It's just my opinion, I could be wrong

A bit ago, I criticized the Chrysler superbowl commercial, in which they touted Detroit as a model for the re-invigoration of America. I didn't explicitly state, but strongly implied, that it would be disastrous if the country followed the same path as Detroit, with corruption, bailouts, destruction of industry, and all the other maladies Detroit has brought upon themselves. I suppose you could extend the sentiment to Michigan as a whole, with Detroit being the major city there, but it turns out that would not be entirely fair: there is something pretty interesting going on in Michigan, which I think the country could indeed learn from. I was not aware, until recently, of the Emergency Financial Manager law/system in place in Michigan, and in effect in several of the more destitute cities there. Basically, the law allows the state to appoint a financial manager if the city finances get critically bad, and empowers the manager to fix the problems (by cancelling contracts, firing go...

With the election season getting underway, and America once again approaching the time when they will choose between two statist, freedom-abolishing, debt-ignoring, big government blowhards, an interesting thought occurred to me: what would be the single most beneficial thing which could be done for the country? Obviously, in light of the equally horrible choices for the presidency, a Congress which is the #1 enemy of the people with an approval rating to match, and a government which is absolutely out-of-control, it's a fairly hypothetical mental exercise, but one with an interesting outcome. You see, while there are a lot of good things with could be done, virtually none of them would be overwhelmingly good in isolation: America has a lot of large, pressing problems, and no single fix would be sufficient to alter the course to eventual collapse enough. Rather, I was thinking about the situation in Greece, and how it pertains to America. Greece is, in many ways, a window into our ...

This is a quote, in this article , from an economist in Greece : "It's lunacy," said Yanis Varoufakis, an economist at Athens University. "Greece should default, and the European Union should finally accept and deal with the inevitable, instead of pushing it under the carpet, like children trying to avoid being spanked." A second Greek bailout, he added, would "just throw good money after bad. What's the purpose of getting an additional loan when it's unlikely Greece will be able to repay it?" Greece's people (most of whom are union and/or public service employees, or retired) are protesting the terms of the new bailout funds as unacceptable. Public opinion in Greece of the country's leadership is rapidly declining. Public opinion of the other EU countries and their leadership is also souring. Many people in Greece don't want to accept the austerity measures the other EU countries are insisting on, and most seemingly have no interes...

Chrysler ran a commercial during the superbowl which is generating a fair bit of controversy; if you didn't see it, feel free to youtube it. Opinions vary: some people think it was inspirational, others pandering. What is more interesting, to me at least, is that if the news media is to be believed, there are two ways to view the political slant of the commercial, depending on your own viewpoint; in fact, one of the articles described it as a rorschach test for political views. Meanwhile, both Clint Eastwood (who narrates the commercial) and the producers insist it's not intended to be political, which is odd, since it clearly is. What struck me, though, is how dumb the message actually is. Essentially, the commercial is holding out Detroit, and Chrysler, as examples of doing what's necessary to "right" the country, and that if the rest of the country can follow their example, we can forge a path back to prosperity. I don't think that logic holds up, though, ...

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] ...

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 wh...

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 mo...