It's just my opinion, I could be wrong

MegaUpload as an Object Lesson

2012-01-30T21:51:00.000-08:00

Recently, the US federal government shut down MegaUpload, a cloud-service offering from a company, based in Hong Kong, which allowed online backup and file sharing. The government raided the hosting premises and took the physical servers, taking the company effectively offline. They did this, nominally, because MegaUpload was used in large part to share copyrighted material; the recent setback to SOPA/PIPA, and the renewed need to demonstrate obedience to their big media ~~overlords~~ patrons, was probably another motivating factor. However, that wasn't the end of the story.

Today, the government released an interesting statement, regarding the online assets of the customers hosted on MegaUpload. Apparently the government had released the servers, having copied whatever forensic evidence they "needed", and the data was back under nominal control of the company. However, as they also noted, the hosting companies might delete the data if MegaUpload did not pay their [monthly] hosting fees, which given their traffic, are probably large. Of course, that might be an issue, since the government still has all their assets frozen, thus making it impossible for them to do so.

The timing to too convenient to be accidental, in my mind. Why stage a huge, international law enforcement operation against a huge internet company, and then release all their systems in a matter of weeks? Could it be that the government wanted the company to miss the hosting payment, and have a scapegoat for when their data goes away ("not our fault, the hosting companies make that decision")? That sure would make their "case" against them pretty easy, when they have no evidence left to dispute the accusations. Oh, and also, their business is entirely destroyed, regardless of the eventual outcome of the legal battles. I'd say it's a pretty shrewd play, if you intent was to utterly destroy a company, and the people running it.

Which brings us to the object lesson: the government can, and will, utterly destroy you if they want to. Did the government respect international law or boundaries? Nope. Did the government respect the 4th Amendment? Nope. Did the government even give a token nod to due process? Nope. Is there jack the people running MegaUpload can do about it? Nope. Are they going to jail, broke, their lives ruined? Yup. And we, the rabble, didn't even have to give them the extra police-state powers that SOPA/PIPA would have endowed.

Some other possible lessons here:
- You cross the gestapo at your own peril.
- If you are storing data in "the cloud", it can be read/written/deleted by other people, like governments, and you will not be able to do anything about it; plan accordingly.
- However afraid of the government you are, it's probably not enough.

Devil in the Details

2012-01-24T21:55:00.000-08:00

I listened to Obama's ~~campaign speech~~ State of the Union Address, and came away with an interesting perception: at a high level, I agree with a lot of what he's saying. There are plenty of reference to the speech/highlights on the web, but I'll focus on a few points, and point out where I agree with our ~~socialist dictator~~ socialist president, and where I differ.

[on the housing bubble/pop] Regulators had looked the other way, or didn’t have the authority to stop the bad behaviour. It was wrong. It was irresponsible. And it plunged our economy into a crisis that put millions out of work, saddled us with more debt, and left innocent, hard-working Americans holding the bag.

I totally agree. There was no reason for the government to be cheer-leading the housing bubble, when they knew it was unsustainable. Regulators not only looked the other way, they led the charge in the other direction: recall Greenspan's praise of the "new and innovative" lending products which enabled the bubble. Regulators were not only complicit, they were driving forces, and the GSE's were allowed to assume massive amounts of bad debt which the taxpayers are still paying for. It was wrong, it was irresponsible, and I hope some of the people who left taxpaying American's holding the bag (ie: many people in government during the bubble, including Senator Obama) is made to pay.

Together, we’ve agreed to cut the deficit by more than $2 trillion.

This is a bold initiative, Mr President, and if it's true then I salute you. The deficit, as you know, is the difference between money taken in and spending, and colloquially refers (implicitly) to the annual difference. The budget deficit for 2011 was approximately $1 trillion, and will probably be slightly more than that (or possibly significantly, given your history) in 2012. However, if you indeed have agreed to cut it by $2 trillion (thus giving us perhaps a $800 billion surplus in 2012), then you have done more than I could imagine in the name of spending reductions, and I might even be inclined to support you in 2012. After all, even Ron Paul proposed a relatively modest reduction of $1 trillion in the deficit, and presumably that was over four years.

Of course, you could also be full of misleading distortions and shit, but here's hoping your statement was accurate. :)

What’s happening in Detroit can happen in other industries.

I think we would do well to heed this warning. If the auto industry can get a massive taxpayer bailout/subsidy, and become a government-run zombie industry, beholden to the unions as a gift to Democrat supporters, it could happen to other industries as well. You are astute to issue this warning, Mr. President: let us not make the grave mistake of putting another socialist in office, while we still have some private-sector industries left.

My message is simple. It’s time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas, and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America.

I wholeheartedly agree. We should revise the tax code, and stop making it a tangled mess of deductions, special-case favoritism, and disincentive on top of one of the highest business tax rates in the world. By simplifying the tax code and reducing the marginal rate, we can make job creation in America more appealing than abroad to all our benefit. I glossed over your specific suggestions, but I'm sure if you were serious about this one, they would be pretty close to mine.

[for education] In return, grant schools flexibility: To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren’t helping kids learn.

Once again, I totally agree. We need to break the powerful teacher's unions and lobby groups, and allow schools to get rid of bad teachers, and reward good ones. We need to ensure our students are educated enough to pass the tests, but rounded as well: fluent in many areas. We need to stop extorting states to fall in line with federal education mandates, get the government out of schools, and let them get better, so they are competitive with private offerings. Well said, Mr. President.

Of course, it’s not enough for us to increase student aid. We can’t just keep subsidising skyrocketing tuition; we’ll run out of money. [...] So let me put colleges and universities on notice: If you can’t stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down.

This sounds exactly like what I've been saying for a while: higher education costs have skyrocketed because of subsidies and government programs; they are chasing the tail of the problem they are creating. Cut the subsidies, and the costs will go down. It will be a painful transition (as coming off any other addiction), but it's what we need to do: get the government [largely] out of the education subsidization business. Once again, Obama surprisingly seems to be [somewhat] aware of the root of the problem, and [somewhat] proposing an actual viable solution.

And I’m proud to announce that the Department of Defense, the world’s largest consumer of energy, will make one of the largest commitments to clean energy in history – with the Navy purchasing enough capacity to power a quarter of a million homes a year.

I support this plan. As long as the DoD is operating within their budget, which is in-turn within a balanced and constrained federal budget, I support their purchasing of clean energy to generate demand. There are worse things we could spend military money on than domestic energy production and investment.

Let’s never forget: Millions of Americans who work hard and play by the rules every day deserve a Government and a financial system that do the same. It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bailouts, no handouts, and no cop-outs.

I couldn't agree more. It's time to hold those worthless politicians accountable: the ones who enacted the worthless stimulus package, bailed out the banks, bailed out the auto industry, propped up the housing market after the bubble popped, gave taxpayer money to the GSE's, authorized the FHA to keep giving risky loans after the bubble, gave massive handouts to their union supporters, and copped-out on their personal massive contribution to the national debt. Throw all those crooks out of office, starting at the top and working down, till all those scum are purged from our government.

But in return, we need to change our tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of Members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes.

I agree: put a cap of 20% of income on taxes, for everyone, then get rid of all the deductions for everyone making over... whatever arbitrary amount you consider "rich". People paying less will then pay their "far share", and people paying more won't get dicked-over by heavy-handed class-warfare tax policies. It's a win-win, and I can get behind it.

I’m a Democrat. But I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.

I believe that too, Mr. President, as does Ron Paul, probably more than anyone else in government. You should seek him as your running mate in 2012, to show you are serious about this pledge. I look forward to your reductions in the scope of government to match this pledge; frankly, I want nothing more than this from the government. If you follow through on nothing else stated here, but actually hold true to this, I give you my promise: I will support you.

Of course, as I said, the devil is in the details.

One [Big] Reason for Conspiracy Theories

2012-01-12T11:51:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of conspiracy theories out there. Many of these have to do with governmental, or extra-governmental, organizations, and how they are following secret agendas to advance their own goals, to the detriment (or in indifference to) to well-being of the rest of humanity. I'd be surprised if there weren't a few which are true, but likewise I'd speculate that most are false, yet they continue to persist, and many are at least somewhat plausible. I postulate that one significant reason for this is that people, probably largely subconsciously, refuse to believe that the actual governments could be as bad as they actually are.

Consider, for example, the Department of Homeland Security. You could certainly make the argument that, as part of a secret plot by the Skull and Bones fraternity (of which George Bush was a member), and using the 9/11 attacks as a pretense, DHS was setup as en evolution of police-suppression and monitoring in the US, and was designed to be a modern-day gestapo to oppress the people. Now, lots of that makes sense: the DHS is a modern-day gestapo, it does monitor the populace, it actively ignores Constitutional rights, and it could (and probably will) certainly be used to suppress dissent and exert government control. However, the idea that DHS was designed to do all of these things from the beginning stretches credibility: it would be akin to asserting that all the people who voted for Obama were secretly collectively architects of Socialism in America; while it may be true that Obama himself has socialist goals, it's difficult to believe that most people supporting him were intelligent enough to see the eventual consequences of their actions.

Rather, in the DHS case, it's more likely a product of incompetence, short-sightedness, and the undercurrent of adding to centralized government control which created this gestapo-nightmare, rather than a coordinated plan. I think people are quick to attribute eventualities which seem so counter to the well-being of the people to forces outside of the government (which nominally exists to protect and serve the people, rather than oppress them); in reality, it's more likely just a combination of incompetence, corruption, gross malfeasance, contemptible disregard for the Constitution, and outright stupidity which create these incomprehensibly bad eventual situations. There may indeed be a few people who could foresee the predictable outcomes, but the idea of a conspiracy encompassing all the people who contribute to the problem (in this case, essentially all of the federal government) defies common sense.

I think in reality, that's probably the cause of many of the conspiracy theories related to extra-governmental forces working to control events. To be fair, I think it would be a mistake to assume there aren't at least a few truly evil people in government, but most of the people in office are probably just ignorant, corrupt, or simply not interested in serving the interests of the people, or upholding the values of the country. Sure, you could interpret the fact that virtually everything the government does being detrimental to the people they nominally serve as one or more conspiracies, but I think Occum's Razor would suggest that, given the plethora and magnitude of downright scum in government, it's probably more just a natural consequence of an institution which itself has evolved to become the #1 enemy of the people, rather than sinister plans of external entities.

That's my thought, anyway, although I don't expect this will dissuade anyone who clings to the belief that government cannot possibly be as collectively bad as the end-results would suggest. For some things, we may never know the whole truth.

Interesting Legal Musing

2011-12-16T12:23:00.000-08:00

So I don't know if anyone here read about the Barry Bonds Congressional fiasco; if not, I'll give a brief rundown. In 2003, Congress, apparently not having any national business whatsoever to attend to, decided to get involved in a private sports debate, and forced Barry Bonds to give testimony before a grand jury about steroid use. During that testimony, Bonds said as little as possible (as anyone would under the circumstances), answering only direct questions and not offering additional detail. They then had a trail to try to convict him of lying, which ended with a hung jury.

Frustrated in their initial witch-hunt, Congress instead decided to try Bonds for lying to the grand jury, which of course they couldn't prove, because it didn't happen. Instead, they prosecuted him for "being evasive" and "not saying enough to incriminate himself", which would seem like an equally far-fetched theory. Here's the obscene part, though: they convicted him! He's now facing a fine and house arrest; a far cry from the 15 months hard time the government was asking for, but a criminal conviction nonetheless. It's an abortion of justice, to be sure, but tangential to my musing...

So with this precedent, the government may convict you for not saying enough to incriminate yourself during testimony. Any testimony you provide could be judged "not complete enough" or "evasive", no matter the content, and could therefore be considered self-incriminating (even in omission, or phrasing, for example). Thus, could not one argue that any testimony provided whatsoever, regardless of your interest in a case, could be self-incriminating? If so, would that mean that anyone could claim the 5th amendment right to refuse to answer any question in court, under the above justification?

I'd be very curious if any readers with a legal background could chime in. It seems to me that this misguided witch-hunt prosecution, in addition to being ridiculous on principle, has opened the door for literally anyone to refuse to testify in any court proceeding. Thoughts?

Obama: So Slimy It Hurts

2011-12-06T13:15:00.000-08:00

I was reading the highlights from Obama's recent address to the nation to push his agenda (http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/06/politics/obama-speech/?hpt=hp_t1), and it nearly hurt to read. Not, of course, because the speech wasn't eloquent; I'm confident Obama's writers crafted something with all the bells and whistles. Also not because it wasn't well-read off a teleprompter; I didn't see the actual speech, but I'm wager Obama did a good job of delivering the carefully-crafted message. No, the hurt was more of a visceral reaction to the dishonesty, the half-truths, the creative spin... all the things which just aggravate those of us who desperately wish the voting populace was more well-informed and intelligent, so we wouldn't ever risk having leaders like Obama.

All in all, though, it was just another standard Obama speech... so why does it deserve a blog post? Well, you can think of this as another public service post, to enumerate some of the distortions and outright lies. In the spirit of Discovery shows, I'll call it: President Obama Tells Lies.

"It's not a view that says we should punish profit or success or pretend that government knows how to fix all society's problems."

Um, yes, that's precisely your view, as demonstrated by all your proposals, and reinforced by your actions. In fact, the negative of that statement is probably the best summary of your exact viewpoint on what government should be doing that I could come up with if I actually tried. We'll call this a bald-faced, unmitigated lie.

He framed the issue as a choice between making vital investments in future growth or the Republican position he characterized as maintaining "tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans in our country."

"We can't afford to do both," Obama said. "That is not politics. That's just math."

This is a half-truth; the country indeed cannot afford to both continue its current spending and cut taxation, but it's a false choice, because there is another option he's ignoring (which is, in fact, the option espoused by the Republicans): cutting spending. We can certainly afford to cut spending; in fact we must... no amount of increased taxation will ever compensate for Washington's waste, and cutting spending is the only viable option. That, Mr President, for reference, is accurate math, as opposed to your fairy-tale accounting.

"This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and all those who are fighting to get into the middle class," the president said. "At stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure their retirement."

This is a pretty bold statement, in context. It's true, in a sense, although one might argue that the period for determining the outcome is longer than this moment. It's bold, because all the Democrat policies are causing the problems, and endangering the outcomes! Democrats are hurting the economy by demonizing and overly-regulating private enterprise, Democrats are eroding savings through inflationary reckless spending policies, Democrats are making homes less affordable by impeding the market's ability to correct for distortions, Democrats are endangering retirement by refusing to get spending under control. Democrats are the primary driving factor for all the dangers Obama is warning about! It's like warning your local neighborhood that a serial-killing arsonist child-rapist is on the loose, when you are in-fact that person! The audacity is astounding...

"Inequality also distorts our democracy," he added to applause. "It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder. And it leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them -- that our elected representatives aren't looking out for the interests of most Americans."

I guess I have to give some credit for taking a well-deserved swipe at the various labor unions, associations, and insiders who have disproportionate power in our government. Of course, you only get points if you actually meant to call out those people, and not try to deflect the blame to other people with less corruption and influence. I'll leave it to the reader to conclude if Obama should get credit for this observation; it's correct, but only if it wasn't meant as a distortion.

"This is the height of unfairness," Obama said. "It's wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker (who) maybe earns $50,000 should pay a higher tax rate than somebody raking in $50 million."

He said the issue "isn't about class warfare," a charge leveled by Republican opponents.

I like this one; it is the height of unfairness in the tax code that someone making less money should pay more or less in percentage taxes than someone making more. Hey Obama, you know what would fix that problem? A flat tax. I'd even give you credit for saying it's not class warfare if your proposal treats everyone equally, and tries to fix this "height of unfairness". Or, I guess, if you were a contemptible scum, you could try to "fix" it by engaging in class warfare, and then saying it's not class warfare... that's another disingenuous option, I suppose.

That's all CNN bothered to quote from the speech, so I'll leave it at that. I will grant Obama that I'm certainly not the target audience; surely he's looking to appeal to people who are ignorant or stupid (or both), and his points reflect that. Still, it hurts to think someone like that can and did get elected, and every time he opens his mouth something more insulting to intelligence comes out. Do [much] better next time, America; the future of your country depends on it.

The Problem with Ignorant Frustration

2011-10-15T21:29:00.000-07:00

There's a movement going on in the country right now; small at the moment, but persistent, and getting lots of media attention currently (due in not small part, I'm sure, to the fairly significant alignment of positions between the protesters and the liberal media). This protest movement started as Occupy Wall Street, a sit-in protest against the profits of investment corporations despite the economic downturn, but has grown to be nation-wide to some extend, and into a protest against corporations in general, in addition to a few other things. It has received backing and support from some big-name organizations (namely and primarily, the Socialist party, the Nazi party, several large labor unions, and several well-known Democrats), and although the numbers of people involved are relatively small, there is a solid basis for frustration. America is in a recession, jobs in many fields are scarce, the housing market continues to stagnate and impede possible recovery, and some corporations are still showing large profits. Clearly there is plenty to be upset about, but before we go marching, let's see if we can really figure out what the real problems are.

You see, there are several problems with ignorance, especially among the people trying to influence the course of political happenings. Firstly, obviously, you can easily make the problems worse, if you advocate for people or policies which a contributory to the problems, rather than the solutions. Second, unless you are clear on your understanding and message, your actions or indignation can often be co-opted by other interests, sometimes to support positions you do not adhere to (for example, ask OWS protesters if they are all Nazis; after all, the Nazi party has claimed solidarity with their cause). Third, you can be taking attention away from the real causes of problems, and providing political cover for the people responsible for them, thus impeding the efforts of people who would be able to have more positive impact, but for your efforts. Thus, it's vitally important to have as full and correct an understanding of the situation as possible, if you even hope to affect positive change. In that spirit, lets examine some of the problems that the protesters are ostensibly upset about.

First, I guess, there's the recession. This is an economic correction, caused by years of easy money and bubble creation by the government; it's fairly easy to see at least one of the main perpetrators for this one. However, this recession is going to be prolonged due to a number of other factors, such as the housing market and unemployment. Of the latter, one of the root causes is the lack of skilled workers in the fields/areas which have a shortage (ie: high tech, biology research, engineering), and a surplus in areas where there is little employment potential (ie: literature, history, social studies, etc.). For this it would be easy to also blame the government, but really the blame here should more accurately be directed at college advisers, degree incentives, and other things which have steered students away from fields where the job prospects are good. At best, though, they would share the blame with the students who chose to study areas which did not lead to jobs; it would be grossly unfair to allow these people to dodge personal responsibility for their own educational direction decisions. Thus, if you see a PhD in art history complaining about a lack of jobs (as I did in an interview with some OWS protesters), you know that he is responsible for the problem he's complaining about, and if he wasn't ignorant, should be protesting himself (preferably in private).

Of course, that's not the whole story on jobs. It would be incomplete without at least a mention of the transition of America to a "service-based economy", which was triumphed by various politicians (primarily Democrats) as a way to get rid of all the ugly, polluting manufacturing and product creation, and focus on "clean" industries, such as food service and retail. This economic model relies, of course, on ever-increasing consumer consumption, driven by wealth that they create by borrowing against equity in their homes, or create by producing... no, wait, we're virtually outlawing that old and outdated concept, though oppressive business regulation and environmental restrictions. So that just leaves wealth from housing, which was fine while the government was able to keep that bubble blown, and is now terrible as the government is insistent on prolonging the recovery. So, perhaps demonizing manufacturing and actual goods production was not an optimal plan; that's a good note for the protesters to keep in mind, at least.

Speaking of the housing market, though, let's touch on that for a moment. By now, there's no real excuse for not being at least passably familiar with the housing bubble and its subsequent correction, especially if you real my blog. I suppose the important point here is that although the government was primarily responsible for the conditions which created the bubble, it's also important to keep in mind that they caused more longer-term damage to the economy by prolonging the recovery, with all the idiotic measures to try to keep prices artificially inflated, and thus prevent the market from becoming functional again. In addition to that, of course, there was the government decision to bail out the banks and investment corporations, as a reward for their participation in creating the bubble in the first place (which was only possible because of government encouragement, and the example set by the GSE's with consent and direct support of the government). Thus, and fortunately, it's fairly easy to see where the vast majority, if not all, of the blame for the housing market conditions should be directed.

So now that we have at least a little perspective on the causes of the actual problems, we can better hope to make reasonable choices as to what to be upset about, and moreover to judge if the actual protesters are cognizant of the same. Unfortunately, it would not appear (at least from initial observations) that most of the protesters are even slightly aware of the actual issues or causes, thus virtually ensuring that they will have at best no impact, and at worse a negative one. All I can hope is that the readers of this blog, at least, will make a reasonable effort to be educated about what they complain about, and this not be part of the problem.

EU Handling of Greece Bailout is Dumb

2011-09-28T23:21:00.000-07:00

I was struggling a bit to come up with the right word to describe how the EU is handling the whole Greece/Euro situation. It's not really 'dumb' in the intellectual sense, since a certain amount of dancing around issues and obfuscation seems somewhat necessary to try to get public buy-in to their policies (that is, the only way their people are going to support what they are doing is if they don't really understand it). It's also not dumb in the end-goal sense: if you want to preserve the nominal stability of the monetary union, and prolong Greece's national default by stealing wealth from the other countries in the EU, this is a good way to do it.

No, what I mean by 'dumb' is that this whole process exemplifies most of what I find distasteful about politics in general. First you have a political system which is very popular among the people, but doomed to economic failure like every other attempt before it. Then you have this effort to prolong the problem, by "bailing out" the country, which really means just postponing the default of the country's debts by stealing wealth from people in other countries. Of course, you can't state that directly, so you have this whole elaborate charade of "support funds" and "emergency loans", and all the other facades to disguise the process. On top of that, you have an excellent excuse for all the other countries to print massive amounts of money, which doubles as a huge hidden tax on anyone with savings, and a means to funnel money directly to government members/allies ("stimulus", "banking support", "job creation", etc.).

Of course, the US is doing a very similar thing; replace Greece with "housing bubble", or "stock market level", and you'll get the idea. The only difference is that Greece is generating more debt as time goes on, rather than something which will eventually become "normal" if you just debase the currency enough. Moreover, I'm sure the policy makers know exactly what they are doing, and are proceeding very purposefully; they have an agenda, and these actions support it.

I guess I just find the whole process rather distasteful, stomach turning, frustrating... "dumb".

OnStar Wises Up to Business Opportunity

2011-09-22T11:38:00.000-07:00

As you should know, OnStar is a telematics system which is installed by default on every Government Motors car (and several other makes); it's one of several systems now in use, but probably the most widely known and deployed. This system is used for providing real-time updates to your vehicle, getting assistance, uploading your car's diagnostic information to OnStar's servers, allowing remote control of your vehicle by police, OnStar, or anyone else in control of their network, and surreptitiously monitoring in-car conversations without a warrant. There are other uses as well, but these are the major ones, I believe.

Recently, though, OnStar changed their terms of service to allow the company to use your telemetry information for its own private use, regardless of if you have the service currently "active" (the monitoring and surveillance capabilities are always active, you cannot modify these through any means, for obvious reasons). They have always been collecting the information, of course, but previously only law enforcement (or other government agencies) could use the information "legally"; the legality is debatable, but OnStar had a "get out of jail free" card if, say, the CIA wanted to get all the data, so they were happy to cooperate. It was, and continues to be, a mutually beneficial arrangement; there's a good reason Government Motors installs this system in all their vehicles regardless of customer desires, and if you think this is for the customers' benefit, you probably want to stop reading here, because the real world is going to make you cry, or worse.

What OnStar has figured out recently, it appears, is that in the post 9/11 world, where privacy is an antiquated concept, you can make lots of money selling people's personal information. Facebook's entire business model is built on this concept, and even Google, previously known for trying not to do evil, is making no excuses for its business practices in which your privacy is totally irrelevant to them (see recent comments on real names in google+, and how the company has no consideration whatsoever for user privacy desires, apart from what might be specifically mandated by law or overwhelming public opinion). With more data being uploaded into the cloud every day, and OnStar-type functionality becoming socially acceptable (see: recent commercials and talks promoting total surveillance and remote control in the context of parents remotely monitoring their children), the idea that OnStar could do the same with your vehicle information (and/or conversations in/around your vehicle) has moved out of the realm of scary, and into the realm of taken for granted. Therein lies business opportunity.

Of course, you need the appropriate spin, which is why OnStar was quick to go on the pseudo-defensive, and insist that you can still "disable" it if you like. Of course, the concept is laughable: it's still always on, the data is still collected (for "law enforcement", if nothing else), and the usage is still at their discretion. Remember, it's the contract which defines the legal rights, not the press release with empty promises about how the company may or may not utilize the data. With the direction of the country, though, you won't even need the spin in a few years; it'll just be the way it is, and people will accept it as unchangeable, as they accept OnStar in their vehicles right now, despite all the government control implications.

Kudos to OnStar, though, for recognizing the business opportunity, and making the data which was once only available only to every government entity possibly available to everyone for a reasonable price. As google figured out, if you're going to be Big Brother incarnate, you should at least have the business sense to profit off your part in the conversion of the US to a totalitarian regime.

I miss the days when people wanted to leave the country/world better than they found it...

Health Care Mandate Ruling

2011-08-12T21:58:00.000-07:00

A US Court of Appeals ruled that the health care mandate specified in the Obamacare legislation was unconstitutional. This makes one appellate court which has ruled the legislation valid, one which has ruled it [partially] invalid, and two which are still pending; all of which are a waste of time, of course, since eventually the Supreme Court will obviously need to consider and rule on it, making all the other deliberations and rulings a colossal waste of time, money, effort, and attention.

I could take issue with the procedure, I suppose, and complain about how absurd the process is which takes years to resolve anything, and serves no valid societal purpose aside from enriching lawyers (which has questionable social value). I could also of course address just how ridiculously overreaching the government's position is: that everyone indirectly affect inner-state commerce by their existence, and thus the government is entitled to dictate every part of their life. There's certainly plenty of low-hanging feces in both of those areas, but I'm not going to get into either of them in this post, per-se. Instead, I'm going to take issue with the courts themselves, and how the recent ruling, while more or less obvious, was not even unanimous, and how bad that is for America in general.

Sure, the government's position is an absurd abuse of power. You know what, though? I don't blame them too much. I mean, it's not like any of the corrupt power-hungry scum drafting or approving this legislation have any obligation, explicit or implicit, to honor or respect the Constitution (at least, as far as I can tell). Rather, like any power-hungry business-person, they are taking every advantage the system allows, and doing whatever they can do advance their own agenda/position. We don't expect them to be magnanimous or ethical; rather, we rely on the system and the laws thereof to keep their actions in check. For the politicians, this falls to the court system, which is supposed to be on the side of the people.

Here, I think, is where it's fair to be upset. In what scenario is it even plausible to have a judge, representing the interests of the people, decide that the government should be allowed to rule over and dictate every part of peoples' lives, by arbitrary extension of a clause in the Constitution designed to make sure states play nice in business transactions with each other? Moreover, having ruled such, how is that judge allowed to continue to be judging anything, much less reside outside the walls of a mental institution? Have we really progressed so far down the road to idiocy, as a society, that something like the Constitutionality of the purchase mandate of Obamacare can now be considered a reasonable question, rather than the utterly obvious extra-Constitutional abuse of power it clearly is?

I'd like to demand more from our judiciary. I'd like them to take a dim view toward small overreaches of legislative power, much less enormous egregious ones such as this. I'd like them to take a more proactive role in striking down such actions, rather than waiting years for test cases, and the entire appeals process to play out. I'd like them to uphold the limits established in the Constitution, rather than decide if the government is pushing out their boundaries of control "just enough", or "slightly too far". I want a court which is actually on the side of the people and the country, not a "yes man" for government abuses which only occasionally, and seemingly accidentally, acts in the peoples' interests. Is that too much to want?

Cyber-Defense Quandary

2011-08-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

I work in the computer security industry (more or less). I recently had the occasion to attend the Black Hat and DEFCON conferences, both of which focus on computer security (more or less, with different perspectives). When I got back, I came across this article, which references one of the conferences and points out an ongoing problem in the US: there are not enough skilled computer security experts going to work for (and/or continuing to work for) the US government, specifically in the area of cyber-defense. This is a rather large problem, but presents a rather interesting quandary for the US government.

One of the side-themes of a few of the talks at DEFCON was that if you really wanted to hack things, you needed to be based outside the US, for a number of reasons. First, and probably the most obvious, is that the US has some of the harshest penalties for computer crimes in the world, and just the accusation of such can ruin your life. You don't have to look hard to find numerous "aggressive" actions against hackers by "law enforcement" (really, just government thugs), and/or civil lawsuits. Heck, you can barely write any code at all in the US without conceptually violating someone's patent on something, with how absolutely asinine our patent system is. It's a virtual minefield of legal problems, which can have very real and disastrous consequences for you if you get noticed (everyone's always guilty with the way the laws are, it's only a matter of if you do something significant enough to get one someone's radar).

Second, the US is the most technologically advanced country, so they have the most electronic surveillance. The CIA/NSA/others monitor all internet and phone traffic, the FBI can (and does) track people with GPS, warrants and court supervision are antiquated concepts, video surveillance is becoming ubiquitous, etc. If you find yourself on someone's radar, you will be hunted, tracked, monitored, and when someone feels the time is appropriate, scooped up and detained somewhere, where you may or may not be granted any rights, at the discretion of your particular captors. This is not science fiction, this happens right now: this is the country in which we live. The advice to would-be hackers (or anyone else not playing inside the guidelines the government has established) is to do everything you can to stay anonymous and off the radar; if you fail at either of these, your life is essentially over.

The problem, then, is that when the US needs the computer security expertise to defend itself from foreign attack, it finds that it has, to some extent, become a victim of its own success. Very few hackers want to operate in the US, at least openly. The ones that do, even when explicitly helping the government, can also find themselves ruined. The aggressive prosecution of hackers in the US has bifurcated the talent pool: some go into "white hat" security research, where they can make a good living applying their talents to solving problems in the corporate world, and some go "dark", inside or outside the country, working on their own projects and usually at least away from, if not against, the US government. This leaves very few skilled people to fill the gaps in national cyber-defense, leading to the current state.

I don't envy the challenge of the US government, and it is a serious one. However, I also don't harbor much, if any, sympathy for them. Like many other recent crises, they have manufactured this one themselves, and now find themselves somewhat uncomfortable with the inevitable results of their own plans and actions. As someone who nominally could do that job, I have a somewhat unique perspective; this doesn't help the situation much, though, other than to be more acutely aware of the many failures which have brought us to the current state. I would wish the US luck in their recruitment efforts, but it would be a false gesture: as I would not help the government trample on the rights of its people more than it already does, nor would I want anyone else to, especially people with actual skills. It's interesting to see the US at least acknowledging the problem, though, even if they are miles away from acknowledging the root issues, or finding any sort of solution.

It would be funny, if...

2011-08-02T14:26:00.000-07:00

File this story under the category of "it would be funny, if it wasn't the people making the laws where I live". Apparently, two Democrats in the California legislature are at odds about releasing financial information about office budgets and spending projections. The complaining assemblyman asserts that his budget was cut as a retaliatory measure for voting against the caucus on the budget bill. The speaker of the assembly counters that he has budgetary problems because he consistently over-spends, rather than the arbitrary adjustments which he doesn't deny making.

Wait, though; it's gets more ridiculous. The assemblyman who got his budget allocation slashed in retaliation for having the audacity to try to represent the people (instead of the political establishment), along with various media organizations, requested the budget information, under a free-information request. This was denied, by the rules branch controlled by the speaker, under the grounds that it was equivalent to notes or legislative memorabilia, which are exempted from the public record. Everything about budgeting is supposed to be public to prevent coercion, but I guess when the prime suspect is running the rules committee, there isn't much you can do within the legislature itself.

You gotta kinda laugh at the humor of the situation, though. According to people in the legislature, coercion and punishment through budget manipulation and other measures is a fairly common practice, and is just expected. In this instance, a Democrat voted against the pressure anyway, and was retaliated against for it. In response to his complaint, the Democrat speaker accuses him of out-of-control spending, which seems like it would be a given (they are Democrats, right?). Then we add a coverup with clearly bogus rule interpretations, a mockery of transparency and accountability, threat of lawsuits, and another Democrat proposing a bill to, if I could paraphrase, "force the speaker to follow the law" (because apparently that's not a given in California). And nobody really cares much, because this is politics as usual in California.

Normally I might add a quip here, but I'm really a kinda a loss. It seems sad that such a prosperous state, with such nice weather and resources, could become such a miserable place to live because of the festering shit-hole that is our state government. Aside from changing who gets to vote, though, I really don't know what anyone could do about it: the same contemptible scum keep getting sent back, and as long as that continues to happen, "politics as usual" will continue to run the state into the ground.

Debt Ceiling Capituation: Politics as Usual

2011-08-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

So apparently, over the weekend, the leaders of both major political parties finally reached a "compromise" to raise the debt ceiling. To call it a compromise is disingenuous, though; essentially, both parties caved to the administration demand for a blank check through 2012, then added enough smoke and mirrors and other bullshit to try to deflect criticism that it's just another blank check. Honestly, I'm more upset about the clearly bogus rhetoric about having a serious discussion or fixing any of the real problems than the fact that our government ended up doing neither: if you were going to capitulate and write the check in the end, why create all the drama and uncertainly leading up to it?

Let's look at some of the facts for the "compromise", just to be clear:
- $2.4 trillion increase in the debt ceiling limit
- No spending cuts of any significance during this term of Congress; all spending cuts are non-binding to next term of Congress and easily reversible then, so no effective spending cuts
- No reforms to entitlement programs
- Vote on BBA required, but nothing tied to outcome, so a complete waste of time
- No new/higher taxes immediately, but door is open later (especially with debt commission recommendations)
- We spend more money on another debt commission, to tell the government what they obviously need to do (ie: cut spending, reform entitlements), so they can ignore it again

So, basically, this "compromise" is exactly what Obama wanted (sans class-warfare tax hikes, which can always happen later), and nothing that anyone in the Tea Party wanted (eg: actual spending reductions or entitlement reform). The politicians all get to claim victory, nobody's happy about it, and everybody loses, especially the American people. So, politics as usual.

Both Sides Suck

2011-07-18T21:58:00.000-07:00

I've been listening, as most of the people in America who are at all cognizant of the political happenings in the country, to the partisan debate about raising the debt ceiling. I have voiced my own thoughts and opinions, of course, but this post isn't going to be able what I think should or should not be done, nor is it going to address any particular statement. Rather, I'd like to criticize the approach to "resolving" the problem taken by both sides. I realize that typically I find myself more angry with Democrats than Republicans, however in this instance, I think the approach coming out of both sides stinks.

First, let me address the Republicans. It's true that the country had a huge spending problem, and your party would seem poised to capitalize on the growing realization of such among the slow-witted populace, and the rising sentiment that something needs to be done to stop the slow bleeding to death. You started out well, opposing the increase without corresponding tax cuts; I would have liked to see more, but it was a much more rational compromise than the Democrats' position. Now, though, you've stooped to worthless posturing motions which you know cannot pass, and simple political bickering. If you want to take a hard line against raising the limit, I could respect that, but playing this immature and transparent political games just makes you appear to not be taking this issue seriously, and not only weakens your current position, but your future political capital for a leadership role in tacking this problem. It's just moronic.

Allow me to suggest an alternative, if I may. Instead of handing the Democrats exactly what they want and turning an easy win into a crippling loss, why don't you pass a reasonable bill which cuts easy spending targets, and raises the debt ceiling by a commiserate (and hopefully smaller amount). I realize that's what Obama asked you not to do, but let me clue you in on something: he doesn't have your political best interests in mind when he gives advice, and clearly he's better at playing the political game than you are. Writing a bill which cut, say, $100 billion annually, and increased the debt ceiling by $100 billion, shouldn't be too hard, and although it would only let the country go another month or so at current spending levels, it would do a lot to reinforce the image that you are trying to do something, even if that something was far less that what Obama and his allies wanted. If the Senate or Obama were to veto such a package, you could then at least reasonably claim that you tried to compromise on something, and make sure the checks kept going out. Moreover, who knows: if you could pass one of those a month for a year or so, we could actually get the finances of the country under control, and eventually solve the real problem.

Now for the Democrats, and Obama in particular, since he has become the spokesperson for the party on this issue. Saying you want to do anything to avert the crisis while refusing to compromise on including tax hikes is asinine: the only reason you can get away with it is that the predominantly liberal media doesn't call you out on it repeatedly for the idiotic premise that it is. You're not going to be able to get tax hikes through the house right now, and hinging your "solutions" on them is just dumb. Moreover, as much as you'd love to get the ceiling high enough to spend like it's going out of style for the next two years like you have for the past two, that's probably not going to happen either.

However, at the risk of helping "the enemy", you're missing a political opportunity. You should be offering a standard "raise the limit" bill, with nothing attached, for the Senate to pass and the House to vote down. Then, don't do anything. When we hit the debt ceiling, have a plan in place to reduce spending arbitrarily through Treasury, probably starting with Social Security. Then, go on TV at every opportunity with carefully constructed, conciliatory speeches which make it clear that you are only doing what you must, and that you regret having to make the decisions at all, since it's Congress' job under the Constitution to allocate spending based on the amount of money Treasury is allowed to borrow, and if Congress was doing their job, you wouldn't have to be hurting people. In the meantime, prioritize spending however you like, since it's your prerogative. Your talking points will ring true with the American people, because unlike most of your normal talking points, these would actually be true and not misleading. Just try not to mess up the delivery, since it will be a new experience for most of you.

Sure, the debt ceiling is a big deal, and the US missing $100+ billion in payments per months could be a huge disruption. Like any other challenge, though, it's both an opportunity to do the right thing, and a chance to show people your "true colors", so to speak. So far, both sides are coming out looking like shit; which I suppose is appropriate, given the state of American politics. If we are going to address any of the large problems facing the country, we the people must find a way to get better people running the country.

Hypocrite in Chief

2011-07-14T19:33:00.000-07:00

Obama recently told Congress that, with respect to making a deal to raise the debt ceiling, they needed to suck it up, "rip the bandaid off", and deal with making the hard choices which were beneficial for the country in the long run. Personally, I tend to agree with the sentiment, even as I take issue with the specifics: although I'm not at all convinced that writing another blank check we can't possibly afford to the spend-happy democrats is either "right" or "necessary", it does seem to me that it would be the job of Congress, and the President, to do what's best for the country overall, rather than what's most politically expedient and popular at the time. However, to see if Obama is serious about the sentiment, and is not just using it in this case to push his political agenda (and the title might have some foreshadowing as to which it is), it's important to look at some other instances where Obama and/or his party in Congress had the chance to "rip the bandaid off", and do the right thing for the country.

Banking Industry

As banks got incredibly leveraged leading up to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Congress and the Treasury Department were both well aware of the pending problems. Congress had ample opportunity to fix the laws to prevent catastrophic collapse, but did nothing. Treasury had ample opportunity to intervene in ways which stabilized the markets, but did not reward the participants, but did not. Congress could have instructed the fed to end the leveraging practices through oversight, but did not. Instead, the administration first selectively let some institutions fail, then saved others, creating the concept of "too big to fail" and a nightmare for future generations.

So... a big failure on that one, but it might be an isolated incident. There were certainly more opportunities to show leadership, and do what was right even if it was hard.

Auto Industry

As GM collapsed under the weight of non-competitiveness brought on by years of mismanagement, union largess, and a brazen lack of care for customers, the administration was faced with a decision point. Would they follow the law, and allow GM to fail as the market forces dictated, preserving the legal rights of the various creditors and the integrity of private enterprise in the US? Or would they bow to the pressure of their primary political supporters, subvert the entire legal system by creating new quasi-legal bankruptcy measures to confiscate and transfer wealth, and prop up the company using taxpayer dollars which they were certain to lose, while preserving all the factors which drove the company into the ground and virtually guaranteeing that the company is never competitive again?

Yeah, well... I guess we had another abject failure there. Perhaps the record will get better as we look further.

Housing Market

Ah, yes, the housing market; I great example of a golden opportunity to do the "right" thing, even if it's not the "popular" thing. Back when the country was inflating the bubble, there was ample evidence that the so-called "innovative" financial products which were allowing people to borrow way more than they could afford had the potential to blow up; Warren Buffet even noted it publicly. The Fed was well-aware that banks were under-capitalized for the leveraged risks they were taking, and could have easy used its oversight authority to make sure they were resilient against a decline in asset values. Failing that, Congress could have taken steps to ensure that a default in one or more of those banks would not threaten the financial system as a whole.

Okay, so they failed there, but there was still time to make it up. As the bubble started to burst, it became clear that the GSE's (Fannie and Freddie) were taking too much risk, getting away from their role of providing an exchange market for stable safe mortgages in pursuit of higher profits. Congress could have stepped in and made sure they didn't take on too much risk, or made it clear to investors that if they failed, their bonds would not be covered by the US government. The president could have urged Congress to ensure that if they failed, the taxpayers wouldn't be in the hook. Hm, I wonder what happened... oh, right: Congress and the administration raised their limits so they could do even more damage, socialize more losses, and disrupt more of the market! Then, as if that wasn't enough, Congress also explicitly guaranteed their bonds, inducting them into the "too big to fail" debacle.

Dear god, they really f-ed that one up... but there was still one more chance to do something right. As the bubble started to burst, the housing market essentially froze up: nobody knew how many people were going to default, how long it was going to take, or what "real" prices should be. Development and commerce basically stopped, as people waited for the market to fix itself, and establish a new normal. This was the quintessential opportunity to take some short-term pain for long-term prosperity: flush all the "bad" loans, turn the properties back around (through foreclosure as appropriate), expedite the correction process by streamlining the bureaucracy, get rid of all the subsidization, and get the entire housing industry working again, as fast as possible. Tell, me, please, Mr President, you at the very least did this.

Yeah... not so much. The government, primarily at the behest of the administration, did virtually the exact opposite of what would have been optimal for the country. Instead of flushing the bad loans, it propped them up, wasting taxpayer dollars prolonging the problems. Instead of turning properties around, it delayed the foreclosure process, stripping lenders of their rights and imposing impediments. Instead of expediting the process, the government imposed barriers, turning a one-year problem into a decade of economic malaise. Instead of getting rid of the subsidization, the government increased it, generating more taxpayer losses through the GSE's, and making the FHA the de-facto standard for subprime lending. Instead of getting people back to work in a functioning market, the market continues to drag, trying to fix itself but being hamstrung every step of the way by a government which is simply incapable of doing anything beneficial in the face of public opinion calling for short-term misguided "fixes".

The Bottom Line

President Obama is a hypocrite. He had many opportunities already to do the "right" thing, and failed to take any of them. Now, only when it's politically expedient to use the terminology as a catch-phrase to push his agenda, is he at all interested in "taking the bandaid off", and even then in word only. If we really wanted to take our medicine, so to speak, we would not do anything, and force Obama to spend only what the country takes in, while prioritizing as appropriate. That's the only real "painful but necessary" choice, and I seriously doubt our government, and especially Mr Obama, has the courage to make it.

The Audacity of Framing the Discussion

2011-07-11T11:41:00.000-07:00

Obama infuriates me; this is probably not a surprise to regular readers here. However, in this case it's not his policies, his socialist ideology, or his dictatorial approach which is currently most aggravating. The thing which is currently bugging me is his approach to the debt ceiling debate, and the complacency of the main stream media not calling him out on it.

Now granted, it's a good strategy, and as a shrewd political move I can find no particular fault. Essentially, what he has done is frame the discussion as one where raising the debt ceiling is an inevitability, a fundamental job of Congress, and everything else is partisan politics. From the beginning of his involvement, there was no mention of the "right" or "wrong" of spending without limit, or any mention of deficit reduction, or taxes, or anything else; it was just "this obviously must be done", and nothing else. Only later did he introduce the other issues into the rhetoric, but being careful to label them as "distractions" from the "basic responsibility" of Congress.

Take a moment, and consider the audacity of the position. If you were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and you started a conversation with your credit cards companies by telling them that it was their "obvious, basic, fundamental job" to extended you more credit without hesitation, and any other concerns they had were simply distractions from their responsibility, how do you think they would respond? Yeah... they probably wouldn't share your opinion, and might even laugh at the absurdity. Yet, this is exactly what Obama is doing, and the media, by and large, just goes along.

There was a very informative article from a small publication about what would happen if Congress didn't act. The Treasury (and by extension, the president, since it's in his branch) would need to decide what bills to pay, and which to not pay, based on the actual revenue coming in. Now, there's only a few hundred billion annually in interest on Treasury bonds, which is the "real" national debt service, the part which puts us in actual default if we don't pay. Everything else (social security, medicare, military, government bureaucrat salaries, etc.) is a voluntary obligation, per the laws passed by Congress. If the government doesn't pay those, it's not in default, it just doesn't have the money to pay all its obligations. Sure that's bad, but is it really that bad?

I'm not sure that I want Obama deciding which programs get funding and which don't, but... I really do want the government to not bankrupt itself with the Democrats' reckless spending, and there doesn't seem to be any other way to force reductions in expenditures. If forcing the Treasury to make the hard choices is the only way to actually reduce spending, because Congress is too childish to suck it up, and the president is too irresponsible to sign off on real spending controls... well, there are worse options for the country. It's not chicken, Mr President... it's the last best hope we the people have against you.

Obama 2012

2011-05-30T23:19:00.000-07:00

The speech people didn't hear from Obama to kick off his 2012 re-election campaign. I'm sure the original was something like this, and the final version was just edited for time, and to appeal more to his base and stuff.

My fellow Americans,

Today I'm pleased to announce my candidacy for President of the United States in 2012. We have done more to advance the progressive agenda in the last few years than any administration since FDR, but there is still much to do. Our country still faces many grave challenges, from curmudgeons in Congress who wish to keep us from borrowing infinite money, to the remaining industries which are not being run by our government, there is much we can still do to improve the country, and I intend to be there to help complete my vision for the United States.

Now, before I get into specifics for what I intend to accomplish in the next four years, I'd like to address some of the concerns that people have expressed about my presidency so far, from both sides of the aisle. I believe it's important for any candidate to be clear about where they stand on issues, what their positions are, and what their visions for the country are. I have perhaps not been as clear as I could have been in the past, and I'd like to take this opportunity to clear up some concerns, so we can move forward. I think once the American people have all the information, they will be able to see that I am clearly the best candidate for the job.

First, I'd like to address the issue of TARP. Now, some people have said that this was just a thinly-disguised bailout for the large financial institutions, and this is simply not true. The banks didn't become solvent again after we gave them $750,000,000,000 of taxpayer money, it would have required far more money to pay off all their leveraged bad investments and such. Of course, the Fed gave them a couple trillion additional dollars, but really, that wasn't the point. The point of giving them that much money was that they were able to keep paying their executives millions of dollars, and we were able to count those as jobs "created or preserved".

Also, giving the banks that money was instrumental in making sure housing prices could not correct to realistic values in the short term, ensuring that the housing market downturn would take at least five, and perhaps as long as ten years. Without the bailouts, banks would have to write down their bad loans, and housing prices would have dropped dramatically, making housing affordable for a great many more people. If that were to happen, the GSE's and the FHA wouldn't be effectively running the housing market; instead, it would be a free market. Look at where the free market got the country before all the government intervention and help, before the GSE's could inflate a giant housing bubble while generating huge profits, then turn around and demand a taxpayer bailout: does anyone really want to go back to those times?

Speaking of taxpayer money, I'd like to clear up another common misconception. Since taking office, I have increased the national debt by an enormous amount; a quicker pace, in fact, than any of my predecessors. Moreover, I have committed the country to a fiscally unsustainable path through Obamacare, and my refusal to do anything to confront growing entitlement payments, much less public employee salaries and benefits. A lot of people say this is wasting a truly monumental amount of taxpayer money, but the reality is that that is simply not true. We spend all the actual taxpayer money long before we get to all the bailouts, handouts, undeclared wars, and other things I have spent money on; that money is newly printed money, not taxpayer money. In my fiscal plan for the country, we never come close to catching up to the deficit I'm creating, so actual taxpayer money will never be spent on all the debt I'm accumulating.

Now, I know what you're thinking: won't we run out of money eventually? Well, that's the beauty of my plan: because the US government prints money, we don't need to worry about ever running out. The US economy is strong, we've never defaulted on our payments, and I believe in a strong currency. I have some very smart advisers, like Professor Paul Krugman, who tell me that printing money is never bad for a country, and cannot possibly cause any long-term problems. All of the commotion right now calling for debt reduction and the like is just politics; everyone knows you need to spend money to make money, and I'm certainly the best man for spending money.

Speaking of spending money, I'd like to talk about the stimulus plan for a minute. I'd like to say that this plan was an unmitigated success, despite what the detractors might say. We were personally able to give out nearly a trillion dollars to all sorts of needy individuals and groups, a few of which might not have even supported me in the last election. Under Vice President Joe Biden's watchful eye, not even a dollar of the money has been wasted, and in addition to generously rewarding my political allies, I have also managed to preserve at least 10,000 overpaid government jobs. Now, I know some people will say that with unemployment even higher now, and the private sector still suffering, the stimulus didn't fulfill its goal, but I'm here to tell you that those people just didn't understand the goal of the program. As a direct payout to my supporters and political allies, the program was a huge success, and I hope to repeat it in my second term.

Speaking of success, I'd like to quickly touch on some of my other accomplishments during my first term. during my initial campaign I called for change, and with the government now in control of the banking, housing, and automobile industries, we have had sweeping change. I called for closing Guantanamo Bay immediately, and that's basically done. I called for ending the war in Afghanistan and bringing all our troops home, and that's also essentially done. I got a Nobel Peace Prize, and have brought peace to many areas, including the Israel, Egypt, Syria, and Libya. I called for financial responsibility, and although Obamacare and my spending have put the country on the probably irreparable path to economic collapse, I'd like to qualify that as a victory as well. So all in all, I think we're doing pretty well.

However, we can do much more. The top 2% of the wealthy in this country are still allowed to make money, often in excess of $250,000 per year, and that just isn't fair to the rest of the hard workers in this country. We need a special 200% tax on those people; that's right, I say we not only take all their extra money, but make them pay even more. Now, before people get upset, of course there will have to be some exemptions to this, so that hard working people who exceed the cap don't get unfairly penalized, like retired city workers drawing pensions while also consulting for their normal salaries. That's why I also propose the creation of a new Czar of tax exemptions, who can grant waivers, like we do for Obamacare. That way, only the "bad" people will have to give up all their money, and as long as you can show that you're not "bad", you can keep your money, and maybe even get a tax "credit" at the same time. This system will serve as encouragement for the "bad" people to change their behavior, and greatly benefit the middle class.

Now, there is one more thing I'd like to address now. There have been some people, mostly hill-billy redneck tea-baggers, who have said that I am a socialist. Well, let me be clear: I am in favor of a government-run economy, where the government controls everything in the country for the benefit of the people. If that makes me a socialist, then I'm a socialist, but let's be frank: it's a long time since socialism was really out-of-favor in the US, and the Democratic Party has basically turned into the Socialist Party anyway. Progressive used to mean equal rights and liberal views; now it means unequal rights, crony capitalism, union favoritism, and big government. Those people say "socialist" like it's a bad thing; I say it's just what America needs, and with your help, in another four years we'll be very close to my vision for America.

So in closing, I ask for your vote in 2012, so that I can continue to lead America in this great transformation, from a prosperous nation of freedom, to something far different, and I say, greater. With your help, we can ensure that the next four years have as much profound change as the last four. Thank you, non-denominational politically-correct existential entity bless you, and non-denominational politically-correct existential entity bless America.

I Don't Get the NFL

2011-04-26T12:55:00.001-07:00

So, in case you don't follow sports, there's an ongoing labor dispute between the NFL and its players. It's a fairly standard dispute: the union wants more money, and the business says it can't afford to pay more. This lead to a lockout, which led to the union decertifying (in name only), which led to a lawsuit by the players, which led to a court order to lift the lockout (presumably along the argument that players should be allowed to work, although clearly influenced by the current pro-union federal executive administration). All of this, though, leads me to wonder: what's the big downside for the NFL?

The NFL has a television contract, from which it derives most of its revenue. Previously, this was contractually guaranteed to be partially distributed to the players, in a fixed ratio set forth in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. However, with the union dissolved, doesn't this leave the league free to distribute the revenue however they see fit (assuming they can uphold their end of the contract, ie: put on the games)? Moreover, they should be more free now than ever before to craft whatever rules they want for the teams and the league, now that there's one less interested party at the table.

Want a salary cap? Easily done; just work it out among the owners and come to an agreement. Want to pay players less? Also easily done; work it into the agreement among the owners. There's no player's union to collectively bargain, so owners should be free to impose whatever employment terms they want. The league can create whatever rules they want for the sport and the operation of the teams, and teams can hire players as they see fit (in accordance with whatever rules the owners agree to). How is this not a solid win for the league?

The whole point of the player's union and CBA is to get more benefits and revenue for the players by refusing to work as a group unless demands are met. If the players want to not operate as a union, but rather as individual employees, how is this bad for the business? Just write the rules, craft an agreement among the owners, and start hiring whoever is willing to work. What's the problem?

On Police and Personal Rights

2011-04-25T18:44:00.000-07:00

I was reading a story recently about a guy who basically got railroaded by the FBI after someone used his unsecured wireless connection to download child porn. Now, child porn is pretty horrible, but so was the abuse this poor guy had to endure at the hands of the FBI, who, as far as I can tell, doesn't care about respecting people's rights at all. Between this, the various recent privacy abuse stories, and the ongoing controversy over recording police activity (which, btw, should absolutely be unequivocally protected), I got to thinking: our current system is pretty bad at protecting peoples' rights, especially against abuse from law enforcement.

It's no surprise why this is so, of course. The police (and I use this term generally, to be inclusive of local, state, federal, and other government enforcers and thugs) are required to respect the laws, but commonly do not. I mean, are we even surprised when we see police routinely disregard traffic laws whenever they feel like it? This is so common, it's not even regarded by average people as surprising, even though it is clearly illegal. Should it come as any surprise, then, that some police officers feel they can step over people's rights as they will, with no consequence? After all, even when they are "caught" and sued, they don't feel the pain: it's the city/state/country, and eventually the taxpayers, who have to foot the bill. This might be somewhat fair if the police acted in the interests of the people, but I think that's so far removed from reality that it's laughable at this point.

What I would propose is to create a disincentive which would actually work, for the betterment of society. Every police force has retirement benefits, paid by the government, and negotiated as part of compensation packages. I would like to see a system where if there were any judgements against the police for violating people's rights, those were paid directly from the pool of money allocated for retirement benefits (perhaps over the next year), reducing the benefit payouts accordingly, and every single affected police officer get a note explaining which officers committed the violation(s) which directly cost them money.

You know what? There wouldn't be any more incidents of breaking down someone's door, beating them, and accusing them of child porn unless the police were sure they had the right guy. You know why? Because Officer Bob doesn't want to have to explain to his 10,000 retired buddies why he personally cost them each part of their rent payments by not taking the extra five minutes to do a 'duh' check with the tech department. There also would be a whole lot less beating random people, and if we (the people) are lucky, we might actually get the police to back efforts to let us record their activities, since the only police seemingly opposed to that are the ones who like to beat people. You know what else? We might accidentally also raise the level of quality we expect and receive from the people who nominally work to "protect and serve".

Obama Visits the Chamber of Commerce: Joke Night?

2011-02-09T00:33:00.000-08:00

I realize this is a couple days late to be super-timely, but it still needs to be commented on, in my opinion...

So Obama paid a visit to the US Chamber of Commerce, to give a rosy speech about being pro-business. Wait, what? Obama's about as pro-business as I am a bleeding-heart liberal; it would be like me giving a speech about the value of public funding for NPR. I mean, I get the reasoning, from a political perspective: people are sorta figuring out that all the wealth redistribution in the world doesn't help people when there aren't any jobs because the socialist regime has obliterated industry, so perhaps it's a good idea to at least give lip-service to the engine which generated virtually all the prosperity the Democrats are now dismantling. Seriously, though, when you're so far removed from what you're saying that it comes off as comedy night, you might want to rethink the strategy.

Let's just look at a few highlights. For example, Obama said:

I understand the challenges you face. I understand you are under incredible pressure to cut costs and keep your margins up. I understand the significance of your obligations to your shareholders and the pressures that are created by quarterly reports. I get it.

Now if that isn't comedy, I don't know what [it] is. It's certainly not at all accurate: Obama never ran a business, never met a business he didn't want to plunder, and never met a budget he couldn't exceed by the entire wealth of smaller nations. I give Obama credit for some intelligence, but this statement is pretty absurd; it's probably meant for humor, then.

Maybe that's just a line for comedic relief, then. A bit before, he said:

As a government, we will help lay the foundation for you to grow and innovate and succeed. [...] And we’ll work to knock down barriers that make it harder for you to compete, from the tax code to the regulatory system.

Again, must be humor, cause it sure as hell ain't even on the same planet as fact. Since when have the Democrats, ever, been about less regulation and less taxation? I mean, they nominally are trying to do "good" things for the country, and they may mean well, but their policies never involve less government or less intrusion into people's lives or businesses. He actually said this with a straight face?

I could go on... there's parts about regulation making things cheaper, there's a section about Obamacare saving businesses money (which is absurd; if it really does that, why is everyone "on the take" with the administration getting waivers?), some drivel about businesses having moral responsibilities to the American people (I guess this is a nod to unions, but not sure), and lots more garbage. If I were in the audience, I would have been snickering during the speech; the whole thing was just utterly absurd, like some inverted-world view, massaged to be rousing or something. It's hard to tell how it went over for the American people (ie: are they dumb enough to believe that the disingenuous lip-service being paid to capitalism is anything more than a transparent sham), but here's hoping they are not as stupid as Obama apparently thinks they are.

Thought Experiment in Population Engineering

2011-02-01T19:06:00.000-08:00

So this is an interesting idea I've been pondering, which I figured I'd share; hopefully it's at least thought-provoking, if not amusing.

Consider this: what if there was a cheap, readily-available (as in globally) "contraceptive" pill that men could take which would deterministically set the gender of any children they would father while on said medication? For the sake of argument, we'll assume that you could get either type: male or female children. What would the effects on populations and political dynamics be, both short and long term?

For example, in areas where population is limited (either by law or by resources), and males are given better opportunity and/or status in the society, you could assume that most people would choose to have exclusively male children (especially if it would be the father who was making the choice, presumably at least sometimes without consent of the mother). Over a generation or so, this could shift the population balance significantly, which could lead to undesirable effects (eg: large populations of males without families historically are more violent). Over several generations, though, this could serve as both a population control, and a mechanism for social change, as social planners tried to make more a balanced population more appealing to the people.

In areas of gender equality, and/or where population growth is desired, you might see the opposite effect. Governments could easily encourage more females to be born through simple incentive programs, once it was easy to predetermine gender for children. Of course, this might challenge the traditional family structure within a few generations, though, as that grows out of an average gender balance, and isn't necessarily optimal in a population where gender distribution is skewed by incentives. Policy makers would have to carefully consider intentionally tipping the balance too far, for fear of unintended consequences.

In a couple generations, you might also see some interesting cross-population effects. For example, there might be more racial and area cross-breeding, if there are populations with skewed gender distributions in both directions, as people people looked outside their owns groups/areas for mates. There could also arise some power struggles and negotiations stemming from gender inequalities, and the perceived need to preserve populations (eg: it would be very difficult to preserve the strength, at least in terms of population, of a country who had 90%+ males, without drastic measures). It would have the potential to be the most significant force in gender rights equalization the world had ever seen.

Anyway, it's a thought; I'm curious what other people think.

The Problems with Liberal Politics

2011-01-03T23:16:00.000-08:00

Let me begin by stating that I'm not anti-liberal, at least generally speaking. There are a few liberal ideals which I ascribe to, and I think generally speaking, liberal politicians have good intentions (if not good long-term vision, or appreciation of consequences). In fact, I would go as far as to say that if some of the most pervasive flaws in liberal political actions could be corrected for (say, in the framework of the government itself), I might be fairly comfortable with liberal politicians. The problems for me mainly stem from fiscal issues; I tend to side with liberals on social issues, and I think many of the ideals are good (eg: equal rights, taking care of people who are unable to care for themselves, etc.).

That being said, here are what I view as the top "problem areas" with typical liberal political agendas:
- Too much taxation
- Too much deficit spending, borrowing against future generations
- Focus on wealth redistribution, in various forms
- Trying to build a nanny state, and control various aspects of people's lives
- "well"-intentioned discrimination

Some thoughts, then, on how a more optimal governmental structure might deal with some of these issues, to make it more palatable for people like me to have liberals in government.

Problem: Incessant growth of taxation
- We could Constitutionally limit the amount of money taken from people, per year, as a percentage of either income or total wealth. For example, say the limit was 20% of income. The government would be free to institute whatever taxes/fees/etc. it wanted, but would be Constitutionally limited to 20% of income total.
- Side note: I would be inclined to limit the federal government to something like 10% of income or less, and allow states to set their own limits, and/or choose to give money to the federal government to pay for additional services. Money is power, and the corrupting and destructive growth of the federal bureaucracy and control is a testament to the danger of allowing it to collect and disperse wealth.

Problem: Deficit spending
- We should have stronger protections in the Constitutions, at a federal and state level, for limiting deficit spending. Ideally, government should not be allowed to borrow beyond the terms of the politicians voting on the borrowing, excepting emergencies (like land invasion, or civil war). This would need to be much stronger than it currently is, but is not impossible.

Problem: Wealth redistribution
- The government should be prohibited, in my opinion, from offering any services on a discriminatory basis with respect to income/wealth. If it's a government benefit, it should be available to all equally. This doesn't preclude offering services which would disproportionally benefit lower income individuals (for example, subsidies on low-end food basics), but at least there would be no income restrictions or phase outs. As a side benefit, this would also simplify a lot of government programs and tax laws, saving money.

Problem: Encroachment on states/individuals rights
- Ideally, this problem would already have been solved by the 10th amendment, but since the federal government willfully ignores it, clearly there needs to be a stronger directive. This, too, should not be hard to accomplish, but may need to be reiterated every couple of years so that politicians don't "forget".

Problem: Discrimination
- You wouldn't think that people would need to point out to liberals that discrimination is bad, but the sad reality is that liberals are just as bad about discrimination as conservatives (see: affirmative action, NAACP, etc.). The NAACP and the KKK and two sides of the same coin; let's see about ending both of them, so we can move forward as a less divided nation.

Well, that's my wish list anyway. Thoughts?

Grand Theft Representation?

2010-12-21T23:15:00.000-08:00

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 criminals with federal funds, but we're encouraging more people to break the law. Even worse, though, we're literally ceding control of the country (in some part) to the criminals, and the states which foster them. How in the world does that make sense?

Lest you think this is a minor problem, think again. For example, according to the census, California has around 37 million people. Now, it's impossible to accurately measure the number of illegal aliens in California, but recent studies have put the number between 5 and 16 million. If you take the average there, that means over 25% of California's population is in the country illegally, breaking the law, and giving California about 13 additional people in Congress! That means criminals in California are being given more representation in House of Representatives than most smaller states, and more electoral college votes for the office of the Presidency! The whole idea is patently absurd, and an affront to the whole idea of representation of the people of the country.

How can we, the [legal residents of the United States] people, expect to stem the tide of criminal activity when we not only reward it, but we give it a voice in determining the future of the country? It's ridiculous, absurd, infuriating, incomprehensible, and probably the most asinine thing our country is currently doing. If we can't fix brain-dead obvious problems like this, what hope do we have a tackling the larger issues?

Thoughts on the DREAM Act Bill

2010-12-19T12:18:00.000-08:00

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. Historically, the US has had no problem with this: the capitalist economic system allows lots of opportunity for job creation, innovation, and prosperity from the ability and willingness to work for it. As long as you're importing quality people, with the skills and desire to work for a living, and the willingness to integrate into your society, they will likely be a net benefit to the society.

This brings us to a question of what would be ideal for the US. First and probably most importantly, would-be immigrants should want to be fully-integrated members of the country; that is, learn the language and customs, follow the rules, like the country, etc. Second, they should be educated and/or skilled enough to be productive members of the society, and not a burden on such. Third, you need to make it clear, both in word and deed, that one person fulfilling the criteria is not a gateway to any others, so that you don't get net negative immigration. Those things being established, let's compare the DREAM Act to them, and see how it stacks up.

The act provides a path to residency for people who are young, complete a college degree or military service, and are of good moral character. That actually seems fairly close to the ideal: military service could do a lot for integration into the language and culture, and a college degree could do a lot for granting the skills necessary to be productive. The youth requirement helps ensure that people granted residency under the act have time to contribute to the society, and there are some restrictions on people who have broken the laws. So, generally speaking, the act does a fairly good job of encapsulating a good immigration policy.

As for caveats, I have a few things that I would like to see also in the bill. Obviously, I'm not in Congress, so these are unlikely to be added, and they are not major, but I'll call them a wish list of small improvements which would make me less hesitant in my support:
- I'd like to see the college degree be in a field which was recognized to lead to a job in something which is in-demand. I realize this would be somewhat hard to quantify in the legislation, but there are a lot of college degrees which do not lead to productive jobs, and giving residency to someone with a degree in "want fries with that?" doesn't seem optimal.
- I'd like to see a restriction on public funds being used to subsidize the education, and a restriction that the school must not have admitted or retained the student due to any discriminatory program (such as affirmative action). If we're going to give residency for people who were skilled enough to get a degree, let's not include people who were not skilled enough to get into college without using the color of their skin (explicitly or implicitly). You could exclude any schools from the program which have discriminatory admissions programs; that would be ideal.
- I'd like to see the program suspended if unemployment in the country is above a threshold. There's no reason to import people to take jobs away from existing legal residents when the economy is suffering, and this might help encourage other programs to keep the economy strong.
- I'd like to see a requirement that the program applicant also obtain a private-sector job (or multiple) for at least one year after completing the education or military service portion. This would prove that the person could be a productive member of society, and act as an additional check that the other provisions were working as designed.

Would the bill be better with these provisions? I think so. However, I don't think the bill as written is that bad, and even without these provisions it is probably positive on the whole. As much as a don't like rewarding criminal behavior, it behooves the US to have a rational path for immigration for those people who would benefit the society, and this bill seems a heck of a lot better than most amnesty proposals. That's my opinion, anyway.

Liberal "Journalism"

2010-12-17T11:10:00.000-08:00

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/Chrysler bailout
•38 percent believe that most Republicans opposed TARP
•63 percent believe Obama was not born in the U.S. (or that it is unclear)

Well, just for fun, let's see how many of these statements I would disagree with. Now, I'm not a Fox News viewer, but I consider myself a fairly well-informed, rational person (I'm sure some would argue, but whatever). So, in order:

the health reform law will increase the deficit

Well, if you don't think this is true, you're either ill informed, willing to take obvious lies on face value, or deluding yourself. Seriously, I'd question your ability to think if you thought this was factual; there's really no other way to say it.

the economy is getting worse

This is more of a grey-area. The economy is not yet getting better, and you could certainly argue that Obama's policies are contributing to additional long-term damage to the economy, but short-term the situation is more unclear. Based on continuing increases in unemployment only, though (which seems like a fairly objective measurement), and/or private industry health, this statement would also be accurate.

climate change is not occurring

The factual basis for this would depend largely on how the question was worded, unfortunately. It's fairly clear that some climate change is occurring, however anything beyond that (ie: natural or man-made, cyclic or not, hotter or colder, causes, etc.) is scientific hypothesis and speculation at this point. I'd say this is actually a fact, but probably not as presented or implied.

income taxes have gone up

For the majority of people, income taxes have not changed, so this one is hard to justify. You could argue that implied future taxation has increased due to massive deficit spending, but that's a stretch. Unless people are thinking of state taxation, or non-income taxation, or regulation, or implied taxation, or derivative costs... this is a misconception.

the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts

This is true, as far as I know. The legislation provided a lot of handouts, some rebates, and some selective credits, but no tax cuts, or anything to make taxation lower or more fair in the medium or long term.

Obama initiated the GM/Chrysler bailout

Obama may not have publicly initiated the "bailout" (really, wealth confiscation and redistribution), but if you don't think he was intimately involved, I might have some beach-front property available in Arizona which I would sell you for a very reasonable price...

most Republicans opposed TARP

This is another easy point of confusion. Most Republicans opposed TARP as it was used by the Obama administration, which was totally different than how it was pitched when they voted on it. I'm guessing that distinction wasn't emphasized in the survey, so you can forgive a certain amount of ambiguity in the answers.

Obama was not born in the U.S. (or that it is unclear)

Well, to be fair, due to the strenuous efforts of the Obama administration, and complacency by the local [politically-aligned] government, belief in this is a matter of faith, rather than verifiable public record. A conspiracy-minded individual could be forgiven for wondering why such a large amount of effort was put into keeping the documentation secret, of course, or why the highest public servant in the country doesn't have to prove eligibility for the office. I'd say "unclear" is a fair assessment, given the efforts at concealment and faith-based verification.

Hm, so let's see... looking over the list, I'd have to say that the Fox News viewers are remarkably well-informed, given that they represent such a large subset of the news-viewing population of the country. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that accepting the conclusions of this study on face value might not only imply something about one's own political views, but in the spirit of the study itself, might go a long way to prove that you are indeed the stupid one. Maybe there's some deeper double-meaning sociological implication going on here... or maybe this is just another example of retarded liberal "journalism", I leave it to the [more informed] reader to decide.

Edit: Addendum, more on the health care bill, since there's some obvious intentional confusion about how much it will increase the deficit (if at all). The bill itself is expected to cost around $1,100,000,000,000 (at least) over the next decade (that's over a trillion dollars). However, proponents contend that two factors reduce the overall cost:
- Congress has yet to fund most of the provisions, so their costs will be variable based on future legislation
- Savings from reductions in Medicare payments are expected to compensate for the costs
On the other side of the argument:
- Many of the provisions call for funding which is unspecified, all of which would increase the cost if not repealed before funded

As for the Medicare payments, it's true that the government could make the program cost-neutral by cutting Medicare payments enough to compensate. However, before you blindly accept that rosy picture, you should check and see how they are doing at reducing payments to doctors, which are already so much lower than private insurance payments that the supply of doctors for Medicare patients is dwindling rapidly. As the saying goes, there's no free lunch, and effectively adding millions of high-risk patients to Medicare isn't magically going to reduce the cost to the government. Just sayin.

Which Bills are Bad?

2010-12-14T14:00:00.000-08:00

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 forced to hand out billions of dollars to special-interest pork projects just to not shutdown the government; however, these are the Democrats we're talking about, and they're a special kind of reprehensible.

Really, I wish we had enough decent representatives to vote down this monstrosity, and call out the Democrats for shutting down the government. It seems like we've had nothing but years of capitulation to "just a little more bad" legislative bills and practices, and we've reached the point where you look at the process with fresh eyes, and think, "how did we get to this horrifically bad state?" How did we arrive at the point where handing out billions in public money to special interest pork payouts allocated behind closed doors by mafia-style corrupt thugs was a foregone prerequisite of just maintaining a functional government?

Our government needs a massive enema.

Credit Where Due

2010-12-08T10:16:00.000-08:00

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 to work (excepting the unemployment extensions)
- Doesn't give money to banks as a big "thank you" for helping wreck the economy (like TARP and QE1 did, and the Fed continues to)
- Doesn't just monetize government debt, creating latent inflation to subsidize more wasteful government spending (like QE2 does)
- Doesn't hand out money selectively to special interests, supporters, special friends, and government insiders, and represent the most brazen corrupt theft from taxpayers in the history of the country (like the first "stimulus" was)

Could the bill have been better? Sure, but this is probably as good as could be expected. Will it pass? That's more questionable; it has to get some Democrat votes, and the Democrats in Congress are nothing if not contemptible partisan scum, who would rather not steal money than sign off on something backed by Republicans (and trust me, they detest not stealing your money). Is it good for the country on the whole? That's also a tough call; while the tax rate extension will help a lot of people, it sets up another painful fight in two years, doesn't do much to encourage job growth, doesn't do anything to fix the systemic problems with private industry in the US, and prints a bunch more money. However, as noted, it's the least bad of the money-printing schemes so far, so that's saying something (in today's US politics, "least bad" and "not as horrible as it initially appeared" seem to be all we the people can hope for).

So, I give Obama some credit: unlike his Democrat counterparts in Congress, with this compromise he seems to be trying to do something less bad, and the resulting bill is less horrible than anything else that previously came from his administration. Perhaps now, when you're on the people's side (at least for a short time, and in a very limited context), you too can see how monumentally contemptible the Democrats in Congress are, and feel some of our pain.

WiliLeaks followup: Sarah Palin

2010-12-01T11:25:00.000-08:00

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 publications expressing dissenting views (eg: blogs which criticize the government). You could say goodbye to any remaining freedom of expression you were clinging to, and be forced to accept the totalitarian rule of a government which kept a watchful eye on anything people said or wrote, in case it was considered giving aid to our enemies. In essence, the US would become China with a hearty dose of the SS mixed in.

If this is the US that Palin is striving for, I think I'd prefer another four years of Obama. I'd rather be able to criticize the problems with government than simply live in fear and oppression. Why must politics always be a choice between the horribly bad and the incomprehensibly even worse?

Thoughts on WikiLeaks

2010-11-30T00:17:00.000-08:00

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: as the government keeps telling us, if you have nothing to hide, than you have nothing to worry about. I realize this is not necessarily directly applicable to foreign relations (at least as people perceive them), but the sentiment is spot on: it's utter BS when the government uses it as an excuse to violate people's privacy, and it's immensely gratifying to see the government squirm when the situation is reversed. Particularly in light of the recent expansions of the TSA, both in aggressive violation of the 4th Amendment and in desired scope of control, it seems utterly fitting that the government be subject to metaphorically identical examination.

Observation, the third: the founder of WikiLeaks has a very valid point, that the government hides an immense amount of information behind secrecy laws, and not always because the information is actually secret for legitimate national security reasons. There is no other check/balance for this potential for abuse, and as such WikiLeaks (and to a less direct extent, the internet in general) provide a valuable public service. Until or unless we have some other sort of effective check against abuse, WikiLeaks serves a valuable public service (at least as much as, say for example, NPR).

Observation, the forth: WikiLeaks appears to be practicing responsible disclosure, as far as I can tell (within the bounds of what they are choosing to release). They asked the State Department to provide information on sensitive areas or security concerns, and they redacted information which could compromise people. Sure, there still exists the possibility of people getting seriously hurt as a result, and there will be lots of embarrassment, but there's also a chance people could have more open discussions about real threats in the world (such as Iran) as a result of the disclosures, so on balance it might not be negative. In a perfect world it might also lead to more action to stop the real threats too, instead of just debating them in secret, and maybe more privacy for the people as the government gets a taste of what they do to people every day. In the real world, the government has a long and virtually unblemished history of concealing corruption and abuse of freedom behind secrecy, and to the extent that people can peel away the coverings and expose the disgusting mess to the light of day, the better off we the people will probably be.

Those are my random observations, at least for now.

Easier Fix for Unemployment

2010-11-23T12:06:00.000-08:00

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't the same thing work for unemployment? I mean, there certainly is a fair amount of distortion already (for example, consider the "discouraged" workers category, who are defined out of the unemployment statistics; again, see http://shadowstats.com for the real numbers), but really, I think the public is stupid enough that you could do more. For example, consider hedonic regression, the theory that people always buy lower quality, cheaper stuff as time goes on (and thus the CPI can be arbitrarily lowered). With some slight modification, I propose that this manipulation could easily be applied to unemployment as well.

Consider, hypothetically, that you suppose that as jobs become more scarce, more women decide to stay home and raise families. BAM, exclude all women from the unemployment numbers. Maybe as jobs become scarce, people retire earlier. BAM, there go all the people over 60 (or 55, or 50, or whatever number you want to pick really). Maybe young adults decide to get more education: there goes everyone under... 25? 30? The possibilities are virtually endless. Moreover, you can tweak the numbers to achieve whatever unemployment figure you want, just like hedonic regression. It's beautiful, efficient, easy, and there's roughly 30 years of evidence to support the idea that the general population will go along with it.

Really, I don't know why people haven't come up with this already.

TSA Airport Security: Could We Just Strip?

2010-11-10T21:41:00.000-08:00

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 a side note, it's also very important to remember amidst all the new scanners and procedures that none of this makes air travel any safer. Real security is about thwarting people who are trying to do bad things; by refusing to focus on trying to find bad people, and instead focusing on treating everyone equally, TSA does nothing to enhance the safety of air travel. In addition, security penetration tests have shown that human error makes it still possible to get "bad" things by security, and any determined and trained military adversary would have little trouble thwarting any security measures TSA could employ. In essence, everything is for show, and to a lesser extent for enhancing government control and intrusiveness.

That said, if we're going to have all these ridiculous "security" measures for air travel, allow me to suggest an additional option for the seasoned traveler who is not particularly self-conscious about nudity. Since people already need to remove their shoes and all jewelery, as well as belts and items from pockets, it would not be too hard to strip entirely naked while in the security line. You could send your cloths through the scanner with your other carry-ons, breeze through the metal detector (probably optional too at that point), and get dressed on the other side. As long as there was enough room before and after the security checkpoint for the people dressing and undressing, it wouldn't even slow the process down. This process would eliminate all radiation, any excuse for fondling or sexual assault, and you could always choose one of the alternatives if you were uncomfortable. As an added bonus, if it became common, this would probably do a lot to loosen people's attitudes toward nudity in general (you may or may not consider this a bonus, and you may need to add extra seating and/or CCTV around security for other people at the airport, to handle the crowds wanting to watch, at least for the first few years).

Anyway, what do you all think? If we're going to have all this intrusive, dangerous, useless security, we should at least allow this as an option, in my opinion...

Medical Insurance Reform Idea

2010-11-08T22:24:00.000-08:00

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 situation better on the whole. To that end, I have a small idea which I would love to see in a future legislative reform package (hopefully limited to just this idea).

Currently, when you have medical insurance, there are two contracts in place. One is between the insurer and the provider, which stipulates the terms under which they will be paid for procedures on/for people with the insurance, how claims are resolved, what rates will be paid, what procedures will be covered, etc. The second if between the insurer and the patient, covering how much will be paid, what steps must be followed, what doctors can be seen under what conditions, etc. This is problematic in practice, because medical providers often have "trouble" resolving billing with insurance companies, and pass that burden to the patient, often at great expense of time and hassle. In actuality, these problems can happen on both sides, and they can sometimes be semi-intentional: the medical provider has no particular incentive to submit claims correctly (since the patient is ultimately liable for the costs), and the insurer has no incentive to pay claims unless everything is in order to their satisfaction. Often, the patient is stuck in the middle, resolving any problems which may arise in the process.

I would propose that there be a federal law, which establishes that if an insurance company has a contractual relationship with a medical provider, and the provider admits a patient for treatment under an insurance plan provided by that company, that the patient be only legally liable for the payments as dictated by the policy. This is no functional change from the current situation, except that in the case of claim submission problems, the patient would explicitly not be liable: it would be up to the provider to resolve the problem with the insurance company they have contracted with. The law could also allow for insurance plans where the patient paid the co-payments and deductibles directly to the insurance company upon receiving treatment, and thereby avoid all legal liability to the medical provider.

The benefits would be obvious. The providers would be incentivized to streamline the claim submission process and avoid errors. The insurance companies would be incentivized to pay legitimate claims promptly, to keep providers happy and avoid legal action from businesses with the knowledge and experience to pursue such if necessary. Patients would no longer be caught in the middle, being used as leverage to the detriment of the health care experience. Everybody wins.

Now would be where I would typically insert my snarky comment about it being too good of an idea to ever be actually adopted, but I'll leave that out this time. Seriously, though, for my actual readers: am I missing anything, or would this be a good change?

On Printing Money

2010-11-08T10:09:00.000-08:00

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 (and are thus harder, but not impossible, to modify).

Normally, these debts would be paid by future tax revenue of the government (hence the idea of "pushing" the payment obligations onto future generations, which is what the debt does). However, there is a second mechanism by which the government can reduce its effective debt, provided it controls its own currency, and the debt is denominated in its own currency: it can create more currency. Smaller and less stable countries have been doing this literally for centuries, basically since fiat currency was invested, with various degrees of success (they all collapse eventually, but some stay around longer than others).

For many years, the government has been spending more than they take in, but this has really ramped up under the Obama regime: the government has been increasing the national debt by approximately 10% annually for the last two years. However, during this time the Fed has created approximately the same amount of new currency, under various programs (QE1, QE2, banking support, etc.). The debt is still increasing since the US is still borrowing, but the Fed is buying the bonds with new "money" (US currency is actually Federal Reserve notes), so effectively no additional lending from foreign or domestic sources is needed to sustain the borrowing. In essence, the Fed is printing money to cover whatever additional borrowing/debt the government is creating, and there is no effective limit to their ability to do so.

At first glace, the typical economist theory would say that this is going to be massively inflationary, with the amount of currency increasing by 10% annually; however, this is not proving to be the case. Part of this is due to the official inflation statistics: they have been corrupted and manipulated over the years to the point that they can/do understate actual inflation by a virtually arbitrary amount, so the government can keep official inflation as low as desired. Part is also due to fractional reserve lending and the economy: the fact that since borrowing is still low due to weak demand means that the total effective currency is not increasing nearly as quickly as actual currency. However, even without those two factors, it would be difficult to say that the American people would realize the problem or really object to the root effects, outside of some vague notion that this massive borrowing/printing is somehow "bad": the typical people just don't have the knowledge to correlate it with the eventual effects.

Speaking of that, what will the effects be? Well, contrary to the "gut" thoughts, these actions are probably "good" for the economy, at least in the short term, and considered in isolation from the political manipulation and market disruption which results from such. In essence, inflation is just wealth redistribution from the people who have currency; in the US, that's "rich" people (defined here as anyone trying to save money) and entities which have lent us money, both foreign and domestic. It's essentially a way to tax everyone with money, and spend that money as the government sees fit. As such, in a country where the national debt per person often exceeds the average person's net wealth (especially in a down economy), this can be beneficial to a lot of people, and especially those of the receiving end of the wealth redistribution.

This begs the question: if the effect isn't as bad as the theory would hold, and many people would be in favor of it, should the Fed just buy any excess debt as a regular policy? I would contend that perhaps they have been doing so as a "dry run" to testing such a policy, intentional or not, and have a reasonable gauge of public opinion and reaction to such moves. Wealth redistribution, while exceptionally un-American, might be ethically preferable to generational theft, which appears to be the alternative in an era of uncontrolled government spending. Of course, the "correct" answer would be to fix the root problem, but the voting populace has proven incapable of even not electing socialists, much less encouraging spending reform, so I find that exceedingly unlikely.

Of course, the wealth redistribution through money printing only works for a while, after which the currency and economy collapses entirely, but it might work for longer than traditional theory would dictate. As the saying goes, "in the end we're all dead", and a little more turmoil for future generations (in the form of the fall of the country) might be preferable to trying to fix the systemic spending and obligations problems now. At least that appears to be the approach of the current government in the US, and unless you think the voting populace is going to get a lot smarter really soon, I'd suggest people plan accordingly.

California Bucks the National Trend

2010-11-03T11:10:00.000-07:00

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 regulations will be in, but with a looming $20+ Billion deficit and a clear mandate to go "all in" with the tax and spend approach to governance, you can be assured that some form of tax hike is coming for California. It's mildly surprising that the state which already has the highest taxation rate and one of the worst business climates in the country would be voting for more taxation and regulation, especially with unemployment around 12.5% and combined underemployment hovering around 25% in the state, but California has a long-standing tradition of forging its own political path. As a silver-lining, bond rates for tax-exempt California municipal bonds should go up (Greece's bonds are paying over 10% currently), so at least it's not all bad for people living here, at least until the state can't borrow any more.

Speaking of which, if I were someone concerned about the future of the US, I'd start thinking now about how to handle the eventual default point, when California can't borrow any more and goes to the federal government for a bailout. If the rest of the country doesn't want to get stuck with the bill for California's largess, get a plan in place now, before the crisis hits. The conservative part of me says to let the state go down in flames, relying on the taxation authority to suck everyone there dry until there's nobody left, and then have a procedure in place to rewrite the state Constitution and redistribute the state resources after it collapses. A more reasonable approach might be to create a program whereby the state can get a loan from the federal government if it agrees to harsh austerity measures designed to both get the state finances in order, and be punitive to the people who voted the state into its fiscal mess. Whatever the approach, though, the federal government needs to have a plan, because California's economic collapse is not a matter of 'if', but a matter of 'when'.

On California Elections/Voting (cont)

2010-10-25T22:39:00.001-07:00

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 relative stability in California politics) would accelerate the decline of the state, both fiscally and otherwise.

No, I don't think Meg Whitman has particularly well-formed plans, but I don't think that matters. The mere fact that she's nominally a Republican ensures that our violently partisan state Congress will not even pay token attention to her proposals, which makes fleshing them out totally irrelevant. On the other hand, unlike Jerry Brown, she probably won't rubber-stamp most of the barrage of garbage regularly extruding from our legislature, and such serve as a check against their malfeasance, which is probably the best we can hope for at the state level (remember, this is the state that will send Pelosi back to Congress; expectations are set accordingly). So Meg Whitman is the clear reasonable choice for governor; let's just hope the anger with incumbent parties doesn't blind voters to common sense.

As for the Senate seat, that one's a bit more interesting. I personally can't see any compelling reason to support Boxer: she's a pompous, arrogant bitch who rubber-stamps the Democratic agenda without a second (or in this case, first) thought. On the other hand, it's not like Fiorina is a model of steadfast integrity either, having basically outsourced all of HP for fat bonuses as her claim-to-fame. Still, when in doubt, I'd have to go with supporting the person I don't know is horrible, so Fiorina it is, but only cause she wins the contest of "less bad" this time (which is not a great way to start a term representing anyone).

As for the other races, meh, who cares. Sure they are important; after all, we could (in theory) replace the entire hopeless corrupt and thoroughly reprehensible state legislature if people could be educated and motivated to defy their basic human greed for immediate gratification and handouts. But nobody's kidding anyone: California will have the same sad bunch of scum in its Congress as it had before, even if a few faces change. After all, we won't even get rid of Pelosi, and she's being disowned by her own party for being too left-wing wacko. As long as people can continue to deceive themselves about the consequences of their votes, and blame it on the other party, we the people will continue to just be abused.

And the beat goes on...

On California Elections/Voting

2010-10-25T09:29:00.000-07:00

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 predict at least 90% of my views on issues, even though I don't use either as a basis for forming said views; that's just an observation.

Anyway, on to opinions.

Proposition 19
I'm for this, but not for the standard reasons. I'm a little ashamed to say that I've never smoked pot (not even in the Bill Clinton sense), and I wouldn't plan to even if it were legal. I don't really care if people smoke pot, though, since it less dangerous than alcohol. I support this proposition, though, because it will advance the conflict between states' rights and federal government control, and I strongly favor limiting federal government control. The federal government has no Constitutional mandate to police drug/medical activity, and it would be nice to see more states pushing back on their expansions of power. If this puts California in the forefront of the fight to take control of our lives back from the federal government, I'll deal with some extra pot smoke being around.

Proposition 20
I grudgingly support this. I dislike committees generally speaking, but in this case it's better than the alternative of rampant corruption and gerrymandering which is the clear alternative.

Proposition 21
Obviously I oppose this thinly-disguised attempt to raise taxes on people, so that the politicians in Sacramento can waste more money on crap. Seriously, anyone who thinks initiatives like this do any good whatsoever needs to have their head examined, or get educated, or something.

Proposition 22
This is the "stop the state from stealing money from people to paper over the massive deficits fueled by ridiculous out-of-control spending" initiative. What's not to like? I think this is a good idea, like most similar efforts to try to hold our political corruption and spending disintegration in check: it's an uphill battle in California, to be sure, but a noble effort. You'd think bill which essentially said "the state can't act illegally in this manner" would be unnecessary, but this is California...

Proposition 23
This is a pretty reasonable idea: don't enforce pollution control restrictions which hurt businesses until unemployment is under control, and people are working again. Of course, with the direction the state is going, this might be a permanent "suspension", but that's more the fault of the politicians who have systematically destroyed the business environment in the state. I'm in favor of this bill, if only as an incentive to fix the business situation, and counter-balance to the efforts to destroy it.

Proposition 24
It seems to me like a bad idea to tax businesses more and create tax uncertainty during a recession, but maybe that's just me. I guess if you want jobs, you should oppose this bill; if you feel there are just too many businesses and jobs (and too much tax revenue from each) in California, you should support this bill. You can guess which position I feel is more accurate.

Proposition 25
This is probably the worst of this year's crop of initiatives. The only thing standing between the politicians and utterly destroying the state even faster is the 2/3 rule for budgets, which forces the politicians to at least consider fiscal restraint. Removing this would be financial suicide. And as if that wasn't contemptible enough, the pushers added a totally unrelated populist provision to deny legislators their salaries and benefits while budgets are not passed (a provision which would be meaningless if the initiative passed, since they could rape the state with a simple majority, so we wouldn't have late budgets any more, we'd have unmitigated disasters delivered on-time), so they could campaign on the populist provision, and hope people were too stupid to pay attention to the other part. This is the worst kind of political deception, and I detest it, and its supporters. I encourage people to take a look at the donors list for supporting this proposition: these are the enemies of the people, the groups leading California to destruction.

Proposition 26
This is a solid bill: it closes a loophole which our state government has been exploiting, and will continue to exploit, to raise taxes without a 2/3 majority. It's sad that the voters need to close legal loopholes when the intent is so clear to begin with, but that's the depth of the corruption in California politics.

Proposition 27
Since I support Proposition 20, it's probably obvious that I oppose 27, the "let the politicians draw districts for maximum advantage, manipulation, and potential corruption" initiative. I don't know that there's much more to say: if you favor bribery, corruption, and less accountability for politicians, I guess you should support this, otherwise it's a clear 'no' vote.

Well, that's it for the propositions... I'll cover the elections later, where I'll express my opinions on which candidates are less bad for each position (in my opinion). Here's hoping we (the voters) don't mess the state up any worse than it already is this year.

Hawaii 5-0: A Gripe

2010-10-17T11:46:00.000-07:00

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; implausible, sure, but within the standard technology-use stretches common for television and movies. However, at another point, they had identified the suspect as being inside a late-model GM car (GM sponsors the show with taxpayer money, so product placement is predominant) with a hostage, and it takes them ten minutes to get a trace.

Now, as I presume most people are aware, all GM cars come with OnStar: you can't get one without it for at least the last few years. As everyone should be aware, OnStar comes with several built-in features, such as automatic tracking of the vehicle, remote management, and a built-in microphone which can be remotely activated and recorded from without any indication in the car. Moreover, all these things can be done by OnStar without any sort of court order or customer recourse (as they are a private company, and you agree to the EULA), as has already been demonstrated publicly.

So I have to ask: why, when they knew the suspect was in the car, did they not just call up OnStar, and have them remotely disable the engine, lock the doors, and engage the listening system to record the resulting incriminating conversation, all while sending the tracking information to the police immediately? This could be done in real-time, much less within the ten minute window stated to just get the vehicle location. In this case, the show had a blatant understatement of the government/police technical capabilities, which was very out-of-place given all the other high-tech stretches. It was very disconcerting, and made the rest of the premise almost laughable to me.

I guess my message to writers for TV/movies is: if you're going to stretch what's technically possible for dramatic effect, don't ignore the blindingly obvious when constructing your plot. If the bad guys are in a car with OnStar or similar remotely accessible listening and/or vehicle management system, and the good guys are the police (or have access to the system for whatever reason), catching them would be trivial: that's part of the point. Don't ask me to believe the good guys have all this high-tech magic, but are willfully ignorant of the features mandated in cars largely specifically for law enforcement and government surveillance: it makes your shows seem stupid and contrived.

That's my opinion, anyway.

More "Unintended" Consequences

2010-09-29T13:58:00.000-07:00

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 moderate amount of consideration.

This story, then, illustrates another good example of a reasonably easily predictable outcome from a law, which I can only assume the legislators anticipated. To summarize, the laws in various states which criminalize texting while driving are causing more accidents. Ironically, this is similar to another set of traffic laws with unadvertised consequences: the red-light cameras causing more accidents (because it makes people more nervous and apt to drive more erratically around/through those intersections, obviously). In the texting case, drivers are moving their cell phones out of visible sight from outside the car, which causes then to divert their eyes further from the road while texting, causing more accidents. It's very reminiscent of the hand-held cell phone ban/law, which is causing drivers to hold their phones out of visible range and glance down while talking (although in that case it's a less severe problem, because you don't normally need to look at your phone while talking on speakerphone).

There are many other examples of these "unintended" consequences, of course. Obamacare will raise health care costs, drive providers out of business, lower the quality of service, and cost the country trillions: all of these are easily predictable. Socialism and wealth redistribution remove the incentive to work hard, reducing a country's economic output and innovation. An uncertain tax environment, punishing domestic tax rates, and onerous restrictions on business in the name of environmentalism (or other causes) all serve to drive business out of the country, reducing employment for Americans and industrial competitiveness for the country. The list goes on and on.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to these relatively obvious consequences: they are unintended, or they are merely unadvertised. In the first view, the politicians and their aids are dumb, they don't really understand what they are passing into law (or they don't read the legislation), and they don't ever consider the obvious effects of the policies they enact. In the other view, the people crafting the laws are not dumb, they have considered the implications, and they just don't publicize the fact that they know full-well what is going to result from the policies; they just don't want to advertise the effects, because they are not publicly palatable. It's hard for me to believe that everyone in government is monumentally stupid, even if I don't agree with their positions, so you can guess which side of the "unintended consequences" theories I come down on.

Who knows how much better the country would be if we had an independent news media, who could accurately point out all the obvious consequences of all the complex and intentionally opaque legislation that self-serving politicians advance to further their own agendas. Until then, though, I guess we'll have to live with the continuous absurd repetitions of "who could have known" and "that didn't work out as well as expected".

More Easily Foreseeable Consequences: Obamacare

2010-09-22T23:14:00.000-07:00

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 cutting coverage for children; again, a predictable and foreseeable consequence of the new restrictions in Obamacare. I'm sure it would offend the people who are up-in-arms about the evils of insurance companies, but their ire is ill-directed: they should be upset, but all the blame and vitriol should be properly directed toward Washington DC, where the law which directly caused these obvious and foreseeable effects was drafted, rammed through Congress with no bi-partisan input, and signed into law.

It's fine to be angry about it: coverage is being decreased, health care costs are going up, and health care in America is degrading. These are all serious problems, and it's reprehensible that Obamacare makes them all worse. Just make sure your anger is appropriately directed against the criminals in Washington DC, and not the innocent corporations caught in the crossfire.

Fannie Mae: Public Enemy #1?

2010-09-05T14:49:00.000-07:00

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 a free market in the US, this could be the gigantic poster child.

If I were running the country, everyone connected with this brazen, incomprehensibly corrupt scheme to directly steal from the US taxpayers would be tried for treason, and if found guilty, executed. The sheer scope of the crime, potential damage, and depth of corruption and malfeasance would demand a complete purge, if not a dismantling entirely.

Better Political Distinctions: Libertarian and Statist

2010-09-04T23:11:00.001-07:00

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 associated with liberalism (eg: civil rights)? Also, conservative might want government out of private industry, but they want government in private personal interactions (eg: preventing gay marriage), and religion in government.

On the other hand, Liberalism represents an interesting amalgam of beliefs, largely catering to the voting base. There's progressive taxation, affirmative action, social services, welfare support, civil rights and invented privileges, heavy government control, massive fiscal irresponsibility, environmental protection, fighting global warming, protecting the unions, and whatever other hot-button short-term issues their constituents think they are concerned about at the time. One could say liberalism is trending toward socialism, but really that's only a subset of the political ideology which has been embraced. About the only things liberalism is not about are small government, limited government control and influence, equality under the law, and government fiscal responsibility. Which, ironically, are about the only things libertarians are strongly supportive of.

I suggest that within the group roughly identified as conservatives, there are two general ideologies, where each member holds one or both. One ideology is that of limited government, personal freedom, equality under the law, and government only where/when necessary to preserve such: ie, the libertarian ideals. The other ideology is "traditional", usually religious-based values, and government enforcement of such. Similarly for liberals, you can divide their ideologies into two broad categories. First, there are the ideals which are concerned with personal freedom (most of which have been perverted at this point), such as equal rights, equal treatment under the law, and freedom from government oppression and control. Second, you have the statist ideals: generally everything concerned with or reliant on big government, government control, wealth redistribution (either explicitly, such as through "progressive" unfair taxation, or implicitly, through inflation and government money-printing handouts), invented and government-enforced privileges for select people, selective treatment under the law, interference in and control of private enterprise, welfare and social services, and everything else which either expands government control or makes people more reliant on government.

To my mind, the first ideologies in each make more sense together, as do the seconds. All the ideologies in the first sets are what are traditionally Libertarian values: personal freedoms, limited government, equality under the law, etc. Similarly, all the ideologies in the second sets are Statist: big government, government control, lots of government involvement in people's lives, encouraging reliance on the government, etc. As an aside, notice that in my construction, Statist certainly does not equate to Socialist, since I've included bundling of religion with government as a Statist ideal, whereas Socialism is traditional devoid of religion; however, they would obviously share a large overlap.

Thoughts? Where would my readers fall on my hypothetical line? If it were a choice between a Libertarian [tea] party, and Obama's Statists, which would you more closely identify with? Would it be easier to rally the people who are fed up with Statism around the ideals of Libertarianism (as I have described), rather than colloquial conservatism? Does either one better encapsulate an ideal for America for you (I know one does for me)?

Obama and Border Security: National Disgrace

2010-09-01T22:09:00.000-07:00

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 the area instead, as if they are actively trying to cede the area to the drug cartels. In all demonstrable aspects in this area, the Obama administration appear to be acting on behalf of the illegal invaders and drug cartels, for reasons we can only speculate about.

The question arises: is this mere monumental incompetence and dereliction of duty, or something more? After all, you can certainly make the argument that perhaps Obama didn't realize how significant the problem is, but he's spoken out about the severity, and the signs indicate a knowledge of the scope and implications of the problem. You can argue that the Arizona law amounts to profiling and discrimination against people who are in the country illegally, violating our laws, but that's kinda the point: DHS exists to make it more difficult for those people to be in the US. Oh, and if that's not enough, the law/examination only applies to people who are already breaking other laws, so it's not like the argument that it's random or targets otherwise normal people holds any water. The best argument I can fathom is that we, the legal residents, shouldn't have to give up our freedoms in massive government expansions and reactions to perceived crises, but common: that argument is laughable in the face of the rest of the Obamanation's actions. I just can't come up with a plausible rationale for this being anything other than a well-considered plan of action to undermine the security of the country.

Which, in turn, begs some followup questions. Could you impeach a president for a willful failure to preserve and protect the country? Is the Obama administration's handling of border security in Arizona gross negligence, horrible incompetence, malicious disregard for the country, or something else? What would be the appropriate course of action for dealing with our Traitor in Chief?

Addendum: In related news, Obama administration continues harassment of sheriff on the front-lines of fighting the tide of illegal invaders in Arizona. On behalf of my government and its apparently traitorous leadership, I'd like to apologize to all the hard-working, honorable men and women risking their lives and livelihood to keep the country safe, in defiance to all enemies, both foreign and domestic, and extend my thanks for their efforts in the face of opposition.

I Don't Get Protesters

2010-08-25T13:11:00.001-07:00

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 local business in any meaningful way. The largest group is the marchers, with standardized color-matching protest shirts, and standard union protest signs. There are also security people, who coordinate displacing the normal people in the area so the protesters can march through. There are also a few union thugs in suits, presumably there to intimidate anyone who might oppose the protesters.

Then, there's what they do. Specifically, they march for roughly an hour or so, blocking walkways, driveways, intersections, bridges, and impeding anyone they can. They carry drums and bullhorns, so as to make as much disruptive and annoying noise as possible. There are a couple of special-interest signs (eg: promoting a politician the unions favor), but most are standard union-support signs, in English and Spanish of course. They pause in front of some buildings, but mostly they just unload, walk through being as obnoxious as possible, load up, and move on to the next protest site.

Now, what exactly is the point? I mean, here's what I get from the protests, in no particular order:
- These people don't care about the local businesses, they're union stooges bussed in from who-knows-where
- They don't care about jobs for Americans, just jobs for union members and people who can't/won't learn/use English
- They don't have any clue about what policies or politicians are good for jobs and the economy, so they are extremely hypocritical
- They don't care about anyone else, or the damage or inconvenience they impose on anyone else
- They want people to respect their rights, while they trample on other people's rights without a second thought
- They are spending an entire week working every day to solidify my contempt for their organization and whatever they stand for

Their protests make me want to support the businesses they are nominally protesting against, oppose their political causes, and seek and moral and legal justification for doing them physical harm. I can't imagine that's their nominal intent, but I also can't see what they think they will be accomplishing, other than providing something to justify the salaries of all the protesters and support people who are on the union payroll. Are they collectively too stupid to extrapolate the resulting sentiment, or am I not experience the typical/expected reaction, or... am I missing the point of these protests?

Update: Apparently these a-hole protesters will be busing in more people for tomorrow's protest, and randomly blocking/closing streets in the area between noon and 6pm. And, astoundingly, the LAPD will be complacent and supportive to their activities, helping them aggravate the local employees and patrons while facilitating their ability to otherwise break the law. The SEIU union will get no support from me ever, for what it's worth.

Obama the Muslim? Bad Reporting...

2010-08-19T13:32:00.000-07:00

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 better than the truth. See statements about unemployment and the "stimulus" bill, his being a socialist, top priorities for his administration, or any of other clear, well-documented lies he has told just while in his current office. Why, out of the blue, does he get a free pass on stating his religion, something which clearly would affect many people's perceptions of him?

Now, I'm not particularly religious, and it makes very little practical difference to me if Obama is actually a Muslim or not. I have significant issues with many of his ideas and policies, but that's fairly irrespective of his religion. What I do have a problem with is traditional news outlets subjectively editorializing opinions as facts. The fact of the matter is that if you disregard Obama's statements (as any jury would, for example, given his complete lack of credibility), his actions would support the claim that he is, in fact, Muslim. Throw in some previous statements to that effect, and you could see how it's at least a reasonable conclusion. It's irresponsible and inaccurate to dismiss the conclusion as mistaken: at the very least, it should only be "in conflict with Obama's current claim".

Shame on the media for bad reporting, again; not that I expect better, but it's worthwhile to continue to emphasize it for people who may not be convinced.

The 14th Amendment

2010-08-12T22:50:00.001-07:00

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 provide. Accordingly, almost all of our laws are designed to ensure that any ill-gotten gains are forfeit if/when you are convicted of a crime; in fact, you often stand to lose whatever you may have had.

The 14th amendment, however, provides a glaring exception to this principle, which was almost certainly not intended. At it's core, the amendment is intended to simplify citizenship for people born in the US: it's sorta an easy catch-all for the "if your parents are welcome here, you are too" ideology. As such, it's fine... but the country has changed a bit since it was envisioned. For example, we had a lot less people openly breaking our immigration laws, the federal government was more concerned with upholding the law and less with [openly] pandering to the controlling party's demographics, and we weren't nearly as much of a welfare state, ready to constantly sacrifice our own hard-earned prosperity to care for people who has no interest in caring for themselves. All these things serve to pervert the usage of the 14th amendment from something which must have seemed clearly the "right idea", into something which is effectively being used to profit from criminal activity. I find that personally objectionable, and potentially worthy of change.

Of course, I would not propose to repeal the amendment or anything; after all, the motivating principle is still perfectly valid. However, I think it could be itself amended, such that children born in the US are citizens unless it cannot be shown that, at the time of their birth, the mothers are present in the US legally. Basically, as long as your parent(s) are in the US legally (for whatever reason, citizenship of otherwise), you're automatically a citizen; if not, you would not be.

At this point, someone usually objects, saying it's unfair to punish the child for the parent's misdeeds, but that's a dumb argument: there's no free right to US citizenship, and you shouldn't get that right if your mother successfully breaks the law. There's also the argument that it kicks the proverbial illegal immigration can down the generational road without solving anything, but that's an aside: yes, it doesn't fix the underlying problem or do anything to fix the government's asinine position, but it doesn't make the problem worse, or provide incentive for the commission of more crime, as the current system does.

Anyway, that's my opinion, for what it's worth.

Appropriate Plans for the Future

2010-08-05T21:36:00.000-07:00

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 the current deficit spiral other than a default, in some form. With the enormity of the hole our politicians have already created, the reckless and astounding lack of any fiscal responsibility in the current government, and the crushing weight of pyramid schemes created and expanded by previous equally-irresponsible leaders looming, it might be time to think pragmatically about the national debt. That is, it might be time to abandon the "how do we fix it" question, and move on to the "how do we not be crushed when it inevitably collapses" question.

As this opinion piece by Peggy Noonan aptly points out, Americans are coming to the realization that the good times are over. Our politicians have done such a monumentally horrible job of managing the country that the era of ever-increasing prosperity in the US is likely over (which, to be fair, is also the fault of the monumentally idiotic voters who put them in office; eg: see Nancy Pelosi). This, coupled with the insurmountable debt, virtually ensures that the US will need to collapse (at least fiscally speaking) before it can be rebuilt; and like the financial debacle, where banks had trillions in bad assets and loans which needed to be revalued and cleaned out before the system can recover, the US will need to purge both its debt and pyramid scheme type obligations before it has a chance to return to increasing prosperity. The only question is whether the people suffer for a long time fighting uphill while in denial, or if we can openly admit the inevitable, choose the quick path which leads to the least suffering for the American people, and get to work on changing the system to prevent such egregious abuses of public trust in the future.

It's no longer enough to ask the politicians to stop making the problem worse. We need to start planning for the inevitable national default, start creating means for honest hard-working Americans to minimize the damage to themselves and their livelihoods, and start thinking about how to make sure these type of politician scum (the current group and groups past) can never again do such monumental, irrecoverable harm to the United States of America.

Radical Taxation Idea

2010-08-02T13:07:00.000-07:00

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 to have a net worth of more than $2 million before the tax bill would be higher under this plan
- High income, high net-worth individuals would probably pay similar taxes, depending on exact numbers

The people who would pay significantly more are people with significant worth relative to income; eg: people who inherits millions, people who get very wealthy from stock/investments, etc. On the other hand, people with significant net worth usually make income from investing their money, so as long as they are making more than the tax amount on investment income, their net worth would not necessarily decrease, even if they do not have net income from business.

Notes/concepts:

This type of tax would always be imminently affordable: since it's based on net wealth, the person/corporation paying will always have the assets to afford the tax. Since it's based on net assets, you don't pay more if you are leveraged to buy something (eg: house with a large loan): you are taxes only on net worth of your total assets.

Corporations would have less incentive to retain profits. Since retained assets would be taxed and dividends would be not taxed (opposite of current situation), corporations would be incentivised to only retain money they actually think they will imminently need, and pay out the rest to shareholders.

Net asset value is less variable than income/other, which means tax rolls will be much more predictable. Tracking net assets would be roughly equivalent to tracking income. The government needn't be concerned with private or intrastate transactions for tax purposes. Banks and investment institutions can aggregate reporting requirements for tax purposes.

This plan would constitute more explicit wealth redistribution than our current tax scheme, although I don't think it would be a significant problem, as long as the Constitutional low limit is solidly maintained (I would not be in favor of this plan without such a limit). It basically constitutes the same wealth redistribution mechanism/effect as inflation, but without the incentive to diversify out of the US dollar, and/or hold assets in tax deferred or unrealized-gain holdings. It would provide a slight negative-incentive to horde wealth, but as described, the actual tax consequences would be lower for most people, and the average spending power for people with income from employment would be higher.

This would effectively allow everyone (individuals and corporations) to deduct all operational expenses from tax liability, as opposed to the current system which favors corporate structure/operations for that benefit. Since you're only taxed on retained net assets, money expended to satisfy operational costs would not be taxed, either as income or otherwise.

2% should be close to enough, if not actually enough, to fully fund the federal government at current levels. 2% of net asset value of all households and nonprofit organizations would be roughly $1 trillion per year. Adding in taxes for all corporate net assets, and the figure should approach $2 trillion. The tax figure would rise directly and proportionally with the actual wealth level of US people/corporations, which is exactly what we want for incentive for the government. Moreover, as mentioned, the number changes slowly, so it's much less susceptible to economic fluctuations than the basis's of current tax schemes.

Anyway, that's my radical idea for the day; thoughts welcome as always.

Fully Funded Retirement Programs

2010-07-19T22:26:00.001-07:00

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 immediate payouts to people by borrowing from future generations, and thus "game" the system for voter approval. In the case of unions, large defined-benefits for retiring workers have allowed federal, state, and local governments to create their own Ponzi schemes, which are now coming to their inevitable conclusions (with accompanying collapse and inevitable lawsuits). Even though private industries are not allowed to engage in such egregious practices, there are also problems there, from companies "borrowing" from retirement plans to manipulating expected growth numbers to over (or under) state corporate earnings, to pension plans which operate like indirect Ponzi schemes, and collapse when the company goes under. The whole class of situations is a giant systemic problem, in need of a general (and not circumventable) solution.

I would propose the following as a conceptual solution for the problem: require, at the federal level, that all "retirement plans" have fully funded contribution accounts, in the beneficiary names, managed independently of the organization (similar to how 401k accounts are currently). For all plans, there can be a certain amount which is reserved for extra benefits for particular individuals meeting well-defined circumstances (eg: early retirement due to disability, illness, etc.), but this should be capped at a low percentage of contribution amount (say, 10% maximum). Furthermore, the government should provide an estimate of expected inflation over the benefit lifetime (based on historical CPI numbers), and all organizations will be required to use that number as expected annual investment growth for assets in the plan, regardless of actual investments (which, also, should be required to be "safe" in all cases). The organizations can continue to manage the investments of assets in the plan as a whole, primarily to allow governmental organizations to continue borrowing the money from their own plans as long as they have the highest level of credit worthiness; otherwise they will need to be weened off the Ponzi scheme easy-money as new contributions go into private accounts.

Of course, the changes wouldn't be retroactive, and thus everyone already scammed by the various Ponzi schemes would be out their "contributions" to date: but that's really no different than the status quo, only it would be much more explicit and consequently less ignorable. Furthermore, if it was done correctly, it would fix a whole class of problems, and prevent future similar problems, which is the best type of solution. Hard to do, certainly, and most likely politically impossible... but still a good solution, in my opinion.

Federal Employees and Voting

2010-07-12T10:01:00.000-07:00

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 form or another, we're creating a self-reinforcing incentive loop which might be hard to escape. When the government was small, and operating within means of revenue collected from the people, this was not a problem: the size and scope were limited by the revenue collected. To the current politicians running the country, though, limits such as budgets and revenue are not only ignored, but to some viewed as impediments to the conversion of America to a socialist dream (or nightmare, depending on your perspective) state. In the country's current state, we might do well to break the perverse incentive circle before it's too late.

I was thinking, what if there was a rule that if you took government money directly during the year (or two) leading up to an election, you were not allowed to vote in it. Yes, this would remove a lot of people's votes, and yes, it would lead to everyone not being equally represented in votes, and yes, people would complain mightily about it; but, consider the effects. You might have a fighting chance to rein in out-of-control government expansion, curtail implied bribery of the voting populace, and break out of the vicious expansion of the federal government before it's too late.

Of course, there are variations too. For example, you could prevent voting only for those who have received more from the government in any year than they have given back through taxes, fees, and donations to the IRS. This would allow anyone to still vote, as long as they assured their net income from the public was not positive. It would also prevent unscrupulous politicians from using the rule to negate entire blocks of voting through targeted handouts. It might also encourage more qualified people to vote, as their votes might carry more weight, especially since a large group of regular voters (namely, career public "servant" leeches) would be disqualified from influencing voting outcomes for which they clearly regularly have conflicts of interest.

I'm not sure if this would be a good idea, and I'm fairly sure it's too late to enact in the US in any case, but it's food for thought.

Of Obama and Commissions

2010-06-30T09:35:00.000-07:00

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 for acting slowly if the problem gets worse in the interim, as it was certain to in this case; after all, it's not like the liberal-socialists show any signs of slowing down the monetary hemorrhaging and socialist expansion of the government between now and December, when the commission is due to report the mind-numbingly obvious suggestion that any first grader could have told our imbecile-in-chief any time during this whole debacle: spend less money, you morons.

I still like the article, though... it's not every day you can ridicule our socialist leader for his transparent attempt to deflect criticism from his idiotic policies with his own words. Let's hope this is the liberal media's reluctant nod to a rising tide of sanity in the voting populace which can no longer be ignored.

Paul Krugman is a Strange Fellow

2010-06-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of thoughts about Paul Krugman from time to time. Most of them are negative, as he is a self-promoted liberal with some pretty horrendous ideas for how the government should operate. However, he's also a pretty smart guy, which makes it frustrating that he can fairly accurately assess a situation, then apply his liberal bias to come to a completely wrong-headed conclusion.

Take, as a recent example, this piece about the danger of the world falling into another depression due (primarily) to the lack of jobs. The premise is sound, and entirely agreeable: without jobs, the economy spirals downward, generally making everyone unhappy. If you want to fix the situation and avert a more serious problem, you'd want to do a few things: make sure the climate is good for businesses to operate and employ people, provide a fair and level playing field to encourage people that all they would need to operate a successful business was hard work (as opposed to political friends and handouts), and remove any disincentives which might be keeping people from being willing or able to work (such as long-term welfare programs). As added insurance, you could work to ensure that the country was as viable a place for all types of business as possible, and that as few industries as possible were being exported or overly regulated. Finally, you need to keep government debt under control, so people are not scared about their future prosperity and security, and can just focus on earning an honest living. Sounds simple, right?

Well, first let's compare to the Obamanation, so we can see how good (or bad) of a job they are doing. I should point out this is only with respect to the economy; they may be doing better or worse in other areas, but we're just focused on the economy here. Let's see... Climate good for business: nope, tons of regulations, massive rewriting of industry rules, takeovers, czars running industries; a solid F- on this category for Obama and the missing village idiot liberals in Congress. Fair and level playing field: nope again, trillion dollar pork handout bill, plus Chicago-style extortion and selective arbitrary unconstitutional actions against businesses ensure another solid F here. Remove disincentives to work: not doing this either, but at least we're not raising handouts and welfare [much] [yet], so maybe a D here. What about keeping business here? Gotta be fair and give a C- for this currently, although Cap & Tax would lower it to a solid D or below if/when it passed. That just leaves keeping the debt under control so people aren't worried about the future value of their money: Obama and the tools round out their report card with another F. I guess the bottom line here is if you're concerned about the economy and you voted for Obama, stop voting: you're hurting the country.

But what about the [esteemed] economist Krugman, does he have the right answers? After all, it's not a hard problem: you want jobs and stability, and there's nothing magical about getting from here to there. Unfortunately, Krugman recommends a detour of massive spending to bankrupt the country and collapse the currency; apparently this is a necessary side-trip on the way back to national stability. Huh... for a purportedly smart guy, his plan (like most of his other ideas) seems really stupid. Perhaps he sees how collapsing the US currency Greece-style is the road to economic prosperity, but I doubt it; more likely he's just advocating more of the same idiotic policy decision which got the country into this mess.

Hey, I've got a novel approach for economic stability: how about we cap the amount of drag the government puts on the economy, make sure the drag is spread as evenly, fairly, and impartially as possible, and force the politicians to only spend that much money! That way you have a fair and stable business environment with low drag, a stable currency with which to do business, and a stable country that people can live and work in and not have to worry about future national economic stability. Seems a heck of a lot more straightforward than a magical trip through liberal fantasy land with the vague promise that if we the people just hand over enough money, power, and control to the "enlightened" elite like Paul Krugman, they will somehow bring prosperity to the masses after all the other inevitable damage, grief, and forced transfer of wealth to our would-be liberal masters. But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Idiotic Liberal is Dead and Dangerously Wrong

2010-06-10T11:18:00.001-07:00

Now I know what you're thinking: any other day, and this wouldn't have even warranted a byline, much less a headline, in any respectable information source. Nothing in the headline is really that unusual, or that surprising. However, when it's couched as sound analysis, and in the context of how to advise the president, it seems kinda like one's duty to point out how monumentally idiotic this particular liberal is, and how people in power can drive nations to financial ruin by listening to bad and dangerous advice.

Robert Reich, aka public enemy #1 for the day, lays out the current situation basically correctly, before moving out to lay out two different government approaches. In the first, he explains the typical Keysian/liberal economic approach: borrow/print more money, bail out the irresponsible states with new federal borrowing, make taxation more unfair, and waste another $300 Billion or so on corruption and insider payouts, all while doing nothing to address the long-term problems. The second is more pragmatic, and much less active: cut spending a little bit, emphasize the debt commission, and tell the American people we need to spend less to restore our national solvency. He then goes on to assert that if you shouldn't be advising the president unless you'd pick the first option.

... it's almost too stupid to even comment on, but I'll go a step further, and suggest that there should be a third option for consideration. In this option, you would advise the president that the only way to salvage what's left of his reputation for integrity and "cleaning up" Washington would be to man up and admit what most people have already figured out: we can't just keep printing money and bailing out everyone and stay fiscally solvent as a nation. Tell him he needs to refuse another corrupt handout program labeled as a "stimulus" or "jobs bill", and pressure Congress to instead fix the real long-term issue, which is how to create and preserve private sector jobs. While he's at it, some acknowledgment of the growing disparity in total compensation between the public and private sector (public is now roughly double private for comparable jobs, including benefits) would be nice, in addition to a pledge and some tangible actions to cap public compensation at equal or less than private compensation. Tell him it's time to pick between continuing to pursue the ruinous liberal agenda (ie: Cap and Tax, public health care expansion, amnesty for illegal aliens, etc.), or fulfilling his seemingly empty and disingenuous promises of steering the country in the right direction; that his legacy should be more about having the courage to address the real issues, rather than acting as the figurehead for the liberal-socialist agenda. And while you're at it, remind him that public interference in private markets is generally bad, no matter how good intentions may (or may not) be, and he's do well to apply that thinking to various industries which have been grievously damaged on his watch, if not by his own hand (eg: housing, auto, medical, energy, insurance, financial, etc.).

Not that I think any amount of good advice would actually help: I think Obama charts his own course, and is doing what he wants to do for his own reasons, regardless of how reasonable or mind-bogglingly malignant the advice he's receiving may be. However, it's an insult to every thinking American to state or imply that the only advice the president should be receiving is to lead the country headlong into financial ruin, full speed ahead, with eyes wide open, and damn the consequences. It's despicable and contemptible.

Some Analyst Stupidity

2010-06-09T15:12:00.000-07:00

I had a couple of topics I wanted to blog about recently, but haven't had much time; however, this caught my attention, and I wanted to take a bit to write about how dumb analysts are. When I say dumb, I don't mean the people are necessarily not bright or informed, but their analysis is often so off-base that you have to suspect they are either willfully ignorant or just lying for undisclosed reasons.

The article in summary discusses analysis of recent gold and commodities prices; gold is going up, and commodities are going down. One person had this to say:

“Bernanke is dispelling the argument that people are out there buying gold because of the threat of inflation,” said Matt Zeman, a metals trader at LaSalle Futures Group in Chicago. “Deflation is now more of a threat.”

Well, that's all fine and good, but it's totally wrong. Commodities are a hedge against short-term inflation, and gold is a hedge against long-term inflation. Short-term inflation might be caused by a large uptick in borrowing and lending, such as when there are ample business opportunities, people are confident about their job prospects, and/or positive about the direction of the country and its economy. Long-term inflation might be caused by a large uptick in government debt, offloading private debts onto the public by bailing out failing industries, and/or having large looming unfunded long-term public liabilities.

Wait, there's more...

“There is a great deal of uncertainty and anxiety in the financial markets right now,” Bernanke said. “Some people believe that holding gold will be a hedge against the fact that they view many other investments being risky and hard to predict at this point.”

Hm... somewhat accurate, but also misleading. When people are uncertain about investments, they buy government bonds; ever wonder why the interest rate for Treasury bills is near zero? People are very anxious about the economy and the prospects for business (you would be too if you run a business, just ask BP about life under the Sword of Damocles of nationalization, or rising health care costs and requirements, or rising taxes, or any of the other impediments Democrats love to impart on the private sector). Gold is what you buy when you think the monetary system is going to fail, not what you park short-term cash in, though. Bernanke knows this, of course, but since stability of the monetary system is his main job, it might be politically difficult to speak the whole truth here.

Anyway, thought I'd note this, as a warning to always consider the source when relying on someone's explanation of why something happened economically.

Some Days our Government is Really Aggrevating

2010-05-27T17:21:00.001-07:00

Most days, the machinations of the malignant imbeciles in Washington as just the backdrop of life in the US: an evil, to be sure, but a somewhat necessary evil to allow the country and society to continue its strained existence. You can usually write off the constant struggle between the people and their would-be rulers as the price of living in a country with some semblance of law and order, and just hope that there are enough people sacrificing their time and energy to keep the government in check to prevent the situation from deteriorating too much. Some days, though, enough abuses pile up that you can't help but feel a sense of profound anger and frustration, even if each individual abuse seems small compared to the sheer magnitude of vileness emanating from Washington, and today is one of those days for me.

See, this particular frustration starts (oddly enough) with looking at new cars. Now, I'm not really considering buying a new car, but I wanted to see what was new in that world; my car being over six years old now, and I wanted to explore. I quickly remembered, however, that I'm not going to buy a GM car (ever again): I just don't like the idea of GM or the government being able to listen into any conversations in range of my vehicle at any time without my knowledge or consent, and the idea of giving both arbitrary corporations and the entire government full access to remotely manipulate my vehicle doesn't really thrill me (and if you don't know what I'm talking about, please do yourself a favor and figure out what OnStar really does and has actually been used to do, if you're going to give the government that level of control over your life, at least don't be ignorant about it). Unfortunately for me, this malignancy is spreading: Government Motors is unlikely to remove it ever for obvious reasons, and other automobile companies are adopting it or similar systems.

But wait, it gets worse. Apparently the House of F-U to Freedom is working on passing legislation to require all vehicle manufacturers to include a mandatory government spy and back door devices in all new cars manufactured for sale in the US. So soon, you may not be able to buy a new vehicle which does not function as a mobile listening device for the government (or anyone allowed to use their systems), as well as subjecting yourself to remote control of your vehicle. Yeah, that's just what I wanted in a new car... my current car's looking better every day.

Add that to all the recent previous atrocities (warrant-less wiretaps, covert executions, terrorist designations to strip citizenship, etc.), and the country is looking pretty bleak today. Some days you gotta wonder which would be better for the United States: if Iran gave up their nuclear weapons, of if they somehow smuggled one into the US and nuked our government. I mean, I don't wish ill on anyone, but as a philosophical discussion, I really couldn't say for sure which of those two elements (Iran's government or our own) is worse for the United States, and I'd lean toward our own government: they have certainly done a lot more to actively and effectively destroy the principles of freedoms of the United States, at least as the free country it was conceived to be. If I were taking an oath to defend the country from all enemies, foreign and domestic, I'd have to take a long look toward Washington DC and do some soul searching to answer the question if I was ready to uphold that promise.

Political Opportunity

2010-05-26T13:52:00.000-07:00

Barney Frank is a funny guy... or, at least, I'm sure some people find him amusing. In a joking swipe at the controversy around Obama's concerted efforts to ensure that nobody outside of a couple of public officials in Hawaii can actually verify his citizenship (and hence his qualification to serve as president), Frank suggested that the media should verify the citizenship of new House representative Charles Djou. Notwithstanding the fact that citizenship is not required for membership in the House of Representatives, I'm thinking it provides a potential political opportunity.

See, Djou was born in LA, so it would be pretty trivial for him to acquire a certified copy of his actual birth certificate, and post it online or something. You'd have to be careful about the wording, but I'm thinking of a public statement along the lines of:

You see, it's not actually difficult at all for an American-born citizen to acquire and produce for verification one's birth certificate, as I have shown. There is no law requiring this, and several states have laws to shield the information from the public; but I personally see no reason to go to extraordinary lengths to hide by birthplace information, or contest people requesting it for verification, or otherwise fight to obfuscate my background or qualifications. I see no place for that in public service, although that's just my opinion.

Depending on the level of media coverage, it could make for an interesting response to jolly ol' Barney...

Prediction: Next Stage of Socialized Medical Care

2010-05-18T16:03:00.000-07:00

I've talked about this before, somewhat, but I'm not sure if I've ever laid-out a specific prediction on the future of medical care in the US, now that it has been partially socialized by the Obama administration. One could argue that these changes were inevitable with or without the latest "reform", and that they stem from the Medicare system in general, but more socialization certainly doesn't help.

From Texas: more doctors opting out of Medicare. Now, no big surprise here: Medicare is somewhat unfair to practitioners, underpays for procedures, has horrible inefficiencies, a spotty payment history, and is generally a pain compared to other insurance programs. To some extent providers accept Medicare for the same reason businesses take credit cards: it opens up markets and allows more sales opportunities. However, as the Medicare costs go up and the system continues to degrade, look for more practitioners to drop it as a coverage option, leaving few actual resources for those with Medicare.

However, this will not go over well in Congress, especially since more people than ever are going to be on government health care. In response, Congress will mandate that some practitioners take Medicare, probably all over a certain size. This will launch a fight between the medical industry and Congress, and cause more hospitals to go under and/or restructure to avoid falling under the mandate. We may also see some bailouts in the form of subsidization, to delay the problem at the expense of the taxpayers, while the underlying problem continues to get worse. In the meantime, the medical profession will become even less attractive from a cost/potential perspective, and we could see even more of a shortage of practitioners.

Eventually indefinite subsidization and accounting shell games will no longer be able to hide the true cost of Medicare, and the problems will come to a head. At this point, it's hard to say what will happen; liberals will blame conservatives and visa-versa, but in terms of real action, it's anyone's guess. Politicians will try to forestall this point until we as a country have more dire things to worry about (eg: hyperinflation), which, at the rate Obama and the liberals in Congress are expanding the deficit, may come sooner rather than later, and they may succeed. If they do, it'll get lost in the revolts which inevitably follow an effective national default; if they do not, the rest of the options may all be untenable, and it could well be the final straw.

Housing Mobility: Interesting Quote and Semi-rant

2010-05-14T11:24:00.000-07:00

From USA today, via CalculatedRisk:

"This is the absolute worst time to lose our residential mobility," says Richard Florida, a professor of U.S. urban theory at the University of Toronto. "It's important for people to move to where the new opportunities are, because that is the cornerstone of our idea-driven economy."

CR goes on to note that part of the reason for the lack of mobility is that lots of people are underwater on their homes... which is true, but not the only factor. I'd venture to say that another significant reason why people are reluctant to move is that many people know that there's significant pending price declines in he housing market, and don't want to make a move now because they know prices are going to be lower after the delayed foreclosures work their way through the system in the next few years. This is less likely to be preventing people from moving for employment if they are desperate (after all, you can always rent), but would be a significant drag on people who might otherwise move for better opportunities or less competition, or in response to other subjective factors.

Speaking of housing prices, I had another interesting realization today: government debt makes housing less affordable for everyone. This may not come as a shock to anyone well-versed on economic causality, but might surprise some people who don't regularly appreciate how destructive to the American economy massive surges in government debt are. In this case, debt leads to the perception of future inflation (as the government prints more money to devalue its debts rather than pay them), which causes investors to look to both borrow money, and acquire assets which hold their real value. Aside from precious metals, one of the best asset classes historically for a hedge against currency devaluation is housing/land. This is a problem because perception drives investment allocation, artificially increasing the demand (which naturally increases prices). If the perception was that the currency value would remain stable, housing would be a much less attractive long-term investment (relative to just, say, money), which would in turn act to reduce prices closer to actual consumption/use value.

Incidentally, that's also a factor which causes speculative swings in other asset prices, such as oil, food futures, and precious metals. It also drives volatility in the stock market, and helps decouple stock prices from fundamental valuations (as people buy stock to hedge against currency devaluation). As even novice economic theorists could observe, all these price distortions and speculation are bad for business, bad for the economy, bad for individual people, and bad for the country. Think about that the next time Comrade Presidente and the Party decide to print another $800B for their insider friends.

Funny Quote

2010-05-12T18:44:00.000-07:00

This from a Reuter's article about how LA is apparently going to boycott doing future business with Arizona in protest to their attempts to curb their rampant illegal immigration problem:

"I cannot go to Arizona today without a passport," Councilman Ed Reyes said before the vote. "If I come across an officer who's had a bad day and feels the picture on my ID is not me, I could be summarily deported -- no questions asked. That is not American."

Arizona's new law, which comes into effect at end-July, does not allow police to demand identification from individuals without cause or to summarily deport them. But it does require officers, during a lawful contact, to check the immigration status of anyone who they reasonably suspect is in the country illegally.

One has to wonder if resident douche-bag Ed Reyes is just a moron, woefully uninformed and thus making a fool out of himself, or just spewing garbage based on the belief that his constituents and supporters are too stupid to know the difference. I personally thought it was telling that even Reuters, which is normally slightly more left-wing than the socialist party, calling out his BS in a matter-of-fact, marvel at our resident town idiot fashion. At least he's being entertaining.

Thoughts on Government Borrowing

2010-05-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

Ok, this might be a bit wonky and theoretical, fair warning...

I've been thinking some about the problem with long-term government debt, and how to prevent government entities from mortgaging the future to fulfill current spending desires. In essence, this is the #1 long-term problem with government debt: it's not that debt is bad, it's just that the accumulation of debt, combined with compounding interest payments, eventually leads to default or inflation, or both. The same is true for everyone else's debt too, of course, although normal people cannot typically print money to paper over the problems and reduce the debt by devaluing the currency. But I digress.

Consider if, instead of being allowed to roll over debt indefinitely, a government (eg: state government) had a strict, carefully-constructed Constitutional limit, which specified that all debt would only be valid for a specific period (eg: 10 years), after which if not paid back it would be automatically void, and the government was explicitly prohibited from paying back any debt with new borrowing (ie: no interest/principle payments could be made for any debt during any fiscal year where any additional borrowing occurred, for any reason). The implications would be significant:

- Debt servicing cost from the private market would increase proportional to the expectation of fiscal prudence (to enable repayment) and responsibility (to repay the debt), knowing that there is a fixed expiration
- Financially responsible entities could still borrow to cover extraordinary events, but probably at a higher cost
- Governments would be forced to have a credible repayment plan at the time of borrowing
- Probably most importantly, it would eliminate the possibility of shouldering future generations with debt: the subset provision ensures that any debt expires within a fixed period of time, by design
- Borrowing costs for financially dysfunctional governments would be prohibitively high, forcing immediate changes rather than prolonged paper-over periods and political blame-games
- Governments will be more immediately responsible for the fiscal impact of their decisions
- Several other problems would likely be also solved as side-effects (eg: no more missing the budget deadline every year)

The more I think about it, the more I like it. Yes, the initial change-over would be painful for most governments, especially those with massive existing debt problems, but the end result would be a system which ran much more smoothly, and had much less potential for political abuse. Thoughts?

Thoughts on Privacy

2010-05-07T11:26:00.000-07:00

Kinda off-topic from current events, but I've been thinking somewhat about online privacy, and specifically how it could be protected. Now, being the small-government person that I am, my thoughts naturally shy away from idiotic notions like "we need government regulation" and "more government regulation would help", and toward more practical and potentially effective solutions. It's a hard problem, though, and it's ripe for abuse... already various government organizations are vying for the right to control our privacy. Rather than just rant about how stupid all those "solutions" are, though, I've been trying to come up with some actual good ideas.

One idea I've been evaluating is making telecommunications "gateway" providers civilly liable for any divulgence of personal data (which seems pretty straightforward). A step further, though, would be to make them also jointly liable for any illegal data access or activity (eg: content stealing, hacking, etc.), but only if they monitor, record, or otherwise oversee or store the data being transferred; there would be an explicit safe-harbor if the data is not monitored or recorded in any way. This would provide a significant advantage for service providers to strictly maintain privacy for their users by design, while not substantially increasing government overhead. Of course, this would require also modifying any laws which required storage or monitoring of personal data, but those [invasive] laws could be happily sacrificed. A similar safe-harbor law would be available to corporations, although I'd imagine less businesses would avail themselves of it, though it certainly wouldn't hurt (from a privacy perspective).

Another difficult area is financial privacy. Big government types would argue that the government needs access to all financial information, large and small, in order to track terrorist funding and other nefarious financial activities, as well as preventing market manipulation and ensuring financial stability. They're dead wrong, of course; not so much in their logic (ie: the government would need that data to optimally protect the people from those things), but rather in their premise (ie: that the government can or wants to protect the people at all). The "solution" for these concerns is twofold: first, apply the forth amendment liberally and repeatedly like a blunt hammer to the heads of the imbeciles who keep proposing these asinine laws, and second, develop separate mechanism to ensure financial stability and market fairness which don't rely on mythical government competence, but rather transparency and accountability.

There's one more issue which has been hot recently, and it's vexing to try to address: online information privacy. There's lots of information available on people online, and controlling access to that information is a logistical and legal nightmare, especially when most people don't know what information is out there, or how to effectively control their own information. Again, here, transparency would be our friend: if every online site were required to post, in an easily accessible format, all your data which they make available and under what circumstances, it would go a long way toward enabling private information to stay private. The other way the government could help is by making it illegal for companies to ask for and/or acquire sensitive information unless they assume legal liability for its release, similar to the laws which control health care information. A little more easily-applied liability could go a long way toward companies taking privacy more seriously.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on this difficult subject, which is only going to become more so as systems become more connected, and nefarious politicians try to capitalize on it to advance their own unrelated agendas. Hope it was interesting.

Greece: More Craziness

2010-05-06T13:23:00.000-07:00

Picture this: you have a spouse with a spending problem. You both work, but "he" (imagine a gender-neutral pronoun here) is incapable of controlling his spending, and has run up enormous credit card debt while you have been trying to save money. He claims that he has an expensive lifestyle which must be maintained, and that it's unfair to ask him to make sacrifices when he's always lived extravagantly before. You've even gone out of your way to try to negotiate a debt settlement with your creditors which only requires a small reduction in his spending, but he complains that even that amount is arduous, and vows to continue spending as normal, seeing no problem with your ever-increasing debt, and no scenario where you would "run out" of money.

What do you do? Well, apparently if you're the EU, you give him another $110b euros and hope that magically fixes the problem. ...WHAT? It's like giving free booze to an alcoholic while he's complaining about you asking him to stop drinking as much! It's absolutely insane.

At this point, the rest of the EU is going to be as much to blame for Greece's eventual colossal downfall and default as Greece itself, in much the same way an enabler must share some blame for an addict's self-destruction. If the more stable economies of Europe want to flush their money down the socialist economic toilet which is Greece, it's their right; if I were the US, though, I'd be telling my banks to value their debt at junk, and trade/adjust accordingly (and absolutely ensure that we, as a country, have as little exposure to their financial situation as possible).

If/when they want a real solution, I'd look at selling off some land. Greece has lots of easily separable islands which could make nice colonies for countries with money, and Greece could be a pioneer in rewriting borders with economic, instead of military, force. As a side-benefit, once you sold off a few islands, maybe the people of Greece would finally "get it", and act to save what remains of their country, instead of fighting about which of their failure policies and political parties are most to blame.

Greece Should Default

2010-04-28T15:37:00.001-07:00

Opening note: Apologies to readers for which Greece's problems are not interesting; they are interesting to me, so I'm blogging about them.

It's strange to me, other than as a political game, that the EU/IMF would even be considering "bailing out" Greece. For starters, it's clear that the country has economic problems, the extent of which are probably not even acknowledged to-date, and which are largely due to their unfunded social support obligations and their largely socialist system (hm... remind you of anyone else?). That's a big problem, to be sure, and will need to be addressed if the country is to recover and become financial solvent. The second problem is that the "bailout" isn't really one, it's just some money to extend and pretend; it doesn't address the structural problems directly, and although the EU is negotiating to have austerity measures attached to any handouts, these are far from a sure-thing to be implemented or stuck to, or work even if they are (without fixing the fundamental problems).

However, there's still another, stronger, reason why it makes no sense whatsoever for the EU to be giving handouts to Greece, and that's the Greek people themselves. Far from accepting their condition and being ready to commit to making the necessary changes and sacrifices to restore their badly-hurting country to financial health, they are actively protesting the to-date reductions in their [very generous] salaries and government benefits. Their actions clearly demonstrate a sense of entitlement which is common in socialist systems, and a complete lack of appreciation or consideration for their precipitous financial state. Giving them money at this point would likely only encourage this sentiment, and strengthen a system which needs to fail, for the long-term benefit of not only Greece, but other countries with similar socialist systems, and those which are rapidly moving in that direction.

Until Greece is allowed to hit rock bottom, and its people are forced to endure enough of the reality which is the natural consequence of the system and leadership they have chosen, they will not be able to recover, restructure, learn from the hard lessons, and start fresh on a solid foundation. Psychologists and drug councilors have known this for decades, it's about time nations figured it out as well.

Greece and the Need for Dynamic Currency

2010-04-23T15:44:00.000-07:00

The debt situation in Greece is interesting to me, not just because it represents an interesting dynamic in national solvency and international economics, but also for highlighting the need to have dynamic currencies, particularly for countries which cannot spend within their means (which, for practical purposes, is all countries). Inevitably, eventually, for those countries, you will encounter a situation where you need to effectively print more money to cover you spending obligations; it's a pretty common thing, and is generally accepted by people as a necessary consequence for any fiat currency system. This isn't the end of the country, or even all that bad, it just devalues the rest of the currency proportionally, and life goes on.

In the case of Greece, however, they have created a situation which is unsustainable. On the one hand, they have signed on to a currency which is cross country and cross economy, which they cannot arbitrarily and unilaterally devalue. On the other hand, they have a largely socialist government and economy with large entitlement spending, which will inevitably overspend its income (both due to the spending, and the lack of income from industrial competitiveness which is a common aspect of socialist systems). At some point, something needs to give: either the other euro nations will absorb the losses from Greece's failed government/industrial structure, or Greece will need to default on its debt, and likely fail/restructure as a government/country.

This could have been avoided, however, if Greece had a dynamic currency, even only for it's national obligations (and thus still used the Euro for day-to-day commerce in the country). Sure, their national currency would probably be in hyperinflation free-fall at this point, and it wouldn't do anything to address the structural failure of their political system in general, but it would limit the fallout and impact of their failure as a country on the rest of the other Euro zone countries, and particularly on those with less insolvent political and economic systems. At least then when Greece and the other insolvent Euro countries failed (as an inevitable direct-effect of their own government and policies), the damage would be more contained, and there would be much less danger of a collapse of the Euro itself.

Of course, this argument can be easily extrapolated to any country which is incapable of spending within its means, to better protect those that are from the fallout of collapse... I leave that as an mental exercise for the reader. :)

Financial Reform: Housing Market Edition

2010-04-19T13:55:00.000-07:00

When considering any sort of government "reform", there's always a philosophical fine line. On the one hand, it's beneficial for the government to help people, solve problems, and prevent the sort of financial disruptions which endanger the market and ruin people's lives. On the other hand, it would be better to do nothing at all than allow the circumstances to be used as an excuse to enact unrelated takeover policies, give more power to ineffectual or corrupt organizations, and/or abuse the rights of the people under the guise of "security" or "stability". In that spirit, it's my hope that my musings will fall on the former side of the philosophical line, in stark contrast to everything being enacted and proposed by the contemptible scum in Congress, which clearly and repeatedly falls overwhelmingly more on the latter side.

So, then, how to prevent future housing bubbles/pops, if indeed possible, without pissing on the Constitution?

I would propose a couple things (in-part based on the success Texas had in limiting the housing bubble in their state, based on strict lending limits). First, I would mandate that home loans be categorized (by the GSE's or banking/lending oversight organizations, whichever is more appropriate) as follows:

Class A: Any loan for which all the following items are currently true:
- The borrower owes no more than 80% of the current value of the underlying asset on all loans secured, in whole or part, by the asset
- The borrower provided adequate asset/income information to verify payment ability for the loan at the time of borrowing, and that information is attached to the loan documents
- The maximum annual payment on the loan, at any time during the lifetime of the loan, and assuming current interest rates, does not exceed 35% of the income of the borrower
Class B: Any loan which does not meet all the above conditions

Second, I would impose the following restrictions on financial market participants, based on the above ratings:
- No organization which is supported by federal funds (eg: GSE's, banks in concert with FHA, banks borrowing from the Fed, banks with access to the Fed discount window, etc.) may make any loan which would not be ranked 'A' at time of inception.
- No security which contains, or contains any derivative of, any loan which is not ranked 'A' may be rated 'AAA' (or equivalent "investment grade") by any rating agency.
- No loan which is not ranked 'A' may be purchased by any GSE. The GSE's will also insist on "buyback" clauses if the loan falls below 'A' rank in the first 'n' months after purchase (probably 6-ish), re-evaluate loans near the expiration of this option, and insist on buyback if they are no longer rank 'A'.

Now, admittedly, this is only a partial solution, and does have some limitations. In particular, it doesn't prevent 95%+ financing, it just limits the ability of putting big money into these risky loans. It also does not entirely eliminate the possibility of taxpayers holding bad loans, although it should significantly reduce the magnitude. I'd also probably add a clause to ensure originators always hold some percentage of all loans, but the specifics of that would require more information and calculations than I'm willing to research/do.

Anyway, that's how I'd propose to [partially] prevent future housing bubbles, in contrast to all the unrelated power-grab and socialist crap Congress will label as "reform". Feel free to leave your thoughts too.

Tea Party Pledges

2010-04-15T09:28:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to make this post for a little bit, kinda as a public service (for the infinitesimal subsection of the public who will read it, I guess). The basic idea is that since no single person is going to fix our government, and creating a new political party which embodies the libertarian ideals of the Tea Party movement is probably counter-productive in our political system, what would probably be the most effective is trying to support candidates who ascribe to certain ideals which match those of the Tea Party, and/or would likely lead to fixes in the government if upheld.

Of course, everyone has their own opinions of what those pledges/ideals should be; some are short-term reactionary to current events, some are fringe, some are good, and some are not obvious, and there are many others. The fringe ones are the most dangerous, of course, since they divide the movement and weaken the effect of promoting change. However, the short-term reactionary and small-scale pledges are also sub-optimal, since they will need to be changed regularly, and don't represent the sort of fundamental clean-up which government needs. So, in that context, I'll propose what I would like to see as pledges from "Tea Party" candidates, in hopes that some/all of them might somehow get adopted by at least part of the movement, and have the desired beneficial effect on the government, and by extension the country. I'll also include the rationale for each pledge, for clarification and explanation, as well as indication of desired effect.

Pledge #1: I believe that government exists to fulfill its necessary roles, and that expanding its size and roles is dangerous for the people. I will work to support limiting the size and power of government, and improving transparency in its operations wherever possible.

Rationale: This is sorta the setup clause, if you will, as well as an ideological differentiator. Nothing particularly concrete here, but a good overall statement towards the sentiment of the movement. There are many benefits to small government for the people (detailed elsewhere), which I don't feel the need to repeat here.

Pledge #2: I will vote against any bill which contains any provision which I do not feel benefits the American people on the whole, regardless of the value of the bill as a whole. I will also vote against any bill I have not read in its entirety, or do not entirely understand.

Rationale: This is the first "meat" pledge, and is meant to create a legislative stand against payoffs, bribes, earmarks, and all other forms of incentives and "horse trading" which has created to much bad legislation. If something is important enough for Congress to pass, it should be separable into small enough bills such that you can achieve a majority vote on merit, without any bribes or handouts. Admittedly this would be a large change to the way Congress does business, but one which I think would have dramatic benefits in the long run, both in less government, and less bad laws.

Pledge #3: I support the 10th Amendment, will oppose any actions which clearly violate it, and will support actions which correct previous actions which violated it.

Rationale: Another "small government" pledge, this one about the federal government overstepping its authority. Nothing too onerous here, but another good ideal for candidates to have.

Pledge #4: I understand and accept that the government cannot limit its spending by itself, and unbounded spending leads the country to financial ruin. Therefore, I promise to:
1. Work to limit the governments income from taxation (in all forms) to at, or preferably below, current levels
2. Work to prevent the government from devaluing its currency to create more income (by "printing" money)
3. Work to improve accuracy and transparency in all government accounting, particularly in areas where the government is currently intentionally distorting statistics
For all these, I will support actions which makes these changes and limits as incontrovertible as possible by the government in the future.

Rational: This is a biggie, and covers a lot of things, all related to keeping the country financially solvent long-term. The tax limit I envision would be a hard-cap on total taxes as a percentage of income, but the pledge is general enough to allow other options. Item #2 is largely tied into the Fed; elimination would be the best option, but there are others, and the pledge leaves it open. #3 is related to distortions in the CPI and other statistics, which have wide-range distorting effects, and need to be stamped out. Of course, the best place for these changes would be in the Constitution, where they cannot be controverted and abused again in the future, but the pledge leaves it open for incremental and/or sub-optimal methods of trying to fix the problems.

Pledge #5: I support freedom of religion in the US. I understand that in order to keep that freedom for everyone, we must preserve the separation of church and state, and keep religion of any kind out of government. As such, I promise that my personal religion, if any, to the best of my ability, will not be a factor in any decision I make while in public service, nor cited in reference to such, nor made any more visible during my time in public service other than what observation requirements I might have. If I think I will be unable to make decisions without the influence of my religion, I promise not to pursue or accept public office, for the benefit of the country.

Rationale: It's become obvious that religion has no place in our government, and trying to put it there is asking for trouble and conflict. It's time the country really started practicing what was first envisioned as just protection from different religions, and now should be protection from all religious bias. It's fine to have morals (obviously), and fine to be religious, but these have no place in public service, for the good of the country.

Anyway, those are the pledges I would want from candidates (first pass); comments are welcome, as are forwards/quotations. I guess I too had a dream today...

The Curious Case of dermdoc

2010-04-12T17:07:00.000-07:00

So I came across this news report, which, by itself, isn't particularly newsworthy. Basically, a guy on a message board claimed to be laying off someone because he (the employee) was an Obama supporter, and Obamacare was going to cost the medical business a lot of money, and people need to understand that [political] actions have consequences. There was also some general semi-founded ranting about Obamacare, and not much else to the story... but it got me thinking.

I've ranted before about the problem, especially in a representative democracy, of people being unable to correlate the consequences of their political actions to real-world changes. In a high-level sense, this might be an area where employers could really make a positive contribution to enforcing the correlation directly: by laying off people who indirectly created the business need to lay off people (eg: by voting for socialists), a business owner would be aptly rewarding people for their political actions. After all, if you have two equally-qualified people vying for one position because another position was eliminated due to the actions of one of the potential employees, it seems only fair to let that employee go, both to that employee and the system as a whole.

On the other hand, though, it brings up the interesting and potentially precipitous concept of discrimination based on political views. Now, political views are not a protected class, so there's no direct legal issue; indeed, employers are doing more extensive personal background checks on employees now, and disqualifying people for a variety of non job-related personal things. The counter-argument to the [legal] discrimination would be that an employee can keep his/her political views private if they don't want them to bias employment applications. However, this begs for a much higher level of anonymity than is currently the norm, especially in the age of social networking and information aggregation, and much more discretion in inter-personal discussions, which is also not preferable.

Furthermore, there's an inherent danger of abuse based purely on ideological differences. While it might be noble and beneficial to have an employer bias employment decisions against people actively working to the detriment of his/her business, it might be hard to make the distinction between that case and an employer just biasing on the basis of ideology, without respect to the effect on the business. Moreover, there are some specific legal protections for supporting some ideologies and organizations which are explicitly working against the best economic interests of the businesses (eg: unions), and you could argue that those protections have legitimate justification in our society. Clearly, then, there would be advocates on both sides of the debate.

The question, then, remains: should an employer bias employment decisions against those supporting anti-business laws and/or political candidates? I don't know which side I would support. The best answer, in my mind, is more education and better correlation; it's unlikely that employees would support policies/candidates which caused their jobs to cease to exist, and it would be better for the country if people were better able to vote in a way which was actually beneficial for them. In discriminating against anti-business supporters, though, you would also run the risk of creating a large enough section of the voting populace to overwhelm the free-market supporters entirely, and bring the whole system crashing down in a government-largess, Atlas shrugging style event. Clearly if the direction was to allow alienation of those people who could not grasp correlation, for whatever reason, there must be a mechanism to protect the rest of the social organism from their continued cancerous influence, and without such a mechanism it might be better for the organism as a whole to maintain whatever unsustainable balance exists for as long as possible (sort of like prolonging the life of a terminally-ill cancer patient, and making them as comfortable as possible). In that case, if the patient is already too far along to be saved, it doesn't make a lot of sense to start cutting out bad cells and causing trauma, which argues for not exploiting or emphasizing the correlation.

As I said, I don't know what the right answer is, which is why I found the case curious. Let me know what you all think.

Paul Volcker: Right and Wrong

2010-04-06T18:29:00.000-07:00

Paul Volcker is a smart guy, who got duped into being a stool pigeon for the Obama administration under the guise of having influence on fiscal policy. Among other things, this makes him a great target for liberal media elements, who delight in distorting his speeches into supporting their agenda.

For example, consider a speech today, in which Volcker made the otherwise innocuous observation that "at the end of the day", if the country is going broke and needs money, they must increase taxes to get it, and may need to explore other taxation schemes to fund every increasing entitlement programs and special-interest drags on the economy (such as cap-and-tax and other proposed programs). Simple, truthful, and direct... but probably not such a good idea.

Reuters US wrote this up as: Volcker advises raising taxes, implementing Europe-style VAT. Their report could be the poster child for liberal media distortion, since Volcker was basically advising the exact opposite (ie: control spending so we don't go broke), but Volcker could do better to not enable them too. As a respected financial adviser, it's clear your words are going to be distorted to support the liberal agenda by the media, and you should plan for that.

Even more so, though, I disagree with the statement itself. At the end of the day, the US should default on its debt and take the opportunity to fix the Constitution to prevent out-of-control spending in the future, rather than run up tax rates to 100% before defaulting. I would much rather deal with the pain and turmoil in a "quick" reorganization and restructuring, rather than prolonging the inevitable collapse with a massive tax burden the whole time. The only way to try to avert an eventual collapse is to make a stand now, hard-cap the amount of taxes, credibly commit to not raising them ever, and implementing harsh automatic corrections when the government creates policies which cause its spending to exceed its income, now or in the future. To acknowledge/promote that continued reckless spending will eventually inevitably be "rewarded" with higher taxes is a betrayal of the financial future of the country, and counter-productive to fixing the very real problem we're facing.

On the narrow scope of the facts of the matter, Volcker may be right; in the greater picture, though, he couldn't be more wrong.

Edit: Drudge Report's headline ("OBAMA MAN: RAISE TAXES, START EUROPEAN-STYLE VAT") begs the question: do two wrongs make a right? On the one hand, Volcker didn't really state or imply that we should be doing that; on the other hand, in the linked article from the liberal news outlet Reuters, the writer added the strong liberal skew and implication. I guess, in essence, Drudge's headline is correct, if "Obama Man" is the liberal news reporter who misrepresented Volcker's statements, although I doubt that's what he was going for. Shameful reporting on both sides, I guess; the eventual implied sentiment (ie: Obama's policies will necessitate raising taxes and exploring new taxation methods) is correct enough, but there's plenty of distortion and editorializing along the way.

Another Systemic Problem: Correlation of Consequence

2010-03-30T12:18:00.000-07:00

This is another installment of "big picture ideas", aka political philosophical exploration...

Democratic society, at its fundamental level, works on the basis of automatic self-correction, as do many other systems (evolution, various computerized automatic organization algorithms, neural networks, etc.). The basic idea is that you have some direct input into the results of the system (in the case of democracy, that's voting), and to that extent you somewhat control the outcomes. By observing the outcomes, and evaluating their benefit/harm to yourself, you adjust your inputs in the future, so as to influence the system to produce more beneficial results. These systems work fairly well... with some rather large caveats.

One problem is timing: change is slow, and there can be painful missteps along the way. To compensate, many of these systems allow/encourage biasing the input based on the expectations of results; ie: voting for a politician because of campaign promises, etc. Participants also consider similar previous inputs, based on the supposition that similarity in input qualities will, at least in some cases, carry through to similarities in output events (eg: favoring political parties). These mechanisms can work, but they rely on the accuracy of the information and suppositions, both of which are very tenuous at best in the political work (campaign promises, in particular, are suspect to the point of being well-understood to be laughable). Fortunately, these "input bias" methods don't have to be accurate; as long as the feedback loop works well, eventually the system will produce inputs which lead to beneficial outputs regardless.

This brings us to the larger problem: ensuring the feedback loop works correctly, which is vital to long-term success for the system. To this end, participants need to be able to evaluate the consequences (results) of the actions of the system given their inputs (elected officials), and correlate those consequences to the inputs accurately. This is where there's a huge problem in many democratic societies, and the US in particular. As examples, how many voters would accurately attribute the higher level of perceived inflation than that which is officially reported to Bill Clinton's manipulation of the CPI? The huge unfunded social network liabilities to FDR's establishing of a government-sanctioned pyramid scheme? The housing bubble (at least in part) to the change in tax treatment for capital gains from sales of primary residences? There are many other examples, some obvious and others less clear, but most not well understood.

How, then, are voters to adjust their voting to benefit themselves when they cannot accurately assess the results of previous votes, and correlate them to their own actions? Let me state something, and let it sink in: there are voters in this country who think the health care takeover bill is about providing universal health care for people. Or this: there are voters who think the government needs to be doing more to prop up the housing market. Or even this: we have voters who think the government should be doing more to regulate businesses to help create jobs. Think about how stupid any of those premises are, how bad they would be for the country, and yet how benign they might sounds to the average non-thinking individual, and how even purportedly "smart" people hold some of the beliefs. How can we reasonably expect the feedback loop system to function when we have active participants who are pushing the system in the complete wrong direction?

We need a system whereby the voters can really experience the effects of their efforts in isolation from the people who think differently, and visa-versa. We need a system where the capitalists and the socialists can co-exist, rather than trying to pull one country in two polar opposite directions. We need a system where when the socialist part inevitably collapses under the weight of its inherent failure, it can be removed like the malignant sociological tumor it is, and keep the rest of the host alive (preferably without giving the tumorous cells voting rights in the remaining healthy political organism, so as to not encourage more tumorous growths). We need a system where people can directly experience the correlation of consequences for their own actions, so we can evolve into a better overall society.

Tax time: my tax plan

2010-03-27T15:49:00.000-07:00

I've blogged about this before, but since it's tax time once again, and in light of the ever increasing spending and wealth redistribution programs of the Obama administration, as well as the ballooning unfunded long-term entitlement programs we're actually growing in total asinine willful ignorance of long-term national solvency, I'd like to revisit my thought/plan for taxes in the US. It might be overly optimistic to wish that someone with real political power would grasp onto this plan, but I still consider it one of the best political ideas I've blogged about, and one which, if somehow enacted, would be a great contribution to the long-term health of the country and the people (for example, I'd consider it more worthwhile a goal than any of the stated short-sighted Tea Party pledge objectives).

In short, the plan would be to cap the maximum amount the government collected in taxes from every individual in the country to a fixed percentage of their income; my current thinking is around 20%, but I'd be more happy with something like 10% (although that would require a drastic decrease in government spending). Note that this limit would be aggregate across all tax schemes, all programs, all income types, and all collection methodologies. As part of enacting the plan, government would be required to allow a taxpayer to refuse to pay any portion of any tax, provided they could document how they had already paid the maximum limit for that year. Optionally, government could provide a centralized mechanism for paying one's taxes (eg: standard payroll deduction), and then distribute the money to all branches of government and programs as appropriate. I'd prefer for the limit to apply for all levels of government, but just for the federal government would be a good start.

Notes on the plan:

- Government would still be free to preserve all existing tax codes, deductions, favors, loopholes, preferences, and the entire gargantuan mess which is the current tax code. This maximum would simply be a cap on total taxes paid. Many people would still pay less than the cap, and government could still redistribute wealth and give preferential treatment through taxation as it does now, just subject to the cap. This plan/change would not institute a flat tax.

- Government should provide a mechanism for someone to pay the maximum, and not file any further tax documentation or have any standard deductions withheld (and provide evidence of max payment, to submit in lieu of any other tax demands). This would save taxpayers and government a tremendous amount of money. Government could (and probably should) provide a streamlined mechanism for determining if you will be paying the maximum, and to allow payroll deduction of the maximum automatically.

- In the longer term, it would be very good if "income" could be computed using a stable currency, rather than the US dollar which might be rapidly depreciating in the future. This is another problem, though, and one which would plague both the current tax system and this new plan, and thus would be worth tackling separately (as I have proposed elsewhere in previous blog posts).

Anyway, that's the recap, with my current thoughts. I welcome comments, as usual.

A Fundamental, Pervasive Misunderstanding of Government

2010-03-23T17:30:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot more recently about the problems with governments in general, and the government of the US in particular. I'm sure that's largely motivated by the huge expansion of socialist government control recently, but the problem is not confined to just the Socialist party currently in power; there were many issues with the previous Republican party as well, and with the government in general. It would certainly behoove the American people to address the recent egregious government abuses (and throw out as many of the responsible Congress-scum as possible), but it's also worthwhile to look at the bigger picture, and see what can be done to address the more systemic problems.

For example, one of the challenges in a representative democracy is that the leadership, and by extension the actions of the leadership, are limited by how intelligent and informed the voting populace is. In an ideal world, you get direct representation, and a government which works for the benefit of the people, and is accountable to their wishes and the betterment of the country; in the real world, you get the Obamanation, where everything is for sale, corruption is rampant, and the government takes advantage of the gullibility of the people to operate directly against the interests of the country, and for their own collective advantage. Clearly the current system is badly broken, and if it is allowed to continue to operate as it currently functions, America as a free country experiment is doomed to failure. It's less clear, however, how to fix it; as long as the people are allowed to elect the "representatives", and do so in an idiotic, uninformed, misguided, or selfish (ie: own interests above the country's) manner, America will still be dismantled by those who would take advantage of the collective stupidity of the masses.

Now, something which I have long understood, and clearly the founding fathers understood, is evidently sorely lacking from the collective consciousness of the voting populace. That is, the idea that government is a necessary evil: it exists to serve several vital social roles which cannot (as far as anyone has devised) be effectively served by any other mechanism (such as national defense, and the other principles spelled out in America's Declaration of Independence). However, government is inefficient and dangerous doing even its vital roles, and even more so for any other responsibilities and powers it assumes. The concept that "the government should/will do more to improve this" shouldn't really have a place in intelligent discussion, as virtually any time the government expands its actions and/or scope of power, it does so to the detriment of the people. Moreover, the idea that a bigger or more involved government is somehow better for the people is possibly one of the biggest, most dangerous, and most implausible myths ever propagated by Socialist and their complacent or unwitting supporters. If we, the people, could somehow abolish one lie from the consciousness of the voting population, we could do worse than getting rid of the idea that government is anything more than a necessary evil, which needs to be kept in check, lest it consume everything good about the country.

Unfortunately, I don't have any good answers for how to better educate the voting populace, and I'm not sure that's the answer anyway. It's clear, though, that our current system is very broken, and getting more so with each passing year, and if we the people don't manage to enact some systemic fixes, we soon may not be able to at all.

The Party of No

2010-03-23T13:30:00.000-07:00

A random thought I had recently:

The liberal media has been relentless in their portrayal of anyone opposed to the massive influx of socialist agenda propagated by the Obamanation and the rest of the Socialist party (regardless of affiliation, but predominantly Republicans) as members of the Party of No. Their thinking, if I can speculate, is that the American people want change and reform, and by labeling the opposition as standing in the way of that change, ie: the people saying 'no', they can galvanize opposition to their overhaul of the concept of the US into their socialist ideal.

I think the Republicans, and their "enemy of our enemy" friends, should turn the tables a bit, so to speak, and adopt the Party of No as the unofficial moniker for the Tea Party movement. After all, what is the Tea Party if not the Party of No to socialist takeovers? ... of No to putting up with backroom deals, corruption, and Washington politics as usual? ... of No to out-of-control government spending bankrupting our children and future generations? No to more massive unfunded entitlement programs? No to big government, no to losing more freedoms, no to everything the government is trying to do?

Ask yourself this: would a politician voting 'no' on every single bill presented by the repugnant corrupt Congress we have now be any worse than your average Congress-scum? Why must the voters choose between big-government neocons and big-government socialists? We need a Party of No More, and it seems like the media, as an extension of the liberal political propaganda machine, has created the opening, and the American people just need capable trustworthy representatives to step into it, and pledge their support for the people, the country, and the Constitution, and be the Party of No.

Bunning deserves props; media comparison

2010-03-02T09:00:00.000-08:00

Sen Jim Bunning (Kentucky) deserves some thanks today; he's temporarily stalling the Obamanation from wasting more of our money ($10,000,000,000 this time) on extending various government support programs, which, although popular, are the continuing bane of America's long-term well-being (being as the largest long-term problem America has is the culture of entitlement, and nothing feeds the culture of entitlement as much as more government spending on entitlement programs). Granted, it's only a temporary setback; the money will be printed/spent soon anyway; and the objection is not to spending the money, but rather a statement about the blatant hypocrisy of Congress proposing the unfunded waste just days after approving "pay as you go" rules for new spending (which this clearly violates in concept, although not in letter). Still, I have to approve of someone in the cesspool of Congress doing the right thing for the country, since it's such a rarity these days.

On a related note, here are some representative samples of the story (and some reader comments), from the [colloquial] conservative and liberal press outlets:
- Fox News
- AP

Feel free to decide for yourself which one gives you the better, more complete picture of what's actually going on, and extrapolate about which side of the political spectrum contains the bulk of the intelligent and informed participants.

Chronicling Obama's Wasting of Your Money

2010-02-19T11:29:00.000-08:00

I'm somewhat fascinated by the way the Obama administration is using the roughly $800,000,000,000 blank check which Congress generously gave it (of our money) at the beginning of Obama's term. Nominally the money was for saving the economy from disastrous ruin, and for job creation/preservation (both noble goals, and both utterly unrelated to and unaffected by this unprecedented bold display of waste and largess). The Obama administration has been dolling out this money slowly, with careful thought, spread between bribes, payouts, PR moves, partisan initiative support, and other targets for maximal political value. A brilliant strategy, on its face, as long as you can control the media message and continue to "get away" with it.

I wonder, though, what would happen if one or two large-impact media organizations started chronicling the various handouts and political giveaways for what they really are. For example, consider today's $1,500,000,000 handout of your money. What if, instead of the typical coverage, somebody was covering the event from the perspective of an average, fiscally responsible, hard-working American; eg:

Today, Obama gave $1,500,000,000 of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars to state housing agencies, to help pay for their increasing bureaucratic oversight and to help fund some new programs. Your money will help pay for people who are underemployed stay in houses they can no longer afford, help pay for houses people bought who could never actually afford them, and help subsidize payments for people who used their homes as ATM machines to live above their means. States have yet to announce how much of this funding will effectively (through budget redirection) go to subsidizing general state government waste and corruption, but sources indicate that at least part of the money will actually go to dead-beat home debtors.

Hey Fox News, if you happen to be reading this, feel free to use my blurb when you describe this latest taxpayer ripoff. I'd love to see a regular column for each of the Obama "stimulus" handouts with a similar real-world perspective...

Obama and the Boy Scouts?

2010-02-11T15:14:00.001-08:00

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts. In lieu of this, and being a boy scout once upon a time, I thought it might be fun to evaluate our comrade Obama against the traits which define a boy scout, per the scout oath. We'll keep score, and see how Obama stacks up to other American boys whom he would nominally be setting an example for.

So, if I remember correctly, a scout is:

Trustworthy

People with this quality are honest, can be trusted to do the right thing even if it difficult, and are not corrupt. Any of this sound like any politician, much less Obama? Leading of with a solid zero points for this one.

Loyal

This one is more mixed, since it really depends on who you're considering. Obama has been very loyal to his liberal base and campaign doners, pilfering billions in taxpayer money for special interests while continuing to relentlessly advocate a socialist agenda. On the other hand, he has cheerfully ignored his duty to uphold the Constitution, his responsibility to protect the country from enemies, and his promises to change corrupt politics in Washington. We'll give him 1/2 a point.

Helpful

Well, I guess if you're a campaign doner or a banking executive you might disagree, but I think most of the rest of the country would give him a zero here. It might be hard to say what another person might have done in his place, but it's hard to believe anyone could have been less hopeful to America's long-term interests than Obama so far. No points here.

Friendly

Hm, gonna have to say mixed. Obama puts on a good face publicly, and is fairly proficient and reciting his prepared speeches, but behind closed doors (and increasingly publicly) he's revealing more of his contempt for anyone who refuses to bow to him and fall in line. Still, 1/2 point for this.

Courteous

It's hard to be a seasoned politician without mastering this quality, and Obama succeeds here. Some might argue that bowing to foreign dictators and giving Iran the green light to develop nuclear weapons is a bit too generous for the American President, but it's hard to argue that Obama is not accommodating and cordial. A full point for this one.

Kind

This one is not really applicable to the presidency, so I'm gonna discount it. I have no idea if Obama exhibits this quality or not.

Obedient

Another pass on this one; you could argue he earns the point for sticking to the party line, but it's not really a desirable quality in his professional capacity, so I'll ignore it for scoring purposes.

Cheerful

Obama gets a 1/2 point for this one, as he's typically stoic.

Thrifty

If you could get negative points, it would be hard to capture the magnitude of failure on this point; I guess it will suffice to say a solid, unequivocal zero here.

Brave

Well, it would have been brave to let the big banks fail, instead of giving in to their blackmail. Also brave would have been standing up to your own party when they advanced bad and/or corrupt ideology. Working with the Republicans to fix the underlying actual problems with the banking system, instead of exploiting the crisis, that would have been brave. Obama is not that kind of person, no points here.

Clean

I'm gonna expand this from the colloquial physically clean to include corruption and dirty politics, since it seems more applicable to the position. Obama gets high marks for physical cleanliness, and low marks for political dirt. So, 1/2 a point here.

Reverent

In a surprise, I'm gonna have to give him reasonable credit here. After all, this typically denotes religious subservience, and Obama is a steadfast believer in the Church of Global Warming. He also might be Christian or Muslim depending on the occasion, is a strong believer in the socialist doctrine, and follows his party doctrine well. If only he believed in the Constitution and the separation of powers in the US government, he's get a whole point; only 1/2 point then.

So, as a final tally, we have 10 applicable categories, and Obama scores a 3.5/10. Hm, I guess Obama would not have made a good boy scout. Oh well, happy anniversary to the Boy Scouts anyway, just don't look to Obama as a role model. :)

Taking the bad with the good

2010-02-10T14:31:00.000-08:00

It's time for another installment of "things I would do if I were president, which are probably indicative of the fact that I'm the farthest thing from a politician you can imagine". In this episode, a voting strategy I would adopt, publicly and vocally, to try to put some sort of limit on the amount of absolute garbage, pork, largess, and corrupt money funneling which gets passed through our Congress. I'm philosophically aligned, in this, with Ron Paul, who voted against the bill containing his own amendment because he observed it was also filled with tacked-on corrupt garbage and pork, just because the other despicably corrupt Senators knew it was likely to pass. So, without further ado, this would be my plan, in bullet-point form:

- I will veto any bill which contains any provision which I consider harmful to the American people, no matter how beneficial other provisions might be. In doing so, if there are beneficial provisions in the bill, I will ask Congress to pass the beneficial provisions as separate distinct bills which I can approve.

- I will publish a web site, visible to everyone, with the offending provisions of any bills I veto enumerated, along with explanations as to why I consider them harmful.

- On the same site, I will publish all the provisions I consider beneficial which have been proposed or offered but not yet passed, to encourage Congress to pass them in an unencumbered manner.

- When possible and clear, the site will also list the primary supporters and detractors for both the damaging and beneficial provisions, such that the American people can get a sense of which members of Congress are offering helpful legislation, and which are offering malfeasance, corruption, pork, and/or simply bad ideas.

For this, I'm certain I would be labeled the great obstructor, or something similar, and very little legislation would pass, at least for a while. However, something like this would likely have significant enough long-term benefits to our mess of a legislative process, that even four or eight years of passing absolutely nothing would have positive benefits overall. Then again, as I said, ideas like this (along with a healthy aversion to public exposure) are why I'm not a politician, and am unlikely to ever become one.

Jobs report, focusing on the big picture

2010-01-08T16:12:00.000-08:00

The latest jobs data is out, and as expected the US lost more jobs. What was apparently underestimated by the "professionals" was the magnitude of the job losses, although I fail to see why: if you can't figure out why Socialism is bad for business, productivity, or wealth (outside of the Party which is running the government), read a book or something, and for the love of rational thought stop calling yourself a professional analyst. Rather than dwell on this dismal inevitable destruction of our country, though, I figured it would be nice to take a step back, and focus on some big-picture, overall observations which sometimes get lost in the everyday blunders of our government and its incompetent and malicious leadership.

For example, let's look at jobs. Back nearly a year ago, we spent around $800 Billion of our money to prevent unemployment from getting above 8%. At the time, that was more than the country had spent on both wars during the Bush administration combined (iirc), but we were promised the enormous spending would prevent a recession, and get the country's economy going again. Now, we're looking at 10% unemployment (which is the rosy fake number, real unemployment is 17.3%), and our corrupt politicians are talking about more stimulus programs and tax breaks. Meanwhile, the government has been spending the initial money on seemingly whatever it wants: pork for this guy, handout for that guy, etc. So big picture on the stimulus and related promises: abject, total, inexcusable failure.

What about government interference in private markets? Obama during his campaign: "I'm not a socialist." Obama during financial crisis: "we have no desire to run banks." Obama during auto company crisis brought about by uncompetitive union wages and poor products: "we have no desire to run the auto companies" (oh, and the union/uncompetitive problem isn't fixed either). Obama on the housing market now relying entirely on GSE/FHA because they are ignoring losses and underpricing risk, now that they have explicit taxpayer loss payoffs and the Fed is purchasing their assets... no, even Obama is not dumb enough to try to justify this debacle as somehow good for the economy, or not massive government interference. Big picture on keeping the government out of private enterprise: abject, total, inexcusable failure.

How about more government cooperation, less partisan bickering, more "reaching across the isle" and compromising, and a new era of transparency in government? Huh, does any of that sound like the Obamanation, at all? I mean, I can't remember a time in my lifetime when we had a more corrupt, partisan, bickering, and contemptible government, even before the utterly laughable idea of more transparency while the Democrat leaders hash out socialized health care and who knows what else in secret meetings. Big picture on government reform: abject, total, inexcusable failure.

I could go on, there's plenty more: reduction in health care costs, improvements in the financial industry, handling of scientific matters and religion (eg: global warming), etc. I think the important point to keep in mind, though, is in the mist of all the individual failures, contemptible actions, and repugnant bills this Administration and Congress keeps piling onto the American people, in the big picture, all the benefits promised in exchange for everything we are being forced to sacrifice, every one of them, have failed to materialize (and probably never had a chance of happening). All the big promises turned out to be massive lies. All the liberties which are gone bought us nothing. The massive crushing debt we have assumed to fuel the unquenchable greed and corruption of the Obamanation has been for naught. In the big picture, Americans made a grievous, abject, total, and inexcusable error last election; there's just no other rational way to look at it.

Nationalizing our Health Care

2009-12-21T13:43:00.000-08:00

In case you're living in an information void (doubtful, if you're reading blogs), or missed the news, or can't apply basic logic to current events, the Democrats succeeded in the major hurdle to socializing health care in the US today. All it took was a few hundred million in corrupt payoffs in taxpayer dollars (who am I kidding, newly-printed money) to various fence-sitters and other scum; I guess the value of thirty pieces of silver has increased a bit with inflation. It's pretty much a done-deal now; just a few rubber-stamp procedures and a great big holiday present for a Socialist rulers.

Instead of focusing on the negative, though, I thought I'd focus on the positive aspects of this unmitigated disaster... but I couldn't find any. So instead, I'm going to extol, once again, what I think is possibly the most valuable thing we the voters could try to accomplish to prevent atrocities like this from being perpetrated by our government in the future.

It seems to me that the root of most of the evils our government brings upon us lies in the perversion of the federalist ideal; that is, when the government consolidates money and power, and then gives it out to states/people on a preferential basis. Without this ability, corrupt payoff legislation wouldn't be nearly as feasible. We wouldn't have as many subsidies for failure states, we wouldn't have government mandates and dictates backed by the threat of reduced federal funding, we wouldn't have preferential handouts of federal funds to states to buy votes; in short, if we can manage to cut of the money to the scum in Washington, the system would get a whole lot better.

Now, granted, that wouldn't be easy... but fighting enormous evil monstrosities never is. What we, the US, needs, is a return to a limited-government, in the sense of scope of role and funding thereof. There would be no debate about how best to nationalize health care if the federal government were Constitutionally prohibited from overstepping its limited roles (and that prohibition were enforced via real checks and balances). There would be no threat of cutting off funding if the federal government didn't ever give money to states, for anything, ever; that's an excellent litmus test for if something should not be allowed in a federalist system.

We, the people, need to stop fighting the leaves of the problem, and go after the trunk. There will always be despicable scum like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Ben Nelson in the country, and always be enough gullible and/or idiotic voters for corrupt evil politicians to get elected. We need the system to be better, to limit the damage they, or anyone else, can do to us. We need a return to the ideal of a government formed with the assumption that the people in charge will be hopelessly corrupt, and the more checks against their power, the better it is for the people.

Today is a dark day for the country, and there are more dark days ahead. It looks like we're in for a somber holiday season this year.

Torn on health-care nationalization

2009-12-04T15:44:00.000-08:00

I know this will seem strange coming from me, but at times, I find myself conflicted in my opinion on nationalizing the health care system in the US (as Congress is currently debating). I'm strongly of the opinion that it will be bad for our economy, reduce the qualify of care, drive skilled and intelligent people out of the field, raise costs, be horrible for the long-term financial solvency of the country, and contrary to much of what America stands for. On the other hand, though, if ever a business and group of people is so despicable, so intentionally ineffectual, and so malignant as to richly deserve comprehensive summary execution in the business sense, the private medical insurance industry is such a beast, and the not-insignificant silver-lining of a government takeover would be to see all those people cast out like the garbage they collectively are.

Let's look at some anecdotal examples from my life, which has been (thankfully) largely medical-issue free:
- I have always had [good] medical coverage through employer plans, HMO or PPO, I'm the "easy" case
- I had an emergency room visit which took four years, multiple legal threats, and weeks of my time to eventually resolve with the insurance company, the hospital, and multiple collection agencies, which caused untold stress and unfairly damaged my credit rating
- I had a primary care physician facility which I literally could not contact over the phone to do anything (they never picked up or returned calls), and I couldn't schedule anything without going through them due to HMO restrictions
- Over 50% of my medical visits (routine checkups, etc.) have resulting in insurance billing "issues" which I have needed to intervene to resolve
- I can't get prescription drugs covered by my medical plan without manual calls to the company every single time, because their automated system is always wrong (it seems the default is to not pay anything unless the covered patient calls, waits on hold, and corrects the problem every time)
- I dread going to the emergency room, even though I have medical insurance, because I know it's inevitably going to lead to a billing problem, which will be months of work for me
- I have an outstanding bill for "lab work" from six months ago, where the other parts of the visit were billed correctly, but somehow this part cannot be fixed, or the various participants don't want to resolve it, but rather just repeatedly bill the patient
- I can't imagine how much of my time will need to be spent on just dealing with medical insurance problems if/when I have children; given my current experience, it might literally be a part-time job

I'm not harboring any delusions: nationalizing the process is unlikely to make any of these problems better. There would be ways to fix most of them, but they are beyond the Neanderthalic thought-processes of our Congress-scum. Nevertheless, if and when our government destroys private medical insurance in the US, I will not cry for these companies; they are a blight on the country in their current form and operation, and they are the most compelling argument for health-care nationalization.

Health care "debate" begins in Senate... kinda...

2009-12-01T00:34:00.000-08:00

So let me begin with a rhetorical question: doesn't Congress have anything important to do? I realize that may sound silly given the thousands of Billions of dollars they are creating semi-annually these days, but as the health care takeover "debate" begins, I'm reminded of just how ludicrously time-wasteful our Congressional process is. For anyone with a hazy crystal ball, let me give you a preview of how the next couple of months are going to go:

- Both parties will make speeches, primarily in the media, about how the nationalization of our health care system is great/horrible for the country (and the Democrats will pay lip-service to the idea that their takeover is not nationalization, and everyone who's not a blind follower will continue to laugh at that aspect of their contentions)
- Various amendments will be offered; some trivial Democrat-sponsored ones will pass, major Democrat-backed ones will fail (both left-wing and conservative), and all Republican-backed ideas/plans will be shot down without a second thought
- Eventually, the Democrats will call for a vote, likely after they have identified the necessary number of thoroughly corrupt and reprehensible enough Senators from both sides who can be purchased with political favors and large handouts, and incorporated those bribes and grand larcenies from taxpayers into the bill
- The bill will pass the Senate easily after being greased by the filibuster threat with billions in new spending bribes, and an empty and laughable promise of being budget neutral
- The house will pass an entirely different, and much more radical left-wing, version
- The two bills will be "reconciled" behind closed doors to form a Socialist wet-dream monstrosity, which will then be enacted into law without anyone reading it, although Republicans will bash the Democrats for this after the fact
- Everyone will position themselves for the next fight, and the 2010/2012 elections, where Republicans will hope to dismantle the entire thing if they can retake Congress and the Presidency (which will largely depend on how contemptible their candidates are)

The only upside of this Kubuki theater procession of events, which is admittedly not insignificant, is that while the Senate is busy "debating" this next Socialist legislative disaster in the making, they are less likely to be enacting any other new laws; which, given recent government actions, is probably a really good thing for the country. Can I vote we settle all Senate debates on the Congressional floor with knife fights, and hold multi-month special elections to replace anyone who is unable to continue at any point? Would a completely non-functional Congress really be worse than what we have now?

On the "Job Loss" "Recovery"

2009-10-25T11:23:00.001-07:00

First, it was the jobless recovery, where the economy was magically getting better due to the artificial increases in spending fueled by deficit currency devaluation and favoritist handout programs. Then it became the "job loss" recovery, when it became more obvious that the various handout programs and Kabuki Theater money printing and shuffling wasn't actually creating or even preserving any actual jobs. At some point, maybe, in the distant future, some astute historian can berate the current administrations and its other various socialist-leaning philosophical supporters with something akin to "it's all about the jobs, right, and those blithering morons just couldn't get the trivially simple concept into their empty fascist skulls".

The American economy is not going to get "better" without jobs. On the upside, a healthy business and job environment does wonders to cure many economic ills; on the downside, every Democrat policy, thought, and action seems expressly designed to crush job creation and maintenance, and the blithering morons are running the country currently. Government jobs (explicitly, as in all the people directly employed by various government agencies, or implicitly, as in all the people employed as a result of the government printing money and/or subsidizing various industries above and beyond their normal competitive capacity) are a net zero: they don't help, but there are far worse things the government could be doing as it strips the remaining remnants of economic prosperity from our children (eg: creating a nationalized health care nightmare).

This goes along with another facet of the same problem: handouts. Handouts (subsidization, stimulus, support, etc.) are the antithesis of jobs; not only do they supersede the will/need to create/have jobs, but they encourage a national philosophy of begging for more handouts, which is even more destructive to economic prosperity. It has become more obvious to me, recently, that the whole handout mindset is likely the #1 long-term ailment of the US economy, and the enormous psychological damage which handout programs inflict on the US is downplayed, or outright ignored, when handout programs are considered. Americans have moved beyond asking what their country can do for them, and now are upset when their country does not do enough for them, and we will not be able to recover economically until or unless we somehow halt the progression of this crippling philosophical disease. Yes, it really is that bad.

If our esteemed leaders and "public servants" has any interest at all, in the slightest, in helping the people of the country, they would be focused nearly-entirely on private sector job creation, and on eliminating handouts. The day I hear the beggar on the street change his pitch from "can you spare some money" to "anything I can do to earn some money from you" is they day I know we have succeeded in reversing the tide of national sentiment. Instead, all the US people seem capable of debating is who should get what in the latest handout programs, and it's a road to ruin.

It doesn't matter as much who gets what benefits in Obamacare, or how much banking executives are allowed to pay themselves out of government subsidization, or how long unemployment benefits are extended, or how much money the government gives to the housing industry to reward them for the bubble: they are all, every one of them, symptoms of a greater, more insidious, and immensely more destructive meta-problem. We, the people, should not be asking how we can mold the latest handout program to be less detrimental; we need to be thinking about how we can eliminate the root scourge of political malfeasance which continues to doom the American people to a life of servitude and begging for scraps from the master's table. If we can free ourselves from this latest crushing evil, economic recovery, prosperity, and freedom from government oppression would come along for free.

Been away...

2009-10-25T10:02:00.000-07:00

I'm sure some people noticed; I've been on vacation for the last couple weeks, with spotty internet access. That, and the resurgence of playing a certain MMO has left me with less free time to allocate to blogging about the idiocies of the world. I have not, however, experienced a significant decline in opinions; and you can expect to see a few more posts shortly with possibly some travel observations and likely some political current events opinions.

Just to be clear for my readers, though (since I'm getting enough followers to care about keeping people somewhat informed), this blog won't be a daily thing; if you want daily news recaps and commentary, there are several other excellent sources, some of which I myself follow (LCR for political current events, CR for econ news, etc.). I'll keep posting sporadically, maybe a few times a week, on topics which interest me and/or philosophizing on how things should work in my idealized world. Hopefully that'll work for ya'll out there in internet-world.

Good to be back. :)

Leaving (fleeing?) California

2009-10-05T11:37:00.001-07:00

For reference, this article paints a pretty clear picture about why I'll likely be leaving the [previously] Golden State in the next couple of years. I'm not sure what happens when a state fails, when the poverty-stricken, largely-illegal non-tax-paying masses overwhelm the legitimate legal residents, when the education system finally collapses under the weight of its own malaise and corruption, when the state finances finally collapse under the weight of decades of financial idiocy and irresponsibility, when the government cannot function any more... but I'm pretty sure I don't want to be living here when it happens. I think the best California can hope for at this point is a clean start, a purging of the entire broken horribly-failed experiment, a re-write of the state Constitution to include many more protections from the current state, actual enforcement of immigration laws, and a new competent government with minimal social unrest. On its current trajectory, though, the future looks decidedly less optimistic.

More fleshed out thoughts on preventing future housing bubbles

2009-10-03T21:54:00.000-07:00

I've been giving this more thought recently, since pretty much nothing has been done to try to prevent future housing bubbles (indeed, the current administration/Congress has only done things to make the post-bubble recession worse). I've had thoughts on this previously, but these are my new, more fully-formed ideas, the up-to-date thoughts from my brain on this issue (until they get revised again).

First, let's establish some guidelines. An affordable loan is one which is approximately no more than 4x your annual income, based on general loan guidelines. Second, we'll call a loan made to someone which brings their total outstanding loan balance for all existing loans at the time of the loan under 4x annual income a "qualified" loan. Third, for annual income, we're talking average of last 2 years reported gross income for tax purposes.

Ok, so here's the thoughts:
- No loan which is not "qualified" can be subsidized by the government, at all, or traded on the government-backed exchanges. So no FHA, no Fannie Mae, no government money whatsoever for any non-qualified loan.
- No security containing or based on (eg: a derivative of) a non-qualified loan can be rated higher than A, by law, and cannot be owned by any fund/organization which buys only "investment-grade" securities.
- This one is more of a personal-preference, but I suggest we officially call non-qualified loans (by the above definition) "Over-extended" loans. This way there is no confusion about the intent, and it will be more difficult for ambitions RE industry people to push unsuspecting buyers into risky, over-extended loans.

At this point I'd normally make a wrap-up comment about how the Obamanation has failed horribly at their purported goal of consumer protection, and how all their so-called "reforms" are just socialist power-grabs, but I think at this point if you're smart enough to be reading blogs (or just reading, for that matter), the corruption and malfeasance of the Obama administration and our current Congress is probably self-evident, so I'll leave my thoughts to stand without the closing obligatory admonition of the idiots currently running the country (unless you count this sentence). :)

Entirely predictable result transpires

2009-10-01T14:50:00.001-07:00

Today, the WSJ noted that in the aftermath of the Cash for Clunkers debacle, the auto industry is in turmoil, with sales declining precipitously after the artificially-created demand dried up, as would be expected from something which merely distorted the demand curve, rather than actually stimulating demand (like, for example, creating more jobs would). This is causing dealerships to struggle, distortions and inefficiencies rippling through the supply chains, and further economic damage.

So to summarize, these are the entirely predictable results of this latest brain-dead handout scheme:
- Waste billions in taxpayer dollars for no economic benefit
- Create distortions in the auto manufacturing and supply by only giving handouts for buying certain types of cars, rewarding the manufacturers of those models disproportionally (with taxpayer dollars)
- Compressing the demand curve, creating distortions in the industry which will lead to closed dealerships and suppliers, costing more jobs and doing more damage to the US economy

... and yet, even with all that, we get news reports about how this was an unexpected side-effect, and nobody could have predicted, etc. Hello? Is anybody home upstairs in any of the "news" outlets? The only headline about this should be "Idiotic Bailout does Entirely Predictable Damage to Economy", possibly with an addendum to write your congress-morons if you didn't want your children's tax money spent on hastening the demise of the American Dream.

Cause there's another equally idiotic handout extension to distort the housing market further in the pipeline...

Bill Maher on tax protest march

2009-09-21T16:02:00.000-07:00

Bill Maher had a marginally amusing, if not highly partisan and inaccurate, rant about the people marching on Washington to protest the liberal destruction of the US ideal. Putting aside his swipes and vitriol, he does raise an interesting point: we should find some way to tie the costs of not taking care of one's own health to the cost of getting health care. After all, subsidizing health care doesn't help overall if everyone gets less healthy along the way.

Now, like many liberals, Maher's knee-jerk idiotic reaction is to echo the calls for taxing foods which are bad for people. Sure this might help the immediate problem, but at the unnecessary cost of big government, big regulation, stifling of freedoms, and precedent for more wrong-headed approaches. I would suggest that there's a much better way to tie the amount paid for health care to the magnitude of the care required, based on how you maintain your own health, without all those nasty side-effects.

I propose that we have a system where people pay for health insurance for themselves and their families, where the cost is based on their various health risk factors (eg: lifestyle, habits, etc.) and general health-affecting factors (primarily age). This distributes the cost of random events among many people, while allowing individuals with unhealthy habits and/or higher risk bear a higher proportion of the costs for everyone's care. No nasty big-government intrusions, no big wasteful bureaucracies, more personal accountability for one's health: it seems like a win-win-win. What say you, Bill Maher (as if he reads this blog)?

If only we could get from wherever we are now to that ideal...

California's education system

2009-09-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

I was struck with an interesting thought on the way home yesterday, while listening to a radio ad "brought to me" by the California Teacher's Association. Every advertisement, promotion, lobby effort, sponsored message, etc. which is paid for, even in part, by the CTA is being bought directly or indirectly with my taxpayer dollars. Moreover, that's money ostensibly allocated to educating our children, which is being diverted away from our children and to lobbying efforts to enrich the union and its members.

That's worth keeping in mind, I think, the next time you hear about over-crowded class sizes, underpaid teachers, miserable education rankings, or other updates on the state of public education in California. Think of it this way: every CTA-sponsored ad/message you hear is directly taking some tax money away from educating our children, and directly and intentionally contributing to the miserable broken failure that is the California public education system. The next time the CTA wants more tax money, reflect on how much they have directly wasted and diverted already, and evaluate on if they are doing what you want done with your money, instead of educating children; as they say, "the more you know..."

A litmus test for news sources?

2009-09-14T12:43:00.000-07:00

Something I have observed among the people I know: intelligent people like to be well-informed. This principle seems to extend beyond philosophical and political differences, and across various spectrums of communication. It's what leads people to explore new avenues of communication, seek out dissenting opinions, and generally favor unbiased information presentation. Indeed, it's probably largely the reason people read blogs like this one.

It's rare that an opportunity would arise to clearly and unambiguously judge whether a news organization or source is presenting all the important information in a clear and unbiased way; many people argue about this very topic in relation to various news sources, with no clear criteria. It's fortuitous, then, when events come along which offer a clear differentiation, a litmus test of veracity and integrity for news sources. Fortunately for us, 9/12/09 offered just such a test.

As you, a blog reader, are probably already aware, there was a large protest march at Washington DC on 9/12/09. There's some debate over the exact number of people participating, but estimates put the number between one and two million people, making it the largest protest of the Obama administration, and the largest gathering in the capitol since the coronation of our Dear Leader. Surely, then, if anything warrants news coverage, the largest consolidated protest of the government in recent history would be such an event, and no matter what your personal stance on the Obamanation and its policies, you would want to be informed of it.

Here's the NY Times search on '9/12 protest', see if you can spot their extensive coverage. Or maybe you prefer CNN, self-proclaimed "America's leader in news". Or, closer to home, the LA Times coverage. Good extensive coverage, guys... way to go.

Now, you can say I picked liberal-biased news sites, and you might be right; if you picked a random news outlet, chances are it's liberal-biased, and might be reporting on the largest protest in recent US history with a liberal bias. But even if you want your news colored with a healthy dose of left-wing bias, you still want the news... like, significant events which are occurring, right now, in the world. I know I would feel very uneasy about reading news sites, large or small, where I knew reporting on significant world events was being suppressed and filtered before I got to see it, and you should to, no matter what additives and flavoring you like with your news.

So, I humbly suggest you take this opportunity, and recommend to your friends and colleges, to use this rare event as a litmus test for your news sources, and filter out the ones which are not giving you the important information on significant events in the world. We the people cannot change what various media conglomerates present to us as the news, but the one power we have always had is the ability to vote with our feet, as it were, and our viewing/listening/reading attentions. People have sacrificed much to preserve the freedom of the press; the least we can do to honor those efforts is turn away from the news organizations which would throw it away.

Health care reform "debate" is laregly over

2009-09-12T15:29:00.000-07:00

In his most recent speech to Congress pushing his vision of socialized medical care for the United States, President Obama said the time for debate is over, and the time for action is now. Now, it seems to be there's still quite a bit of difference of opinion over what health care "reform" should constitute, and I would personally contend that rash action without consensus is probably worse than no action at all, but on one point at least I can agree with a socialist leader: there's not much left to debate health care reform.

Let's look at the largely undisputed facts. Health care in the US is expensive, painful, and getting worse. Lack of consumer protections in the insurance industry have allowed the process to become painful even for people "fully" covered. Tying insurance tax incentives and group plans to employment has made it difficult and painful to have private insurance, and stifled competition. Medical liability laws have made health care very expensive, with much of the expense going to lawyers and ambitious plaintiffs. Medicare is bankrupting medical practitioners, while simultaneously creating a massive unfunded liability to the country which is predicted to eventually surpass Social Security as the largest financial debacle the country has ever created. There are some very strong arguments for reform, and fixing some of the massive problems which everyone can agree on.

On the other hand, there are some bright spots. America leads the world in medical research, both in procedures and pharmaceuticals. You can generally get care reasonably quickly, as compared to some countries where multi-month wait times are common. Emergency rooms are only packed in areas with large populations of illegal immigrants, and solving the latter problem would help a lot with the former problem. Doctors are still paid well, and medical professions still attract some of the best, most competent people as a result. So there are some bright spots with health care in the US, and whatever the government decides to do, they should endeavor to preserve as many of the good points as possible.

Now let's look at the "debate". Republicans have been the minority voice with their ideas, largely because of the Democrat majority and huge liberal media bias, but they have a few points/ideas. Among them are reducing medical liability to keep costs down, allowing cross-state insurance shopping for more competition, and developing some sort of non-profit insurance program to help provide coverage for people who cannot get insurance through an employer. They have also talked about reforming Medicare to reduce overhead costs and limit long-term costs for the taxpayers. All of these are good ideas, and although they don't address all the problems, they also don't damage any of the good aspects of the current system.

The Democrats, on the other hand, want to go an entirely new direction, and nationalize health care entirely. Essentially, the Democrat plan (at least the most popular version expressed) would replace all private insurance with an expanded version of Medicare, which would cover everyone in the country, regardless of income, job status, legally, conditions, or any other factors. This essentially would destroy all the bright spots of the current system, while aggravating most, if not all, of the problems. All of this is irrelevant for the Democrats, though; it's part of their long-term agenda to socialize as much of the country as possible, and any medical reform which does not move in that direction is unacceptable to a large sect of the Democrats.

What is amazing to me, though, is that for everything I have listed above, there is virtually no debate. Nobody on the Democrats side has debated that any of the Republican proposals would be good for the US; in fact, some Democrats favor the reforms (in concept). Similarly, nobody on the Democrats has argued that any of their proposals do anything to solve any of the problems I listed, or even not make them worse; there's a tacit acknowledgement that socializing medical care is worth the admitted degradation in services and increases in cost. In essence, there's no debate on either side about any of the facts or proposals; there are just real, legitimate philosophical differences between the two parties and their ideal versions of health care in the US.

So indeed, the time for debate might be over. The US people need to decide if they want socialized medical care, and vote in/out their "representatives" as appropriate. The Democrats need to decide how much sacrificing the principles of democracy, and acting against the interests of the people and the country, is acceptable to push their agenda. Each Republican in Congress needs to decide if they can be bribed with incentives and pork to compromise their principles and get on board for the Democrat's historic push to reform the US to match Obama's socialist vision. There's really nothing left to debate; it is now simply a matter of which group will be stronger, the would-be leaders of Obama's new socialist US, or the few people left defending democracy and freedom.

More scary stuff: indoctination

2009-09-02T17:34:00.000-07:00

So it seems like every time I read anything about the government these days, it's one abject failure after another. Whether it's bailouts, handouts, encroaching socialism, corruption revelations, or other malignancy, each day brings new reasons to feel disgusted with your "representatives" in the Obamanation. However, every once in a while they plumb a new low, and indoctrinating school children could just be the new bar-setter for utterly despicable actions which bring my hatred for Obama and the misguided people who elected him (and/or the few remaining zealots who still support him) to entirely new levels.

Maybe I'm over-reacting. I mean, surely the Obamanation is doing more destructive things to the United States in general than force-feeding liberal propaganda to impressionable school children. Destruction of the national currency has got to be worth more overall "evil points" than brainwashing poor Richard and Jane. Achieving the end-goal of full Socialism will probably have worse long-term on our children than one day of indoctrination. Reversing the damage Obama is reeking on our economy will surely take longer than teaching the very important lesson that people, especially politicians, lie a lot.

Yet, for some reason, using your position to brainwash children with your propaganda seems worse than all those things. For me, it's kinda the ultimate low, worse than virtually any other damage you can do. Not that I needed another reason to think Obama was bad for the country, but this moves him from irresponsible and misguided to straight-up evil.

Remember when $40,000,000,000 seemed like a lot of money?

2009-09-02T14:24:00.000-07:00

I had a somewhat amusing conversation yesterday, talking about government oversight on a defense project a while ago, and it was mentioned that because the government was spending $40 Billion on a project, they demanded some oversight (which naturally led to complications and waste, but that's beside the point). I was struck with a kinda sentimental nostalgia for the times when $40 Billion was considered a significant amount of money, something which required some oversight and planning before spending, and an amount which would appall people if the government squandered or flushed. It wasn't too long ago when that amount was considered a lot of money for the government to spend; yet now, it seems almost insignificant.

Consider recent government wastes:
- $180 Billion to bail out AIG, so they could pay off gambling debts of other banks
- $700 Billion for TARP, so the taxpayers could absorb the losses from the banking industry as repayment for causing the economic meltdown
- ~$60 Billion to buy up the failing auto industry, and prevent it from needing to be competitive
- ~$900 Billion in "stimulus" handouts for "tax rebates", green incentives, kickbacks, bribes, etc.
- $3 Billion for the Cash for Making Nationalizing the Auto Industry Look Good Historically program
- A few more billion in handouts to help prop up the real estate industry, as a "thank you" for creating the massive housing bubble
- $100+ Billion pending to the FDIC, to cover all the unrealized losses they have absorbed due to lax and/or nonexistent oversight
- $100+ Billion for the GSE's, so we can keep underwriting bad loans, cause that was such a good idea
- ?? Billion for FHA, so they can give more horrible loans to people who shouldn't be buying houses, and keep housing unaffordable for everyone else
- $10? Trillion pledged by the Fed to who-knows-what banks, corporations, private persons, hedge funds, or whatever other people/entities have received taxpayer bailouts in secret
- $1000+ Billion for socializing health care, as a down-payment toward socializing the rest of the country
- oh, let's not forget the ~$1000 Billion annual deficit for "normal" spending this year, before all the extra spending, handouts, kickbacks, bribes, corruption, accounting tricks, etc.
- etc, etc, etc.

Picking on $40 Billion in government waste today would be kinda like pointing out some dirt on top of the enormous pool of sewage we're swimming in. It makes me long for the "good ol' days" where our national debt was conceptually re-payable, and national insolvency was only a "long-term" problem.

On taxation: fixing the heart of the problem

2009-08-13T11:55:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot of talk recently about big changes in the US. We are running the largest deficit in history, increasing at a record rate which is around 4x higher than the previous administration (which was ridiculed for their enormous deficit spending by the people in the current administration). Our economy is in tatters, still losing jobs as debt-fueled personal consumption is not recovering, no new bubble is appearing, and our production base has been all but destroyed. Our public education system is horribly inefficient and ineffectual, our more liberal states are struggling to correct years of over-spending, and our de-facto global economic leadership is being questioned.

In response to this, our government under President Obama has taken bold measures. We have increased deficit spending, giving out Trillions of dollars to the banks which helped caused the reckless gambling economic meltdown. We have virtually nationalized our automobile industry, helping to ensure they will never again be competitive, or even solvent without government subsidization. We have stepped up efforts to tax industries and business owners, to accelerate the destruction of harmful and polluting employment. The administration is pushing to nationalize our health care industry, to ensure that the cost rises to match the level of frustration people have getting effective insured medical care. Next year the administration will push plans to impose enormous crippling new energy taxes, to insure our industry will never be able to recover. The Obamanation hopes publicly, without logical basis, that one or more of these bold initiatives will magically restart our economy, while privately delighting in the opportunity this crisis have given them to push the Socialist agenda more than any other period in nearly the last century.

At this point, you might be asking yourself: why is the government doing everything they can to make the problems worse? Well, the answer is two-fold: first, the government generally makes problems worse when they act, regardless of their nominal intentions, and second, in this case the Obamanation is not trying to fix the problems, they are trying to use the problems as an excuse to instigate a Socialist government, and in that respect they are succeeding. More depressingly, even if the citizens manage to defeat this brazen attempt at a government takeover, there's nothing to prevent the next attempt (promised already in the form of Tax and Cap), or subsequent attempts. What we, the people, really need is something which goes to the heart of the problem, and seeks to cripple the government's ability to do damage like this not just now, but in the future as well.

One of the big, underlying problems which is a common thread in the recent actions of the Obamanation is the relentless expansion of government, and aggressive pursuit of social manipulation through monetary, and primarily tax, policy. Now, most people (from all political ideologies) don't have a problem with the government spending money to "help" the people in general; the primary source of disagreement stems from how much money to spend, and on what things. When the income tax was instantiated in the US, the purpose was to fund a war effort, and the enormous burden placed upon the taxpayers was a staggering 2% of income. With the nature of politicians, this naturally grew from there, reaching nominal rates above 90% in some cases. This carte blanche to expand and manipulate the tax base gives license to the government to pursue spending and wealth redistribution programs of various forms, with no obvious check or limit, and it's getting worse. This is the problem which I would propose to solve, as a stepping stone to addressing many of the other problems.

Now, many people would argue (myself included) that the only legitimate purpose for taxation is to fund the government's operations. This obviously conflicts with the current usage of taxation, which is as much about dictating and manipulating social policy as funding operations. Moreover, the operation themselves are often social policy based, rather than what could be considered legitimate fundamental government operations. My proposal does not address this problem, however it would, I think, provide some incentive for people to fix this problem, and a platform for the people to exert leverage against problems like this in the future.

I would propose a Constitutional amendment to limit the total amount of taxation each individual in the US is subject to, per year, based on income. To wit:

Amendment:

The government shall not, though all direct taxation, collect more than 25% of any person's income per tax period.

Furthermore, the government shall not collect more than 20% of any person's income during a tax period without declaring a state of fiscal emergency at the beginning of the tax period, and stating the maximum percentage of income which it will collect during that tax period (not to exceed 25%).

What this would do, and not do:

Obviously, this would impose an upper bound on income collected by the government through direct taxation (income, property, other). It does not limit indirect taxation (sales, tariffs, etc.), so the tax rates could, and probably would, still be ridiculous. It also, notably, does not dictate that the tax rates need be uniform, or the collection not have favored activities (eg: deductions), or that the money need be used only to fund essential government operations; all of these are noble goals, but all are beyond the scope of what I think is essential to have in our Constitution, at least at this point.

What the first part does is impose a hard limit on the government's ability to drain money from its people, which would necessarily impose a limit on the expansion of government, and wealth-redistribution programs. This ignores devaluation of the currency, of course, which is an ongoing problem I hope the government will eventually solve, but is beyond the scope of this effort. Is would be, however, a good first step, and would be sure to cause some consternation in the halls of special-interest payouts and corrupt favor mongering.

The second part forces the government to acknowledge, publicly, that they are doing a bad job, fiscally-speaking. While I don't think that will dissuade anyone or cause any immediate change, it does set the stage for further initiatives, which could be tied to the state declaration. For example, you could limit the scope of additional spending while in that state, or not pay the members of Congress, or limit terms to one while the government is in that state; all of these would just serve to re-enforce the concept that it's "bad". Note that I would prefer a number more like 10% as the "soft-limit", but I realize that with the current state of our enormous government services set, that's unrealistic. This, however, would be a good start.

BTW, I need to acknowledge that this post was somewhat inspired by Penn & Teller's BS episode about taxes, which is highly recommended. There might be a followup later about the other excellent point they raised: the complexity of laws, tax code included, serves the interest of the police state, and true freedom means eliminating all the ways you ambiguously "might" be guilty of something from the laws; but that's for another time.

Anyway, thanks for reading; feel free to add your thoughts. I have no idea how anyone could/would go about starting a process to get a change like this done, and I certainly don't have enough time/effort to do so, but in the spirit of making a more perfect union, this is something I would do.

On the Obama/Joker poster...

2009-08-04T12:20:00.000-07:00

If you're reading blogs, I'm sure you've seen it; if not, here's a good reference article.

Couple of quick thoughts:

- All the outraged liberals should be ridiculed for being hypocritical scum; there was a nearly identical image of Bush published in a magazine during his tenure, and Bush/Cheney have been called much worse explicitly.

- To say that the "socialist" label is hurtful and dangerous is like saying an expose of illegal activities is hurtful and dangerous to the perpetrators; it may be so, but it's accurate, and free speech is a right we still (mostly) enjoy in the US, at least for now. Whether or not socialism is good for America is debatable, but anyone who doesn't at least acknowledge that Obama's policies are socialist is too stupid to vote, in my opinion.

- There are many potentially applicable quotes from the movie which could be applied to Obama, but I particularly like this one: "And in their desperation they turned to a man they didn't fully understand." It kinda sums up the whole Obama administration pretty well so far, and we've got several years to go.

Another wacky idea: bonds for civil suits

2009-08-03T15:39:00.000-07:00

From the "my wacky ideas" file:

I think there should be a couple more qualifications in civil suits rather than simply a judgment against the accused or lack thereof. Specifically, I think the court/jury should also have the right to say (in addition to the regular judgments) that the lawsuit had no merit, and that the legal representative for the plaintiff should have been aware of this before bringing the action. This, in and of itself, would not change the system at all, but that brings me to my associated idea...

I think to file a civil lawsuit, against anyone, you should first be required to post a bond in the amount of reasonable court and defense counsel costs. This bond would be forfeit if you drop the action (at least in the amount of incurred court/counsel costs at that time), or if your case is dismissed for lack of merit. If you win, or the case is determined to have merit but is decided against you, you get the entire bond amount back.

The actual bond itself could be handled somewhat like bail is currently, with independent companies available to front the money in exchange for a percentage of the settlement if you prevail (similar to the lawyer's percentage for taking the case with no money up-front). Law firms could also pay the bonds, of course, if they are taking cases on behalf of clients.

The obvious benefit of this is that there's a certain amount of financial risk associated with filing a lawsuit, highly discouraging any lawsuits without obvious legal merit. Of course, wealthy individuals and businesses could still file frivolous lawsuits at their own expense, but the cost to both the accused and the court system would be minimal, since the bond would cover the normal and reasonable expenses of both. If the system works well, frivolous lawsuits would be virtually eliminated, which would be a huge benefit for our society; if it doesn't work, it doesn't make the system much worse than it is today.

Anyway, that's my wacky idea for the day.

Sadly largely lacking from political information: accurate accountability

2009-08-02T17:28:00.000-07:00

Another contemplation of late: it's a rather unfortunate situation, in the voting population today, that there's a distinct lack of accurate long-term accountability for actions and policies, and their effects. This is certainly a phenomenon not restricted only to the political spectrum (eg: some people are baffled about how typical executive compensation packages destroy large corporations in the long-term), but it's especially noticeable and distressing in the political arena. How would Americans ever expect to be able to elect competent leaders, or judge their actions, I wonder, if they cannot even accurately correlate policies to effects?

For example, consider California's budget. The state has a massive deficit, which is causing much distress, and is proving very difficult to address for the current politicians. As a resident, one might be inclined to get rid of the politicians which created this mess, but to do so, one would have to understand the underlying causes of the problem. After all, California has some of the highest property, income, and sales tax rates, so it's highly doubtful that the problem is caused by not enough tax collection; yet you still have morons saying the state needs higher taxes to fix the budget problem! Now, I don't think you'll ever be successful at expunging all the morons from the state/media, but perhaps if the general population was somewhat more educated and cognoscente about the underlying causes, those idiots could be appropriately laughed at, instead of lauded as insightful.

Take, as another example, inflation. Inflation is an economic phenomenon which destroys wealth, creates a "hidden" tax on all assets, creates turmoil in financial markets, and generally encourages people to have destructive financial habits (such as shunning "saving" money, hording assets purely for investment purposes, and engaging in reckless borrowing and speculation just to preserve their wealth). It's generally a "bad thing", but is considered somewhat inevitable in all fiat currency societies, so much so that the government has official inflation targets, and some government officials periodically extol the "virtues" of inflation. If the general public understood that the misery associated with inflation was entirely preventable, that inflation was entirely created/controlled by government monetary policy, and that the loss of wealth and purchasing power they experienced was directly attributable to policies which created inflation (eg: printing a Trillion dollars to fund agenda waste spending), they might have an entirely appropriate unfavorable view of the politician(s) who stole their and their children's money by adopting such policies. Instead, we're cursed with a voting population which accepts such policies as "necessary" without appreciating the damage they cause, and is willing to accept when politicians predictably blame the damage on unrelated actions of the other party.

There are many more examples, of course, and no easy solution. One might argue for an IQ requirement to be part of the voting population, for example, but people not meeting the requirement would feel disenfranchised, and that could lead to discontent and civil unrest. It would be nice to have a non-partisan foundation operating in the public interest to provide unbiased information, but as long as the general population can vote equally, it wouldn't have much effect. It's lamentable, though, that in as progressed and information-savvy of a society as this, we are still governed essentially by the smooth talking and/of big spending few, backed by the idiocracy of the voting population, and politicians and talking heads can continue prattle off moronic distortions as factual statement to mindless applause, rather than immediate condemnation.

Philosophizing on how the US should work

2009-07-29T22:20:00.000-07:00

This is gonna by a kinda wonkish post, part of a series of topics I've been thinking about which represent somewhere between where we are now and what a more idea country would be. I don't know if this will be the last one, or even interesting to anyone, but since it's my blog, I'm going to dream on.

So my ideal country is founded on the basis of a few principles, but one of the most important is that the government should work for the benefit of the people, and not the other way around (as an aside, America was also founded this principle; I know, hard to believe in today's times, but look it up). One of the best ways to make sure that principle is preserved is to keep government local; it's much more difficult to feel like your government is a faceless, clueless entity abusing you for their own gain when it is made up of people you know and interact with. To that end, my ideal country has a couple of interesting differences from the US as we know it today.

First, elections would be done locally, for local governments. These people would then, in turn, elect positions for the next highest levels of government, all the way up to the federal elected positions (President and Congress). No more media-whoring popularity contests to determine the "rulers" of the country, where the outcome is based largely on who can come up with the most catchy quip, or spend the most money convincing the idiot masses that their insidious plans to abuse power are less bad then their opponent's insidious plans. Rather, at each level, the leaders are being elected by the people they will most directly interact with, with the people's votes simply weighted by the total number of people who elected them (including all indirect votes). As an added bonus, this also harnesses the power of greed for the benefit of the country: for example, the states are going to have a strong incentive to elect people who oppose more federal government control over the states, etc. Also, this will help curtail the "idiot voter" factor in elections... a solid win all around.

Second, the states and municipalities themselves will be more dynamic. There should be no reason someone owning land on the border between two different governed areas cannot join whichever he/she pleases, given reasonable limits for frequency of switching. Likewise, with enough people in contiguous area, you should be able to create a new municipality dynamically, elect a local government, and govern yourself. As an extension, if your municipality becomes too small or underpopulated, it should be absorbed into a neighbor region (to be determined by majority vote of the remaining people in the dissolving area). Not only would this allow a natural ordering by efficiency and effectiveness of government in various areas, but it would provide a strong incentive for each government to do the best job they could, and provide the best area in which the people can live, something which is sadly lacking in our current government.

Lastly on this topic, I strongly believe the government at the federal level should be providing a stable currency, and in my ideal country the amount of currency would be fixed (or dynamic, but strongly tied to real national wealth). Moreover, each level of government would set their funding requests, but collection laws and procedures would flow upward, with each municipality deciding what to tax and how much to allocate to the government above it. There would be some minimums, probably (likely based on total income in the fixed federal currency of all people in an area/state), but the government would be required to adjust its services to the funding level every year, instead of ignoring the funding level and printing money to pay for partisan agendas and favored-friend payouts. Admittedly, though, this item would need some more thought to actually do, but that's the theory.

Anyway, that was installment one of my thoughts on what I'd want an ideal country (US or otherwise) to be. I'll try to make my next post more actually topical, and less fanciful. :)

California adds "thievery" to "can kicking" and "fraud" in repertoire of budgeting tools

2009-07-27T22:47:00.000-07:00

A short post, just to emphasize the obvious, not because it hasn't already been said, but because it deserves to be reiterated (and as a bonus, it serves as a "gimme" prediction for next year when the next wave hits).

So California is expanding its arsenal for dealing with out-of-control spending and a dysfunctional legislature. Not content with just can kicking and accounting fraud (or, more precisely, those we're not enough this time), we recently added thievery [from local municipalities] to the list of lows we're willing to stoop to. Apparently there's not much which is ethically out-of-bounds for our legislator-scum.

Not that I would expect their latest trampling of the laws and common decency to stand up in court or anything, and it's certainly going to be challenged early and vigorously. In the end the lawyers will make a lot of money and the legislature will be able to push off fixing the problem for a few more years while they pretend they can/will prevail in their court case, which is all they really want anyway. After all, there's got to be another bubble around the corner to once again bail-out California and their ridiculous spending excesses, right?

Either that, or just keep issuing IOU's as our own currency, that way we can just print more of them instead of solving our problems; it works for the federal government, surely it can work for states too. To paraphrase Joker, "this country needs an enema."

Since when did "it's broken" become "we need to make it worse"?

2009-07-22T17:17:00.001-07:00

There's something which has been bothering me about the whole way Obama is phrasing the discussion about health care nationalization ("reform"), aside from his normal rhetoric strategies which continue to aggravate me (such as saying one thing, and doing the exact opposite). Over and over, I hear from the Obamanation that the health care system "is broken", and we need to "fix" it. You know what? I agree with the first part: the health care system does appear to be broken and unsustainable, and I agree with most of the reasons why. Although I'm not sure we "need" to fix it (any more than we need to fix other unfunded entitlement programs left over from historically destructive administrations, such as Social Security), I do agree with a lot of the arguments for why we might want to.

For example, escalating costs of medicare. That system is bad: its an entitlement program which underpays providers while being underfunded and very inefficient. It's unsustainable, and it needs serious reform to cut the costs, and could also use more free-market competition in the rates it pays, to prevent medical providers from being stifled out of business. On this I agree with Obama.

Also, the current insurance system is somewhat of an aggravating disaster. Billing errors are common, consumer protections are scarce, getting quality care is time-consuming and difficult even for those with means to acquire it, and the common consumer is often trampled on. I agree that this, too, could use some serious reform and consumer-oriented oversight.

Consider, too, medical liability costs. America is an overly litigious society, and medical malpractice insurance costs are enormous as a result. This in turn raises the cost of health care for everyone, and almost exclusively only to the benefit of the lawyers involved in medical cases. This is an area where the government could certainly help, establishing safe-harbors and cutting down on rules, to make it easier for providers to follow the law, and reducing insurance premiums (and thus cost of coverage).

Given all that, you'd think I'd be generally for health care reform... but it turns out I'm not. See, somewhere along the line, all those problems which the president emphasizes and I agree with got transformed (inexplicably) into rationale for making the problem worse! How did that happen?

Obama's plan doesn't cut costs or entitlements; it raises both, creating more unfunded liabilities and bureaucratic waste. It doesn't fix the under-payment of providers; it continues and possibly amplifies it. It doesn't fix consumers getting trampled by private providers; it creates a new provider you have even less recourse with. It doesn't reduce liability costs; it creates an entirely new confusing legal scheme which would increase them. Not only does it not fix any of the problems being used to justify the need for the nationalization initiative, it makes all of them worse!

Seriously, did I miss the societal bulletin where "it's broken" became code for "this problem is not bad enough, we need to make it worse"? Or is Obama just counting on people not realizing how what he's advocating does nothing whatsoever to address the problems cited to justify it? And when/how can we get some actual health care reform, to fix the very real problems with the current system which we all agree upon?

Concealed carry amendment is interesting

2009-07-21T18:40:00.000-07:00

I figure if I want to comment on this proposed amendment, I should do it soon; it doesn't seem to have much chance of getting past a Democrat majority, and is more noteworthy for the coverage it's getting rather than the chances it would become law. Regardless of my opinions on gun control in general (which I won't state, so as not to distract from the point), I find this proposition interesting.

It is interesting, in one sense, because of one of the immediate objections quoted from a police officer in one of the initial news reports: "if this passes, we wouldn't be able to tell if someone is allowed to carry a firearm." Notwithstanding the fact that the officer would presumably do the same thing he would do currently (ie: ask to see the permit and check its validity), the statement itself serves to exemplify something which many people object to: authority figures (eg: law enforcement) consider it their de-facto right to control you (the normal people), and restrict your rights. Your rights are certainly restricted in some cases by specific laws, and for legitimate social reasons, but shouldn't the default (under the Constitution) be: you're allowed unless explicitly forbidden? Shouldn't the police officer be asking, "how can we tell who isn't allowed to be carrying?" That reason alone might be enough to justify this amendment in my mind, to sacrifice some public security to regain some freedom, and not fall into the trap Ben Franklin elocuted?

Another way it is interesting is with respect to the Full Faith and Credit Clause. Essentially, the argument would be that under the Constitution, what is granted in one state as a legal status must be honored in all other states. Of course, this is not held true for laws (only for court rulings and documents), hence the need for a federal law. If you could pass a law specifying this, though, presumably you could also do the same for gay marriage (a fact which, I'm sure, has not escaped the gay marriage opponents). I'm sure it would be tested in various courts if passed in either case, but it would be legally interesting to watch, and have strong implications for federal/state legal authority.

Finally, and almost as an after-thought, there's the argument in support of the amendment itself, that having more people armed deters crime. Here, both sides have legitimate points, and surprisingly rarely contradict each other. The Republicans argue that in states with more people carrying guns, general crime is reduced (which seems to be true), while Democrats argue that in such states crimes involving guns increase (also true), and serious crimes involving guns are more likely in states more permissive to gun ownership (also true). So really, it's a question of whether less crime in general is worth an increase in proportion of crime involving the use of a gun, which seems like a debatable trade-off to me; I'm not sure which side I'd be on, but neither position seems overwhelmingly better.

So, an interesting amendment, which I thought I'd comment on; that is all. :)

Often I don't understand politics

2009-07-17T23:45:00.000-07:00

The thought occurs to me, sometimes, that I just don't understand the political process, or what people are talking about in reference to a political process. Now sometimes, that's because the process itself is incomprehensible, obtuse, meandering, idiotic, or any/all of the above. Sometimes, though, the process seems like it would be straightforward, yet it is not, and I really don't understand why.

Take, for example, nationalizing health care in the US. Obama says he wants to do it, in about a month or so. The Democrats have the majority in both houses of Congress, enough members to override a filibuster, the ability and expressed willingness to use the "reconciliation" process to write whatever legislation they want with no Republican input whatsoever, and have given up on any credible notion of bipartisan anything ("Rahm it through" politics). So why is nationalizing health care seeming to be "hard"?

Maybe it's the money. It's going to cost a few Trillion dollars (at least $1,500,000,000,000 up front per the CBO, and probably another couple Trillion by the time it's actually done), but that shouldn't be a stumbling block: those figures are over ten years, and the Obamanation has already printed/wasted over a Trillion dollars this year alone. Heck, Biden just came out and said you needed to waste money to make money (I guess that passes for economic theory in the Democrat party these days), and the Obamanation is spending without regard so far, so the money problem just doesn't make sense to me.

Maybe it's the quality of care; after all, most countries with socialized health care have long waits for low-quality care, and maybe some people are regretting destroying America's leadership in medical research. However, the people bemoaning that loss are all Republicans, and they don't have any say in "Rahm it through" politics; why would that impede the process? The same goes for the public insurance plan eliminating private plans, practitioners being underpaid, facilities closing, jobs lost, the hit to the economy: all valid concerns, all legitimate complaints about Obama's plan, but all only being voiced by Republicans. I don't see how they would impact the process either.

Maybe it's the new taxes on small businesses, or the escalating high-end tax rates which will be raping the people who try to provide jobs for their fellow Americans? Maybe somebody would clue in to the fact that obliterating a large chunk of our economy during a recession might not be such a stupendous idea? It might be credible, except that again, only the Republicans seem to be expressing the concerns; the sheeple Democrats should be lining up behind their Chosen One and his priests like Polosi, right?

I mean, I'm against nationalized health care as much as everyone else in the country with any functional brain cells, and I'm glad for whatever mysterious process is delaying the "inevitable" descent into socialized medicine, but I just don't understood exactly what's keeping us from falling over the edge. Couldn't the Democraps just pass a simple appropriations bill, then rewrite it during "reconciliation" into the enormous Socialist Manifesto the Chosen One has vowed to "Rahm through" by fall, and have it enacted without debate already? I mean, what's the hold up; if you're going to shred and piss on the Constitution, do it already... the country deserves better than a drawn-out, torturous death at the hands of you despicable villains.

Large words confuse small minds

2009-07-14T20:57:00.000-07:00

It seems like every time Obama's pit bull Rahm Emanuel opens his mouth and opines about "bipartisanship", I'm reminded of a quote from The Princess Bride: "You keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means." For example, consider this gem:

“That’s a test of bipartisanship -- whether you took ideas from both parties,” Emanuel said. “At the end of the day, the test isn’t whether they voted for it,” he said, referring to Republicans. “The test is whether the final product represented some of their ideas. And I think it will.”

So, basically, what he's saying is that in his interpretation of the word, it just means you incorporated some of the ideas which didn't come from your party into the bill you then rammed up everyone's ass. So, for example, if your bill only wastes a few Trillion dollars, you can claim you incorporated some Republican ideas because it doesn't waste $10 Trillion, and Republicans favor saving money. It's a pretty nice interpretation, if you want to fit anything you might conceivably do under the banner of "bipartisanship", but I'm not sure his definition would match that of the common man, even if the common man in question is as dumb as a pile of rocks.

It makes me wonder why the spin-masters are even bothering to try to push such a preposterous claim. The health care reform bill is an enormous partisan socialism push, but the Democrats have a majority in both houses of Congress and hold the Presidency; why would you feel the need to make asinine statements like this? Just ram the bill through like all your other initiatives, and stop wasting time pretending like you have any concern for what the other side thinks: it's worked for you so far, and it's hard to believe you're winning more friends by treating the American people like retarded imbeciles. Unless, of course, they really just don't even understand the term "bipartisanship"; it's hard to believe that they just don't know what the term means, but it's really the only explanation I can think of.

My advice to Rahm: stop using words if you don't know what they mean, it emphasizes your stupidity.

The difficulty of governing with pervasive collusion and corruption

2009-07-13T23:24:00.000-07:00

So I was reading this article about the impending financial meltdown (and probably taxpayer bailout) of CIT, and reflecting on the problems inherent in the government trying to be fair, impartial, and governing in the people's interests. I don't mean to imply that I think our current government is trying to do any of those thing, as they are clearly not interested in any of them, but rather the difficulty in doing so for a government which was interested in doing so.

You see, I think the founding fathers of this country were pretty smart, in a lot of fortuitous ways. For example, they forbade intermingling of government and religion; and although that has not always been followed in literal terms ("under God", Christian remnants in the government, preferred tax statuses, etc.) or in conceptual terms (pseudo-religions like Global Warming, etc.), it has generally been very good for the development of the country. One could make a strong argument that we don't have a repressive theocracy (like Iran) primarily because of this one provision, and I think most people in the US would consider that a good thing.

Another thing the founders and early governors were pretty smart about was establishing the sanctity of private contracts, and establishing that it was the government's job to provide basic protections and a level playing field, and otherwise explicitly not to interfere in private business as much as possible. This turns out to be a very good policy for prosperity and freedom, as 200+ years have demonstrated. Moreover, if the government was interested in doing its Constitutional job, it is much easier if they are not entangled in private businesses, as the article points out.

Apparently, the primary problem with bailing out CIT is the perceived conflict between the government's desire to "stabilize" the economy (read: pretend like everything's okay by shoveling newly-printed money at the problem), and not appear to be rewarding the "fat cats" who "caused" the problem (which is all a problem of appearance, since in reality the government primarily caused the problem, and the "fat cats" just capitalized on the situation). Of course, this is just one of the many people who will soon be clamoring for bailouts; I suspect California will get a bailout before it makes any meaningful progress resolving its budget problems, more large financial companies have systemic problems, the Fed continues its efforts to pay off gambling debts with taxpayer money, etc. But as atrocious as these problems are, bailouts are only part of the problem.

When the government is so pervasively corrupt, it becomes nigh-impossible to do anything in an unbiased manner, and/or to convince the people you're trying to operate in such a manner. Financial bailouts? Rewarding the "fat cat insiders", or an attempt to seize government control of the entire financial sector, take your pick. Universal health care? It's a spending contest between the medical insurance industry and the government bureaucracy proponents, or the largest expansion of government spending and control in US history. Energy bill? A spending contest between the environmental and clean energy lobbies (who stand to profit big) and the oil, coal, transportation, and producing businesses. Is the government entirely for sale, or are there any politicians left with any shred of integrity who are working for the peoples' interests? How could you tell?

Maybe some of these things are not malevolent in purpose, but the point is that once the government has started down the path of bailouts, interference, market manipulation, and overt control, not only is it hard to reverse the damage, but it's equally or more difficult to regain the public's trust that the government is operating in their interest, and not just beholden to all the special-interests they have gladly and openly served in the past. Is there anyone at all in the country who believes that the government is operating primarily in their interest in any/all the above matters, and not just for sale to the highest bidders? If so, I have some houses in California to sell you at 2006 prices; it has become preposterous to think that the government operates with integrity, and that permeates everything that they do. The current government has almost stopped even pretending they are operating in the people's interest; the last bastion of make-believe adherence to the principles of the country, teetering on the edge.

How much damage will the Obamanation do, and how much of America as we remember it will be left when he's done? Only time will tell... but if it were a private enterprise, it would be in line for a corrupt bailout right now like everyone else, like a great big blood-stained warning against moral hazard, government collusion, and the siren call of government "assistance".