Hispanic prisoners that can't legally vote.

The rural prison districts quite literally are stealing the votes of their prisoners, votes they very much use AGAINST the interests of those prisoners (for some reason, voters in rural areas near prisons tend not to like the prisoners). In fact, given that 1% of our population is currently in prison, and we have 435 congressmen in the country, that means that it would be possible (if we moved all the prisoners in the country to Texas), for the GOP to make at least 5 congressional districts out of just the prisoners and the people that work at the prison. In effect, you steal 5 congressmen. Whatever happened to one man one vote? It's not supposed to be one cop = 5 votes (his + 4 prisoners).

All of this is quite legal, even if it smacks of corruption and in my opinion, outright evil. In effect the politicians are using government authority to benefit their own party, not the country.    It's kind of like someone passing a law that says donations to their own political party are tax free, but not to their opponent. Why is it legal? Because the politicians that are doing it are also the people that decide what is legal and illegal.

It's not quite as bad as it sounds. Another reason it is legal, is that it is not that effective. You can physically move ALL the people into an area, you can just design a really weird shaped ones to get as many as possible. More importantly, it only really lasts a couple of years. People move, age, change their party.   So once every 10 years, the party that is in power tends to get a slight advantage for the next two-four years. After 5 years or so, the shapes are no longer that helpful. Except of course for the prison districts - people can't move out of them. Those are permanent 'pro rural/anti-crime' votes.

But you see, Texas has a problem.   While it is legal to put all the Texan democrats (and yes, they do exist) in one district, it is NOT legal to do the same with all black people. Or all Hispanic people. Because federal voting rights laws (Voting rights act of 1965) prevent you from eliminating a races effective vote.

Guess who are responsible for Texas's 20% growth rate? I'll give you a hint - it isn't Germans, French, or Irish.

Non-hispanic whites grew from 10,933,313 to 11,397,345 a gain of 464,032 or about 10.6%. Not that much better than the country as a whole of 9.7% A growth rate of 10.6 earns you no more congressmen.

Latinos grew from 6,669,666 to 9,460,921 a gain of 2,791,255, or about 41.9%

Blacks grew from 2,364,255 to 2,886,825 a gain of 522,570 or about 22.1%

(No other racial group had more than 1 million people)

(Click here to download my an excel source from 2010.census.gov/)

So basically, Hispanics, with a bit of help from blacks are entirely responsible for the fact that Texas outgrew the rest of the country and earned more congressional districts. If it was just the whites, they would have no new seats.

First, let me point out that at their current rate of growth, Texas will be mostly Hispanic by the next census. 9.5 million growing at 42% will beat 11.4 million growing at 10.6%. And it will turn mostly Democrat BEFORE then. In large part because the GOP continues to treat Hispanics poorly, despite the obviousness of this trend. Texas will once again be a Democratic stronghold, not a Republican one, within 10 years. In fact, I bet that in 2016, when Obama retires, the Democrats will win all of Texas's electoral votes for presidential. Even with the prison cheat. Of course, that assumes someone better than Biden is running.

Second, back to the Texas's problem. You see, while Texas will become Democrat, right now, it is strongly Republican. As such, the GOP did the redistricting, try very hard to give Republicans more districts and create no new Democrat districts.

That meant they had to work very hard to give the Hispanics no new districts. So they took mostly Hispanic districts moved the non-Hispanics out and added more Hispanics to them. Then they carved out enclaves of non-Hispanic districts for the new ones. To do this they had to put some Hispanics in the 'GOP' districts, but they made sure to keep it light. They succeeded, in large part because Hispanics tend to be in the same place - cities and SW border sections of Texas. All the new districts created by the Republicans in the Texas State legislature were non-hispanic majorities. Every single one.

People noticed. They sued. The federal court agreed it was racial discrimination and came up with their own redistricting plan that gave the Hispanics 3 new districts - which were obviously Democrat districts and one district that is probably going to be Republican.

This pissed off the Republicans - they were in power and thought it was THEIR right to gerrymander, not the Democrats. How dare the Democrats do what the GOP wanted to do?

In fact I have read of Republicans complaining that the judge gave the districts to the Democrats on purpose - all the while ignoring the clear fact that the GOP did exactly the thing they are complaining the Judge did. In other words - the GOP's complaint is that they have the legal right to be corrupt, not the judge.

The thing is the Judge is not being corrupt. He did NOT look for Democrats, he looked for Hispanics - the people that caused the population growth in the first place.

This is not judicial activism, this is outright fairness. You want the extra congressman the Hispanics earned for the state? Give them to the Hispanics. No you can't steal them.   Trying to will just make sure you lose their votes for the next 20 years, like you lost them the last 40.

So it goes to the Supreme Court Of The United States (SCOTUS) The question is, will the court say "It is the Legislatures allowed to be a partisan dick and screw over the Hispanics that gave them the new districts."   Or will they say that anti-discrimination laws prevent it?

Honestly, this will only affect Texas for 2-4 more years. By 2016, the Hispanics will have moved enough to mess up the carefully drawn GOP districts and it won't matter that much anymore. In fact, I expect Texas to go Democrat a BIG way by then.   But till then, the SCOTUS decision will control about 3 congressmen for the next 4 years.

Cellphones in cars

2011-12-17T01:51:00.003-05:00

The first question is should the government be in the business of regulating phone use in a car.

The answer to that is a profound YES. I understand people objecting to excess government regulation, but they miss the point. They think this is about phone use. It isn't. It is about car use. What you do in a car affects my safety as much as yours - and I don't even own a car. People that drive stupid don't just kill themselves, they kill other drivers and even pedestrians like me. The government clearly has the legal right to enforce traffic safety rules.

Do you think the government should be allowed to stop people from putting on blind folds and racing the cars? Of course that should be illegal. It is a clear danger to everyone else on the road, not just the blindfolded fool.

This is why drinking and driving is illegal. It kills people - besides the idiot that is drinking and driving. Almost every one in the country recognizes that not only is drinking and driving stupid but it is illegal and the government SHOULD make it illegal.

The question then becomes is cell phone use - either texting or verbal direct to phone or with a headset/hands free setup - as dangerous as driving while druink.

The answer to that is a profound YES. There are multiple studies (Utah study, British Car and Driver study, list of many more studies) that clearly show driving while on the phone is worse than drinking.

The problem is two fold:

Many of us have done this stupid thing and not crashed. That makes us think we are experts, and we are not. Idiots that drive drunk say the same thing - that they have done it and not crashed.
We falsely believe that a hands-free setup is no worse than talking to someone in the back seat. Not true. People in the back seat can see what is going on and stop talking when it get's 'risky'. That happens instantly. Someone on the phone can't do the same thing which means they keep talking and distracting you even when a semi has crossed the line and is coming right at you. Your brain quite simply can not ignore them just because your life is in danger.

The problem is that so many people already drive while using the phone. But people also speed. I bet more people have driven 10 mph over the speed limit than have driven while "phoning" (Phoning = using the phone in any manner - text or call).

People think they now better than the scientists. They don't. Driving while using a phone in any manner - whether texting or even using a hands free set up is DANGEROUS. We have multiple studies from Utah, Australia, Britain, Harvard and many other places confirming this.

People need to trust the scientists and stop trying to claim they are wrong simply because you personally have anecdotal information that contradicts them. Anecdotal evidence is not good evidence. If driving while using a cell phone was instantly deadly, the problem would solve itself. Instead it simply raises your risk - in something that is already fairly risky (You have a 30% chance of being in a car accident - unsupported number, found on a yahoo answers)

The scientists have numbers and tons of real evidence to back them up. You don't. They do the math, you don't. Yes, if you ask all your friends if any of them been in a car accident related to phone use, chances are they will say no. You didn't ask the dead people. Nor did you check to see if they lied - highly likely as insurance companies love to blame people.

Finally and most importantly - even if you personally are a good enough driver to do it, not everyone else is. It is more important to stop the less-than-perfect drivers than it is to give the few that 'might' be able to do it safely. Unless you want to offer special "phone driving" licenses, which seems ridiculous to me.

The move to outlaw driving while phoning is not a government over-reaching, it is about safety. You can't drive while blind folded, you can't drive while drunk and you shouldn't be allowed to drive while using a phone.

All of that said , just declaring it illegal will not be enough. We need a campaign against driving while calling, just like we had a campaign against driving while drunk.

We need a MAPD - Mothers Against Phone Driving. That needs not just TV time, not just money, but committed people with horrible stories.

Honestly, if the studies are right - that driving while phoning is dangerous, it should not be that hard to find those stories - and therefore the people..

We need to reform immigration law before we build a fence.

2011-12-14T12:29:00.001-05:00

The GOP is flat out wrong about immigration. Their official policy is to change the law to stop the illegal immigration, then create a policy to let more people in. They leave the proposed policy up in the air on purpose. It lets everyone read into it what they want, without committing to anything.

The problem with is four fold:

Ladders are cheaper than fences. Cripes, even the tunnels the drug cartels use are cheaper than the long fences we would need. It's not impossible to stop illegal immigration into the US, just prohibitively expensive. When times are good in the US, poor people from other countries spend thousands of dollars to get here for low end jobs. We can't stop them with pocket change, it requires huge amounts of money.
There are already 11 million people in the country - building a fence won't force them out. The immigration laws focus more on prevention then on kicking people because as hard as it is to block them with a fence, it is even harder to hunt them down and kick them out.
Their 'goalposts' are movable. We can never totally stop all illegal immigration. People can always fly in on a tourist visa and get work. As such, even if we gave the GOP everything they wanted, they would say it wasn't enough. We have already strengthened the laws against illegal immigration multiple times and they still won't let us change the policy.
We NEED their cheap labor - and their money (source) As Alabama has shown, without it, our food dies on the vine with no one to harvest it. Millions of Americans will lose their livelihoods without illegals working for cheap pay and spending their money here.

You want to stop illegals from entering this country? Stop hiring them. Accept either the much higher wages for low priced services such as farm labor, lawn care, maids, nannies, etc or go without those services.

Because the desire for cheap labor to fill those positions is not just the cause of the illegal immigration, it is a separate problem that is far more important than illegal immigration and the illegal immigration FIXES that problem. If we get rid of illegal immigration we need to also fix that problem.   Look at what happened to Alabama. It's not that horrible to have produce from one state spoil on the ground. It is far worse to have it happen to ALL states.

The obvious solution is to create a solid guest worker program. If we build it the right way, then the illegal immigration problem will go away. Build the guest worker problem first and it gets RID of the need to deal with the illegal.

I've talked about this before (Arizona law about immigration).   With the right guest worker plan, we can legalize immigrants, get a solid identification of them (to prevent terrorists entering the country), raise money for the federal government (by charging for a green card), raise money for the states (via state income taxes that could be higher for the guest workers than American citizens).

Best of all, if we do it right, we can regulate the workers. Among other things, we can revoke the right to be in the country for anyone 5 or more months pregnant. No more anchor babies.

As for 'amnesty' for illegals, that argument is stupid.   What if during Prohibition some moron would to suggest that "we can't legalize alcohol unless we first arrest every single person that drunk alcohol during Prohibition." No. That's is not how laws work.   Legallizing something does not mean we have to arrest everyone that used to violate the law.

In fact, a major part of the reason we legalize something is that we recognize that the LAW was as much a problem as the people that broke the law. If you don't think the law was a bad idea, then we wouldn't change it. If the law was a bad idea than you can NOT demonize the people that broke it.

Yes, we should not give 'special benefits' to someone that is already in the country illegally. But that does not mean we have to refuse to let them work here in the future - anymore than if we legallized pot we could then refuse to sell it to people that had previously been arrested for buying pot.

The solution is simple - whatever arrangements we make for the guest worker program should only be done in a US Embassy/Consulate or at the Borders (including ports and international airports).

Complaints about letting people already in the US apply as a Guest worker should be laughed at just as we would have laughed at an idiot that insisted no one ever arrested for drinnking/bootlegging alcohol be allowed to drink it after prohibition.

Health care savings account

2011-12-09T17:29:00.002-05:00

It's that time of year again. When millions of Americans get un-needed health care - and spend our own money on it.

Me? I got the following, "extra care":

An extra doctor appointment. Sure, I could have waited two more months for my yearly check up, but I got it early.
I pre-ordered some medication that I still have two months of left.
I bought a first aid kit
I bought new reading glasses
I am going to buy sun glasses. Expensive ones.

Why do we do this? Because the law encourages us.   My employer offers what is known as a "Flexible Spending Account."(FSA) Flexible Spending Account is like a "Health Savings Account" (HSA) or a "Health Reimbursement Account" (HRA), but unlike them you can't roll over the money. If I don't use it this year, is forfeited to the government. Does the government end up with a lot of cash? No. Instead we all rush out to spend it now - and decrease how much we save next year.

So at the end of the year I, like millions of other Americans, rush to spend whatever is left.

Is this money a total waste? No. But if we want to decrease how much we spend on healthcare each year, this is an easy cut.

Why doesn't my employer use an HSA or an HRA?

The HSA is only available if your health care counts as a "High Deductible Health Plan" - a deductible of at least $1,200 for a single person, 2,400 for a family. The HRA is entirely funded by the business. They pay the money, not you.    It is pretty much only used by small businesses - and then often used in place of good health care plans.

Companies with bad healthcare plans offer the HSA - and keep costs down. Companies with good healthcare plans offer the FSA - and drive up our yearly health care costs. HRA's are pretty rare in larger corporations.

But the end result is that anyone with an FSA is likely to waste money. I paid extra for speedy shipping of medication - in part because I knew I would have extra money and decided why take the risk of missing a day or two of medication.   Normally I would have said the missed day or two would not matter.   I can probably make do with old, cheap sunglasses, but why not get a new, expensive pair?

After all it is MY money - I just have to spend it on healthcare this year.

You want to reform Healthcare?   Change the rules for the FSA to make it like the HSA and HRA. Let any extra money rollover to the next year.

If that was the case, then I would probably spend about $267 less on healthcare this year. If 5% of the US population did that, it would be $4 billion dollars.

Reform FSA accounts - let people rollover the money. This will decrease our yearly health care costs without decreasing the quality of care. Or you could simply let people pay the taxes they did not pay earlier in the year and get the money back.

The point of these accounts is simple - to encourage people to save for and spend money on healthcare. Letting them rollover the money encourages them to save more money. You don't have to worry or think about putting too much in. Yes, the next year you may reduce your monthly contribution, but so what, you still are 'saving' for healthcare as the money you rolled over counts.

Why Cain had to dropped out

2011-12-08T10:35:00.001-05:00

First note, that after Herman Cain dropped out, Newt Gingrich became the front runner. Newt Gingrich cheated on both of his wives - one of them had cancer when he dumped her for his new mistress.

So clearly the GOP republicans are willing to vote for an unethical, womanizing cheater, as their Presidential nominee.

No.

Herman Cain did not drop out because of his sexual indescretions. Instead he had to drop out because of how poorly he handled them.

To quote myself "But he has zero experience as a GOP candidate. If he is serious about running for office, he should first win a lesser office. At least win a primary."

Cain had zero experience where it counts. Yes he had experience running a company, but not in politics. Why is this important?      Well, running a company is very different than running for office OR serving in any American political office.

First, lets talk about doing the job, rather than earning the job.   Quite honestly, running a company grants you MORE power over the company, then running a government does.   Boards of Directors pretty much take your word and let you do what you want.   You are a dictator.   Not so in an American political job. Here you need to seek consensus - get other people - who are often your enemies - to agree to what you want. There is very little you can just order done.

Being the head man in an American corproation makes you a BAD political candidate in the US. As the head guy, you give orders and people obey. Or you fire them.   That doesn't work with Congress. Or the United States Supreme Court.   Or with other Countries. Yes, President, (and Governors) do have to run the executive branch, but that is the EASY part of the job. Mayor is pretty much the only political job you can run like a business. Political jobs in this country is about getting things done without the dictatorial power that you have in business. Which is why people often wish they could run this country like a business, but also why that dream will never come true.

So, what jobs work better? Well, clearly a community organizer works out pretty well. There you have little power and have to convince a bunch of zealous individuals to work together.   But that's not all. A lobbyist would also be good prep work. After all, if politicians make good lobbyists, clearly a good lobbyist would make a good politician. Same for charity work.

Second, there is getting the job.   Getting a business job is mostly about money and experience. If you have the money, you can buy a company. Also, you can build a company yourself or pay a lot of money for a high end degree and work your work way up. But in any case, dealing with the press, and public scrutiny is not a large part of your job. People simply don't question you.

Running for office is and always has been a gauntlet of scandal searching. How you deal with the press is a key part of it.

Cain had zero experience dealing with this. He never had to talk to people about his own failings. Which is why he lost the nomination. He sucked at talking the press about what he did and what he did not do. "Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan" and "China is trying to develop nuclear capability" made him look like a fool, as opposed to someone that could handle the tough questions.   Then he totally blew the infidelity issues. He simply did not have a clue on how to handle this kind of stuff.

Newt knows how to handle this. He is wily and cunning.   He wills still lose the presidency because he did cheat on his wives. The plural their is key.   You can't keep the 'saintly' vote after they see your feet of clay. But he might be able to beat the other candidates simply because he is competing with people stupider than he is. But he can't beat Obama.

Compromise

2011-12-04T10:53:00.001-05:00

In certain quarters (Republican party), compromise has gotten a bad name.

To quote the only republican president in the past 50 years not to do at least an acceptable job (Ronald Reagan), ""If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that's what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it."

Recently Senator Santorum disagreed with Ronald Reagan. Specifically, he said that if you got 75% it wasn't worth it if the other 25% worked against you.

The problems with this is basic math. If you get 75% and lose 25%, that's still a net gain of 50%. Which is better than nothing. Cripes, it's better than 40% of what you want. If you ask for $1000 and get $750 but they take away $250 that's still $500 gain.

More importantly, guess what Mr.Santorum - sometimes you are wrong. Maybe not on this particular issue, but on some issues. Yes, I know it's hard to believe, but you are not perfect. Sometimes the things you want to do are the wrong things and the things your opponent wants to do are the right things.   Reasonable people agree to try both and see what works. More importantly, when you try your way and the entire country's economy collapse, you can lie and claim it was because you did not get enough of your way.

But that still not enough.

You see, when people (reasonable or otherwise) disagree there are exactly five ways to solve the problem.   In all of history, we have not found a sixth.

1. One side forces the other to bow to their wishes. Whether you call it Fascism,Dictatorship or Oligarchy, we've seen this happen more than once Give one side a total win. One guy controlling everything, ignoring what his opponents want. Sometimes they are a minority forcing the will on the majority, but it can also work the other way around.

2. Compromise. You get some of what you want and the other guy also gets some of what he wants.

3. Education   This takes a long time. Worse the GOP hates teachers and teaching (professors - ivory tower types). This is a long term project, as in 20 years. We can't wait that long.

4 Trickery. This is slightly better than force, but not much.

5. Chance. Flip a coin.

Force has a really bad reputation. In the 20th century, Nazi Germany, Communist USSR, and Imperial Japan all used force to settle disputes Much of our laws are designed to STOP people from forcing their personal political views on other people. I am not saying it is never appropriate. When your opponent is doing something so horrible, you can't stand to let them get away with it, Force is OK. But things like that require real force - as in second amendment solutions. You don't do that for simple things. You do it for major evils. I'm talking about slavery, concentration camps, genocide, that kind of thing. If you win, it's called a revolution. If you lose they call you a traitor and or a terrorist (even if you never targeted a civilian, they still lie and call you a terrorist) For this reason, we don't do it for tiny things - like budget negotiations healthcare laws or excess regulations.

Compromise is the Democrat's solution of choice. It's how we accept people with such radically different viewpoints into our party.   But the GOP doesn't like it. So, if you don't like compromise, admit Force is only appropriate as a last resort, that leaves Trickery and Education.

Education. takes a long time.   I see you have been trying to change our schools, forcing them to teach your personal political views (anti-evolution, anti-global warming, etc.), but that's only a long term project, (one that hasn't really worked out well for you). You pretty much don't even try to teach liberals how we are wrong. Instead you insult us and call us names (socialist) instead of patiently trying to teach us your truth. Probably because when you try to teach us, we are not convinced.

Next is Trickery. Trickery is not nice. But I see how that could be your plan. You want to lie to us, trick us, and deceive us into doing what you think is best.

Finally is chance. Are you SERIOUSLY suggesting we flip a coin to decide things like Abortion, Health care laws, etc.?   It's fine for figuring out who goes first at a sporting event but national politics?

Hm. Should we listen to the guys that are willing to actually play fair and compromise? Or to the guy who either wants to force us at gunpoint, wait twenty years to solve the things we need done TODAY, trick us or flip a coin?

We aren't stupid. When you say compromise is a bad idea, it tells us that you are not trustworthy. That you are lying, violent, dictators that don't care what the majority of Americans think. Sorry, but less than 1/2 the population is conservative - less than a third if you ignore the R.I.N.O. people.

This isn't a new problem, it existed from the founding of this country. The founders compromised all the time.   They wanted a weak central government - tried that (Articles of Confederation) and realized it did not work. So they COMPROMISED and gave the Federal Government more power. Some wanted slavery, others did not, so they compromised on that.   Then the slavers wanted their slaves to count as citizens for census purposes, even though they did not get the rights of a citizen. They compromised on that too: " three fifths of all other Persons." (source)

In fact the entire Bill of Rights was a compromise.   They are amendments to the Constitution, put in to get people to sign it.

If you don't like Compromise, you don't like the Constitution of the United States of America and you don't like Democracy.

Well, technically you don't like a Democratic Republic, as the US is not pure Democracy. But you get the idea. Democracy means we all vote on everything, Democratic Republic means we elect people to vote on issues for us. And one of the main advantage of electing other people to vote is that they can create a compromise among themselves, rather than having us do all the work.

The problem happens when they start ignoring subsections of their electorate and concentrate only upon what their most fervent supporters demand. Then they refuse to compromise, only doing the bidding of their favorites, rather than of the entire electorate.

Bachmann, Cowardice and WaterBoarding

2011-12-01T11:09:00.001-05:00

Michelle Bachmann is an arrogant coward. Also gullible, but that is nothing new (no, anonymous sources in India are not something you should believe - not even for a second.)

Recently she was confronted over her ridiculous opinion over water-boarding. Here is some background information first.   Water-boarding is long established as torture. Nazis were tried and convicted of torture for water-boarding people.

However, one moronic lawyer in George W. Bush's Department of Justice (DOJ) thought it was legal. We know he was a republican because Bush's DOJ illegally refused to hire or promote Democrats - and was also accused but not proved to have fired lawyers because they were Democrats. So this one lawyer gave permission for American agents to water-board.

Eventually people found out what they did and reminded us that the world had long (over 50 years since the WWII war crimes) considered water-boarding to be torture. Eventually the DOJ admitted it was illegal and a crime. Obama decided not to charge the agents because they acted 'in good faith' - they were specifically told it was legal. They also decided it would be too difficult to charge the idiot lawyer.

But in the process, a lot of people tried to defend the decision. Hence the GOP's party line became that even though the US had charged Nazis with war crimes for water-boarding, it wasn't torture.

Bachmann has followed that party line. When asked would she let someone water-board her? She said "Well, I think that would be absurd -- to have the president of the United States submit themselves to water-boarding. There are those who have submitted themselves to it so that they can talk about it, and speak about it afterward." (Source).

I need to respond to this directly (though I doubt she will read my blog).

First, Ms. Bachmann are definitely NOT the president. You aren't the GOP's nominated candidate, you are not even the front runner for their nomination. Chances are you will never be the president. It would be absurd for President Obama to participate in a GOP primary debate, but for you it is fine. So the fact that the it would be absurd for the President to do something, doesn't affect YOU at all.

Second, multiple people have come claimed it was not torture, then tried it and changed their mind. So those people you talk about as 'back up' say you are wrong.   (Source)

Third, American soldiers undergoing SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) undergo water-boarding. This is not illegal because it is voluntary and done for training purposes and not for the objective of causing pain or obtaining information. Amputating a leg to cause pain and get information would be torture, but doing it to stop a gangrene infection is not. Torture is about causing pain for either no reason or to get information. (Source - look for the quote of UN Convention) Voluntary training to resist torture is not torture - but by it's very nature should include activities that if they were not voluntary and done "for real" WOULD be torture. SERE training is not torture. If you were voluntarily water-boarded for the purpose of learning what it is like, it would not be torture.

Fourth. The President is the Commander in Chief. As such it is certainly NOT absurd for him to undergo any training that his soldiers do. That includes SERE I mentioned above, which includes water-boarding. In fact, it sounds like a VERY good idea to me for the president to prove himself or herself to those he/she commands by undergoing some of the training they go through.

So I say to you, Ms. Bachmann, almost every single thing you said in that quote was wrong.   It is not absurd to have the president water-boarded. In fact, any candidate that undergoes waterboarding would be demonstrating bravery and the willingness to do part take in some small part of the sacrifices that those under his command do.. Finally people that, unlike you, know what they are talking about, do consider it to be torture.

P.S. my personal opinion is that torture should be encouraged under certain rare circumstances. But I don't think it should be legal even then. If we actually have a "There's a nuke going to go off if we don't know the code to turn it off" or even a "A little girl is going to die if we don't find out where he buried her", I am fine with torturing a person. The courts should have the right use 'exigent circumstances to downgrade the charge to a misdemeanor if you can prove that the torture was the only way to save lives. If the cop/agent is not willing to be fired and go to jail for 11 months (more likely just get probation given our current legal system), then he should not be torturing people.

But if the government official thinks this particular incident is worth risking his job, then he should be expected to do his duty, torture the suspect, then accept whatever punishment our courts dish out to him. Frankly, I've seen how our courts work, and I think this system would work fine.

Immigration and Chaos: Please come to America and Take Our Jobs.

2011-11-27T19:29:00.000-05:00

I recently read a very interesting piece by Rob Asghar. (CNN Opinion)

In it he analyzes the myth that US has fallen behind.   The heart of his point is that real business innovation is a chaotic process and that is why the US will not (in the foreseeable future) be overtaken by other countries. He states that invention, innovative growth is a chaotic process and it is the American ability to thrive in the chaos that fueled our growth.

But once the innovations are developed, it is not chaotic. You can simply copy the winner.   Also, it is cheaper to start out with the best, as opposed to work your way through the earlier inventions.   Build 1000 iPods, as opposed to 100 walkmans, 500 diskmans, and finally 1000 iPods.

Other countries have been 'developing', not by actually innovating, but instead by copying ideas invented in America and/or refining them.   This works fine - as long as you have someone else to copy. But eventually, like Japan did, you catch up to the US. Then you have to break new ground, which is a lot harder and tougher. It takes new ideas - and a willingness to let people have the new ideas.

Conservatives recognize this and it the basis of their 'anti-regulation' belief system.   The more regulations, the less space to innovate in. But at the same time, regulations can keep businesses from conspiring against their competition. That is,no price fixing, not "drive them out of business", etc. Some regulations encourage innovation, as opposed to preventing it.

But the thing is, you can't just decided to innovate financially. If you teach your citizens to innovate they won't just build a better music player. They also demand other freemds. Speech, religion, civil rights. Financial freedom goes hand in hand with other freedoms. It's an entire culture, not a business method.

When the Middle East and Asia tries to create their own financial freedoms, they either fail entirely to create a real culture of innovate or spend half their effort sabotage themselves by preventing the culture from spreading outside the financial zone.

This is America's edge.

It is also a high risk strategy. In effect, it is the freedom to jump off the a financial cliff that lets us learn how to climb financial mountains.

Rob is pretty sure we are set for the forseeable future. He is almost right. The thing about Chaos is that it eventually settles down. The stablest form takes over. Unless of course it has a constant influx of energy.

Specifically, we need immigrants.   That's good, because we have a large supply of people wanting in.   The forces of stabilization know this and are trying to stop them.   Here their clarion call:

"They took our jobs".

Yeah, THAT'S WHY WE NEED THEM.    Let me make this very clear. I want all americans to be just a little bit afraid that an Immigrant will come to America and take our jobs. Mine included.

We need the competition. Competition keeps us strong.   Not just between corporations, but between employees. Saying you don't want immigrants to come to this country and take our jobs is like the Heavy Weight Champion of the World saying he only wants to fight people he has already beaten. You get good by beating other good people. If America is going to continue to be the best, we need to recruit the best from around the world - and make our own citizens compete against them internally as well as externally.

Now, let me make it clear, I fully expect most of the people that come to America in search of a better job to fail. I expect them to end up as the 99%, not the 1%. Americans are very good at what we do, and it is tough for outsiders to compete with us.    But some of them will win. Some of them will beat us. And by doing so, they earn the right not just for themselves to be an American citizen, not just for their family, but for their friends and associates as well.

But that ends up with a population growth problem. There are several ways to handle this, and one of them is a guest worker program. Not everyone belongs here, but we need to offer them chance. I like the idea of giving people the chance to come to America, work hard, and decide they don't want to live here for the rest of their life.

Police and Media Coverage of Protests

2011-11-23T12:51:00.000-05:00

One of the things I have seen recently are cases of police stupidity. Make no mistake here, I am not talking about evilness.   No "lets' beat the crap out of protesters cause I hate them.". In general, that does not happen. The police have a hard job and I sympathize with them.   Instead I am seeing (and hearing) a lot of police doing "I gave an impossible order to fulffil, now arrest them".

A typical situation is where the police order people to leave an area (rightly, or wrongly), then arrest everyone that does not leave.

Sounds reasonable right?

Well, it's not reasonable if the exit is being blocked - either by police officers or by other protesters.   You don't arrest person A because they can't get past person B that is blocking the exit.

I know the police have a hard job, particularly in cases like this.   Their usual response is that they can't tell the difference between someone trying and failing to obey an order and someone actively resisting. Let me ask you if a bad guy said "I was not trying to steal this item without paying, I just could not find a cashier?" would the police believe him? Stupidity is not an excuse to steal, neither is it an excuse to arrest innocent people.

It is the Police's job to tell the difference between the lawful people and the lawbreakers.   If you can't do that, quit your job.    In most of the cases I have seen, the people make reasonable attempts to prove they are law abiding people.

On the videos, you can clearly hear the lawbreakers chanting stuff like "We are the 99 percent", while at the same time, the law abiding media are saying things like "I am a reporter, I am trying to leave.", and you can see clearly see the exit is blocked. I don't see protesters are claiming to be reporter. In addition, the reporters make reasonable efforts to leave. They are not hanging back, they are not continuing to ask questions.

Now, being a reporter does not shield you from breaking the law, but the fact that they are clearly attempting to obey the police and NOT trying to break the law is obvious from the videos we are seeing on the internet.

If as a police man you can't tell the difference between a protester that is disobeying you and a reporter that is obeying your commands, then you should be fired.

At the very least, the police need better training in how to deal with non-violent crowds - and with innocent bystanders in particular. The problem is, their bosses don't want that. They want to crush the opposition, which just makes things worse.

Arresting reporters for simply doing their job and the police failing to do their jobs, is not helping the situation, it makes it worse.

Advice to Bachmann

2011-11-19T09:39:00.004-05:00

I am about to give Michele Bachmann, real, honest, intelligent advice. This is not a trick, it is in my honest opinion, the simplest way for her to win the GOP nomination.

Michele Bachmann is actually a fairly intelligent woman. You have to be to make it as far as she did in the GOP primary. More importantly to the GOP, she is a far right republican, which is what they think they want/need in the presidency. I disagree, moderates (like Ronald Reagan) have better chances, but that is what they think.

But as the GOP has repeatedly looked for a far right candidate more attractive than Romney (whose main faults appear to be a) wrong religion and b) some moderate tendencies that he flip=flopped on) , they have consistently overlooked her. They tried the Millionaire con man - that was using them as a publicity stunt, the Texan - who could not speak, the "our black guy" - who had never won real elected office and could not deal with the scrutiny, and know they are trying the "old pro-family values guy" - who has cheated on multiple wives.

They have never tried her. The reason is simple. It is not her ridiculous claim that the media are out to get her. It is her gullibility. Well, technically it is her reputation of being gullible. It doesn't matter if she gullible or not, people vote on what they believe, not on the truth. Right now her reputation is for gullibility.

Simply, the public knows her mainly for making obviously false statements. Usually partisan attacks. Things like (My comments on her comments in parenthesis):

Claiming that the swine flu only came when we had democrat presidents. (Not only is this a weird claim, but she was wrong. It broke out previously under republican presidents and not under Carter despite what she said.)
Gay marriage is the biggest state and national issue. (As in bigger than then the economy, bigger than the debt, bigger than the war on terror, etc.)
Claimed, based on an anonymous source in India, that Obama spent $200 million a day on his trip to India (he - and his entire entourage, including a few navyships - spent more like $10 million a day - It's like if you spent $10,000 on a vacation and she claimed you spent $200,000)
That vaccinations cause mental retardation.

So, lets assume she wants to actually win the republican nomination. She has to portray herself as someone that can be TRUSTED, as opposed to someone that will say any foolish thing she heard, particularly if it is damaging to her opponent. And that's a problem given the GOP's current strategy of using bad science.   She can't come out in favor of global warming, nor can she support evolution, either one of which giver her some credentials as a serious, trustworthy person among the moderates.

But she can attack her competitors other statements. She has done a little of this on the debates. Her comments on foreign aid to Pakistan were a good start. But she has to up her game.   The best way to do it is to defend the President of the United States. She doesn't have to do it too much. Twice should be enough, with maybe a few more of the Pakistan type correction for other issues in between.

You see, the GOP is going to lie about Obama. They have done it before (Gun control - Obama did nothing, birth certificate - was valid - both the short and the long form, etc. etc.) and they are going to do it again. So when Gingrich or Romney trot out something that Bachmann knows is false, she can defend him. She can say something simple like "I despise Obama as much as the next guy, but it just isn't true that he eats raw kittens alive."

I guarantee that if the Gullible Gal gets up and defends Obama, it will play on TV.   The networks, even MSNBC will give her favorable coverage.   If she does it just right - reluctantly defending a man she hates - she will come out looking like the Last Honest Woman in politics.

Then wait a while, perhaps correcting some more non-Obama error. Just like her Pakistan correction, only more so. Which will happen - as Perry demonstrated it is only human to make mistakes. It is how you deal with them that matters. If she starts correcting her opponents, it will establish a new reputation, as opposed to a one-off comment.

Lastly defend Obama one more time.   This cements her reputation as honorable and presidential instead of gullible. More importantly it frees her up to attack Obama from a solid reputation.   When she claims he is going to raise taxes on everyone, people will believe her because she defended Obama against other nonsense.

Oh, and one more thing - she has to STOP making unsupported statements. She should only speak about things that are accepted by the main stream or she has a LOT of evidence to back her up. No more anonymous sources, no more "a random, non-doctor constituent gave me medical advice".

But she won't do any of this, for three reasons:

She has an ego. A big one. This prevents her from admitting she was wrong, or even that she has the reputation of being gullible. She has repeatedly refused to apologize for things she has said.
She does not appear to know the difference between a supported statement and an unsupported one. When you are running for president you need to know the difference between something you can believe and something you can state on national TV. For local elections, people will overlook some rather silly stuff. Here they research your remarks and discuss them on national TV.
She is so partisan, I don't think she could bring herself to defend a democrat. She would let an innocent Democrat be convicted of a crime even if she could easily alibi him out.

But that's my best advice to Michelle Bachmann. Three press incidents - two Obama defenses sandwiching another non-Obama correction. If she does this right, she can take Romney's place. Without these actions, she is doomed.

Why do Republicans Love Reagan - and why Democrats don't have a similar hero president.

2011-11-17T15:10:00.000-05:00

First, by today's standards, Reagan was a Liberal - or at least a "RINO" He raised taxes - saying things like "Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.", "I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary", and many more such things.

So why does the GOP love him? Well look at their other choices:

Anyone born after 1945 was too young to vote for Eisenhower and most doesn't even remember him. That means the Republicans are comparing:

Nixon
Ford
Reagan
Bush Sr.
Bush Jr.

So exactly who else would they lionize? Nixon? The crook? The man that stole an election? Granted, he did a nice job with China, but you can't praise the only president to leave office because of a scandal.
Ford? The man no one voted for? The man that never was elected?
Bush Sr. Only served one term, and Bush Jr. is still reviled for taking Clinton's incredible no-recession economy (had no defecit), creating a defecit, starting multiple wars and creating the biggest recession since the Great Depression.

That leaves Reagan. He is the only republican president in the past 50 years to not be an obvious screw up. That is not to say he did a bad job. I think he did a good one. Not as good as many of the republicans believe, but I like his record.

Honestly, Nixon was probably the second best republican president, after Reagan, if you just look at his presidential accomplishments, as opposed to what he did to get there. Bush Jr. was probably the worst president, considering what he did to the economy. But the GOP has a major problem looking for a 'superstar president', they really only have one choice, Reagan. Lucky for him, Reagan ran against Carter, the worst Democrat president, and as such won in a landslide.

Now look at Democrats. Since 1945 we have:

Kennedy
Johnson
Carter
Clinton
Obama

Carter is our Nixon - only not as bad. Yeah, he did not fix the economy he inherited from Ford. Yeah, he could not solve the hostage crisis - weather killed his rescue attempt. Carter is without doubt the worst of the bunch.

All the rest were pretty impressive presidents - beloved by the Democrats, even if the GOP dislikes them. More importantly, the things they did that the GOP dislike, become more and more accepted as time goes by. Kennedy was a war hero, kept us out of Nuclear war with Russia, and died in a hail of bullets (OK, 3 may not be a hail, but you get the idea). Clinton took a deficit and destroyed it (only to watch Bush recreate the deficit). He did this while keeping the economy strong - no recession under his term. Johnson did the Civil rights Act and the Voting Rights Acts - without which Obama would never had a shot. And Obama killed Bin Laden and pushed through healthcare. Yeah, it is not as comprehensive as we want, but he is going down as a historic president if just for being the first black one.

The final truth is, of the past 5 republican presidents, only one would be considered worthy of a major monument, such as Mt. Rushmore. But of the past 5 democrat presidents, we have two obvious heroes and two quiet heroes.

Most democrat presidents in the past 50 years have simply done a better job that republican ones have.

Healthcare and the Supreme Court.

2011-11-16T01:38:00.001-05:00

On Monday 11/14/2011 the Supreme Court of the United States (S.C.O.T.U.S) agreed to consider Obamacare. They are expected to hear arguments after March 2012, and to rule on it by July 2012. Less than 9 months to go.

Specifically, they are considering:

Are the insurance mandate penalties a type of tax that can only be legally challenged after it is collected? (Refers to the Anti-Injunction Act)
Does Congress have the constitutional power to mandate insurance (from the Commerce clause). Can congress charge people money for not doing something?
If it is not-constitutional, does the rest of the law become invalidated?

The main issue is #2, but the#1 will, if won by the liberals, give them a great standing for issue #2. That is, if you call the insurance a tax, there are lots of examples of the IRS taxing people for not doing things. We call them deductions. As in, if you don't do X, you don't get a deduction and you pay more money. So we charge you for not doing X.

First, in my own humble opinion it is in fact a tax.   Buy health insurance, pay less money to the government. Don't, pay more. By that logic, the ruling should be "Delayed till implemented" and then of course, declared constitutional because the IRS already taxes us for not doing things.

But I don't think SCOTUS will do that.   I think they will hate the idea of delaying this - it complicates people's financial planning tremendously, and I think they just want to end this crap.

But I do believe they will rule that it is constitutional. Most of the existing courts have already ruled that way. Only one federal appeals court in Richmond Virginia said it was a tax that could not be challenged till after it was collected. Of the 4 appeals courts that have ruled on #2, only one said it was unconstitutional. (source)

In addition, the courts have found that congress can order us to buy vaccines (with our own money). In fact, Congress has already forced us to buy health car - it's called Medicare, talk to any senior citizen. If they can make us buy health care from the government, they can surely give us greater personal control by letting us pick the corporation to pay instead of requiring us to pay the government. Just like auto insurance.

Obama's care fans have a lot of reasons to be optimistic.   Scalia, one of the most conservative judges, has in the past ruled that Congress does have more power from the Commerce clause than most conservatives have felt. So has Chief Justice Roberts and Kennedy. Kennedy is the most liberal of the conservative appointed judges, while Scalia is generally considered the most conservative judge on the court. (source). I personally feel that Scalia is a stretch. In the past he has demonstrated he would rather stick with his gut then with his personal philosophy - he is a a conservative first and a constitutional scholar second. But Roberts and Kennedy are prime suspects. Roberts hates to make big law and Kennedy is a solid moderate, likely to let the government do more, rather than less.

Judge Thomas and Judge Alito are expected to follow the conservative line and vote against Obamacare simply because it is a conservative talking point. Next up are the liberals. None of the liberal justices are known to have issues with health care or with expanding the government. We have two judges chosen by Clinton and two judges chosen by Obama, all of whom are likely to look at this as a straight out partisan ploy by the conservatives to overturn a fairly enacted liberal law. I don't think they see any problems with giving Congress this power.

That gives the healthcare law four solid votes and 3 good opportunities to craft a majority ruling. Given Chief Justice Robert's past rulings, I think most likely they will craft a weak rule that validates ObamaCare as constitutional laws, but not a tax, and to do so without any major implications. Roberts doesn't like making new law, he likes to let things be.   Which means he will craft a decision that will make Kennedy definitely agree with. In part I think Roberts will do this so as to avoid a situation where it is 5/4 in favor of the law, with Kennedy crafting a ruling that is stricter, granting the US Congress even more power.

I bet the final vote will be 6 to 3 against (Roberts, Kennedy, Kagan, Sotomayer, Breyer, Ginsburg vs Alito, Thomas and Scalia). We will know in less than a year.

Gotcha questions

2011-11-13T02:44:00.021-05:00

Cain has repeated the "Gotcha Question" phrase recently. The Republicans seem to think that reporters are supposed to be nice to them.   That "Gotcha Questions" are an unfair tactic - cheating, so to speak.

Nothing can be further then the truth.   So called Gotcha Questions are expected to be easily answered by the President - and therefore by presidential candidates. In fact there is no such thing as a "Gotcha Question" - as long as you are not a moron.   If you go back and check the questions that people claimed were "gotcha questions", you will see they are all very simple ones. More importantly, we grade on a sliding scale and the Presidential job is the highest. Presidents should be able to answer the toughest questions and come off looking good. They don't have to be right, they don't have to even truly answer the question, but they should come out looking ... well presidential. When faced with an unintelligible question, "I feel your pain." works well.

It's OK for a president to not be smarter than everyone else.   He (or she) can hire geniuses. But he should at the very least be a good politician.   The phrase "to play politics" means "to deal with people in an opportunistic, manipulative, or devious way, as for job advancement."    Half of the president's job is to "out talk" his opponent. He needs to be able to give a speech and change people's minds.

But OK, lets pretend that I am wrong - that being President does not involve being able to out-talk other people. We are still talking about people running in a primary, not a general election. As in, if they win the primary, they still have to win the general election. If you think the questions are troublesome now, wait till September and answer the questions the reporters ask then.

When you apply for a computer job, you can't complain about being given a test of your computer skills. When you are applying for a job as a politician, you should be able to out-speak other world leaders and the head of the loyal opposition.   At the very least you need to be able to talk rings around an amateur. Because that's all a reporter is. Reporters are low level talkers, not experts. The thing about writing is that it takes time. You write it once, then edit and re-write.

Politicians on the other hand have to get it right the first time. Even an award winning reporter is an amateur compared to a politician. Oh, a good reporter should be able to beat a low level (Congressman or lower). But President?

Cain, you want to know how to deal with reporters asking questions? Instead of calling them dumb, try this:

"Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement." You never heard Reagan complain about a "Gotcha Question".

To Cain, Palin, and Bachman I have but one thing to say.

You are no Reagan.

One Term Presidents

2011-11-09T17:27:00.002-05:00

As so many Republicans desperately wish Obama ends up as a OTP (One term president), I thought it's a good time to look over the one term presidents of the 20th century and find out why they lost re-election.

1. George H.W. Bush (R).   First of all, he lost to Clinton, one of America's more popular presidents.   Clinton is the only president to have no recession during his presidency.   Bush's problem related to a bad economy, violence in inner cities, and high deficit spending.

2. Jimmy Carter (D) Carter lost to perhaps the most beloved Republican President - Ronald Reagan.   Carter most likely lost due to military failings (hostage in Iran,) plus high inflation. Even the Democrats were worried about him - as a Kennedy opposed him in the primary.

3. Gerald Ford. (R) He lost in part because he was never elected.   He was appointed VP by Nixon, perhaps the least popular president.   Like Carter, he had issues with inflation and the economy.

4. Herbert Hoover. (R) He lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt, again a very popular person (only president to serve 3 terms).   The Great Depression started on his watch - within months of his election and he could not get out of it.

5. William Taft (R) He alienated members of his own party. His predecessor was Teddy Roosevelt who got so mad at Taft Teddy left the GOP and started his own party.

(Source)

During the 20th century, 52 years were under Republican presidents and 48 were under Democrat presidents.   The first thing to note is that most of the one term presidents in the 20th century were Republicans, while the office itself was pretty much split 50:50 between the parties.. Four to one ratio is important.   Apparently, Americans elect more Republicans, but regret it enough to balance things out.

Three things tend to stick up. One term presidents are created by 1) Bad economies. 2) star competition and 3) a dis-unified base.     Obama has a poor economy to fight against.   He does not have a star competitor nor does he have a problem with his base.   As long as the economy does not get worse, Obama is going to be re-elected. The question is, what happens if the economy gets worse.    Which is why many (if not most people) think the GOP may be trying to kill the economy (at least Floridians think so - source)

It is also important to note that our data may be flawed. We only have a single one term Democrat to look at, vs 3 Republicans. One data point is not very informative.   It is possible that what kills a Republican president won't kill a Democrat President and vice versa. For example, Republicans care more about family values. A Republican may not be able to win as pro-choice, but clearly Democrats do all the time.

In general, the people look to a Democrat to fix the economy and a Republican to save them from enemies.   Mommy vs Daddy, prosperity vs war.   If that is the case, then a bad economy will kill a Republican, but it takes a bad foreign situation to kill a Democrat. Some people think Carter's failure to resolve the Iranian hostage situation may be more responsible for his defeat than his failure to fix inflation. This was compounded by dissension in the ranks, Carter faced a primary challenge against a Kennedy. Obama has no such competition.

Obama has consistently outperformed in foreign affairs.   He is ending two wars on the same schedule his predecessor set up, started and won another one (Libya) with far fewer American casualties, and taken out multiple terrorists (including Bin Laden) that have been plaguing America for decades.   Obama has no foreign enemies issue.

Obama has no real competition within the DNC. While some Democrats are upset with him and wish he had done/could do more, the rank and file support him This compares to a very divided GOP that ignores their best declared candidates (Huntsman), barely supports their one 'acceptable' candidate (Romney), while continuously obsessing about outrageous people (Palin, Bachmann, Paul, Perry, Cain) that say preposterous things.

Is it possible for Obama to lose? Yes.    A worsening economy may do that.   But if things stay the same or get better, Obama will win. Easily.

Airport Insecurity

2011-11-05T11:51:00.003-04:00

I fly several times a year. Not quite enough to make me a 'frequent flyer', but definitely experienced.

I despise the current airport security paranoia. They are for show, not to make us safe.

1) The TSA has publicly declared they use a far higher value for the cost of one human life than we require industries to use. That is, when calculating whether to force an airline (or car) to install a safety gadget, our government values a single life at about six million dollars. If it costs eight million dollars to save one life, we don't make Boeing or Ford build or install the safety device safety device. But if it costs only five million per life saved, we require them to build and install the devices. This is called the "Value of a Statistical Life" or VSL.    But the TSA state doesn't use 6 million dollars.   In fact they are willing to spend more $180 million to save one life. Let me repeat, the TSA thinks it is fine to spend ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY MILLION dollars to save a life, while Ford thinks $8 million is too much. (Source for TSA value). The airlines and car companies number is much closer to that used by other government agencies. Obama's EPA values life at about 9.3 million, while the Consumer Product Safety Commission values it at a low of five million.: source.   When the GOP talks about federal regulations forcing businesses to put in ridiculous safety features - this is what they mean. Consider what would happen if we did the same to the car industry. We get about 42,643 (source) fatal car crashes in the US during 2005. Using a generous 9 million per death, would be $383 billion , divided by the 62 million cars (source), comes to about $6,177. So if we raised the car safety number 50%, that's how much a new car should pay for all safety features (brakes, seat belts, airbags, bumpers, brake lights, etc.). If instead of 9 million, we used the 180 million figure the TSA uses, that would mean spending an additional $117,363 on safety. Cripes, for that amount of money we could hire everyone a chauffeur.

2) They kill people. Yes, the back scatter devices, if they are properly operated, are safer than medical and dental x rays.   But did you ever notice how the dentist covers your body with LEAD? And leaves the room? Recent reports estimate that full use of the machines will cause 6-100 cancers a year. (source) In the last ten years, there have been exactly none, zero, zilch, nada, nil, terrorists deaths on airplanes leaving a US airport. OK, that doesn't include 2001, so lets make it 20 years. Then we get 3,000 for 2001, and ...none, zilch, zero more.   That works out to 150 deaths a year.   Over the last 30 years we get another 270 deaths on the Lockerbie flight from London to New York (so no US screening, just British, but lets count it anyway), and that's it (there were some minimal - less than 1,000 - americans killed in flights between European countries, but my cancer death rates are just for America, so they can't be included for a fair comparison.) (source).   OK, so over the past 30 years, that comes to 109 deaths per year, almost all of them on a single flight that did not involve anything more dangerous than box cutters.

3) They don't catch terrorists. Not once has any machine - not the metal detectors, not the back scatter machines ever caught a real terrorist. (Yes, they routinely find weapons - most of which belong to citizens with gun licenses forgetting to check their bag. Rarely do they arrest the person - usually the worst they do is confiscate the weapon - more often they simply check it. Note, these are metal weapons that are detectable by a metal detector, you don't need an xray machine to find them.)    But of the two the foiled terrorist attacks involving airplanes, one was stopped by Saudi spies, another was stopped by the passengers and stewardesses on the plane, that is it. For all the shampoo, nail clippers, snowglobes, etc. confiscated they have confiscated not a single bomb at the gates.   Most importantly, the easiest way to blow up a plane is to fire a missile at it, and the machines can not stop that.

4) The majority of the deaths were caused by terrorists getting into the cockpit, not by letting people bring liquids or weapons on the plane. A solid door, lockable door would have stopped 90% of worldwide deaths.   Replacing the door with a wall so that the only way into the cockpit is via an external door accessible only on the ground would be even better. This would cost less than the back scatter devices cost.

The machines are way too expensive. They kill more than they save. They don't catch terrorists.   There are cheaper ways to prevent hijackings.   They are an invasion of privacy. They cause a small number of cancers.

The various x ray machines are illegal under the Constitution of the US. They are offensive to the very heart and soul of our country. The only people that think they are worthwhile are either A) spendthrift, paranoid and ignorant, B) own stock in companies that make the devices, or C) Politicians trying desperately to LOOK like they are doing something against terrorism.

Perk vs Motive

2011-11-03T13:49:00.003-04:00

I truly enjoyed the Fountain Head. Being an author, Ms. Rand knew a lot about the world of art critics. She dealt with them all the time. But I had major problems with Atlas Shrugged. Rand made a ton of rather bad simple political mistakes. One of her primary ones is still found in the political (and philosophical) world today. She confused a Perk with Motive. You can like something for multiple reasons, and some of those reasons are 'bonuses', rather than the main motive.

At heart, the problem is ignorance. It comes from thinking that the only reason to do something is that you like it.

Nope.

I do things for three main reasons:

I like doing it. Examples: Looking at pretty girls, drinking, skiing
I agreed to do it to get something else I like. Work for money, ride on a plane to get to a vacation,
I hate the consequences of not doing it: Breathing, obeying laws,

These are three entirely DIFFERENT motivations. If you don't know which is the main motivation, you can't take proper precautions.   For example, people like driving fast cars, so if you own one, you need to take steps to prevent un-authorized people from driving your car. You don't need to stop people from filling your gas tank.   So there is a lock on the car door, but not the gas tank.

But you don't need to take steps to prevent people from mowing your lawn. No one wants to mow your lawn.   You have to pay people to mow your lawn. So you do have to take steps to ensure that people you pay to mow your lawn actually does it. If they could get money without mowing your lawn, they would do it.

People don't give to charity because they enjoy giving to charity, Nor do we give to charity to get the tax credit or the applause. We don't even pay because we like what the charity is doing.   We give to charity because we hate the idea that the charities' work won't get done. Take any charity. Suppose the charity were to somehow 'win'. That is, suppose the MS Society cured Multiple Sclerosis. The people that gave to it would stop giving to the MS Society. Oh, a new charity might form, it might even have the same people, but the point is, people give to the charity not because they enjoy it, but because they hate the idea that no one is working to help/cure MS. We don't like giving the money, we don't like people working on a cure. We hate the idea that the cure doesn't exist.   That is a very different motivation, something Ms. Rand never thought about.

Now, they might actually enjoy giving.   We might like the praise for giving. We might like the idea of employing doctors. But those are PERKS, not the Motive.

For a non-charity example, consider the case of eating lobster. I love lobster. It is delicious. When I eat it, I do so because I like to do it. There are times when I will eat it even if I am not hungry. My motive for eating lobster is that I enjoy it, not to gain substance or to avoid hunger. My pleasure was my motive, the sustenance was a perk.    Now consider if I get shipwrecked in Maine. Then, I might hunt down and eat a lobster (OK, for the sake of argument, let's pretend I am the kind of guy that can hunt down a lobster, catch it, and cook it all by myself.).   In that case, my motive would be sustenance, and the taste would be the perk.

People often confuse motive with perk.   Members of both the conservative medical industry and the alternative medical industry get accused of being more interested in the money than in helping people. Whether you are involved in alternative or traditional (doctor/hospital/FDA approved drugs), everyone gets accused of being motivated by money and being 'perked' by helping people.   Honestly, most people in both industries are probably motivated by helping people.   There are some that care more about the money, but they are the minority.

The same thing gets done in politics. People focus on perks and think they are motivations, and vice versa.

Honestly, it doesn't matter.   All consequences need to be examined.   I don't care if you want a flat tax because it will simplify things, or if you will benefit from it. It doesn't matter WHY you want it, the question is is it a good idea.

And you need to admit the various things you claim are perks, so that we can discuss them. It doesn't matter if you are not motivated by them.

Corporations vs. People.

2011-10-31T13:04:00.003-04:00

The Supreme Court seems to think that corporations get the legal rights that people do.

Let's talk about the implications of corporations having the same rights as people.

First, they should clearly have the same duties as people do.

People have to sign up for the draft.
People can go to jail and even be executed for their crimes.
People get nationality at birth - which they can not easily change.
People have to pay into social security and other taxes.
People can marry
People vote.

That last one makes it obvious - if we declared corporations get all the rights that people do, it would include the right to vote, which makes for obvious problems with rich people creating multiple corporations and getting extra votes. But that's not the end of it.   Obviously, if you let corporations 'marry', then two gay men could make corporations and they could marry their corporations.

Some people like to 'translate' things and use that as an excuse. They say things like the people in the corporation have to sign up for the draft, can go to jail (or be executed), have nationality, pay into Social Security and other taxes, can marry and can vote, and that is good enough.

If that is true, by that same logic, the people in the corporations have free speech even if the corporation does not

To me, the biggest one is the possibility of jail. Corporations have their own goals and they can structure themselves to encourage the pursuit of those goals. Most of the time, that goal is to earn a profit. Usually the corporations structure themselves so as to pursue those goals legally. But not everyone is ethical. Sometimes people break the laws to get that profit. And sometimes the corporations structure themselves to encourage people to break the laws.

In those cases, the corporations need to be punished, not just the person that broke the law.   If the crime that was committed was just theft, that's one thing. You can punish the corporation financially. If the crime resulted in a single death, that's a whole other story.

But lets talk about the single specific way the SCOTUS said corporations count as people: Free Speech.    Not all speech is protected.   There are types of speech that is illegal:

Obscenity (usually applied to pornography)
Fighting words "I had sex with your mother and you can't do anything about it."
Imminent Threat (yelling fire in a crowded theater)
Commercial speech has some restrictions. Trying to sell something means you give up certain rights - which is how the government can prevent cigarettes from advertising to children.
National Security
Lies
Public Employees. If you work for the government, the government can restrict what you say as a government employee. On your off time, you can say what you want.
Corporations can punish employees or customers for saying things - that is, Free Speech protects you from the government, not your boss.
For School discipline purposes.

Of those, the one we punish most severely is probably National Security. If a person violates National Security, they can be killed for treason. We can't arrest a corporation. We can't execute it. We can dissolve it and arrest some of the employees. We can take the money, but that still leaves the information and the methods to continue on. If you can only arrest the people in the corporation than only the people in the corporation should have free speech.

Optional flat tax = a limit on how much tax you pay.

2011-10-29T11:10:00.009-04:00

It's not that hard to understand. An optional tax is in effect a tax cut but only for the wealthy people. If using it you pay more, you stick to the current tax. If using it, you pay less, you use it. So in effect, people only use it to lower their taxes, never raise them (except for the stupid - but we tax the stupid enough already). Worse, it makes it harder to raise taxes - as you have to raise both. Which I am sure the GOP likes - they act like taxes are an incredible evil instead of the reasonable cost of freedom, security, and safety.

The question is - is it a good idea? Nope.

Let's discuss why the GOP claims we need it. At heart, taxes are complicated. Could they be simpler? Yes, they could. There are certainly parts of the tax code that are way too complicated. But a very simple tax code takes a reasonably good, working tax code with a few flaws and turns it in to an incredibly bad one.

The world is NOT simple.   If it were, problems would not exist and people would not argue about it. We need a tax code that can not be expressed in one sentence to deal with these complexities.

A key example is the complex problem of how you treat married couples.   Do you treat them as a single tax entity with a single income and a single set of deductions, or as two individuals.   If you treat them as a single entity, then you in effect are tremendously hurting the two income people. All the various deductions they get are not doubled.   Their combined income pushes them up into a higher tax bracket.

But now try treating them as two people.   This works great for the double income families, but screws the single income families.   A man (or wife) trying to support his wife ( or her husband) and four kids on one salary has it pretty tough. They family should not be forced to have both parents work, they need the help.

So the tax code gets complex because we want to be fair and life is COMPLEX.

When you simplify things, in effect you are saying "we don't care about your special circumstances."

Some of the special circumstances built into the tax code probably should go away. But all of them? Without even bothering to look at them? No. Bull crap.

The simplest possible tax code will by definition screw over (and that four letter word should really be spelled with an "f") some people. The flat tax is designed to screw over the poor, the home owners, and families, among many others.

As I have said before, if simplicity is your only goal, then you should go after my "flat wealth tax", which taxes you on what you own, not what you make (income tax), or buy (sales tax). But the 'simplify' people don't like that, because the flat wealth tax is good for the poor and the middle class, while treating the wealthy the same way their flat tax treats the poor.

Complicated Ethics

2011-10-27T10:49:00.112-04:00

Ethics are a lot complicated than people think.   Lets look at so called ethical vegetarianism. I never liked the idea in the first place, because it assumes that it is more ethical to eat plants than it is to eat animals. Why? What about a sponge? Most people think of it as plant like, but technically it is an animal. Worse, all animals eat - which means they kill to survive, while most plants photosynthesize, so they don't kill anything at all.   Ethical vegans choose to eat peaceful, non-violent creatures as opposed to the violent, mass murders that kill other creatures to live. The distinction between plant and animal is more emotional than it is logical.

But lets move on to the big objection. As many have begun to point out, eating a purchased plant kills more animals than eating a purchased steak.   Commercial harvesting is ... violent. Read this quote (Source):

"[A] conservative annualized estimate of vertebrate deaths in organic rice farming is ~20 pound. … [T]his works out a bit less than two vertebrate deaths per square foot, and, again, is conservative. For conventionally grown rice, the gross body-count is at least several times that figure. … [W]hen cutting the rice, there is a (visual) green waterfall of frogs and anoles moving in front of the combine. Sometimes the “waterfall” is just a gentle trickle (± 10,000 frogs per acre) crossing the header, total for both cuttings, other times it is a deluge (+50,000 acre)."

When cows (or sheap, or veal, etc.) eat plants, they are selective. They leave the frogs and anoles (a small lizard) alone, eating just the grass.    When we farm vegetables we leave a path of death behind. This is not even counting the many insects killed by pesticides used to protect the precious vegetables.

To make it even worse, you can raise livestock on marginal lands.   Mountains? No problem.   Growing vegetables (and many grains), requires you to use prime land that normally teems with natural wild life.   You kill them and steal their natural habitat to grow plants    Cows, etc. can live on marginal lands that doesn't support much wildlife and they can share it. You don't have to kick the prairie dogs out to raise beef.   Oh, you do have to get rid of the larger predators, but they are relatively rare - and are more likely to be saved in parks and preserves.

As you can see, ethics requires more than just a principle. It requires thought, research, and the will to do what is right, as opposed to simply what seems right.

That is my problem with the many politicians. They don't think through their own principles. Take Herman Cain's recent abortion blunder.   He said:

"What it comes down to is not the government’s role or anybody else’s role to make that decision. Secondly, if you look at the statistical incidents, you’re not talking about that big a number. So what I’m saying is it ultimately gets down to a choice that that family or that mother has to make. Not me as president. Not some politician. Not a bureaucrat. It gets down to that family, and whatever they decide, they decide. I shouldn’t try to tell them what decision to make for such a sensitive decision."

That is at heart, the pro-choice position, if said using the GOP's new 'faux-libertarian' language. It's clear to me why he said it - he was sticking to the talking points about government regulations being bad. He applied it fairly and honestly, without realizing that is not what the GOP does. As such, he came to the oh so logical conclusion that abortion should be legal.   Too bad another of the GOP's prime principles is pro-life, and that over-rides lesser principles such as regulations being bad. Later he realized his mistake and tried to fix it.

Too late. At the very least he revealed that the GOP is lying about being anti-government. That is simply an excuse the GOP uses to explain why it wants the government to do nothing about issues they don't care about. On anything the GOP does care about, they are tremendously pro government regulations. Abotion, sex education, gay marriage? Regulate away.

It's not just the GOP, it happens with Democrats too.   Less often recently, in part because currently, we have a wider base of politicians (with more varied goals) and better leadership. The wider base means we can allow people to differ a bit without being kicked out of the party. In other words, we let people hold opinions that violate core DNC goals and still be part of the Democratic party.   For example, if we had a politician that believed strongly in the power of regulation, we would allow him to use that principle to be pro-life, without kicking him out. Note, as a general rule few (if any) democrats are pro-regulation as a principle, but instead see it as a necessary evil.

In addition, we have a strong leader. Obama's has clear goals and priorities, which can shape the party.   He leads and gives direction to the entire party, but the base allows for differences. As long as the other Democrats follow his lead for most things, the party will not adopt principles that at heart go against deeply held core party beliefs.

The GOP lacks leadership. If Cain did in fact become the GOP president, he could make a choice - either abandon the principle of 'anti-regulation' as a core theme, or abandon the core principle of pro-life. I think we all know that if he did become president, the anti-regulation theme would vanish against the unbreakable rock of pro-life.      Because in real life, principles almost always lose out to core beliefs.

Regulations vs jobs.

2011-10-25T10:09:00.002-04:00

I have said before, regulations create jobs.

There are three things we regulate:

Processes
Products
People

When we regulate a process, it can either be movable or immobile. An example of a process regulation is requiring the manufacturer not to pump lead and arsenic into the air. Similarly, requiring that a pharmacologist see your ID before selling you Sudafed is a process regulation.    Immobile processes are hard to out-source, while movable ones are relatively easy to outsource. Examples of immobile process include sewage treatment, electrical generation, bridge building, tunneling, etc.   Movable process are more common, as most products can be built anywhere and moved. In either case, regulations create MORE jobs, not less. If the process is immobile, the manufacturer hires new people to do the required process. However, if the process is portable, the new jobs MIGHT be transportation based, as the process gets outsourced to an area that does not have the regulation and the net change is someone else gets those jobs while only a few more transportation jobs are created. Net net, the world benefits, even if the country suffers a bit. But in both cases regulations decrease the profits of the existing corporations while creating new jobs.

An example of a product regulation is requiring the end product to have extra features. Cars must have seat belts, tobacco must have warning labels, dangerous medicine must have child-proof caps, are all product regulations.   Unlike a mobile process regulation, you can't move production overseas to avoid the regulation.   Here new jobs are created and in the same country that passed the regulation.

There are two types of people regulations: limitations and verifications.   An example of limittion regulations are requiring doctors, barbers, and taxi drivers to have licenses. This is the ONLY form of regulation that actually decreases jobs. But businesses usually don't complain about these regulations.   Usually they like them. Existing businesses do not wants the competition in the case of of licenses. Verification is another story. Here, government requires the business check to see if the employee is appropriate (sex offenders from teaching at schools, or requiring businesses to check immigration status).   This does not decrease jobs, it increases them (they need to pay someone to do the checks). But businesses don't like doing the government's job for free.

When the GOP claims that government regulations kill jobs, they actually mean that a regulations on mobile processes that don't kill jobs, it just moves them over seas (which actually adds transportation jobs to the world job market).    But then they use that as excuse to destroy many job creating regulations - such as the ones requiring power plants to clean up their pollution (cleaning up pollution costs money - which goes to pay people to do the cleaning or to build the devices that do the cleaning).

Some regulations are short sighted. Maybe we don't need to be too strict. But I know one thing - the world is not clean.   Cancer rates, autism rates, attention deficit disorders, allergies, they are all on the rise.   Human health is impaired as compared to what it 1,000 years ago, let alone 100,000 years ago. Some of it may be due to greater medical care allowing for greater life spans and propagation of genes that might once have been eliminated by harsh methods. But I bet some of it is caused by all the pollution that the GOP is not at all concerned about.

But here are some facts the GOP does not like to admit:

Every single power generation and utility regulation INCREASES jobs.
Every single regulation that requires features on a product INCREASES jobs.
Business by a far majority, love regulations that prevent other people from competing with them.

Businesses do dislike regulations that require them to do the government's job, nor do they like regulations that prevent them from dumping pollution into the air, water, and ground that we breath, drink, and grow food on. But funny how they don't do that on property the owners live on.

Healthcare Costs

2011-10-23T12:49:00.083-04:00

This post is not about the high cost of healthcare. Instead it is about the way we lie about the costs.

I have health care.   In fact, my employer does a pretty good job when it comes to benefits. It offers multiple plans and lets us choose. I have in fact chosen the more expensive, pick your own doctors plan.

When I get healthcare bills, I pay them. Usually I just look at the "You Owe" column.   The rest of it is pretty complicated and hard to understand.

Today, I am going to look at the rest of the columns The most interesting thing, is the differences between the "amount billed", "Paid by XXX", and the "You Owe" column. In most businesses, you would expect amount billed to be equal the paid by + the owe column. Not in healthcare. None of my health care bills for the past 12 months add up like that.

In health care bills, there are two more columns: "Discount" and "Amount not Covered"

You see, insurance companies make two kinds of deals with healthcare providers. The first is a straight "discount", of say 29%.    There, they pay the healthcare provider 29% of what they bill. The other is a set fee, where they pay a certain amount of money for certain types of procedures, regardless of what the provider normally charges. Hint, it is usually a LOT less - as in much less than 50%.

That 29% is spot on accurate (to the penny) example, used by my insurance company for all payments to that particular provided. The negotiated amounts have dramatically different billing percentages. But a typical set fees vary a lot. One was covered $110.27 out of $295, or about 37% of the bill.    Another was $39.27 out of $177.96, or about 22% of the bill.

Add to that a small copay, usually under $50, which I personally pay.

Wow, those providers must be going bankrupt! They are getting ripped off! But wait, they have been doing this for a long time. More than long enough to go bankrupt. At the very least, why don't they all go to the discount method.   Another thing, clearly, those inflated prices are wrong. They are overcharging.   What is going on?

First, the amount of inflation in medical prices varies depending on location. That is, while that provider may charge$295 in Manhattan, the same procedure may only cost $155 in Detroit.   For a national provider, the set discount may make a lot sense in one location, but make no sense in another.Clearly the negotiated 29% discount is a good deal for the Manhattan doctor, giving him about $200, but a horrible deal for the Detroit guy who would get his full $155.
Second, not everyone has insurance. And sometimes, even with insurance, you can't go to a provider 'in plan'. I try to save money by going to in plan, but if I get a brain tumor, I may have to go out of plan.

So those providers keep their high "inflated prices" for use with relatively rare non-participating people, while at the same time accepting the massively lower prices for most of their clientele. Note, I am not special, most people try hard to go with providers 'in plan', most of us get the lower prices.

It is VERY rare that someone with money goes to a provider "out of plan", for anything significant. The main case is emergency room visits.   More often, you get poor people that have no insurance getting hit with large bills, that they more often than not, can not pay.

Third, the providers can get tax benefits for having those high prices discounted away. They are business losses - "I charged X, but only got paid X/2"   This is particularly used by 'non-profit' entities that make a lot of money, but to avoid paying taxes, have to find ways to claim they are not-profitable even when they really are.

Fourth, it lets the insurance companies pretend they are getting a good deal. They can claim they saved you money, as opposed to simply costing you more than the doctors, just spread out over time.

The truth is quite simple. No reasonable person ever pays the "billed price" for helathcare, given sufficient time to prepare for the charge. If we have insurance, we go to in plan providers. If we don't, we get insurance first, hunt down charity, or simply don't pay it.

So why do we allow the deceitful business practices created and maintained by the providers and insurance companies for their benefit.

Medical care is hard to price. Particularly emergency medical care. The providers have you over the barrel - pay or die. Usually it is agree to pay NOW or die. Worse, they don't tell you the price before service.

Lets talk about a world where these practices are not going on. No 'discounts', no massively lower secret "negotiated prices".

Three rules to make this happen. Why treat healthcare special? Because I am not. Most of these rules are designed to do to hospitals and other providers what existing laws and capitalism have required other businesses to do for years.

No Price Gauging. Emergency room visits to a hospital, by law would have to use the lowest negotiated/discount prices a place has, regardless of with whom they negotiated services. If they have no negotiated prices, they can't provide those services anywhere else. We don't let people raise the price on water or gasoline to 3x normal because of a emergency (hurricane, etc.), don't let them do it because of a car accident/heart attack.
No Hidden Prices. Any service provider must post all regular prices and negotiated prices online, for every single insurance company. If this is too hard to do, then perhaps the provider should consider simplifying their pricing. No other business gets away without listing prices beforehand. If they negotiate discounts, they must list the un-discounted price and the set discount. Every other business in the world has to list their prices before you pay, so should the hospital. The negotiated prices must be listed so that people can tell before hand what they will actually pay, and which insurance companies they should consider joining.
No Secret Profits. Anyone non-profit provider can not charge more money to the uninsured than their lowest negotiated price. That should be what non-profit is all about. Any for-profit provider can screw the uninsured all they want to.

P.S. I am talking about providers, not just doctors here. More importantly, the doctors are not the ones in charge. Corporations are. Medical providers are not just doctors and hospitals, but also businesses doing medical tests, selling drugs, braces, etc. In general, it is the big corporations that are in control, creating this system, not individual doctors. Individual doctors have to go along with the system.

Campaign Finance

2011-10-21T11:13:00.002-04:00

There are many theories about campaign spending.   Many (if not most) say it is relatively infective. (Erickson & Palfrey, 2000) Others claim that it does have an effect, but small: one percent increase for doubling the spending. Some claim that it differs for incumbents vs challengers, usually stating that incumbents spending is less effective, while challenger spending more so - in large part because challengers have to do more. Incumbents have a large advantage particularly in simple name recognition. (Abramowitz 1988, Gergber 2004.) But almost all of them state that the higher the election, the less effective money becomes.   At the presidential level, if money does anything at all, it takes an awful lot of it to get any results.

I personally am of the opinion, that cause and effect are being reversed. Money does not buy winning votes for in an election, instead winning candidates attract money. Campaign finances are not shady, despicable things, but instead the best polls you get for free. People vote with their wallet before they vote at the booth.   The most popular guy gets the most money and then goes on too win, as opposed to the other way around.

In any case, Obama clearly has a lot more money than the GOP candidates. (http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/campaign-finance?hp) The NY Times says Obama has raised almost $100,million, as compared to Romney's, $32.6 million. The entire Republican field has raised a total of $90.1 million. That is still 10% less than Obama and that includes the Ron Paul people and the Cain people, neither of whom are likely to give freely to any other candidate but their own.

Best of all, Obama raised 52% of his money from small donations (under $200), as compared to Romney, who got 61% of his cash from maximum donations ($2,500). Romney got less than 10% of his money from small donations and Obama got only 22% of his from maximum donations. But not that 20% of $100 million is still more than 61% of $33 million

Last year, at this same time period, Clinton was the rich woman at $62,7 million, vs Obama at $58.6, Romney at $43.5, Giulani at $34.4 and McCain at $25.9. Romney did better 4 years ago than he is doing now and lost the Primary, to McCain, who lost the general election.

Obama, despite his poor showing in the polls, is going to win the 2012 election.   Not because he is going to buy the election, but simply because so many people want him to win. The voters are voting with their pocketbook and giving him money and LOTS of it, mostly in small batches of less than $200.

The Republicans are caught up in pandering to the far right, ignoring the moderates that are essential to win the presidential election.   The T-Party won't let them pick anyone that can beat Obama, their strategists are ignoring the needs and desires of the majority of the citizens of the USA, and blaming Obama for everything bad, while it sells well to their base, just angers the undecided.

Part of the problem is that blaming the other guy does not win you votes, ever. Politicians have a bad reputation.   We don't like them. To quote South Park:   "But Stan, don't you know, it's always between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. Nearly every election since the beginning of time has been between some douche and some turd." The fact that Obama is hated by the far right means nothing, the fact that the left is angry with Obama for not doing enough, means nothing. The fact that our opposing choice is WORSE is what matters.

Another issue is the plan. People vote for a guy with a plan, not the guy that says the plan sucks.   For the GOP to win, they need to shift the rhetoric away from how bad Obama is, and about how good their plan is. Too bad their only plans are rehashes of old stuff that people don't believe in. To shift the rhetoric, you need not just a plan, but a NEW plan.   Which is something they have not had in 10 years.

Unemployment

2011-10-19T17:16:00.001-04:00

I have some good news for us - unemployment has really only risen by about 3%. But some bad news - the length of time people remain unemployed has doubled.

Part of the problem is that people usually quote the Unemployment numbers, which only count the number of people looking for work. It ignores everyone that has given up. More importantly, it also ignores all retired people, college kids, the military, infants, and a bunch of other things.    Unemployment numbers are really about how many people are unhappy with being unemployed. It is important for politicians seeking to get re-elected, but not that much for economists.

A better statistic is the Civilian Participation Rate. That number is pretty inclusive - it includes stay at home moms, senior citizens and college kids. But it still does not include kids under 16, prisoners or military personal. It doesn't really matter if your unemployment number is 1% or 80%, what matters is how many people are working to support the unemployed. If you have a Civilian Participation rate of 10%, then every 1 working person is struggling to support 9 other people - and you are in deep trouble, tax wise. If your Civilian Participation rate is 75%, then 3 people are supporting 1 person, and you are fairly flush tax wise. Even if you have an unemployment rate of 15%, it won't matter.

(Source for this article)

The Civilian Participation Rate has fallen from a high of 67% (Good old Bill Clinton) to a low of 64%, the lowest since the 1980's (Ronald Reagan presided over this dark time in US history). That means that only 64% of the working age, non-military US population has a job.   But note that's only a fall of 3%. So honestly, this recession is not as bad as some would think. During that same time, unemployment has rose from about 4% to a 10% high. Note the unemployment rate change is twice as much as the participation rate change - in part because so many people in our culture never had a job. About half the population never was looking.   It also means that no, the unemployment numbers are not being affected by a large increase in the number of people who gave up.

On the other hand, the length time people are being unemployed has skyrocket. Before the recession, people usually were unemployed for about 10 weeks. The highest it had ever averaged was about 13 weeks back in the early 1980's. But now it hit 25 weeks as the average. That's about twice as much as the previous high. That is a big change.

The difference between this recession and the good times is 3 more unemployed people out of every hundred. So this recession does not really have a lot more people out of work - what it has is a lot more people that want jobs that can not get them. Honestly back in the evil old Ronald Reagan recession (which to be honest was probably as much about Carter's mistakes as the current one is about George Bush's mistakes.), there were just as many people working. A major difference is who is unemployed - gender wise. Back under Reagan, women stayed home and liked it. Now, the men are staying home and not liking it. Not liking it for half a year.

Contrast this with corporate profits and you understand why the unemployed people are upset.    Corporate profits are continuing on their same path of ever increasing profits. Oh, they got hit in 2008/2009 but are fully recovered. And the CEO's are getting paid more. CEO's pay increase is better than inflation, better than the corporate profit increase, and even better than the Stock Market.   (Will someone let me buy options on my CEO's salary? Please?) But regular wages have dropped. Why? Because business men know that the unemployed people are REALLY desperate, even if there are not all that more of them.

Economic Structure

2011-10-17T16:19:00.001-04:00

Currently America has a 4 tier economic structure:

1% (TW) Truly Wealthy (Yacht/Full time Servants Don't have to work, owns multiple homes)
9% (UMC) Upper Middle Class (speedboat/luxuries - many have a Graduate degree, always owns their home)
50% (MC) Middle Class (two cars, graduated from college, - sometimes owns, sometimes rents )
40% (LC) Lower Class (one used car, at best - did not graduate college, usually rents)

There used to be a Lower Middle class (LMC) that consisted of clerical/blue collar workers, but that class has dissappeared. They typically had the 2 year "Associate's Degree" but not the four years B.A. Computers and robots took a lot of those jobs and the pay dropped for the rest, making them clearly the lower class. Oh, a few managed to make the jump to Middle Class, but not many. Now a days a n Associate's Degree won't help you that much.

At the same time, the Upper Middle Class has shifted upwards a bit.   They don't like to be called the "Upper Class" for several reasons. Chief among them is that often the Upper Middle Class works sides by side with the Middle Class - in fact sometimes U.M.C. people work for a MC boss.

This is because children can turn an Upper Middle Class family into a Middle Class family. If your boss has a family, he may not live as well as you do - particularly if his wife is a stay at home mom. Children cost a lot of money and often the mother (and rarely the father), have their employment changed because of the child. The second most common reason why an UMC becomes a MC family is disease. A single sick person in a family (parent, worker, or child) can cost huge amounts of both time and money.

This happens because the main difference between UMC and MC is that the UMC has luxuries. The main difference between the MC and the LC is not luxuries, but steady employment, with benefits, and a bit of a safety net in the bank or home equity.

The same effects (child, sickness) can turn Middle Class into Lower Class, but this is a little bit bit rarer.    The movement is generally caused by someone stopping a lucrative job to help out and give personal, loving care to someone (child/ sick parent). The Middle Class does not have the luxuries afford to do that - so the child/sick person often just has to make do with what they can afford because both mommy and daddy have to keep working to keep them out of the dreaded Lower Class.

I don't think we will ever regain the Lower Middle Class.   Computers do what they did much very well.   In addition, the push to get more people with a full bachelor's degree is a wise thing. If you are smart enough to graduate High School, you should get a full Bachelors Degree, not settle for an Associates Degree.

Being in the Lower Class is often the result of illness in a family without two strong, skilled workers. Drug use is also a contributing factor.   To pull people out of the Lower Class we need better education and better free healthcare (Obamacare is a good start). What we really need is a new education system. And that won't happen without removing local control.

Now to discuss the big one. The move, everyone dreams about. Moving into truly wealthy is practically impossible.   Social mobility beyond the UMC is practically gone. The top 1% likes their position and does what it takes to stay there.    It's no enough to be better than 99% of the population. Bill Gates' children - who may be smart but not as smart as he was - fight to keep their position.

(Source for rest of article)

The telling problem is the drop in mobility. In the 1940s and 1950's, the chances of changing social class were from a low of 5 to as high as 12%.    But since the 1990s, it has held solid at about 3.8% That means less than 4% of the top 1% will ever stop being rich.   You just can't become wealthy (or lose your wealth) the way we used to. Not unless you do something spectacular. Everyone hears of lottery tickets wasting their wealth.

In truth if you have to be 1 in 2,500 to fight your way into the top 1 in 100 position.   As for the rich slowly descending into the Upper Class - that usually only happens to the arrogant ones that pissed off their parents. Again, less than 1 out of 25 rich people somehow blow it and end up living in just a million dollar condo instead of a $10 million dollar mansion.

Part of the issue is that corporations got bigger and better. We created national chains, so new businesses have to compete against huge businesses - that can sell at a loss in a small area.   It used to be that small business could relatively easing establish dominion over a 3-10 town area without fear of competition form a national chain. You were only competing with other local businesses. But now we have huge national chains. This makes it much harder to turn your family business into a state wide corporation.

The internet helped out a bit - but try to compete with Google/Apple/Amazon/PayPal now. We have new large corporations, not many medium ones competing with each other. In the end, it was a one shot infusion of new blood to the upper classes, not a continuous engine.

Easy Tax Reform

2011-10-15T16:29:00.004-04:00

It is very hard to raise taxes. Much easier to close loopholes. So here are bunch of expensive loopholes we can close, all of which make little sense to keep open. Some are tax deductions that seemed like a good idea, but turned out to be easy to abuse. Others are simply government give-a-ways that never made financial sense - even if they made political sense.

Payroll tax limits
Mortgage deductions for second homes/yachts (yes YACHTS)
Real estate Tax deductions
Business deductions for SUV over 3 tons.
Capital Gains tax (buffet rule)
Oil
Agricultural

Payroll tax limts. You only pay social security tax on your first $106,8000 of income.   So someone that makes $107,000 and someone that makes $5,000,000 a year, both pay the same amount into social security.    If we eliminate this limit, so that everyone pays the same 6.2% (and their boss pays another 4.2% - which may be the same person if you are self-employed), that solves our Social Security funding problem without cutting benefits a single penny or raising the retirement age, ever.

Mortgage Tax Deductions. You get a tax deduction for all mortgage interest you pay for anything that qualifies as a home. That includes a second home as well assuming you live in it 14 days a year / 10% of the days you rent - whichever is greater. Even if one of your home is a houseboat - or a 200 ft yacht with a bed, kitchen and bathroom in it. If we limit this to a single home and also limit it to no more than $30,000 tax deduction a year (adjusts for inflation) and the IRS gains a lot of cash. I am being very generous with that $30k deduction, you

Real estate tax deductions. Property tax you pay to the state is also tax deductible. Why? We don't let the poor deduct that taxes they pay on food? We don't want to affect the main housing market, so, again, make it only for your primary home (6 months+/year), and again a limit of no more than $30k a year.

SUV deductions. Here we give a tax deduction for any SUV that is purchased for business purposes if it is over 3 tons. The idea was to let business deduct their business related expenses. But it got abused by a lot of small business owners for vehicles they use personally.   The problem was they made a category too big and let people buy the low weight (6,000 lb vehicle) and get the tax deduction that would be appropriate for the high weight (14,000 lb vehicle). Keep the deduction, but scale it.   $1,000 deduction at 6,000 lbs, + another $1,500 deduction per 500 lbs. lbs base vehicle weight above the 3 tons. Still tops off at the $25,000 deduction for a 7 ton vehicle, but to get that they need to own a real truck, not just a heavy SUV that they once used for business purposes.

Capital Gains Tax.   Here I propose a simple rule. You can pay the 15% capital gains tax - but only on the first $50,000 of capital gains you make. After that, it jumps up to the same tax rate you pay for regular income. Put in an exception for selling your primary home at the 15% rate as long as you have lived in it for at least 40% of the time you owned it.

Oil Loopholes. They get a lot. Tax credits for 'enhanced oil recovery' - needs the newest, expensive, tech to get = tax break. Production credits for marginal wells - poor well with little oil/gas = tax break. Intangible drilling costs - you get a bad reputation for spills = tax credit for propaganda. Plus a bunch of weird accounting rules that only they (no other business) gets. Remove all of that crap and make them play by the same rules everyone else gets.

Agricultural tax benefits fall into two types - direct subsidies for corn based ethanol and the classic pay people not to farm. Neither of these make much sense. Ethanol is perfectly profitable - if you limit it to waste agricultural products as Brazil does. Then the fuel is cheap - the leaves, stalks, etc. that would otherwise be thrown away. But it makes zero sense to put perfectly edible corn into the mix.   Same goes for the paying people not to farm. We don't need to socialize farming, it has become a big business - the payments get rid of ALL risk for farming and it has in fact KILLED the family farm. Because of the lack of risk, all gets done by big corporations.     In 2005, the government spends more on farm aid than it pays to families that receive welfare. "The cash comes with so few restrictions that subdivision developers who buy farmland advertise that homeowners can collect farm subsidies on their new back yards." (Source of quote and data = Washington post )

Great idea for the IRS

2011-10-13T09:40:00.002-04:00

Here is a simple suggestion for the IRS:

Whenever a corporation declares less federal taxes than it pays for it's top executives, board of directors plus dividends paid to stock holders, for three or more years in a row, that should automatically trigger a full field Audit of all their finances.

It's based on the simple idea that no sane corporation could possibly pay more than it is earning, and that doing so is evidence of fraud.

Strangely, such actions happen often. Corporations routinely find ways to declare no or minimal taxes while declaring banner years and paying dividends and bonuses.

Perhaps they are doing really well manipulating the tax laws. Or maybe, just maybe they are pretending to do really well. Maybe their business is a fraud. Maybe they are simply cheating the government. Maybe

At the very least, if they are not willing to pay their fair share of taxes, they should get extra scrutiny.

Science and Politics

2011-10-10T02:40:00.001-04:00

First, let me state that there are just as many anti-science democrats as there are anti-science republicans. For every creationist, there is an anti-vaxer. For every anti-climate change lunatic, there is an anti-nuclear fool.

But that's the individuals.    They don't matter. Their are lunatics in all social groups.   The problem is the Party Leadership and the political platform.

The left does not carve their anti-science message into stone as core party beliefs. The left doesn't have major candidates endorsing the anti-science views. It doesn't have litmus tests for candidates, demanding they repeat a viewpoint that is patently false. The democrat presidential party candidates avoid those issues, as opposed to bring them up.

That is not a minor difference. It is a major difference between lip-service for bullcrap and actual laws.   More importantly, by not promoting it, we enable our own growth.   In 10 years, the anti-vax movement will have to be taught in history schools because it won't exist anymore.   Some day, with a bit more advancement, we can make nuclear power safe enough that even the paranoid masses will accept it (it is already far safer than coal.).

That can't happen to the GOP. Their anti-science movements have gotten stronger and stronger, and have stood the test of time. Evolution is proven science, it hasn't been controversial for 50 years, but the GOP keeps promoting Creationism.   The same goes for Climate Change. In fact it has gotten so bad that moronic politicians point to the left's pro-climate change stance as proof we are anti-science. Climate change is accepted science, not something you can dismiss and claim is controversial (not among scientists at least).

That is why the GOP gets the anti-science rap. Not because liberals are more scientific than conservatives, but because the Republican party embraces anti-science movements while the Democrats are ashamed of them.

What the Wall Street Protestors Should Demand

2011-10-08T16:25:00.001-04:00

There are a lot of people mad at Wall Street. Right now they have a growing protest (it just gained the Unions).

All they lack is a solid message. First of all, forget about solving the issue completely. If it were that easy, it would have been done already. What we need to do is to make a single solid step in the right direction.

The problems Wall street has are three fold:

Excessive concentration on the short term. Short term profits can always be achieved by taking long term risks. It's not that hard to create gambling strategies that pay off a reasonable profit 9 times out of 10,but one time out of ten bankrupts you. Stock prices pay attention to short term profits, and often ignore long term risks.
Unethical treatment of customers. American corporate law is at heart a "Buyer Be Ware" process. IT lets corporations sell things by focusing on the main benefit while ignoring the small print.
Unemployment. When the business doesn't off shore their business, then they get beaten by foreign based companies.

These three problems can not be completely solved without doing horrible things to the economy. But they can be ameliorated. I see two solutions. (Sorry, could not think of anything to help out with unemployment - in part because the more you fix #2, the greater a problem you get for #3 - we need a balance))

Solution #1: More some of the focus of corporations to the long term via bonus rules. Three rules to do this:

Any public corporation based in the US can not pay any person more than $200,000 unless at least half of the amount over $200k is in the form of a corporate bonus. You can pay them $500k a year, as long as $150k of that $500k is in the form of the corporate bonus.
All corporate bonuses must "vest" over a period of at least 4 years. If you earn a bonus in one year, your get no more than 25% one year after you earn it, 25% the next year, etc. etc. If you leave the company, you still get the bonus. No bonuses can vest in any year unless the corporation declares a taxable profit to the US government.
All un-vested corporate bonuses are, by law, forfeit to the the government if the corporation receives a bail out or to creditors if the corporation goes bankrupt. If a corporation is in talks about a bailout or is considering declaring bankruptcy, then the bonuses must be delayed for up to 3 months or until the talks/considerations are over. If they can delay completing the bankruptcy/bailout, then they get that extra year's worth of bonuses.

Note, this does not actually lower the amount anyone gets paid, unless their business goes bankrupt.. Instead it time shifts some of the money.

Solution #2: Grant more power to the newly created Federal Trade Commission. Specifically, grant it a rating power. It can review any and all contracts for major corporations and rate them - from A to an F. This rating, by law, must be prominently displayed at the location where people sign the contract - and in large, readable, type whenever any web site requires you to click to accept. Failure to do so invalidates the contract completely.

Republicans STILL looking for a winner

2011-10-06T14:05:00.000-04:00

Chris Christie yet again repeated that he will not be running for president.

That is not the news - he has repeatedly said it. What is news is the fact that republicans kept begging him to run, this late in the game.

The GOP does not like their own candidates. It's not like they are limited. They have their 4 major candidate types:

Libertarian that still believes the bull crap lie that the GOP wants small government (Ron Paul)
Populist Tea Party candidate (Bachmann)
Moderate Conservative that most of the GOP thinks is a R.I.N.O. (Romney)
Religious Right guy (Perry)

What more can they possibly want?

Oh yeah, someone that can win against Obama. That is simply not available.

So how could the GOP actually beat Obama.

Well, they could get a miracle - some incredible bad scandal that breaks just in time to crush Obama. Sex won't do it, I'm talking major crimes
They could try to steal the election - they are trying their best to stop college kids from voting throughout the country.

But lets' talk about reasonable actions they could take.

Nominate Cain - a black man - to give them a chance to get some black votes. Without him, they got nothing. But that won't happen because too many of the far right won't vote for a black man at all.
Have Cain get sane. Stop talking about ridiculous plans to do major changes to our tax plans.
Come right out and say you want to cut the military - and by a large amount. Specify a 50% cut to the military budget..
Pick a side - either deficit cutting or tax cutting. Can't do both. Use the military cuts to fund one of those choices to a LARGE amount. I suggest starting with the Deficit cut and stating when it gets down to 5% of the budget, we will automatically start a tax cut.
Come out with a major immigration reform bill - with the US consulates offering cheap 4 month immigration visas just to men or women that provide a blood test indicating no drug use or pregnancy. UNLIMITED numbers of these visas would be available - but anyone caught without one can never ever get one - and deportation begins (with regular court rules, not special deportation court rules). This can get them the hispanic vote.
Ignore abortion, gay rights, Obamacare cancellation and any other issue you don't have a 60% or greater support for. And that has to be a real 60% favorability not a 60% dislike Obamacare when 30% dislike it because it did not go far enough. Push issues you get more than 60% to win.
Stop defending the rich. Look at whatever Obama plans and negotiate it down, then call it victory. You can NOT win by defending 1%, or even 9% of the population's wealth. You need to concentrate on the 40% that are poor and the 50% that are true middle class. More importantly, the rich already hate Obama. They will vote for you anyway.

Who are the 50% that don't pay taxes

2011-10-02T09:19:00.005-04:00

The GOP has begun talking about half of all Americans that don't pay tax. First, lets clarify that when they say "don't pay tax", they mean they don't pay federal income tax. They still pay payroll taxes (social security and medicare, etc.) directly to the federal government. In addition they pay state tax, local income tax, and sales taxes.    Lastly, the number is actually 46%, as per the Tax Policy Center.   But lets talk about that 50% that don't pay 'federal income tax'.

(My source)
First of all, about a one third of the "no taxers" made $20,000 or less a year. That is less than 1700 a month.   The issue should not be that many Americans don't pay tax, it should be that 15 % of Americans make less than $20,000 a year. That is families making less than $20, not each parent. About 6% of Americans don't even make $10k a year.

Second, it's not quite as bad as that sounds - because about a lot of those people are not working and we don't expect them to be working. Some are elderly and some are students. Specifically, 44% of the 'no taxers' get the various Elderly credits in the code. That is, they are retired or mostly retired senior citizens, getting social security.

Another 5.6% of the 'no taxers' get education credits, so they are most likely full time students or paying for kids in college.. Another 30.4% of the 'no taxers' are getting the credits for Children & Working poor. That is, they are making very little money - about $20,000 a year or less, and/or have children.

That leaves about 20% of people that are not elderly and not poor, but manage to pay no taxes. Some of that is from severe health issues - often temporary. You can avoid paying taxes for workers comp, disability, etc. That works out to about 6% of the 'no taxers'.

You end up with a about 15% of no-taxers doing it the hard way. Remember, no- taxers are about 50% of the entire population, so that is about 7.5% of Americans paying no taxes without being old, very poor, paying for school, or getting disability.   They use itemized deductions, such as mortgage interest, charitable contributions, business losses, gambling/stock losses, and tax-exempt bonds to avoid paying federal income tax.

Of these 15%, two thirds (about 10% of the 'no taxers, about 5% of the entire population) are middle class (making between $50-$100k). The $50-$100k group is harder to define, as it includes seniors that invested wisely and people with large families barely making it and not paying taxes because they have 7 children.    It may also consist of people paying no tax in one particular year because of special circumstances. I am talking about - business upsets, theft, etc. If you normally make $100k a year, but this year your house gets destroyed by flood and you have no insurance, that can eliminate your tax bill.    Or if your long term business, which used to make $200k a year did horribly and you earned only $75k, then business losses could eliminate your tax bill.

Only 1/3 (5%) of 'no taxers' make more than $100,000 a year. Again, that is 1/2 the entire population, so about 2.5% of Americans make more than $100,000 and are not old/poor/paying for school/or getting disability. These are the people that it is truly surprising that they don't pay federal income taxes.
The statistics show they tend to use the same methods as the middle class. The two biggest cause for "rich people paying no taxes" appears by far to be most of their income being Tax Exempt (municipal bonds, foreign earnings etc.) and Itemized Deductions. In the Itemized Deductions, the biggest one by far is the mortgage credit.

Full disclosure: I own a home and take full advantage of the Mortgage credit and it does lower my federal income tax a lot - but not to zero. I still pay significant federal income taxes. But if I were to have four children with a stay at home wife (or worse, a wife going to school part time), plus take some capital losses in stocks then I might be able to avoid all federal income taxes. Or if I were 65 living off of my savings plus social security, with the same mortgage I have now, I could see not paying any federal income tax.

Honestly, entirely removing the deductions that those 2.5% of Americans use - Mortgage and Tax Exempt interest - would be a bad idea. It would affect a lot of the middle class, destroy housing prices, and hurt a lot of people. But if you start to phase them out, with limits of no more than X dollars, that would be reasonable.
We tried that already it's called the "AMT" and most people consider it a failure.

Even if we re-vamped the AMT to make it work right, don't expect a huge benefit from limiting the mortgage deductions or reducing the tax exempt status of bonds. The blow to high end real estate and to states trying to raise funds with bonds would probably more than offset any gains.

How Primaries Should be Done.

2011-09-30T01:34:00.002-04:00

There are some people out there that think Primaries should be open. In effect, they want to allow Democrats to vote on who the Republican Candidate should be, and vice-versa.   I used to disagree with this idea, for several reasons. First, once you do that, there is less need/benefit/advantage to actually joining a political party.   Second, some might sabotage the opposing party - for example a bunch of Democrats could all vote for a Republican they think they can beat - such as Sarah Palin that no serious person thinks can win against Obama. . Of course that might backfire if they turn around and win. Thirdly, it is the Republican's (or Democrat's) Primary, not the country's primary, why should anyone that is not a member of that party be allowed to vote? We don't let Coke vote on who's going to run Pepsi! The same goes for the other way around ( Republicans voting in a Democratic primary).

My solution is simple - give the party members extra votes and opposing members less. This gives clear advantages to joining a party, makes sabotage much more difficult, and recognizes whose primary it is. I am not saying that this should be a law, just that both parties should do this. In fact, I think that if one party would do it and the other refused, the party that took my advice would come ahead - with more 'electable' candidates.

The way I see it, a Democrat voting in a Democrat Primary should get 3 votes. An independent gets 2 votes while a member of any other political party gets 1 vote.   These ratios are not set in stone - and can be altered. If you still have fear of abuse, you could start it off at 6 votes for a Democrat, 1 vote for an independent and no votes for the Republicans.

Similarly, the GOP could give the GOP members 3 (or 6 or whatever) votes, independents 2 (or whatever), and Democrats 1 vote (or whatever) etc.etc.   I suspect that Obama still would have beat Clinton using this methodology. The GOP really disliked her - more than any planned attempt to sabotage her would have helped- and now they are wishing she had won. So would have McCain - despite the rhetoric both were relatively moderate candidates as opposed to the rather radical ones we are currently seeing in the GOP partisans.

But it does do three things. First, it discourages extremes. Suddenly there is some cost for going to extremes. Second, it encourages more electable candidates. It doesn't just weaken the radicals, but it empowers the main stream candidates.   Isn't that a great phrase "Main Stream" it is so much better than moderate which the extremists have used as an insult.   It isn't. Moderate/Main Stream means more people agree, whereas radical/extreme means LESS people believe it.   Thirdly, and most important, it discourages mudslinging.   If you attack the other party, as opposed to promoting your own ideas, you lose out. So the rhetoric would shift.   That alone would be a major benefit. Less mud thrown makes for a better election, a more civil country.

Obama: Success or Failure?

2011-09-28T12:54:00.003-04:00

Let's look at what Obama has done in his 3 years:

Killed Osama Bin Laden.
Ended "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (which Clinton created and grew to hate.)
Passed a massive healthcare bill that both Clintons failed to create (pre-existing conditions, child coverage, Medicare "donut hole", increased eligibility for medicaid, etc. etc. etc.)
Ended the Iraq war and began the pullout
Credit Card bill of rights and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Fully funded the Veterans Administration,
Reduced our Nuclear spending - in part by completing START Treaty obligations before they were required by the treaty. What a great idea. Do it early and save some cash.
Helped Libya's revolution succeed with real military aid (air support) without putting hundreds of American troops in Libya.
Ended the DOJ's corrupt and illegal hiring/promoting/firing practices (which under Bush were) based on which political party people belonged to (all new hires have to sign a pledge not to do this - so everyone knows it is illegal instead of pretending "oh, thats not legal?")
Raised fuel standards for cars and light trucks
Required that at least 10% of US electricity be from renewable sources - as of 2011, it is about 11%: 6% hydroelectric + 3% wind + another 2% from a combination of solar, biomass and geothermal. Most of this was from strong growth in Hydro and wind

Some of you are going to say that Bush should get at least some of the credit for Obama's #1 success - killing Bin Laden. Maybe that's true (I disagree. If Bush 'helped' he helped to the extent that it took 10 years to find Bin Laden. Finding him after 10 years is a failure.   Finding him in less than 3 years is a sucess). But Bush is definitely responsible for creating Obama's major "failure" - the Recession.

Note the recession is technically over, according to economists. But it's not back to normal either.    Yes, that's a big one in my mind bigger than any but the top 4 Obama successes .   However, if I had a choice of having Osama Bin Laden still alive but the economy thriving, I would rather take the situation as it is now. I bet a lot of other people - Democrat and Republicans - would keep it the same as well.

But the economy is also the one thing that presidents don't really have a lot of control over. Presidents can't go on a hiring spree to give everyone government jobs. They can't even pass laws - Congress does that.   They can push and scream and yell at Congress plus they can propose laws and carry them out quickly or slowly. They can hire the right/wrong people and put them in charge of our financial policy - such as raising/lowering money supplies and interest rates charged to banks, but that only has so much of an effect.   Basically, if the problem wasn't stupid Federal policies in the first place, there is not much they can do.

While presidents get the blame for the economy, they can't really do all that much about it.

People are going to look back at Obama and say he was one of the better presidents. In his first term, he did 4-5 very difficult, very important things, plus about 6-7 easier, but still important things.   He only failed on the one thing he didn't have much control over - the economy.

Obama has not done a bad job. The Republicans may not like a lot of what he has done ( of the 11 good things, I can see them hating #s 2,3, and 5, and not liking 9,10 and 11, but that still leaves 1,4,6,7, and 8 that they wanted done ), but the things the GOP dislikes were Democrat priorities and the Democrats are all glad he did them. Quite a few of the people that voted for him wanted those list items the Republicans hate.

By any reasonable standard, Obama has done both America and the DNC proud.   The people that voted for him got about as good as can be expected. Yes, the people that voted against him dislike the things he did - that is why they voted against him.   Obama is a clearly successful President, not a failure. He did most of the big things he wanted to do. The one main thing he hasn't done, well, it's pretty impossible for a President to do - at least not without a lot of luck.

Why Obama is still going to win the election

2011-09-26T15:50:00.001-04:00

First, several republicans (Bachmann, the queen of lies, in particular) have mentioned that Obama is in a worse position than any other president. They say he has lower approval ratings than any other president. It is not surprising that republicans think that because most likely, Obama has the lowest approval ratings among REPUBLICANS than any other Democrat president. They talk to their friends and they all hate him, so they think everyone hates him.

But is wrong. His approval rating is at 40%, as compared to Clinton's low of 37% (in his first term) Reagan's low of 35% (again in his first term), and Truman.

They continue to think that the Recession will kill Obama's second term.

Second, the major way the Recession has affected people is unemployment. But first of all unemployed people vote DEMOCRAT. They don't believe the GOP when they say they are protecting Job Creators, they believe the GOP is protecting rich people and destroying the social programs that the unemployed people depend on.

Thirdly, blacks have a much higher unemployment rate than among whites people. Black people are not going to vote Republican, even if Cain wins the primary (something very unlikely). In addition, they are not going to stay home - they are going to go out and vote for Obama.

Neither are gays going to forget the man that ended "Don't Ask Don't Tell".

Once again, in order to win, you need to get your base to vote, the independents to vote for you, and your opponents base to stay home.

High unemployment, particularly among blacks, is NOT going to get Democrats to stay home. Nor will it get unemployed independents to vote Republican.     The best the GOP can hope for is that white unemployed independents will stay home.

Talk about "Job Creators" is not convincing. It doesn't work on independents - all it does is assuage the conscience of Republicans.

The Republicans have worked hard to ensure that their own base will show up, because they know for a fact that the Democrat's base will also show up. This election is going to come down to the independents, not the bases.

Independents think the Tea Party is a joke. They think the Republicans have been taken over by it.   Most independents that are unemployed will vote Democrat (or stay home).    The more power the Tea Party exhibits, the larger an effect this will cause.

Employed independents will not be concerned about fixing the economy.   The republicans hope to get their votes by promising low taxes.   But the more people talk about a bad economy (which the Republicans keep talking about), the harder it is to make that promise.

In addition, usually the GOP tries for the "We will protect you from the big bad world". But the T Party has destroyed that motif. It costs money and the GOP has bowed to pressure to stop spending.   Worse, Obama caught and killed Bin Laden, ended the Iraq war AND managed to help out Libya without an army on the ground (sailors off shore are not as big a deal - they are always off shore). So the GOP has had to give up their main counter and try some new ideas.

I can't see those new ideas working.    The claim of "we promise to be more fiscal responsible, and this time we REALLY mean it even though we didn't the last time" just doesn't cut it.

The Democrat's promise of "We won't let you starve or die from a paper cut" is a much better bit of propaganda.

Romney is the only GOP candidate with a chance of beating Obama, and he won't make it.

Jewish Politics in the USA.

2011-09-25T10:04:00.003-04:00

For a long time, Republicans, mostly Christian, have been trying to get the Jewish vote. They do pretty well with the extreme orthodox sects, that are of course ultra-conservative. These are people that don't like homosexuals, don't like modern culture, and don't trust outsiders.   But not many Jews are Orthodox. Among the much more populous Conservative and Reform Jews, the Republican message has fallen flat.

The reason is simple. When talking to Jews they talk only about international politics and ignore domestic issues.   Israel has existed for only about 63 years, and has proven itself reasonably good at defending itself. Yes, it needs USA support, but it doesn't need a lot of USA support.

Jews have had about 2,000 years of persecution, mainly from Christians, while Muslims have (excluding the past 63 years) for the most part, left us alone.   Islam didn't accuse us of killing Jesus (funny how Rome/Italy never got the blame for that) and didn't accuse of blood libel. The Spanish Inquisition did not start until after the Christians took over Spain, the Muslims left us mostly alone.

But we see an awful lot of Christians out there quoting the bible at us, telling us that because their priest, pastor, minister etc. tells them that abortion is murder, that it should be illegal. Tthere is no Pope telling us that abortion is wrong. Sure, some of think it is, but we don't base it on a religious position. Then the Christian politicians start preaching religion to get elected. They complain about "prayer in school" being illegal, saying that the Constitution doesn't say "separation of church and state", sometimes while holding prayer rallies, or even promoting christian based anti-gay treatments.

We are not afraid of Muslims pushing Sharia law on us, because we don't see that happening. To my knowledge it hasn't happened anywhere in America. But we do see Christians trying to use the New Testament to push Christian based laws on us all the time.   Sure, it's not particularly strong, not particularly intrusive, but it happens.   Every time a politician brings up Jesus, we hear it and remember.   Then there is the entire "War on Christmas" campaign, where they try to force us to say "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays". Funny, if it is a war on Christmas, where are the Jews objecting to people saying "Merry Christmas"?   We don't see a war on Christmas, we see a war on us.

I'm just one Jew, and not a particularly religious one. I can't speak for everyone. But from this Jew's perspective, the Republican party is squarely against Judaism in America. They support it outside the country, but not inside. They preach against the First Amendment. They are trying to establish this country as a Christian Nation.   They want to use their bible to determine what is legal and what is illegal, exactly the way they (falsely) accuse Islam of using Sharia law.   Frankly, the Republican party ignores Judaism with regards to all of it's domestic agenda. Strong support for Jewish ideas in the foreign agenda (i.e. supporting Israel) just does NOT make up for treating us so badly on the domestic agenda.

In addition, every once in a while I see the GOP acting like France pre-World War II. France complained about the influx of Jewish illegal immigrants, the Republicans talk about Mexican immigrants. Stories of military court martials for terror defendants remind me of the Dreyfus affair. Sure, they may be guilty - but why not give them the full protections we give serial murders that rape and kill children? Just maybe they are innocent and the military doesn't want to admit they got the wrong guy.

I am American first, Jewish second.   I am not Israeli at all. I care most about how you treat me here in MY country. I do care about Israel, but the second you push your religion on me I start worrying about you. You want to get Jews to vote Republican again? Fine. Make the following changes:

The most important thing is to enforce "Separation of Church and State" Yeah, I know it isn't in the Bill of Rights, but it is in the founders other writings. They meant it and it is very, VERY important to Jews. When you attack Separation of Church and State, you scare Jews.
So the GOP needs to yell at any politician for bringing up his Jesus. Don't treat it as a bonus, act like it doesn't matter. Because when you act like being a good Christian makes you a better candidate, I hear "being a good Jew makes you a bad politician". If you must say something, say you are a "strong believer in the power of God, but that religion is a personal matter". You mention Jesus or Christian, or anything else specific to your religion, you send a message that you don't want my vote.
Stop using religion as an argument indirectly. That is, when some random yahoo tries to quote the bible as an argument for politics, don't put him on the news. Instead give air time to the guy who uses logic. Fox is the right arm of the GOP, even if they don't want to admit it, so get control of your arm.
Stop trying to pretend that Christians are being persecuted. You have no idea what real persecution is. Being told to say "Happy Holidays" is not being persecuted. Persecution is about theft, vandalism, assault, rape, murder, and being forcibly identified/labeled.
Instead of saying things like "No Sharia Law", say things like "No Religious Law". That simple change makes you far more likable. We now the difference between those two statements, and it is damning. We look at you and say "He wants to do to me what he is accusing them of doing."
Forget about stopping the constructions of Mosques. Every time you do that, I cringe and think of Jewish Ghettos. If you want to put people in concentration camps, you first need to round them up and preventing them from building houses of worship wherever they want is as great way to do that. If you want to give Muslims extra scrutiny, I hate to admit it, but Jews probably won't object. But when you have yahoos trying to stop Mosques from being built, that is a clear violation of the First Amendment and Jews don't like it.
Stop having idiots say things like "Islam is not a religion, it is a political plot". We heard people use that same logic against Jews before, and not just in the 20th century.
Start complaining when military officers push Christianity on their privates. We hear the stories, and it doesn't sit well, even if the officers only push religion on 'atheists' and leave the Jews alone. We don't care, stories about anyone pushing religion on anyone make us sit up and pay attention.

Economists, Irrational Economies and Secret Assumptions

2011-09-23T11:49:00.003-04:00

Here is a great video of Stephen Dubner ("Freakonomics") talking about the limits of social science experiments. Specifically he showed that studies of charity change depending on how the question is framed. That is, if you pay a college student $10 and then tell them they you have an extra $10 they can distribute among themselves and another anonymous person, they tend to give on average $3 to the other person and keep $7.. But if you tell them they can take give some of the money none, or even take $1 from the base $10 from the other guy is supposed to get, then they tend to give $1.50. (Note, what happened was much more people gave nothing, it was not simply the people that gave $0 now taking $1.)

If you had not done the second two experiments, it looks like people are generous - they are giving $3 for no reason.   But if you allow the possibility of 'theft', the truth comes out. Dubner stated that the charity was an an attempt to seem nice to the experimenter, and by 'not stealing' they look nice so they did not need to give.

My point here is that how you phrase the question dramatically affects how people react, and is part of the experiment. It is not something you can 'write off' as irrational.

Back in 2010, Laurie Santos gave a talk about a similar issue She compared monkey economies to humans (Video of a talk she gave) and declared the monkeys irrational for the choice they mad - which happened to be very similar to the choice people made in similar experiments.

In it, she failed to realize that the monkeys were smarter than the economists.   Specifically, she said that a brown capuchin monkey was irrational when it demonstrate loss aversion vs risk adverse, the same way that humans do.

The monkey version is comparing a choice of two scientists that displays 1 grape. One guy half the time gave just the displayed grape and the other times gave 2 bonus grapes, for a total of 3.   The other guy always gave a single bonus grape (2 total). In either case, the monkey averaged 2 grapes over the long term.   The monkeys usually took the safe bet of 2 grapes. This is called risk adverse behavior. The monkeys don't like to gamble.

But when you switch from the experimenters showing 1 grape (and giving extra) to instead showing 3 and sometimes taking them away, you get a different result. In that case one guy always took away 1 (leaving 2) while the other guy half the time took none (leaving 3), and the other half took 2 (leaving 1). Here, the monkeys have radically different results. Instead of being risk adverse, most monkeys are "loss adverse", preferring the risky potential of 3 grapes even though they might get stuck with just one.

Ms. Laurie Santos says this is irrational, as the monkeys treat loss different from gains, when in reality the end result would be the same    In addition, she notes that humans act the same way the monkeys do (If you switch out $1000 for the grapes, humans are more likely to gamble if they think they already own the money rather than if it is presented as a bonus). She thinks this is an indication that humans have in built evolutionary flaws that screw with our ability to do economics.

But she is wrong. The monkeys are smarter than she is.

As Dubner said, how you present the choice affects the results. It's not irrational, but affects us in logical, rational ways.   We are not trusting fools that believe what the experimenters say.   We live in the real world and we use clues from presentation to make our decisions. These clues work. I don't ride in cabs that reek of alcohol, even if the driver swears he is sober.   In social sciences, you are NOT measuring just what you want to measure, there are always a lot of extraneous variables. In this case:

The monkeys don't know the odds are the same. They do NOT know that you have artificially set the chances for loss to be the same as the chances for gain. Even assuming they can do the math and figure out that the odds are the same, it doesn't matter. Why ? See point 2 below.
To quote every single mutual fund performance sheet: "Past performance is no guarantee
of future results." Things change. People lie. Ms. Santos, despite being well versed in monkey psychology does not realize this - at least she doesn't account for it. The monkeys do not trust that the guys to keep acting the same way.
The monkeys are not looking at the odds, they are looking at the MORAL CHARACTER. They are not confronted with scientists offering risk/rewards scenarios. They are confronted with humans - some of whom are nice and give 'tips', others of whom are nasty and steal.

She did not set up an experiment where the monkeys are calculating odds and rate of return. Instead she set up an experiment where monkeys are deciding who to trust.

Monkeys, like humans, treat tippers differently than we treat thieves. When given a choice between someone that randomly tips well but sometimes tips nothing or a consistently average tipper, the monkeys (and I) would rather go with the guy that tips consistently average. But that same rule does not apply to thieves. Monkeys, like humans, would rather deal with someone that sometimes does not steal from them at all, even if when he does steal, he steals a lot, rather than the guy that always steals a little bit.

What does this have to do with politics? It explains a lot of the hard to figure out stuff. It is why the Republicans keep trying to say "Job Creators" rather than "Wealthy". They tried to influence the voters. It is why the Obama Health Care bill described itself as "tax penalties for not having health insurance" rather than a tax hike that is exactly countered by a 'tax deduction for having health insurance'. The Democrats did not want to admit they were doing a tax hike with an exactly equal tax deduction, because then the Republicans would have said TAX HIKE and left the rest out.

But in a system where we make the rules, past performance may be no guarantee of future results, but it is a strong guide. When it comes to taxes and economics, we need to look at what happened before. As in Bush's tax cuts destroyed the surplus that Clinton created. Look at the math while spending has gone up, the truth is that the growth is relatively minor while the recession caused a huge drop in tax receipts.

While character is important, it is not the only thing. We need to look at the math as well as the intentions.

Bad Journalism

2011-09-21T10:08:00.001-04:00

Routinely, journalists try for sensationalism. The News business has become more about the business and less about news.   Walter Kronkite was a man known for being trustworthy, now we have people known for being nasty.

A prime example of this was a recent article in the Los Angeles Times. http://graphics.latimes.com/fever-drug-death-chart/

It compares the death rates from vehicles, drugs and firearms.   Firearms has a slight rise, and the vehicle death rate has a large drop. Drug deaths rose dramatically from 2000 to 2006, but since then they began to drop slowly.   More importantly, since 2006, the vehicle death rate dropped about 20% bringing it down below the death rate for drugs. The story should obviously be either about drug deaths leveling off, ceasing their huge clime, or about vehicle deaths dropping like a stone.

Then click on the story for the chart (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-drugs-epidemic-20110918,0,5517691.story
So, what is the headline?
"Drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in U.S., data show"

They are so caught up in telling a story about drugs, that in reality is 5 years old - and no longer true. So they ignore the real story - that drug deaths have leveled off, even began to drop, while vehicle deaths are practically disappearing.

It's not just an isolated case. We've all seen the "horrible storm coming" stories that turns out to be nothing. The same thing happens too often with regards to politics. They talk about the guy yelling the stupidest, most ridiculous thing, ignoring the guy making sense.   You want to know why politics is so crazy? At least a third of the reason is that media encourages it. Not the politicians, not the voters, but the media.

This goes for the smaller media just as much as the big ones. And it works on both sides. Fox does it, but so does CNN.

Doing this drives up ratings, but down trustworthiness.     Its just another form of the "Tragedy of the Commons". That is where you have a resource that everyone can use, so no one maintains it.   In this case, the resource is trustworthiness.

Like most Tragedy of the Commons, capitalism is the cause, not the fix.    I love capitalism, it is a great system, but it is not perfect. There are things it can not do, problems it creates, and this is one of them. Anyone that tries to use capitalism within a family - having a wife charge her husband for chores, having the children pay for their dinner - etc. is committing a horrible offense against nature. Similarly, a church whose prime goal was turning a profit is not a good idea. Nor should police departments be about writing tickets.

Apparently, journalism is another case where capitalism does not work. News is not just another way to make money, anymore than Religion, or marriage is.   I don't have a sure fire way to fix it, but I have some suggestions. Maybe expanding the Pulitzer prize in some way - giving $10k to the finalists and $100k to the winners. Now that we are depending more and more on the internet, perhaps some kind of Pulitzer Prize link systems where if you read one Pulitzer Prize winning website, it will direct you to another randomly chosen one. Something that will encourage people to go to the best news sources as opposed to simply the most profitable.

What Freedom is About

2011-09-15T10:37:00.000-04:00

Ron Paul, a libertarian disguised as a Republican, recently said that freedom is about taking risks.

Ron Paul is wrong.   Totally and completely wrong.

George Washington did not rebel against Great Britain because King George was stopping him from putting all his money in junk bonds.   Abolitionists did not demand freedom for the slaves because the masters were not letting them get drunk.    The Allies did not fight against the Axis powers because they wouldn't let them drive too fast.    My ancestors did not flee communist Russia because they forced healthcare on us.

No.   In all of those cases, freedom meant freedom from a TYRANT, not freedom from a nanny state.   If freedom was about taking risks, no one would want it.

Freedom is about doing what we want to do, not ignoring safety.   Yes, when you do what you want that come with additional risks, but the risks are the costs we pay to get freedom, not the goal. More importantly, sometimes those costs are too high, and we give up the freedom.

The honest truth is that the majority of Americans are not libertarians and do not want total freedom.

We want police to stop us from doing stupid things - like drinking and driving.
We want the EPA to stop people from putting lead in gasoline - because lead causes nerve damage.
We want the FDA to make the use of addictive substances such as Meth illegal.

Why? Because those risks are too high for the amount of freedom. So we give up the freedom because of the risks.   Moreover, it's not just the risks.   It's also the arguments.

Freedom and peace are opposites. The more we have of one, the less we have of the other. The peace we get from agreeing to things a set way means we give up the freedom to do it the way we personally like (but others hate).   Freedom to play music at all hours will piss your neighbors off, and that creates strife (less peace). Freedom to paint your house any color may lower property values.

People don't always agree as to how much freedom we want. Some people want more. I myself am willing to give up the freedom to play loud music at 3 AM, but am not willing to give up the right to paint my house whatever color I want it to be.

That why not all local governments have the same rules. We get to pick how much government we want.   That's the beauty of having local governments. But some things can't be left to local governments.   We found out the hard way that single nation can not let individual states decided about slavery. Run away slaves caused too much problems, let alone the moral outrage that Slavery was legal in America.

Here are some good reasons why freedoms need to be curbed for an entire nation, as opposed to just a local government:

Shared resources. Water does not respect local boundaries Water used upstream is not available downstream.
Shared dangers. Diseases and pollution don't respect local boundaries either. If an epidemic starts in Texas, it can easily spread throughout the country. Pollution from coal plants in Ohio can affect the air in New York.
Economies of Scale. Many items, whether we are talking about an emergency reserve fund for disasters, a Coast Guard, or the FBI, are cheaper to do for a larger area.
Business consistency. It is easier for a large business to operate the same across all areas rather than conform to different local regulations.

Molten Salt Reactors - the solution to our power question.

2011-09-13T09:01:00.002-04:00

If you have read my blog, you know I am a proponent of nuclear power. Before I have talked about how coal is far worse than nuclear.     But another reason is that the newest designs are far better than the current ones.

We are now using Generation 3 - the ones currently being planned are called "3+". The next design is called Generation 4.   It is a radical change from Generation 3. Generation 3 uses solid nuclear fuel (Uranium and/or Plutonium) physically placed together, with graphite control rods in between them to slow down the reaction.   Generation 4 takes the nuclear material (thorium)l, chops it up into small pieces, and mixes it with salt. Then they heat up the salt so that it is molten and flows.

Put enough of the molten salt in one place and you get a reaction. If you keep it spread out, no reaction. Being molten, to put enough in one place, you just pour it into a small container - ideally in the shape of a ball.   Or to keep it spread out, you can pour it into a web of small, narrow tubes separated by some lead.

Best of all, they can put a refrigerator near the bottom above a drain. With the refrigerator on, the drain is cold and the molten salt freezes into a solid plug, blocking the drain. When you have a power failure (and/or a melt down), the refrigerator turns off, the salt plug melts, and the molten radioactive salt flow out into a safe drainage system that physically can NOT cause a melt down.

Note, a meltdown is what caused all the serious problems with nuclear plants.

But there are some downsides.   First, it is not a very good 'breeder' plant. So to make a lot of these plants quickly, you have to dig up and purify your fuel, instead of simply getting it for free from running the plant. That also means you can't use it to make nuclear weapons. Second, the plants need a lot more maintenance. The salts can under certain circumstances form acidic gasses - some of which may be radioactive.   But as there is no heat buildup, there is never an explosion. Just slow leaks of acidic gas, that in the worst cases might be radioactive.

But this design does negate almost all of the problems that Japan had. Their design needed people to keep it safe and no one wanted to send people into an unsafe area.

The Molten Salt Reactor needs people to keep it working, but without people, it shuts down safely, automatically. No water needs to be pumped to keep it safe. Electricity is needed to keep it working, not to shut it down safely.

Why Partisan Politics is bad

2011-09-09T02:26:00.000-04:00

I am going to use a non-controversial issue as an example. Well, at least it hasn't been controversial for a while. The issue is "Tort Reform", which hasn't got a lot of press lately.

Basically Tort Reform refers t to the laws about suing a company for damages. Whether those damages be physical, pain & suffering, or financial.

Typically the conservatives argument against maintaining the current form are three fold:

It is expensive (per wikipedia, Britain spends 85 pence in legal actions for every Pound of damages obtained). Those legal expenses also gets pushed into healthcare by insurances rates having to rise to cover them.
Some of the cases are frivolous/fraudulent
It discourages no-fault insurance - so those that are injured by a true accident get no payment, while those that are injured by negligence get paid large amounts.
It discourages innovative ideas out of fear of tort cases (I.E. No weather control attempts by US companies because they are afraid that they will be sued for indirectly causing a hurricane. - Instead China leads the field Source )

Liberals counter that:

It is expensive because corporations/insurance companies act in bad faith,
Few cases are frivolous and fraudulent cases should be prosecuted,
No fault insurance prevents punishment, encouraging firms to re-offend
We need a mechanism to discourage dangerous ideas - and that truly innovative ideas should be made safe before we act on them.

Liberals want more punitive damages and to make it easier to sue, conservatives want less and to make it harder to sue.

But what ends up happening is that both sides use this issue as a talking point. It becomes a weapon to get lobbying money from the public. The GOP goes after insurance company money while the DNC goes after tort lawyers money. This affects their proposed solutions. Sometimes the various lobby's directly write the proposed laws. So instead of the GOP vs the DNC bill, you get the Insurance vs. Lawyers Bill.

Lets look at a logical way to deal with it, for all of those four issues.

Expensive = required mediation. Laywers can't talk to each other without a mediator present. They get a quick and cheap hearing by one - cost to be split equally.
The mediator can either a) Approve a settlement. b) Refer it to trial. c) Declare that a case is either frivolous or being unfairly denied - requiring the offending party to pay double the mediator fee and if they insist on a trial, have penalty fees applies if they lose the trial. or d) Order a criminal Investigation if they believe either side is committing fraud.
Requiring all people to have health insurances takes care of most of this (Obamacare to the rescue) plus the mediator can give out penalties.
Again, the threat of a law suit will still be there.

Finally, one more idea to solve the problem. The heart of the Conservative fear is greedy trial lawyers suing people that did nothing wrong (or demanding high reimbursement for low damages). So reduce their payout. Let the lawyers get 15% of any tort case plus expenses (including an hourly charge for their time in front of a judge - as long as the judge doesn't rule them excessive), while allowing the plaintiff to get quadruple damages plus expenses. This significantly reduces the incentive for greedy lawyers, without affecting the incentive to sue. Greedy lawyers will only go after strong cases, while strong cases can still sue for massive damages. We still get to discourage dangerous activities and encourage reasonable safety..

But that won't happen. Because the insurance companies are not really afraid of frivolous lawsuits, they are afraid of ANY lawsuits. Similarly, the tort lawyers are not solely looking out for their clients, they are also concerned with their own livelyhood.

So partisan politics stops us from looking at an actual fair way to solve the problem, instead focuses us on one side winning and the other side losing, even if a compromise would be in the best interest of all.

What if the T Party Won

2011-09-06T14:36:00.024-04:00

Lets assume America undergoes a radical shift in politics and suddenly the T Party wins. They get everything they ever wanted.

American military gets a budget cut of 50%.   Medicare and Medicaid vanish away to be replaced with private insurance - if you can afford it.   Social Security stops taxing us, everyone over 55 gets the old plan, everyone under that has paid money into it gets that amount back (let's be generous - with interest), instead of what the current plan says they get.

The Bush tax cuts (done during a war) are made permanent.

We still have a deficit. OK, let's give them their remaining cuts. Away goes the National Weather bureau, the EPA gets' its budget cut, the Department of Education goes away, etc etc. (and there are LOT of etc.).

Well, first of all, America is no longer a Super Power. In fact, China now becomes not only the fastest growing country, but also the one with the biggest military. We still are richer than them, but not for long. We can still use the threat of existing nuclear weapons to protect our actual territory, if not stop threats from growing. Eventually we may have to nuke North Korea or Iran, but screw them. Who cares if we get hit by trade sanctions, terrorism and have to suck up to China to protect us.

You see, we will more important stuff on the mind. There will be homeless old people wandering the street, begging for food. Or just eating cat food in group homes. That will lower property values, of course, but the poor will need place to live. At least the seniors are healthy - because those that get sick die slowly in crappy hospitals.

Those are definite. We know they happened before - they were why we created those programs in the first place. But there are a bunch of maybes.

Maybe our education standards don't go to crap.   Maybe we don't run out of scientists and doctors because people that believe in creationism don't pass college level biology.   They certainly don't get hired by Monsanto to genetically design plants to withstand Roundup.

Maybe the death rate for asthma skyrockets - not to mention cancer rates.   Maybe we don't overtake China - as having the most polluted cities in the world.   Maybe the corporations deny they are responsible and never have to pay for the damage that they do. We just get a bunch of sickly poor people - because the rich move away from the states that let people pull that crap.

But all that is small potatoes. The real problem won't be pollution, or low education, or even the international situation.   Eventually, we will have a civil war. Because the world I am describign is a world where America is no longer a super power in any way shape or form - and that won't sit well with the proud Americans I know. The people that raised me, raised me proud. Immigrants don't come here to be second best, they came to be the best.

We don't want to live cheap we want to live LARGE. We want to be the heroes. We want to be betters, stronger, smarter and richer than other countries.

That COSTS MONEY. Being a world power is not cheap - but it is worth it. Ask the Italians dreaming of Rome, the Iranians so desperate for Persia they put up with psychotic leaders, the British lusting for their lost Empire.

The T-Party wants to turn back the clock, restoring America to roaring 1920s - without America's social programs, civil rights, or strong military. But we can't turn back the clock, even if women, Jews, blacks, Asians, and Hispanics were willing to do it (and we are not). We can however go forward.

Forward may not increase military spending, but it won't drop it significantly. The same goes for social programs.   Just maintaining the current budget will be tough.

Partisan vs Politics and the Loyal Opposition.

2011-09-03T14:08:00.001-04:00

Every once in a while, someone will dismiss something as 'just politics'. By that they mean it is not really going to effect their lives. But politics is real and it does effect their lives. What they usually mean is "it's just PARTISAN politics", as opposed to general politics.

General politics, whether it is local, state, national is about three things: 1) What activities we want the government to charge fees/taxes for doing (and how much),   2) What activities we want the government to severely punish people for doing (and what that punishment will be - jail/torture/death), and 3) What we want the government to do with the money it collects. All three of those things are EXTREMELY important - at least if you don't want the government to tax you $150 for going to the bathroom, break your hands for saying "Recall Election", and buy underage sex slaves for all Congressman.

Partisan politics are generally not important.   Partisan means you are doing something for your faction, not for the good of the country. Usually it involves Ad Hominem (attacking a person instead of his logic).

There are two cases where Partisan politics becomes obvious: The Flop and the Ignore.   The Flop is when a politician that has previously supported something (like say healthcare, GOP) proceeds to object to a plan that looks a lot like what they used to support because it is now being offered up by their opposing party, that is "partisan politics".   The truth is, if that person had been in power they very well might have made the same plan, or one very similar to it.

The "Ignore." is when when a politician that has previously attacked something (like Guantanamo Bay, DNC) suddenly becomes quiet when his own party starts doing the same thing.   The truth is, they were just using is as a weapon, they really did not see how to do it any better.

Partisan politics is not very interesting (with the exception of a good sex scandal). It tends to be boring because most of it consists of rather stupid lies. Unless of course you belong to that faction. Then you swear it is the most important thing in the universe.

But the rest of us know better.

Real politics is about real disagreements on how to do things, as opposed to simply who gets the credit, or the discredit. When someone says they are devoted to getting X done, even if their opponent gets the credit, that is real politics, without the slightest taint of partisanship.

One of the problems I have had with the GOP is that they have become overtaken with partisan politics. They vilify everything their opponents say and do - even when it is almost a carbon copy of what they said not that long ago.

For example, one man said all of the following quotes - "I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself. "

"I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary. "

"It doesn't do good to open doors for someone who doesn't have the price to get in. If he has the price, he may not need the laws. There is no law saying the Negro has to live in Harlem or Watts."

"It's difficult to believe that people are still starving in this country because food isn't available. "

The Negro bit makes it obvious that they are a bit old. But they still make a lot of sense. Can you guess who said them? A Democrat, a Republican, or maybe what the GOP calls a R.I.N.O (Republican In Name Only).

Need some help? How about one more line: "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall! " Yes, Ronald Reagan said all of those things.

Won't catch a Republican saying any of that stuff now for fear of being called a RINO.    Similarly, Democrats don't object to the Guantanamo Bay or the loss of our rights in the name of Homeland Security- all for Partisan reasons. To quote Benjamin Franklin (correctly): "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."     But the Democrats don't talk about it anymore. Why? Because of Partisan politics - the GOP (and the DNC to a lesser extent) are supporting their own personal agendas above the good of the nation.

In the 1800 US presidential election, something most unusual happened - Vice President Thomas Jefferson defeated the existing President John Adams.   Back then, the Vice President was whoever had the second highest vote tally, not an add on selected by the presidential candidate. This was the death knoll for the Federalist Party and began the rule of the "Democratic-Republican Party". (Note this political party eventually became the Democrats, even though at the time it held a point of view that was closer the current "Republican Party") During this time, despite a hard fought partisan fight, between Jefferson and Adams, a new term came about: "Loyal Opposition".

Loyal Opposition was originally created by the opposition (the Federalists) to show that while they dislike Jefferson, they were still loyal to both the Country and the political process.   Later, it became accepted as the norm. It helped prevent extreme partisanship that can cause a Civil War for 60 years - despite clearly have dramatic differences that could not be solved without a Civil War.

But the recent partisan politics is destroying the idea of the Loyal Opposition.   When the conservatives claim that the Democrats are Socialistic (we actually have one socialist - Bernie Sanders of Vermont - in Congress but he refuses to join the Democratic Party because he does not agree with their politics - The Democrats run candidates against him and fail to unseat him - as does the GOP), engage in treason, or call for "Second Amendment Solutions", they are not being a Loyal Opposition. They are in fact engaging in Partisan politics to the extreme, just short of Insurrection.

Look, part of the problem is that some really evil men have in the past claimed that they were just exaggerating and they did not really mean the obvious violent consequences of their untrue statements.   Then we found out that they were not exaggerating but were in fact hiding the true extent of their evil.   It is EASY to lie and say "I didn't mean it that way.", even when that is exactly what you meant.

More importantly, politics evolve. What you propose as a sneaky bit of propaganda, if it is successful, gets BELIEVED by the next generation. That is part of the success of the Civil Rights. We got people to publicly state that they believed blacks, Jews, women etc. were equal, even though they did not believe it. This led to the next generation actually believing it - at least a little bit more. Go through 2 1/2 generations later and we had a fight between a black man and a white woman for the Democrat Presidential candidate - and the black man became President.

That is the real danger with partisan politics. When you lie about what you believe, calling it "an exaggeration", the next generation starts to believe it. If the lie/exaggeration gets people elected, the next time they repeat the process, making the exaggeration even stronger. And you are not going to like what they end up believing - because if it worked once, it will become VERY extreme until it becomes blatantly obvious false.

That is the real secret to the rise of the Tea Party For a long time the GOP claimed they were all about Fiscal responsibility and that the DNC were fiscally irresponsible. The GOP talked about how the DNC was wasting massive amounts of money on social programs that Americans did not want. The people that started these lies knew they were lies but said them anyway as good propaganda. They did not realize that their core constituents would believe them and eventually rise up and demand they take real action to fix the situation.

Right now the GOP is discovering what happens when the lie about the US budget becomes so obviously false. They said we are wasting money and now the public is demanding we stop wasting it. Cuts will be made and later the public will realize they were not cutting fat, but instead cutting muscle and even bone. If too much damage gets done, it could kill the GOP and hurt America for a very long time.

2012 Election Predictions

2011-08-24T19:53:00.000-04:00

With the Wisconsin elections in our rear view mirror, I hereby predict that Obama will win the 2012 election, due in part to low Republican turnout.

In addition, the Democrats will take back the House of Representatives, although they may lose some Senate seats (that is MAY, not will ).

I base these predictions on three factors.

The Republicans are working so hard to please the Far Right/Tea Partiers, they are ignoring the clear message from the general population. They keep making the same mistake -moving far right to win a primary, ensuring they will lose the election. They can't win the presidency with approximate 33% of the population that is their conservative base, in fact, they can't even win moderate house districts.
The current GOP strategy is successfully reducing all elected official's favorablility ratings. This hits Obama, but also all the Republican incumbents. They keep watching Obama vs a Generic Republican, because they don't have a candidate yet. Obama keeps doing well against any specific candidate.
The net change is worse for Republicans than for Democrats. Obama stays ahead, even if his net numbers are worse. But the House of Representatives also suffers from the bad numbers. So they lose some incumbent House Representatives to challengers. In the Senate only 1/3 of the senators are up for re-election (but most are Democrats). More importantly, they have bigger constituencies, so are less likely to be extreme. This gives Democrats a real advantage in any state with a significant population. In smaller states, then you can win by appealing to far right (or far left).

The presidency is a clear example. Consider the sad tale of Ron Paul. He keeps doing very well in the polls - he came in second to Michelle Bachmann. But he won't do the same in a national Republican Primary. Why? Because while he has a strong base of committed followers, he lacks the broad-base support that a more mainstream conservative has. (Which is a pity, because Ron Paul is NO crazier than any of the other candidates. Ron Paul may be against even the Income Tax and has proposed getting rid of it. But that is saner than being against Evolution. At least he would be a different kind of crazy than the GOP.)

But just as Ron Paul's strong following among a small group of people can not win the Republican Primary, neither can the other GOP's strong following in the far right win the US Presidency. You need to appeal to the moderates, which the GOP hates doing. They even made up an insulting name for a moderate Republican (RINO = Republican In Name Only), to help drive them away. Without the RINO's, the GOP can't win the Presidency.

Imagine if the Democrats drove all the "DINO's" out of the party. They would have to start with Obama himself - a man that is weak on Gay rights, is willing to reduce Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security, and who actually started a third war against Libya before getting out of Afganistan. The Democrats won the Presidency by expanding the party to include more people, the GOP can't kick Obama out by reducing themselves even further.

The Senate is a hard call. Currently, the Democrats have 53 vs 47 Republicans. While there are 33 senators up for re-election, most are liberal.   Two are independents (Lieberman - a conservative ex-democrat and Sanders, the only real socialist in the Congress), there are 10 Republicans and and 21 Democrats up for re-election.   That gives the Senate many more chances for Republican gains, and fewer for Democrat gains.   But unlike the House, Senate districts tend to be larger, less uniform. This means that the far right zealous t-party movement is a serious disadvantage for the GOP.   More importantly, most of the nasty stupidity is being blamed on the House, not the Senate.   I don't think the anti-incumbent bent will be enough to overcome the moderation movement being led by Obama.
To gain a majority, the Republicans need to win 3 more votes than the democrats do.

The Liberals at high risk are Webb (Virginia), Tester (Montana), Nelson (Nebraska), Conrad (N. Dakota). Those 4 Democrats are all in mostly Red states.   I expect to lose one or two of these Democrats.

On the other hand, our primary targets are: Scott Brown (Massachusetts), and Snowe (Maine). Snowe actually is moderate (for a Republican), having helped Obama out on Health care. Brown is more conservative.   I expect we will be able to take one of these these seats.

The next quest are the 'purple' states. Most are states that went Democrat with Obama last time, and I don't expect them to change that much. Maybe we lose one of them, but not more.   That will leave us with a 51/49 Senate.

But I am being generous with the senate seats.   The main issue is which is going to be more powerful - the anti-incumbent fervor or the move to the far right in the primary that will hurt the republicans in the general election.    Frankly, in a purple state, the concern about far-right zealotry should be much more powerful.

Treason and Fed Policy.

2011-08-22T01:07:00.002-04:00

Mr. Perry has accused the Fed of being 'treasonous'.

Specifically he claimed engaging in 'quantitative easing' during an election season was treasonous. Perry describes quantitative easing as 'printing money'. In fact the Fed does create virtual money and use it to buy up corporate and government debt to lower interest rates. In effect it prints money electronically. As the Fed has the right to print money, this is not illegal. If you or I do it, it would be illegal - because we don't have the legal authority to print money.

The danger here is that it may cause inflation. For example, if we were to decided to solve our debt crisis by printing out actual money, we would need to print out $14 trillion. Today, we have less than 1 Trillion physical dollars out there, so that would be increasing the amount of cash out there by a huge amount. This would cause a massive amount of inflation, as people would use that money to buy things, driving up prices. Similar problems would exist if we did it by printing 'virtual' money. More money out there, causes inflation.    But of course, the Fed is not creating 14 trillions of dollars.

When you buying up bonds to lower rates, you are fighting inflation - particularly if you buy a mix of corporate bonds as opposed to just federal bonds.   So printing money to buy up many different bond types is different than printing money to pay off just Treasuries.

First, lets admit that we have already done quantitative easing twice earlier. No one called it treasonous then.   Perry's complaint seems to be that it is being done to help out our economy in the short term ( just before an election) despite causing long term risk.   Perry claims this is treason because he says Obama is doing it to get re-elected despite it being bad for the country. The second round of Qunatitative easing involved about $600 billion.

But you see that is exactly what ANY kind of 'recession response is - an immediate short term benefit to the country that will cause problems later. If it did not cause problems later, then you would be doing it all the time, not just during a recession/economic trouble.

Inherent in Perry's belief (about treason) are three unstated assumptions: 1) the economy is doing just fine now and does not need any Quantitative Easing. Otherwise Perry would have objected to it being done the first two times (he did not) or at least stated it should never be done. 2) That it is the GOP's right to have an America economy worse now to make it better later (presumably after the 2012 election when he dreams of being in power). 3) That Obama is not just wrong but KNOWS he is wrong about Quantitative easing.

In either case, he has made NO attempt to convince the world that the Fed is being influenced by Obama - he asks for them to open their books to obtain proof but admits he has no reason to think it is going on.   He is Republican, so it is understandable that he thinks he knows better than a Democrat (he doesn't), but it is not appropriate to claim that Obama is intentionally hurting the country. George Bush was wrong about MANY things (WMD's in Iraq, who he hired in the Justice Department that thought Torture was acceptable), but we don't call him a traitor. Why? Because we know George Bush was simply stupid, not evil.

In his claims, Perry has demonstrated:

Ignorance of the current state of the economy
A sense of entitlement - he thinks he is entitled to a bad economy to help him get elected
Arrogance in his belief that no one can possibly really disagree with him on economic matters.
Paranoia - in his belief that people that pretend to disagree with him must in fact have ulterior motives. Their claimed reasons must be lies, they must hate Perry and America.

Yes, that is the kind of man the Republicans want to run against Obama - an ignorant, entitled, arrogant and paranoid man. He is a perfect match for the party that thinks Evolution is a lie, that the rich should not be taxed, that the Democrats can't actually believe what they say they believe, and that they must be socialist.

It is a wonder he is not hoarding ammunition to protect against Obama's plans to outlaw it. (As the far right paranoids keep insisting despite Obama making NO attempts to get involved in gun legislation at all. Those idiots will still be doing it till 2016 - when Obama leaves office. I mean really - don't you think Obama has more than enough real problems to deal with as opposed to little stupidity?)

Compare Perry and Huntsman. Perry accuses the president of treason, while Huntsman stands up for truth, science and the American way - by proclaiming that Evolution and Global Warming are real.

As I have said earlier, Huntsman is the best announced Republican with a chance of getting non-conservative votes. Rubio could do so as well, but is smart enough to know he would lose to Obama so he won't run. Perry is just another GOP clone following the extreme right T-Party agenda. He can win the GOP nomination, but not the Presidency.

Wisconsin Recall: Republicans keep their head in the sand.

2011-08-18T01:47:00.000-04:00

Recall elections are hard to win.   They are hard to even get - both the Democrats and the Republicans tried to get 8 recalls (total of 16 attempted recalls - out of 33 elected state representatives), but the Democrats only got 6 and the Republicans only got 3.   The Republicans failed to recall any of the 3 Democrats they got on the ballot, while the Democrats recalled 2 of the 6 Republicans they got on the ballot.

This moved the Wisconsin State house from 19 (R)/ 14(D) to 17 (R) /16 (D).   This is a CLEAR win for the Democrats, but they did not quite win enough to regain the majority. The GOP tried to spin it as a 'win' for them because they kept the majority.

Part of the problem is that the driving force for the recall was really hatred of Governor Walker, not of the 6 lapdogs that did his bidding. But incumbency/name recognition is a big advantage.    But the biggest problem with recall elections is voter apathy.   Frankly we just get tired and disgusted with the process. We don't enjoy voting - it a a sacred duty. Like all chores, we do it with reluctance.

Wisconsin went is at heart a purple (neither Lib or Con) state. It went Blue (Dem) for Obama in 2008, red temporarily in the 2010 election, it is back to blue again in 2011 (Democrats won 10/16 proposed recalls). Walker pissed off people and Obama is smart enough to take advantage of it.   As a result the Wisconsin Democrats now have some immediate advantage - they just need one ethical Republican to stop a bill. More importantly, there is one Moderate Republican who has stood up to Walker before.   This means that much Walker's conservative agenda - such as anti-abortion and anti-immigration will have to be watered down.

But more importantly, it is a huge sign that the GOP is in for a rude awakening next November.   The GOP has used a dis-satisfaction with Obama's ability to fix the economy as an excuse to push a heavily conservative agenda that most Americans simply don't agree with.   Whether we are talking about trying to attack liberal institutions such as Planned Parenthood's non-abortion services (which make up 97% of it services mostly in STD testing/treatment, contraception, and cancer testing/prevention as opposed to 3% that is abortion related.), or to prevent tax hikes on the wealthy, the GOP is about to find out what the term BACKLASH really means.

It got 2 Republicans kicked out of the Wisconsin State House before there term was up and we are going to see what it does to House Republicans in a bit more than one year.

A Simple Plan for Conservatives

2011-08-16T10:58:00.011-04:00

I offer this plan to the GOP because I think they are too cowardly to use it. If they were brave, they would have secretly done it already.

For quite some time, conservatives have been upset with the difficulty of pushing back entitlements. They talk about them as if they are addictions that Americans can't give up (See this earlier post) While I disagree with their analogy, I do agree that it is hard to get rid of popular programs. This is not a short term phenomena, it has been going on for a long time. At the same time, they have repeatedly demonstrated that it is incredibly easy to push through tax cuts. President love to offer them. For some reason, Americans don't enjoy paying taxes. Cutting taxes has been popular since, well back when Greece invented democracy. Greece had this thing when they went to war they created a tax called a eisphora. Then after the war, they canceled the tax. Hm, what a wonderful idea. (Source)

So here is a simple plan for the GOP to follow:

Step 1. Agree to permanent Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security in exchange for tax hikes starting in 4 years. After all, we don't want to disrupt the economy.

Step 2. Complain about the tax hikes, using them as a weapon against Democrats for the next election cycle.

Step 3. After a couple of years (anything less than 4) push through tax cuts that cancel Step 1's tax hikes, but leave the entitlement cuts. For an added level of sneakiness, they could make the tax cuts not quite identical to the original tax hikes. They could even be bigger. These tax cuts cut in immediately, not in 4 years

Net results from this rather simple plan:

In the next election, the GOP gets two weapons to use against Democrats - in liberal districts they can say "the incumbents sold out Social Security, throw the bums out." In conservative districts they can say "Those tricky Democrats only know how to raise taxes and spend your money."
They permanently reduce entitlements.
They have a fake tax hike that never actually happens.
Some republicans may lose their primary to T-Party idiots too stupid to understand the plan.
They do run the risk of failing to cancel the tax hikes before they activate. But honestly it is a LOT easier to cut taxes than it is to cut entitlements. It is a worthwhile risk - for a brave politician that cares more about the country than his own job.

So why won't conservatives do this? Well, there are basically four possible reasons:

They are cowards. They either care more about their own jobs than they do about what's right for the country, or they are afraid of not gaining a majority in time to kill the tax hikes.
The GOP doesn't actually want to cut entitlements, they are just using it as a fake rallying cry.
They have not thought of this rather simple plan. Well, I guess I shouldn't have told them.
The GOP is too ethical to lie to the Democrats. Wow, that was hard to type. I was laughing so hard I almost couldn't do it.

Honestly the last two are jokes. Karl Rove and Michelle Bachmann are rather solid proof that the GOP is very cunning and willing to lie through their teeth.

I am pretty sure the GOP wants to cut entitlements. They know that if we don't raise taxes, than we have to do major cuts somewhere to balance the budget. Aside from Defense, the liberal entitlement programs are pretty much the simplest things to cut. If they weren't so incredibly necessary, we would have cut them already. Despite the GOP rhetoric, America doesn't have a lot of things we can cut. Compared to other countries, we outspend on the military and not much else.

So, as far as I can tell, the Republicans must be cowards. They either are afraid of losing their jobs or of not being in a position to revoke the tax hikes. Either way, it doesn't look good for them.

Half of politics is being brave enough to trick your opponent into a bad compromise. The reason the GOP hates compromise so much is that they keep thinking the Democrats 'win' the compromises. Frankly I think that is just partisan lies to build their bargaining position. The debt crisis is a great example - they pretend they lost when they won - or rather the T Party did. Funny, the GOP seems to relish compromising within their own party.

Rick Perry (with an E) enters the race for Republican loser of 2012

2011-08-14T15:02:00.003-04:00

Rick Perry is deciding to enter the race. Note this is remarkably late, being less than 15 months to go to the election. Typical campaigns last 21 months, not 15.   During the 2008 election, by this time Obama had already out-raised Clinton and Oprah had not even mentioned him yet.

So a couple of questions - first, why did Perry wait?   Maybe because he did not think he had a chance, until he saw the current people competing to lose to Obama in 2012. Maybe he because he knew that the shorter the primary campaign, the last dirt your own people dig up on you.

Why am I so sure he will lose? Because the far right has a lock on the primary process of the GOP and the center hates the far right. You can't win the primary unless you agree to: no new taxes, no on abortion, no on gay rights (there is actually a gay republican candidate for presidency that Fox won't show on TV - despite his having the 1% of votes that they claim is their limit), no on healthcare, no on everything Obama every asks for.

Anyone that cow-tows enough to the far right to win the Republican Nomination can NOT win the popular vote.   The far right gives you at most 30% of the vote, and you need 51%.   Obama on the other hand is quite willing to move to the middle - as demonstrated by his willingness to cut entitlement programs if the GOP agrees to raise taxes. The independent voters are not fooled by the ridiculous hyperbole of the T-party.   They know garbage when they hear it.

But that is beside the point. Who is Perry, what makes him different than the other candidates. Well, he lacks the history of outright lies that Michele Bachmann has. He lacks the kiss of death of working with the Democrats that Huntsman has. He lacks the Mormon scare that Mitt Romney has.   He has the experience that Cain does not. He has the intelligence that Palin does not.

In short, he lacks all the weaknesses that the other candidates have. The only true weakness he has is a clear history of sending innocent men to the death chamber (In 1991 Cameron Todd Willingham's house burned down.   After a trial in which an 'expert' witness (if you can claim to be an expert when the state has already discredited you - but not in that trial) said it was arson, he was convicted of Arson and killing his three daughters. The claimed motive was to have more time alone.   In 2004 Perry let Willingham die, despite multiple real arson experts testimony that the fire was accidental, not arson. In 2009 Perry fires the commission that was going to report on the innocence/guilt of Willingham 2 days before they make their report and replaced them, having them start over. In May 2011, the commission found that the Arson investigation did not follow proper procedure and then in August the Attorney General Office ordered the commission NOT to rule on Willingham's guilt/innocence because the crime took place too long ago.)

That said, Rick Perry is a fairly typical republican, who has stated that he wished the country did not have an income tax. He opposes gay rights, abortion, etc. He is religious (Methodist), believes in intelligent design, is against vaccination for HPV (a kind of cancer women can get from sex). He does not believe in global warming.

He has ruled over Texas while it has been adding jobs - though they are almost all menial, low paying jobs, and bragged about it being the only state to do so during the recession.

His only liberal thought is opposing the US-Mexican Fence. He prefers boots on the ground, and has stated that the harsh anti-immigration Arizona Law SB1070 is not right for Texas.

Most importantly, Rick Perry, unlike Obama, lacks leadership. He follows the GOP guidebook instead of re-writting it.

Compare that to Obama that is willing to reform medicare/medicaid (if we get tax increases). Obama did what no previous Democrat President could do - reform healthcare (despite yet another appeals court ruling that is likely to be over-ruled.). Obama got us out of Iraq, is getting us out of Afghanistan, killed Osama Bin Laden.   No, Rick Perry is just another follower, not a leader.

So it is not very surprising that he has followed all the other slow-poke republicans into the race for the Republican failed presidency candidate, as opposed to going first.

We need a leader and leaders jump in, they don't hang back and test the water.

P.S. Before Perry began running for election in Texas, he was a Democrat. But in Texas, Democrats can't win anymore (they used to be able to win as a 'blue dog' conservative Democrat because old timers hated the Republican party - a hold over from the Civil War). Perry even helped Al Gore's campaign, about 23 years ago. But he disagreed with Al Gore about environmentalism and claims that is what turned him Republican.

We, as Liberals, need to eliminate a lot of regulations

2011-08-14T12:41:00.001-04:00

There are just a ton of really stupid regulations and laws that need to be eliminated. Yes, I a liberal, am stating that we need to get rid of regulations and laws.

Walter E. Williams, a republican commentator, recently posted an article listing a bunch of them. You can read them here. But one thing Walter E. Williams did not seem to realize - ALL THE REGULATIONS/LAWS HE MENTIONED ARE STATE LAWS, NONE ARE FEDERAL.

The best example he gave was of an inter-state trucker trying to get into in-state trucking. There were all these state laws he had to overcome.

The problem with the GOP is that they just don't realize that Federal Government is BETTER than state governments.

It draws from a larger pool of talent, so Federal employees are smarter and more ethical. A Congressional district may have 2 really great politicians in it, even if that same district has to send 4 people to a State House of Representatives, along with a Congressman to Washington.
There is a bigger spotlight on federal laws then on state ones. When a city like Chicago passes a law to make it illegal to cross the street on the south side of an intersection, it gets reported on by the Chicago Tribune (a fairly good newspaper) and local TV stations. Federal laws get reported on by the Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, the New York Times, the CNN, FOX News, etc. etc.
Local areas can easily be dominated by one political party, effectively dis-enfranchising 30-40% of the population, but this is harder to do on a national scale.
A national lobbyist can come in and overpower a local one over a local issue, but this is harder to do with national issues. They can do this with skill, not just money.
Similarly, a low amount of money can effectively buy an election for a local issue, but honestly for federal issues, the amount of cash it takes to buy an issue on the national stage is simply excessive (Studies show that to get a 1% change in popular support, you need to double the amount of money spent. A nationally funded group can probably double the current spending for a local issue about 4-5 times (4 doublings = x16 original cost) You can't do that for a national issue.
The Federal Government has Constitutional restrictions on what they can do. States and local governments usually have a lot less restrictions For example, the Federal Government has no legal authority to tell you what color you can paint your house. But some cities claim that right
Important things that we KNOW are right get done at the Federal level, leaving less important things for the states to decide. A key example is Slavery. We know it is wrong, so (eventually) we passed a federal law about it, instead of leaving it up to the states. Same thing for Murder - we don't let a state say "murder is OK", because it is important and we know it is wrong. The states tend to deal with concepts and ideas that are either new and untested, or just plain controversial.

As a general rule, Federal laws and regulations are created by smarter, more ethical people, with more transparency, with greater concessions to their opponents, without outside interference, and with higher goals in mind. State laws are sometimes (not always), created by crooked idiots, in a back room, to spite their opponents, with outsiders calling the shots, over anything they feel like it.

State laws require licenses for Barbers, Federal Laws require licenses for Doctors. Federal laws prevents discrimination against housing the handicapped, State law limits how many people may occupy the building (sometimes in an underhanded attempt to negate the Federal handicapped protections).

See the difference?

So yes, we need to get rid of a bunch of state/local rules/regulations/laws. But Federal government does not have that same problem. Yes, there are some bad federal rules/regulations/laws. But they are few and far between When I get upset about government interfering in my life/business it is almost always a local law that is causing the problem.

Anyone that does not see obvious fact should stay in local politics and out of national politics. We don't need to let the Peter Principle work in government.

Why Using the Bible Against Homosexuality is a Bad Idea.

2011-08-12T01:26:00.001-04:00

This post is not about the First Amendment. I will pretend that we live in a country that allows a state religion, because in fact most of the world does live in such countries.

The bible is a pretty big book. It is so big in fact that often people think it says something when it doesn't (Source). Furthermore, being so large it has some self-contradictory information.

The first and most obvious examples are the two contradictory explanations of how the world was made: Seven days (Order: 1 Light/Dark, 2 Water/Sky, 3 Earth/Plants, 4 Sun/Moon/Stars, 5 Animals, 6 Adam/Eve, 7 God Rests) vs. Garden of Eden (Order: Earth + Heaven, Adam [Human], Plants, Animals, and finally Eve). Not only does the Garden of Eden story have Adam being created before the plants and animals, but it has the Earth and Heaven (presumably including the Sun, Moon and Stars), all before Plants instead of on the same day.

This does not even take into account the various different versions from different religions. I am not just talking about Jewish vs Christian vs. Islam. Different sects have different versions - Roman Catholic is not the same as Methodist, and their bibles have differences.

But we are saved. You see, God is in his infinite wisdom, knew we were going to have this problem. Among other things, the various bibles make distinct differences between what flawed but sainted humans said/wrote, what they remember God said and what is confirmed as God actually saying.

Best of all, God made sure that his most important words were in fact written in stone. Not just words said by a human, not just the word of god remembered by a single human, not just the word of God remembered by many. As per the old testament, God personally carved them in stone for all to see. So that when we wrote the bible we could quote them. He did not write a novel, just a short list of things he thought very important. He gave us a TOP TEN LIST of Gods Most Important Issues. This is the stuff that really matters.

To paraphrase (as those different sects I mentioned have slightly different versions - they did have to translate from Hebrew) , the Ten Commandments are:

One God
No Idols
Don't break your word (swear)
Pray to me at least once a week (Keep Sabbath Holy)
Be good to your parents (honor your mother and father)
No murder
No Adultery.
No Theft.
Don't Lie (bear false witness)
Don't be Greedy (covet - it's more than just desire)

These are the big ten. The things God REALLY cares a lot about. Now, I am sure that God has a lot of other things he cares about.   He probably doesn't like it when a youngster refuses to give up a seat for an elderly person.   Not to mention hacking into the cell phones. Or farting in church.

But those things did not make the top ten list. God thinks those top ten are far worse than anything else man does.   I don't see Homosexuality anywhere on that list, do you?   Maybe God doesn't like it.   Maybe he is as disgusted by it as you.   (I don't think so, but I am just a poor, modest sinner - I have been known to visit my grandmother in a nursing home on a Sunday instead of praying.) But it is not on his top ten list.   He's got more important things to care about.

That means it is easier to get into heaven if you spend your entire life engaging in wild, perverted homosexual sex than it is if you never prayed on Sunday.   So that gay couple that went to a makeshift church every Sunday presided over by a lesbian? They get into heaven while the atheist doesn't. More importantly,if you try to keep homosexual away from church, then you are doing the Devil's work.

Frankly, God doesn't care all that much about homosexuality. It's just not on his list.   When you complain about Homosexuality, using the bible as an excuse, that you trying to tell God what to do, instead of accepting his will.   Sounds to me like you are ignoring the angel on your shoulder in favor of the other guy.

Bad Politcal Arguments

2011-08-10T01:02:00.000-04:00

There are certain classic bad political arguments that are used continuously in American politics.

Here are a few of them:

What you are doing is wrong and evil (but totally different from the near identical things I do). Jon Stewart makes a living pointing out all the times Fox News does this. If in fact Fox News stopped doing it, The Daily Show might have to close down. Fox objects to rappers and Stewart shows them embracing Country singers who basically sang the same lyrics. Fox objects to liberals using a "victim" card while claiming they are the victim because of this happening. Democrats do it to, but not enough for a TV show to base it's existence on them.
The "Amateur" mistake: focusing on unimportant details while ignoring the extremely important ones. Amateurs do this all the time because they were never taught what is relevant and what effects are minor. Examples of this are the "Pro-Confederacy" people that point out blacks working for the Confederacy (by working I mean slaves), while ignoring the fact that the blacks were not given weapons and were killed if they objected - or were in fact Union spies.
Ad Hominem : This is mud slinging - when they attack the man's character instead of his politics.
Exaggerate to silliness. Sometimes called the Slippery Slope. The common practice of taking a reasonable idea and exaggerating it and pretending it is the same thing. As in the arguments that gay marriage will lead to people marrying animals. Or an older claim that if you give women the vote, next thing you know we will give animals the vote. Both arguments are moronic.
Irrelevant facts . Often used with statistics. When you bring up true, but irrelevant facts that seem relevant. For example, stating that we need to outlaw violent video games because people have violent thoughts afterward. It SOUNDS like you are saying the video games turn you violent, but you are not really saying that. Instead all you are saying is that people remember things (as in after they play a violent video game they remember (thoughts) the violent video games). Turning someone violent means they actually act on their violence - and not in minor ways like hitting a pillow. As in actually committing violent crimes. No study has shown an actual increase in violent actions related to playing violent video games. Studies do show actual increase in a violent actions after drinking Alcohol. Video games don't show the same increase. They cause less violence than a 2 drink minimum.
Straw Man This is when you tell people what your opponent believes in. Funny how your opponent never believes in good things. Also funny how your opponent never agrees with your statement of his beliefs. This technique is often used by people that refuse to state what they themselves believe in.
Quoting someone else's lie. Here they know (or strongly suspect) something is not true, and they don't want to get sued, so they quote someone else saying it. All news agencies like doing this, but the master on the right is Michelle. Bachmann. Her crowning masterpiece was the laughable lie when she accused Obama of spending $200 million a day on a trip to India. Turns out he spent less than 1/20th that much. It's like spending $4,000 on a business trip and having some jackass from accounting think you spent $80,000 - because of an anonymous email from some guy claiming to work in the hotel you stayed in.

We are never going to get rid of all of them. Mud Slinging simply is not going to go away - despite the fact that people that engage in it come away covered in almost as much mud as their victim. But you can pay attention to things people say and ignore them when they use these things. Most of them are fairly easy to detect - with the exceptions of 2 Amateur and 5 Irrelevant, which require some intelligence/experience in the issues.

What Is a Fair Share of Taxes.

2011-08-08T05:00:00.001-04:00

One of the tricks that the GOP likes to do is to pretend that your income determines whether you are poor or not. They use the fact that $250,000 is not a lot of money for a family of 5 to live on, as an excuse to cut the taxes on single people earning $250,000.

Conservatives love to talk about the rich as if they are tireless workers for the country, while the poor sit around and do nothing. They quote numbers like: "In the U.S. now, the wealthiest 1 percent of the population earn 19 percent of the income but pay 37 percent of the income tax. The top 10 percent pay 68 percent of the tab. " The link inside the quote came from the quote, so it might not be reliable. (my Source for the quote)

Now at first that sounds impressive. Until you realize they quoted the wrong numbers. It's not how much you declare as 'income', but how much wealth you have in the bank that matters. I know people earning $150,000 a year that are poor - because they are paying off huge school loans, or supporting a wife and 5 kids. I know people earning less than $90,000 that are rich - because they are still single and invested wisely - one guy I know makes less than 90k, but it worth more than 900k at the age of 42. He is aiming to be a millionaire by the time he is 43.

Note that the conservative quoted the wealthiest 1% of the population, not the highest earners, so you need to look at their wealth, not how much they pay. A man worth $1 billion dollars who has a salary of $100,000 (while living in a company owned Yacht, driving a company owned car, etc. etc.) is not 'middle class'. No, that guy is rich, despite his salary. Talking about income is how we got into this mess, we need to talk about his wealth.

So lets look at the numbers that actually matter, instead of the bullcrap that is not relevant (Source for real numbers)

The wealthiest 1% own 34.3% of all the wealth in the US and they pay 37% of our taxes
The next 9% own 36.7% and pay 31%.
The middle 50% own 29% of the wealth and pay 32% of the taxes.
The bottom 40% own about 0.2% of the wealth, so it is not surprising that they pay almost no taxes.

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Taxes need to be based on your WEALTH, not the salary.   (see my previous post about taxing assets, not income) If you own $1 billion, in the bank, you should pay higher taxes than the broke guy, even if you salary is less than his.

Why? Because it is easy to fiddle with the number you declare as your 'income', but it is hard to fiddle with your wealth. If you own your company, then you own all the wealth it has. But if you own your company, you can still use accounting tricks to cut your income down to nothing. Also, if you are foolish enough to keep all your 'wealth' in the company name, then you lose one of the main benefits of being incorporated - protection from lawsuits/corporate bankruptcy.

Some of you may notice that numbers look reasonably close to the numbers. Not exactly. The top 1% pay 'an extra 3%'. But the next 9%, pay 6% too little (taking back the extra 3% the very top give, then an extra 3% stolen from the middle class). The middle 50% (excluding the top 10% and the bottom 40%) are the middle class and are getting ripped off - they own 29% of the wealth but pay 32% of the taxes.

If we were to truly fix our tax structure, we would raise taxes on the top 10% wealthiest not the top 10% earners.   I repeat my previous blog's (New flat tax idea) claim that taxes should be on ASSETS, not on income.   I don't want to replace the entire tax system, but we need to use this idea as a basis for changes in our current system.   Require people to tell the IRS their total net worth, and tax that, as opposed to their income.   It doesn't have to be large, the Total Net Worth of all US households is about 55 Trillion (in 2009).   Total federal tax Income collected was about 2.6 trillion.   A 4.7% Net Worth Tax would pay for everything (up from 4% in my old article based on 2008 numbers), even during the recession. But I don't want to do that. Despite the fact that it would be MUCH easier to calculate: no hunting down income forms, just check your last month's financial statements and a housing valuation from a service like Zillow. No calculations on gain/loss, no working out exemptions, etc.    If you spent or lost it you don't have to pay tax on it. We only taxed the wealth you accumulate.   No, that idea is too radial a change.

Instead we could simply trade in the complex AMT rules with a simpler rule. Here is one (of many possibilities):   First drop the current AMT rules.   Calculate your net worth. If it is under $1 million you owe no additional taxes. If your net worth is more than a millon dollars, you owe taxes of either the standard rate or $20,000 plus 5% for every dollar of net worth above that exempt $1 million. Note the $1 million would be automatically adjusted for inflation every year.

Net worth doesn't change all that much, so you know each year roughly how much you have to pay in taxes.   Yes, illiquid assets would make calculating Net Worth harder, but we could require them to be published and have people be legally required to sell any such illiquid asset for any offer at 150% of the listed taxed value. The only problem is people with large assets and low income (farmers).   That could be solved with a corporation minority share sale. For example a farmer incorporates, trades his land for shares, keeps 51% of the shares themselves, sells 49%. He owns a controlling interest, gets taxed on only 51% of the value of his farm, and can pay the early taxes using the money from the shares sold.   He can also diversify himself by buying some shares from other farmers.

And no, farmers are not hicks. If they own enough property to inflate their taxes, then they are intelligent businessmen (or women) quite capable of running a corporation.

Update on Debt Crisis/FAA Budget

2011-08-06T12:32:00.000-04:00

Well they went with the mix of all the Debt Limit solutions, as I was almost predicting.

They did a little bit of Mouse by pushing the harder stuff out to a committee to be decided later. A little bit of Chicken by only planning on cutting 2 trillion instead of 4 trillion. A bit of Cat via spending cuts without tax increases, a bit of dog with no cuts to Social Security, etc.
Worst of all, as I feared, we also got a bit of Ostrich with one of the three major credit raters downgrading us. Standard & Poors says we are only AA+, not AAA. (My original post said: "Also, if we are not careful, we can get Ostrich with any of the other ones in that even with a solution, investors may start to worry about what happens next time. Just because we pay our debt does not mean inflation won't happen anyway.")

----------------

The FAA Budget deal was a bit better. We funded it till Congress comes back. It look like the GOP is going to win the elimination of a few of the rural airport subsidies (if they had real character they would cut at least 50%, but it looks like they won't cut more than 16 out of the 140 airports getting paid subsidies.) It also looks like the Democrats are going to stop the one sided Union rules the GOP tried to push through.

But while they did extend the budget, it was only till September - so no real confirmation on the FAA budget yet.

The FAA Budget Stupidity

2011-08-04T01:03:00.070-04:00

As a mostly liberal person, I heavily blame the GOP for their horrendous activity during the Debt Limit Crisis. They claim to care about our debt in one breadth and then refuse to raise taxes back to Clinton era levels - despite the fact that under Clinton we had a SURPLUS, not a deficit.

So now I have to look at the current problem. Here we have the FAA's budget being disputed. Because it has been rejected, certain air travel taxes are not being collected, costing the US about $200 million a week. Not to mention putting about 74,000 people out of work.

The GOP is doing this for two reasons:

To stop 13 rural airport from receiving federal subsidaries. It is so much money that some rural airports offer FREE air travel for the sole purpose of boosting their numbers enough to get the federal aid. Here the GOP is completely correct, we do not need to be wasting our money on this crap (or at very least graduate the payments so that free air travel is never worth the airports effort.) Yes, I am supporting the Republicans on this part of the problem. The problem is that they only did this for 13 out of over 140 airports receiving the subsidy. They do sometimes get things right.
The GOP wants to change airline Union organizing rules so that the they need to get a majority of total possible votes, as opposed to total votes cast. In effect that means people that did not vote, count as voting against the Union. For a company that has 20,000 employees, the union needs 10,001 YES votes, even if not a single person voted No. Here the GOP is acting in a vile manner. In most elections you get a lot of people that don't vote. In 2008, only 63% of eligible voters voted for the President of the United States. The GOP is in effect demanding that all people that don't vote count as voting against them. I wonder if they would allow the Democrats to use those rules for Presidential elections - that is any person not voting counts as a vote for the Democrats.

To me, the telling point is the number of airports they are cutting back on. Why only 13 airports - saving less than $17 million (I have seen estimates of $8.5 to $16.5 million). We are losing over $200 million a week in lost Aviation taxes because of the shut down.. We give subsidies about 140 rural airports and honestly, I see little reason to continue supporting most of them. Yes, some people will have to drive further. But the cost to the nation is not worth the minor benefits. If a state wishes to maintain a rural airport, let that state do it. The country can't afford it.

But that's not the point. We know it's not because they cut subsidies to less than 10% of the rural airports, while they did the union rules changes to all the airlines. What is actually going on is that the GOP is using a minor point where they are correct to hide a vile disgusting attempt kill unions. Worst of all, they don't even have the courage to elimination 10% these wasteful subsidies. Not even 10%!!! You want legitimacy, try dropping at least 50% of the rural subsidiaries, not less than 10%.

The FAA budget fiasco is not about the wasteful rural subsidies. Instead it is about a blatant attempt to kill unions.

Voter ID laws

2011-08-02T04:15:00.001-04:00

Several states have instituted voter ID laws. The GOP claim they are intended to prevent voter fraud, but statistics show that is very, very low. The Democrats claim that it is just another barrier to stop people from voting.

In general, the laws are designed to allow drivers that live where they got their license to vote without any additional change. But that means non-drivers, or worse, people that don't live where they got their license, have a much harder time voting.

Let me list some of the people that are inconvenienced by the law:   Elderly (don't drive/nursing home), College kids (may not drive, not living at 'home'), Homeless, and the poor in general. Oh, the laws let a poor man get a free ID, but he still has to pay the bus fare, and possibly miss a day of work to get the card. Not to mention he has to deal with the bureaucracy /ignorance of the people giving out the IDs. Often the people giving out the ID's are ignorant of what they have to do.

Some of the laws make it much harder to do absentee balloting. In effect that prevents college kids from voting. Others, go out of the way to help nursing patients to vote, but do nothing for college kids. In general the laws require a photo copy of a photo ID to obtain an absentee ballot. Fairly silly as there is no guarantee that the photo copy looks anything at all like the person mailing it in. There it is only done to ensure they have an ID, not to actually prevent fraud.

Voter fraud rates are fairly low. We get numbers ranging from 1 in 100,000 to 1 in 2,000,000 (Source) Lets use the higher number.    I estimate more than 1 in 100 Americans are currently in college (80 year life span, 4 years of college, = 1/20 chance of being in college, assuming 20% graduate = 1/100). About 50% of college age students vote.

So, to stop 1 in 100,000, we are going to make it much harder for 500 in 100,000 people to vote.   Lets assume that only 1% of the people will be stopped by the laws. Seems low to me, I bet more like 5% to 10% will be stopped, but lets be generous.    OK, so to stop 1 in 100,000 bad votes, we are going to also stop 5 legitimate votes in 100,000.

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Now some bright moron is going to start arguing that "If they don't care to vote, then they shouldn't get to". Unfortunately that argument you gave has been ruled unconstitutional.   First of all, you are intentionally selecting poor, sick, and young people to block their vote (not to mention the obnoxious ruling that lets gun licenses count but not student IDs).    If you want to stop the unmotivated members of my party from voting, I demand the right to stop the unmotivated members of your party. ou hare 90.

But that is irrelevant, the Supreme Court already outlawed such 'barriers' to voting. You see in the old days, the big, bad Democrat party tried to stop blacks from voting (my how far we have come - and how far the Republican party that freed the slaves has fallen). The Democrats used poll taxe, literacy tests, party restrictions (Texas made it illegal for blacks/hispanics to join the Democratic party - preventing them voting in the primary, which was what mattered) and other such barriers. Eventually the Court in a series of rulings, prevented all of these things (Harper v. Virginia, Nixon vs Herndon, Nixon V. Condon, Smith v. Allwright, etc. etc.)

Unfortunately people do not have a constitutional right to vote, the states do. No part of the US constitution gives any individual the right to vote, just the states. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlaws discrimination based on race or color, but not on age or poverty. So those court rulings above? They flow from that act.

But just because something is legal does not mean it is ethical. What we have here is a bunch of slimy, liars trying to disenfranchise Democrats by pretending to fight voter fraud. So far they have succeeded, but...

They are only getting rid of 5 legitimate votes in 100,000.   People tend to win elections by more than .005% It may be a slimy tactic, but it won't be particularly effective. Don't be surprised if those Voter ID laws are either changed or thown out after 2012.

Socialism in America

2011-07-30T10:11:00.004-04:00

Shocking, I know, but there are in fact multiple socialist institutions in America.

The Military, Social Security, Roads and the Family are all run on socialist principles.

Specifically, you have no choice in which one you get and the pay/services you receive are pretty much set in stone - no extra pay for superior performance within the 'commune'. We all use the same stuff, regardless of how wealthy/poor we are. Soldiers don't get paid more if they win a battle than if they lose it, retirees can't choose where to invest their money, you can't choose to use "Microsoft Roads", and Family members don't pay each other for the various services they provide. We all use the same Military and Social Security, and we are mostly stuck with the family we are born to/give birth to/adopt (though we do get to choose our spouse). Yes, Social Security has some competition - 401(k), IRA, pension plans, but almost all workers are required by law to participate in Social Security - the competition are add-ons, not replacements.

There used to be more - the School, US Post Office and Utilities, but modern innovation/rabid capitalism has given us choices (UPS/Fed Ex/email/ and you can now choose your electrical/gas supplier, if not your water - which many buy in bottles - or you can get from a well).

But the Military, Social Security, Roads and the Family all suffer from the two major problems with socialism:

Lack of Innovation
Lack of Financial Motivation

These two problems lead to poor financial performance for the Military and Social Security. Not so much for the Family, but more about that later. The first question is, why do we use Socialism in the these four institutions.

The military has two higher priority than money - protecting America (at all costs), and saving the lives of it's soldiers (at any cost except endangering America).    It counters the lack of innovation three ways - competition between various services (Marines, Army, Air Force, etc), discussions with friendly countries, and outside contractors developing weapons.   Instead of using financial motivation, it uses Patriotism, and espirit de corps (protecting your brother soldiers).

Social Security has some innovation problems (it would be nice to invest some of the 'lock box" in something besides US Treasuries) so it pushes innovation into those add-on products (401(k), IRA, pensions, etc.).   It lacks financial motivation - what you get is set in stone by the time you start using it.   But instead it is motivated by Security Motivation. That is, the idea is to be absolutely SURE that you will get a minimal amount of money to live on, assuming you worked all your life.

Different states have different road systems, so we get some innovation there. They also outsource production to construction companies which also helps out innovation. Occasionally (innovation and financial motivation) you do have the option of paying more for greater service (toll roads). But the fact that everyone benefits from roads (even if you don't drive, things you buy travel on them) means that we all basically have to use the same roads. Throw in some innovation/financial motivation via the vendors (car manufacturers and trucking), with a bit of examining other countries (US Highway are based on Eisenhower's impressions of German road systems), and things work out OK. Not perfect - which is why road construction is a bit expensive and sometimes bridges fail, but reasonably well. It also helps that the industry is rather static - you can still use ancient roads from roman times, if they are well maintained.

The Family has innovation - because while you get little choice, there are 10 's (if not 100's) of millions of families in the country, and you can change your spouse, if not your parents/kids. Your particular family may not work out great, but you can hear about what other people are doing. The motivation issue uses Love instead of financial motivation. which works pretty well.   Without love, families do poorly. (Which is why gays need to be allowed to marry each other, not be forced to marry people they don't and can't love. Yes, they need a family, it is a major part of America's society and being deprived of one is a major issue. Everyone should have a chance to get a loving family.)

The next question is, is ObamaCare socialism? The answer is no. You get lots of choices, and the pay/services you get, while they include base level minimums, are variable. Some of the Democrats wanted to expand Medicare/Medicaid into a single payer system, which may arguably have been socialistic (hard to say as those plans were never fully described). But the moderate Democrats rejected that idea. We went with a system based on multiple private insurance companies. You have real choices and you can choose to pay more (or less). Laws that charge you penalties for failing to get a service are NOT socialism - most states use those to force people that drive to have insurance for example. Particularly if those laws have many loop holes (which ObamaCare does).

Third question: Is taxing the rich socialistic?   Again, no.    Not even if they tax them a lot more than they tax the poor. But honestly, in the United States, the rich in general are taxed at a percentage rate LESS than the poor. The poor spend most of their money, so sales tax, property taxes, and other fees tend to take a lot higher percentage of their total take home pay. Moreover, Social Security tax only gets paid on the first $100k (give or take 10%) of your take home pay. That is currently a 4.2% (10.4% if self-employed) drop. Finally, Capital Gains taxes (15%) are much lower than income tax and the richer you, the more of your income comes from "Capital Gains" as opposed to a salary.

What, you don't believe me?   Here are some numbers from the Tax Burden Study This study examines state/local income taxes, property taxes, sales tax and vehicle taxes among major cities in the US.
The average local tax burden for a family of 3 with an income of $25,000 in the top 51 cities of the US is about 11.0%. At $50,000 that number drops to 8.7%. At $75,000, it drops a bit more to 8.5% . At $100,000 it rises to 8.8%, but for $150,000 it drops to a 8.1% average. Moving from poor to middle class drops your tax burden 3%. But it gets even better as your wealth rises, because you start saving/investing money instead of spending it on things that cost you property/sales/vehicle tax.      In effect, your local tax burden drops as your earn more and more money.

The GOP constantly accuses the Democrats of trying to 'redistribute wealth', but the truth is, it is the GOP that has been redistributing wealth over the past 40 odd years, using changes in the Tax Code to move it from the poor to the rich. From 1988 to 2003 the poor increased their average household income by 5.7%, while the rich gained 20.4% (Source: Us 2004 Census = page 44/45, via Wikipedia) If you start in 1967 and end in 2003, the numbers are 28.4% and 73.8% - guess which one was the wealthy and who was the poor.

The only 'redistribution of wealth' that the Democrats want is to undue the GOP's 20 year campaign to ensure that the wealthy pay less taxes than the poor do.

If the Debt Limit was already reached in May, how are we paying bills till August?

2011-07-29T17:05:00.000-04:00

Back in May, we hit the debt limit. Yes, May, not August. But Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner used "extraordinary measures" to delay the problem.

Basically what he did was to stop selling bonds to various government agencies - both local and federal.

This has a huge effect because over 40% of the US national debt is in fact held by various American government agencies. Social Security alone holds $2.6 of the $14.3 trillion out there, but Social Security is still buying US treasuries because of legal requirements (it can not invest in anything else). It is other organizations, such as the Federal Employees Retirement Funds (it used to hold about $783 billion in treasuries, but not anymore), that are buying things besides treasuries. As their existing bonds come due, the government is paying them off and not issuing new bonds. Presumably those agencies are using that money to buy municipal and corporate AAA bonds.

Note that the government is paying them off. You see, the USA ran out of debt in May, not cash. In fact, we just got an influx of cash in April. It has the cash, it simply does not have the legal right to sell more bonds.

The problem is, eventually that cash will run out. The cash we are paying out now was supposed to last us a while, but that assumed we would be selling more bonds. Each day, we spend more than we take in (deficit, definition of), so eventually that money will go away.

The Fed thinks it will all be gone on Aug 2. God help us all.

Possible Endings to the Debt Crisis

2011-07-28T01:39:00.002-04:00

Here are the potential ways to solve the debt limit crisis, using animal names:

Ostrich: Ignore the problem, and hope it goes away. Result: US Credit ranking goes down (even if we pay our debt), our borrowing cost goes up, debt increases. Oh, and the GOP loses a lot of congressional seats come next year, but the tea party is happy
Fat Cat: Obama gives in, allows GOP to bend the US over and take it like a manly country. No tax increases at all, but massive spending cuts, mainly for things that effect the poor. Result: Poor get poorer, Rich keep their money, GOP congressman are happy and keep their jobs. Tea Party is happy. Upside for the Democrats is the outrage will almost certainly sweep the 2012 election.
Dog: GOP "gives in" and accepts some kind of revenue enhancements on the rich. Nobody is happy - GOP is upset about taxes that they will blame on Obama, while Dems are upset about cuts to Social Security which will be blamed on the GOP Some members of the Tea Party would accept this, but not all.
Mouse: They raise the debt ceiling, but not enough to get us past the 2012 elections, ensuring that we do this whole thing again, this time in the middle of an election. Tea Party might be accept this, but don't want it. Wild card, no one knows what this does.
Chicken: They do what they used to do all the time and raise the debt ceiling without any real changes to taxes or spending. Democrats and GOP both come away happy, Tea Party is unhappy.

There are some variations, for example you can change the amount of tax increases per spending cut.    But those are the basics.   You can for example mix Cat, Mouse Chicken by allowing the GOP to vote for temporary debt increases, but then in a series of later 'dis-approvals' to symbolically vote against them. Not likely to happen, anymore than voters are likely to be fooled by this stupidity.   Why should the Democrats agree to let the GOP look good and make the Democrats look bad?

Also, if we are not careful, we can get Ostrich with any of the other ones in that even with a solution, investors may start to worry about what happens next time. Just because we pay our debt does not mean inflation won't happen anyway.

Motivations:

The country as a whole wants the budget balanced.   They have made it quite clear (multiple polls) they are willing to pay more taxes, preferably taxes focused on the wealthy. (Cat, Dog, Mouse, or Chicken)

The tea party wants a smaller government with less spending.   They claim not to care if the government defaults/can't pay for all the benefits. (Ostrich or Cat)

The GOP insists on no new taxes and also want massive cuts on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They can't get both. They can get either "no new taxes" or "massive cuts". No way will the Democrats cave on both. The Democrats have the Presidency AND a majority of the Senate.   The GOP is not in charge and can't have their way without Democrat agreement. (Cat or Mouse)

The Democrats want no cuts on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and to raise taxes on the rich. No way will the GOP give us both, but we have already stated we are willing to lose on one (but not both.).   (Dog, Chicken, or Mouse)

Obama wants an end to the debt crisis as well as everything the Democrats want. (Dog and Chicken)

The only people wanting the Ostrich are the Tea Party. But the GOP is courting the Tea Party, so it might accept it.    The only people that don't wantt the Chicken are the Tea Party and the GOP.

Chicken looks likely, after all, Congress has been Chicken before it is their usual modus operandi. They have done Ostrich before, but usually that results in major turnover.   Whoever is blamed loses seats.   I think the GOP is wise enough to know that they are being blamed for the debt gridlock (Source). As such, Chicken looks more likely than Ostrich.

A strong possibility is that you get a watered down version of Chicken-Dog or Chicken-Cat combo. The idea there is you do mostly symbolic dog or cat type plan that doesn't really reduce the deficit all that much.

Finally, there is one more thing going on.   You see, Ostrich definitely hurts this country.   It is the weapon both sides are using to get the other to submit.   They are playing "chicken" with the economy.   If both people blinks, then we get the 'chicken' outcome, if neither do, Ostrich. If only one side blinks, you get either Cat or Dog. If they decided to stop for a while and play later, that's Mouse.   The problem is, playing the game means you value your own party's goals more than the country. You are in effect willing to blackmail the country to do what you want - or the "US credit rating gets it".

Both sides are doing it.   Neither side has tried to pass the "chicken" outcome (raise the debt limit with no attachments).

Another part of the problem is there are ... people ... out there that think "Balanced Budget" = no new taxes. No. Balanced Budget means that taxes = spending.   You can do it two ways: 1) increase taxes or 2) reduce spending.   Anyone that refuses to admit that you can balance a budget by increasing taxes has no business talking about economics.    You may not LIKE that method of balancing the budget, but it works. Given our current situation (with taxes covering only about 60% of the budget), budget cuts alone would be too massive - putting too many people out of work, etc. A tax hike on the wealthy would allow us to balance the budget right away, and once the debt goes away, then we can talk about cutting taxes again.

A Wise Republican

2011-07-26T01:51:00.002-04:00

Mickey Edwards is a former Repeublican Congressman, currently working for Aspen Institute. He is a particularly effective writer.

He recently published an article in the Atlantic, entitled How to turn Republicans and Democrats into Americans.

It is a great article, and I highly recommend it to all.

I don't agree with everything he said but my disagreements are minor.

My first issue is the fact that both Democrats and Republicans have become more hidebound. I agree that if you go by what they say, that is true. But everyone knows the Democrats are 'wimps' that cave. I personally think this is an advantage. It means that the Democrats are NOT as hidebound as they sound.   They are willing to compromise, and that means that a Democrat pushed bill ends up not as being controlled by the zealots, the way a Republican backed bill does.   Contrary to the GOP, I think flip-flopping is a GOOD thing - it means you can change your mind and can work for the good of the entire country, not just the 51% of your district that voted for you.

Mr Edwards suggests reforming the primary system, allowing for the possibility of two members of the same party in the general election. While he does not go into specifics, I do think this can be done.   The main objection to this method are problems with the simplistic voting system we use now - which honestly only works well if there are only two real candidates. The primary elections can be different, such as an Approval voting (you can vote for multiple candidates, but only once per candidate), a Single transferable vote (used when two or more seats are available. You vote for whom you want, with an automatica transfer to someone else if your candidate has already won and does not need more votes - used in Australia), Instant Runoff/Alternative vote (you rank the candidates 1, 2,3, 4, etc. anyone with 51% of 1 wins, if not, then eliminate candidate with least ones, and anyone that voted 1 for him, now uses whoever they voted for as #2, repeat. Also used in Australia), and/or Condorcet (voters rank them again, 1,2,3..., but a more complex matrix is used to determine the winner, pitting each candidate against each other)

I personally prefer the Instant Run off method. It is simple enough to understand, and lets people rank candidates, as opposed to simply yes/no.

He wants fair redistricting, which I think is a good thing, but irrelevant. As he pointed out, attempts to gerrymander are not as effective as people doing it want. As such, fixing the problem is not that important. It's kind of like saying "No, you can't use a lucky rabbit's foot" when gambling.

Then he says something I disagree with strongly. He wants to let anyone amend bills. The problem is that it is easy to use amendments to destroy bills. You just need a majority of the people in the room at the time, not a majority of all the congressman. So your opponents can add a "Legalize Gay Marriage" amendment to your bill to limit abortions.

Amendments are often put on to bills that are expected to pass that have little/nothing to do with the bill.   This makes bills needlessly complicated. We need LESS amendments not more.   Put those 'amendments' in as separate bills.

I can see making the change he recommended with two caveat:   1) Let the bill submitter veto any amendments. That is, anyone, Democrat or Republican, can attempt to add anything they want to a bill. But the Congressman that submitted the bill (not their party, just them), can veto any amendment.   This increases the chance that a good amendment will be added, without increasing the chance that it will be sabotaged. It also grants the bill's submitter more power, as opposed to the party leadership. 2) If you propose amending a bill, then vote against the bill, you personally are fined $10,000 with the money going to Presidential Election Campaign Fund.

His other recommendations, with have to do with committee leadership, vacancies, and staff, all make sense.   It removes the partisanship and thereby a lot of the power of the political parties.

The News Corp scandal

2011-07-24T02:08:00.003-04:00

News Corp is a major international news corporation. In America it owns a bunch of respectable newspapers and respectable TV channels.

In Britain, they also own some tabloids. The kind of papers that ran "I had Bigfoot's baby" stories.   Like many tabloids they did not always obey the law. Some disgusting stuff, such as invading the privacy of murder victims.   Worse, when they got caught breaking laws, they bribed law enforcement officials.

But you see, they were special. They were the step child of far more respectable newspapers. They used the clout from their respectable businesses to squash the investigations.   The government was afraid to piss of their owners. So instead of instantly catching them, investigations were delayed for years.

First let me state that I just don't think that the American branch of News Corp will be found to do anything blatantly illegal. Well, not worse than their standard minor libel and slanders - such as putting a (D) in front of Republicans that get caught committing crimes. Funny how they never make the error the other way around.

I am not here to yell at Fox. What is happening to them is nothing more than a direct consequence of Congress and the FCC's failures. Similar problems existed in England.

You see, at one point in history, it would have been impossible for News Corp to be in this position. Up until 1996 or so, there were real limitations on how many TV channels, newspapers etc. someone could own.   More importantly. we had foreign ownership rules - which is why Robert Murdoch (born Australian) became an American citizen in 1985.   But after 1996, those laws were effectively changed in the US, (with new exceptions and SCOTUS rulings removing the teeth).

There in lies the problem. Think about what would have happened if the strict US laws from 1985 were still in effect in both Britain and the the USA.

Murdoch could not be British and American at the same time, so he could not maintain such powerful newspapers in both countries.
Given reasonable media limitations, no tabloid would have the political clout of respectable papers, so they could not have squashed the investigation.

The media has power. They have abused their power.    In this case, it happens to be an abuse by British companies owned by News Corp.   Worse, the conglomeration of media that has NO reasonable need to be conglomerated. Really, tabloids owned by a respectable company? Why?

This is in fact a major claim of Fox News - that the liberal media has too much power. The problem is that if the liberal media could in fact have as much power as Fox claims it has, then by definition, so could a conservative media. As so clearly proven by this case.

We need an independent media. We never should have let News Corp grow to be as big as it got. There was no need for the same guy to control British news, American news, tabloids, video and paper.

Imagine what would have happened if Fox News was a separate corporation, with Roger Ailes as CEO instead of only the Chairman of the Fox Group.   Then Fox could have gone into high moral outrage about News Corp invading the privacy of a September 11 victim. They could have led the charge, instead of defending against it.

Media corporations need to be small enough to attack each other. News Corp is the single most powerful media corporation in the US.   No one should have as much power as they currently do. Fox needs real competition. Which is why Britain is considering creating some of those same limitations that the US got rid of in the 1990s (Source)

It's a pity that Congress, the FCC and SCOTUS have eviscerated our 20th century anti-monopoly laws, particularly with regards to Media. The internet may save us, with the rise of Google, Drudge, and blogging. But only if we stop the old companies from stealing all the power before it spreads it self out among the innovating, smaller corporations. If we let News Corp, AP, CNN maintain their dominant position as they move into new technologies, then we will lose the chance to regain a free and independent press.

A real free press that is capable of reporting on the crimes other people commit, instead of covering up the crimes of their subordinates.

Light Bulbs

2011-07-22T16:03:00.003-04:00

The GOP recently failed to overturn George Bush's 2007 new light bulb rules.   Bush's law created efficiency standards for light bulbs. You are allowed to keep any inefficient bulb you already own.   The law does not outlaw incandescent light bulbs - you can still buy any that meet the standards. In fact Home Depot is already selling incandescent light bulbs that meets those standards. Look for Halogen and HID light bulb.   HID refers to High Intensity Discharge. They have no filament, but instead a small capsule of gas (such as Halide, Neon, etc.) They are more efficient than a regular light bulb and last longer. Like Halogen bulbs, they are dimmable.   HID bulbs sometimes use mercury, but not all the time. Fluorescent bulbs electrifies mercury vapor that gives off ultraviolet light that is converted to visible light by a phosphor.   As such, all Fluorescent bulbs have some mercury in them.

In addition, bulbs below 40 watt and above 150 watts are exempt. So are specialty lights such as 3-way, colored, plant grow lights, and heat lamps. If you are hoarding 25 watt bulbs vanity or 200 watt flood lights, you are going to find out how foolish you are in about 6 months

Oh, and if you break a CFL normal people just throw it out. Just as you used to do when you broke a mercury thermometer. In most cities, this is legal.   Some cities may have special rules. The EPA always did advise you to triple bag the mercury and dispose like you would a car battery - but I bet you never did that did you?   You also probably never wore a bike helmet - but aren't all upset and suing the bike companies.   I would however advise you to aire out the room after a CFL breaks.

A small thermometer had about 0.500 grams of mercury, while a big one had about 3.000 grams. A small CFL has.... 0.001 grams of mercury and a big one has 0.005 grams of mercury.    The amount of mercury you get from breathing air polluted by coal power plants is far higher than if you were to break every single CFL you ever buy.   If you don't think coal power plants should be required to cut their mercury content by 90%, then you shouldn't care about the mercury in CFLs.

The law comes into effect on in 2012. After that, among other things, that means it will still be legal:

To get the nice, full color light of incandescent light bulbs. (Get a Halogen or HID bulb)
To use 200 watt floodlights.
To put in "sauna lamps" for those that like to have a super hot bathroom.
To buy light bulbs for your garage 'oregano' farm. (But the cops will still catch you.)
For movie theaters to continue their obnoxious practice of putting 200 watt spot lights above their soda counter, directed at the people in line - making them hot and thirsty. At least they aimed them so as not to hit the people behind the counter.
To use a dimmer switch with a cheap light bulb (HID again, or,if you are an idiot you can of course choose to buy expensive florescent bulb designed for them, or a regular expensive LED light )

But there will be some issues.

People will not be able to buy new 100 watt bulbs for their Easy Bake Oven. The new easy bake ovens will use a heating element. Hasbro does not recommend buying a 200 watt bulb - it will over-cook and might start a fire. And they can't charge you $5 for a replacement heating element.
You will save money on electricity - and if you get your electricity from burning coal, will put less mercury in the environment even if you break a CFL every year.
Everyone will realize how stupid the GOP is for trying to panic people over non-issues like this.

Whoops, no #3 will not happen because people never admit when they were wrong.

Note, hear some actual bulb pricing numbers, for a 100 watt equivalent bulb. (all from Home Depot

Standard Incandescent:   $1.27 for four bulbs. 100 watts, 1620 lumen, 750 hours, dimmable
Long Fluorescent: $14.97 for 10, 32 watts, 2,800 lumen, 20k hours

CFL (Fluorescent pig tail): $5.97 for 2 23 watts, 1,500 lumen, 10k hours, not dimmable
Full Spectrum CFL: $7.97 for one, 27 watts, 1,400 lumen, 10k hours, not dimmable
Dimmable CFL: $9.97 each, 23 watts, 1,400 lumen, 10k hours, dimmable
LED: $46.97 for one bulb, 18 watts, 1,200 lumen, 25k hours, dimmable
HID: $14.97 for one bulb, 100 watts, 3,800 lumen (note this is twice as bright) , 24k hours, dimmable.

On line I could not find an HID 50 watt bulb that cost less than the 100 watt, so I went with the 100 watt. I also could not find any Halogen bulbs at Home Depot that meet the new standard. They do exist, but Home Depot doesn't have them .... yet. Look again in a year.

Note that some (not all) HID light bulbs and all fluorescents have mercury in them, but LEDs do not. In addition, we have already begun to reduce the amount of mercury needed in the fluorescents .   Where they used to be 1/1000 as much as in a mercury thermometer, now you can buy them with 1/4000 as much.

With electricity costing $0.12 to $0.50, a kilowatt hour, that means that a typical standard incandescent light bull will cost your more than $9 in electricity for it's short 750 life. Times 13 to match the lifespan of a typical CFL, and you get $100 for electricity.   At less than 1/4 the wattage, that means a typical CFL saves over $75 in electricity costs.    If we were to package them with the EPA recommend breakage cleanup equipment (3 zip lock bags and rubber gloves), throw in pre-paid FED EX box to a national dump, and we still save over $40.   That is assuming that unlike most people, you won't just treat them the same way you treated a broken thermometer.

The GOP continues to try and push this ridiculously unimportant issue that has already been settled under George Bush. Despite the fact that debt talks are far more important and immediate. Why?

They think it is a good "the democrats are trying to regulate your life too much" issue.   This is a major theme for their campaign but frankly they could not find a lot of examples, so they push the few they have (Health care and light bulbs apparently).

Obviously some regulations are needed.   So when should we regulate and when should we leave the free market alone?

To me the answer is pretty obvious - when we come across a situation that the free market isn't dealing with well AND is of national importance, then we regulate. Energy use is one of this countries biggest issues. We import oil and in doing so support some of the most evil countries in the world (mainly by keeping the price of oil up, as we tend not to buy directly from the really bad guys).    In addition, lighting uses up about 10% of our energy production.   That makes light bulb efficiency an important issue, just like gasoline efficiency. The math I showed above makes it clear that the CFL and HID are a better financial choice. Clearly the free market is not working well here. This is an ideal example of when regulation is a good idea.

There is not enough money in American Politics.

2011-07-18T03:41:00.003-04:00

In the 2008 Election over $1 billion was spent. Obama spent 730 M and McCain spent 333 M.

2012 looks like it will be even more. With the Citizens United Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruling, the numbers are expected to go up.   Recent reports support this. Obama raised $86 M in the last 3 months, breaking previous records, as well as their goal of $60 M.   The Republican candidtes raised less than $5 M during the same period. The GOP is trying to save face by claiming that the incumbent has an advantage in fund raising. That is true - just as he has an advantage in the actual election. If you can't beat him now at spending now, you won't beat him in the polls.

The traditional view is that all this money is a bad thing.   We don't want anyone to 'buy' office. But the Supreme Court says (and I agree) that money is a kind of speech.   Money flows from strongly held opinions, but is a rather poor at changing people's opinions (estimates are that doubling your spending increases your votes by 1% of total votes).

Note I do disagree with the SCOTUS when they claimed that corporations are entitled to Free Speech and that allowing anonymous spending ( without proof of citizenship) on a presidential election.   We need laws to prevent non-citizens - whether they be corporations or foreigners - from interfering in an election that is NONE of their business.

But there is no problem with the amount of money being spent per se.   That is an illusion caused by looking at those numbers in a vacuum.   One BILLLLLLION dollars (hold my pinky up to my face) sounds like a lot.   Until you realize that more money will be spent advertising chewing gum during that year. Which do you think is more important? Choosing who will be president or which brand of gum you will buy? (Note, the candy industry loves advertising - they spend about 20% of their budget as advertising.)

$1 Billion is not enough to buy the US presidency. Neither would $2 Billion, or even $4 Billion.   People (and now corporations and foreigners - due to the bad SCOTUS ruling ) are voting with their checkbooks before the 2012 election.   It is the the best indication of how the 2012 election will go. The GOP is in for another sad shock, just like in 2008, when Obama led the Democrats to crush the GOP.

McConell is only partly correct when he said that no deal is possible (on the budget) while Obama is president.   He forgot that a deal would be possible if Obama is President and McConnel led only 32 Senators and the House was held by the Democrats.   If the GOP continues with their foolhardy plan to shut down the government, the country will just realize how much they LIKE the services the Democrats are protecting, and how much they don't care if the top 1% has to take a tax hike.

China

2011-07-16T10:00:00.001-04:00

Trust is a strange thing.   One of the strangest thing about trust is that the more you give, the more you get.   You can't trust someone that doesn't trust you.

This is a major flaw in China's political theory.   They don't trust their citizens at all. As such, they hide information from their citizens. The problem is that the citizens don't know the extent of the secrecy.   They know their government is hiding stuff, but they don't know whether the government is hiding a little lead in their toothpaste or hiding cyanide in their water.

China has recently begun censoring phone calls. If you mention "protest" (by words or by text), your call is dropped.   The thing about America is that we don't censor. Instead we publicize - both our mistakes and insane conspiracy theories. We shout them to the world.

It is partly because of this that we know that Obama is a US citizen. Because if he wasn't, than Wikileaks would be full of information about where and when he was born. The fact that we allow idiots to shout stupidity lets me know that there is no one hiding actual conspiracies.

China censors because it is afraid. They fear fast change (revolution), so they do their best to slow it down (evolution). As such they are and always will be, behind the times.

Why do they appear to be catching up? Simply because they were so far behind.   In effect, they are racing along the path we blazed. But they can never lead - they will always be behind us.   Fairly quickly they will catch up and then they will slam into the wall that they themselves have built.

Who is to blame?

2011-07-15T10:43:00.000-04:00

Both sides always want to blame the other. It's not just the debt, the economy is a great example. Republicans want to blame Obama for not fixing the mistake that happened on their watch.   Democrats want to blame Bush for creating the problem and the current congress for not fixing it.

Honestly, the recovery is not anyone's fault.   If we truly knew enough about how to fix it, it would never have happened in the first place.    Obama did not have a free hand to do whatever he liked, neither did Bush or Congress (either the Democratic Congress or the Republican one).   Even if they did, the President quite frankly does NOT have the power to fix the economy.

We generally don't know how to fix the economy - despite what a bunch of economists and politicians say. If they really did know how to fix the economy, we never would have had the problem in the first place. Yes, both sides have ideas - but honestly we have tried those ideas before (and in smaller scale in the states) and they do NOT work. No matter how often you say "TAX CUTS WILL GROW THE ECONOMY", you can't argue with the fact that they have in fact NOT grown the economy. Similarly, claims that stimulus spending will save the economy also fail flat.   Both sides say "we didn't do enough", or "your tax cuts destroyed my stimuli" vs "your stimuli destroyed my tax cuts".    But when it comes down to it, if either thing worked at all, their effect would have been much greater.

The Debt Ceiling is another issue, same story.

It is true that people don't want to raise the debt ceiling. Neither do the Democrats. We wish we had never hit it. But the GOP is the party that took Clinton's Surplus and turned it into Bush's Deficit. Raising the debt limit is not a concession. It is something that needs to be done that NEITHER side wants. It is something that we need to do, like taking out the garbage.

If you want to get something for agreeing to do it, you get the grateful thanks of the nation, nothing more. Insisting on more is like a child saying "I will take out the garbage if you send me to Space Camp." Then when the parent replies "I will send you to Space Camp if you take out the garbage and wash my car". Why? Because the garbage is a base chore that MUST be done, even if you don't like it. It is not

So, while we can't fix the economy or keep the debt limit where it is, when it comes to blame, that is a different story.   We definitely have the power to blame people, and we try it all the time.

There, the Democrats have a huge edge. They have a reputation for being wimpy and failing, while the GOP has a reputation for being dogmatic.   For example, Cantor (R) says that they will not under any circumstance accept any tax icnreases - not even a tiny one on jet plane owners. While the Democrats cave and allow cuts in medicare and social security in exchange for tax hikes on the rich equal to $1 in increases for every $4 in cuts.

But when it comes to blame, however, the wimpy guys have a big edge.   You see, the hard line can help you get more of what you want - but only if your opponent really is wimpy. If on the other hand, he is smarter and stronger than you thought, then when the crap hits the fan, nothing gets done and you get stuck with the blame.   When the bully beats up the wimp, they both get in trouble for fighting, but the bully gets the blame.

Yes, the hard core conservatives will blame Obama - they always do.   Claiming that you stuck to your guns may go over great with your base, but they don't matter. They always would have voted for you, just as the hard core liberals will always blame the GOP. Convincing those guys only helps you run the election, it won't win it for you.

When it comes to The Blame Game, the independents are the people that matter.

And independents are by there nature middle of the road people that do not like it when you take a hard line.   They prefer, hell, they ARE 'the wimpy guy that takes a moderate stance.'

Only they don't think they are wimpy. They think they are reasonable, and the hard core, 'line in the sand' guy is to blame.

And you know what? They are right. Both about them being reasonable as opposed to wimpy and about who is to blame.

About 67% of Americans (Source) believe that the rich should take a tax hike to help us get out of the current situations. Only 25% said no to any tax increases. Republicans counter that the Obama plan would be a tax hike on everyone, not just the rich. But they don't offer ANY tax hike of their own. In effect they admit they are going against the will of the american people and are claiming that Obama is lying when he promises to do the will of the people.

But even if Obama is lying - wouldn't you rather go with the guy that claims he gives you what you want rather than the guy that refuses to do it at all?     The problem is that the 25% that don't want any tax hike are the Republican base. That is why the GOP is doing what they want, instead of what the majority wants.

But too bad, 25% of Americans don't get to tell the other 75% what to do. Instead, the 67% get to tell the 33% what to do. That is how Democracy works.

And that is why 48% will blame the GOP, while only 34% will blame Obama about the debt ceiling issue. It is also why come election day, Obama will win again - and probably pick off a few GOP House Representatives who foolishly tried to keep their base happy instead of their entire district.

Internet Pornography is a Good thing.

2011-07-14T01:22:00.003-04:00

(First, let me apologize to all the people that googled "Good Pornography" and ended up here. Sorry, not what you are looking for, try again.)

Governments trying to censure the internet often use 'morality' as an excuse. They want to eliminate porn for the good of society.

The problem with that is the internet's pornography is a huge force for morality.

Before the internet, more than 10% of rural people had tried bestiality of some kind. Basically, you had horny young people, many of whom were considered un-attractive with poor social skills. Their self-righteous neighbors (many of whom were married because they were more-attractive and/or had better social skills) legislated against pornography. So sexual relief was not easy to find.   Women have always had simpler, cheaper, and effective sex toys, but men can not simply turn to cucumbers.   For a surprising number of men living in close proximity to animals, assuming they could stomach it, the easiest solution was out on the ranch.   As a result, the Kinsey study found significant incidents of rural bestiality.

Disgusting, but unfortunately true.   No, I am not posting a source for this information. I don't have the will to wade through the porn results a google search for relevant terms would include. But if you yourself are willing to do so, you can hunt down reports that show bestiality has almost vanished in the past 20 years, pretty much with the rise of the internet.   Why? Because people in small towns now have a sexual release that does not involve animals. Given the choice, they abandoned bestiality.

Yes, child porn has become more popular, but pedophilia itself has not risen any significant amount, while bestiality has gone from above 10% in rural areas to much less than 5%.   The number of people that commit crimes against children is and always has been very small.   Rape statistics have also gone down, but that is more likely explained by a general decrease in crime.   In addition, the internet has not resulted in significant rises in actual homosexual activity, S&M activity, etc. etc. We don't have more gay people, more dominatrixes, etc. But those we do have are talking publicly about what they do. The people that like their various kinky perversions have found each other, and are enjoying themselves in a more public manner.

The internet has cut down significantly on some types of 'perversion', while making others more public. More public is not more immoral, in fact it makes things MORE morale by pushing the nastier people out and allowing the saner people to become leaders of their communities. They discuss what they do and how to do it safely, without breaking laws.    They advise beginners to avoid things they should avoid.

A bunch of moralistic prudes have become upset now that they hear what other people are doing. But the truth is that WORSE stuff used to happen before the communication revolution publicized everything. People are being safer, saner and more consensual (or 'risk aware' if you prefer).

So, thank you Internet for making the world a much safer, less disgusting place for sexuality.

The lesson here is that censorship is BAD. It doesn't eliminate or even reduce the bad stuff, it just hides it.   Of course that means that people that want to censor porn are in fact pushing bestiality.   Now, of course, Michelle Bachmann is not aware of any of this. How do I know she is ignorant of the Internet's positive effects on morality? Because instead of learning from experts that have devoted their lives to studying these issues, she disparage them as ivory tower intellectuals.   Then she listens to amateurs with no degrees that have spent a couple of hours googling things.

Politicians and Lies

2011-07-12T10:20:00.000-04:00

There is a story (probably a myth), of a Professor that tells his students that he will lie to them every single class.   Furthermore, if they believe the lie, he will grade them wrong.   The lies start out obvious, but by the end of the semester become hard to detect.   One of his best students double checks all of his statements and always finds the lie. But on the last day he checked and checked and could not find the lie. So the student goes to him after class and asks him what the lie was. The professor states 'Remember on the first day when I said "I will lie to you every day" - I lied.'

Supposedly the professor did this to get his students to: - 1). Question Authority and 2). Pay attention and study their books, not just memorize what he said.   If I were a teacher, I would definitely try this out.

But you too can play along, with your politicians instead of teachers.   Everyone knows politicians lies. Even the best ones do it.   If you stand there and say yours does not, you look a fool. For one thing, they have to speak so often, that accidental lies must creep in.   To err is human.

Don't examine the statements of those you dislike. That is like shooting fish in a barrel. The trick is to find the lies that your favorite politician speaks. For example, I like Obama, yet I think he lied when he says his actions in Libya do not violate the War Powers Act.

Unless you stalk your politician, chances are you won't hear them speak every day. So make it once a month or so during election seasons and once a year otherwise. Or you could pick multiple politicians you like and do it more often.

Politifact makes your job easy. Just go through the statements they think are false/pants on fire, and find one you think they got right. You don't have to use Politifact, if you don't trust them, but it might be harder.

But if you can not find out when your politicians lied, then one of two things has occurred:

You have found the Messiah. His very holy nature makes him immune to the normal human mistakes. You can easily tell this because of course, all others will recognize his greatness. Such a man, if he went to college, would go to Harvard or Yale. Corporations he ran never lost money. You should quit your job and spend your life worshipping him - or at least working directly for him. Place bets that he will win the next election. If you are not willing to do this, then you have lied to yourself or...
You are not competent to judge his veracity. That probably means you are blinded by loyalty and wishes. Keep this in mind and try to be more lenient when judging the truth of others. Your own deep opinions are getting in the way of your ability to think.

Conservative ideas I like - and why they are so rare.

2011-07-10T03:49:00.077-04:00

Most of my blog comes down pretty hard on the Republicans. I despise their opposition to the First amendment (Religion, speech, press, assemble and petition), their ridiculous belief that you can cut taxes and reduce the deficit, their demand for corporate rights while stepping on the individual rights, their anti-abortion, anti-gay,anti-intelligentsia, anti-civil rights and anti-poor biases.

But there are some things they got right.

So I decided to list a few of the Republican Ideas that I agree with.

We do need to simplify the tax code. That does NOT mean lower taxes for businesses - even small business. It means get rid of a bunch of the loopholes that deductions that people and businesses use. Tax deductions should be simpler - and abuse of them should be rare, not common.
Our educational system does need some work. The major problem is we don't know how to fix it - Teachers are not the problem, though sometimes working around their contracts might make solving the problem harder. I would probably require Teacher Unions to allow exceptions for 'test-case' schools, to help us figure out how to fix the problems. No more than 5% of schools could opt-out of the standard contract.
Nuclear Power is safe and should be considered a green/renewable energy source. I wish the DNC would commit to it's use. Of course, if they did, the GOP would deny they were ever for it and claim Nuclear Power is a socialist plot.
Unions should not have the right to force people to join or pay them, just as businesses should not have the right to prevent people from joining them. Similarly, a business should not be required to use the same contract for a Union employee as it does for a non-union employee. You don't pay for collective bargaining, you don't get the bargain. If a Union can not find a way to survive without requiring the 49% that did not want to join it in a company that has 51% of it's employees union members, then the Union should die. But I don't think they will. Unions are strong enough to survive.

I would add I favor a strong Defence, but the GOP is turning away from that view. It costs money - which many in the GOP would rather cut from our taxes then spend on defence.

There are probably more ways I agree with the GOP, but it is hard to tell. They so often use words to mean the exact opposite of what they say. (Democrats do this too, but to a lesser extent)

For example the GOP say they want schools to teach a fair scientific viewpoint on Intelligent Design vs. Evolution, but all scientific evidence is for Evolution and almost none for ID. They work very hard to phrase certain ideas as if they meant the opposite of what they really do mean. We know this because they only do it when talking to the general public. When they speak to conservative only groups, they drop the strange phrasings.

Worse, they insist on pulling crap like calling a bill "Revoke Excessive Policies that Encroach on American Liberties Act" instead of "Revoke Obama-care". Then there was "Reducing Barack Obama's Unsustainable Deficit Act". Such things do not help you pass a bill, it makes it harder by pissing off people that may agree with some of the rules but despise your childish behaviour. They think they are boosting their base by creating sound clip for the media.

In actuality, they piss off their opponent's base the same amount. Net net, your opponent ends up boosting his popularity the same amount as you do - but you are the one that spent all the money and political capital. It's kind of like what happens when you put up an advertisement to join the local Gay Community in a town's only newspaper. Sure, you may get new recruits, but don't be surprised if certain church groups start picket your meeting.