It's just my opinion, I could be wrong

So the 2010 Census data was just released. Predictably, the states with lower tax rates saw an influx of people, and the states with higher tax rates saw an outflux. However, there was another phenomenon which was also evident: states with high rates of resident illegal aliens also saw an increase in numbers, which is to be expected (since the census specifically does not ask or care if people are in the country legally, or are actively breaking the law). For federal money to states for infrastructure, this can make sense: the state has extra burdens from extra people, and doesn't deserve to shoulder the extra burden from the federal government's incompetence in securing the borders and enforcing the law. However, the census also determines representation in the federal government, and this is where the otherwise academically interesting situation graduates into a big problem. In essence, by giving representation based on ongoing criminal activity, we're not only rewarding...

The DREAM Act , for those who don't follow politics, is a bill backed primarily by Democrats which would establish a path for illegal immigrants to obtain permanent legal residency through education or military service. It has been opposed by critics as a sort of amnesty for illegal immigrants (which it kinda is), and because it rewards criminal behavior (which it kinda does). It has been proposed and revised several times over the last decade, and is still not popular enough to be passed. At this point, I'm going to state something which may surprise regular readers: I kinda like this bill, and with a few caveats, I think it would be a good idea. Before I explain, let's get into a little philosophy on immigration in general. It's in the best interests of countries to encourage and facilitate immigration of skilled workers and other productive members of society, provided that the industrial system in the country can support additional productive work and people. Histor...

Study Confirms That Fox News Makes You Stupid This article was recently published on AlterNet, although it's not the first time this liberal-media bash of Fox News study has been quoted in the liberal media. So why am I linking it? Well, in some cases, the sheer magnitude of the audacity of something being distorted to support an agenda rises to the level of selective ridicule, and I feel that this is one such piece. So, for amusement, here are the items which were asserted to be "facts", and the number of Fox News readers who disagreed with the liberal talking points "facts": •91 percent believe the stimulus legislation lost jobs •72 percent believe the health reform law will increase the deficit •72 percent believe the economy is getting worse •60 percent believe climate change is not occurring •49 percent believe income taxes have gone up •63 percent believe the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts •56 percent believe Obama initiated the GM/Chry...

There's an old joke about politicians: How can you tell if a politician is lying? He/she is speaking. Now, obviously that is a tad bit of hyperbole, but it's amusing because of the hint of truth in it. People have come to accept that their "representatives" are lying virtually all the time, and clearly more often than they are telling the truth. To that end, I'd like to propose an additional variation of the above observation, with respect to Congressional legislation: How can you tell if a bill is bad for the country? Congress is voting on it. Consider, for example, the latest gigantic pork bill proposed by the Democrats, as an effective rider to the continuing resolution to keep the government operating beyond Dec 18. Now, in a sane world there would be some rule, or procedure, or perhaps even modicum of decency to separate gigantic pork bills from the simple "keep the government operating" resolution, so that conscientious legislators wouldn't be...

I know a number of other "Tea Party" blogs (including likely some readers of this one) are posting articles critical of Obama's latest effort to pump more printed money into the US economy. While I think there's certainly a legitimate point of contention with the idea that the only feasible action for the government (seemingly in every circumstance, but especially when the economy isn't doing well) is to print more money, and Obama certainly did his best to vilify Republicans while accepting the compromise deal, I have to give him a certain amount of credit: the deal is not nearly as bad as it could have been, and he (unlike his Democrat counterparts in Congress) at least seems willing to make some concessions in the name of helping people. Consider the proposed compromise plan. It: - Does not increase the progressive tax gap (ie: it doesn't make income taxation more unfair) - Gives money primarily to those who are working, creating/maintaining jobs, or trying...

So Sarah Palin chimed in on Facebook regarding the WikiLeaks controversy. In short, she asserts that Julian Assange (the director of the organization) should be hunted like an al Qaeda leader, and that the US should use all available resources (military, diplomatic, cyber-warfare, etc.) to silence the site. To say that I disagree with the stance would be an understatement; in fact, it's thinking like this which would lead be to believe that Palin would be no better than Obama as a leader, and quite possibly worse. Consider, for a moment, the implications of such a stance at the national level. Essentially, the government would be saying that anyone who publishes any information which they find objectionable should be hunted as an enemy of the state, their information censored, their freedoms taken from them, and possibly also their lives. Clearly all news organizations would fall under this (with the exception of the state controlled news sources), as well as independent publicat...

I have a few scattered thoughts, in no particular order. Unlike several other topics, I don't really have a clear-cut right/wrong opinion on the organization or what they are trying to do, so anecdotal observations will have to suffice. Observation, the first: if the US is really so concerned about the information being leaked, why don't they use their new-found (or maybe just newly abused) power to take down the entire domain ? I mean, if piracy of music is justification for taking down internet sites, than espionage and exposure of classified material would be grounds for nuking WikiLeaks ' ISP from orbit, much less obliterating their DNS entries, right? I mean, if you're gonna be wielding the gigantic censorship stick anyway, and clubbing anyone who your donors are upset with, you might as well just fix the problem you spend so much time complaining about too... Observation, the second: An acquaintance from school, Patri Freidman, re-tweeted a brilliant observation: ...

The Fed has been pretty busy recently, debating inflation targets, QE2, monetary/fiscal policy, etc. I have suggested before that the easiest way, by far, for the Fed to achieve its inflation target is to just back out the hedonic regression , basket adjustment, and other one-sided transparent manipulations by the BLS to artificially lower the CPI. If you just use the "real" numbers (ie: before/without the intentional distortions), you could have inflation at over 4% immediately (since that's where the real value is), and you wouldn't have to worry about trying to raise it by printing money. Of course, that is all sorta academic, since the economists at the Fed are not total morons, and I assume they know the real numbers, and are just using the fake numbers to justify their de-facto fiscal policy of printing money. However, it does raise an interesting point: if the public is stupid enough to be deceived by the rather blatant BLS distortions to the CPI, wouldn'...

There's been a bit of controversy lately over the new TSA security devices and procedures being put in place to make commercial air travel more obtrusive and dangerous for people. Specifically, I'm referring to the new full body "naked" scanners, and the associated "enhanced" pat-down procedures for people who refuse the scans, designed primarily to be so obtrusive and embarrassing that people will consider the scanner to be the lesser of two undesirable circumstances. The new system are more obtrusive for obvious reasons, but also more dangerous: after all, exposing frequent travelers to repeated bursts of radiation (which may be significantly higher than advertised, according to some rumors/investigations) can have bad long-term effect on the human body. Of course, if everyone requested the new "make it as cumbersome and humiliating as possible" pat-downs, that would also grind security lines to a halt, so there's no real good alternative. As...

I've blogged about the US medical insurance problem before , but as most pundits could attest to, it's much easier to point out flaws in a system than to propose solutions (and, as an aside, only mildly harder to use the flaws and public frustration with the system to advance an unrelated agenda which does nothing to address them and might even make them worse, as the Obama administration has so aptly and repeatedly demonstrated). Part of the reason you don't see people like me proposing 2000+ page legislative "fix all" monstrosities to "reform" broken systems is that reasonable people realize that you don't reform/fix problems with massive legislative fecal-dumps: at best they fix some problems at the expense of more spending and red-tape; at worst they make most problems worse and add more spending and red-tape. The path to actual good reform is to address the actual real problems, one at a time, in a manner which most people can agree makes the ...

Note: This subject is interesting to me, so please bear with any rambling. Over the last couple of years, the government (through various agencies and programs) has been doing something very interesting. First, though, I'll explain some background which will probably be familiar. When a government runs a deficit, they typically finance it through borrowing, either from foreign or domestic participants, with the promise to repay the borrowing with interest over long periods of time. This, of course, is the source of the declared portion of the national debt, about half of which is owed to foreign entities (mainly countries such as China), and about half owed to domestic entities (in the form of government bond funds and such). This doesn't count the unrealized obligations such as Social Security and Medicare, but these are somewhat more flexible, as they are promises which can be changed, unlike bonds which are promises which carry the "full faith and credit" of the US...

The voters of California have successfully defied the national trend toward smaller government and less taxation, voting almost universally in the other direction. If we assume the voters understood what they were voting for (as assumption which is far from certain, but I'll go with it), the majority of voters in California stand against the Tea Party principles, and want more taxation, more big government, more destruction of businesses, and more of the status quo. One could argue, certainly, that the powerful union lobbies purchased the election results in California, but at the end of the day, the voters have spoken, and California will live with the consequences. To recap, here's what the voters decided: - "Moonbeam" Jerry Brown, friend of unions and mortal enemy of taxpayers, for governor - Barbara "rubber stamp" Boxer for Senate - "New taxes with simple majority" Prop 25 passed It remains to be seen exactly what form the new taxes and regulat...

On to the elections; this part will be much shorter, since there is much less to say. Perhaps the most important race is for the governor position, and surprisingly I sorta agree with the characterization made by Jerry Brown's campaign: it's a choice between more of the same [as Arnold], and something new and different. Only sorta, though, cause Jerry Brown was the governor before, so people know exactly what to expect from him (more taxing, more spending, more big government, etc.), and Meg Whitman is sorta untested in public office. However, in terms of big picture, the Brown campaign's characterization is largely accurate: I think Meg Whitman, like Arnold, would take office with a lot of good ideas, and spend the rest of her time there fighting with an intractable state Congress hell-bent on pandering to their union patrons, and basically accomplish nothing. On the other hand, Jerry Brown would pander to those same unions, which (in contrast to the last seven years of re...

So I figure since this blog is at least part-time political, and I certainly have my share of political opinions, I should probably weigh in on my views on the various electoral races/issues for the state of California (where I reside: LA, in particular, for reference). My views will probably be familiar to regular readers, but perhaps there will be some surprises, and maybe it'll be of use to someone who's otherwise undecided. I'll preface by saying I've noticed some trends, which will probably not come as a surprise to anyone. I'm generally for the same things which taxpayer organizations support; I'd guess this is because we both feel the same way about the government taking more of people's money. I'm generally against issues supported by the various public employee unions; this is partially because they usually want more money from taxpayers, but also because predominant unions like the SEIU are scum . Using these two principles, you could probably ...

Pardon me, I just want to rant about something... It's pretty common for television shows to exaggerate what's technically possible, for dramatic effect. This is usually pretty obvious, and shows regularly stretch their portrayals of "cutting edge" technology, usually passing it off as "conceivably possible" with today's technology, if everything was aligned correctly and functioning optimally. We, as viewers, have come to accept this, with the implied assumption that the main characters are optimally utilizing all the available technology at the time, as impractical as that might be. This, then, brings me to my gripe. On a recent episode of Hawaii 5-0, we have the typical cop-chase scenario: tracking the bad guy from point to point, calling up surveillance footage in real time, calling in vehicle identification, etc. At one point, one of the main characters even causes a spy satellite to be re-tasked to locate the fleeing suspect in real time; implausib...

Whenever you are designing a system, be it something in engineering, government, or otherwise, you always need to consider the unintended consequences of your design/policies. Sometimes these can be rather obvious, such as when you spend more money, you will need to collect more money so that you have it to spend (this may be delayed at additional cost in the case of borrowing, or you can also print it if you control the currency itself). Another classic recent example would be bailing out the large banks who took on huge amounts of risk in their pursuit of leveraged profits: by doing so, the government not only condoned the business strategy, but encouraged the banks to both take on more risk in the future, and essentially ignore the issue of divesting themselves of risky assets, both of which are proving more detrimental to the longer-term health of the US economy than their failures would have. Some are harder to anticipate, but rarely are the major ones difficult to see with even a...

I feel bad for the providers in the health care insurance industry. They are directly in the path of the statist takeover of America, with a virtual death sentence hanging over their heads, and the full force of the government's propaganda machine (lead by the liberal media) working to paint them as the bad guys. The groundwork for nationalization has already been laid, and the financially crippling new regulations of Obamacare are starting to take effect. To date, the health insurance companies are taking it admirably well: responding civilly to the criticisms, putting a positive face forward, and adjusting their business models and practices in entirely predictable and foreseeable ways to try to compensate for the rule changes being forced upon them. First there were the rate hikes to compensate for the expected increases in costs, and the lack of any provisions in Obamacare to counteract rising costs in the industry, primarily related to liability costs. Now the companies are c...

Stories like this infuriate me. Fannie Mae, the government-run, taxpayer owned organization most recently known for passing on roughly $100 Billion in losses to the US taxpayers (with undoubtedly more to come), is launching a new program called HomePath to allow people to gamble on houses in foreclosure. In addition to directly creating untold billions in additional losses for US taxpayers (ha ha, suckers), this program will help keep the housing market artificially inflated, making it more difficult for savers to purchase affordable housing, rewarding speculators, and further delaying economic recovery for the country. Seriously, what kind of a sadistic incomprehensibly monumental moron dreamed up this atrocity? Furthermore, what band of corrupt thugs in the government oversight group which is running Fannie Mae actually approved this brazen theft of public money? If ever there was a clear-cut case for why government should never, ever be running a company even remotely connected to...

America has grown a lot since the time it was founded. Institutions have risen and fallen, nations have come, gone, and mutated, wars have redrawn maps, political experiments have been tested, and philosophies have been refined and reshaped. It seems to be that, particularly at this point in America's political evolution, the terms Republican and Democrat, or Conservative and Liberal, are perhaps no longer the best distinctions between the two major political schools of thought in the country. Rather, I would conjecture that the best distinction might be Libertarian and Statist, and I will explain. On the one hand, Conservative encapsulates a set of political philosophies fairly well, which amount to essentially the Republican ideals without the RINO influence. That is, a combination of limited government, traditional values, and free market capitalism. However, beyond that it's more fuzzy: does conservative also mean personal freedoms (eg: gun rights), or would that be more as...

The United State Department of Homeland Security is an organization under the executive branch of our government responsible for protecting the country domestically. They don't have a mission statement per-se, but if they had one, it might be along the lines of "keep America's homeland safe and secure." This includes, among other things, border security, and keeping people who don't belong in the country out of the country. Empirically, and somewhat strangely, the Obama administration seems to have an opposite prerogative. When Arizona passed a law to try to identify and detail illegal invaders in their state ("immigrants" is a less accurate term, since that implies people desirous of immigration), the Obama administration opposed it . When Arizona requested national guard help to secure their border, the Obama administration did nothing more than a token gesture . Moreover, instead of trying to help, they put up signs to keep American people out of th...

The last couple of days, there have been protests around my work. People are apparently protesting the reduction of wages for janitorial staff at large companies as a result of cost-cutting measures. We have been informed that they will be protesting all week, and that we should just be prepared to deal with all the noise, delays, and annoyance which will accompany them, because apparently we can't do anything about it. Now, I respect people's right to free speech and the ability to protest (as long as they respect other people's rights in the process, which, as an aside, these protesters do not, as they readily trespass on private property), but I just don't get the point of these protests; perhaps someone can enlighten me on what they are trying to accomplish. Let me explain further. Firstly, the composition of the protest group. There are roughly 100 people, who all get bussed to and from the protest: they are not local (as far as I can tell), or connected to any loc...

So the news story of the day, as much as anything else, is the "shocking" revelation that somewhere around 20%-25% of Americans think Obama is a Muslim. Now, that by itself is interesting, but not particularly blog-worthy: the numbers are trending up, but really, it's not like it matters too much; people should be much more concerned with Obama's actions rather than which deity he professes to be subservient to. However, I can't let go of the bad reporting associated with this issue. Look closely in the Time article, for example, where they state unequivocally that 24% of American's "mistakenly believe" that Obama is a Muslim. Um, wait, what? When did you, the editorializing reporter, become an expert on what is factual based purely on the unverifiable statements of politicians? Moreover, this is a politician we know , for a fact, has no problem lying directly to the American people, over and over again, whenever he thinks the lie will serve him bet...

A preface: Before I dig into my opinion, I'd like to note that this is, of course, a sensitive subject for a number of people. The liberal media outlets love to label anyone who questions the principle enshrined in the 14th amendment as a "lunatic fringe" member, and mainstream conservative politicians know to stay far away, lest they alienate the growing voting base of gray-legal immigrant populations. But hey, it's not like I'm particularly timid, or running for anything, and I happen to have an opinion on this topic, so here it comes. There's a principle in the justice system of America that a criminal should not be allowed to profit from his/her crimes. This is presumably derived from the observation that allowing a criminal to profit from crimes might encourage criminal behavior, and if the profit potential is large enough, it might provide a stronger incentive for socially-destructive behavior than the discouragement which the threat of punishment might ...

So there's an advertisement which is running on some web sites, from defeatthedebt.com . In it, the voice over laments the $3.5 Billion of additional debt the US is accumulating per day, and extols the need to stop digging ourselves deeper into the proverbial financial hole. I'm not sure I agree, though; not because I think our ridiculous recent handout spurts are anything but asinine partisan politics, or I think the deficit is easily solved or anything, but quite the opposite. I think it might be time to stop living in the fantasy world, and start thinking and planning pragmatically. For example, I don't necessarily think we (the US people) should really start trying to reverse the tide of mounting deficits, and somehow try to save enough money to pay back the entire national debt. I mean, it's a noble goal, and the current situation is certainly worthwhile to guard against in future governmental frameworks, but realistically there's just no conceivable outcome to...

I've been mulling over this for a bit; I'm not sure if it's actually a good idea, but it's an interesting idea. If anyone has any historical examples of if/how this would actually work, or specific negative consequences they can extrapolate, please comment; I'd be very curious. Anyway, here's the idea: replace all taxes at the federal level with a fixed, Constitutionally-limited 2% annual tax on all [non-retirement] net assets, for all individuals and corporate entities. Effects on people (generally): - Low-income, low net-worth individuals will experience little change: they pay low taxes currently and in the new plan - High-income, low net-worth individuals (people who spend almost all they make) will benefit: lower taxes on income will mean more spending power - Low income, high net-worth individuals (significant savings relative to income) would pay more in taxes, but only after a high threshold: someone who made $100k/yr and paid $40k/yr in taxes would need...

I while ago, I wrote an entry about how to fix social security . I stand by the idea, btw; I still think it's the most feasible approach to unwinding the pyramid scheme that FDR left us with before its inevitable collapse. However, recently I was pondering that the social security problem is not isolated to that one (admittedly gargantuan) government-created disaster in the making, but is a more general problem with retirement plan accounting and funding, and how ripe for abuse they are. You see, the general problem with retirement plans is that you are collecting money now to pay benefits in the future, and it all goes into the same pool of money. Because the specific benefits are not directly tied to the money being paid in, and the expectations of investment growth are arbitrary, the system is easy to manipulate and abuse. In the government's case, FDR set up a classic pyramid scheme (which would be obviously illegal in the private sector, for good reason), in order to have ...

So browsing other blog/news posts this morning, I came across a link to a Washington Post article which discussed how federal employees are largely happy these days, even in the face of the broad economic malaise in the US. This makes sense, of course: after all, (including benefits) federal workers are compensated roughly double what private workers are for the same jobs, employment is up, and the prospects of government largess into the indefinite future are arguably higher than ever. In addition, with the Democratic party essentially running all of the government, you might imagine the majority of people in government being Democrat inclined, which would generally make them more content with the recent direction of the country, and actions of its leadership. However, this does raise an interesting dilemma for the country in general. With an ever increasing public payroll, and the real possibility that at some point the majority of the voters will be receiving public payouts in one ...

So I browsed this article this morning, recalling how Obama had ridiculed the concept of establishing commissions to deal with serious problems, and contrasting that campaign stance to his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Now, the amusing part is more that this article came from CBS news, where normally I might least expect anything this on-point from the liberal media; maybe the story was just too obvious to ignore this time. On the commission conceptually, though, Obama was more/less correct during the campaign: a commission is Washington-speak for "we'll get back to you, we either don't have any idea how to address that, or we're not at all interested in addressing it and we hope this substantial delay and inaction will be enough time for you to forget about it." Commissions also have the bonus of being able to add an additional layer of responsibility and blame, in case the policies are contentious, and you can blame the commission fo...