It's just my opinion, I could be wrong

So if you're not living in an internet-disconnected hole, you've probably read some of the information stemming from the Snowden disclosures (the biggest, and bravest, disclosure of clandestine government abuses since Watergate, by a good margin). Recently, the largest US tech companies chimed in with an open letter, requesting that the US do something to change course, before their business interests are more irrevocably damaged (I appreciate the stance, but let's not pretend it was magnanimous; they see the writing on the internet message board, so to speak). Unfortunately, I think they, like many other people, do not yet grasp the real problem with the expansion on unconstitutional government surveillance in the US, and why it's far worse than most people currently think. The real problem, which most have not grasped yet, is how to address the issue of a government which is more than willing to defy the law (and indeed, the Constitution itself, the basis for the r...

The Swiss are voting on a referendum to limit executive pay to 12x the pay of the lowest paid employee of the company. It's a popular socialist position recently, to attempt to keep compensation levels from getting too imbalanced, and encourage corporations to raise minimum wages. In the US, for example, CEO's can make well more than 100x the amount of the lowest paid workers in the same company, and that creates large wealth disparities. Somewhat surprisingly, I find myself in cautious agreement with the concept. I've been thinking about a similar thing recently, and here's what I would propose for the US. First, we'd need to establish some definitions of compensation. To that end, let's say that compensation includes all salary, benefits, bonuses, and other indirect compensation mechanisms (eg: stock options) given to an employee. Furthermore, let's say that for part-time employees, annual compensation is calculated to be their effective compensation ...

I'm not sure which area of government has responsibility for oversight of advertising claims (Department of Consumer Protection inside the FTC?), but I have a suggestion for them. It should be a requirement that, if you state a value for some product or service in an advertisement, that value must represent the average actual money paid by independent consumers [recently] for that product or service. So for example, if you are currently advertising $100 of free merchandise, but the average amount you actually sell that merchandise for (including all the samples given away for free in the average) is $2, then you're guilty of fraud, and susceptible to large fines. There can of course be some leeway for approximations (I'd say anything within 10% of actual value, above or below, would be fine), but if we're policing false advertising, it's absurd that something be advertised as a $X value, where X is ridiculously higher than anyone would ever pay for it. (Looking ...

[This post semi-motivated by the open invitation from Jon Steward, on The Daily Show , for opponents of Obamacare to provide some viable alternatives to fix health care problems, rather than just criticize Obamacare. While I do think Obamacare has a number of problems and have been somewhat critical of it, he does make a fair point: there are far less people proposing alternatives to address the problems, which are very real. I figured I should take an abbreviated pass at such.] Existing Problems So health care in the US... it kinda sucks. Here are some of the big problems, in no particular order. Cost Cost is rising faster than just inflation, and has been for a while. This is driven, in large part, by the in-elasticity of demand (ie: people will pay virtually any amount of money to live), and the semi-free market taking advantage of it. Another contributor, though, is the opaqueness of cost of goods and services; many providers are less than up-front with their costs, and the p...

This week, President Obama outlined a call to action , in which he urged Congress to pass a budget, while asserting his intention to not talk to Congress about raising the debt ceiling. While many in government might see this as typical partisan positioning and blame, I'm willing, in this case, and for no reason other than rhetorical exposition, to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, and take his statements somewhat literally. That being done, I find myself in surprising agreement with the president and his bold plan to get the country back on the right track. For far too long, the country has hobbled along with continuing resolutions, while continuing to spend far more money than it collects, incurring ever-increasing debts on the backs of future generations. Obama, however, is now drawing a line. Over the last couple of months, he has managed to put a temporary stop to the bleeding, by ordering the Treasury Department to keep the national debt constant for over three months no...

“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat.” - Barack Obama, 2007 Barack Obama has never been a particularly honest person, either with the public in general or with himself. If he were a mentally challenged grade school student, we'd probably just feel bad that he'd be receiving a low grade in social studies. Given that he's a law school educated Constitutional scholar and the sitting President of the United States, though, it's hard to believe his actions are anything other than representative of a total disregard for the actual laws of the land. Again, though... nothing new here. Obama wants to use the US military to strike Syria in retaliation for the use of chemical weapons on its own people, as part of the ongoing civil war in the country. Oddly, perhaps, I find myself in the position of agreeing with the sentiment. There would ...

Do any of these sound familiar? - "The people I represent..." - "Those are the people you voted for..." - "A government of the people, by the people, for the people..." All these are related, as well as many other quotations, to the idea of a representative government system, where the people have "proxy" agents which represent, typically, large groups of individual people. Those agents, colloquially "representatives", then make decisions which govern the lives of the people they nominally represent. The idea being that such a system has a few benefits: a smaller group of people negotiating on policy, the ability to have more informed policy makers, the ability to more quickly make decisions, etc. I'm not going to talk about how well those theories match the reality; that's another discussion. Rather, I'm going to address a per-peeve which has been bothering me recently: the difference between having a representative ...

It's been a while... I wanted to express an opinion on how the US conducts foreign policy, particularly with respect to aggressive would-be adversaries such as North Korea. For a recent example, see this ; of course there are many others. I think the US response to such provocative statements is somewhat detrimental, and we should consider another posture... allow me to explain. Currently, the US more or less ignores provocative rhetoric from hostile nation-states. The thinking, I guess, is that "talk is cheap", and the statements are more intended for the domestic audience for political purposes, and/or for keeping up appearances of a posture of strength and defiance. Moreover, we tend to maintain a philosophy of "proportional response", where presumably the proportional response to aggressive rhetoric is strongly worded statements at/with the UN, or such. That is, doing nothing. I'd submit that there are some problems with this approach. First, it...