the Gregarious Blog

Debt by Fiat? Musings on the Constitutionality of the Debt Ceiling

2011-05-16T23:51:00.003-04:00

Today, May 16, 2011, according to Treasury Secretary Geithner, the Federal government hit the debt ceiling of $14.294 trillion. (odd number to set the limit at, right?) That's $14,294,000,000,000.00. Anyways, the Treasury has begun taking extraordinary measures to prevent defaulting on its loans until August 2, after around which those normal extraordinary measures won't be enough. Right now that includes raiding the Federal employee pension fund. (The government is legally required to repay the fund with interest, although I believe that is along the lines of what they said about the social security trust fund.) What would defaulting on loans mean besides possibly a government shutdown like the one averted earlier this year? Many economists say a global financial catastrophe. US debt is looked up as being an investment safe as cash. That would no longer be the case. Congress isn't stupid enough to let that happen of course, right? But one has to wonder should Congress be stupid enough to fail to raise the debt ceiling by around August 2 could the extraordinary measures include an Executive Order either raising the debt ceiling or simply instructing the Treasury to ignore the debt ceiling entirely and continue issuing debt?

Should that discussion arise, which I imagine it will if come July the debt ceiling still hasn’t been raised, I think pivotal to that discussion will be the 14th Amendment, Section 4.

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

The question is, would not raising the debt ceiling on its debt cause the validity of the public debt to be questioned? From a financial market perspective, most definitely. For that matter, the mere talk of the debt ceiling causes questioning of the validity of the public debt of the United States in financial markets. As long as there are accounting gimmicks to avoid default then probably the debt is not questioned. But you would be hard pressed to say the public debt is not questioned if the United States defaults on the public debt. Almost by definition it is being questioned.

There's another key point though in that section, the validity of the public debt, authorized by law. Who has the power to authorize by law? Well, Article I of the Constitution states:

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

The President does not have legislative powers to make laws. Additionally, Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment states:

The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

It doesn't state the President has the power to avoid the questioning of the validity of the public debt. Would an executive order raising the debt ceiling or instructing the Treasury to ignore it be introducing public debt not authorized by law? My guess is probably technically. Strictly speaking, not only would that be public debt not authorized by law, but that would be additionally public debt in opposition to a law made by Congress. Now, should such an Executive Order be made and found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court I'm betting Congress would choose to honor those debts issued in the interim. Of course, would the market believe the debt still had the full faith and credit of the United States government? That's a whole different discussion I won't get into now.

But wait, if not raising the debt ceiling would cause the validity of the public debt of the United States to be questioned, and if only Congress has the power to authorize debt, which wins? Isn't there a dichotomy between the not questioning of the validity of the public debt and not exceeding the debt ceiling? This raises a bigger question than does the President have the power to raise or ignore the debt ceiling. Does Congress have the power to institute a debt ceiling? In other words, is a debt ceiling even constitutional in the first place?

Now wait, if a debt ceiling isn't constitutional, what's to stop Congress or the Executive Branch from borrowing without control. Well, first off, clearly a debt ceiling hasn't stopped us from borrowing without control. Need I remind you, $14,294,000,000,000.00. But we haven't always had a debt ceiling. The debt ceiling wasn't around until 1917. There is a constitutional means for controlling spending and borrowing, it's called a budget. If Congress doesn't want more borrowing than Congress shouldn't have passed a budget which requires more budgeting. The Executive Branch cannot legally spend money that Congress hasn't appropriated. And yet, Congress just last month appropriated a budget which we knew then would necessitate the debt ceiling being raised. There's a conflict right there. Is the Executive Branch supposed to follow the appropriations by Congress or follow the debt ceiling by Congress? Is one law passed by Congress trump the other? You don't knowingly put together a budget that relies on increasing debt while also knowing you aren't willing to rely on increasing debt. If you're going to do that, then you should cut spending enough so you won't increase debt, not play chicken with your debt limit. If you want to limit debt, limit your spending. (or increase revenue)

I don't have the answer to the question of whether the President can by Executive Order, by fiat, raise or ignore the debt ceiling. Nor do I have the answer to whether the debt ceiling is even constitutional to begin with. Only the Supreme Court can definitively answer those questions, and only if and when such an Executive Order is if ever issued, and of course only after relying on years of case law in addition to the Constitution.

(In full disclosure: Although I may be an employee of the government I am only writing as a private citizen exercising the freedom of speech and am not in any way, shape, or form speaking on behalf of the United States government.)

2010-11-18T15:11:00.001-05:00

In an age when airlines nickel and dime you, how can you complain about free preventative health care?

Incentivizing Lousiville Cardinal Fans to Stay for the WHOLE Game

2010-11-17T00:32:00.002-05:00

I think all of us Louisville Card fans are proud of our team's performance against the NCAA March Madness runner up Butler tonight. But if you were at the game, or my guess watching it on TV, you might not be able to tell in the last minutes. As I looked around the new Yum! Center, the arena appeared half empty. This wasn't some exhibition game, this was the first real game against a very real team. It was also, I call, a disgrace on a part of the fans who left early.

That's why I propose this or a similar system to incentivize ticket holders to be the loyal fans they are and pack the house at every game and support our team until the final buzzer ends, win or lose. Every ticket price should include a small deposit per game. For each game, when its scanned to enter the arena you would get a portion of the deposit credited back electronically to your account. But the real incentive would come at the end of the game. After the clock runs out, and only after the clock runs out, you could have your ticket scanned as you leave the arena and have a larger portion of the deposit returned to you electronically. This would reward people who stay and support the team rather than try and beat traffic. Although I have no statistics to back this up, I think having a packed house at the end each game would increase our winning record. It would keep the morale of the team up, thus making less likely them losing a lead if they have one and more likely of making a come back if they are behind.

I noticed another thing as I looked around, or rather up. The lower part of the arena was empty, but the top of the arena was still almost full. Now, unless I'm mistaken, that's because the fans in the upper deck for whatever reason can't afford what it takes to get good seats in the lower section (or simply haven't had season tickets long enough to get the points) but what they do pay is a greater percentage of their income than all the donations and ticket costs themselves are to fans in the lower deck and so are valued more. To help encourage our fellow fans in the lower arena and our loyal fans high up for each game when you scan your ticket after the game is over so many CAF (Cardinal Athletic Fund) points would be rewarded.

These proposals would both encourage fans to support the team to the end, like they should, and to reward loyal fans with better seats if those with good seats consistently leave early. If you couldn't make a game, you would have extra incentive to ensure you give or sell your tickets to someone you know will go. (In the case of giving them to someone you know, you could remind them to scan their ticket and login and view if they did. If they keep leaving early you would probably give them to another friend who would stay.) I don't know whether you would want to charge a small deposit for higher up seats and as the ticket price increases a larger deposit since a $1 fee for example wouldn't be enough to change behavior. There is precedence for revoking season tickets from people who don't use them. I know Churchill Downs at least used to do this with box seats, as my dad received boxed seats from my grandfather, sold them to his law office, and after a couple of years of them not being used enough lost them.

And remember, this isn't adding cost to the tickets. If you go to every game and stay until the end, or at least make sure your ticket is put to use when you can't, you would get back all your money. We could even keep in a savings account and you get the interest (doubt it would amount to much) it earned. If you really can't find anyone to take your tickets, you could turn them into the box office before hand and would automatically get your CAF points and your deposit back, and if the tickets are sold your money back. (Probably be best to use a site like FlashTickets to manage electronically and not worry about physical tickets.) I'm pretty sure there are 22000 Card fans that would gladly jump at a chance to go to a random game who can't afford season tickets and all the mandatory donations. But if for some not enough people can be found, by letting the box office your seats won't be used they could upgrade people from higher up to keep the lower section full.

Of course, there would be the question of what to do with the deposits that aren't claimed. Of course that could always be donated to a scholarship fund. Or perhaps to further incentivize every one who does stay would split the pot of deposits. (would work best if the deposit is the same for everyone, but could probably still be manged if otherwise.) If everyone stayed for the end of a nail-biting game, you'd just get your deposit back. But if people start leaving early, the amount you would get back if you stay would increase providing feedback to the crowd to keep the rest of the crowd there since they will earn more.

Finally, if just giving hard cash doesn't sound good, we could always link it to promotions and even make money off the sponsorship. Stay until the end of the game and when you leave you get 100 points on your Q-doba card for example. People are crazy about Q-doba. I however think just crediting cash back would be most effective since everyone likes money, not everyone will like any particular restaurant we let do a promotion.

(Don't get me started on UK fans in the student section during the UK game. I find that disgraceful. I think that as a condition for receiving student tickets so cheaply, part of the contract should be for that game you agree to wear red (or at least U of L gear, although for the UofL-UK game it really should be red.) You would agree that upon arriving at the section during the game, the school could challenge your wear, (aka UK or blue clothing) and give you a CardShirt to put on. If you really insist on cheering for UK (vomiting in my mouth as I type) you could take a seat in the upper deck and some lucky fan would get upgraded to the lower arena.) Something like that would be too late to put in a contract to receive tickets this year, but could be in place in two years. If its in a contract you sign when purchasing tickets I think it should be legal. It would be akin to the student section being extras in a movie and obviously being able to dictate what you wear or fire you. But that's another issue.)

New Congressional Draft Leads to Draft Dodging

2010-11-09T13:53:00.003-05:00

You know what they say, those who deserve power don't want it and those that want it don't deserve it. This has never been truer than in politics. In 2014 we saw Congress swing back in control of the Republicans, after having swung in 2012 back to the Democrats, before that in 2010 the House going to the Republicans, and in 2008 and 2006 moving Democratic. This back and forth, back in forth has become the only change America could expect from Congress.

That's why after the 2014 Midterm Elections, (one might call No Real Decision 2014), many Americans had had enough. The grassroots movement to amend the Constitution, to select Congress members by a draft, similar to that used back in Vietnam, or jury duty, caught traction. As co-founder of the Congressional Duty movement Gerald put it, "Well, when I look around at the people I know, the only ones I would truly like to see in office don't want to touch it. So I thought, what if serving in Congress were like jury duty? A random selection of representatives is the only way to ensure we get qualified individuals into office these days." When asked if he wanted to serve, "Hell no! But that's the point. If my name comes up, I'll go though, of course."

Article 5 of the Constitution provides two paths for an amendment. One is for two-thirds of both houses of Congress to vote to propose an amendment. The other is for two-thirds of state legislatures to ask Congress to call a national convention to propose an amendment, never before used until now. Of course, the latter approach was necessary as Congress would never be willing to relinquish power. As Democratic minority leader Nancy Pelosi said, "We're doing great work. Why would we support some damn %$@ amendment from the same people who are in the Tea Party movement to stop us?" For the record, neither founder of the Congressional Duty movement are in the Tea Party. One was in fact a registered Democrat before becoming an Independent.

Co-founder Gerald may say "of course" he'll go, but that hasn't been the case with many who have received Congressional Duty notices. We talked to Vietnam historian Mark Porter. "What we're seeing is not un-akin to draft dodgers during the Vietnam War, although what is surprising is the rate of dodging going on. It's actually worse than that among those called to Vietnam, despite the ostensible lack of threat of death in the case today, and of course the Congressional pay and health benefits. (You can thank the 2008 Congress for ensuring that Congressmen enjoy their great benefits despite the changes forced onto the rest of Americans.) We've even seen the unemployed with homes about to foreclose dodge service, saying they'd rather live in a homeless shelter than move to DC."

Yes, across America, Americans are waking up to the fact that they may have to serve in Congress. One Congressional Duty supporter anonymously said "I was working hard to get the amendment path. I have more faith in the average Joe than the career politician. But then I realized I could receive that dreaded notice."

There are of course various requirements to be eligible to the Congressional Draft. The original age limits set by Constitution remain in effect. This means that at age 25, you must sign up with the Selective Service, whether male or female. What used to be a somewhat significant birthday only because of the promise of lower car insurance and the ability to rent a car has become absolutely dreaded. There are however exemptions for those pursuing higher education. I talked to head of admissions at Harvard University. "We've seen the number of applicants for our masters, doctorate, post-doctorate, and post-post doctorate programs skyrocket." The same holds true at universities across the country. Doctorate student Jessica Smith said "I was going to pursue a promising career in private industry. I had several job offers coming out of college, which is saying something considering the sluggish economy. But I realized if I left academia I would face the possibility of serving in Congress. I know the chance is slim, but I can't take that risk. I'll take the loads of debt for grad school any day." Asked about her plans after her doctorate, "Oh, I'm already looking at grad schools for my post-doctorate, and post-post doctorate after that."

Law school must receive special treatment. In order to reduce the likelihood of a would-be career politician ending up in Congress, the amount of persons in Congress with a Juris Doctorate have been capped at 5%. Law school advisor Karen McCormick said, "At first I had hope that this would mean we would start seeing only applicants to law school who were, you know, actually interested in practicing law and not doing it just to get into politics. I underestimated how much people loath Congress though when the number of applicants actually jumped. We're seeing people who just want a permanent way practically out of the draft. They're willing to take on huge debt with no promise of paying it off just to avoid the possibility." The sense amongst the newest class at Yale was hopeful. But amongst those third year, L3, students about to graduate, positively abysmal. Natalie Carneige said, "What am I supposed to do now? I did my undergrad in political science and got a law degree with no intent on practicing law so I could get into politics. The job that is being forced onto other people is out of my grasp. I got into politics because I saw there are two things that more money will be spent on, health care and political campaigns, and I don't like blood. But without elections all the political advisor jobs are drying up." This attitude seen here and especially at lesser law schools has led to an increase in suicides amongst law students. (If your son or daughter are in law and had political aspirations, we strongly advise you get them into therapy immediately.)

One of the other controversial requirements of eligibility is that potential draftees must be current on their taxes. As one anonymous farmer put it, "I don't see why we have to go punishing honest, tax paying individuals with the threat of serving in DC." Will he stop paying his taxes? "No, but that's because I hire illegal immigrants to work my farm, so I'm counting on that being good enough to get me out if my number comes up." The requirement was of put in to rid the potential pool of Congressmen from unqualified candidates, like the former Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner who somehow passed Congressional approval in 2009 despite having not payed self-employment taxes. I talked to tax attorney Richard Green. Would he say the amount of tax evasions have gone up. "Oh, most certainly. Business is booming, never better. I'm working 100 hours a week as tax day approaches. Our clientele used to be the rich who had money they wanted to hide. Now though, we're seeing Americans from every walk of life come in to evade taxes so to be ineligible from the draft. Of course, almost half of America doesn't end up owing the government money. The interesting thing is we even see those people come in. At first we turned them away but eventually caved in to pleas for help. I may be a lawyer, but I'm not so cold-hearted as to sentence them to serving in Congress."

Armed forces recruiters have started pushing to make military service an exemption to Congressional duty but so far no luck. They're banking on the horrors of possibly serving in Congress being perceived worse than going to fight in Iraq, Afghanistan or Iran. Our soldiers are brave, but no one can blame them for not being brave enough to serve in DC.

Government Health Care Flow Chart (from Congress)

2009-07-24T21:27:00.008-04:00

This chart is from Congress and illustrates how simple our new government health care will be. I'm not making this up, this is not a joke, although I can see where you would get that.

http://www.newmajority.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/dems_health_plan_organizational_chart.jpg

I beg to differ Mr. President

2009-07-23T18:07:00.003-04:00

President Obama,

You were asked last night about a black Harvard Professor who was arrested for disorderly conduct after breaking into his own home. The police responded to a call of two men breaking in to the home, asked to see his ID, and he defiantly refused and accused the officers of racism. Eventually he shows proof of ownership, but continues to be agitated. You said that "I think it's fair to say, No. 1, any of us would be pretty angry,"

Apparently you and I are different. I would not be upset to see the police showing to prevent what looked like a burglary of my property. I would be grateful and happily show them my ID. I would be left thinking I live in a safe neighborhood with a good neighborhood watch. Hopefully I would know my neighbors so they would have recognized me in the first place, but that's beside the point.

And then you had the boldness to say "No. 2, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home." I still can't believe called the police officers stupid for doing their job and responding to a robbery. Sure, now you are claiming that you were calling the incident stupid. But clearly you said the police acted stupidly, which implies you called the police officers stupid. The professor was not arrested at that point for breaking into his home, he was arrested for disorderly conduct.

You then said "And No. 3 — what I think we know separate and apart from this incident — is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionally and that’s just a fact." Whether or not you not you said it was apart from this incident, your words in fact imply you are calling the officers racists. I think its obvious this wasn't a case of racism. Perhaps the man shouldn't have been arrested, but if you're being yelled at and called a racist for doing your job you aren't going to be sympathetic. There was a black officer present. Additionally, the arresting officer has taught a diversity class to other officers for the past five years. I don't think a racist would do that. The police officer shouldn't be apologizing, you and the professor you should be apologizing for calling him racist.

It wouldn't surprise me if your friend Professor Gates wanted to be arrested. I'm not saying he came thinking he would get arrested. But now that he was arrested he is on cable news. Next thing you know he will be announcing his book deal.

Sincerely,

Greg

Health Care - Worth Taking the Time to Fix

2009-07-23T18:02:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, thankfully, it was announced that the health care bill will not be voted on before the August recess despite President Obama's time table to do so. (You can't blame the Republicans anymore, the Democrats have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate so all the delays are from their disagreements) This is only a good thing, in my opinion, no matter what side you stand on.

If health care is as important an issue as it is claimed, then we the American people deserve for any bill promising reform to have had the time devoted to it to try and ensure it is well thought out. There are many issues yet to have been addressed, including how much exactly this will cost, how we will pay for it, who and how covered procedures and medicines will be determined, what sacrifices we will have to make, (and there will be, despite vague answers) and more. This are not easy and light issues. As of yet, I have not heard satisfactory answers to these questions. His news conference Wednesday certainly failed to offer them. To try and push such a bill through without these questions having been addressed and explained to the American people, who should have a chance to respond, was ludicrous on the part of the President.

The problems of our nations health care have been around and developing for years. How then can you argue that a bill must be passed so quickly, that a couple more months cannot be given to try and ensure the bill is good? Many point to President Bush as having used the politics of fear to push through legislation in the wake of 9/11. I point to President Obama as using the politics of fear to push through health care and other legislation that dramatically changes the nature and role of our government. Obama is afraid if he doesn't get his bill passed soon, Americans will begin to realize that it isn't the silver bullet he promised. The economic crisis that burst forth open last October was not related to health care. (it was caused by over-borrowing, and is being fixed by over-borrowing) And yet, the President seems to connect the two and use the financial crisis as a pretext for rushing through health care reform. If President Bush used fear tactics, President Obama has used them from the beginning of his presidency.

So When Did AIG Become FDIC Insured Anyways?

2009-03-03T22:52:00.004-05:00

Our government sank another $30 billion into AIG this week, for a grand total of some $170 billion since the beginning of this crisis. We've been told AIG is "too big to fail." It's becoming we've lost too much money for it to fail. Any hope that we would make money off this "investment" (remember the good ole days of October 2008) has in my opinion has died.

Let's recall what AIG did to get in such trouble. It wasn't health insurance or providing your grandmother with an annuity, nor their aircraft leasing business. It was their Credit Default Swaps (CDS), basically insurance on an investment, such as a corporate bond or mortgage-backed security. Say you bought some debt of GM (because you wouldn't want to buy one of their cars), thus lendig them money to use (they really need it), but you were afraid they would default. You could get a Credit Default Swap, a contract where you the buyer would pay a small fee to cover that bond to the seller (like AIG), and if the company defaulted paying back the bond you receive a payment. Basically insurance on the bond, but the key being its not regulated. There were no rules over how much money a seller of CDS had to have on hand to cover losses, as there are in regulated insurance. Indeed, there were no rules that you even had to actually own a bond of the company you were buying, if you thought a company would fail you could bet against it. So, there were more CDS than the underlying assets they were insuring.

As I mentioned, CDS's were not regulated. Your normal commercial bank where you have a checking and savings account, is regulated (I would say well-regulated but if you've watched the news...) and FDIC-insured. (Federal Deposit Insurance Company) So, should the bank fail, your money in your accounts would be safe, up to $100,000 at a bank before the crisis, now $200,000 or so. But these credit default swaps that AIG and other banks were making were not regulated like insurance companies, or banks, and not FDIC insured. Like buying stock, there's a risk the CDS will fail. But somehow, we (or at least the government) has got this mentality that we can't let AIG fail because all these credit default swaps would fail. So what? That would be horrible if people lost money on their bad investments. Investors should have been aware they were buying unregulated insurance and could lose. The problem in my opinion is not that AIG is too big too fail but that their product (CDS) has now become too important to fail and is being treated like an FDIC insured bank account where the government will back it, despite AIG and the investors never having paid anything to cover them when they were profiting. If only they had bought credit default swaps on their credit default swaps. Will we the taxpayers keep sinking money into AIG to cover ever investor's loss covered by a credit default swap? Probably.

This raises another question, which could be a post in itself. These large banks (I won't name them) that keep getting bailout money, why doesn't the normal FDIC process apply here? The accounts are FDIC-insured, so although they can fail the account holders would be protected. If a bank is good it shouldn't need money, and if its bad it would reach a point where its about to not be able to cover its accounts, in which case the Feds would step in, wipe out the shareholders, prop the bank up, and reorganize it and eventually re-privatize it. Fair and simple. The way the media portrays it if the banks failed the account holders would lose, which is not true. And yet, there has not been much talk about the FDIC since October.

Obama's Charity Tax: The War On Charity

2009-02-26T17:38:00.006-05:00

Obama announced today his $4 trillion budget. To help pay for this, one of the tax increases will be on charitable donations of the rich. (as well as mortgage-interest deductions since houses are selling too fast as it is and taxes on energy) Obama is planning on reducing the tax deduction of those in the top tax bracket, 35%, from the 35% they are paying for each dollar donated to 27%. That's effectively an 8% tax on charitable donations.

Clearly, this charity tax is going to drive down donations to charities, but is that a bad thing? Let us start this war on charity, because charities have too much money as it is. It's about time they suffered like the rest of America. They overpay their employees who enjoy plush jobs that they don't have to work at unlike our dedicated, government servants who work for too little in jobs that could be eliminated at any moment. They have such a demand for their services these days that they shouldn't have a problem making ends meet; after all, any business would die (some are) to get that much demand for their products now.

How is it fair that a rich person who donates say $1000 gets back the $350 in taxes they paid on that money, when those in the next lowest tax bracket pays $270 in taxes on that same $1000 and only gets back a measly, $270 and not $350? That rich person who worked to get that $1000 could have taken time off from work and donated their time and not made that $1000 that they donated thus getting back $350 they owed on it, but since they did work and donate they should only get back $270 after paying $350 in taxes on money they didn't keep. But what about the poor who make donations? They get back even less than $270 on $1000 they donate, how is that fair? If you don't pay taxes, you won't get any money back on your taxes for making a donation. (the really poor and Treasury Secretary Geithner) Clearly, the only fair thing to do is to get rid of charitable deductions.

And shame on that rich person, who having likely managed their money well by keeping a budget, should consider donating less because the taxes on that money they would donate would consume more of their budget. Not only should they donate the same irregardless of taxes, they should donate more so to offset the increased tax on giving, so that the government gets not a penny more than before, thus showing they don't just give to reduce their tax burden, but to spite the government.

America For Sale

2008-07-15T11:15:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, it was announced that Anheuser-Busch, maker of Budweiser beer, was being sold to the Belgian brewer InBev for $52 billion. This could mean major trouble for Americans who love their cheap, flavorless beer. Just think, a Budlight is now going to be considered an import, with import prices. And it will be more patriotic to drink microbrews than Budweiser. Superbowl ads in Belgish? (We're being bought by a country that isn't even large enough to have its own language.) What is the world coming to? We must retaliate against the Belgians by calling Belgium Waffles (can you guess it?) Freedom Waffles. Then again, maybe that's our problem, everything being free. After all, $52 billion isn't what it once was. It's just a measling 33 billion euros, practically free. America is on sale for bargain basement prices.

The selling of the America's "King of Beers" is symbolic of foreign capital coming in and buying American companies. Last week the Chrysler building in New York was sold to Abu Dhabi. Of course earlier this year Citigroup was bailed out by Middle Eastern investors. This raises the question should this trend be a concern to Americans?

First off, can we complain about foreign capital coming into America when Americans have long been and are investing in foreign countries? Is there anyway for us in the age our modern financial system to stop this? To do that would require we ban foreigners from buying stock in American companies, which even if it could be done would end up causing other countries to do the same to Americans. We would have to become xenophobes, recluses hiding out across the oceans.

Its important to keep in mind that these foreign countries are out to make money. They aren't going to buy up America, so that one day we'll wake up to see our city skylines destroyed not by bombs, but demolished by foreign owners. They aren't going to by companies and then dissolve them. They want to make money, just like America wants to make money, and that is to our advantage. We have a large national debt, too large in my opinion, held largely by foreign countries like China. Countries that are holding are debt aren't going to do anything that would cause us to default on our loans. If they did, they wouldn't get their money back that they loaned us. The whole world economy would come tumbling down after America.

Perhaps to get our economy out of the gutter we could, as a nation, pull an Enron. We'll just fudge the numbers a bit. All we have to do is print more money than we say we printed. Nations have tried to print their way out of poverty, which has only resulted in rampant inflation. But that's because people knew they were printing the money. If the rest of the world doesn't know we're printing more money that we then use to pay down our debt, buy back stakes in American companies, and maybe buy stakes in foreign companies, (we'll throw in some foreign aid to developing countries) no harm done. It would also be very unifying for the country. Committing fraud is very unifying, your team has to be on the same page, committed to secrecy. If one person gets a conscience, it's all over, and everyone hangs together. "United we stand, divided we fall." This could really bring red and blue America together. Just think of it as a loan off our future prosperity that will be achieved. After all, the American dollar is weak because its seen as weak, but if America is able to do all this the dollar will appear strong and thus be strong, allowing us to do all that we would have just did. It's like the give a penny take, take a penny tray at cash registers. We're just taking billions of weak pennies now because we're a little short, and giving them back as strong pennies. To put it another way, its a sub-prime loan helping poor America who can't afford its own home to get one. I'm going to put it out there to all you pessimists who think the government isn't doing enough that maybe they are already doing this plan and the economy is going to improve, they just couldn't tell you because you would spill the beans on your blog to the whole world. Keep that in mind when you go to vote for president. If this plan is in place, McCain knows about it, Obama doesn't. You don't want to risk ruining that, do you? If Obama can be a secret Muslim, then McCain can have a secret plan for fixing the economy.

So you have a conscience and don't want to go through with the secret plan. There's an upside to the declining dollar. Our $9.5 billion national debt becomes a mere 6 billion euro national debt. Now is the time to pay off our national debt. Obviously, we can't use our tax money to pay this off since that tax is collected in dollars, which would defeat the point. Solution eBay. If we start selling items in Europe on eBay we will have a source of Euros. But we must act now, before the dollar becomes strong again and is coronated the King of Currencies once again, ushering in a reign of prosperity, another golden age for America.

DISASTER STRIKES!

2008-04-18T13:53:00.003-04:00

If you live here in Louisville or the Midwest, you may have been woken up this morning by an earthquake. Now that your mind is on natural disasters, let's take a look at disaster preparedness. (If you're a long time reader of this blog, the following has been said before in response to Hurricane Katrina, but if its quite relevant now that we're thinking about the "big one." You might say I don't just blog on the news, I blog before the news even occurs.)

We were lucky with the hurricane, we knew it was coming a week in advance. Of course, the government still had a horrible response. I predict the worse natural disaster that could hit the US is an earthquake. (Besides a large asteroid striking in or near the US.) An earthquake would be bad because there's no warning, it just happens. There's no time to evacuate, to go to the store and stock up on supplies, no time for anything. There's no time for the feds to call up the national guard, or preposition supplies. Now you're probably thinking of the San Andreas fault in California. And that's certainly a possibility, but we also must consider the New Madrid fault in Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, and my own state of Kentucky. It should be pointed out that the largest earthquakes on record in the United States were from the New Madrid fault, and not the San Andreas fault. Three occurred in 1811 and 1812. The only reason not many people died is because it was 1811 & 1812 and so the area wasn't heavily populated. The same quakes today would cause immense damage. And indeed, there is much talk about us being due the big one.
I think the first lesson learned is you cannot expect help from the Federal government in the first few days to reach you in the disaster zone. Now with Katrina, the government new it was coming and probably should have responded better faster. But with say an earthquake, no warning will be available and so you definitely can't expect a fast response. Who knows what condition the roads will be in to allow aid to reach people. No, communities and individuals will be on there own for at least several days, if not longer.

So, perhaps each person in a vulnerable area or even the whole US should have a survival kit assembled with several days worth of nonperishable food (probably MRES - Meals Ready to Eat), water, a first aid kit, a radio for information, water filter, tarps, and other supplies. I doubt too many people are going to do this, (I myself have not and probably won't anytime soon) so the government would need to encourage this somehow, maybe by making it tax deductible. Then you have the problem that if all these buildings have collapsed, how will people reach the kits when they're buried under debris. People could build sheds to store all their emergency supplies. (Build a earthquake resistant house, call it an emergency shelter, and you'll be exempt from property taxes.)

Chances are that's not going to happen, so each community should store emergency supplies, not in one central location, but at various locations within walking distance of all residents. Each neighborhood could be responsible for their own supplies. And as the shelf life approaches, if MREs do indeed have shelf lives, the food could be given out to the homeless so it doesn't ruin and go to waste and be replaced with new food.

Each community should have disaster centers from which to manage disasters. For starters, the buildings should be especially built to survive the disasters, whether hurricane, earthquake, etc. They should have back up generators and maybe solar panels, satellite phones and satellite internet for communication in case the land lines go down, two way radios, food, water, gasoline, vehicles, etc. Communications was a problem after Katrina.
What about after the initial disaster and when aid must be distributed? After Katrina, the government was criticized both for being too slow in getting out money while being criticized for people getting away with fraud. First of all, if you want speed fraud will happen, that's the price you pay. What we need is a database of everyone including biometric information (fingerprints and retina scans), where they live, and other information. This would be a national database and backed up in several locations in case a disaster strikes any one server's location. Then, when a disaster hits an area, the government will be able to quickly verify if someone really does live in the affected area, and if they are who they say they are. and get the money to people who are suppose to have it quickly. It would also be able to make sure people don't double dip into the funds. The government might not be able to stop people from buying $100 bottles of wine, etc., but they could control who gets the money in the first place.
After Katrina, many people had trouble getting new ID since they lost their birth certificates along with it. With a database, new IDs could be quickly issued. This is important since an ID is needed to access one's bank account, etc. Who knows, maybe the government could provide each American with an allotted amount of electronic storage in this database to backup important information in case all their belongings are destroyed.

A final step step we should take is disaster mitigation to reduce the impact of disasters in the first place. This could include not building in areas prone to flooding (like under sea level), building earthquake resistant homes, clearing brush away near buildings in wooded areas, and not building on the sea coast or building hurricane proof houses. Obviously disaster mitigation costs some money, but its cheaper to mitigate a disaster than to recover from a disaster. They can actually make buildings that are designed to resist earthquakes better, and homes that survive hurricanes. Building codes should require new buildings to follow guidelines that would mitigate disaster. We also don't want to repeat the mistake of requiring casinos to be floating, resulting in casinos ending up miles inland. If you are going to have casinos, they might as well be on land, because its not going to affect how many people gamble anyways.

More disasters are likely to happen. Sooner or later an earthquake is going to strike without warning, and we need to prepare now for that worst case scenario in addition to everything else. We cannot expect the federal government to be there to help for several days, and each community and each individual needs to be prepared to survive on there own in the mean time. We should have centers to manage disasters in each community that will survive the disaster. We need a national database so that we can get new IDs to be people, and get aid to the people that need it without wasteful fraud. And finally, but still importantly, we should take steps to mitigate disasters before they happen.

(P.S. To my loyal readers out there, I apologize for the sparse postings lately, but I have been swamped at school as the semester ends. We here at the Gregarious Blog believe in excellence, and if we can't deliver it to you then we don't deliver anything, because your time is as valuable as ours.)

Wall Street versus Main Street? Why not stop at the intersection of Wall Street and Main Street?

2008-03-30T21:32:00.009-04:00

In this post I will write mainly in response to a speech Obama gave on the economy. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/us/politics/27text-obama.html?pagewanted=all

Barack Obama talks about Wall Street versus Main Street. It seems often that Wall Street and Main Street are viewed as diametrically opposed. That Wall Street prospers on the back of Americans. But does it have to be this way? I think not. Americans, no matter what they make, as long as they make something, should be investing money in the markets. Then they too can prosper when Wall Street prospers. But this requires sacrifice on the part of individuals. They have to choose to save money instead of spend it on items beyond their means. Indeed, this requires that they spend below their means, below their incomes, rather than spend more than their income. If you are in credit card debt money you earn in the market will be wiped out by your credit card interest. Of course there can be good debt, like your mortgage, or your student loans, although as has been brought to light lately that depends on your circumstances. Main Street should prosper on the backs of Wall Street.

"To renew our economy and to ensure that we are not doomed to repeat a cycle of bubble and bust again and again and again, we need to address not only the immediate crisis in the housing market, we also need to create a 21st-century regulatory framework and we need to pursue a bold opportunity agenda for the American people." Have you not studied history Obama? Have you no idea that the economy goes up and down, but in the long-term up? In the long-run, if you're diversified, you should make money. That doesn't mean each day you check your portfolio you'll have more, that doesn't even mean any given year you'll have more than you did last year. You could lose money in the short-run, you will lose money in the short-run from time to time. But if you're investing in the long-run, and diversifying your investments, you will historically make money. You say that we shouldn't put short-term gain ahead of long-term consequences, which I totally agree with, but your thinking betrays you and puts short-term gain first. If you strive to get rid of the cycle of bubble and burst, then you are encouraging short-term gain. In the long-term, the economy will improve, the markets go back up. If you're investing for the long-term you don't have that much too fear, except for politicians who will try to "fix" the economy. But if I can be guaranteed that I won't get caught in a bursting bubble, why wouldn't I invest for short-term gain, why wouldn't I put all my money in the latest investment fad? To say that the government needs to work to get rid of the bubbles and ensure stable growth is naive and just contributes to the get quick-rich mentality that got us in this financial quagmire in the first place.

I would like to know how Obama proposes to stop bubbles. The stock market by nature will create bubbles. Some area starts going up, whether it be technology stocks or mortgage-backed securities, and other people see this and say to themselves, "I should put my money in there since its doing so well." And they do, which drives up prices even more, causing even more people to do that. But eventually people stop putting money in, and prices start dropping. And then everyone thinks to themselves, "I must get my money out so I'm not stuck holding the deed to this house of cards." And so prices are driven down dramatically. Without dramatically restructuring our economy, there's no real way to stop this. The government can't come in and say the price of a stock or security or a home has gone up too much and so no one else is allowed to buy. And yet that's whats implicit behind Obama's statements. To be fair, I don't think Obama is that radical to attempt that, just too dumb to realize that what he says can't work.

One thing the housing bubble has shown is too many Americans aren't diversified financially. Most people's net worth is found in their homes, very little if any outside of them. Although home is housing, it is also an investment and like any investment one shouldn't put all their eggs in one basket. As I said earlier, Americans need to be invested in the market so that they can partake in the riches of Wall Street. Then if your home value drops, you'll be cushioned by investments in some other area. Why not have Main Street and Wall Street intersect?

What should the government do to prevent something like the subprime mortgage problem happening again in the long-term? I would argue the single greatest thing would be to educate students while they are in school about finances. This is more important than any regulation we can create. Kids shouldn't graduate without having been taught about making a useful budget, the dangers of credit cards, home loans, IRAs, 401(k)s, mutual funds, stocks, planning for retirement, planning for a house, the benefits and costs of home ownership, etc. The subprime lenders certainly share a large part of the blame for this whole mess. But if people had been educated before they graduated they would have known to avoid subprime loans. (and if they got one anyways that's their fault.) No matter how much regulation, there is bound to be failures of large companies from time to time. There is bound to be more Enrons. There is bound to be more bubbles. But if the average American, especially the workers of those companies, knew to invest for the long-term and to stay diversified, they would not feel a huge impact beyond at having to find another job. They would have known home prices wouldn't keep going up forever. They would have known not to get a mortgage they can't afford.

Presidents' Day: A Day Long Forgotten

2008-02-17T22:25:00.003-05:00

What ever happen to Presidents' Day? We use to celebrate Washington and Lincoln's birthday on different days. And rightly so, as they are both worthy of our rembrance for their great courage to found and hold together these United States of America. We have since rolled the day of celebrating them along with the other 40 Presidents of the United States into one day. Now that day we no longer get off, we no longer celebrate. It has become an excuse for used car dealer sales. Disgraceful. The men who stood up to tyranny and founded a nation, who united a nation, who held it together, who stood up to those who wished to dominate the world, who put themselves under the microscope that is the Presidency, and who willingly handed over their power even to their political opposition where in other states a coup d'etat would have had to take place deserve more. Not only do they deserve that people honor them by setting aside a day of work, they each deserve their own day. If anything, we should get every President's birthday off. These men not only gave of their lives, three of them gave their lives. And to think we can't even afford one day to truly honor them.

Improving Education Requires Refining The Teacher Workforce

2008-02-08T19:19:00.000-05:00

What is it that we can do to improve our public schools? I would submit that every great organization is made great in part by its people. It doesn't matter whether its a corporation, a non-profit, the government, or I would say even a school. You can have new textbooks, laptops for every student, many standardized tests or no standardized tests, and on and on, but without good teachers you won't get the results you want.

I believe that if we truly want to improve public education we have to make it easier to fire underperforming teachers. In the business world if you consistently fail to perform you're fired. But this is not the case in our schools. You pratically have to be caught having an affair with a student or abusing a child to be fired. Results don't matter. We hold our teachers to a standard so low its absolutely disgraceful. I think the majority of our teachers are more capable than that. And I think our students deserve better. They deserve better than the standard being not breaking the law. That doesn't cut it in the business world, and it shouldn't cut it in schools. Public schools, after all, are suppose to benefit the students, not provide jobs you can never get fired from for grown adults. Unless we are willing to fire underperforming teachers we won't have significant improvements in education. If we don't, then there will be individual students are stuck with these bad teachers, who will suffer because of it. It is important to remember our educational policy affects individuals kids, its not just theoretical. I'm not out to hurt teachers but to help students, who should be the focus of education.

I should point out that I'm not for firing teachers out of the blue. They deserve to know their standing, whether they are doing an exceptionally good job, and average job, or are underperforming. They deserve a second chance to improve, to put forth the effort if they've grown apathetic under the current culture of mediocracy. They deserve honest feedback. They deserve to respond to criticism, to set the facts straight if they fail their evaluations are incorrect. To fire them without such a chance would be cruel and ineffective. I imagine many teachers would do better knowing that they could get fired for underperforming and rewarded for good work. After all, honestly, how hard would you try at your job if you were set for life? The underperformers should be offered help to improve if they choose. For that matter all teachers should be given help to improve, No one reaches a point where there is nothing new to learn, no way to improve. New teachers should be mentored by more experienced teachers. Continuous improvement for everyone.

Politicians are always saying that teachers are underpaid, and should be paid more. But bad teachers are grossly overpaid. Good teachers are grossly underpaid. We need to get rid of bad teachers and pay good teachers more, a lot more. People will object saying that student test scores don't give an accurate picture of a teacher's performance. I would agree 100%. We can't rely entirely on a teacher's students' test scores, that is only a small component. We have to trust principals to evaluate their teachers. People again will say that's a hard thing to do. Yes it is. In the business world managers, executives, CEOs are always having to evaluate their employees and its almost never easy, except in cases of gross misconduct. Principal's can use a variety of ways to evaluate their teachers.Student test scores is a small component. Input from fellow teachers and students is another. Interviews with the teachers, having them write down and talk about their accomplishments from the past year and their development needs for the next year, is a third way. Again, this is not easy, but its as necessary as in business. If a principal finds it easy to fire then they should fired themselves, as they should if they can't make tough decisions. It goes without saying principals also have to be held to tough standards, not just the teachers.

I suggest that we hire mathematicians to develop algorithms to use student test scores to evaluate teachers. What do I mean here? I mean algorithms that would show how students improve or fall behind as they go from teacher to teacher, year to year. Right now if a student had a bad teacher they'd probably score lower not just that year, but the next year. But if the next year they had a good teacher, their score would likely improve, although it might still be below average. So through complicated statistical analysis like that, we could use test scores to provide a better view of how teachers are actually performing. Again, its not the whole picture, but it would be an aid in teacher evaluation. I could post a whole blog on student testing, so I'll save that for another time.

Rewarding good teachers is not just the right thing to do, its the best thing to do. It will get teachers to try harder, knowing that they will be rewarded. It will help attract more of the best and brightest of our society into the teaching profession. Its no secret that teachers don't make a lot of money. No one will ever go into teaching just for the money. But if you're a bright student with many options deciding on a career and actually interested in teaching, but realize you have to raise your family on a teacher's salary, you're going to be less likely to choose to teach. On the other hand, there are currently people in teaching because its a paycheck, you get a lot of vacation, and you don't really have to worry exereting yourself too much. Colleges of education generally attract many students who aren't the best students. If we reward good teachers we will both motivate teachers and attract generally more qualified people into the teaching career.

We also need to offer combat pay. Combat pay is where teachers are paid more to teach in challenging schools, i.e. schools in dangerous and poor areas. The goal is of course to attract good teachers there to turn the schools around. Combat pay has to be high enough that it makes up for the tough assignment and actually attracts good teachers who would otherwise take easier assignments that many better schools gladly offer them even though they're the ones who can do the most good at failing schools. Combat pay shouldn't just be student loan forgiveness but cold, hard cash. Otherwise what incentive will those who didn't take out student loans because their parents saved or more imporatantly because they were exceptionally good students and received scholarships do? And what happens after they're their long enough to have their loans forgiven, then there is no incentive to stay even if they are experienced by this time with working with underperforming students from tough neighborhoods? No, we have to pay them more money. The amount would have to be determined by a study to find out how much money it would take to make someone as likely to take a hard assignment.

We must encourage people from challenging technical fields to teach math and science by paying them more to teach, a proficiency of which is necessary for America's long-term succes in a globalized world. People who are skilled in the areas of math and science have a lot of higher paying job options before them than teaching. Wouldn't it be good to have math and science teachers who really know math and science, who are excited about the subjects, rather than have math and science teachers who never majored or worked in those areas. It would be great to have people with real world work experience, who can explain how can explain why the subjects matter, how the topics they're teaching are relevant and important to learn. To do that requires more competitive pay. It also requires allowing professionals who want to try teaching to get in the classrooms before they have to go back to the class themselves. If you have to get a masters in education before you can find out whether teaching is for you or not then you're going to be significantly less likely to try teaching.

Going along with encouraging more people to enter education, preferably enough so there is competition for teaching jobs, because competition breeds excellence, is a change to the current pension system. Most school districts or states probably have an old-school (pun intended) pension system in place, where you have to work so many years in the district or state before you are vested, and even then don't get full benefits unless you retire from working in that district or state. I suppose the goal is to encourage teachers to stay working there but in the end I would say it hurts more than it helps. First off, we shouldn't be encouraging bad teachers to stay. I'm sure there are teachers who realize teaching isn't a good profession for them but have to stay because they need the retirement benefits. But more importantly, I imagine it hurts encouraging people to enter teaching. Today, chances are you won't work for the same company your whole life, you'll likely change jobs many times. A company who now has a traditional pension plan instead of 401(k) would have a hard time attracting new employees who want job mobility. Chances are, most teachers are married to someone who brings in more money and whose job dictates where they live. People who otherwise would try teaching are less likely to since they offer traditional pensions which would hurt their retirement if they realize they aren't fit to be teachers and got out, or because they want to move. Not everyone who tries teaching is going to be good, so by offering 401(k)s instead of pensions the pool of applicants will increase, allowing schools to find good teachers and weed out the bad. So we need to phase out pension plans, of course keeping promises to current teachers but giving new teachers and current teachers who choose 401(k)s instead. Not only would this be to the benefit of education, but its to the benefit of local governments since 401(k)s don't tie their hands later on down the road with huge pension obligations when their revenues might be down because of a hurting economy, like today.

The teacher unions won't be wild about this plan, they would be pretty adamantly opposed to it. Which is unfortunate, because for the vast deal of teachers it will help them. So how do we pass it, since a plan that can't be passed is useless? Hook higher teacher pay, both rewards for great teachers and higher pay for teachers in general, to the ability to fire bad teachers. If a teacher union won't agree to eliminating underperforming teachers then the only pay increases their teachers get is an adjustment for inflation. This would put pressure on the teachers to encourage their union to agree. If we don't get rid off bad teachers and raise teacher pay then we're paying bad teachers more. For the first school districts or states to adopt such a plan, they would get the added benefit of attracting good teachers from other places with the rewarding pay. I truly believe that improving our public schools requires refining the teaching workforce more than different teaching methods or more money for schools besides what's necessary for competitive teacher pay.

An Apology for Conservatism

2008-02-06T10:58:00.000-05:00

Conservatism is not, at its heart, a mere collection of policies, a platform, nor a political party, but rather at it's heart it is how one thinks, a particular mindset, a way of viewing the world, the whole world and all its happenings, both days of celebration and days that live in infamy, 11/9 and 9/11. There is no Conservative Manifesto. God willing, there will never be a Conservative Manifesto. Two conservatives may differ on the way to approach any number of issues and yet both still be true conservatives. And in spite of, or perhaps because of all the differing approaches conservatives may hold, conservatism presents a far more unified view of the world than other political philosophies.

Conservatism recognizes that there is indeed a definitive right and wrong. There is great evil in the world, although there is also great good. It is unfortunately not always easy, not usually easy, to discern but that foundation remains nonetheless. It is a foundation for government, the basis for laws. Our founding fathers recognized this. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." And it remains, I think, a necessary component for the functioning of a successful society. Now to be clear, I am not saying we need to institutionalize any particular religion, the founding fathers also saw the dangers of that mistake repeated many times throughout history. But right and wrong is a necessary basis for government.

Conservatives see the hearts of men for what they are, corrupt. This is why we need government, to restrain our passions, our lust, our greed, and our pride. Yes, conservatives see that government is a necessary evil, as are taxes. Taxes are the price we pay for living in a civilized society. Yes, conservatives believe we need government and taxes, they don't want a world of anarchy. Government protects us within a state from fellow citizens and from threats from other states.

It is the same reason that we need government that conservatives see the need to limit and restrain government, because man's heart is corrupt. People ultimately must run any government. And when you put corrupt people in power their corruption can overtake them. The old adage is true, "absolute power corrupts absolutely." That is why we have a system of checks and balances and separation of powers. No one person or group of people get too much power. And that is why in part conservatives see the need to limit the size and role of government. Many people have come up with and implemented grand plans for utopias, to the ruin of their societies. That men are corrupt, including themselves, is a fact that all these agents of change have sadly failed to recognize. Try to create a heaven on earth and you will end up with a terrestrial hell for this very reason.

Conservatives believe in people, not the government, being responsible for their lives. We have a right to the pursuit of happiness, not an entitlement to happiness. When the government starts doing more and more things for people they become more and more dependent upon the government. You end up with a welfare state, in effect a mommy state that picks up their socks after them. Conservatives on the other hand are for citizens being equipped for running their own lives. They are the proud father that watches as their son experiences triumph and learn's from their mistakes. Conservatives are not for leaving people out in the cold either. Conservatives take the approach of "feed a man to fish, feed them for a day, teach a man to fish, feed them for a lifetime." Hence why conservatives favor job training as opposed to welfare. Help people get the skills they need to compete in the world and they can have more income and more importantly a far more satisfying and rewarding life than they can livng off of government handouts. When a job is outsourced people should be provided the opportunites to learn new skills and go into a new, better line of work rather than live off a unemployment check searching through the classifieds for similar jobs that also are being outsourced. Work is not to be viewed as drudgery. Work should be interesting, rewarding, and challenging. It feels good to bring home a paycheck that you earned, to be the one providing for your family, and even to be a supporter of rather than a drag on your society by paying taxes. Perhaps conservatives have done a bad job both portraying this as their goal and more importantly pursuing it as a goal. Hence the push to create personal savings accounts in social security. Its a person's money first, they should be the one to save and invest it for retirement. In my own opinion the government never should have started social security to begin with; its a massive pyramid scheme about to break when you get down to it. Hence personal responsiblity in health care, individuals are better suited to manage their health than any government program, not to say changes don't need to be made.

When Conservatives trust people to be responsible, they are also trusting the free market to work by invisible hand to the benefit of society. Competitive markets are best at determining prices, not the government. Competition keeps prices low for consumers. Businesses need to make profit to survive drives them to be efficient. The government doesn't work that way. When the government does things inefficiently, they just tax more or borrow more to pay for it. When the government manages things it ends up with an inefficient, cumbersome bureaucracy that would never cut it in the business world. When the government sets price control that are relevant then we either end up with shortages or surpluses, just think gas price limits and agriculture subsidies, neither has ended up well. Conservatives recognize a need for the government to make sure markets don't turn into monopolies and to make sure companies play fair, but in general see that it is better for the government to stay out of the way. Indeed, conservatives believe the economy is helped best by the government when it gets out fo the way by keeping taxes low and minimizing regulation. Conservatives also see that free trade benefits us and other countries in the long run. Yes, some people's jobs go overseas, but that is why there is a need for job retraining to help them get better jobs. If the government has a role in the economy its in helping people transition, not in helping them hold onto the old economy. Conservatives see that some things don't work well in the free market, like defense, but in most cases the free market is better at allocating resources.

Conservatives are for doing just that, conserving. There is a place for tradition and convention in our modern world. There is also a place for change, but that change must be slow and prudent. Conservatives don't fall for change for change sake, they ask the important question of "to what are we changing?" Hastily, unprudent change seldom turns out for the good. The Soviet Union was a great change, but was it a change for the better? Certainly not. No, conservatives have never drunk the Kool-Aid. Conservatives "prefer the devil they know to the devil they don't." Change, no matter how good its intentions, results in disruption. Conservatives weigh the disruption when discerning whether the change is merited. Conservatives believe in making decisions in part based on how it affects later generations. The do not believe we should burden our children and children's children with debt and with problems we've left unresolved out of lack of leadership and political cowardice.

Conservatives in the United States respect the Constituion. It limits the government, it protects our liberty. We cannot get rid of habeas corpus, we cannot get rid of the right to a fair trial, in the name of national defense. Liberty is valued above security. "Live free or die." They value the federal system setup in the Constitution. One of its great merits, besides protecting us from tyranny, is that it allows individual states to experiment with changes without risking the whole nation. If a state tries a new approach and succeeds, then it can spread to other states. If they try and fail, then we all learn from their mistake. Conservatives believe local people are better suited to make decisions that affect them locally then any national institution.

Conservatives, I would submit, should be associated with conservation. We inherited the earth and all its beauty and yes, all its resources from our ancestors. We must likewise keep in mind that our children, our children's children, and their children, will inherit what we leave or don't leave behind. We wouldn't want to leave them a bankrupt government, nor should we want to leave them a bankrupt environment. It would be a shame if our grand-children aren't able to experience the great outdoors because of our action or inaction. We are stewards of this earth, not owners. God gave us the earth for our use but also with the responsibility to take care of it. In addition to allowing our ancestors to have the same priveledge of enjoying the great outdoors, of visiting national parks and snorkeling through corral reefs, there is also the economic impact to consider. We must also conserve the environment so that we will continue to have its renewable resources. We must conserve because climate change can hurt the economy. Conservatives should be at the forefront of conservation, working towards solutions that protect the earth and help our economy. We should remember President Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican and a conservationist, who set aside 150 million acres of national parks and nature preserves. When Congress went to block him in 1907 he slipped in 16 million acres the night before by executive order.

Conservatives know that the health of a state, particularly a democratic state, rests upon the virtue, knowledge, and wisdom of the people. And so conservatives see the need for a good education system. Besides keeping taxes low its one of the few positive things the government can actually do for the economy. Having well-educated people will only be more important for getting jobs in the globalized economy as time goes on. This is essential if people are to be responsible for their lives. Students should also graduate knowing how to handle their money as well, in order to avoid credit card debt and the repeat of the subprime mortgage crisis. But education is not just about getting people ready for successful careers in order to make lots of money and thus stimulate the economy. A good education system must create citizens, not just consumers. The children in school today will one day be choosing our leaders, some of them will eventually be our leaders. They must be ready to take that responsibility seriously and cast their sacred ballots. That requires knowing how our government work and knowing history to avoid repeating mistakes of the past. Education must develop students' minds, shape them, make them think critically, even if it means they start questioning their education, especially if it means they start questioning their education. Even if we pump out students with technical skills, we are failing students if they can't think critically. Conservatives believe in an education system which benefits the students.

Conservatives recognize it is both the right and duty of a sovereign state to protect and defend their borders. The government has the right to know and control who crosses the border, and indeed they ought to do so. There are many people from around the world who desire to come to these United States, and it is unfair to them to simply let people cut in line and sneak across the borders. It is, more importantly, a national security issue. We need to know who is in the United States. Conservatives also recognize that our economy is dependent on immigration to fill jobs, and thus see the need to allow legal immigration via a guest worker program while cracking down on illegal immigration. Conservatives think that we need to crack down on the hiring of illegal immigrants, which will put a stop to people coming here in the first place. We definitely differ on what to do with those already here. Many have sympathy for those illegal aliens who are here and already have families and would rather pardon them than uproot them and send them home. Others conservatives think that the only way to put a stop to illegal immigration is to send a message by deporting those here. Its alright to have disagreements. We can disagree on the particulars and still be conservative, as long as we recognize the need to address illegal immigration and can arrive at a compromise solution that will take the necessary steps towards putting a stop to it.

I've tried to capture the essence of conservatism. I hoped to show how conservatism is a framework in which each policy fits, rather than a seemingly random collection of different stances. It is by no means complete nor will every self-described conservative agree with all of what I stated. As I said at the beginning, the nature of conservatism means there will be variation in conservative's views.

Reforming Health Care: Part 3 - Why A Government-Run Monopoly Is Wrong For America

2008-02-04T12:35:00.000-05:00

There has been much talk about the United States being the only developed country without some sort of socialized health care. We spend the most on health care but don't get comparable results, they say. How do we survive, one might ask. Although our current system is at best mere survival, I would strongly disagree that a government run system is the solution.

First off, lets ask what is uniquely different between the United States with our private insurance system and other developed nations with a form of government run insurance, as it amounts to. Advocates in the United States seem to think that we will magically start spending less money on health care if we switch to socialized health care. This is not true. People in other countries are much healthier than Americans. In essence, our obesity makes us uniquely American. People in Europe don't have car-centric societies, they use public transportation and walk a lot more. (To be fair, Europe is more densely populated and so public transportation makes more fiscal sense to build light rail, etc.) They also eat healthier, not necessarily because they don't ever eat fattening food, but they eat in moderation, we eat fattening food to excess. To a large degree, we spend so much on health care because we have to treat preventable diseases caused by obesity, whereas countries in Europe do not. If we switch to a government run system then those costs do not go away. We don't have a health insurance problem so much as a health problem. Higher health care costs from obesity drive up insurance premiums, which drive people out of the system. Socialized medicine does nothing to fix this.

Second, lets look at how advocates say socialized health care costs save money. They say that a government run system is more efficient. There is less overhead, no marketing costs and no profits. To that I pose this question, what is so unique about the health care industry that would cause the same reasoning of lower costs do to lack of profits, marketing costs, and other overhead from applying to any other industry? Why should we in the United States not have a government run telephone system? You get the same thing no matter what provider, the ability to talk with another person, so why do we need so many competing companies? Cingular, Verizon, and other companies compete against each other for customers, which requires spending money on advertising, and all of them make profits. So why not cut them out and have the government provide our cell phone service? No profits and no advertising means lower bills. Why stop there? What about air travel? Do we really need all these different airlines when they all do the same thing of getting you from point A to point B, albeit some better than others. Then your frequent flier miles will work for any flight. I could keep listing examples, but I think you get the idea. So, when we carry this idea through to its logical end, what do we end up with? The USSR. The USSR failed though. But why, they don't have advertising costs and profits to make?

Supply and demand. Ceteris paribus, price determines the quantity demanded and price determines the supply provided. Communism failed to realize this. They couldn't set the right price, the right supply, and they definitely couldn't set the right demand. There's either surpluses or shortages. But under capitalism, competition sets the right price, the right supply produced, the right quantity demanded. (Not perfectly, but better than communism.) Now capitalism only works for the consumer when you have competition. Competition keeps the price down because you can't charge too much because another company will undercut your prices, stealing your customers. When there is no competition you have a monopoly which can set the price much higher than consumers would like, hence anti-trust laws. Socializing health care would result in a government monopoly, not any better than a corporate monopoly.

John Edwards has said that he would be create government insurance packages that people could choose to buy modeled on medicare. "American health consumers will decide which works best. It could continue to be divided. But it could go in one direction or the other, and one of the directions is obviously government or single-payer. And I’m not opposed to that." He should be opposed to that. Sure, initially a government system would be able to cost less by foregoing profits, etc., and drive private insurance companies out of business. Its the after the private insurance companies are driven out of business that concerns me. Just like we don't allow corporate monopolies because they're bad for consumers, we shouldn't allow a government monopoly of health insurance. After the private insurance companies are put out of business because they like every other business in America must make a profit to survive, what will set prices when the government doesn't have a target to beat, private insurance prices? What will determine the level of quality that can be provided when there is no target to beat? Need I remind you of how good the USSR was at setting prices without competition? In a few years the government will fail to invest in new innovative technologies that could lower costs and raise quality since they don't have to respond to competition. We will have a stagnant and then decaying health care system. I might point out that corporations take profits and reinvest them. If the government plan doesn't take profits then they won't have money to reinvest and that will either not happen or the costs will be added to your tax bill.

If anything is wrong with our private health care system with competing companies then it is that there is not enough competition. Employers choose health plans, not the consumers who have to use them. If we had a system that gave consumers choice and information (definitely lacking today) then I think we would see costs lower and quality rise. I've already addressed this issue so I will refer you to my health insurance plan that would introduce more competition while putting people in the system, not pushing out the sick. (Reforming Health Care - Part 1 - Evil Insurance Corporations, Reforming Health Care - Part 2 - Preventative Measures and Insurance)

Taking The High Costs Out Of Higher Education - Innovative Ways To Reduce U of L's Budget

2008-02-01T14:28:00.000-05:00

The governor of Kentucky this week announced a 12% cut to higher education. This is a very drastic cut. It’s not just asking us to tighten our belt buckles, but to cut off the excess belt and sell it, and sell the remaining belt and buckle to advertisers. Now although I very much intend to delve into this cut, and where it shows our priorities lie, (and don't lie) that will have to wait for another post. Today, I'm putting forward some ideas I have for cutting the costs of higher education here at the University of Louisville, and more broadly at other universities in Kentucky and the United States. Many of these I would be for even in times of economic boon, but especially now that we have a budget cut we need to take innovative approaches.

1- Cut the insanely, ridiculously high mandatory meal plan. When I was a Freshman I was required to purchase an $850 per semester meal plan. (per semester!) There was no way I could spend it all on my own, nor should I have to have spent that much of my money at U of L's poor food services. I had to buy food for friends, and then at the end of the year by a bunch of overpriced groceries, to keep our food service (Chartwells) from getting free money. But now it’s gone up to $1000 per semester. It’s not a question of if tuition will go up, but by what insanely huge amount. Reducing the meal plan would put real money into student's pockets, helping to offset some of the tuition increase. Just cutting back to the level when I was a freshman would save residential Freshman $300. It’s the least we can do, and it doesn't take much to do it.

2- Another easy thing we can do to help students in lieu of a major tuition increase is stop going to new edition of textbooks that are almost identical as the old edition. It’s no secret that textbook manufacturers make money by releasing new editions. Let’s say no to this, at least for the next couple of years while our budget is cut and tuition extra high. Professors should have to show a legitimate reason for requiring a new book.

3 - Get rid of our current, crappy e-mail system. Most students don't use it for their primary e-mail, most just have it forward e-mail to their personal account. I only log in to clear it out every so often. There are plenty of free options out there, my favorite Gmail, let’s just use them. Believe it or not, there are universities that have switched to Gmail. Google takes over, they keep the same domain name, e.g. louisville.edu, and the same addresses, customize the logo, etc., all for FREE. We should not continue to pay for a dissatisfactory service that doesn't have enough storage. (And if you go to U of L you know the spam filter for all our money isn't even built in, you have to login to another system.) We could use Gmail for free and get gigs of storage. Take our backroom operations and make them someone else's front room operations.

4- Gmail of course makes money by showing ads based on your e-mail. So along those lines, put advertisements on our other online systems, (e.g. Ulink, Blackboard) to help pay for them, if not make money. And while we're on advertising, put ads up on campus, especially on those wasted flat panel TVs that show the weather. (I've obviously already been outside, I know the weather)

5- Corporate sponsorship. Anything a company is willing to pay for, let them. It’s happening in sports, why not in the world of academia. Sell the naming rights to buildings on campus. How about the KFC Student Activities Center? We can't make people change what they call places, but guarantee everything in official university communication their name will come up with the mention of their building. Hell, if they offer enough, sell the naming rights to U of L. "Papa John's University of Louisville?"

6- Advisors, what do they really do. So far, I've haven't been impressed with most of my advisors. (A few were ok.) They seem to just rubber stamp your schedule rather than truly guide you. We should develop a dynamic online system for aiding students in picking out classes. It could check your proposed classes against your transcript to make sure you meet the prerequisites and check against your degree requirements. If you don't have a prerequisite you would either change or fill out an online form seeking an exception. And if it doesn't meet a requirement or its one you've already done, it would confirm that you are aware of this and let you either change or continue. Additionally, you could enter in the classes you want to take and have it generate some different possibilities that don't conflict. And as you make changes it would eliminate choices. This would useful even if we didn't have a budget crisis. No one enjoys firing people, (besides Donald Trump) but with a 12% cut in funding some hard choices are going to have to be made. Between keeping professors and keeping advisors, I choose professors. The remaining advisors could respond to exemptions, e-mails, phone calls, and requests for face-to-face meetings. Or, perhaps we could outsource some of this advising, or have student volunteers from each major provide advice, and cut the number of advisors down further. If we implement this with the help of all the current advisors, they can put the development and implementation of an online advising system on their resume and use it to get a better job elsewhere. In effect, they digitalize their own job, and could do the same elsewhere for more money.

7- Push online classes. Do we really need to be spending so much money so students can sleep through lectures with hundreds of other students? Those classes are prime targets for being done online. Technology has advanced enough to make this possible. No more falling asleep in an 8 am class. No more straining your eyes to read your professor's horrible handwriting on the chalkboard or text on PowerPoints that are too small for the room, just peruse your professor PowerPoints notes on your computer at home. Submit your homework online. Of course, you would have to come in occasionally to take tests, which maintains the credibility of online classes. Right now at U of L they charge more for online courses, even if you're full time. Online classes should cost less for U of L to run, if not we're doing them wrong. We should be encouraging online classes, not discouraging them through higher costs. We can market this not as a budget cost, but as a benefit of coming to U of L. "Your schedule shouldn't be flexible to class, but your class should be flexible to you." I'm not saying U of L should move all our classes online. I'm saying we should offer classes where there is not participation, not discussion, but just your professor lecturing in an online format. A lot of your higher classes in your major would probably stay as physical classes for the time.

8- Going hand in hand with online classes is the outsourcing of grading of homework, quizzes, and tests. Right now U of L has fired student graders. You can't tell me that won't affect what assignments your professors give you. If I were a professor I would move towards multiple choice scantrons and questions with one right, clear cut answer. Partial credit, not my problem. If outsourcing grading of some work would allow professors to have graders then its better than nothing. Submitting homework online would be pretty essential for this to simplify the process and allow for speedy processing of your assignments. If ran right the time between turning in an assignment and getting it back graded would decrease, maybe even to the next day. Another thing to do is have homework be filled in on a site so that a computer can grade it, and then you challenge anything you think the computer missed because of spelling, etc.

9- We can't just push the envelope anymore, we have to push beyond the envelope. Mailing costs too much, use e-mail. U of L sends out late notices via snail mail. These mailings for me go to my parents' house, my permanent address, not where I live during my time at college, and I don't find out for several weeks that I have forgotten to return a book. If that was done via e-mail (at least for a couple of weeks) it would not only save mailing costs, it would speed up the return of books and other materials. This can be applied across the board. Besides legally required mailings, and marketing material to potential students (we wouldn't want to look cheap), we should be doing mass mailings via e-mail.

10 - Every time I'm on campus late at night I notice the lights on in academic buildings, long closed. We are just throwing money away. We need to install motion sensors to turn lights off when people are absent. Some areas during the day are near windows and when the sun is shining bright could do without artificial light. So we also need ambient light sensors. Do we really need lights on in stairwells with windows during the day? Another place that could cut power, deserted book stacks in the library. Perhaps we could add solar panels too, if they can be shown to be fiscally feasible in Kentucky's climate. The initial costs to get these energy savings could perhaps be paid for using bonds, with would be paid off with a portion of the energy savings.

11 - Along with the cutting of our electric bill, if we aren't already expand recycling and use it as a way to cut waste disposal costs. We can either have the recycling taken away for free or even get paid for it, depending on how much effort we're willing to go to. Many large companies have turned to recycling to cut costs. Use these efforts to market U of L as a green university, turn cost cutting efforts into a marketing advantage. "U of L is turning green." "Green is U of L." "Green is the new red." I'm sure there are other efforts that could go into this. We should require all new campus buildings to be eco-friendly. (Not that there is going to be many new buildings with a 12% budget cut.) It's no longer enough to think outside the box, we have to get out if it and sell it for recycling because boxes cost too much.

12- Get rid of phones in the dorms. Most people today have cell phones. When I was living in the dorm I hardly ever used my dorm phone. I gave people my cell phone number and called people from my cell phone even when in my room. I'm sure I'm not the only one. If someone doesn't have a cell phone they can take their savings from not having a landline and apply that
to a cell phone. Or use Skype, etc. Or perhaps U of L could switch to running phones through the ethernet, surely that would save money and preserve dorm phones. One of the newer residence halls I stayed in did that, so apply that across campus.

13- Considering the cost of campus housing, there is no way building a new dormitory or residential hall doesn't pay for itself in a few years. So, increase on campus housing either by encouraging private businesses to do it or sell bonds to build them, to be paid off using the revenue from rent. We know that there is more housing demanded than U of L has, so this is a pretty sure bet as you can get that you will have increased revenue. Those bonds could perhaps be coupled with bonds to cover a system to turn of lights and other energy saving efforts. Perhaps a parking garage could be covered by those as well.

14- Encourage high schoolers to take new online college classes to get a leg up. More revenue, self-explanatory.

15 -Stop charging to pay tuition via credit card. We should be encouraging people to make payments online, cutting out paperwork, cutting overhead. If anything, lets either require payments be made online, (if you don't have a credit or debit card to put it on you could always provide your bank account routing number from your check) and charge to process paper checks. Students have access to computers on campus, so lack of access is no excuse. While we're at it, cut down the number of check writing by payroll by requiring all employees paid via direct deposit, and get rid of paper stubs. If they don't have a checking account then they can get one.

16- Conduct season ticket sales online. It used to be tickets were given on a first-come, first-serve basis and people camped out to get good tickets. Last year we switched to a lottery system to give tickets away, but you still had to show up at a certain time. When they got rid of the need to camp out they got rid of the need to conduct ticket sales in person. It’s a chaotic, inefficient process that needs to go. You stand in long lines to pay with a physical check or credit card number on a form filled in by hand. If you can't make it at that particular time and date you get screwed. Lets conduct it online, give a couple day window to go online, fill out an electronic form for everyone in a group seeking tickets together, enter in a credit card number or bank routing number, and let computers, not people do the work. It would save money, it would save time of both U of L and students, and it would reduce stress. This one makes sense no matter the budget situation.

17- Outsource tech support. I shouldn't be able to call tech support and hear an American voice on the other line. Additionally, besides switching to Gmail, we could see about outsourcing all of our IT to a company who specializes in that, if it will save money and improve service.

18- I would say cut orientation down to one day, no overnight stay, or better yet move it online, but I'm pretty certain U of L makes money off that. If that's not the case then get rid of it.

19- When it warms up shut off hot water to buildings where it’s not necessary. So, everywhere besides residential halls, the Student Activity Center since the gym is there and people don't want cold showers, the natatorium for the same reason, and maybe some of the buildings with labs depending upon the type of research. (Who knows what they're developing in the Belknap Research Building.) You don't have to have hot water for washing your hands, that's a luxury.

20 – This would go along with the online classes. Grad classes need to be offered online. At my workplace in Louisville, I know people who were getting Master's Degrees that the company pays for from schools hours away since they could do it online rather than physically show up for class at a particular time. That is lost money.

Just For Fun
1- Lease Miller Hall (probably the worse dorm on campus) out as a minimum security prison. Win-win for the state and for U of L.
2- Require tuition to be paid in Euros
3- Cut all sports that don't make money or at least break even.
4- On all tests add this question: "What's a 16 digit number that will provide U of L with $20?" (5% of grade)
5- Shut off AC and sell cold drinks outside of class.
6- Add "volunteer" hours as a requirement to degrees. Coincidentally, there will be many new "volunteer" "opportunities" on campus with all the layoffs.

There's how I would cut costs at U of L. I doubt these would add up to all our lost money from the state, but I think these would help. (I guess it depends in part on how many online classes we push, and how many professors we layoff because we have less classes to cover on a daily basis.) Drastic times call for drastic measures. A few thousand dollars here, a few thousand there add up. No cost is too small to consider cutting. As I mentioned, many of these make sense even if there wasn't a budget crisis, and some of these would actually result in improved quality. I tried to stick with things that wouldn't result in lower quality, although I'm sure those cuts are coming.

America's Economic Stimulus Package: Banking On Your Stupidity

2008-01-30T19:16:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, the House (not the Senate) passed a $146 billion economic stimulus package. You, if you're a taxpayer, can expect a rebate of $600 to $1200 once it clears Congress. (depending on whether you're filing separately or jointly, and your income level) There are also tax cuts for businesses, allowing them to write off loses over the past several years, thus encouraging more spending than they otherwise would be able to do. But as far at the personal rebates go, the idea is that Americans' will go out and spend that money, giving a boost to our retail-dependent economy.

Is spending that $600 or $1200 on a new HD flat screen TV really the most financially prudent decision during a possible recession? What individuals would be better off doing is saving that money, especially considering most Americans' savings are lacking. Congress's and the President's plan is banking on Americans' stupidity, hoping that they will do the irresponsible thing and spend it frivolously rather than save it. (saving would defeat the whole point of the stimulus) That's how much your government thinks of the average citizen, or should I say consumer. It would after all be fair, I think, to say that we starting to think less of ourselves as citizens and more as consumers. What's the most patriotic thing you can do right now according to your government, shop 'til you drop. Why don't we just send out gift cards, that way no one wastes their money on their 401(k)s.

If I had to guess, we're probably going to borrow this $146 billion from overseas. I question the wisdom of adding that much more to our national debt for a short-term stock market high. Seems like we would be better off trying to pay it off rather than keep maxing out our national credit card. (Fortunately for the US government, and the world economy, Congress can just raises the credit limit whenever we get near defaulting. Don't you wish you could do that with your card?)

On top of that, the Federal Reserves dropped interest rates again today, another 1/2 point down to 3%. It could just be me, but I seem to remember a certain sub-prime mortgage problem. Did we not have our economy come crashing down in part because money was so cheap and people were borrowing when they shouldn't have been because offers were too good to be true. How is this going to help prevent that situation from happening again?

That said, on behalf of my 401(k) I'm going to have to ask you to ignore everything I've said and go spend your rebate, and not on anything like groceries. It's the American thing to do, after all. If only we could forget about the alleged recession, spend like normal, then the high consumer confidence would drive up the stock market and pull us out of the recession, allowing us to afford the spending in the first place. Makes perfect sense, right?

Giuliani In Memoriam

2008-01-29T22:37:00.001-05:00

Voter ID Laws: Preventing Fraud or Preventing Voting?

2008-01-25T19:29:00.000-05:00

The Supreme Court is hearing a case about a law in Indiana requiring citizen's to show a photo ID (specifically one issued by the state or federal government) in order to vote. Advocates of the law say its to prevent voter fraud. If you're required to show a photo ID then you can't impersonate someone and vote, and thus protect the integrity of elections. Opponents say that it would disproportionately affect the poor, the elderly, and the minorities, those least likely to have a photo ID.

I would argue that the Constitution prevents no grounds for striking down such a law. Technically speaking, you have no right to vote for President. First off, we don't elect the president or vice president, we elect electors who elect the President. But the Constitution leaves the method of choosing electors in the hands of the States.

(from Article II, Section 1) Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

If a state wanted to, it could have all its potential electors play Twister until the number of electors a state is apportioned are left standing. Now I'm sure the people of such a state would have objections to that, and the Legislature that implemented that would be voted out, but that's not the point. Now, the Constitution has been amended several times, so let's look at some of the potentially relevant clauses.

(from Amendment XXIV, Section 1) The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay poll tax or other tax.

(from Amendment XXVI, Section 1) The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

One might say that these clauses show a right to vote for President. No, I think to take this literally it says if one does have a primary for President, or an election for electors for President, that you can't deny them the right to vote because of a failure to pay a poll or other tax. Nor, in an election in a state (for any position, national or local) can the government of the United States or the state prohibit you (if you're 18 years or older) from voting because of age. So again, if they have an election for electors in the Electoral College, then you can't be denied the right to vote because of age. But you don't have right to have an election for electors of the President in which to vote.

So, states choose how the choose their electors for the President. If a state does have an election for those electors, then people 18 years of age or older have the right to vote and a poll tax can't be put in place. Requiring a photo ID is within the power of Indiana's legislature, according to the US Constitution.

That said, I think it is very reasonable for a state to require a photo ID to prove you are who you say you are when voting in order to prevent voter fraud. Some states require IDs with a signature. I quite frankly don't see how that stops voter fraud. It does about as much good as requiring a signature on a receipt when you pay using a credit card. If someone wanted to they could copy your signature. Others require a sworn affidavit that you are who you claim to be if you don't show an ID. That's even better, if I'm committing voter fraud having to lie about who I say I am is definitely going to stop me. Does someone have to break a law before you can try to prevent it from happening?

Some people have objected saying that people in Indiana can mail in an absentee ballot without showing an ID, so why the ID rule when you show up in person. If you're going to commit fraud you would be stupid to show up in person and risk being caught, instead you would just cast an absentee ballot. OK then, get rid of absentee ballots and require if you're going to vote you have to show up in person. Case closed.

Some have objected that there are not cases of this voter fraud taking place. Well, if you don't need a photo ID to vote then how would you know someone is an impostor, and how would you get statistics on voter fraud? The Presidential election in 2000 and 2004 were both close in many states. A few fraudulent votes could tip the balance to another candidate. We need to be able to trust the results of our elections if our democracy is to function. Just take a look at a place like Kenya where the election result was disputed.

Now as far as not having an ID is somehow a tax. A state can set a deadline for voting sometime before an election; you don't have a right to show up on the day of an election and vote without having registered to vote. This implies that a state can require persons to have some intent of voting before an election. Now if you have to take time to register in advance, I think it is not unreasonable to take the time to get a photo ID if you want to vote. Voting is a sacred privilege, and should be taken seriously. If you care enough to vote you should care enough to get a photo ID. These "voting right advocates" are really doing a disservice to minority, elderly, and poor voters by giving them a false hope that they won't need a photo ID. By the time the Supreme Court rules, they will have even less time to get a photo ID before the next election. I read about someone who was born at home and not in a hospital, and may not even have a birth certificate, or at the very least it would cost $50 to get a certified copy in order to get an ID. That's their problem. If $5o in order to vote for the rest of your life isn't worth it, then you don't deserve to vote. Freedom isn't free. I'd have to agree with Justice Kennedy, "You want us to invalidate a statute on the ground that it's a minor inconvenience to a small percentage of voters?"

Prime Time Self-Destruction On The Way For Republicans?

2008-01-09T18:45:00.000-05:00

So far we have two caucuses and one primary down for the Republicans. Huckabee won Iowa, Romney got Wyoming (not that anyone but him really cares about that), and McCain won New Hampshire to die another day. The Republican field is in chaos. There is no front runner. Romney could win Michigan, his home state, which would definitely keep him going. Huckabee is poised to take South Carolina through the evangelical vote. Giuliani is waiting in Florida, the chaos definitely a plus for him if he is to have a chance. Then we have Super Tuesday on February 5th, who knows will happen there. It is quite possible those states will be split up throughout the field. Perhaps Huckabee gets the states with a large evangelical population, McCain the states with primaries open to independents, and Romney and Giuliani split large, closed states.

What if no one gets a majority of delegates? That possibility may seem far fetch, but I feel its becoming more and more real. I haven't heard the media talking about it yet, but its not without the realm of possibility. (Which is why I'm saying it now, so I can beat the media to it and say I told you so if it happens. Not too mention the media wasn't right about New Hampshire.) If that happens then the Republican Party won't have a nominee going into the Republican National Convention. How would we get a nominee there? The delegates keep casting ballots until someone has a nominee. So candidates would be trying to steal each other's delegates and cut deals; a massive barbecue of the party with a lot of pork being offered from all sides. If that happens there goes the well-oiled, unified Republican machine in a flame of prime time self-destruction with a record number of viewers. Makes for good TV, but for a lousy chance of winning in November.

To makes matters worse, the convention isn't until Labor Day, leaving barely two months for the eventual nominee to run. The Convention is later this year since the Democrats are holding their convention later to avoid a conflict with the Olympics. The advantage this gives them probably an accident but if not, one of their most brilliant political moves, if this doomsday (if you're a Republican) scenario takes place.

Hopefully, if no one has a majority the candidates will be able to work something out so that we can have a nominee before September, and avoid four nights of political WWF. Some candidate would hopefully offer their support to another in exchange for a vice presidency. Although if Romney is in the lead I don't know if he can offer a vice presidency to the other candidates after the beating they have given him. But who knows if this will even happen, we still have to get past Michigan next week.

Handicapping Politics: The Presidential Election Mapped Out

2008-01-05T13:35:00.000-05:00

Today, I'm going to take some time to write out my predictions for the presidential race. (so that on the rare chance I'm right I can have proof.)

We're going into the New Hampshire primary Tuesday. On the Republican side, either McCain or Romney are out after it. McCain is definitely out if he loses, Romney might keep throwing money at his dying campaign though if he loses, but is still ultimately done. My guess is McCain, he won the state in 2000 and there are a lot of independents (assuming enough vote in the Republican primary.)

On the Democratic side, Clinton will be out if she doesn't pull of a win. Edwards is out if he can't pull of second place. All in all, I'm betting on Obama again because of the independents and his momentum from Iowa. Huckabee needs McCain to win to get rid of Romney. (politics makes strange bedfellows) If Obama does lose New Hampshire, a state he should get, to Clinton, he might be done with. Clinton will be able to claim she's the "comeback kid." He won't drop out yet though. I think Edwards will come in third and be eliminated since he has an anti-corporation message that won't carry in New Hampshire, a state that is more adapted to globalization than Iowa and thus depended upon globalization.

So on the Republican side it will be Huckabee versus McCain as we go into Michigan and South Carolina. (or Romney if he wins NH) Giuliani is holding off until Florida. I personally don't feel his strategy of ignoring the first few states and waiting until the big states and Super Tuesday is going to work. (If it did and he won the nomination, Iowa and New Hampshire wouldn't forgive him for ignoring them.) Giuliani right now needs Huckabee to do well, so he'll take votes away from McCain in Michigan and South Carolina. McCain is screwed in South Carolina, he lost there in 2000, the large evangelical population will deliver Huckabee a win there. That will probably eliminate McCain, although if he wins Michigan he might be able to keep going. (Michigan a must win for McCain. If Huckabee were to lose South Carolina he's out, that's a must win for him.) That means Huckabee (possibly McCain as well but probably not) versus Giuliani (which Giuliani wants) in Florida and on Super Tuesday. (It would probably aid Huckabee more if McCain did campaign in Florida before he gives up.) After Super Tuesday we have a nominee. I'm betting and hoping on Huckabee. It should be pointed out the traditional Republican establishment is against Huckabee, so he is fighting that.

On the Democratic side, Clinton will have been knocked out effectively in New Hampshire, although she probably won't drop out, she's got the Clinton legacy riding on her. Edwards needs Clinton gone to have a shot. I think Obama though wins against Edwards or even Clinton is she stays in. The black vote will go for Obama in South Carolina. Definitely by Super Tuesday, although my guess is before that Obama has the nomination effectively sealed.

This brings us to the general election, Obama versus Huckabee. (I'm more willing to bet on Obama getting the Democratic nomination than Huckabee the Republican, for the record.) To be honest, the Republicans have an uphill battle no matter the nominees. I think Obama wins against any one the Republicans throw at him. On the other hand, if I'm wrong and Clinton won, its more up in the air, she's a polarizing figure. As a Republican I hope she gets the Democratic nomination. I don't think Edwards wins the Democratic nomination, but it would be easier for the Republicans if he won over Obama as well. McCain might have a better shot at the general than Huckabee, if he could get the nomination. He would certainly stress his foreign policy credentials, obviously not important in a time of war. However, a Republican president got us into it, and so the electorate might not trust any Republican to get us out.

The last time a sitting senator was elected president was 1960, JFK. Its immensely hard for a senator to win because they have a voting record. I think the clamor for change could probably outweigh that factor. Whatever Republican wins the nomination is going to have the make the case that they are a candidate of change. I think Huckabee could make that case. What worries me about Huckabee, even though I support him, is that he could be perceived as the evangelical candidate. He won 46% of the evangelical vote, but only 14% of the non-evangelical vote in Iowa. Obviously a large part of the Republican party is evangelical, which helps him get the nomination, but could hurt him in the general. He will have to overcome that perception, allowing him to keep the evangelical vote and motivate them to come to the polls, but not let that define his candidacy so he can grab moderates. He is not the typical Republican, so he'll have to work to grab the economic conservatives. He is very articulate, so I think he a good shot of doing that. As David Gregory of NBC News said on a panel, he hears Huckabee talking about his faith in a way that is not exclusive and is how many people see their faith and is thus appealing. That's a good thing if he's going to win.

So if I were betting, Obama wins, but I want and hope Huckabee wins.

How the heck does the Iowa Caucus work anyways?

2008-01-03T12:16:00.000-05:00

If you don't live in Iowa, chances are you probably have no idea how the Iowa Caucus's actually work. Here's a video from CBS News that does a pretty good job of explaining it. (it even has animations) I suppose I could have written an explanation of the process, but why reinvent the wheel?

It Doesn't Matter Who You Caucus For, Just Caucus (for Mike Huckabee)

2007-12-18T23:05:00.000-05:00

With only a few hours until the Iowa caucuses, time is ticking down. McCain may have gotten the Des Moines Register's endorsement, but Mike Huckabee gets my endorsement. Mike Huckabee has climbed out of nowhere, which threatens to change my opinion of our primary system. Iowans, if you choose Huckabee I will support your state being the wine tasters of American presidents. And if that propels Huckabee to the Republican nomination, I will stop being for all the primaries on one day. But this blog isn't about our primary system, that's a whole separate topic, its about why Mike Huckabee is the right choice for America.

Huckabee is for the fair tax. The fair tax would get rid of the IRS, income taxes, payroll taxes, death taxes, capital gains and replace it with a national sales tax, meaning your money is only taxed once. I don't know about you, but I like the idea of getting rid of the IRS and filing for taxes. This probably deserves a whole blog of its own, (along with every other issue) but I'll hold off for now. But before you object to it being a tax increase on the poor, there would be a prebate to the poverty line, making it a progressive tax system.

When Huckabee was governor of Arkansas, he improved the state's education. Huckabee supports the arts in school, "weapons of mass instruction" as he calls them, which would help us to be creative and competitive. "Art and music are as important as math and science because the dreamers and visionaries among us take the rough straw of an idea and spin it into the gold of new businesses and jobs. It is as important to identify and encourage children with artistic talent as it is those with athletic ability. Our future economy depends on a creative generation." I could go on but will let you research yourself.

Huckabee is for moving from a sick care system to a health care system. That is to say, preventative medicine instead of treating problem after they arise, when they are more serious and cost more to fix. And he would know, he is like the Jared of politics, he lost over 100 pounds. He's a living example of his plan to address the health crisis we're facing, not just the health care crisis we're facing.

I could delve further, and probably will eventually, but instead I'd urge you to check out what Mike Huckabee has to say yourself. www.mikehuchabee.com If you're a Iowa resident, go caucus and go caucus for Mike Huckabee.

Pardoning The Turkey: A Tradition of Injustice

2007-11-22T01:01:00.000-05:00

This Thanksgiving, a day where we give thanks for our blessings before we go out and buy new things for which to give thanks and thus bless the nation's bottom line, I could have chosen to blog about the top ten things I'm thankful for, or have posted the words of Abraham Lincoln from when he commenced this national day of thanks. Or something else that would leave you with a warm feeling inside to put you asleep after eating turkey with tryptophan. (at least I like to think it was the tryptophan) But my conscience wouldn't allow it.

No, instead I choose to address the traditional presidential pardon of a turkey. This is an egregious injustice. What crime did the turkey ever commit? Unless all the turkeys are enemy combatants being detained without habeas corpus then they have committed no crime. That the turkey should be pardoned brings shame upon him and his family, everyone suspecting the worse about him, asking what he did to deserve a pardon. Far better is it to be a cooked turkey with a good reputation than a turkey at a petting farm with shame cast upon him.

Why is not PETA outraged that a turkey is being pardoned for a crime it never committed and of which it was never convicted? Do they have something they care about more than the shame of an individual turkey? Obviously PETA tolerates this injustice because if a turkey is pardoned, that makes a turkey a person. They would be exuberant if a turkey was committed of a crime. Pardoning a turkey is a slippery slope to turkey citizens. We must put an end to this unconstitutional act. If turkeys are citizens with rights, then we can't kill and eat them. That would be cruel and unusual punishment. The real cruel and unusual punishment, not being able to eat them.

This is why I will not vote for a vegetarian president. If the president can pardon one turkey, he could theoretically pardon them all. Hell, he could pardon all our livestock, and I like meat way too much to let that happen.

On a related note, I wish we had gone with Benjamin Franklin's idea. He wanted the turkey to be the national bird. You know what that would have meant, succulent bald eagle for Thanksgiving Dinner. The turkey was going to do well regardless. But the bald eagle, if we were able to eat it wouldn't be endangered. Why's that? Because there would be bald eagle farms to provide us with bald eagle meat, keeping them around.

I hope your conscience is not too troubled but this evil, if it is, drown out your woe with food if you haven't already. Remember, don't actually eat bald eagle, its against the law. (put in on advice of legal counsel) As for me, I'm thankful for those of you who read this blog. I leave you with the final words of Lincoln's 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation. "In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed."

Getting Your Fair Share

2007-11-20T22:13:00.000-05:00

As you are surely aware by now, especially if you are a watcher of Late Night TV, the Writer's Guild is on strike. As I am not in the Writer's Guild, I am glad to be able to inform you my blog is not affected by this as I am not a member. They are on strike because they want a share of the profits from DVD and Internet sales.

It is true that media is changing and I can understand their viewpoint. At first I was sympathetic. But, it occurred to me that just because you do a job doesn't give you a right to the profits from your work after that. That's why you get a pay check. I'm in engineering, and I won't get a cut of the profits from the product I'm working on. You don't see me on a picket line complaining. You should ask yourself if you are getting the benefits of your work long after you do it.

There are many other jobs were this is the same case. Take it when a doctor saves your life. Does he get a cut of your pay that results from you're continuing to get to work? In some cultures (don't ask me which ones) when you save someone's life they owe you a life debt. (like with Chewbacca and Han Solo) Perhaps doctors should get some of that debt that you owe them in the form of garnished wages. Its only fair.

What's our greatest asset? People. Specifically our children. Who makes them besides of course their parents, teachers. If teachers are making our greatest products, better than DVDs and iTune downloads, should they not get rewarded for their long lasting work as well? So writers, you've brought me around to your side, but only after you give that English teacher who encouraged you to write in the first place (or mocked you and made you write just to spite him) part of your salary, until you die.

Think about it. This could really revolutionize teacher compensation. If teachers get their fair share of the income of their students, they would be really motivated to care about their students for the long run and would go the extra mile to help them, tutoring them, mentoring, etc. Rewards based on grades and test scores don't mean much, bad teachers can either grade easy or give students answers during tests. But when corporate America is judging student success, its out of teachers' hands and they can't be wrong. It wouldn't matter if a student is from a rich, middle-class, or poor family, teachers would expect them to become productive members of society. (But God forbid not teachers; that wouldn't get them much later down the road.) And think of the potential for teacher's pay to increase. If you taught the next Bill Gates, you would get quite a bonus. This could turn teaching around and attract the best, most qualified people. Schools would not be satisfied with mediocrity. Of course this would be grandfathered in. Its about time we invested in our children.

Why stop there? Why not literally invest in our children. If we incorporate a child, we can then sell stock in that child to fund their education, in exchange for dividends, aka a cut of their income. So, I'm going to incorporate myself. If I can't sell stock in myself then I'm not free, and we live in America. (This has the added benefit of my qualifying for corporate tax rates, making my expenses business expenses and thus tax deductible, and limiting my liability. I didn't run over that person, ME Incorporated did, and they happen to not have any money, having paid it to their CEO, me.) $100 buys you one share in me, which will be .01% of my future income, so $1,000,000 total. (Don't tell my prospective investors but when I sell all my shares I'll invest it in the stock market, quit working and live off the growth since I won't get any of my income anyways. But shh. Although I should probably stay the majority stock-holder, lest I lose control over myself.) The stock price of good students would of course naturally be higher. This would encourage investors to look for undervalued students, those under-performing but with great promise, and help them do well. The lower the stock price of a student, the greater the potential gain. It's a win-win situation. Of course make sure you diversify. Emerging markets are doing great, so I'm thinking the most money to be had is in third-world children.

Writers, I hope you're happy about advocating selling stock in children. If you're not I'd say feel free to post otherwise but you'll be crossing the picket line. Silence will be taken as tacit agreement.

Corporate Sponsorship of Campaigns - Good Idea or Great Idea?

2007-11-10T16:27:00.000-05:00

You may have heard about the popular host of the Colbert Report Stephen Colbert's presidential bid coming to a tragic end. Sadly, the Democratic party of South Carolina rejected his bid to run in their primary despite being wined and dined. I was quite disappointed, but I'm not focusing on my democratic rights being trampled on by the Democrats. I'm here to talk about his "The Hail to the Cheese Stephen Colbert Nacho Cheese Doritos' 2008 Presidential Campaign."

"The Hail to the Cheese Stephen Colbert Nacho Cheese Doritos' 2008 Presidential Campaign" is in my opinion a novel, ingenious idea that could, unlike the McCain-Feingold Bill, bring about true reform in the way campaigns are financed and ran. Questions were raised about the legality of Doritos sponsoring "The Hail to the Cheese Stephen Colbert Nacho Cheese Doritos' 2008 Presidential Campaign," as corporations aren't suppose to give money to candidate's campaigns, but I see no problem. (He changed it to the "The Hail to the Cheese Stephen Colbert Nacho Cheese Doritos' 2008 Presidential Campaign Coverage.") Corporations already find ways to support candidates who's platforms align with their goals, or to buy them off, whether by forming Political Action Committees or telling their employees to make donations. If that's the case, which it is, then how would it not be better to have candidate's wear their supporters on their sleeves? For example, many accuse the Bush administration of having close ties to Halliburton, so what would have been wrong with the Halliburton's Non-Bid Contract for America Bush-Cheney Quail Hunt for the White House 2008 Presidential Campaign? At least you would know where their interests lie. (Yes I know the Contract for America was from 1994, but I couldn't resist)

But there is an even better reason for having corporate sponsorships of campaigns. When its a corporate sponsorship its no longer about a quid pro quo for if and when their candidate is elected, (I paid for your campaign, you pass this bill that happens to help out our bottom line) but about advertisement. Do you really think Doritos was supporting Colbert's campaign so that when he was elected president he would be pro-junk food? (Not banning Doritos in vending machines in public schools, etc.) Of course not, he was only running for president in one state, that would never happen. (If he was running in every state though, he might have had a shot, his supports would be voting two, three times for him on election day if he asked.) Doritos just wants people to buy their product. It doesn't even really matter whether a candidate wins or loses, as long as their name is out there. Thus, if we allowed outright corporate sponsorship of campaigns, we remove corruption from the political process, and at the same time stimulate the economy by encouraging Americans to do what they do best, consume.

And finally, why stop at corporate sponsorship of campaigns? Why not help fund our democratic process by having everything from the Pepsi Presidential Debates, the Capital One Capitol Building, the McCain-Verizon Straight Talk Express, to the Nabisco Democratic Convention. (the last one I stole from NBC's the West Wing) We could use the money to help pay down the National City National Debt. I propose all these reforms be made into law in the RoundUp Weed Out Corruption Campaign Reform Bill. After all, can we expect our businesses to be good corporate citizens if they can't contribute to campaigns like citizens?

(I just proposed corporate sponsorship of campaigns, I'm not above corporate sponsorship of my blog. So if your interested, arrangements can be made.)

Can You Sue God? Apparently, But I Wouldn't Advise It - Part I: The Filing

2007-09-18T19:35:00.000-04:00

Nebraskan State Senator Ernie Chambers filed a lawsuit against God. He accuses God "of making and continuing to make terroristic threats of grave harm to innumerable persons, including constituents of Plaintiff who Plaintiff has the duty to represent." It says that God has caused "fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects, and the like." It also says God has caused "calamitous catastrophes resulting in the wide-spread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants including innocent babes, infants, children, the aged and infirm without mercy or distinction." He's seeking a permanent injunction ordering God to cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats.

Oh where to begin? Let's start with the point this lunatic is trying to make. He says that senators periodically offer bills prohibiting the filing of certain types of suits. His objection is that doors of the courthouse should be open to all. "Thus anybody can file a lawsuit against anybody - even God." I believe he has just made the opposite point, that the state should regulate what lawsuits can be filed. This frivolous lawsuit is just costing taxpayers money.

Logistically, there are numerous problems with the filing of this lawsuit. He filed this in Nebraska. That would require Nebraska to have jurisdiction over all these catastrophes and terrorizing, which would mean they would have to have taken place in Nebraska. Last I checked, nothing has ever happened in Nebraska. Second, how is God going to be served the papers for this? You'd have to physically track God down. "Plaintiff, despite reasonable efforts to effectuate personal service upon Defendant ("Come out, come out, wherever you are.") has been unable to do so." Chambers asked in the suit that the court waive personal service given the "peculiar circumstances" of the case. "Peculiar circumstances," you got that right. I don't believe the law allows for the waiving delivering the papers to notify the defendant, even to God. (Why they didn't have the foresight to write this into the law I don't know.)

Now let's turn to the heart of the case. Let me start by pointing Mr. Chambers to past transcripts of press conferences and press releases from God, found in the Bible, to aid him in his suit. (The Lord knows that he needs it.) In particular I'd advise he check out the book of Job. God already addressed the issue of why bad things happen to Job and his friends, and we are fortunate enough to have what God said, although unfortunately not on YouTube, so he'll have to read.

God's King of all of creation, so he probably has sovereign immunity. But putting that aside, let's look at what God has said. "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements_surely you know! Pr who stretched the line upon it?..." Job 38:4. And turning to the book of Romans, (11:33) "Oh the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?" So we must draw from these statements that we are not in a position to challenge God.

I could take a look in depth at some of the many theological problems of this guy's case, but I recently had it pointed out to me by some friends that my blogs can get too long, so that will have to wait. This guy better hope God doesn't choose to make an appearance in court to address these charges. I'm afraid that Chambers will find himself, like Job and his friends, being the one cross examined, and not God.

No One Ever Said Freedom of Speech Was Free

2007-09-18T19:00:00.000-04:00

Today while I was at lunch I saw on CNN a story about a journalism student at the University of Florida being tasered during a townhall meeting with Senator John Kerry. He had been asking several questions when he was dragged away from the microphone by campus police and eventually tasered. While this was going on Kerry said to let him answer the question. (You can of course watch this for yourself on YouTube.)

Was this an infringement on free speech? As you should know, the 1st Amendment guarantees freedom of speech. It says Congress will make no law abridging the freedom of speech. It doesn't say that other people, such as the police, can't abridge your freedom of speech, nor does it say that speech is free or without consequence. The cost for this UF student to say what he wanted was being tased. As long as Congress stays out of it, you can't complain.

Who tasers a student for asking a question in front of a bunch of people who are bound to have videocameras? You have to know this is going to end up on the internet and the news. Of course they now have to investigate. In the video you can hear protests of police brutality from onlookers. What do you expect? When will the police learn to only beat people and taser, etc., when there is no videocameras?

Although I could probably go on and on, I feel a picture speaks a thousand words. And if a picture speaks a thousand words, a video clip made up of many pictures speaks a whole volume. So go judge for yourself.

A Petition To Apple

2007-09-10T22:35:00.000-04:00

I address this post to Mr. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, in response to the decision to refund $100 to the iPhone early adopters after their outcry against the $200 price drop.

Mr. Jobs,

Your decision to placate your irate customers is appalling in the very least. As you know, your company after 10 weeks dropped the price of the $599 iPhone by $200. But then you had an outcry from iPhone users, and are now offering them a $100 rebate. Before we get to that horrendous, detrimental decision, lets ask what reason did you give for this drop now? So that you can "go for it" for the holiday season. I would agree that this was the right move to make at the right time. Almost everyone who is crazy enough to pay $599 for a phone, even an iPhone, has already bought it. If they didn't buy it when they first came out they're not going to buy it, and would be stupid to do so. You're paying to be cool, and that has already worn off. iPhone, big deal, I've already seen people with it. You are right to go after the holiday season sales, and indeed anymore sales at all.

Personally, here's what I think you should have done. You had a bunch of people who would paid whatever price for an iPhone the first day it came out. So you should have released the iPhone at $599 like you did. You have a 14 day return policy. On the 15th day you should have lowered the price. Then you would see a sustained, organic growth in sales, instead of a drop off. But its too late for that.

You said in your Open Letter to iPhone customers that "being in technology for 30+ years [you] can attest to the fact that the technology road is bumpy. There is always change and improvement, and there is always someone who bought a product before a particular cutoff date and misses the new price or the new operating system or the new whatever. This is life in the technology lane. If you always wait for the next price cut or to buy the new improved model, you'll never buy any technology product because there is always something better and less expensive on the horizon." These were well said words with which I whole-heartily agree.

Early adopters of technology always pay a premium for the next latest thing. And that premium comes with the aura of cool, of being hip, of looking impressive. And that early technology is usually a work in progress. I thank early adopters for paving the way to the cheaper, improved products. On their backs we drove on the information superhighway. if it was not for early adopters, we'd have no new technology.

But it is ludicrous to think that one can be an early adopter of technology and receive its benefits, and then get back what you paid when the price drops later on. They know what they were paying $599 for the iPhone when they bought it. As you said, it is always a gamble when buying technology on when the price will come down or an improved version come out. You said so yourself, and yet you went back on your word. I must say as an engineer this ominous decision creates a dangerous precedent that threatens the future of innovation in America. This could raise the expectation that other technology businesses also refund their early adopter customers whenever they drop their prices. New products will never be introduced if they can't initially pay for themselves, which can't happen when they cost the same as they do after they've been out for months. Our economy will become stagnant and we will decline into the stone age, all because of your $100 bride to placate the mob of your angry customers.

I thought Apple had some of the most loyal customers in the world. It would have seemed they would go to the end of the world for Apple, or at least wait in line for hours for a new product. But your customers seem to doubt the "perfect timing" of your price drop. They seem to doubt your ingenuity and keen market sense that has gotten the great company of Apple where it is today, or rather a week ago. Why do they not trust you? If only they were loyal enough to own stock, then they wouldn't make you, Apple, shoot yourself in the foot, but would gladly have paid even more for the iPhone. Perhaps each iPhone should have come with Apple stock.

I ask you if you can put a price on being cool? Clearly you did, $200, the cost of being among the first to own an iPhone and have people gawk at you. That established, I did not, although tempted, buy an iPhone despite the allure of coolness because of the steep $599, I am only a poor college student after all. But that was when I thought it would cost $599, which happens to be the price, and not knowing there would be a $100 rebate. If I had known that it would only cost me $499,, I would have bought an iPhone so that I can be cool. So all I ask, and I believe it very reasonable, that you give me a rebate of $200, the value of cool that I lost out on, and I will use that to help buy an iPhone at the new price of $399. (costing me only $199 or my own money) And while I'm at it, I got a 30-gig video iPod a while ago. Of course the price has dropped and there is also an 80-gig, and now 160-gig iPod. So, I should get the latest iPod and a partial refund.

That is all I have to say you, Mr. Steve Jobs. I hope you can sleep peacefully at night knowing that you are destroying innovation in America. I will await the announcement of a $200 refund to all potential iPhone buyers, and my new 160-gig video iPod. (or I'll settle for the new iPod Touch.)

Sincerely,

Greg P.
Concerned Citizen & Concerned Engineer

Why Harry Potter Is Not Satan

2007-08-02T12:14:00.000-04:00

If you were alive a couple weeks ago you know that the last installment of the popular Harry Potter series came out, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. We all are aware of people who object to these books with magic, who have even burned copies of these books. I'm going to argue that this should not be the case. Harry Potter is not satanic. I must warn you there is a major spoiler for the last book in here. But, if you haven't read the last book yet I have to wonder if you even care.

First of, the inclusion of magic by itself doesn't make a book evil. Perhaps you may remember another popular children's book series, the Chronicles of Narnia. These books have plenty of magic in them. Perhaps you will also remember they were written by a famous Christian, C.S. Lewis. The most famous of these books, "The Lion, the witch, and the wardrobe," is actually a allegory for the gospel. We don't hear an outcry against C.S. Lewis's books. So, to be fair, one cannot condemn one book because it has magic and encourage your kids to read another. These books are written in the genre of fantasy. They aren't suppose to be reality. J.K. Rowling is not trying to convince kids to become witches and wizards. No one thinks that the magic in these books are possible. The witches in Harry Potter are not Wiccans.

Indeed, if you read the last Harry Potter book, you will find that Harry Potter is a Christ figure like Aslan is in the Chronicles of Narnia. And I don't just mean in the fact that the whole fate of the wizarding world rests upon him and that he is some saviour. No, that alone doesn't make one a Christ figure. He actually willingly, without resistance, without so much as raising his wand, turns himself over to Voldemort to be killed so to defeat Voldemort. This would be comparable to Christ letting himself be arrested, tried, and crucified. Harry Potter doesn't end up actually dying, but he goes into this kind of in between state before coming back, and he fakes death before rising up, comparable to the resurrection. (I'm not saying Christ didn't die. But you have to allow creative license for a work of fiction.) This is about as close as one can get in a work of fiction to having a Christ figure. This presents great opportunity when one's kid is reading these books to explain the Gospel to them in terms they will understand, just like "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" allows people to do. No, Harry Potter is not sinless like Christ. But it is hard to write a good work of fiction with sinless characters. If you want something that exactly follows the gospel then read the gospel, which I encourage you to do.

Besides the fact that the Chronicles of Narnia have magic as well, and that Harry Potter is a Christ figure, there are other reasons to have kids read this book. There are many positive values in these books. Such as the value of friendship. In a day and age when we are increasingly drifting further apart, when we are having less and less personal interaction and more and more interaction with machines, surely the value of friendship is worth instilling in children. And of course there's courage. There are things worth fighting for, standing up against, making sacrifices for, and even dying for. Harry Potter and his friends know this. We can all use heroes as role models.

These books also send the message that you have a choice over your actions, that you can't use whats happen to you or your DNA code as excuses for why you are the way you choose to be. Take Voldemort and Harry Potter. They both have similar backgrounds. Both of them were orphans, both of them were of less than pure blood, and neither of them had a sugar-coated childhood. And yet one of them choose to be evil and to seek domination, while another chose to do the right thing and stand up to such evil. Of course Harry Potter is not perfect, and does the wrong things at times, and this only reinforces the Christian view that there is evil in all of us, that we are all sinners. Was that the point of the books, I doubt it, but it was a good byproduct.

The books also send the message that we can't depend upon either technology nor the government to fix all problems. Just like in the wizarding world with all its magic there is still as much evil as without, so in our world there still is and still will be evil no matter how technologically advance we might get. And just like the magic is used for good and evil, so to is technology. And then the government in Harry Potter is quite inept and incompetent. Yes we need the government, but no it will not fix all our problems and may even cause them.

Some have argued that Harry Potter presents a magical, secular world, without a God for Harry to pray to if he had that desire, with ghosts but no afterlife. First of all, as I have said before this is fantasy, and must be read as that. Second of all, I would have reservations with letting children read the books if there was religion in this magical world. Why? Either that religion would be a distorted version of Christianity, that had to ignore parts of the Bible, or it would have to be another false religion, either from this world or invented for the story. I would not want my children reading a book indoctrinating them into the way of Islam or Hinduism or any other religion. I would certainly be opposed to them reading these books if Harry and his friends were Wiccan. Religion in the books would take away from the books. And as far as a secular government, I must again point to the government in Harry Potter as hardly being an institution that one feels like they could rely on.

All that said, which I could say more, Harry Potter is a book I as a Christian would feel quite comfortable letting my children read. They would have to hold off on reading the later books until they were old enough, but I have no problem with them reading a fantasy book with magic. No book can or should take the role of parents in teaching their children values, but I believe there are many positive values found in these books.

College Cost Reduction Act - Is It The Right Approach To Reduce College Costs?

2007-07-12T10:43:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I was channel surfing and I came across on C-SPAN the house discussing the College Cost Reduction Act. A few things have jumped out at me. I haven't put enough thought in to have coherent plan for higher education, so these are just some musings.

I continuously heard almost every Democrat who spoke say that it comes at "no new cost to tax payers." No matter what the issue, I cringe when I hear our leaders talking about something not costing tax payers money. Everything that Congress does costs money. I'm not saying that our government shouldn't spend money on worthwhile issues, but don't talk about it not costing money. "Taxes are the price we pay for living in a civilized society," as Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr said, and I'm fine with that. But I want the government remembering that it is our money they're spending, even if they have cleverly appropriated so as to make it appear that its not coming from out taxes.

The last thing concerning the Democrats, they kept comparing this bill to the GI bill. There is a big difference that should be pointed out, that seems to have been overlooked. The GI bill paid for college for people who served our country. I'm not saying I'm against helping out students, nor cutting college costs, nor improving education. But I do dislike incorrect analogies. It reminds me when I heard presidential candidate in 2004, I forget who, say we need a Marshall Plan for America. The Marshall Plan was foreign aid, you can't give your own country aid.

The bill increases financial aid. Among things, it raises the maximum Pell grant. But some of the Republicans raised an interesting point, as financial aid increases colleges just raise their tuition to capture more of that. I haven't studied the issue in depth, but it is interesting and deserves more analysis. I will whole heartily agree that we need to spend more money on education, both K-12 and higher education, although along with that we need to dramatically improve that education so to ready America for competing in our globalized world. So if financial aid, including student loans, is driving up tuition instead of actually reducing the cost, or at least stabilizing the cost, perhaps we need to rethink how we fund colleges. Perhaps what we need to do is keep scholarships for those who truly can't afford college, but to keep tuition down we give more funding directly to universities. This will keep people in the between qualifying for student aid and being rich enough (or rather their families) to afford college from having to take out more student loans, their only recourse.

That we have so many students leaving college with so much debt is unacceptable. If college tuition was rising at a reasonable rate, with inflation, or at least below the growth in our economy. Parents have some 18 odd years to save up to send their kids to college. If tuition was reasonable and below the growth in the economy, you could start setting a couple thousand dollars away each year tax free in mutual funds, etc., and have a return on your investment which would give you more money to spend on your kids college than if you waited to pay all of it when they hit college. But with tuition rising above rapidly, you're going to effectively lose buying power each year. If the current trend keeps up, tuition costs will more than have doubled in 10 years.

Another interesting point raised is with student loan forgiveness and capping payments. When you forgive loans students don't care how much their education costs and don't factor that into a decision. When I was choosing college, I had to make a choice. I could go to one of the more prestigious schools and go into debt, or I could go to a good school but not the best school in-state and stay out of debt. I chose to stay out of debt. Are students entitled to a blank check for their education, that will cover either a state university for $6000 a year or a private school for $60,000 a year? If I could have gone to any school that I could get into regardless of cost, I would have chosen a more prestigious, expensive school.

Indeed, this is the very problem with the idea of making higher education totally "free." Do we want to move to a merit system where if you can get into a college, you can go for free? And so the best students will all go to the best, most expensive universities for free, and the worse students will go to less prestigious, cheaper universities. If we did that, is the government and thus each tax payer going to cover the costs of expensive schools like Harvard? Or do we put price controls on college tuition, including private schools? Or perhaps we only cover public universities, and hope that there lower tuition drives the cost down of private schools? And if we have a fully tax payer paid (and what money schools can get from their alumni) system, but universities that set their tuition, what will keep costs from skyrocketing even further? We still have the best university system in the world despite our problems, and if our government takes too much of a role in determining their budgets, we will upset that balance. So despite its allure, the idea of free college is riddled with problems.

I'm not sure on a particular solution. Yes, we do need to spend a lot more money no doubt on higher education. But we need to do that without raising tuition a lot more, which more financial aid seems to do. If we are going to compete in the 21st century as a nation, more of our children are going to need to go to college and more of our children are going to need to be better educated in college as well, all of which costs money. In the past we had lots of decent jobs that don't require college degrees. That is changing. The cushy high paying factory jobs with nice health and pension benefits are moving overseas to where they are cheaper. And not only that, many white collar jobs are also moving overseas or being automated. We can no longer let just the smartest children and the children of families who can afford college be the ones getting higher education. We need most of our children to be the brightest not at home, but the brightest in the world, if we are to continue our high standard of living that we have come to expect and perhaps, take for granted.

Reforming Health Care: Part 2 - Preventative Measures and Insurance

2007-07-11T23:46:00.000-04:00

I previously established that we should require every legal US resident to have insurance. This would be coupled with requiring health insurance companies to cover without penalty those with pre-existing conditions that are not caused by their lifestyle. This would ensure that the un-insurable could get insurance when this is implemented. When your house burns down, you can't go out and buy fire insurance, likewise, its unreasonable to expect insurance companies to insure people after they're sick. By requiring everyone to have health insurance, when they do get sick they would not be stuck without insurance and become un-insurable, and would contribute their fair share. And this would be paid for by giving individuals the tax rebate that corporations already get for insuring their employees but that individuals do not qualify for. But this alone is not enough. Other steps must be taken to prevent diseases, or at least catch them early, which would reduce overall costs. Today we will deal with what measures insurance companies could take to help accomplish this.

In addition to these measures, I'd give insurance companies the power to require certain preventive measures. If they wanted to, they could require an annual physical, not for the purpose of charging you more but with the purpose of catching problems earlier when they're easier to deal with (meaning better quality care) and cheaper to deal with. And for example, women could be required to have a mammogram or men to be screened for prostate cancer. Obviously this would have to be carefully regulated, to prevent abuse. If you preferred not to be forced to do all these preventative measures you could elect for a more expensive plan (since its covering more losses that occur from lack of prevention) or a plan that doesn't require them but offers a discount for each preventative measures voluntarily taken. That might be the better route since if you were fine with most measures but objected to one, e.g. the controversial HP vaccine for cervical cancer, you would still be overall more healthy.

Insurance only works when a few people are obtaining losses while they're are others to cover those losses. If most people are suffering losses, then the underwriter won't be able to cover them. Take Hurricane Katrina, insurance companies can't afford to cover everyone hit since the damage was so widespread. Likewise, health insurance becomes ineffective if everyone is sick. And what we have in America is an epidemic of obesity. Health insurance is getting so expensive because so much money is having to be paid out to cover health problems caused by obesity. Thus, we really need preventative measures to address this problem in particular.

Insurance companies can turn down or charge higher premiums to sick people right now, but they can't make such decisions on lifestyle issues like obesity. The exception is smoking, which is as much a choice as overeating and not exercising. This is completely backwards. You should not be charged more for being sick which you may not be your fault, you should be charged more for living unhealthy which increases your chance of being sick that is your fault. (not society's) If someone should object and say that being fat is a disorder and it would be unfair to discriminate against them, I'd reply that smoking is addictive and yet no one seems to have a problem doing the same to them. This plan would just restrict it to differentiating based on factors within your control, which would be fair and more effective at encouraging healthy living which will lower the cost and raise the quality of health care for everyone. Which is easier, telling a man to lose weight or telling a man not to have a hard attack? We could provide a grace period, perhaps a year, to get healthy by exercising and eating right before this part would be implemented. (Undoubtedly it would take more than a year to get it through Congress, so that could be the grace period.) And of course, it there was a proven medical reason why it was not possibly to lose weight, that would be exempt. (Then everyone will say they have some phony medical condition in this age of ADHD and IED. I kid you not, Intermittent Explosive Disorder, or road rage.) If it helps, instead of charging unhealthy people more we're giving healthy people a discount. Effectively the same thing, but more politically correct.

People are probably more likely to take advantage of preventative measures like vaccines and screenings if their insurance covers them. On the other hand, catastrophic insurance (high deductible after which your completely covered) is attractive since it has lower premiums, especially so to the young and healthy who are less likely to get sick. When you couple that with health savings accounts (which allow you to save tax free like with an IRA for out of pocket health expenses) you can save up your deductible for if and when you do get sick. So which route people take is up for them to decide when buying their coverage. If some combination could be created, high deductible but certain required or optional preventative measures are covered, that would lead to healthier people and thus lower costs without the significantly higher premiums incurred when every little cost is covered. But again, that is outside of government control and up to the individual, although it should be studied in order to make recommendations.

These measures would first and foremost put an end to discrimination by insurance companies against the sick. Conversely, it would give them the ability to fairly place more burden on those who are by choice living unhealthy lifestyles. It would allow them to cut long-term costs by requiring preventative measures or at least offering discounts to those who take advantage of them. This is a win-win situation since it leads not only to lower costs for insurance companies and those paying premiums, but to higher quality health care. Indeed, it would truly bring us into an age of health care out of the darkness of sick care that for so long has reigned.

And All This Time We Should Have Just Been Paying Students

2007-07-10T21:41:00.000-04:00

New York City is planning on a pilot program to pay students for doing well. Actually, not only will they get paid for doing well on standardized tests, they'll get paid just for taking the tests and for going to class. 4th graders will get up to $25 per test, 7th graders will get up to $50 per test. That's up to $500 per year for the 7th graders. What a novel, new approach to pedagogy.

That is the problem with education in America after all. Students aren't getting paid. Basically what we have established is forced slave labor of our children. (We'll ignore the fact that their work isn't actually used for anything.) Its unconstitutional and immoral. We thought we ended slavery back in the 1800s, but its still going on folks. We've had the civil rights movement, women rights movement, is the student rights movement coming now? Children are just little adults after all. They do have to make ends meet too. (They are after all getting cell phones younger and younger.)

We've been wasting so much money paying teachers to be task masters over their enslaved students. When in actuality, students have not been doing well because they're not being rewarded financially. If you didn't get paid at your job would you try very hard? So we could save so much money and improve education so much in this country if we just paid students directly. We just need to take a handful of the best teachers in America for every grade and subject, have them put their lectures on video podcast for a school year, with nice slides and video clips and other multimedia content, and then fire all the teachers in America. (We'll have to be sure to record the lectures and lesson plans before we tell the top teachers what we're planning.) Put all this along with the students' textbooks and assignments on a laptop, hand it to them at the beginning of the school year, tell them to go through it all by the end of the school year when they will show up for standardized tests in person. Remind them that they'll get paid for doing well, and of course they'll be disciplined and self-motivated enough to learn all they need to learn so they can get paid. What could possibly not work with this? There's been a lot more flex time at people's work these past years, as long as you get your work done, work whenever. Why not let the students have flex time since school is just work.
Of course, the students might have questions. So we'll hook each on up with tutors in India to answer any questions. (Using their laptops with built in web cams) And they'll have to turn in assignments via e-mail, the grading of which will be outsourced as well, as the teachers will be too pissed to work part time. Some really good software will give teachers a run for their money, which of course will be going to the students (and back to taxpayers) and more than make up for the difference.

Think of all the money being saved. We exchange the salaries of teachers, principals, janitors, lunch ladies, bus drivers, superintendents, and the costs of building and maintaining schools, lunch, power, water, gas, diesel for school buses, for $500 cash plus the cost of new laptops every couple of years. (The cost of the laptop we could offset with advertisments in the podcasts, as the children will need ideas on how to spend their money.) And most importantly, our students will learn better when motivated by greed. What an antiquated idea, learning for the joy of learning, learning being fun and exciting, satisfying curiosity, exploring, and discovering. Learning just for the sake of learning must date back to at least Socrates, so its clearly an outdated idea in our HD, surround sound, WiFi world in which we live. Instant gratification as an impetus, that's more like it.

You have to love some of the objections raised. Ernst Logan, the president of the principals' union says that “We are troubled by additional pressure being placed on children to achieve perfection. What really matters in education is continued student progress, not perfect test scores.” I don't remember anyone saying anything about having to get perfect test scores to get paid. Actually, I seem to remember something about getting paid just to show up. Which, as Woody Allen said, "Seventy percent of success in life is showing up." We seem to be doing a pretty good job of teaching children that. I thought education was about learning. If you're learning what you're suppose to then yes, you are progressing, but just because you're progressing doesn't mean you're learning sufficiently all that you need to learn. But now I, once blind, can see clearly that education is only valuable for the sake of making money. When I grew up though that money was far off, how I envy tomorrow's youth who will get a taste of that satisfaction while they're learning.

America is built on capitalism. Why shouldn't we introduce children to this at an early age? What could be wrong with sending the message that it doesn't matter if you enjoy what you're doing, as long as you're getting paid for it. Never mind that when you enter the real world you have to pay for college or some other form of training so you can get a decent job. And paying them to just show up to class, that's even better. Not only are they getting paid to take the tests, they get paid to go to class which I assume they need to do in order to pass these tests. If they don't need to go to class in order to pass them, why fool with class at all? How about we try dragging their asses to jail if they don't show up to school? "This is where you're going to end up in a few years if you don't try in school." Some have said this could work if the money is put into a scholarship fund. That seems to defeat the whole point of motivating them with immediate payoffs versus being able to get a well paying job when they graduate. If we're going to pay them to motivate them, we need to give them cold, hard cash. Forget all the pizza parties, scholarships, and other gimmicks that we try using. Money is the American way. And we have to cut out this self-esteem crap and this just showing up BS. If we're going to bring our children into capitalism, then lets do it. Last I checked, corporate America doesn't pay just for showing up, at least not for long. There's not smiley face sticker on your pay check saying, "Good Effort." Corporate America is a cold, competitive, and cut-throat place. So too then should our schools be. Let's increase the competition to get more out of our kids at a young age by posting all their scores and giving a bonus to the top students. Nothing like a little gloating and flashy new iPhone to shame the poor (now quite literally), failing students into studying.

Reforming Health Care - Part I - Evil Insurance Corporations

2007-07-06T11:38:00.000-04:00

I think we can all agree that our health care system in America is broken, and that something needs to be done to fix. Health care costs keep going up higher and higher, but the quality of the health care does not go up. There are some 45 million uninsured Americans, and many more under-insured Americans. Last week I saw Michael Moore's documentary "Sicko." It was a great piece of propaganda for socialized medicine. I left the theater trying to figure out what we can do besides resorting to this extreme measure. I'm happy to announce that I have figured out a solution that I believe would work. This will be the first of several posts addressing the issue of health care in America, today looking specifically at those ostensibly evil insurance corporations.

I would break down an analysis of health care, or rather sick care, into several parts, the actual work done to help people, the costs associated with that, and the payee system. The actual work done breaks down further into treatment and prevention, both screening to catch health problems early and preventative measures to stop them from occurring at all. The costs would be the costs of prescription and generic drugs, the cost of equipment, who how much doctors and hospitals charge, administrative costs, etc. Finally you have who is paying (or not paying) for the health care, HMOs (Health Management Organization), traditional insurance, individuals, businesses, the government, or a combination of these. To fully address the problem, we need a plan that addresses all of these parts. We hear a lot about universal health care, which attempts to address only the payee, not the costs and quality of the health care. I think despite people's differences over whether they want government run or private run health care, we can all agree that we need to cut costs either way.

It should be pointed out that there is no such thing as free health care. No matter what approach we take, you're paying. If your business pays, you really pay with a deduction in your salary. If the insurance company pays, you paid them to do so. And if the government pays, you pay in increased taxes.

Let's look at the concept of insurance, as right now in America we have for-profit insurance companies. The basic idea of insurance is to spread out a particular loss, e.g. car accident, fire, disease, etc., so that no individual person, business, or organization bears the full amount when it happens to one of those individuals. Thus it is a way to cope with risk. For example, there's a chance your house burns down. So you buy home owner's insurance that covers among things a house fire. You along with many other people have pooled your money together, and when someone's house burns down some of that money is paid out to that individual. How much you pay takes into account the chance of various covered events happening and their severity and your own particular circumstances. So if you have an expensive house you have to pay more for your home owner's insurance, if you have a pool your liability insurance goes up a lot, if your in an accident your car insurance goes up, etc.

So some people may be tempted to say, why should they pay more for other people's health problems when they themselves are quite healthy. Well, that is the nature of insurance. If you don't like it don't buy it, but don't complain when your bankrupt because you became sick without insurance. So when you do get sick why should you have higher premiums and deductibles? I don't think you really should, if its a health issue out of your control. If its because you smoke or are severely overweight not for any medical reason but because you lack self control, you should. But I don't feel you should pay more because of family history and other factors out of your control.

So should insurance companies charge more or simply flat out deny people with a pre-existing condition? It seems awfully cruel and unusual. Why doesn't Congress pass a law banning this practice, and require that they don't make decisions based off of people's health? Its more complicated than simply the health insurance companies lobbying Congress not too because they want bigger profits, which no doubt they do want. You don't buy home owner's insurance after your house burns down and expect that the insurance company to cover it. And in this light the practice of insurance companies of turning people down or charging more is not unfair. If you could wait until you were sick to buy insurance with no penalty, then no one would buy insurance when they're healthy and the whole system would break down and go broke. If only sick people are paying in, its not going to spread the losses out. So although insurance companies maximize profits by not covering people with pre-existing conditions, this practice is not unreasonable.

So clearly the real problem is not that insurance companies refuse or charge more to people who have pre-existing conditions but didn't have insurance when they were healthy, for whatever reason. If you maintain a continuity of health insurance then you should be protected from your insurance rates skyrocketing when you get sick. I believe most insurance companies only raise your rates based on age and gender, not based on a change in your health. So I think the solution consists in part of requiring that everyone, all legal US residents, have health insurance. Every parent would be required to obtain health insurance for their children before they are born and thus before it is known if they will be born with a serious complication that would prevent obtaining health insurance for them. This would be coupled with requiring insurance companies to accept people, without penalty, with various pre-existing conditions at the time of the passage of the law. Whereas if we only required people to have health insurance, then sick people wouldn't be able to get health insurance. And whereas if we only required insurance companies to not penalize sick people, people wouldn't get insurance until they were sick and the system would break down. These two measures have to come together if either one is to come at all. It should be pointed out that many states have "high risk pools" for the un-insurable, but I believe it would be better if they had access to private insurance instead of having to have a public system to deal with them. And once everyone is insured continuously, pre-existing conditions would be a thing of the past, which would cut down on denied claims.

This addresses the problem of getting the sick insured, but it doesn't address the problem of people who can't reasonably afford health insurance. As you are probably aware, the best deal for insurance is through work, if you are lucky enough to work for a large company that offers health insurance. Why is this? One reason is you have a large pool of people being insured and as it is cheaper to sell a large volume it is cheaper to sell a company a policy than an individual or small business. If your sick its definitely cheaper because they're not allowed to charge you more, your additional health costs are spread out over the company's employees. But, a major reason is also because companies get a tax break on their employee's health coverage, but individuals do not qualify for the tax break. This seems a bit unfair. President Bush has said that he's in favor of allowing small businesses to form pools together to buy health insurance. But why not simply give individuals the same tax benefits that large companies get?

My plan would be to give people a tax rebate equivalent to the cost of an average health insurance policy, what companies get now, which they would then use to buy health insurance. You could not use this money for anything but buying health insurance. If you wanted to buy into you company's plan, you could, or if you wanted to buy individually a plan that you felt better met your needs, you could. And of course if you wanted to buy a plan that costs more than your rebate, you could use your own money to cover the difference. A certain level of minimum coverage would be required, some sort of catastrophic insurance, where once you've paid so much of a deductible you'd be covered for good. That would protect against people going bankrupt. If people wanted plans to cover all their costs, they could do so, good luck finding that plan though. The rebate would adjust each year to keep up with rising costs, ideally inflation only, but probably not. Health insurance voucher might be a better description, but I hesitate to use the term since they haven't had the best run.

As every American individual and family would be receiving money for health insurance, we would get rid Medicaid (for the poor) and phase out Medicare, reducing the size of our government. Now your insurance can be independent of your job. If you lose your job job, quit your job, get fired, you'll still be covered. In the past, health insurance through your job made more sense, since most people didn't move around. But today, people don't work for one company their whole life, they change jobs pretty frequently. So it no longer makes any sense to tie insurance to your employer. Think of the freedom this offers people. If you don't like your job, change jobs, without fear of how are you going to get health insurance. And if you change jobs, you can keep going to the same doctor since you'll be on the same plan. The same goes for retirees. If we get rid of Medicare, when you retire you can still go to the same doctor you're comfortable with and who knows you better than a government bureaucrat.

Additionally, I would change health savings accounts, which allow you to put aside money tax free to cover medical costs, such as visits to the doctor, contacts or glasses, and prescription drugs. The problem I see is that you loss your money after a year. So while these encourage saving what you know you're going to need, it doesn't encourage saving for the long-term. I would take away the expiration date on your money. Then you would be encouraged to save enough money that in the event of a major medical emergency, you would have enough to cover your deductible. Obviously there would be a limit on how much you could save away. Health savings accounts encourage people to use insurance only to cover big expenses, reducing premiums for all of us.

I believe this plan would work, making sure every American is insured and can afford it without resorting to government-run health care. Keeping competition would help make health care more efficient, cheaper, and of higher quality than it is now and than if we had socialized medicine. Of course more has to be done to fix the system than make sure everyone is insured. That alone will not cut costs by much, and in later posts we will address this.

Was the Revolutionary War a Justifiable War?

2007-07-04T11:35:00.001-04:00

Today honors the birth of our nation, the day that we declared our independence from Great Britain. (Coincidentally, its also the date that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died, both on the fiftieth anniversary. Weird, huh?) I hope that you have an excellent day remembering this and barbecuing with family and friends or whatever is your tradition. In the meantime, I turn my attention to the special, obscure, largely esoteric topic of whether we were justified in declaring our independence, from a Christian perspective. I must be careful here, this is largely my opinion. I will be looking largely at what is said by Paul in Romans, and what is said in the Declaration of Independence. Below is the whole chunk of Romans on submitting to the authorities, so I may not take it easily out of context. Although I use both Romans and the Constitution, I must make it clear they are not on the same level, Romans was divinely inspired, the Constitution is written by man and is not infallible. Nor is my reading of Romans divinely inspired, and so I may very well be wrong, in which case feel free to put your two cents in.

"Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is
owed." Romans 13: 1 - 7

To begin with, a Christian group is under obligation to submit to the government. To rebel in the name of Christ would be to rebel against God. My church, if under attack by the government, could not resist with armed force. If the government were to pass anti-Christian laws, against all outcries of Christians, we would be obligated to submit to the extent that the laws do not call for us to commit sins. We should not put up an armed resistance in such a case. During the reformation, there were Protestants who fought against Catholic governments. That was wrong. But we are not dealing with a group of Christians rebelling, although our founding fathers had Christians among them, there were also non-Christians. This is the first distinction I draw. But, I should be careful to point out here, lest you object, that a Christian is always under obligation to submit to the word of God, not only when in Church among other believers. Without further justification, Christians could not justifiably have participated in the Revolutionary War on the side of the colonies and later United States of America.

We were not simply a mob fighting the British government, an insurrection.. Our war for independence, although a civil war, was waged by authorities. We had colonial legislatures and the Continental Congress directing the war effort. I believe this is justifiable. At the end of the Declaration of Independence, our founding fathers' assumption of all the powers of a legitimate state is clearly carried out.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

So Paul says to submit to the authorities. But from the very beginning we were resisting Great Britain with the authorities of the colonial governments and Continental Congress. We had effectively set ourselves up as a separate, sovereign state. So what we really had was the authorities of colonial America fighting the authority of Great Britain, not the people fighting the authority of the government of Great Britain. If the authorities of the colonies can't go against the authorities of Great Britain, then perhaps you should apply the same logic to the United States not being able to resist the United Nations. After all, the colonists never chose to be part of Great Britain, but the United States did join the United Nations, so we gave them authority. Now I know a many a Christian who scoff at the United Nations, I'm included, and who would never want to see the United States give up its sovereignty to that body.

Paul says that "for rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad." Does this mean then that a government is always right, and everything that it does is not a terror, by definition? I need not go any further than to pull out the old trump card of the Nazi government. Clearly it was a great terror to those of good conduct. Its own people should have rebelled more, not submitted more. So perhaps when a government ceases to do good, and becomes a tyranny, it can lose its authority to another authority. I should stress it doesn't necessarily lose its authority unless there is another new government to assume that authority, lest we have anarchy.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Although I doubt Thomas Jefferson had Romans in mind, (I don't believe he was a Christian) the same kind of reasoning can be seen here. If a government is doing good, then it is protecting those rights more or less, and if it ceases to do good and becomes a terror, it is destructive to those ends. Therefore, no longer being a terror to the bad but to the good, it ceases to be a legitimate ruler. At this point, the people may alter or abolish it, and institute a new government. They may not simply abolish it without instituting a new government. But in America, we had governments in place when abolishing Great Britain's authority upon us.

Now I turn away from matters of absolute right and wrong, black and white, and turn to matters of prudence. For one cannot simply overthrow the government every time April 15 comes around and you feel it in your pocketbook, or when you get angry watching the news. Nor can you simply replace your government if you're living under a monarch, whom you never elected.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Why does prudence dictate all this. Because whenever great changes come about there a many problems that arise. Only when the situation reaches a certain point is it worth a great deal of disruption to throw out the old system with its problems only to replace it with a system of problems you never knew about. To put it another way, the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. I applaud the British here, of never having thrown a big revolution to get rid of their monarchy so they could worship at the idol of democracy. Most of their people over time weren't involved in giving the King power to begin with, and yet each generation did not demand they be able to choose a new form of government to their likely, that would be very impractical and imprudent. But back to the Revolutionary War, the Americans didn't just declare independence on a whim, a great many grievances stacked up (which they list in the Declaration of Independence) and there many efforts to reconcile with the King were rejected. Only then did they seek independence, a very wise move on their part.

I hope reading this was to your enjoyment and sparked some thought. I'm sure many people will disagree with many either for having gone too far in justifying our independence or for not going far enough. And if you do disagree please, give me your reasoning for why it was or wasn't a justifiable move upon the part of America's founding fathers. Although I imagine most people could care less whether we were in the right or wrong, that was some two hundred and thirty-one years ago, to date. But those who forget the past are doomed to repeat its mistakes. Also, I must recommend the book 1776 by David McCullough on the founding of the nation, it is quite interesting and enjoyable. That's all for this Fourth of July.

Commuting Libby: Too Far or Not Far Enough

2007-07-03T18:19:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was told he could not delay his prison term until after his appeal. Less than five hours after this, the President commuted Libby's sentence, removing the two and a half years of prison time, but leaving the conviction and the $250,000 fine. There are people on both sides upset about this. On the left, those who think his sentence shouldn't have been commuted, on the right, those who think the President didn't go far enough and pardon him.

To those who say he didn't deserve the pardon, I ask this, how do you deserve a pardon? You can't deserve a pardon. If you weren't guilty you should be exonerated, not pardoned. A pardon is forgiveness, something not deserved. And yet, our founding fathers invested within the Presidency the pardon to power and commute. Perhaps they shouldn't have. I personally disagree with the tons of pardons that President Clinton signed before he left office. But that's within the President's power. If he wanted to, and if he had enough time, the president could pardon every person in prison in the United States. Total chaos would break out, but its theoretically possible. The very notion of pardon is unfair in a sense. That one person found guilty of a crime should be released from prison and have the conviction removed from their record while another should be left to remain in jail. But I would not remove this power if it was a choice.

I would have to agree that Libby's sentence to two and a half years was excessive. His crime was perjury, but lets keep in mind that not even those convicted in Watergate served two and a half years in prison. So on that grounds alone I think I have to agree with Bush.

Then you have man people thinking Libby took the fall for those higher up in the Bush administration. I'm not sure they were wrong. Some of the jurors have said that they felt the wrong man was on trial. Well, you don't into a trial deciding whether anyone committed a crime, you try the person before you. If you've got the wrong man then return a verdict of not guilty and let another trial be done for the right person. You don't punish someone for a crime, you punish the perpetrator for the crime.

But Libby did commit perjury, and although not deserving of two and a half years, he still broke the law. Some will point out that President Clinton also committed perjury but was never convicted. Perhaps he should have been, although I think it dangerous ground to start putting president's on trial. He was however impeached, and if I remember correctly, had his law license revoked. Libby, if not pardoned by Bush or found not guilty in his appeal, will almost certainly lose his law license as well. (I doubt Libby will earn as high a speaking fee as Clinton does.) If he hadn't lied he wouldn't have been convicted. So I fill forced to agree with Bush's move.

Politically, Bush has most the nation upset with him. He wasn't going to gain any approval and political capital by letting Libby rot in prison. He does however, lose support from those few left by not pardoning him. So perhaps the best political move would be to go ahead and pardon him. I'm sure he kept some of that with the commuting, but I think many are still upset he didn't go far enough.

Another Terror Plot Foiled, So Whats Next?

2007-06-30T18:43:00.001-04:00

Yesterday in London two car bombings were stopped. Then today an attempted attack on Glasgow's airport in Scotland. The two cars loaded with gasoline, compressed gas, and roofing were caught because of escaping smoke in one case and the smell of gasoline in another. And then this afternoon an SUV tried to crash into the terminal and burst into flames. Thankfully only one person was injured. So what is the next security step we're going to see in response to this?

I don't think there is an effective one. About 11 months ago a terror plot was uncovered to blow up planes using liquid explosives smuggled past security, and so liquids were banned on planes. But what can be done to protect against today's attacks? Close roads outside airport terminals or search cars? Yes, but this doesn't address the situation. Two of the attempted attacks didn't involve air travel. The two cars were parked on the street, one outside a night club. We can turn airports into impenetrable fortresses, but any populated location where cars have access to could be easily targeted.

To be fair to the United States government, they have not overreacted with lots of useless protective measures. We have not gone to Red Alert. Perhaps they have realized it wouldn't do any good. But if these plots cross the Atlantic and start happening in the United States, we will be in trouble. Its not that they'll have to attack lots of locations, a couple of car bombings and the fear will do the rest and send our economy downward. 9/11 stopped people from spending money on plane tickets, car bombings would stop people from spending money out.

I'm going to stop here and save my regular faithful readers my typical 10 page diatribe against trying to achieve a complete sense of security, as none is possible, that arises every time something like this occurs. (Feel free to click on the subjects below to see these old posts.)

Are We Reverting To "Separate But Equal?"

2007-06-29T11:40:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court rejected public school assignment plans based on race in Seattle, and in my hometown of Louisville, KY. (Parents Involved In Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education) This decision was split 5-4. I'm not familiar with Seattle's plan, but having been educated in JCPS, I am familiar with their plan of integration. Back in 1975 the Supreme Court ordered JCPS to desegregate their schools. Since then, racial quotas of no less then 15% and no more than 50% were applied to each school, with the classification simply being "black" and "other." In 2000 though, the US District Court ruled that school system ended the desegregation order, although JCPS continued the use of racial quotas voluntarily. Furthermore, it ended the use of race as a factor in school admittance at magnet schools. Later, in 2003, admittance based on race and gender at traditional schools was ended by the US District Court. Which gets us to yesterday's 5-4 decision.

Why was this assignment plan struck down? "The school districts have not carried their heavy burden of showing that the interest they seek to achieve justifies the extreme means they have chosen--discriminating among individual students based on race by relying upon racial classifications in making school assignments." They failed to show that the use of racial classifications were not "narrowly tailored" to achieve a "compelling" government interest. In the present cases, race was not considered as part of a broader effort to achieve "exposure to widely diverse people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints." Although the school districts argued that other factors affected assignments, when it came into play race was the decisive factor. The plans only employed a limited notion of diversity, either "white/nonwhite" for Seattle or "black/other" for JCPS. The "minimal effect" of racial classifications questions need for them at all. They also failed to show consideration of other than explicit racial classifications to achieve their stated goals. Four of the five judges in the majority further concluded that it was unconstitutional because the plans were tied to to each district's specific racial demographics rather than any pedagogic concept of the level of diversity needed to attain the asserted educational benefits. Also, the use of racial classifications promotes the notion of racial inferiority. Justice Kennedy differed from the four in that there are instances that race can be taken into account. He said the problem could be addressed in a general way without treating each student in a different fashion based solely on a systematic, individual typing by race. (For a more detailed summary and complete text of the majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions, go to Find Law.)

First of all, I predict that JCPS will try gerrymandering school districts in order to try and achieve diversity that it can no longer do with racial quotas. Justice Kennedy left room for this in his concurring opinion. However, I see some problems arising from this. To speak quite frankly, white, wealthy East-Enders (the East End in Louisville is richer and more white, versus the West End which is poor and predominantly black) will never tolerate their school district being changed to downtown or the West End. (For those of you from Louisville, e.g. going from Ballard to Central) I think they will stop short of burning effigies of the School Board members, but not by much. Most likely there will be an exodus of students from public to private schools. (On the plus side, if they do revert to neighborhood schools, they can save taxpayers money by having kids walk to school instead of taking the bus, which will also make them healthier and leave more fuel for the rest of us to consume.)

Why not have a voluntary school assignment plan based off a race. When applying for a school, have a box on there where you can check "Yes you may reject my child from his or her choice of school and require that they ride the bus for up to several hours each day across the county in order to achieve racial diversity. I waive my right to sue." or "No, if you determine where my precious child goes based of a race I will sue the hell out of you." When you put it that way, the choice is clear, who wouldn't want racial diversity?

So JCPS, you want to achieve racial diversity but can no longer look at an individual's race. You could gerrymander school districts but will face a massive backlash from the East-Enders and others. Here's a solution we can all be happy with. Build new schools in the East End and then close all the others ones. Then you can change the districts around for racial balance. Wealthy East-ender parents won't get mad that their child has to go to school in a ghetto, and poor West-Ender children will be graciously welcomed into schools benefiting from being in affluent neighborhoods. Plus, the East-Enders are more likely to drive their children to school, and we would not want to inconvenience them each day by making them drive across town. Thus, you achieve racial diversity under Kennedy's suggestion of carefully choosing school districts and placing new schools. Although I guarantee you'll get sued again, this time you should have the support of 5 members (the 4 dissenting justices + Kennedy) of the Supreme Court and easily win. Of course, I would never support such a plan to move all schools to the predominantly white rich East End. After all, building these new schools would cost way too much money.

It seems to me that the underlying problem is not racial imbalance in the schools, but housing patterns. Of course the problem of addressing this is people voluntarily choose where they live, although of course part of it is where can people to live. The government can't make people move to balance out races. Perhaps the government could require when approving new developments mixed income housing. And this might work in the East End, but it would never work in the West End. Developers aren't going to build higher income housing in poor neighborhoods, no one would want to live their and the property value was just be dragged down. And it would only work to a limited extent in richer neighborhoods since if you build in a nicer neighborhoods the price of even supposed lower income housing will probably rise naturally, likely pricing those who its suppose to attract out of the market. I say all this to arrive at the point of there is no real, constitutional solution that I can see of creating forcing racial diversity in communities to come about.

In light of this, perhaps what needs to be focused on is simply making all schools good schools, no matter if they're in rich neighborhoods, poor neighborhoods, predominantly white neighborhoods, predominantly minority neighborhoods, etc. We don't need to white wash the problem by shuffling under-performing minority students around to hide them in Standardized Test averages. (Speaking from experience, my college-credit classes in high school in JCPS was almost entirely white. Something wasn't working.) Of course that's easily said, but not done. We need to speak frankly on this subject, saying what we all know but what no politician has the courage to say out of fear of being called a racist and being voted out of office. In general, the wealthier and middle-class parents are more likely to be interested in their child's education, while poorer parents are less likely to be interested, and so their kids do poorly. I speak in general, there are rich parents who neglect their children and their are poor parents who want to see their children do better than they did. Let the facts be said, blacks are more likely to be poor than whites. Why is this? A vicious cycle over generations that needs to be broken. I bring this up because there is only so much that can be done by school officials and teachers to ensure a child's good education. If the parents aren't interested then their kids probably aren't going to put forth the effort. I don't know how to get parents interested, but this is a factor that needs to be taken into consideration. This is something I see as a problem with the current school accountability system. It assumes that its the schools fault, and never the parents and child's fault. Thus, a school in a poor area is going to have under-performing students, and even good teachers are going to get blamed, and the state or Feds are going to come in and replace all the teachers and make all these changes that don't address the underlying problem. Now there are exceptional teachers in bad schools that get students to perform, and I applaud them. And there are teachers who couldn't care as long as they're getting their paycheck and should be fired. But I'd say in general this applies.

Now I don't have a solution for fixing housing patterns or getting parents interested in their child's education. (Well, I suppose we could get rid of social security and then they'll want their children to not drop out so they can support them in their old age, although this will also encourage more progeny.) I don't know how we can break this cycle of under-performing generation after under-performing generation. But I want to get the debate started, and not just focused on whether we should have racial profiles, affirmative action, school busing, and all the rest. And I know I've said some things that will get people angry, but facts are facts and if we don't have a discussion with facts we might as well shut up. For the record, no we are not returning to "separate but equal" schools, since schools aren't equal now and any separation is the result of where people choose to live and not government action. I agree with Chief Justice Roberts that "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

In the Political World, Primary Cutters Should Not Be Tolerated

2007-05-21T22:26:00.000-04:00

Today, the Governor Crist of Florida signed a bill to move Florida's 2008 Presidential primary up to January 28. This puts Florida only behind the Iowa and Nevada Caucus and the New Hampshire Primary, and on the same day as South Carolina's Democratic Primary. This follows California moving up its primary, which was in turn followed by New York and New Jersey and others moving their primaries' up. This latest move by Florida will give it more say over who will get the Democratic and Republican Parties' Nominations for 2008.

Now I live in Kentucky, who doesn't have their primary until May 2008. I'm getting tired of Kentucky always being passed by in the Presidential primaries, as I'm sure other citizens of my state and other states with late primaries. My vote does not matter in the Presidential primary, the race is already determined by then.

Kentucky should move their Presidential primary up to before the Iowa Caucus, putting us in the lead. If we do that, instead of the candidates pandering to Iowans to make ethanol out of corn, they will be pandering to Kentuckians to run cars off of tobacco and use clean coal. (which I'm not a big fan of but I'm a Kentuckian and I'm suppose to support coal) Think of the great benefits of running a car off of tobacco, once we start we won't be able to get enough. We will break our addiction of foreign oil with an addiction to tobacco. Might I point out tobacco, unlike corn, is green, making it better for the environment.

But back to Florida. The Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee are threatening to take up to half of Florida's delegates away for their treacherous move. We cannot tolerate a state trying to get more say in the Presidential election. After all, from time immemorial New Hampshire and Iowa have had that privileged, God given position and it is a political trespass to even think of taking that away. If we tolerate Florida's move, we will soon have states continuously outdoing one another, until we're deciding the Presidential nominees for 2050 in 2009. I fear that the DNC and RNC may be too late, already having let New York and New Jersey slip by. I call for the DNC and the RNC to do more, strip Florida entirely of all its delegates. And to make atonement for their sin, they should have to move their primary to the end of the line just to keep the delegates they have now. Cutting is not tolerable. If you're going to cut you have to ask everyone in front of you if they don't mind.

If only there was a way that we could be fair and give everyone an equal vote. If only it was logistically possible to hold some sort of vote in all 50 states on the same day. But that's just ridiculous. We have a hard enough time holding an election for President on the same day across the United States. To risk our all-important primaries in that logistical nightmare would be insane and irresponsible. The results are too important for fairness. In fact, if anything we should move our Presidential election in each state to different days to avoid such a situation. And we'll put Florida upfront so to give it more time to count and recount all its votes.

A New Plan For Iraq

2007-05-01T21:06:00.000-04:00

Today President Bush vetoed the funding bill for the Iraq war on the grounds that it includes a time table for a troop pullout. Why does Bush say he is against this? Because if we tell the terrorists when we are going to leave then the terrorists are going to lie in wait until we leave, then spring up. So lets examine this for a moment.

First of all. If the terrorists and insurgents in Iraq would just stop fighting if we told them when we'd leave until we left, why have they not stopped fighting? The Democrats want to set a date by which we will leave. But Bush would agree that we'd leave when we get the job done. So why don't the terrorists lie in wait now, so that we will think we won and leave, and then spring up. They may not know what date we are going to leave by, but they do know the conditions under which we'd leave, victory, and could make that happen. So my point is not to give the terrorists advice, but to say we may give them too much credit. We're assuming that they are, well, rational. But they are not rational, or the situation in Iraq wouldn't be in Iraq.

I think they might just keep fighting either way. Don't forget they are in a civil war, and if they stopped that would give others a chance to get a firm grasp on power before the chaos starts back up. And then of course, which terrorists. We have Sunnis fighting Shites, are they really going to cooperate long enough so that we will pull out? In history there are examples of such cooperation. During World War II the Communists led by Mao and the Nationalists had a truce in order to focus their efforts on repelling the Japanese invaders. But if the various Iraqi factions would do this, why haven't they already joined forces to try and repel America rather than continue to fight themselves?

If we really cared about creating a strong Iraqi state then we'd declare war on that state. I don't mean war with the insurgents, I mean war with the whole US backed Iraqi government. Right now we're fighting Shites and Sunni terrorists, but not the state itself. If their government is being attacked that would grant it a level of legitimacy in the Middle East that we could never attain anyway else. A war is just what Iraq needs to unite it. We were united in our fight against the British, Iraq could be united in their fight against us. We would then have a peaceful, prosperous, democratic America hating Iraq, which is the best we can probably hope for. Case in point, France, we actually liberated them and they don't like us, how can we expect anything better from Iraq? Plus, we do well in conventional wars, its these wars after we've taken over that get us. So, by declaring war against the Iraqi government, we get to fight another conventional war which we can win, and then get bogged down after the Mission Accomplished. (Which may I be the first to wish you a Happy Mission Accomplished Day, this being the 3rd anniversary of the beloved day when it was announced by our glorious leader that we were at an end of major combat operations in Iraq.)

We're probably not going to go the route of declaring war on our own puppet state, too hard to get Congress to go along with it. But, its really a win-win situation for Bush if he agreed to a time table. If he is right and the terrorists did lay down arms until after the date we set, then he's right and he can say "told you so," in a very presidential manner of course. And it could be spun as the Americans defeated the terrorists in Iraq, passed power on to the Iraqis, who then dropped the ball. The buck stops there, make the Iraqis the scapegoat if all goes wrong. So if he's oppose to a time table because the violence is going to stop until we pull out, then therefore if he knew the violence wouldn't stop, then he would agree to a time table. Quod erat demonstratum we could pull out gracefully with our heads held high as the country is continuing to fall apart, as the logic would dictate. Bush would have to agree to that.

Then we have the whole if we're not fighting the terrorists away then we'll be fighting them at home. But in Iraq we have Sunnis and Shites and Americans fighting each other. So, if we step out of the equation that will leave Sunnis and Shites fighting each other away. Therefore, if they're not fighting each other overseas they'll be fighting us at home. This means the last thing we want is the civil war to end in Iraq. They fighting themselves would mean they're not fighting us. If we do achieve a peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic Iraq then the attention will turn back to us at home. So we should really pull out but define victory as the fighting continuing, keeping us safe at home, which is the only thing that really matters.

But Iran is controlled by Shites, so although it would be preferable for an indefinite civil war, if one side is to eventually triumph then we need that side to be the Sunnis, so to form a buffer state with Iran. And since Iran is a strong, totalitarian Shite state, we need a strong, totalitarian Sunni Iraq. Sadly, the perfect guy to be the counterpart to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Saddam Hussein, was executed. (Perhaps because Shites say our plan to back Saddam's bid for power, making our whole invasion of Iraq and dethronement of Saddam in vain.)

So, we have a couple of options. If it is true that the terrorists would just stop fighting until we leave if only we announced when we'd leave, then we can use that as an advantage. We announce a date to leave. Then peace breaks out in Iraq. Our casualties stop occurring, we can remove some of our troops, and spend less money the Iraq war while this date is approaching. Thus, peace means ostensibly victory, therefore we have attained victory. During this time Iraqis will get use to peace and prosperity, as to dry up the insurgents support later down the road. Iraq's government will have time to strengthen itself, prepare its army, etc. Then when we do pull out they'd be better prepared. But, why rush if there is peace, no casualties, and a skeleton army left basically on vacation? So we then announce we our postponing the withdrawal, and announce a new date. We'll just give the insurgents excuses so they won't be suspicious. The President forgot to purchase the plane tickets, our bad. You know how hard it is to book a flight anytime soon, especially with Jet Blue cancelling every weekend on us. You get the idea. So we indefinitely postpone our withdrawal, leaving us in a perpetual state of near victory conditions. We won't be able to pull all the troops out, but it will be like our bases in Korea, potentially very dangerous, but effectively not, and which we likewise never officially won nor lost.

To the Democrats I say this. Bush has said he opposes setting a time table because that's telling our enemies when we'll leave. That doesn't mean he doesn't have a time table, he's just not telling anyone so it doesn't get leaked out, you know how Washington is. If he told you all you'd just blurt it out to get the credit. Shame on you for opposing the President's secret time table by pursuing publicly the matter of a time table. Do you know how much the President would like to tell you what date he picked, but can't because he's doing what's best for the country? One day we're going to reach the date he set, and it will be on the evening news that we left Iraq that day. And we'll have avoided the whole problem of having the insurgents stop fighting temporarily, having continued fighting the whole time we're in Iraq without missing a beat. How will you feel then?

The other way we'd move leave is if we attain victory. So who is standing in the way of us leaving Iraq? The media. Everyday they report on how dire the situation is. If they'd only broadcast good news then America would think everything is going well, that a prosperous, peaceful, democratic Iraq existed. Then we would say we had attained victory and leave. But no, they just have to keep on talking about how bad everything is. Our troops could already be home if it wasn't for the media. George Bush wants victory before we leave. The Democrats want our troops home. If we'd just tell the American people that we have victory we could all be happy. (Besides maybe Iraqis.) A little white lie never hurt anyone, and could have gotten us out of Iraq before last year's midterm elections, saving us from the oppressive rule of our Democrat overlords.

Should We Teach The Bible In Public Schools?

2007-04-28T17:30:00.000-04:00

I was blogging at a local coffee shop, and the cover story on Time magazine caught my eye, "Why We Should Teach The Bible In Public School. (But very, very carefully)" (April 2, 2007) Now although I am a Christian, I cannot say I've ever been wild about putting religion in school. So what are the grounds of concern for the Christian, and under what circumstances should we support such a policy?First of all, just as secularists fear that these classes will end up in the hands of Christian teachers, I fear undoubtedly many of these classes would end up in the hands of nonbelievers, and what is taught here could be damaging. I can see it now being taught, the JEPD theory, that Genesis through Deuteronomy was originally four different documents carefully weaved together by a redactor. (Those supposed documents being known as Jehovah, Elohim, Priestly, and Deuteronomy) How many young folk would be led astray by liberal teachings such as this one?

Then Christians, from denomination to denomination, from conservative evangelical Christians to liberals, differ on the interpretation of the Bible. Who is going to determine whose view is presented? (Don't get me wrong. There is a right interpretation of the Bible, it is not up to the individual to create their own. But people can and do err.) Will a conservative Christian’s understanding be taught or will a liberal view be taught? (which one could make the case that liberal Christianity becomes a different religion altogether) Between secularists and people of different denominations, can politically correct curriculum that offends no one be created without watering the Bible down to the point that the class becomes a waste of time entirely?

The author talks about the 1995 federal appeals court upholding of a death sentence in because jurors had brought in bibles for an "unsanctified discussion of the Exodus verse 'an eye for eye, tooth for tooth... whoever... kills a man shall be out to death.'" Focus on the Family complained "Its a sad day when the Bible is banned from the jury room." "Who's most at fault here? The jurors, who perhaps hadn't noticed that in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus rejects the eye-for-an-eye rule, word for word, in favor of turning of the other cheek? The Focus spokesman, who may well have known of Jesus' repudiation of the old law but chose to ignore it? Or any liberal who didn't know enough to bring it up?" Now I cringe at "Jesus' repudiation of the old law." If the author was biblically literate, he'd know that Jesus said “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." (Matthew 5:17) Jesus never repudiates the Law of the Old Testament. He repudiates the Pharisees for their traditions, but never the law. Not that the point of this blog is to discuss these passages, but Jesus wasn't talking about the state's administration of justice, which is right, the state bears a sword for the reason. Now how many Bible classes taught in public schools will teach the Bible as rightly seen, reconciling the Old Covenant found in the Old Testament with the New Covenant ushered in by Jesus? I think not many. Will these classes teach the Bible haphazardly, looking at passages out of context, or will they teach how to read the Bible properly, examining passages of scripture in the context of the rest of scripture? And will it look just at “key passages” or will they teach the overarching themes of the Bible and give a good understanding of Biblical theology? Will they give a right understanding of what Christians believe? Will it teach the foundations of Christianity, the Gospel, that Christ died for the sins of those who believe in him, or just bits and pieces of the Bible, allowing a student to recognize that when a politician in a speech says "city on a shining hill" that it comes from the gospel of Matthew, and not originally the Puritan leader John Winthrop? And even if it allows students to recognize Biblical language in speeches, will they be taught to know for example, that when Abraham Lincoln said a house divided against itself cannot stand, he was using Biblical language, but when Jesus said that he was referring to the Devil? I doubt that a class that does teach what Christian doctrine actually is, which is not simply obeying the Ten Commandments and being a moral self-righteous person as many believe, would be found unacceptable by secularists. If the curriculum doesn't offend though, I again doubt it is doing its job of teaching the Bible.

Of course having a mere intellectual understanding of the beliefs of Christianity, without believing them doesn't do much good in the end when you reach the judgment seat of God. Although I would say temporally, teaching what these beliefs are would be better than teaching a fragmented view of Christianity. If the class teaches that if Jesus hadn't been crucified, hadn't been resurrected, and hadn't ascended that whole of Christianity falls apart, perhaps I would support it. Then hopefully it would put to silence all this Da Vinci code and the Lost Tomb of Jesus nonsense and whatever will undoubtedly come next. I think we could all go for that. And to you who would object to that I say this, its not that the student has to accept Christianity, its just they know that they either accept Christianity and all its historical claims as true, or they reject the whole thing. There is no middle ground. The resurrection wasn't a spiritual resurrection, the ascension wasn't a spiritual ascension, they were both physical.The author states that "simply put, the Bible is the most influential book ever written." I certainly do not disagree with this statement. But he argues to teach the Bible as literature. I'm not thrilled over teaching the Bible as mere piece of literature, albeit one that is useful to know when reading much other literature, or in listening to many politicians speak. In high school English class I was many times aided with my knowledge of the Bible when reading books, writing papers, and participating in class discussions; but I never read the Bible for that purpose, and would not urge others to do so on that ground either. To put the Bible on the level of Shakespeare, as great an author that he was, would to present the Bible as mere work of human hands, and not the inspiration of God that it is. It would be a lie I believe for Christians to say they want the Bible taught in schools just for cultural and literary analysis when in fact they want it to be used as a tool to convert.

As far as Christians go, we should not so much push for teaching the Bible in public schools, but we should increase our effort of teaching the Bible to our children and ourselves. Far too many Christians don't know the word as they should. How many Christians have read the Bible all the way through, from Genesis to Exodus? We should revamp our efforts of giving our children, and ourselves, a strong foundation in Biblical truth before we should pursue teaching the Bible as public policy.

So I would support such classes on the Bible only if they teach the foundations of Christianity, only if it teaches a correct understanding of the Bible, only if it teaches to take passages in context of the whole of scripture, only if it teaches not just individual passages but also the overarching themes of the Bible, and only if it teaches the Old Testament as viewed in light of the New Testament. This may seem like a lot of requirements for these classes. I should stress at this point these are all intertwined and you cannot truly teach any of these without teaching the others. That said, I doubt I will be supporting too many of these classes. That said, when and where they do take place, I hope and pray and know that God can and will work through his Word despite what any politically correct or incorrect textbook or teacher may say to the contrary of the Truth about the Word of God.

Hilliary's Secret Thesis

2007-03-18T14:38:00.000-04:00

In 1993, Hilliary Clinton's 1969 senior thesis was locked away at Wellesley's college. Why? Because of a convenient rule that said the senior thesis of anyone was available to read at the archives, except the thesis of a president or first lady of the United States. Of course this rule came about after the Clinton family asked them to remove it. But it didn't take Indiana Jones to dig it up; when the Clinton's left office, her thesis also returned to the archives, as she is no longer the first lady.

Now I understand that people change after college. Now I'm no fan of her, but I'm going to defend Hilliary on the fact that she shouldn't have been judged by what she wrote several decades ago. What one writes in their senior thesis is likely not a good indicator of what they believe now. So I'd say in general one shouldn't be judged years later by their thesis.

I also understand that just because you write a paper on a topic doesn't mean you agree with the topic. Otherwise, my writing this would mean I agree with Hilliary Clinton, and I certainly do not. I don't know what stronger evidence of this there possibly is.

But this case is different. Why? As I said, I said she shouldn't have been judged on her thesis, not that she shouldn't be judged on her thesis. The difference? Because of the fact that they the Clintons had it hidden. If they're hiding something, then that suggests they don't want something to be found out. This was a horrible political move. If the thesis had been left quietly in the library of Wellesly, then I don't think this would have been an issue. They could have just shrugged off anything embarrassing as something naively written 30 plus years ago. But it was hidden, and so I say its fair grounds.

Another reason its fair grounds? She's running for the Office of the President of the United States, ruler of the free world, arguably the most important job in the whole world. (as compared to the Vice Presidency, arguably the least important job in the whole world.) Every comment, every scrap of paper, is grounds for analysis for anyone running for this high office. If anything, someone who is not the President or pursuing that office has more of a right to have their thesis hidden then the President or a Presidential candidate does, not less. Everyone running for it knows that you're endangered of burning up under the view of the magnifying glass that is the media's coverage of the election, for good or ill. Stick behind what you said or explain why its changed, but don't try hiding something. If someone covers up when running for office, what does that say about what they will do when in office?

So what was this classified document on? The tactics of the radical community organizer Saul D. Alinksy. Unfortunately, you are probably not going to be able to Google her thesis anytime soon. The only way to read it is to go to Wellesly and read the one copy there, no photocopying, or get the one copy circulating through the country through the interlibrary loan system. As far as the interlibrary loan, my guess it that its booked solid through past the Presidential Election. So you'd probably have to take a trip. If someone did release it unauthorized, Hilliary Clinton could sue them. Granted, that probably would be an even worse political move, as it would really make her thesis an issue, and it would already be circulating so people could actually read this forbidden document. But I'll leave it up for you to investigate her thesis any further if you want.

Red Tuesday: Surviving the Chaos

2007-02-28T21:11:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, if you've read the paper, watched TV, or been online, (You're probably online right now.) you're aware that yesterday the stock market took a massive plunge. Over 3% across the board, i.e. the NASDAQ, the Dow, and the S & P. (China dropped 9%, which helped trigger this decline worldwide.) Yesterday, being called Red Tuesday by me, (Red because there's already a Black Tuesday, and because unlike in 1929 the world is in color and so negative numbers show up in the red on financial spreadsheets) was only the beginning of it. Clearly, we are entering a second Great Depression. (GD II) Unfortunately, the name Great Depression is taken, so let's pick a synonym and make it the Terrific Depression. Although I guess technically its not a depression, so the Terrific Recession. Then again, I believe technically it is not a recession either, so the Terrific Economic Slow Down. (TESD)

Don't panic. If you take my advice you just may get through this with more than the skin of your teeth. So the first thing you should do is PANIC! We're about to enter the second Great Depression, or Terrific Economic Slow Down if you prefer, why shouldn't you be worried?! You know what this means. People are going to lose their jobs, banks are going to close their doors while demanding people immediately repay the full balance on their loans, people are going to lose their homes and be living in Bushdads, (like Hoovervilles.) and the like. You could lose everything. Panicked yet?

Second, you must prepare yourself for the worse case scenario. Go out right now and while your money can be used for more than just toilet paper, go buy some comfortable shoes that you can wear while standing in the soup line for hours. Don't forget a couple of good pairs of socks. While you're at it buy a warm jacket. Also pick up a nice tent and a van to live in and drive around in finding free WiFi. Is the Internet really a necessity? (Do you truly remember the time before the Internet? I thought not. How do you think you'll live without it, much less this blog?) Also, pick up a gun. If you're forced into looting (which is a legitimate response in an emergency situation) for necessities like HDTVs or stealing (which is wrong) for food, you want to be able to protect yourself. In the words of the second amendment, you are your own well-regulated militia, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. (If they do, you can just shoot them.)

Hopefully the worse case scenario won't happen, if you take the right measures now. So third, sell all your investments and clear out your bank account right now. You have to put your wealth in something that will protect it. In the Great Depression in Germany inflation was so bad people's whole life savings couldn't even buy a loaf of bread. You don't want that to happen to you. (Unless you're on the Atkins diet.) At first I would say gold. And yes, gold would be better than pieces of soon to be worthless paper. But if you think about it, what good is gold in the state of total anarchy that is breaking out as we speak? You can't eat it. Is somebody going to trade a loaf of bread for a bar of worthless gold? (Probably. Although it's a trick question. If you remember, nobody can afford a loaf of bread, so hows anyone going to have one to trade?) If you wear it the only good its going to do is get a gun stuck in your face. The only thing you'll be able to use it for is to hit someone in self defense (or offense, in a state of emergency any thing goes.) I'd advise something that won't only lose value, but will keep gaining value. What is that? Oil. The stock market went down 3% yesterday, the price of gas at the pump went up 20 cents today. Oil is a sure bet. (Disclaimer: In investing there are potential gains and risks. You must carefully weigh and balance how much gain you want and risk you are willing to accept. You should consult your financial advisor. This information is only one possible suggestion. This blog nor associated bloggers assume no liability for any loss either directly or indirectly from taking or rejecting any advice on this blog, to the legal limit as allowed by state law, except for in the state of California and Maryland. If any parts of this agreement are found unenforceable, that will not void the other parts of this agreement. By reading this you have accepted this agreement.) Although you could buy more crude oil for your buck, I'd go with gasoline, just in case all the refineries shut down, so you'll still be able to use it. If you want to diversify, go with regular, premium, and diesel. This is going to be a lot of oil, more than you can use. But you can barter with it. Just because Americans have lost their homes doesn't mean they're driving any less. (Are we savages? God gave us legs for a reason, to drive.) On the contrary, they're going to need an even bigger SUV to live in.

Now some might say this is overreaction. That what happened yesterday was just a "correction," as the economists put it, that was due after such record increases. I bet that's what the economists were saying on Black Thursday back in 1929 after the booming '20s. Well I've got news for you, that correction lasted ten years. And whats with this term "correction" anyways? It makes it sound like its some planned event. Do all the major stockbrokers get together and plan it out? "Okay. On February 27 we're going to have a correction. So everyone sell your stock. And remember, keep America in the dark. If word gets out this correction will happen not on our terms, and we'll lose our money, instead of their money." Quite frankly, sometimes I feel economists are just making this up, that its all smoke and mirrors. Ask two economists what they think, and you'll get two different answers. If you think about it, we might as well just let our economy depend on handicapping horse races as much as betting on how other people will bet on stocks, which may be disconnected from the reality of the companies of which they are shares.

So clearly, this is not a overreaction put a perfectly reasoned, pragmatic response. Take this advice, and you will surely survive the Terrific Economic Slow Down. Choose to ignore it, then best of luck to you. And if you find yourself stuck with more gasoline than you can use, let me know and I'd gladly take some off your hand, I need to fill up anyways.

The World Is Neither Black & White, Nor Shades of Grey

2007-02-13T21:44:00.000-05:00

So, it has come to my attention that these past few weeks that there is much talk about Obama's "race." As I watched the Colbert Report last week, he had on the author of "The End of Blackness," Debra Dickenson, herself a black" lady. She said that "black" is "the descendent of West African slaves brought here to labor in the United States." She called Obama not an "African-American," but a "African-African-American." So we discover that the world is not Black & White, but Black, White, and African-African-American. And this story showed up on the nightly news later on, further grabbing my attention.

First of all, this is good news for Joe Biden. Biden got himself in trouble by saying Obama was the "the first mainstream African-American who’s articulate, bright and clean and a nice-looking guy" candidate. Clearly he didn't mean Black, but rather a African who is an American, shortened to African & American, or better put, African American, and not African-American. There have been plenty of African-American presidential candidates, like Jesse Jackson, or Al Sharpton, but Obama is the first African American presidential candidate. The hyphen is the key. It just accidentally got added in the transcript, causing this whole debacle. So Biden is exonerated.

This seems to me both absurd, and quite frankly, racist in itself. "African-African-American?" If anything, I would think the term African-American would be more aptly applied to Obama than someone who's family has lived in America so long. Do you here term European-American as a race? I think not. And going further, is nationality race? No, not that it matters. But anyways, if you would vote for someone if they are an "African-American," but not a "African-African-American," then I would think that would make you as much a racist as one who would vote for a candidate if they were white versus if they were black. Indeed, the degree that you have to split hairs over these supposed races of African-American versus African African-American would make one more of a racist then if you simply used a few basic racial categories to separate people.

The presidential race shouldn't be about race, but about class. Rich people can become president, black or white or black-black-white or men or women, etc, but not poor whites and blacks and poor men and poor women. How much money someone has is what truly matters when voting for someone, not race or gender. Just see the post http://thegregariousblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/if-doesnt-matter-who-you-vote-for-just.html, for a discussion on why the rich should lead our country, and not the poor.

But seriously, I want to propose a novel idea, judging candidates by their ideas, character, experience, etc., and not their race or gender. Perhaps you could even say, judging them based upon the content of their character, and not the color of their skin. Or is that dream too lofty? To not vote for someone because of their race or gender is racist or sexist. But to vote for someone because of their race, or gender, whether that be black or female, is just as racist, or sexist, as with the latter case. Affirmative action has no place in deciding our president, their is simply too much at stake. Whether Obama is or isn't "black" doesn't matter either way. What matters is who is the best candidate for the job.

An Ice Age Is Upon Us

2007-02-06T18:35:00.000-05:00

Well folks, its been quite a while since I blogged. So much has happened, the Democrats took over and we await in fear the guillotine to be resurrected, Bush announced more troops were going to Iraq, Bush gave the State of the Union address (missed out on some good blogging there, e.g. the most Americans have seen Pelosi is while she was sitting behind President Bush; or that Bush could have fulfilled his constitutional requirement to "from time to time give to Congress Information of the State of the Union," by sending Congress a mass e-mail) What should wake me up is not any of that though, but the cold that has gripped much of our nation. Mainly because if I slept any longer in this cold I would never wake up. I thought I would have to tear apart Bush's proposed budget and use the paper as insulation to keep me warm.

There is only one explanation for this weather. Today, my friends, today is the day after tomorrow. Yes, I mean as in what happened in the movie, "The Day After Tomorrow." Hollywood was unfortunately right. We have been plunged by global warming into another ice age. At this time we should be evacuating everyone below a randomly drawn line on the map of the United States. Sorry folks up North, its too late to get you all out. If you go outside, you will freeze instantly.

Fortunately for the rest of us, this ice age came when it did. A few more years, and we would be trapped as I warned before, by our own impenetrable border fence, built to ironically to keep people out, but trapping us in. But there is hope, there are still many gaps we can slip through in the desert. And most importantly, the automated machine guns that could never be turned off (just like the Doomsday Machine in Dr. Strangelove) are not up and running yet.

But seriously, this weather goes to show, we will never be happy no matter what the weather is. With global warming, everyone complains its getting too hot. But when winter is like what its suppose to be, everyone complains its too cold. Since either way people are going to complain, why not err on the side of global warming? At least with global warming, the roads don't ice or snow over, pipes don't freeze, and traffic and water keeps on moving. We can always just burn more fossil fuels to provide more power for our air conditioners, at home, at work, and in the car. And you won't get hypothermia or frost bite, you might get heat stroke our heat exhaustion, but which is worse? Would you rather be a little sweaty or have your nose, ears, fingers, and toes freeze off. (Granted, in heat exhaustion you actually stop sweating and overheat and can die, but that's beside the point)

Besides, the only time people really want snow is when they're dreaming of a white Christmas anyways. Plus, living in a free market society, that just allows our entrepreneurial spirit to rise up and make snow a commodity and manufacture and sell it, and to please you Democrats, tax it. It's a win-win situation for the Republicans and the Democrats. Just think, you could go take your kids and play in the snow any day indoors, after forking down $50 per kid and for yourself to enter ArcticDisney, and paying $10 more per cup of hot cocoa, or for a Kleenex to blow your cold runny nose.

So everything considered, clearly the choice is obvious, global warming is the way to go. This Case For Global Warming is so cogent that you can not argue against it, and have to side with it. (Sounds like another blog in itself.) I honestly had no idea I would arrive at this conclusion, but not that I have, my hands are tied by my own logic.

The Real Santa Claus - Not Who You Think

2006-12-22T23:14:00.000-05:00

Its that time of year when Santa Claus goes around the world giving away toys. What a great philanthropist. But lets take a closer look at the man in the red suit, and what he is really doing.

Think about some of the gifts that are given from Santa Claus. CDs, DVDs, books, video games, and various name brand products. If any body else did this that would be intellectual property theft, copyright violations, trademark infringements, and the like. Why is that not the case with Mr. Claus? It is. The North Pole looks more like a Chinese knock-off factory than a Winter Wonderland. Santa is costing our economy billions of dollars every year. It Santa didn't give away all these gifts, people would have to go out and buy them from legitimate companies, which would generate jobs, raise the stock market, and overall help our economy. Just imagine how much more in the black Black Friday would make our nation's businesses if not for Santa.

Santa Claus goes around to people's houses, sneaking down their chimney's or any way he can sneak in. Just think about the millions of homes trespassed every Christmas. And of course in homes without chimneys, he has to break and enter homes, and not merely trespass. He is dangerous, he knows how to get pass the most secure security systems. No one is safe. What a sad state our world is in when millions of dollars won't buy you protection from Santa Claus, if that is his real name.

Santa Claus goes around the globe every year. What else is he doing, going to North Korea and Iran, the Axis of Evil, before coming to the US. Does he go through customs? No. Santa is violating UN sanctions by bringing luxury items. But more importantly, how do we know that toys are the only thing being brought into the United States. With North Korea having nuclear bombs now, what's to stop Santa Claus from smuggling one or more of them into the country. Santa Claus is illegally crossing borders, without going through customs, declaring his luggage, and being inspected. Besides weapons, imagine what else Santa could be bringing. How do all the illegal drugs get in our country? Our nation's hardworking border agents wouldn't let that happen. Its not there fault, so it can only be Santa's. He does have to finance his whole operation somehow.

Let's turn our gaze onto Santa's workshop, or should we say Santa's sweatshop? How does Santa manage to pump out so many gifts? By forcing children to work in substandard conditions, underpaid, overworked, and utterly dependent upon Santa for their livelihood up there.

He knows when you've been sleeping, he knows when you're awake. He knows when you've been bad or good. One thing Santa Claus apparently doesn't know is that you have according to the Supreme Court a constitutional right to privacy. How does Santa know all this without obtaining any warrants for surveillance? Santa has the world's massive intelligence network. His reckless disregard for your rights makes Bush's warrantless wiretaps look like holding a glass to your wall. There's no telling where all the bugs are in your house. For starters, every item that Santa gave you last Christmas. Hopefully all Santa has hidden are bugs, but I fear that worse may lie in his presents, biological and chemical weapons, explosives, who knows.

And if Santa does know when you've been bad and when you've been good, he could have been a great asset. Would not Santa have known that Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction? He could have prevented this whole war. But he did not. He withheld this knowledge in the march to war. The 9/11 Commission missed out on Santa's knowledge of the attacks before they happened. That's just the tip of the iceberg, every other planned crime could have been prevented with Santa's help.

Last but not certainly not least, Santa's propaganda machine. Look at all the Christmas movies, songs, and TV specials painting Santa in a positive light. This web of lies has gotten us to become complacent over Santa's illegal activities. But that's not the worse of it. The worse awaits those heroes who would stand up to Santa's tyranny. Take a certain fellow living near Whoville. He tried to stop Santa's work, and so is called the Grinch. I fear I too will now be the target of Santa's propaganda.

When all the facts are in, Santa is by far the worst criminal in the world. He should be at the top of the most wanted list. We need to strike before Santa strikes at us again. Bush, I implore you to send in a Black Ops force to his North Pole hideout before Christmas Eve arrives.

The Logical Implications of Evolution

2006-12-21T14:48:00.000-05:00

If what some say is true, that there is no creator God and that we are mere products of evolution, then there would be numerous implications of this in our world. If you believe this, then you must apply it to such areas as health care and environmentalism.

Let's clarify what is meant by evolution before we go on to its implications. Encyclopedia Britannica says that evolution is the "theory in biology postulating that the various types of animals and plants have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations." These modifications come from random changes in individual organisms genetic code (DNA). Organisms with modifications advantageous for their particular environment increase their probability of reproducing while organisms with disadvantageous modifications decrease their probability of reproducing. (Hence survival of the fittest) Organisms that reproduce pass on these modifications to their offspring, this process of selecting organisms with advantageous modifications is called natural selection. Over much time, through natural selection, new species arise as change occurs, this change being evolution. I will stress at this point that what I refer to as evolution is an unguided process. If any divine intervention occurs then it would not strictly be considered evolution, neither in this post nor by most scientists.

Survival of the fittest should be the only rule of law. Why then do we need to improve our health care system. I'd say we should just go to a Darwinian health care system. Surely we've been making our species weak by actually preventing the sick from dying. I have bad eyesight, shouldn't natural selection have weeded me out so that later generations would not have the same problem. Therefore, glasses, contacts, and laser eye surgery must go. More and more weakness enters our species every generation as more and more people are able to survive with disorders that should have killed them off. We must put a stop to this nonsense, this health care devolution that is taking place.

What about the little children though? Surely we should provide health care for them. Wrong! Evolution depends on natural selection to remove organisms from the gene pool before they reproduce, not after. So, the implication of this is that we need to let the weak youth die off before they can have children. Therefore, that lofty goal of ensuring every child has access to adequate health care is the worse idea ever. Childhood is the perfect time to let them die, to make our species stronger. If anything, we must strip children of health care, not give them more.

And then you have the elderly. If the goal of life is to reproduce, which would be suggested by evolution, then after people have children we don't need them. Why bother taking care of people late in life, clearly Darwinism would necessitate that we let them die. They're just taking up vital resources anyways. We don't need to even wait until someone retires, because the only real importance one has is not in his or her work but in his and her progeny.

Health care is not the only area that would be affected by a consistent application of evolution. We, human kind, are just animals, no more special then single cell amoebas. What does this mean? It means everything we do is natural. How did we get to the point of where we're at now? Natural selection. If we're burning fossil fuels and causing global warming, so what? Natural selection caused it to happen, so its not wrong. We should continue just as we are, and let natural selection guide us. At most we'll kill ourselves off and nature will continue and adapt. You know what else has an impact on its environment, trees. Trees absorb water and release it later. They also hold soil together, preventing erosion. No one criticizes trees for changing the weather or interfering with the flow of water, why should the case be any different with humans. We're no better or worse than a tree.

Who cares that animals and plants are dying off because of global warming? Let evolution do its work. If they can't survive then they don't deserve life anyways. If they can't adapt then they must go. Make way for the new, progress must go on. What if, by the extinction of hundreds and hundreds of species today, many new species can arise? Would you deprive them of their existence by selfishly protecting the species alive today? If the dinosaurs hadn't died off would we be around? We should repay that debt and kill off other species so new ones can arise.

Who cares about global warming, regardless of it being caused by humans or not. First of all, because humans are just natural, then global warming is natural either way. Change is natural. Coast lines changed before, whats wrong with them changing now? The earth used to be a molten piece of rock, where's the outcry over that change?

For that matter, do we need police? Clearly, there is no such thing as right or wrong anyways in a Darwinian world. Just let natural selection do the job of police. If crime is disadvantageous then criminals will get killed off in natural selection. On the other hand, if crime is advantageous then those who hold to outdated morals such as not killing, stealing, raping, etc., then they will be the ones to die off. In 'nature' does one say that one animal killing another is wrong? No, of course not. Well, its already been established that we are just as much apart of nature too, certainly not above it. So the same should apply to us too. We cannot commit wrongs anymore than other animals can.

I should point out at this point that this is not what I believe. There is a God who created the universe, every living being, and us. We're not here by accident, by random chance. We're here because God made us. And God made us in his image. And God created mankind above the rest of the living beings. That does not give us free range to destroy recklessly creation, but a responsibility to care for it. Only on God does environmentalism have any basis, not on evolution. And because we are made in God's image, we are not free to kill and steal and rape. Every man, woman, and child is made in God's image, and because of that we should treat them with respect. God put in us a moral compass. That's why we have laws, not because they evolved through natural selection. One must consider their beliefs and the logical implications they necessitate. So if you hold to evolution, then you should wholeheartedly embrace these ideas. To do anything but is to foolishly hold conflicting beliefs.

Control Of The Senate On The Line Again

2006-12-14T17:14:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Democratic Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota suffered bleeding in the brain caused by congenital malformation. It appeared at first that he had a stroke. He was doing a phone interview, started stuttering, recovered, and went back to his office. There he felt bad, they got the physician, who had him sent to the hospital. Today he underwent emergency brain surgery.

This could have a political impact. The North Dakota Governor Mike Rounds is a Republican, and if Johnson were to leave office he would appoint a new senator, who could be a Republican. The Senate right now is 51-49 in favor of the Democrats. If a Republican Senator were to take over, the Senate would be split 50-50 with the Vice President having the tie breaking vote, giving control of the Senate to the Republicans. That would be significant since which party has control over the Senate has control over the committees, over the legislation that makes it to the floor, over judicial nominations, etc. I'm from Kentucky, and Senator McConnell from Kentucky who as of right now will be Minority Leader would become the Majority leader.

To anyone who would put politics above an individual man's health, don't break out the champagne yet. The Senator would have to resign or die, he wouldn't be forced out. In 1969, Republican South Dakota Senator Karl Mundt suffered a stroke and continued to serve out his last 4 years even though he never went to Congress. So if Johnson were not to recover, it is highly likely he'd hold onto his seat just to keep control of the Senate in the hands of the Democrats. Which, if that happens, we're paying from taxpayer money Johnson to do nothing. Of course, we're already paying Congress to do nothing, so that's not anything new.

March Madness : Basketball :: December Delirium : Football

2006-11-26T21:08:00.000-05:00

In the spirit of the now retired SAT analogy, March Madness is to Basketball as what is to Football? December Delirium is the answer, or should be. March Madness is the college basketball tournament. December Delirium, I propose, should be the tournament for college football. There's been all this dispute over who should go to the championship. I say, we should just have a tournament like that for NCAA basketball to decide. This would quiet all the complaining about does a one loss team from such-and-such conference, eg SEC, deserve to go over a undefeated team from a so-called lesser conference, eg Big East. Obviously, this problem has largely taken care of itself with several upsets, but if that hadn't occurred, people would still be complaining. I'll say up front I'm a U of L fan, so I obviously think if they had gone undefeated they would have deserved to go to the Championship.

Truth be told, a single elimination tournament, the only practical type, would not ensure that the top 2 teams in the country, if you could objectively determine that, would make it to the championship. (So I take back what I just said.) If the two best teams played each other before the championship game then one of them would be knocked out. Like with Michigan and Ohio State last week. Sure, you can seed the bracket to try to avoid that. The problem is, you're already assuming you know who the best teams are before you even start the tournament. If you already know, why even bother having a tournament to begin with? Now I'm not saying we should get rid of seeding brackets in March Madness, that would just be dumb. But only one of the teams in the Final Four are guaranteed to actually be in the top 4 teams, assuming there are no upsets.

If you really want to see the top two teams make it to the championship in a tournament, you would have to have a double elimination tournament. To know the top 3 teams, a triple elimination tournament. And to know the top 4 teams, a quadruple elimination tournament. To sum it up in a mathematical theorem, to determine the top N teams, you need a N-elimination tournament. (Bet you've never seen mathematics applied to football.) If you wanted to precisely rank every team, you would basically have to have a round robin, which would require a season of several years. This would apply for any sport. Of course, again, this is all assuming that teams don't have bad days and that you would get the same outcome each time two teams play each other in a season.

So what's my point? My point is that it would be impractical and realistically impossible to actually be able to make sure the best 2 college football teams make it to the Championship. Right now, there's controversy over who should go. But even if we did add December Delirium, we'd still have no guarantee that the top 2 teams actually make it to the Championship. However, there would still be benefit from having a tournament,. I think we'd see some really good games with let's say the top 8 teams playing each other. (Let's not get into how do you determine who makes it into the tournament, since the same problems as deciding who makes it to the Championship would persist.) So I say go ahead and have December Delirium, despite the fact it won't quiet all the controversy.

(By the way, if you're the NCAA, I want compensation for December Delirium. I'm willing to settle for several good tickets, hotel stay, and first class flights to and from the games.)
(If you're Arby's reading this. I have an idea for advertising for you all, the "Arby's Turnover of the Game. It goes without saying I'll want at least Arby's Turnovers for life, although I'm willing to negotiate."

Plan for Cheaper Prescription Drugs

2006-11-16T14:03:00.000-05:00

Prescription drug prices have gotten largely out of control. The current Medicare plan is a mess. Some say we should import drugs from Canada, that to me seems like pretty poor plan, quite frankly, particularly if offered by members of Congress. If we allow that and most people are buying drugs from Canada anyways, we might as well stop fretting about becoming socialists and put the same controls on drug prices that Canada has here in America. If you don't support price controls here, then you had better be buying your medicine full price here in the United States. So let's examine the situation. A good plan needs to face the facts.

First of all, pharmaceutical companies are quite frankly companies. In a free market society we cannot criticize the fact that a company is trying to make money, that's what companies do. It would be no better to do that than to ask you not to eat which you must do to live. If they didn't make a profit they would go bankrupt.

Second, pharmaceutical companies develop drugs, patent them, and then are able to sell them exclusively for so many years before the patent ends and generic drug companies come in and make the same drugs but sell them for cheaper. Now, its not the making of each pill that costs so much but the development costs. The companies have a few years to reap their development costs back and make a profit before their patent ends. This translates into high drug costs, so they claim.

Third, we need pharmaceutical companies to continue to develop better medicines. In order to do that they need lots of money, which must come from the consumers. The other alternative would be for the government to take over the development of drugs, the cost then being passed on through taxes instead of drug prices, and the chances of their being new drugs would be dramatically lessened.

My proposal is this. Why not give pharmaceutical companies the option of having longer patents on drugs in exchange for submitting to price controls on their drugs. Then, they can make the same amount of money off their drugs but spread out over more years. Do we really need to let parasitic generic drug companies come in and steal drugs from those who developed them and sell cheaply because they didn't incur development costs? My answer is no, not if we can get the companies holding the patents to charge less.

Now obviously, some method of determining how to set the prices of prescription drugs would be needed. I'll leave that for Congress and undoubtedly lobbyists to figure out. If a method couldn't be figured out then this plan will not work, since I would certainly not trust giving the drug companies longer patents without guarantees that they'd charge less. And we wouldn't force this upon them, they could choose to charge what they can get while they can and then have generic drug companies swoop in a few years, so its not socialist. But we would close the loopholes allowing drug companies to get more years out of their patents if they don't take the price control route.

This plan seems far better than buying the same drugs from other companies. It also seems better than just allowing people to negotiate prices. If I'm buying from prescription drugs, I don't want to feel like I'm in a bazaar bartering and haggling over my medicine. 'Just walk away, show them that you don't really need your heart medication. You can live without it, for a few days.' We'd be better off ensuring everyone gets the same affordable prices, instead of complicating things even further.

Apparent Change of Course?

2006-11-08T13:56:00.000-05:00

Last night, the Democratic Party took the House. In the Senate, the current breakdown is 49 Republicans, 48 Democrats, and 2 independents. Currently there is one seat undecided seat in Virginia with Democrat Jim Webb leading by 6,708 votes. In Virginia there could be a recount. By state law, the state will pay for a recount if the difference is under 0.5%, which it is. But this cannot take place until 10 days after the election when the results are certified. Virginia is now on my list of states to consider expulsion from the Unites States, along with Florida and Ohio.

News that would have been the top story any other day, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is stepping down and will be replaced by Robert Gates. Robert Gates is from the old George H. W. Bush team, the former director of the CIA and the President of Texas A & M. According to Bush in a press conference today, Bush talked to Gates last week and talked to Rumsfeld yesterday. Apparently, Vice President Cheney was opposed to getting rid of Rumsfeld but Bush went against him. The news is saying that the age of idealogues, e.g. Rumsfeld and Cheney, is over. I'd say personally that pragmatism is more characteristic of political conservatism than ideology, so this is a good thing. One has to wonder if Bush had made this change earlier if this would have resulted in a better night for Republicans. I think considering the closeness of many races, that if the Bush had made this change earlier that the Republicans would likely have kept control of the Senate, and although they probably still would have lost the House they would have held onto more seats. (On a side note, I remember meeting Gates a few years ago kind of randomly, although I don't remember much about it.)

Bush said that he did not think that they were going to get such a 'thumpin.' He talked about working with the Democrats to get things accomplished. He said he wants to get the troops but with victory, and they can work together assuming that its not just get the troops home immediately. He pointed to raising the minimum wage, alternative energy, and a comprehensive immigration plan as some areas that they can work together one. Interestingly, there is a better chance for Bush to get a comprehensive immigration plan through with a Democratic Congress. Bush was asked about how he was going to get pass the harsh words said by the Democrats about him, and vice versa, during the campaign. Bush replied that the campaign was over and in the business of politics you can't hold grudges of you won't get anything accomplished.

Bush was also asked about the contest between him and Karl Rove to read more books in a year. Karl Rove is, but more importantly, Bush said that maybe he was campaigning harder than Rove, which was received with laughter. Does this signal a change in Bush's political strategy? Karl Rove thought that he had access to better numbers and math than media, and was proven wrong last night. Apparently all he had access to was fuzzy numbers.

If Doesn't Matter Who You Vote For, Just Don't Vote

2006-11-06T20:02:00.000-05:00

Have you ever heard, "It Doesn't Matter Who You Vote For," or "We Should Force People To Vote?" Well, that is quite possibly some of the most foolish nonsense to ever grace the earth. You have the right to vote, but if you are uninformed, you forfeit your right to vote. Forcing people to vote so we have bigger turnouts would not help our country, but hurt it. Then, whoever has the better sounding name would win elections.

Instead of requiring people to vote, we should require them to take a poll test before voting. That's right, bring the poll test back. Poll tests were once a bad thing, used to disenfranchise people based on race, totally wrong, but now we can use them for good to disenfranchise the uninformed. We would make sure it wasn't biased in favor of one race. If naturalized citizens have to pass a test to get citizenship (and they should), its only right that naturally-born citizens be able to pass a test as well. It's sad to think how many Americans wouldn't pass a test for citizenship. If we went further and did require Americans to pass such a test for citizenship, it might make people pay more attention in school and to politics, since if you failed not only would you not be able to vote, but you would lose, many other rights as well, such as certain legal protections. We all know Americans are innocent until proven guilty, but not anyone else. Habeas corpus, forget about it if you fail. Nothing like a indefinite day, indefinite-minus-one night free vacation at Guantamano Bay.

Furthermore, I say bring back the poll tax as well. Clearly, only the rich deserve to vote. They can manage their own money, therefore they have what it takes to vote for leaders to manage our nation's financial resources. The rich have more money, therefore they have more on the line and should have more say over the course of our nation. Think of it like stock in our nation, the rich have more stock, i.e., pay more taxes, meaning more votes just as the more shares you have the more votes you have in a company. I say we get rid off all taxes but the poll tax. We'll pay the poor not to vote using the money from making the rich pay to vote. The poor can't afford not to not to vote. Neither would they want to, as they are getting money and not paying taxes. Or, the poor would still get votes, just the rich would get proportionally more votes, and as its proportional its therefore fair, like a flat tax. If we expect the rich to pay more, they should get more of a say, its only fair. This could encourage people from going into debt, since they'd have to have money if they want to vote. And we shouldn't forget, a poll tax makes voting profitable, meaning polling stations become like businesses running more efficiently. We'll actually be able to afford decent voting systems so that we will be sure that the select few's votes get counted fairly and accurately.

Now politics is about what is prudent, so how to get this in place you might ask? Well, politics is also about framing the issue and getting your terms to define the debate. "End Poor And Uneducated Suffrage Amendment." (EPA USA) What politician could vote against ending the suffering of the poor and uneducated, especially when its patriotic and environmentally friendly?

We're not taking away people's right to vote, as anyone could educate themselves and fulfill the American dream by becoming rich and then vote. Nor is it discriminatory since people across the board would fail to either invest enough in America or to know enough about America. It's equal opportunity. And I am not rich, so I am not biased and have nothing to gain. But for the sake of our nation, I would give up my right to vote if it keeps those who shouldn't be voting from voting. We already entrust the running of our country to elected officials, so why not entrust the decision of who to entrust with power to smart rich people. There's checks and balances. People from different competing companies would be voting, keeping the government from favoring one business over another, it might actually reduce that. And or course the rich will respond to money, so the people can hold the rich in check by carefully exercising their spending power. Of course, because this is a democracy their votes are by secret ballot to avoid intimidation which might make that a little difficult. It's an imperfect system, but its the best we got.

The Keystone of Our Nuclear Balance of Peace

2006-11-01T22:19:00.000-05:00

For some five decades now, our world has been living on the edge of destruction. Our world was and still is at every moment an hour away from the end of the world as we know it. And yet, we have had a tenable peace. The closest we've come so far was the Cuban Missile Crisis. So how have we avoided our destruction by nuclear arms?

It's quite simple. Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD for short. For example, if the Soviet Union had attacked us, we would have launched missiles back taking them out along with us, and vice versa. Hence the nuclear arms race: To avoid any side from gaining the ability to wipe out the other side's armament, we had to keep enough weapons to be able to survive a first strike attack and fire back. Otherwise, deterrence would be gone and peace would have been far more unlikely.

MAD is why its okay for a country like the US to have nuclear arms, and a country like Iraq, Iran, or North Korea to not have them. This question is often asked, and the answer is really quite simple. The US would never use our weapons unless we had too, since our destruction would be assured if we became aggressive. But, when you have rogue states with regimes who don't even care about their people to the point of killing their own people, then MAD breaks down. If they don't particularly want their people to survive, then why would they care if they're wiped out if they attacked us. Now of course it would be preferable if we could turn the clock back and never know how to build nuclear bombs. But its too late for that, the knowledge is out there and even if we disarm all our nuclear arms, that knowledge will still be out there and completely disarming will only leave us vulnerable and worse off. Pandora's Box has been open and can't be closed.

So what is the key to this nuclear balance of peace? Its having people in charge of our nuclear arms who will attack back with nuclear arms when attacked by them. Take the Cuban Missile Crisis. President Kennedy said "It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union." So to keep a relative peace as far as nuclear arms are concerned, it is necessary that the United States respond in kind to any attacks. Otherwise, if we didn't retaliate, no one would have any problem using weapons of mass destruction against us, as the fear of their own destruction would be gone. Fear of destruction keeps sane states from using nuclear arms.

Now as that power rests in the hands of the President, that means that our President must be willing to unhesitantly retaliate, undoubtedly killing millions of innocent people in the process. So my question is, can one as a Christian be President and actually go through with killing several million using nuclear warheads. One is Christian first and a citizen second, and a Christian president, if they are indeed Christian, must be a Christian first as well. Of course, a big difference between the president ordering an attack and a regular person doing so is that the government bears the sword to maintain justice and regular citizens do not. But does that make from a Christian point of view the killing of millions in defense of the country an acceptable act, or is it egregious sin?
If is not acceptable for a Christian to do so, then I would put forth we really shouldn't elect Christian presidents. And, Christians shouldn't run for President, if they truly are Christian and not just claiming to be to get votes. Because, it is absolutely essential that we have a President who will do this if put in that unfortunate situation, and if that has to be a non-believer, so be it. So, I'm interested in a response (meaning comments) to the question, can a Christian be the President and make the decision to actually use nuclear arms in retaliation?

A Modest Proposal

2006-10-30T22:33:00.000-05:00

I must say that I write this modest proposal despite the immense harassment I’ve suffered. Some poor unenlightened persons no doubt believe with all due sincerity and yet great ignorance that I am crazy. There are a few who have expressed support for my plan, and to these people I give thanks. Many great ideas which have now become accepted were once met with great hostility and disbelief, e.g, that the world is round and revolves around the sun or that oh so great ideal we call democracy. The French Revolution was met with much resistance by reactionary powers seeking to maintain the status quo, yet the bourgeois would persevere in their fight for Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality. Therefore, it is not only my right but my responsibility to proclaim this plan and let it be judged by fair-minded people, whose right it is to consider thoughtfully and either accept or reject.

I do not present this plan as a panacea. Although I write this knowing this plan would solve many problems, I also present it as a challenge. If one does not agree with it, come up with a better plan. But as of yet, our government, our President, and our Congress have failed to provide adequate leadership, and so I must do my share as citizen of these United States of America and of the world.

So to begin, I shall simply state the plan. The plan is to add an extra hour to each day. And by that I do not mean we should adjust the length of an hour so that each day still lasts the same amount of time, 1440 minutes or 86400 seconds to be precise, but that each day should be 25 hours long. Neither do I mean that the amount of days in a year should be lessened, but it would remain at 365 days. At the same time, a year would increase from lasting 8760 hours to 9125 hours, a difference of 365 hours. Of course I’m sure you the reader already inferred before I even stated those facts. These numbers will be expanded on later, as no proposal would be complete without numerical analysis to provide absolute numerical evidence for the advantages of the plan. We wisely value numbers which do not lie and we wholeheartedly put our trust in them to guide our nation.

So what would this proposal accomplish? It would certainly eliminate the need for that annoying daylight savings time, which is advantageous. However, that alone is not nearly enough to justify changing the amount of time in a day by even one minute. No, change should not be embarked upon unless is clearly better than convention. However, prudent change is not only possible but desirable.

Our lives we live are incredibly chaotic and busy. People are so busy that many don’t even have enough time for a good night’s rest and are sleep deprived. That fact alone that people are operating vehicles while in a state of perpetual sleep deprivation is a serious public safety hazard that needs to be addressed. Certainly you can agree that you could use an extra hour each day; you’ve probably said to yourself if only I had an extra hour. You could use that extra hour for whatever you want, sleeping, exercising, reading, spending time with your children, et cetera.

One area of many which this plan would have significant benefits is energy consumption. As we all know, we are facing an energy crisis, in particular but not exclusively in the area of petroleum consumption. The average price of gasoline at the pump is starting to go over $3 a gallon. Now, if everyday is an hour longer, that means energy consumption will be partially spread out over that extra hour. In particular, driving will be less frequent. I said I was going to go back to those numbers, and now let me do so. Currently, there are 600 hours in twenty-five 24-hour days. Now, if a day lasts 25 hours, then in 600 hours there is only twenty-four days, a reduction of one day out of twenty-five for the same period of time. (You’re wise, as you are still reading this proposal, and I would ask that you delay the question undoubtedly raised in your mind over where the one day went for a moment.) That reduction of one day eliminates with it one day’s worth of daily activities, e.g. commuting to and from work, etc. That means a reduction in energy consumption. If you perform the calculations, which you are of capable of doing and probably already have done in your mind, you see that there is a reduction in energy usage by 1/25 or 4.0% by simply adding an one hour to each day. Furthermore, during that one extra hour petroleum is still being pumped and refined which is equivalent to increasing by 1/24 or 4.2% the amount of petroleum available for consumption on the market. All this is accomplished without any infrastructure improvements.

I would like to remind the reader that Congress in its infinite wisdom last autumn of 2005 anno Domini passed an enormous energy plan which included adjusting daylight savings time to save energy. Now, if changing the clocks twice a year by an hour can help reduce energy consumption, surely it would follow that changing everyday to 25 hours would save so much more energy.

I shall not delay any longer in responding to the question of what happened to that one day out of every twenty-five 25-hour days. I’m sure you the patient reader would agree looking back that the deferment was warranted. The day doesn’t is not eliminated, but rather pushed back. As was stated earlier, each year shall remain at 365 days. So, the implications of this is that for a certain period of time, there is 1/25 less years, So 25 years when dealing with 24-hour days is the equivalent to 24 years on the 25 hour clock. Let’s say someone lives to be 75 years old under the 24 hour clock. Under the 25 hour clock they live 72 years. This person now lives 3 years less.

Now, you will ask why would you want to live a shorter life. First, it is about the quality of life, not the quantity of life. You will live less years but each day will be more enjoyable when you have an extra hour to do whatever you will. But more importantly, this has tremendous implications for social security and other entitlement programs of the government. One is now working longer while living shorter. This means they pay into social security longer and take out less. Since Congress will neither raise the retirement age, lower benefits, nor raise taxes, as it cannot stop pandering to the elderly, this seems to be the only solution to making social security solvent. May I remind the reader if you have a better solution please present it.

You probably have already seen a potential problem, won’t this require either changing clocks back one hour everyday or replacing all clocks. The answer is yes, but this is not a bad thing. Certainly it would be an inconvenience to change clocks everyday and I have no intention on that being the case. No, every clock will have to be replaced. Now you will say this will cost money. Yes it will, and that is the advantage. The economy works by money circulating, the more circulation the better the economy; its not that there is more money when the economy does well. The money spent to replace clocks will stimulate the economy tremendously and generate jobs. This includes appliances with clocks built in, such as VCRs, microwaves, etc. It will provide jobs in all areas of the economy, manufacturing, engineering, retail, etc. So don’t selfishly hoard your money, buy a 25 hour clock and you will do your part as an American in helping the economy and you will see the benefits of a much more robust economy. Likewise, more lighting will be needed and so that to will generate jobs and stimulate the economy.

I must interject here that this proposal was formulated first and that any benefits to any companies in any area of the economy are only natural implications. I am not pandering to the clock and lighting industries and I am not corrupt in accepting donations to the campaign for the 25-hour day. As it is in their interest, not that is not in the interests of others, for the 25-hour plan to be implemented, it is only natural that they should donate money to the campaign for the 25-hour plan and for any politicians in favor of the implementation of the plan. Of course you understand that people only give to that which they support, so it is not pandering to the clock and lighting industries by accepting donations from them for a campaign for the 25-hour day from which they will benefit. Environmental groups donate to those they see as environmentally friendly, which I consider myself to be. I should add less frequent consumption of energy and other goods is good for the environment, and so I would gladly accept donations from anyone, any company, or any organization which is pro-environment.

Now you may be thinking, this plan actually sounds pretty good, but won’t the daytime and nighttime get out of sync. Well, yes it will, but that is actually a benefit. First of all, we have heard a lot about promoting diversity. With this plan you’ll get to experience the diversity of day and night over a rotation of 24 days. The majority of people work something along the lines of an 8 to 5 job. Well, why do you always need to be inside during broad daylight when it would be just as feasible to work indoors at night. So now you will be able to experience much more daylight. You’ll be able to watch a beautiful sunrise without having to wake up early. You can have a nightlife without having to stay up late.

Furthermore, this out of syncing will help reduce crime. There are two deterrents to crime, daylight and people being active. Unfortunately, under the 24-hour clock those deterrents always line up and so people can easily commit crimes at night when it is both dark and people are generally indoors and usually asleep. But under the 25-hour clock there would be times when those deterrents complement each other, it would either be daylight or people out, leaving no opportune time for people to commit crimes and thus would follow a reduction in crime. Sadly this would not always be the case as it would vary over a 24 day period and sometimes the two deterrents would not complement each other but overlap. Nevertheless, it is an improvement over the 24 hour clock. However, the better lighting that would result from the implementation of the plan would take away some of the cover of darkness afforded criminals when that overlapping occurs, still resulting in a decrease in crime.

Smoking Ban Burns Up The US Constitution In Louisville

2006-10-13T13:44:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, the Louisville Metro Council passed a comprehensive ordinance yesterday banning smoking in 'every' 'public' building and workspace besides Churchill downs and a tobacco-product plant. Not exactly a comprehensive smoking ban.

I would like to remind the Metro Council that they are stepping on our constitutional right to smoke. Where in the constitution is this right? Its implicitly there, but it might as well be enumerated, indeed it really is. The second amendment guarantees the right to bear arms. Now what type of arms were they referring to? Firearms. And when you smoke what do you have, fire. And you also use your arm to smoke. They also can kill people. Therefore, cigarettes, cigars, etc, are arms covered by the second amendment which we have the right to bear and use. And of course that amendment does not actually mean in a militia, as has clearly been shown in court cases before. You might think this is absurd logic. I'm not going to contend with that claim, but rather submit that absurd logic is okay when it comes to making the law. Let me just point you to a supreme court decision that was just as absurd, Roe vs. Wade, and is now stare decisis. Because you implicitly have the right to privacy, you have the right to kill your children. Likewise, you implicitly have the right to smoke. Another similarity is abortions don't occur in private homes, even though its protected under the right to privacy, so why should things be any different with smoking.

Now restaurants, bars, etc, might me public places, but they're private businesses. No one forces you to go a restaurant, bar, etc. that allows smoking. So why the ban? The ban doesn't allow exemptions for places with separate ventilated rooms for smoking. But it does allow for smoking outside on patios, etc. Now how is that really different then separate ventilated rooms. Do non-smokers not like sitting outside. Second-hand smoke is just as annoying and dangerous when outside than when inside, especially when all the smokers are packed in a separate room. The claim has been made business increases when smoking is banned. Well, let each business decide what's best for them, and if they make the wrong decision they'll suffer the consequences. Since when did the government run private businesses?

What really gets me is this exemption for Churchill Downs. They claim its because they compete globally and with Caesars Indiana across the river, which allows smoking. Do local restaurants and bars not compete with those across the river, especially if smokers have to go across the river to smoke. It seems more likely its because Churchill Downs is a big corporation which can afford to lobby. And Churchill Down will probably get some of the smokers business just because they have a monopoly on smoking in Louisville.

Perhaps the point of a comprehensive ban is to protect the workers at these places. They after all still have to work in the smoking rooms night after night. So what about the workers at Churchill Downs? Does their health and well-being not matter? Why not just let places that want smoking to require those working in the smoking areas to be smokers? Or require them to wear masks, and maybe shame the smokers out of their habit? "Hello, I'm Darth Vader and I'll be your server for tonight. I'm wearing this mask because you gave me cancer. Can I start you off with some drinks?"

If we really wanted to do what is "good" for us, we would ban smoking in Louisville all together, both in public spaces and in people's homes. We have dry counties which don't allow alcohol to be sold, so why not make Louisville like that for cigarettes? (Because we're in Kentucky which produces the tobacco) Regular smokers after all do drive up our healthcare costs, both for the state and for insurers, leaving us the bill when they get cancer. So we would be better off if we banned smoking and tobacco products altogether. (Although they do die sooner, meaning they cost less social security money. So why not do a study and see if we save more paying their healthcare costs while they're dying earlier, and make our decision based off that. We might want to encourage smoking.) While we're at it lets ban fast food since that is unhealthy too, and costs almost as much to our society and pretty soon will cost more. Yum Brands Inc. might not be to happy about that, so we can give them an exemption, since they are a big corporation headquartered in Louisville. Sound familiar?

While I'm not big on smoking, I am big on keeping our government where it should be, largely out of our lives. (to a limit) We don't need the government to make every decision for us even though we might be better off. That is not compatible with our notion of liberty.

The Solution to the North Korean Problem

2006-10-10T23:47:00.000-04:00

I'm sure you heard the news about North Korea's apparent nuclear test. This is obviously a cause for concern. But let's for a moment look at the bright side, North Korea has one less nuclear bomb. All we have to do is get them to keep testing, until he uses up all his nuclear material. So I'm going to make a direct appeal to Kim Jong Il. "Kim Jong Il, you were just lucky. But we all know you can't do it again. Don't even bother. Unless you test six more nuclear bombs, we'll have no respect for you. So just go back to watching your DVD collection and leave nuclear bombs to us who know what we're doing."

Now Kim Jong Il likes movies, particularly James Bond films, and apparently wanted to be a film director before becoming a dictator. Now what is it with people who dream of being in the arts, have their dreams shatter, and then decide to become a dictator instead. Hitler wanted to be an artist but wasn't accepted into art school. We need to have special slots in art school for people who would otherwise might try to become a dictator. "Your portfolio sucks, but you did check the I'm going to take over a country box if you reject me, so we're letting you in to be on the safe side."

Now maybe Kim Jong Il felt compelled to live up to his father's expectations and tossed away his childish dream of being a film director to be a ruthless dictator. So here's the deal we need to offer. If Kim Jong Il ends the nuclear program, reforms North Korea democratically so to end the totalitarian regime, we'll let him direct the next James Bond movie, maybe even in North Korea. Let's face it, the James Bond movies are going down hill anyways, so what's to lose. Maybe he would even do a better job and turn them around. The deal is too good for him to refuse. And if he doesn't accept the offer, we're cutting off his Netflix, and charging him late fees. (I did not get paid to mention Netflix, although if they want to pay me, that would be perfectly alright with me.)

Now I heard Bush talking about diplomacy. Diplomacy! That's not the Bush I knew when we were under an imminent threat of Saddam Hussein wanting to develop weapons of mass destruction. If we invade a country for just thinking about weapons of mass destruction, why would we only verbally condemn a country who actually tested a weapon of mass destruction? And how are we going to sanction a country which has nothing and doesn't care about its own people? (I read an article saying they were going to cut off funds from counterfeiting, money laundering, and other illegal financial activities. Why would they not have cut that off long ago?) The UN is going to write a strongly worded letter to North Korea. Kim Jong Il is trembling in fear right now. That's why he performed the test on a Sunday, no mail delivery.

Of course its really not that simple. Sure, it might be better for the US for the US to pre-emptively take out the North Korean threat through a decisive military strike before North Korea is putting nuclear bombs on bottle rockets that will reach the US. But South Korea would lose if we strike. And even if we knew that North Korea had not nuclear bombs, they still have a large military and plenty of conventional weapons pointed at South Korea. South Korea would be devastated before we could get rid of North Korea. Thousands and thousands of South Koreans would probably be killed and the South Korean economy would be wiped out. And we certainly don't have the troops available to have any sort of ground invasion of North Korea. Even if we hadn't gone to war with Iraq, I would doubt we'd have enough troops without a draft.

Another problem is that even if we could take over North Korea, democracy would not work right now. The North Korean people have been brainwashed, kept in the dark, and kept uneducated for way too long to be able to start a democracy for years to come. You can't have a successful democracy without educated people. And reintegration with South Korea would again devastate the South Korean economy. The UN would have to run North Korea for years to come.

So after considering the various options for a response, I'd say the best option is to offer Kim Jong Il a director's job in exchange for dismantling the totalitarian regime and stepping down. It's clearly the only thing that will work given the circumstances. I wish I could offer something better, but that's the best we can hope for. So we're going to be inviting to the multilateral talks all the major movie studios. And get ready, Kim Jong Il is coming to a theater near you.

How should Christians work with Government?

2006-10-07T17:15:00.000-04:00

It's pretty obvious and clear what Christians should do when under a non-Christian government that is either neutral or hostile to them. When the government is neutral and has not banned Christianity in whole or part, then we should do as Paul wrote in Romans 13 and "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities." And when a government is hostile and persecuting Christians we go ahead and disobey them when it comes to prayer, worship, fellowship, reading scripture, and sharing our faith, whatever the consequences. But what are Christians suppose to do when they have the opportunity to be in power, and the temptations that go along with that power? Unfortunately, we don't have in the Bible any epistles to Christians in a pro-Christian state, a democracy much less. It would be interesting to see what Paul would have wrote to Christians in the US today, but I will not attempt that as I am obviously without Apostolic authority.

First of all, I believe we must understand the difference between the new covenant and old covenant, between the New and Old Testaments, before we can begin to understand how Christianity and government should work. In the Old Testament we see a theocracy, which God ordained. The disobedience of religious and moral laws had punishments to be enforced by the state. Some of these punishments seem harsh to many of us today, such as stoning for being rebellious to your parents. And forsaking God would lead to death. Now in the New Testament we don't see any calls for theocracies. They were dealing with oppressive governments that persecuted the early Christians. Now we don't see a drop of discipline for God's people though. Members of the Church are to be disciplined. ÂIf your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you,youu have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector." (Matthew 18:15-17) Now under the Old Covenant, members of it could be killed for disobedience, but under the New Testament, we are never told to kill, but rather if worse comes to worse kick them out of the Church.

So why the change? In the Old Testament, God was establishing the Israelites as his people in a land full ofnon-believerss with all sorts of vile practices. God commanded the Israelites to kill them so that they would not corrupt his people. "But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded, that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God." The Israelites did not do listen to God, and thus were led astray and suffered the consequences of having their nation attacked and deported. (God knew this would happen.) So why would this not apply today, to us under the New Covenant. First of all, America nor any other state including the modern state of Israel are not the nation-state of Israel as known in the Bible. Second, the Great Commission, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." (Matthew 28:19-20) The roles have reversed, and instead of fearing that believers will be taught bynon-believerss abominable practices and thus killing them, we are to teach them and make disciples out of them. Now it seems pretty obvious to me we can't teach and make disciples out of people who were are killing for being non-Christians. Under the Old Testament non-believers were like a virus that threatened to infect God's people, but now believers are like a virus that is to infect non-believers. This is why many Old Testament laws can't be made law here in the US even if there was enough support to do so.

Now would it be wrong to go establish Christian only communities, a Christian only state? "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a personÂs enemies will be those of his own household." (Matthew 10:34-36) This passage would seem to suggest that would not work, since households are generally not divided by national borders. A Christian state would not work since as soon as people started having children their would be non-believers. Yes, you would teach them about God, but that would mean everyone of them would accept what you tell them. No, like it or not under the New Covenant the Church and State are separate. Members of the Church are members of states, but members of a state are not all members of the Church. And if you somehow tried to force people to be members of the state to be members of the Church, you would only end up with nominal Christians who are not saved and the church would be weakened by this, as it once was. Plus, how would one evangelize if you lived in a Christian only state, a giant Christian bubble.

So when Christians are writing laws, we must remember that the state is not, will not, and cannot be the Church. We cannot legislate morality, and certainly not salvation. We cannot save people through laws. Even if everyone stopped all the obvious sins because of the threat of prosecution by the state, they would still sin, if just in thought. And if they are sinning without having accepted Christ as thsaviorur, as one who atoned for their sins, they will still go to hell. What it might do is give people they false idea they are good people because they don't break the civil law, and will deserve to go to heaven because of that.

Now perhaps part of the problem is churches are largely failing in America to do their jobs of teaching and disciplining, and so we are somehow trying to resort to the civil law to enforce what we should or should not be doing as Christians. If we had the IRS collect tithes along side taxes, we would sea lotot more Christians tithing.

This is not to say that we don't need laws because they don't do any good. They do good, they restrain sin and protect us from the consequences of sin that would ensue under a state of anarchy. We should thank God for government to protect us. But the government cannot save us eternally. Laws that protect people from other people's sin arcertainlyny good and we need them. But laws that are somehow suppose to forcefully protect people from their own sin perhaps need careful examination, to say the least, as they will sin anyways. And since government must be based of a moral system of some sort, it might as well be based off that of Christianity, as that is right. I seemed to have digressed from the role Christians should play in government to why we shouldn't have a theocracy. Perhaps this discussion on why we shouldn't have a theocracy is largely unnecessary, as not too many people are calling for a theocracy, but I think it is still good to have. So I will soon again try to address the role Christians should play in government, hopefully without digressing.

And We Were Making So Much Progress

2006-09-25T12:33:00.000-04:00

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced today it was easing restrictions on carry-on liquids and gels starting tomorrow, Tuesday. Now passengers can bring 3 oz containers of liquid, toothpaste, eye drops, etc, through the security check point. They must be in one 1 quart clear plastic bag. And beverages purchased past security will be allowed on the plane.

For shame, TSA, for shame. We were making such progress towards achieving a false sense of total security. What happened? We were going in the right direction. That is, towards banning on carry-on and checked baggage, stripping everyone down, and giving them a orange Guantamano Bay style jumpsuit. Then we would have been truly, but not really, safe from almost every thing that could go wrong.

How are you going to be able to check 3 oz of liquid to see if it truly is safe? I don't think TSA has much more equipment than it did on August 10. So why the change? Could terrorists not go through individually with 3 oz containers, then combine them past security?

We are clearly moving back in the wrong direction. If we are to be safe, we must sacrifice every freedom and convenience that we could possibly imagine having some way to be perverted for a terrorist attack. Its the only logical response to terrorism.

Getting The Most Out Of Our Children

2006-09-22T10:41:00.000-04:00

So on the news they talked about some Clinton Initiative with Laura Bush also involved to put merry-go-round pumps in Africa to provide fresh water. Now as great as this is, it occurred to me it could be abused. "Hey kids, you want to go play on the merry-go-round some more.' "Not really, we're kind of tired of it. And we had to walk like 10 miles to school, so we'd kind of like to learn. Yeah, I want to become a doctor." "Are you a doctor right now?" "No." "Can you cure diseases caused by unclean drinking water?" "What? Of course not." "Well, get pumping, I mean, playing."

We need some of these merry-go-rounds outfitted with electric generators here in the US. Put our kids to work doing something productive for a change, instead of just wasting our tax money going to school to be baby sat. Our kids are a potential valuable energy source, a surplus of calories growing every day, waiting to be harvested. We can generate some electricity to increase supply and cut costs at schools, and to get them in shape. We should extend recess to generate more electricity. And it doesn't have to be limited to merry-go-rounds, we could put generators on exercise bikes, large hamster wheels (unless someone can figure out how to put one on a tread mill), in place of weights, maybe even rock climbing walls for when they repel down. We should cancel all school sports that can't generate electricity, and require every student to participate in those that do. It doesn't mean the end of competitive sports, they can compete for who can generate the most kilowatt-hours. It will be fun. And while were at it, get rid of school buses.

Another idea for exploiting children for their own benefit: You know those websites that you can go and pay to have papers written. Well, lets pay for education in third-world countries by having them write those essays. It's a win-win situation. A win for the children writing the essays, a win for the essay companies, and a win for the children who won't be left behind. First of all, these third-world children will get a great education since they have to be able to pass off as regular American English-speaking students. Actually, I take that back. They probably won't need that great of an education to pass themselves off as regular American students. They'll get access to computers, only because that's needed to type the essays and do research for them. Think about it, the business gets to undercut the competition's prices, increase it's profit margin, and be a good corporate global citizen. And it won't be plagiarism any longer, but rather outsourcing to compete in a competitive globalized world. Besides, our children's future jobs are already going to be outsourced anyways, so we might as well outsource their schoolwork to, its not like any education will ever be used. Make them like outsourcing when they're young, so that when they're old they won't mind their job being outsourced. (Now for the record, I only support this since these jobs already exist, and if overseas children who need an education don't do it, other people who are already educated will do it for more money.)

Who ever said child labor had to be a bad thing. If the children are, in addition to being productive in some way, being benefited themselves, then its okay. Sweat shops to make shoes are bad, sweat shops to write essays for lazy cheating students, good. Children playing and getting exercise while generating electricity, nothing wrong with that. Why waste our tax money which could be going towards a bigger rebate on education when children abroad and at home are perfectly capable of funding in part or whole their education.

Pope's Comment Sparks Fury Among Muslims

2006-09-19T18:18:00.000-04:00

The Pope has been in hot water for a comment he said about Islam lately. He quoted a conversation between a 14th-century Christian Byzantine Emperor, Manuel II, and an Islamic Persian, "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." Now effigies of the pope have been burned, along with Vatican and American flags. (Why is it always America's fault?) Now I'm no fan of Catholicism or the pope, but in this case I say go ahead and declare that comment infallible, as only a pope can do. The pope apologized, saying that he was sorry for the Muslims' reaction. Muslims have said that he didn't go far enough in his apology. I say he went too far by apologizing at all.

Why do I say he shouldn't have apologized? First of all, Muslims have proven that Islam is a violent, evil religion by reacting violently to the pope's comment calling it such. How can you expect an apology when you're burning down churches? If this is as the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, "the latest link" in the "chain of conspiracy to set off a crusade," then the Islamic world's reaction is the latest in a chain of events showing Islam's evilness. This is just like the incident of the cartoon in a Danish newspaper sparking a similar outbreak of violence. (And again, it was also directed against the US even though US newspapers didn't publish the stupid cartoon.) I don't know how much anti-Christian cartoons have been made, but you don't see Christians reacting violently like that. Clearly there is a clash between Christian and Islamic views, and theocratic and democratic views. The Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab extremis groups in Iraq said "You infidels and despots, we will continue our jihad and never stop until God avails us to chop your necks and raise the fluttering banner of monotheism, when God's rule is established governing all people and nations." Where are the calls for an apology to that statement? And what they seek to establish is not God's rule, but their rule based on a perversion of truth.

Secondly, Islam is a false religion, a distortion of the truth. And before you go burning an effigy of me for my comments, if you disagree with me then you would think that my Christianity is false as well. (In that case we should burn effigies of each other, cheers.) Clearly, with truth everything that conflicts is wrong. This shouldn't surprise anybody. So if you believe in anything, you must necessarily believe that everything conflicting with those beliefs is wrong. The same is true whether you're Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or atheist if you truly believe what you say. Now we can agree to peacefully disagree, but we will necessarily disagree. This idea that we are all right is complete nonsense. You have the right to believe what you want, but that doesn't mean your beliefs are the truth. If we entertain for a moment that there is no God, then that would not mean that everyone can be right as some would claim is the case now, but that everyone who follows a religion or holds any morals is wrong.

Although I believe in Truth, I'm not for forcing people to convert to my beliefs, that would just be in vain. You can't force someone to believe something, only to say the believe it and to go through motions that don't do any good. That's why theocracy are bad. But apparently some Muslims do think they can force others to Islam, as that statement shows. I'm not sure we can have peace with people who say they will not stop their jihad until they've chopped off us infidels heads and have their banner flying over all nations. And if we are in a conflict with people who will not stop until their tyrannical views are forced onto everyone else, what choice do we have but to fight until they or us are defeated? And can democracy be established where small comments like the pope's spark massive outrage and violence? Where there is no free speech, not just because of the government, but because of the people themselves for whom that free speech is meant? Perhaps we need to consider this clash of civilizations.

New Survey Reveals 9 out of 10 Americans Believe in God, But What Kind of God?

2006-09-13T15:26:00.000-04:00

So it was in the news yesterday that 9 out of 10 Americans believe in God. Don't start celebrating yet. I looked at the survey, American Piety in the 21st Century, done by Baylor University, here's some of the findings. I hope you're not too bored by the numbers.

Only 10.8% of Americans are not affiliated with a congregation, denomination, or other religious group. And fewer than 5% of the US population claim a faith outside opf the Judeo-Christian mainstream. (33.6% are Evangelical Protestant, 22.1% are Mainline Protestant, 21.2% are Catholic, 5% are Black Protestant, 2.5 % are Jewish, 4.9% are other, and 10.8% are unaffiliated.) In the age group of 18-30, 18.6% are unaffiliated.

Then from those who are unaffiliated, 62.9% believe in God or some higher form. Now here is something surprising, of the unaffiliated, 11.0% believe Jesus is the Son of God. And 9.6% Jewish believe that Jesus is the Son of God as well. Now, I don't understand why someone would believe in God and believe Jesus is the Son of God and yet not be Christian. If you know the truth, why would you not follow Christ? Would God send His Son to simply deliver a message he could have picked a prophet to do, that you could have found out by watching Oprah, or was he accomplishing something more? You're really just putting yourself in a dangerous position to know the truth but not act on it. I think I might have more respect for the 37.1% who don't believe in God than those who believe in God but don't glorify God or give praise to God. God created us, so we forever owe praise to him.

Here is some disturbing information about the state of Christianity in America. Only 72.2% of Mainline Protestant believe Jesus is Son of God, the lowest of all the Christian religious traditions listed. So 1 in 4 so-called Mainline Protestants are badly missing the fundamental, essential, part of Christianity, that Christ is the Son of God. That is disturbing, but sadly not surprising. Apparently Churches need to do a better job making sure that those who go there know the Gospel and not just move on to how to be a better person on Sunday morning. And of all Christian religious traditions, only in the Black Protestant do more than half read scripture weekly. 33.1% of Catholics never read scripture, followed by 21.9% Mainline Protestant.

The survey also identified 4 basic categories of Americans views about God. There is Authoritarian where God is involved in our daily lives and world affairs, helps with decision making, responsible for global events, and is also quite angry and capable of dealing out punishment. Then there is Benevolent, God is very active in our daily lives, but are less likely to think God is angry and acts in wrathful ways, and instead is a force of positive influence in the world. Then there's Critical, God does not interact in the world, but God observes the world and views the current state unfavorable, and divine justice will be in another life. Finally, Distant, God is not active in the world nor especially either, he just set the laws of nature in motion. The breakdown is 31.4% Authoritarian, 23.0% Benevolent, 16.0% Critical, 24.4% Distant, and 5.2% atheist. Interestingly, in the 18-30 year old group, 40.2% view God as Authoritarian. It's also broken down by religious tradition. 29.2% Catholics, 10.8% Evangelical Protestant, 29.3% Mainline Protestant, and 41.7% Jewish have a that God is distant, thus Deism. Now the Bible, New and Old Testament, show God as very active. How can someone be Christian or Jewish and have a passive view of God. God sent his son and God brought the Israelites out of Egypt. I'm guessing most of these people fall in with those who don't read scripture weekly.

There's a lot more in the report. I suppose its good the 9 out of 10 Americans believe in God. But what some believe about God is not so good. And superficial belief is not enough. We're not called to just hold an intellectual idea. We're called to a personal relationship with a God who is not distant, but deeply involved in the world, enough to send his only begotten Son for our sake.

9/11 Five Years Later: Are We Any Safer?

2006-09-11T19:24:00.000-04:00

I'm sure we all remember 9/11/2001, a day that will live in infamy. Much has changed, but are we any safer now? For a while we were united as a country, I remember watching our Congress, Republican and Democrat on the steps of the Captitol, singing America the Beautiful. But now, we are more divided as ever. A massive new Homeland Security bureaucracy has been added. Three different wars are being fought by the US, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the War on Terror. The PATRIOTIC ACT was passed, giving the government more power to fight terrorism. But how much safer are we domestically?

It is true that we haven't had any more attacks on US soil. Overseas there was the Madrid train bombing, and the London bombings last year, but nothing hear. And of course a major terror plot to bring down nine or ten planes using liquid explosives was stopped. Other plots may have been foiled that we don't know about, because they thankfully got stopped. So the government must have done some things right. Our intelligence, besides Iraq, despite all the criticism, seems to be working well.

Airplane security is the first thing that comes to mind. Perhaps the biggest change I'd put forth is the change in the mind of the passengers. If another hijacking was attempted, I do not believe the passengers would allow it to be successful. They would either stop them from hijacking the plane or would bring it down like those heroes on United 93. Now it's a lot harder to get sharp objects to use to hijack a plane on board. But, hijackings are no longer what we need to worry about. The terrorists know another hijacking wouldn't be tolerated. Instead, we have to worry about bombings on plane. Here, we have not come far enough. We still have no regular screening for explosives in carry-on and luggage throughout the US. At some airports explosives screening is being tried out. But, once you, your carry-on, and checked baggage get screened going past security or when you check in, you can travel to most any airport in the country without being seriously screened again. So, our airport security is as weak as the weakest airport's security is. Some small town air field that no one would ever expect to be attacked, lacking sufficient security, could be used as an enrty point into our closed aviation system. Once on a flight, they and their luggage could easily tranfer from a small commuter plane to a large plane flying to or from a city like New York. Now, liquids have been banned recently, but there are other ways explosives could probably make it on planes, We have not come far enough in protecting air travel from explosives.

Then there is every other form of transportation that has largely been neglected. Passenger trains are still quite vulnerable. I believe we are largely fighting our last battle, aviation security, and not adequately preparing for future attacks of a different kind. And then port security is also pathetic. It wouldn't be too hard for terrorists to sneak weapons into the US by hiding them in cargo on ships. We need to spend more money on port security, and more money on passenger trains. Mass transit is notoriously hard to secure, and its probably going to stay that way. With a large volume of people traveling relatively short trips, it's not possible to thoroughly search everyone. Trains can't be hijacked and run into buildings, but they can be bombed. So we don't need to spend a lot of effort trying to find all the sharp objects, but we do need to put forth the effort to find explosives.

What about immigration? I believe most of the 9/11 hijackers entered the US legally using visas. But, most of their visas were expired when they carried out their attack. If we had had in place a way to determine if someone is still suppose to be in the US, we could have perhaps stopped the September 11th attacks in the first place by catching them at the airport before they boarded. Now although we have the no-fly list, that is definitely not perfect. Lots of people with the same name as a terrorist are stopped and detained, even children. What we need is a database of everyone who is legally here in the US,US citizens, residents, and visitors. When someone's visa expires, if they say try to fly that easily would be spotted. This database would have biometric information (e.g. retina scans and fingerprints). This would prevent fake IDs from being used to enter the US, to fly, etc. This wouldn't guaranteed more terrorist attacks wouldn't occur, but it would make it a lot harder. This would also prevent screw ups on the no-fly list.

Now if should be pointed out that there's no way to prevent all terrorist attacks. We have a limited amount of resources, and so we can only protect some potential targets. (Everything is a potential target.) So, what we must do is protect the targets that if attacked would cause the most catastrophic disasters. Airplanes need to be protected because they can be crashed into buildings, but also because a full jumbo jet could be brought down with a small explosion, killing several hundred people. Trains and buses need to be protected because there are many people packed into a small space. Ports need to be protected to prevent weapons from being sneaked into the US. Targets like chemical factories and nuclear power plants obviously need to be protected. But there are tons of other places that can't be protected. Cars, schools, malls, homes, businesses, etc. If we could turn parts of the US into a Green Zone, virtually safe from attacks, the rest of the US could turn into Baghdad. Even if we stop the big high death-toll attacks (which is what we must try to do) from happening, many small attacks, bus bombings, car bombings, IEDs, etc, could occur that would cause just as much chaos if not more and bring our country's economy crashing down. At least right now people only get anxious when flying, and not when driving to work or going to a sports event. But that could easily change. We will never, we can never, be completely safe.

Worst Case Scenarios: Preparing For Future Disasters

2006-09-09T20:29:00.000-04:00

We've looked back at Hurricane Katrina, but now it is time to look forward to possible future disasters. What did we learn from Hurricane Katrina that can be applied for other disasters in other locations. What is likely to strike next?

We were lucky with the hurricane, we knew it was coming a week in advance. Of course, the government still had a horrible response. I predict the worse natural disaster that could hit the US is an earthquake. (Besides a large asteroid striking in or near the US.) An earthquake would be bad because there's no warning, it just happens. There's no time to evacuate, to go to the store and stock up on supplies, no time for anything. There's no time for the feds to call up the national guard, or preposition supplies. Now you're probably thinking of the San Andreas fault in California. And that's certainly a possibility, but we also must consider the New Madrid fault in Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, and my own state of Kentucky. It should be pointed out that the largest earthquakes on record in the United States were from the New Madrid fault, and not the San Andreas fault. Three occurred in 1811 and 1812. The only reason not many people died is because it was 1811 & 1812 and so the area wasn't heavily populated. The same quakes today would cause immense damage. And indeed, there is much talk about us being due the big one.

I think the first lesson learned is you cannot expect help from the Federal government in the first few days to reach you in the disaster zone. Now with Katrina, the government new it was coming and probably should have responded better faster. But with say an earthquake, no warning will be available and so you definitely can't expect a fast response. Who knows what condition the roads will be in to allow aid to reach people. No, communities and individuals will be on there own for at least several days, if not longer.

So, perhaps each person in a vulnerable area or even the whole US should have a survival kit assembled with several days worth of nonperishable food (probably MRES - Meals Ready to Eat), water, a first aid kit, a radio for information, water filter, tarps, and other supplies. I doubt too many people are going to do this, (I myself have not and probably won't anytime soon) so the government would need to encourage this somehow, maybe by making it tax deductible. Then you have the problem that if all these buildings have collapsed, how will people reach the kits when they're buried under debris. People could build sheds to store all their emergency supplies. (Build a earthquake resistant house, call it an emergency shelter, and you'll be exempt from property taxes.)

Chances are that's not going to happen, so each community should store emergency supplies, not in one central location, but at various locations within walking distance of all residents. Each neighborhood could be responsible for their own supplies. And as the shelf life approaches, if MREs do indeed have shelf lives, the food could be given out to the homeless so it doesn't ruin and go to waste and be replaced with new food.

Each community should have disaster centers from which to manage disasters. For starters, the buildings should be especially built to survive the disasters, whether hurricane, earthquake, etc. They should have back up generators and maybe solar panels, satellite phones and satellite internet for communication in case the land lines go down, two way radios, food, water, gasoline, vehicles, etc. Communications was a problem after Katrina.

What about after the initial disaster and when aid must be distributed? After Katrina, the government was criticized both for being too slow in getting out money while being criticized for people getting away with fraud. First of all, if you want speed fraud will happen, that's the price you pay. What we need is a database of everyone including biometric information (fingerprints and retina scans), where they live, and other information. This would be a national database and backed up in several locations in case a disaster strikes any one server's location. Then, when a disaster hits an area, the government will be able to quickly verify if someone really does live in the affected area, and if they are who they say they are. and get the money to people who are suppose to have it quickly. It would also be able to make sure people don't double dip into the funds. The government might not be able to stop people from buying $100 bottles of wine, etc., but they could control who gets the money in the first place.

After Katrina, many people had trouble getting new ID since they lost their birth certificates along with it. With a database, new IDs could be quickly issued. This is important since an ID is needed to access one's bank account, etc. Who knows, maybe the government could provide each American with an allotted amount of electronic storage in this database to backup important information in case all their belongings are destroyed.

A final step step we should take is disaster mitigation to reduce the impact of disasters in the first place. This could include not building in areas prone to flooding (like under sea level), building earthquake resistant homes, clearing brush away near buildings in wooded areas, and not building on the sea coast or building hurricane proof houses. Obviously disaster mitigation costs some money, but its cheaper to mitigate a disaster than to recover from a disaster. They can actually make buildings that are designed to resist earthquakes better, and homes that survive hurricanes. Building codes should require new buildings to follow guidelines that would mitigate disaster. We also don't want to repeat the mistake of requiring casinos to be floating, resulting in casinos ending up miles inland. If you are going to have casinos, they might as well be on land, because its not going to affect how many people gamble anyways.

More disasters are likely to happen. Sooner or later an earthquake is going to strike without warning, and we need to prepare now for that worst case scenario in addition to everything else. We cannot expect the federal government to be there to help for several days, and each community and each individual needs to be prepared to survive on there own in the mean time. We should have centers to manage disasters in each community that will survive the disaster. We need a national database so that we can get new IDs to be people, and get aid to the people that need it without wasteful fraud. And finally, but still importantly, we should take steps to mitigate disasters before they happen.

New Orleans Repackaged: Let the wartimes roll

2006-09-05T21:49:00.000-04:00

New Orleans is still far from recovery and has much more work to be done if it is to be rebuilt. And what's more, it is still just as vulnerable, just as much under sea level, as before Hurricane Katrina. So why go to the trouble to rebuild it, if all this will only happen again some time down the road. But, what would we do with New Orleans if we don't rebuild?

Well, what we have is a great resource and opportunity. Most of the city quite frankly looks like a war zone. (I've been there, trust me.) And so, why not leave it that way? War is shifting ever towards urban combat, and we need to train our troops to fight in urban zones. So, why not turn New Orleans into a massive urban combat training center; one that would make the one at Fort Know look like a McDonald's playground?

Seriously. This would save us the trouble of rebuilding the whole city, and would save us the money, time, and resources of having to demolish the whole place and put all that debris who knows where. Furthermore, the money already spent on rebuilding would not have been wasted. It will be necessary to have some of the infrastructure working properly as to create a realistic situation in which to train. We need electricity, water, sewage, and gas running so that the troops would learn how to deal with them, and enough of the city has that now.

You could not find a better spot to train our soldiers. New Orleans has got it all. It's a major city with all types of buildings and structures including skyscrapers, the Superdome, a convention center, homes, bridges, and everything else you could think of. It's a port, so our navy can practice blockages, bombardments, and amphibious landings, etc. (Puerto Rico, we'll no longer have to use you for target practice.) It's got a major airport for the air force to use, and for infantry to practice securing. It's literally got everything. The only work we might have to do is to clean up the petrochemicals left to prevent environmental damage. And really, if we're going to fight wars for oil, we could just leave all that there for more realistic training. When the military isn't conducting exercises, it could be used to train for counter-terrorism, crowd control, dealing with natural disasters, and to train police. And it can be used to try out new weapons. What more could you ask for?

And what about when the levies break again. No harm done, and we won't even need to bother to fix them again. After we get as much use out of the city dry, when the city refloods again, we'll have a great place to prepare to fight wars in a post-global warming age, when all our coastal cities are flooded. (After all, there's no reason to expect that we will build levies to protect our major coastal cities, when we won't even build decent levies around one city that's under sea level right now. I'm sure Al Gore would support me here.)

Once we get get this off the ground, we'll be the envy of the rest of the world. Pretty soon every nation will be wanting a disaster to happen to them so they can train their soldiers too. Lebanon, Indonesia, Iraq, don't rebuild and you could be the next world power. And if they don't rebuild, we'll have no choice but not to rebuild, for we don't want to fall behind. So, if you support our troops, you will support turning New Orleans into a massive urban combat training center that will adequately prepare them. And if you don't support this, then I guess you're just cutting and running, leaving our future troops in future wars for future oil out to dry.

Gridlock Over America

2006-09-01T19:21:00.000-04:00

The tragic Comair flight in Lexington this week revealed weaknesses in our air traffic control system here in the US. Our nations skies and airports are overwhelmed, under-staffed, and using outdated computers that you wouldn't use to check your own e-mail. In addition to just causing inconvenient delays, the present system can lead to fatal accidents as was unfortunately seen. Clearly something needs to be done before things get worse.

It has been found out that there was only one air traffic controller on duty Sunday, when NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) regulations state there are to be two controllers on duty at all times. After he cleared the plane for take off he turned to administrative duties, and did not see the airplane on the wrong runway which was too short to build up the necessary speed. It was further found out that the controller had only two hours of sleep before starting his shift. Now, he had nine hours in between his current shift and his previous shift. NTSB regulations state that controllers must have eight hours off in between shifts. Now eight hours does not seem like enough time. Theoretically, to get a full nights rest you need about eight hours, which would not leave time for commuting, eating, or doing anything else, which is unreasonable. So, if we expect controllers to get enough sleep perhaps we should increase the amount of time between shifts. It was not shown though that the lack of sleep caused the accident. Nor was shown that having another person on duty would have caught this.

What we really need to do is update our aviation navigation and tracking equipment. We now have cars that do have built in GPS systems. Surely we could put GPS units and computers in planes. Then they could communicate with the air tower's computers and make sure that it is on the right runway that it was cleared to use. We need radars and computers that can better track the thousands of flights in the air and on the ground at any one time and warn of impending accidents.

Another step that we need to take to reduce congestion in the skies and at airports is to build high speed rails and trains. This would be a better use of funds than expanding and building new airports. It would reduce the amount of traffic or at least slow the growth of the traffic down. There is no reason why high speed rail couldn't replace short to medium haul flights. When you factor in check in time, security, delays, baggage claim, etc., the amount of time to take a train could be the same or even less. Furthermore, although you still need security for trains, you don't have to worry about a train being hijacked and crashed into a building. Depending on the technology used, trains we have less delays due to bad weather, rain, snow, fog, etc. It would also be cheaper to take a train than to fly, as they are more energy efficient, and so I think the American consumer would be willing to travel by rail. And other flights would benefit from less planes in the sky, which would lead to better safety and less delays.

Before things get worse, we need to look at how we handle personnel, update our technology that tracks planes, and reduce air traffic through high speed rail. This will make us safer and happier when traveling, either by flying or by rail.

Hurricane Katrina - Part 2: Why did it ever happen?

2006-08-31T13:17:00.000-04:00

It's been a year since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, but the problem has been brewing for much longer than that. Most of New Orleans is built under sea level, about 80% of the city was underwater a year ago. The city is dependent upon levies to hold water back, and pumps to clear the water out. Of course the failed, and water faithfully obeyed gravity and marched on in. First of all, I question why you would put a city under sea level by water in the first place. You're just asking for a disaster to happen. I guess we know we why we got such a bargain on the Louisiana Purchase from the French. And people had run computer simulations and predicted this very disaster before last year. And yet, nothing was done to prevent it in the long term, and I fear nothing will be done to prevent it from happening again.

The levies were supposedly built to withstand a Category 3 storm. Hurricane Katrina was said to be a Category 5 storm, but by the time it hit it was a Category 4 storm, although there is evidence it was even weaker. Now perhaps Category 5 hurricanes are rare, but given enough time one was bound to hit New Orleans, and indeed did. Even if a Category 5 storm hits New Orleans every 50 years, (there is no guarantee another one won't happen again sooner than that) the cost of the disaster is too high not to build levies to protect against a Category 5 hurricane. The costs of a sufficient levy system far outweigh the cost of rebuilding after weaker and cheaper levies fail. And although it would have been preferably to have a strong levy system built before Katrina, it is still warranted as another strong hurricane will almost certainly hit again.

Now the problem of the levies is not the fault of any one person. The problem existed before Bush entered office, even before Clinton entered office, and would not have been different if Gore or Kerry had won. The Army Core of Engineers was responsible for the levies, but they have to have money from the politicians. The Congressional representatives of New Orleans shouldn't have rest until they obtained money to build levies that could withstand a Category 5 hurricane, even if they had to abandon all other pork barreling. They should fight like that now. We should not rebuild New Orleans if we are not willing to commit to building such levies this time around. Why have all the money spent be washed away by another hurricane?

I'm personally not sure that New Orleans should be rebuilt anyways. Again, it is under sea level. The government has before designated flood zones and stopped people from living in those vulnerable areas. Perhaps the government should do the same again. Let's just give everyone there a check for the value of their house before the storm and move everyone out instead of spending it on rebuilding in a vulnerable area. I went down there last spring and the destruction left is still unbelievable, so its not too late to stop rebuilding. The costs of rebuilding plus a new, sufficient levy system probably cost more than just buying out everyone. Then we sell all the land to the Disney Corporation and they can turn the French Quarter into another Magic Kingdom.

Of course, New Orleans is going to be rebuilt, whether or not it makes any sense to actually do so. The government on all levels does not have the foresight and will to seriously consider not rebuilding in vulnerable areas. Besides, we're Americans and we can do whatever we want. We won't let nature and geography stand in our way. And since we will rebuild, a good level system should be built, but again it won't happen, because we won't spend the billions of dollars necessary to prevent it. I hope I'm wrong, but I predict all this happening again down the road, maybe in a few years, maybe in a few decades. And when it does, we'll just rebuild again without looking ahead.

Hurricane Katrina - Part 1: The Initial Response

2006-08-29T22:04:00.000-04:00

A year ago Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast. This was a catastrophic natural disaster that left the place in pieces. But more catastrophic, the response by government on all levels after the initial storm. The scenes from New Orleans did not look like they were from America during that crisis, they looked like they were from a third world country. People stranded without food, water, or dignity. People left to rot in the Superdome and Convention Center. And not to mention all the looting and other violence that took place. Some of the suffering was perhaps unavoidable, but a vast part of it was the fault of a slow, batched, response one year ago. So what went wrong? What should have been done to avoid this?

First of all, the mandatory evacuation that left thousands of people behind. The evacuation was ordered 19 hours before land fall, way too late. There was enough warning that this storm would be catastrophic. New Orleans is off course particularly vulnerable, a good portion of the city being under sea level, and so they always should have played it safe and ordered an evacuation earlier than other locations would. The governor of Louisiana and Mayor Ray Nagin share responsibility for the failure to order and evacuation sooner.

Then there is of course the fact that people were left behind. Now perhaps there were people who chose to ignore the evacuation, but many people were just too poor to leave. So there should have been a way to get people out who couldn't afford to drive or fly. But instead of evacuating everyone, the Superdome was set up as a shelter of last resort. This shelter of last resort was not prepared, there was not enough food and water, and perhaps most lacking, information which is free for those inside. There were some 500 school buses that could have been used to evacuate that were left to be flooded by the storm. 500 buses times let's say 40 people per bus would have been 20,000 people that could have been evacuated. I believe the crowd at the Superdome grew to around 25,000 people, so a large amount of them could have been evacuated before the storm. Mayor Ray Nagin definitely is responsible for this massive failure.

Then there is of course the slow response after the storm was over. I'll cut them a little slack for Monday, when it appeared we had dodged a bullet in New Orleans, but starting Tuesday when the water came in it still took 3 days to get food and water in and 4 days to start getting people out. Where were the air drops of water, food (in the form of MREs - Meals Ready to Eat), and medicine. Why didn't they drop in boxes of camping water filters, there certainly was plenty of water in New Orleans that could have been purified. Those people stranded at the Superdome and Convention Center had none of the essentials, and were living in absolutely squalid conditions that should not have been tolerated by our leaders. Our government ought to be absolutely ashamed of their slow response. I thought they ought to have cancelled schools and sent buses down there to get those people out of there if that is what it would take to get buses fast. You might not have been able to get everyone to a place with a cot immediately, but any place with running water, electricity, and food would have been infinitesimally better then the conditions down there. And how was it the media was able to get around the New Orleans, but not our military?

Another major problem was the director of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown. I remember watching an interview between NBC's Brian Williams and Michael Brown. On day four Brown said that the Federal government just found out about the people at the convention center. If he had just turned on the CNN or MSNBC during those days he would have known. Our government should know this information before a regular citizen does, and certainly not after. (Of course President Bush is famous for having to have a DVD made to show him all this, so the same would apply to him as well.) Brown and the rest of the Federal government just seemed unaware of the magnitude of this disaster. (e.g. There was an e-mail where Brown was complaining about finding a restaurant to eat in Baton Rouge to a FEMA person in New Orleans, who replied that must be hard unlike having too eat MREs for the past several days.) Brown had worked for the International Arabian Horse Association before FEMA. President Bush bears responsibility for Brown's failings as a leader for having appointed Brown who's resume didn't fit the job in the first place. The also Senate bears responsibility for confirming someone who wasn't qualified for the job. They should have said no. That's just a fact of leadership, you delegate authority, but you still are responsible to some degree. Politicians out there, if you're going to appoint people as political favors instead of based on merit, appoint them as ambassadors to out of the way countries that we don't even know exist until we invade them.

Since 9/11 we were suppose to be prepared for disasters, and Hurricane Katrina showed us we are not. It also exposed many other problems that need to be addressed. Later I will address the long term response and long term lead up to this disaster, as well as what we need to do to be ready for future disasters. (Note that I focused on New Orleans, but of course the whole Gulf coast was devastated, in some spots even worse.)

Mask of Innocence

2006-08-28T13:48:00.000-04:00

This past Friday, and indeed the past few days, were not a good day for aviation security. There were seven different incidents that caused diversions, delays, evacuations, and searches which cost time and tens of thousands of dollars on Friday. Yesterday was terrible with a crash in Kentucky, but that was not security related. Today as I was writing this there was news on the TV that another flight was diverted because threatening letters were found. On a flight from Argentina a stick of dynamite was found in a college student's checked bag. He says he is in the mining industry and often travels with explosives. As a passenger, you should make sure you don't have prohibited items to speed things up. But this raises the question, how did a stick of dynamite make it onto the plane in the first place. We obviously have more work to do in screening checked baggage.

What I want to focus on though is on a flight from Chicago a ten year old boy told a flight attendant he had a bomb strapped to his leg. So, the plane was evacuated and searched. Now, if he was sitting next to me and said "I have a bomb strapped to my leg," I'd be like "can you say that louder." "I HAVE A BOMB STRAPPED TO MY LEG!" Pow, on the floor for the rest of the flight. The parents should have taken him to the back of the plane and discipline him. That boy is lucky he wasn't shot by a federal air marshal. Shoot first, ask questions later. Remember the tragic incident in Florida where a mentally handicapped man said he had a bomb and was shot by an air marshal. As sad as it was, I think they made the right decision there.

I knew no good could come from having kids on planes. At best, they scream, at worse, they cause a security threat which costs time and thousands of dollars. If you're not old enough to be held responsible for your words and actions, you're not old enough to fly. It's just to risky having kids on planes. A kid may look innocent, but he (or she) could be using his innocence to cover a devious terrorist plot. If a air marshal shot a kid who said he had a bomb, he'd be in very hot water. And yet, a terrorist could hide a bomb on a kid, knowing he probably would get less scrutiny than an adult. And there are child soldiers, so there could be child terrorists, who have sadly lost their innocence. In this country 18 is when you are considered an adult, but that is not necessarily the case all over the world. So to be truly safe, we either have to ban kids from planes or be willing to shot them if they say bomb on an airplane. But would we be willing to shot a kid for security? No, which is why we should add them to the list of prohibited items. Or we can choose an increased risk of terrorist attacks if that's what we want. But to paraphrase people after the liquids ban, if it keeps us safe then we should do it. This is also why we should keep on randomly searching everyone, men, women, and children, in addition to psychological profiling. At least one of the suspects arrested in England for plotting to blow up 9 different airplanes was a woman. The terrorists are adapting, so we have to be ready for anyone to try an attack. That's why there has been a paradigm shift in aviation security, everyone is a potential terrorist and should be treated as such. If we leave any holes in security then we are unsafe.

Are willing to do what it takes to keep us safe? Or are you a terrorist sympathizer and unwilling to sacrifice freedom, civility, and dignity for security? Don't you want an unburstable bubble of protection while in the closed airport security. When pick up your bags and drive away in a rental car you could be be killed in a car accident, but at least you'll have the peace of mind of not being able to die while flying, unless there is a plane accident, or if you keel over due to a heart attack. So let's get working on created a true false sense of security.

A Campus Divided

2006-08-26T14:40:00.000-04:00

(There were two posts today as they are time sensitive, a possible stem cell research breakthrough and Governor Fletcher's visit to the University of Louisville. I was going to post them Thursday but the news of Pluto being demoted trumped everything else. Come back next week for a look back on Hurricane Katrina and any new news.)

On Thursday of this week, Governor Fletcher of Kentucky visited the University of Louisville's campus. A million dollar project is in the works to reduce traffic on Eastern Parkway, which divides the engineering school, Speed School, from the rest of campus. This is because this road is dangerous for pedestrians crossing it and has resulted in injuries and fatalities.

What Governor Fletcher should have done is stage an accident during his speech. Then, he could say this project couldn't come a moment too soon. Fletcher is a doctor, so he could rush out into the street and save the student's life. This might help boast his approval rating which is rather low right now. If you're unfamiliar with Kentucky's politics, Fletcher is in hot water for a hiring scandal, a blanket pardon for his staff, and was potentially going to be indicted.

Part of the proposed project includes a barrier to prevent jay walking. Somehow building a wall between the Speed School and the Main Campus is suppose to unite them together. This sounds more like the Berlin Wall to me. Governor Fletcher, tear down this wall. Seriously, many students leave engineering for arts and science, business, etc. So, by building a wall they will prevent the emigration of engineering students, just like the Berlin Wall was built to prevent the emigration of East Germans. Next thing you know, the crosswalk is going to be a checkpoint, allowing only Arts and Science students over and back to go to Chemistry class. Us engineering students will be dependent upon vending machines and food thrown away by commuter students for sustenance. So you Speed School students out there, be ready for the day you come out of class and find a wall trapping you in.

Possible Embryonic Stem Cell Research Breakthrough

2006-08-26T14:04:00.000-04:00

This week, some scientists announced a potential breakthrough in embryonic stem cell research, which could solve the ethical problem. They claim that they can remove a single stem cell from an embryo in an early state (with 8 cells as opposed to a hundred cells) without harming its development, and grow stem cell colonies from that single cell, as opposed to now where the embryo is destroyed in extracting stem cells. In in vitro fertilization treatment, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, the practice of taking a single cell from the embryo and testing it for genetic disorders is already in practice, and doesn't seem to effect the development of the embryo.

Stem cell research holds the promise of being able to cure diseases like diabetes and alzheimer. Many object because they believe it wrong to do scientific research at the cost of human lives. Others believe its okay to sacrifice lives to save lives. If this breakthrough is true, it would solve the ethical objection to stem cell research on the grounds that it results in the death of human lives. Of course, this wouldn't solve the ethical problems of in vitro fertilization treatment which results in a surplus of embryos which are either destroyed or frozen. See Part 1: Embryonic Stem Cell Research and Part 2: Embryonic Stem Cell Research for further in-depth discussion of stem cell research.

Breaking News - Solar System Loses a Planet

2006-08-24T14:55:00.000-04:00

So you were brought up to believe there are nine planets? Well, you were apparently lied to. Not uncommon these days. Pluto, the once ninth planet has gone the way of the planet Alderaan, destroyed by the Death Star in Star Wars. But Pluto was not blown out of the heavens, nor struck by a comet, but demoted by the International Astronomical Union, IAU, meeting in Prague this month.

Earlier in their meeting, there was talk of defining a planet as basically an object which is round. So a basketball could be put in orbit and it would be a planet. Actually, there was a little more to it, a planet would be a body which is round due only to gravitation force and was in orbit around a star. Under this definition Pluto would have stayed a planet, but there would hundreds of planets added. No Ice Ball Left Behind. Now that would have been not exclusive enough. Not just any celestial object can be a planet. I say there should be a totally arbitrary definition making planets the size of Pluto or larger.

Here is the new definition.
RESOLUTION 5A The IAU therefore resolves that planets and other bodies in our Solar System be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:
(1) A planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.
(2) A dwarf planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, (c) has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.
(3) All other objects orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as "Small Solar System Bodies".

So Pluto isn't good enough. Well, I'll cast my lot with Pluto. If Pluto is not considered a planet, then I'm not a planet either. Maybe Neptune should be demoted since it hasn't swept Pluto out of its orbit. What about Mars and Jupiter, they're around a asteroid belt that hasn't been swept away. So clearly Jupiter shouldn't be a planet, even though its the largest object next to the sun in this solar system. This is outrageous. While we're at it, let's demote Australia from continent to island. It's really been ambiguous anyways. What did Pluto ever do to us? I call upon the UN to pass a resolution threatening economic sanctions against the IAU if they do not stop there unprovoked war on Pluto. These hostilities cannot stand.

Now this is not the first time a planet has been demoted. Ceres discovered at the turn of the 1800s was demoted about 150 years ago to an asteroid. But I for one will not stand for being governed by arbitrary precedents. If we must admit Ceres as a planet to keep Pluto a planet, so be it.

What really is appalling is the political maneuvering by the Pluto haters. Some 2,500 astronomers attended this convention, but the vote wasn't until the last day, and so only 425 voted. Even more appalling, there are about ten thousand astronomers around the globe, so this was only 5% of all astronomers. Ever heard of a quorum? Imagine if we elected the president with 5% of the population, that wouldn't be acceptable. Those anti-plutonians should be ashamed of their selves.

What the IAU has done here with their tier classification system is create second class citizens of the celestial realm. Sure, they disguised it as "dwarf planets," but we know what they really mean, second class planets. Will these dwarf planets be given the same rights and privilege that the first class planets get under the Constitution. I doubt it. Why not have a Three-fifths Compromise and count these "dwarf planets" as three-fifth planets? Sound familiar, that's because that's it is. The founding fathers of the US counted slaves as three-fifths persons. Was that right, of course not. Neither is counting planets as anything less than full-fledged planets right. The IAU is a bunch of planetists, and they know it. The words of Yoda come to mind, "size matters not." (Actually size does matter and not every celestial object should become a planet, but that's beside the point.)

Why not let the celestial bodies themselves decide who is and isn't a planet through a constitutional , representative democracy? It's the American thing to do. We should go liberate them, set up an interim government which will be the transition to a sovereign celestial government, the UPSS, or United Planets of the Solar System. There could be the Planetary Congress, and the Secretary General of the UPSS would rotate between the nine different planets. A new planet could be added with the unanimous consent of all 9 planets, forming the Planetary Security Council.

Why don't we while we're at it just declare a planet to be only those who are in Gustav Holst's Orchestral Suite "the Planets?" Then, Pluto won't be a planet, and neither will Earth. Besides we all know that the Earth is better than all those other planets. Earth is really too good to be classified with any other celestial object. Let's declare the Earth the center of the universe. It's not like we don't act like we are anyways, deciding who makes the cut in the celestial dodge ball game.

A Comparison Between the Beginnings of Democracy in the US and Iraq

2006-08-24T00:42:00.000-04:00

History is important to study so to better understand current events, where we are now and where we are heading. Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. Therefore, I want to examine the beginnings of these United States of America and compare that with the situation in Iraq.

During the American Revolution, not every colonist supported the cause of independence. Only one third supported the Americans. Another one third didn't have a preference, and finally one third supported Britain. I don't know how they got these numbers, I guess a Gallop poll. Obviously in Iraq, not every Iraqi supports democracy, and many are opposed. But if unanimous consent was required, the United States of America never would have been established. To expect unanimous support would be absurd.

America didn't gain independence alone. The US had help from France; which many might cringe at remembering, but it is true. Without France's support, we would be speaking British now, and not English. For example, France supplied naval support, without which we never would have won. Take the final major battle, the Battle of Yorktown. The French cut off the British's support from sea. Presently, Iraq is getting support from the United States, an outside country. So it would be unfair to say that a country must gain freedom all by itself. However, the colonies weren't liberated, they provided the majority of contribution in their fight for independence.

Another important point is that the US didn't blossom overnight. We didn't get everything right in the beginning. We even had a failed constitution. Remember the Articles of Confederation, total flop. It created a national government that was way to weak, fraught with many problems. It took two tries to get a government that would work. So, even if the present constitution in Iraq should fail, that doesn't mean it's the end of democracy there. If that was the case, the US would have failed too. So we should cut Iraq some slack, give them a learning curve that we got.

Again, the US wasn't, and indeed still isn't, perfect overnight. In our beginning, everyone was not equal under the law. Only a very small percentage of the population could vote. Our government didn't trust its people, and so set up the electoral college. And we can't forget slavery. No, the US wasn't perfect when it was founded, it's taken several hundred years to even get close to real equality under the law, and we're still not there. So, let us not judge Iraq for not going far enough to ensure equality, as we ourselves took a long time and are still not perfect. At least Iraq doesn't allow slavery. Indeed, a larger percentage of Iraqis voted or were allowed to in their first elections then did Americans in their nation's first elections. Not that having a lot of people vote ensures that a democracy will succeed..

Additionally, the US had a Civil War, pretty bloody if I remember. And the reason we didn't have one sooner was because we just put off addressing issues such as slavery to avoid splitting the nation in the beginning, like it or not. I happen to think that was for the best, the lesser of two evils. So, if Iraq has a Civil War, we had a violent one ourselves. Now, during our civil war we didn't have foreign troops helping, so that difference should be pointed out.

I hope this helps illuminate the situation in Iraq. I tried to state just the facts and not opinions, to let you decide what to think. There are several similarities between the United States' beginnings and Iraq's beginnings, which warrant examination. It is important to remember the US took a while to develop our democratic society, and we should not expect democracy in Iraq to happen overnight without any difficulty.

Red Alert - New Terror Plot

2006-08-20T22:36:00.000-04:00

The Department of Homeland Security and TSA have raised the nations aviation threat level to red, or severe. There is a high risk of a terrorist attack using snakes on a plane. No snakes may be in carry on or checked bags. This has caused mass chaos at airports as trash cans full of snakes have been accumulating. Many people have had to throw entire terraniums of snakes worth several hundred dollars away that they purchased in terminal pet shops. There is an exception, one small, non-poisonous snake may be carried on if you have it bite you first per person, and only if enclosed in a clear plastic bag. Seriously, Federal authorities are worried that the movie "Snakes on a Plane" could give terrorists ideas and are cracking down. (TSA Announcement)

"Snakes on a Plane" is a film that by no rational, reasonable standards worth holding could be called good. To do so would to take away all meaning from the word "good." Doing so is an act of verbicide so atrocious one deserves to be locked up in the Hague for Crimes Against Language, with snakes in your cell. Nevertheless, the movie was entertaining. It's funny, action packed, suspenseful, and more. It's definitely not going to win any Oscars, which was a guarantee from when they came up with the title "Snakes on a Plane." And there are some pretty crude to say the least parts in the film.

I couldn't believe though that I saw a child in the theater when I went to see it. I felt like getting up and going to the parent. "No. Get out. Seriously, get out. You want to screw your child up? Too bad. Take him to a Disney film. How about Pirates of the Caribbean, or Cars? I'm not kidding. I don't care if you're too cheap to pay for baby sitting. Get out." But I didn't.

This film has gotten me thinking about some other possibilities for films. "Rats on a Train," "Centipedes on a Scooter," "Cows on a Tractor," (A propaganda film for the Dairy Farmers of America showing them growing their own food, living in a farm house, and selling their milk to pay for their new plasma TV, etc. Rated G for all ages. Until the older cow goes to the 'retirement home.') "Bees on a Bus," "Spiders on a Submarine," "Rats on a Subway," (actually that's nonfiction) "Termites on a Mayflower," (a historical film in time for Thanksgiving 2007, coming to a theater near you), and my favorite "Ants on a Highway." Pretty much anything that fits (type of animal) on a (mode of transportation). Or more broadly (type of organism) (preposition) (mode of transportation) . "Venus Fly Traps in a Cab." Or even more broadly, (something) (preposition) (something). "Corn on a Cob."Or "Mayonnaise on my Wendy's Homestyle Chicken Fillet Sandwich." "I'm tired of this ___ mayonnaise on my _____ sandwich. I ordered it no mayonnaise." (I have some anger against the food service on my campus.) "Shampoo on a Plane." Or maybe "Babies on a Plane." (I'm also annoyed by screaming babies on a flight.) The key to making any of these films work is getting Samuel L. Jackson. He, and only he, can pretty much pull off any of these. Samuel L. Jackson is why the US is going nuts over "Snakes on a Plane."

But seriously, "Snakes on a Plane" is unique. Only certain transportation could work. A plane works because you can't just land the plane while over water. Spiders on a Submarine could work if it takes place during the Cold War and the Submarine can't surface. "The Hunt for Red October" meets "Snakes on a Plane," making a great movie horrible. Sean Connery for the Russian sub captain, Samuel L. Jackson for the American sub captain. A car wouldn't work very well since you could just pull over and get out.

Unless there are "Ants on a Highway." Here's the premise. The only thing that could trigger a massive explosion in the ant population, global warming, causes a massive explosion in the ant population. And the ants migrate from Central America to the southern United States, across our new border wall with soldiers standing by helplessly, actually rolling on the ground trying to get them off, but anyways. So, the only way to be safe is to constantly keep driving until out of the affected region so that your vehicle doesn't get swarmed. (Some people stand in puddles of water which end up evaporating on them.) Now just imagine, someone climbing out of their car at 60 miles per hour and siphoning gasoline out of another car to keep going. (Because ants can run at 59 miles per hour.) Or, someone gets a flat tire but can't stop. So they have everyone move to the opposite corner so the car will only drive on three wheels. Then, because of an ominous curve coming up on the road which they know using their On-Star in dash navigation system, someone climbs out and changes the tire while its driving on three wheels. That's probably not even possible in real life, but it would be exciting. A dad says, "Don't make me pull this car over." Then he pulls the car over and it is swarmed as they try driving away too late. All of this complicated by the horrible evacuating traffic which results in the ants swarming thousands of cars idling on major highways, and of course looting. But the looters get justice when the ants attack them. And the government is also trying to get gasoline to moving vehicles and evacuate people by air. In the end, only the Toyota Priuses make it far enough to escape the terror. This film is ripe for product plugs, On-Star, Toyota Prius, which would be necessary as the movie wouldn't make enough money from box office sales.

Major Hole In Aviation Security

2006-08-18T23:53:00.000-04:00

I hate to destroy your sense of aviation security, but apparently cargo is shipped on commercial airlines. (Click on post title for related story.) And most of these packages are not checked. Only packages explicitly requested to be on a particular flight are always checked, and the rest are randomly checked. Now, why are we cracking down on one area of security, leaving other areas wide open?

Unlike with checked luggage, the person who would be sending an explosive wouldn't be on the plane and so would have nothing to lose as it wouldn't be that hard to send a package without giving your real identity. Think about it, they could express mail a package hoping it would end up on a passenger plane, and have a barometer that would trigger it to explode when the plane is in the air.

I say every package should be inspected. If that can't be done, then stop shipping cargo on passenger planes. Actually, we should get rid of all cargo and checked luggage from passenger planes (and carry on and personal items) and just put it all on cargo planes. What we do is fly two planes to each location, one for the passengers only and one for luggage and any cargo that is also being shipped. Or we could get rid of checked luggage all together and have everybody ship their luggage separately.

Granted, our airports and skies are congested enough as it is, but what choice do we have in our quest for security. We could build high speed rail to reduce short to medium haul flights, which when factoring in check in time takes almost as long if not longer than taking a train. Using rail would also be cheaper for the traveler than flying, so who can complain. (The airlines, and anyone who's a terrorist.) Additionally, you could use your cell phone on a train, and we all know how important being constantly connected 24/7/365 is to us these days. Actually, if people can use their cell phones that might make me want to fly instead, but I digress.

This would in addition to making us secure also reduce the weight of passenger planes and thus the amount of fuel needed and therefore the ticket cost. Actually, it would probably just end up balancing out the increasing weight of Americans, keeping the cost the same. We could use cargo hold for a lounge, bar, restaurant, etc, or more likely to cram more people onto planes. If it was the latter, we could consolidate flights freeing up runway space for the additional cargo planes needed. So we wouldn't have to cut the number of seats available, but would gain better security. Of course, your luggage is more likely to be loss, which really sucks when you are not allowed carry on either, nor your laptop or cell phone, but freedom isn't free. We have gone too long in this war on terror without having to make real sacrifices.