It's been an amazing day. I've wanted to see Barack Obama in the White House for years now, and it's finally happened. I don't have the words to describe how I'm feeling about this. For the first time in my life, I've felt a passion for a politician and what they're trying to do for our country, and now that man is the most powerful man in the world. Let's see what he can achieve.
I've heard a song on CNN.com's coverage (which I've been watching rabidly all day long) that fit perfectly with how I'm feeling right now, so I thought I'd share it.
Lyrics:
I'm taking my freedom
Pulling it off the shelf
Putting it on my chain
Wearing it 'round my neck
I'm taking my freedom
Putting it in my car
Wherever I choose to go
It will take me far
I'm…
Chorus:
Living my life like it's golden
Living my life like it's golden
Living my life like it's golden
Living my life like it's golden
Living my life like it's golden, golden
(Repeat)
Verse 2:
I'm taking my own freedom
Putting it in my song
Singing loud and strong
Grooving all day long
I'm taking my freedom
Putting it in my stroll
I be high-stepping ya'll
Letting the joy unfold
I'm…
Chorus:
Living my life like it's golden
Living my life like it's golden
Living my life like it's golden
Living my life like it's golden
Living my life like it's golden, golden
(Repeat)
Verse 3:
I'm holding on to my freedom
Can't take it from me
I was born into it and it comes naturally
I'm strumming my own freedom
Playing the God in me
Representing His glory
Hope He's proud of me!
Yeah!
Chorus:
Living my life like it's golden
Living my life like it's golden (Hope he's proud of me!)
Living my life like it's golden
Living my life like it's golden
Living my life like it's golden, golden
(Repeat)
Hook:
Living my life, Like it's golden, golden, golden, golden, golden, golden
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Things can always be worse
The title pretty well sums up my thoughts lately. No matter what bump in the road my life might hit, things are never as bad as they might be. Work has really been driving that home lately, and it's seriously depressing.
I've spent the past few days working on a couple of projects that have shown me just how much things can suck. One is looking at foreclosures in the area and some of the scummy ways that businesses (one specifically) targeted people with poor credit and set them up so that at the slightest hiccup in their payments, they were pounced upon, their investment taken away, their house ripped out from under them, and then taken to court to extract even more money from their straining pocketbook. All of this happening after the business assured the homebuyer that they should trust the business, that they would take care of them, that they shouldn't read the contract too closely because the company was taking care of it all for them - and the language that let this all happen to the homebuyer was right there in the contract if they had taken the time to read it.
The other project I can't say much about, since it's still under embargo for another month, but it deals explicitly with the health of kids and implicitly with the health of everyone. It focuses on the failure of government to accurately report information on conditions that could lead to health problems, and it's been going on for many years now. If the people that work for us - the government - aren't doing their job to take care of the people, then who will? It makes me wonder if government has forgotten that it actually does work for the people, not for the businesses and corporations of the country that can make the most noise and shovel the most money into Washington and state capitols across the country.
What these stories have reminded me off is that, much like tech support, journalism is not the place to be if you want to maintain a high opinion of humanity. Sure, we see feel good stories and play them up, but for the most part news is about tragedy, corruption, betrayal, pain, suffering and the people that inflict all of that on others. We get to see up close just what it is that people are capable of in more gory depth and detail than we can adequately convey in stories. Something like the housing deal just doesn't have the same impact in a story that you get from talking to the victims, in looking at more than a hundred court cases of people being evicted and seeing the swift, brutal way in which they were kicked out of their homes for missing even a single payment at times.
Which brings me to another point - why the heck does the court system here make their Web site so horrifically difficult to access? Since they already have the information in a database, it shouldn't be a challenge to get a copy of what I'm looking for in electronic format. And yet to do so required me talking to 6 different people over 4 hours before finally being told that any such "bulk" request for records would require a formal Sunshine Law request being sent to the State Judicial Records Committee to be reviewed and, if approved, acted upon.
Seriously? They're already available on the Web and stored in a database. It's going to take them weeks to put together an SQL statement that says "SELECT * FROM cases_table WHERE plaintiff = Company Name"? OMG - that just took me a whole 5 seconds to write! And it might take another 4 minutes to process that request and have the results written to a CSV file... maybe... if the computer is really, REALLY slow. But no, they can't do that. They have to muck it all up in bureaucratic red tape that ends up in me transcribing it all by hand (Yay for copy/paste!) simply to get the data we need in a reasonable amount of time rather than waiting until sometime next month, if we're lucky, to get results back.
And so, to get through just under 150 records, it's taken me a day and a half - yes, A DAY AND A HALF! - to go through and copy/paste the data. They managed to make their Web interface so damnably difficult to get through that getting a single record transcribed has been taken between 2 and 10 minutes, since you have to click through, resubmit the form, click through again, copy, resubmit the form, copy, repeat ad naseum... BARF! I swear, they must have hired the BOFH to design that system with the goal of making it so difficult to get through that users would never come back. Their motto should be "Case.Net: Using obfuscation and hindrance to keep public records difficult to access since we started!"
I've spent the past few days working on a couple of projects that have shown me just how much things can suck. One is looking at foreclosures in the area and some of the scummy ways that businesses (one specifically) targeted people with poor credit and set them up so that at the slightest hiccup in their payments, they were pounced upon, their investment taken away, their house ripped out from under them, and then taken to court to extract even more money from their straining pocketbook. All of this happening after the business assured the homebuyer that they should trust the business, that they would take care of them, that they shouldn't read the contract too closely because the company was taking care of it all for them - and the language that let this all happen to the homebuyer was right there in the contract if they had taken the time to read it.
The other project I can't say much about, since it's still under embargo for another month, but it deals explicitly with the health of kids and implicitly with the health of everyone. It focuses on the failure of government to accurately report information on conditions that could lead to health problems, and it's been going on for many years now. If the people that work for us - the government - aren't doing their job to take care of the people, then who will? It makes me wonder if government has forgotten that it actually does work for the people, not for the businesses and corporations of the country that can make the most noise and shovel the most money into Washington and state capitols across the country.
What these stories have reminded me off is that, much like tech support, journalism is not the place to be if you want to maintain a high opinion of humanity. Sure, we see feel good stories and play them up, but for the most part news is about tragedy, corruption, betrayal, pain, suffering and the people that inflict all of that on others. We get to see up close just what it is that people are capable of in more gory depth and detail than we can adequately convey in stories. Something like the housing deal just doesn't have the same impact in a story that you get from talking to the victims, in looking at more than a hundred court cases of people being evicted and seeing the swift, brutal way in which they were kicked out of their homes for missing even a single payment at times.
Which brings me to another point - why the heck does the court system here make their Web site so horrifically difficult to access? Since they already have the information in a database, it shouldn't be a challenge to get a copy of what I'm looking for in electronic format. And yet to do so required me talking to 6 different people over 4 hours before finally being told that any such "bulk" request for records would require a formal Sunshine Law request being sent to the State Judicial Records Committee to be reviewed and, if approved, acted upon.
Seriously? They're already available on the Web and stored in a database. It's going to take them weeks to put together an SQL statement that says "SELECT * FROM cases_table WHERE plaintiff = Company Name"? OMG - that just took me a whole 5 seconds to write! And it might take another 4 minutes to process that request and have the results written to a CSV file... maybe... if the computer is really, REALLY slow. But no, they can't do that. They have to muck it all up in bureaucratic red tape that ends up in me transcribing it all by hand (Yay for copy/paste!) simply to get the data we need in a reasonable amount of time rather than waiting until sometime next month, if we're lucky, to get results back.
And so, to get through just under 150 records, it's taken me a day and a half - yes, A DAY AND A HALF! - to go through and copy/paste the data. They managed to make their Web interface so damnably difficult to get through that getting a single record transcribed has been taken between 2 and 10 minutes, since you have to click through, resubmit the form, click through again, copy, resubmit the form, copy, repeat ad naseum... BARF! I swear, they must have hired the BOFH to design that system with the goal of making it so difficult to get through that users would never come back. Their motto should be "Case.Net: Using obfuscation and hindrance to keep public records difficult to access since we started!"
Friday, November 7, 2008
"An Eternal Revolution" - Orlando Patterson
Just finished reading a great article on NYTimes.com.
A snippet:
It's a very thoughtful piece, looking at the full spectrum of historical trends that led to the election of Obama as president.
A snippet:
BARACK OBAMA’S victory marks the end of another magnificent chapter in America’s experience of democracy. But rather than being seen as a radical transition, it is best viewed as part of an ever-evolving process that began with the election of George Washington in 1789. To interpret it as a foundational change, ushering something new and unknown, is to diminish the past, to unduly singularize Mr. Obama’s achievement and to raise unrealistic expectations about his presidency.
It's a very thoughtful piece, looking at the full spectrum of historical trends that led to the election of Obama as president.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
The "Finally Proud"
A response to http://www.chris-brewer.com/2008/11/05/fair-weather-americans. A snippet:
Isn't it possible to love your country, and yet not be proud of your country and what it has done? Isn't it possible to "finally be proud" of your country after seeing an incredible reversal of the rampant racism that was at the heart of this country for 300+ years and simmering down slowly for the last 50?
When people are subject to slavery and government-sponsored racism and sexism, claiming to be a country with the most freedoms in the entire world doesn't ring true - and seeing a black man elected president is a symbolic culmination of the rise of the country out of that dark period of "Everyone is created equal - except you. And you. Oh, and you over there. Ummm, yeah, all y'all that aren't white, male and rich just aren't as equal as the rest of us."
So sure, we should all be proud and remember those that have fought, struggled and even died to protect our right to vote. But should we simply forget and gloss over all of those that fought so strenuously to deny their fellow citizens' rights? Should we be proud of the ugly side of American history - of racism? of slavery? of the Japanese internment camps? of the Trail of Tears and the rest of our bloody history with Native Americans? of My Lai and Abu Ghraib? And that's just off the top of my head.
There is much in our history as Americans to be ashamed of which could lead us to not be proud of our country. And if you or your family or ancestors were the direct victims? It would be that much harder to be proud of a country that has made your family suffer for centuries while claiming to offer you freedom and equality.
Obama being elected president doesn't have any direct, concrete impact on racism per se, but it sure as heck is a huge indication that we all are indeed roughly equal in opportunity, FINALLY!, to the point that even a black man (or a woman, as Hillary was close in this election cycle as well) can rise to the highest office in the land.
When you say that they're only proud because "their candidate" is in the White House, I think you're missing the point. You seem to think it's a political thing, but it's not. If this were about politics, they wouldn't "finally" be proud - because all of them were alive during the Clinton presidency when "their" candidate was also in the White House. It's about much more than that, and you would see much the same response if Obama had been a Republican instead and still won.
It's about America finally, concretely demonstrating what it has always claimed - that all of us, no matter our background, have a chance in this land to be what we want to be. It may not be easy, and we very well may fail. But seeing Obama elected showed them that even a man from a relatively poor background, from a mixed-race family who was raised by his grandparents, can focus his talents and abilities to reach for the very pinnacle of American power - and make it there. This would not have been possible 30 years ago; it very likely would have been illegal in many states 100 years ago and would have ended in a lynching.
It's this progress that people are finally proud of - that America has stepped up to the promises it made 232 years ago in a way that is wholly undeniable. Are we finished and at the point where all Americans can truly say they are free and equal? Not quite. Lee Greenwood sings, "I'm proud to be an American 'cuz at least I know I'm free", but what if he were gay and wanted to marry the man he loved more than anything? He would no longer know that he was free, because he would find a governmental wall between him and his basic humanity.
Does this mean I'm "finally proud" of America? No, it doesn't. But my ancestors and I also haven't suffered under the burdens of the dark side of America. I've always been proud to be called an American, and what has always made me most proud of America are those that stood up in the face of injustice and said, "This cannot be right" and then struggled to make correct it.
So I have absolutely no problem with people who say they are finally proud to be Americans. I'm not one of them, but I can absolutely empathize and understand why they feel that way. To call them pathetic is to deny the history and circumstances that led them to feel that way.
To those who are saying “I am finally proud to be an American” after Obama’s victory last night, you are pathetic and I am calling you all out.
So you weren’t proud to be an American before? What about everyone who has, over the course of our nation’s history, defended our right to vote? Did you not forget the fact that regardless of who is in the Oval Office, you live in the nation with the most freedoms afforded to us in the entire world?
REGARDLESS of who is in the White House, you should be proud of your nation. If you cannot be proud of America during the times in which your candidate does not hold the highest office in the land, you have no reason to be called a true American in the first place.
Isn't it possible to love your country, and yet not be proud of your country and what it has done? Isn't it possible to "finally be proud" of your country after seeing an incredible reversal of the rampant racism that was at the heart of this country for 300+ years and simmering down slowly for the last 50?
When people are subject to slavery and government-sponsored racism and sexism, claiming to be a country with the most freedoms in the entire world doesn't ring true - and seeing a black man elected president is a symbolic culmination of the rise of the country out of that dark period of "Everyone is created equal - except you. And you. Oh, and you over there. Ummm, yeah, all y'all that aren't white, male and rich just aren't as equal as the rest of us."
So sure, we should all be proud and remember those that have fought, struggled and even died to protect our right to vote. But should we simply forget and gloss over all of those that fought so strenuously to deny their fellow citizens' rights? Should we be proud of the ugly side of American history - of racism? of slavery? of the Japanese internment camps? of the Trail of Tears and the rest of our bloody history with Native Americans? of My Lai and Abu Ghraib? And that's just off the top of my head.
There is much in our history as Americans to be ashamed of which could lead us to not be proud of our country. And if you or your family or ancestors were the direct victims? It would be that much harder to be proud of a country that has made your family suffer for centuries while claiming to offer you freedom and equality.
Obama being elected president doesn't have any direct, concrete impact on racism per se, but it sure as heck is a huge indication that we all are indeed roughly equal in opportunity, FINALLY!, to the point that even a black man (or a woman, as Hillary was close in this election cycle as well) can rise to the highest office in the land.
When you say that they're only proud because "their candidate" is in the White House, I think you're missing the point. You seem to think it's a political thing, but it's not. If this were about politics, they wouldn't "finally" be proud - because all of them were alive during the Clinton presidency when "their" candidate was also in the White House. It's about much more than that, and you would see much the same response if Obama had been a Republican instead and still won.
It's about America finally, concretely demonstrating what it has always claimed - that all of us, no matter our background, have a chance in this land to be what we want to be. It may not be easy, and we very well may fail. But seeing Obama elected showed them that even a man from a relatively poor background, from a mixed-race family who was raised by his grandparents, can focus his talents and abilities to reach for the very pinnacle of American power - and make it there. This would not have been possible 30 years ago; it very likely would have been illegal in many states 100 years ago and would have ended in a lynching.
It's this progress that people are finally proud of - that America has stepped up to the promises it made 232 years ago in a way that is wholly undeniable. Are we finished and at the point where all Americans can truly say they are free and equal? Not quite. Lee Greenwood sings, "I'm proud to be an American 'cuz at least I know I'm free", but what if he were gay and wanted to marry the man he loved more than anything? He would no longer know that he was free, because he would find a governmental wall between him and his basic humanity.
Does this mean I'm "finally proud" of America? No, it doesn't. But my ancestors and I also haven't suffered under the burdens of the dark side of America. I've always been proud to be called an American, and what has always made me most proud of America are those that stood up in the face of injustice and said, "This cannot be right" and then struggled to make correct it.
So I have absolutely no problem with people who say they are finally proud to be Americans. I'm not one of them, but I can absolutely empathize and understand why they feel that way. To call them pathetic is to deny the history and circumstances that led them to feel that way.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
OMFGOMFGOMFGOMFG!
Obama wins. 'Nuff said. I am so freakin' ecstatic right now, I don't have the words. Now to sit and watch how big of a landslide it ends up being...
Day of reckoning
Well, I did my duty and went out to vote this morning. The polls opened at 6 a.m., and the whole family was out of the car and in line at 6:05. There were probably 200 or so people ahead of us, with maybe 30-40 of them were standing outside. It moved pretty quickly, only taking 33 minutes to go from joining the line to putting my ballot in the box and leaving.
The girls were so funny while we were waiting. You can tell they've been listening to their parents, because they quite often will ask, "Can we go see Obama? Is that Obama? Where's Obama?" and this morning was no different. We had talked to them about keeping who we're voting for a "secret" so that they wouldn't be inadvertently electioneering at the polling place, but several times in line they asked, "Mom, can we get an Obama sticker? Are we going to see Obama yet?", which drew chuckles from everyone around us in line.
Now it's time to sit back and wait for results while I spend the whole day working my butt off. This is the one part of election days that is so bittersweet for me - I'm always so excited to exercise my right to vote, but it's dampened by the fact that election days are some of the longest, most hectic nights of work for me. And that's just based on being in Wyoming, where elections aren't even that hotly contested or have any where close to the population of Missouri.
I'm amazed at the predictions of turnout. Several places have predicted 70% or higher turnout in Missouri - if that holds, that would be 2,805,021 based on the Secretary of State's numbers from 2006. That's huge! And it doesn't even include however many new voters have joined the ranks in the last year as part of the most interesting election of my lifetime. After bottoming out in 1996 with less than 50% voter turnout, I hope to see us smash the national record of 63.06% set in 1960 - I think it's going to be easily surpassed. And the 122 million that turned out in 2004? Easily going to blown away. I wouldn't be shocked to see it come close to or even pass 200 million!
The girls were so funny while we were waiting. You can tell they've been listening to their parents, because they quite often will ask, "Can we go see Obama? Is that Obama? Where's Obama?" and this morning was no different. We had talked to them about keeping who we're voting for a "secret" so that they wouldn't be inadvertently electioneering at the polling place, but several times in line they asked, "Mom, can we get an Obama sticker? Are we going to see Obama yet?", which drew chuckles from everyone around us in line.
Now it's time to sit back and wait for results while I spend the whole day working my butt off. This is the one part of election days that is so bittersweet for me - I'm always so excited to exercise my right to vote, but it's dampened by the fact that election days are some of the longest, most hectic nights of work for me. And that's just based on being in Wyoming, where elections aren't even that hotly contested or have any where close to the population of Missouri.
I'm amazed at the predictions of turnout. Several places have predicted 70% or higher turnout in Missouri - if that holds, that would be 2,805,021 based on the Secretary of State's numbers from 2006. That's huge! And it doesn't even include however many new voters have joined the ranks in the last year as part of the most interesting election of my lifetime. After bottoming out in 1996 with less than 50% voter turnout, I hope to see us smash the national record of 63.06% set in 1960 - I think it's going to be easily surpassed. And the 122 million that turned out in 2004? Easily going to blown away. I wouldn't be shocked to see it come close to or even pass 200 million!
Monday, October 27, 2008
Marxism and socialism? I don't think so
So I saw a clip of this on CNN today where Biden responds a bit incredulously to a question about Obama and his plan to "spread the wealth" being called Marxist:
Here's where I have a big problem - not only with his response, but with the whole accusation here: These people have no clue what Marxism/socialism actually entails, neither the accusers nor the responses from Obama/Biden/the Democratic Party in general.
Nicely summed up on Wikipedia: Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership. It is nothing like the "spreading the wealth" that has been stated. Nothing that Obama has proposed includes state ownership of any industry. Calling "spread the wealth" socialism might work as a first grader's definition, but it vastly distorts the heart of socialism.
Even universal health care is not socialism, even the way in which it's practiced in Europe and Canada. It's psuedo-socialism, but at its heart, the state doesn't own the health care system; it simply provides health insurance coverage to its citizenry while still allowing them to purchase different and better coverage if they so choose. True socialism would involve the states taking control of the hospitals and insurance companies and not allowing private competition. You can see some true examples of this in the way Russia and Venezuela have nationalized the oil industries, and see that this is very dissimilar to anything proposed by Obama or practiced in "socialized" health care.
I've heard the term tossed about in relation to the banking bailout, and it's just as bogus there. The argument goes that, because the government took stakes in the banks that they lent money to, this amounts to a nationalization of those banks. Pure BS. Why? Well, the stakes the government has taken are considered non-voting shares, so they don't get a say in how the bank is run beyond the requirements placed on them as part of the initial loan agreement. The purpose of the stakes taken is to eventually provide a means for the government to recover (a portion of) the money it has lent these banks, not to take them over and turn them into national properties that have been effectively socialized.
If you really want to get down to brass tacks, accusations that "spreading the wealth" are equivalent to socialism are accusations that every government in the world that collects taxes is socialist. Why? The very purpose of taxes is to collect money from all citizens according to the tax code, and then spread that wealth around to where the government deems it most appropriate.
Is that socialism? No; it's simply a misunderstanding of the basic definitions of socialism and government. If spreading the wealth actually was socialism, John McCain and George Bush would be some of the biggest socialists in the world based on the levels of government spending they have been in favor of over the course of the last 8 years.
So, until each and every one of these people has the courtesy to at least take a course in basic philosophy to learn the actual definitions of these terms they're throwing around, they need to check their rhetoric at the door and stick to terms they have at least a rudimentary grasp of.
Here's where I have a big problem - not only with his response, but with the whole accusation here: These people have no clue what Marxism/socialism actually entails, neither the accusers nor the responses from Obama/Biden/the Democratic Party in general.
Nicely summed up on Wikipedia: Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership. It is nothing like the "spreading the wealth" that has been stated. Nothing that Obama has proposed includes state ownership of any industry. Calling "spread the wealth" socialism might work as a first grader's definition, but it vastly distorts the heart of socialism.
Even universal health care is not socialism, even the way in which it's practiced in Europe and Canada. It's psuedo-socialism, but at its heart, the state doesn't own the health care system; it simply provides health insurance coverage to its citizenry while still allowing them to purchase different and better coverage if they so choose. True socialism would involve the states taking control of the hospitals and insurance companies and not allowing private competition. You can see some true examples of this in the way Russia and Venezuela have nationalized the oil industries, and see that this is very dissimilar to anything proposed by Obama or practiced in "socialized" health care.
I've heard the term tossed about in relation to the banking bailout, and it's just as bogus there. The argument goes that, because the government took stakes in the banks that they lent money to, this amounts to a nationalization of those banks. Pure BS. Why? Well, the stakes the government has taken are considered non-voting shares, so they don't get a say in how the bank is run beyond the requirements placed on them as part of the initial loan agreement. The purpose of the stakes taken is to eventually provide a means for the government to recover (a portion of) the money it has lent these banks, not to take them over and turn them into national properties that have been effectively socialized.
If you really want to get down to brass tacks, accusations that "spreading the wealth" are equivalent to socialism are accusations that every government in the world that collects taxes is socialist. Why? The very purpose of taxes is to collect money from all citizens according to the tax code, and then spread that wealth around to where the government deems it most appropriate.
Is that socialism? No; it's simply a misunderstanding of the basic definitions of socialism and government. If spreading the wealth actually was socialism, John McCain and George Bush would be some of the biggest socialists in the world based on the levels of government spending they have been in favor of over the course of the last 8 years.
So, until each and every one of these people has the courtesy to at least take a course in basic philosophy to learn the actual definitions of these terms they're throwing around, they need to check their rhetoric at the door and stick to terms they have at least a rudimentary grasp of.
Friday, October 24, 2008
If Opie, Andy and the Fonz endorse it, it's gotta be good
I saw this over on http://ianmcgibboney.blogspot.com/ and thought it was pretty funny, so I wanted to blatantly steal it ans put it here:
See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Rambling towards an identity
I've been working lately at trying to categorize myself. I know that labels are utterly meaningless in the end, but they're something that can be helpful in the process of trying to define oneself and explain to others what that definition might be.
Part of what's made it hard is how easily those labels get thrown around and abused in daily conversation, which has just been amplified and made so much worse in the course of the election this year. "Liberal" and "Conservative" have gotten to the point of practically being insults when lobbed across the aisle at the other party. I try to hold myself above that level of discourse, but I'm not guiltless by any means.
So what am I? In my own mind, I see myself as a moderately progressive liberal. On the core issues, that's where I see the majority of my personal beliefs being reflected. I do think that welfare and social security are good things and form the security net that is part of the social contract the government and people have agreed to. I do think it's wrong to have a wholesale legal ban on abortion, though there are forms of abortion that can and should absolutely be limited. I do think that the Second Amendment, while (arguably) granting the right to personally bear arms, does not mean that this is an unfettered right to own any and all forms of weaponry - it just makes so little sense to me that it requires a license to drive a car and get married, but not to own a gun. I do think that everyone deserves the opportunity to marry the person they love - straight, gay, transgender, whatever.
And in the more traditional, literal sense of what progressive and conservative mean, I think we always need to keep our eyes looking to the future and trying to adapt to the present in a liberal sense rather than keep looking backwards and simply trying to maintain tradition in a conservative sense. This is something that I think is at the core of the big split between red and blue, yet it often gets overlooked. The very words we use to define the two sides have some meaning. I understand that "conservative" originated with the meaning of fiscal conservatism, and that's something I actually think about a lot, but more on that later. But if you look at where politics stands today, conservatives tend to want to keep things they way they've always been - they want religion at the heart of society and government; they don't want the immigrants coming in and changing things; they don't want to let gays get married because that's not the traditional idea of marriage. And liberals/progressives look at these ways of doing things and see changes that they believe will make things better. When it reaches the point of trying to change the way things "have always been done", there's obviously going to be a huge clash and that's where we are right now.
That doesn't mean that this stuff is at the same level of what has happened in the past. Are the reforms liberals pushing for now of the same degree or importance of what the founding fathers did? The suffragists? The civil rights movement? The closest you can come to that might be with gay marriage. To me, it's not quite the same because that's a small portion of their rights (albeit an important one), the rest of which were fought for and protected as part of the other struggles in the 20th century. But for the most part, it really seems like all the "big" battles are over and now we're picking up the pieces and fighting the smaller battles that are left to be fought.
Maybe you could make a case that the one big battle left to be fought is the one for economic equality, and there are rumblings going on in the wake of the economic collapse that could lead to this happening. The problem I see here is that there's no clear path to "victory". I think it's fairly obvious that there is something inherently inequitable about 1% of the population controlling 60% of the wealth in the world.
But what's the answer? I certainly don't have it. I see potential in a socialist-inspired method, but the problems inherent in that system are difficult to overcome. How do you prevent the greed and corruption that turn socialism into Stalinist communism? How do you provide the motivation to reach as high as you possibly can with your talent without the incentive of proportionately greater compensation? That's the flaw with the concept of, "From each according to their abilities; to each according to their needs" - there is no motivation beyond simply believing that people will work as hard as they can. And from what I've seen, most people will be as lazy as they can get away with, so there needs to be something to motivate them.
To some extent, I think there is a lot to learn from Europe in this sense. Many countries there have found ways to incorporate pieces of democracy, capitalism and socialism together in a mostly cohesive framework. They have taken the idea of a social contract between citizen and government to heart, the idea that the purpose of government is to take care of its people - all of its people. They've decided that health care and education are fundamental to properly caring for and preparing their citizenry, and they've made the sacrifices needed to make it happen.
And after rambling off on a tangent, this brings me back to the idea of fiscal conservatism. At its heart, I truly believe in this principle. The goal of every government should be to never spend more than it takes in in revenue. Obviously, there will be times when this isn't possible such as wars, famines, and other crises. But we've seen vividly in the past year the consequence of overextending. What I don't agree with, and many conservatives have connected the ideas, is that fiscal conservatism means small government and minimal spending. Just because you believe in balanced budgets, that doesn't mean you can't add programs and increase the ability of the government to provide for its people; it just means you have to be able to pay for it.
That is the crux of the problem, because the only way to do that is to raise taxes. And I can't remember the last time I heard people on either side talk honestly about raising taxes. It seems like everyone just wants to lower taxes and still enjoy everything that we've come to expect from government - and more! But it doesn't work that way, and our $10 trillion national debt graphically illustrates that. You want to spend more? Well, then you need to collect more taxes. The idea that lowering taxes results in higher total revenues works to an extent, but I believe that it fails in the long run.
The simple - and only - answer is that, if you want to spend more, you have to raise taxes. If we had nationalized health care and I had higher taxes, but didn't have the $300 a month insurance premium I have to pay now, I'd bet that at best I'd pay a good deal less and at worst have a slight increase in total amount of taxes each month. Isn't that worth it to have health care provided for me, my family and everyone in the country that needs it regardless of income?
How does this all define me? It really doesn't; it mostly just gives a basis of explanation for me. Much of this has been at the heart of my thoughts for many years now. It's what I concluded was the "right" way to do things and what I've continued to investigate to make sure that it is still the "right" way to go about things over the ensuing years. And "right" isn't the right word - these are the things I think will be most helpful, most beneficial to me, my country and my fellow citizens. That doesn't make them "right"; it just makes them right to me. If you disagree with me, that doesn't make you wrong - it just makes you less "right" than I am!! :D
Part of what's made it hard is how easily those labels get thrown around and abused in daily conversation, which has just been amplified and made so much worse in the course of the election this year. "Liberal" and "Conservative" have gotten to the point of practically being insults when lobbed across the aisle at the other party. I try to hold myself above that level of discourse, but I'm not guiltless by any means.
So what am I? In my own mind, I see myself as a moderately progressive liberal. On the core issues, that's where I see the majority of my personal beliefs being reflected. I do think that welfare and social security are good things and form the security net that is part of the social contract the government and people have agreed to. I do think it's wrong to have a wholesale legal ban on abortion, though there are forms of abortion that can and should absolutely be limited. I do think that the Second Amendment, while (arguably) granting the right to personally bear arms, does not mean that this is an unfettered right to own any and all forms of weaponry - it just makes so little sense to me that it requires a license to drive a car and get married, but not to own a gun. I do think that everyone deserves the opportunity to marry the person they love - straight, gay, transgender, whatever.
And in the more traditional, literal sense of what progressive and conservative mean, I think we always need to keep our eyes looking to the future and trying to adapt to the present in a liberal sense rather than keep looking backwards and simply trying to maintain tradition in a conservative sense. This is something that I think is at the core of the big split between red and blue, yet it often gets overlooked. The very words we use to define the two sides have some meaning. I understand that "conservative" originated with the meaning of fiscal conservatism, and that's something I actually think about a lot, but more on that later. But if you look at where politics stands today, conservatives tend to want to keep things they way they've always been - they want religion at the heart of society and government; they don't want the immigrants coming in and changing things; they don't want to let gays get married because that's not the traditional idea of marriage. And liberals/progressives look at these ways of doing things and see changes that they believe will make things better. When it reaches the point of trying to change the way things "have always been done", there's obviously going to be a huge clash and that's where we are right now.
That doesn't mean that this stuff is at the same level of what has happened in the past. Are the reforms liberals pushing for now of the same degree or importance of what the founding fathers did? The suffragists? The civil rights movement? The closest you can come to that might be with gay marriage. To me, it's not quite the same because that's a small portion of their rights (albeit an important one), the rest of which were fought for and protected as part of the other struggles in the 20th century. But for the most part, it really seems like all the "big" battles are over and now we're picking up the pieces and fighting the smaller battles that are left to be fought.
Maybe you could make a case that the one big battle left to be fought is the one for economic equality, and there are rumblings going on in the wake of the economic collapse that could lead to this happening. The problem I see here is that there's no clear path to "victory". I think it's fairly obvious that there is something inherently inequitable about 1% of the population controlling 60% of the wealth in the world.
But what's the answer? I certainly don't have it. I see potential in a socialist-inspired method, but the problems inherent in that system are difficult to overcome. How do you prevent the greed and corruption that turn socialism into Stalinist communism? How do you provide the motivation to reach as high as you possibly can with your talent without the incentive of proportionately greater compensation? That's the flaw with the concept of, "From each according to their abilities; to each according to their needs" - there is no motivation beyond simply believing that people will work as hard as they can. And from what I've seen, most people will be as lazy as they can get away with, so there needs to be something to motivate them.
To some extent, I think there is a lot to learn from Europe in this sense. Many countries there have found ways to incorporate pieces of democracy, capitalism and socialism together in a mostly cohesive framework. They have taken the idea of a social contract between citizen and government to heart, the idea that the purpose of government is to take care of its people - all of its people. They've decided that health care and education are fundamental to properly caring for and preparing their citizenry, and they've made the sacrifices needed to make it happen.
And after rambling off on a tangent, this brings me back to the idea of fiscal conservatism. At its heart, I truly believe in this principle. The goal of every government should be to never spend more than it takes in in revenue. Obviously, there will be times when this isn't possible such as wars, famines, and other crises. But we've seen vividly in the past year the consequence of overextending. What I don't agree with, and many conservatives have connected the ideas, is that fiscal conservatism means small government and minimal spending. Just because you believe in balanced budgets, that doesn't mean you can't add programs and increase the ability of the government to provide for its people; it just means you have to be able to pay for it.
That is the crux of the problem, because the only way to do that is to raise taxes. And I can't remember the last time I heard people on either side talk honestly about raising taxes. It seems like everyone just wants to lower taxes and still enjoy everything that we've come to expect from government - and more! But it doesn't work that way, and our $10 trillion national debt graphically illustrates that. You want to spend more? Well, then you need to collect more taxes. The idea that lowering taxes results in higher total revenues works to an extent, but I believe that it fails in the long run.
The simple - and only - answer is that, if you want to spend more, you have to raise taxes. If we had nationalized health care and I had higher taxes, but didn't have the $300 a month insurance premium I have to pay now, I'd bet that at best I'd pay a good deal less and at worst have a slight increase in total amount of taxes each month. Isn't that worth it to have health care provided for me, my family and everyone in the country that needs it regardless of income?
How does this all define me? It really doesn't; it mostly just gives a basis of explanation for me. Much of this has been at the heart of my thoughts for many years now. It's what I concluded was the "right" way to do things and what I've continued to investigate to make sure that it is still the "right" way to go about things over the ensuing years. And "right" isn't the right word - these are the things I think will be most helpful, most beneficial to me, my country and my fellow citizens. That doesn't make them "right"; it just makes them right to me. If you disagree with me, that doesn't make you wrong - it just makes you less "right" than I am!! :D
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Daily Show: Life in Wasillalalalala, Alaska
I laughed so hard I was almost crying:
Alright, ok... alright... I'm laughing again, so gimme a sec...
Alright. So, Wasilla, Alaska, has no fire department... no school system... no social services at all. And the mayor can only describe her job as signing checks once a week and holding staff meetings.
Well, golly gee, heck and darn, that sure does make Ms. Palin qualified to be governor of the state! Oh, well, maybe it doesn't. What's that you say? OH! She's not trying to be governor, she's the Republican nominee for VICE-FRICKIN'-PRESIDENT!!!! SCHWEEEEEEEEET!!! I'll feel safer knowing that, if they win, she'll be just one heartbeat of a 72-year-old with recurrent bouts of skin cancer away from being the single most powerful person in the world.
Alright, ok... alright... I'm laughing again, so gimme a sec...
Alright. So, Wasilla, Alaska, has no fire department... no school system... no social services at all. And the mayor can only describe her job as signing checks once a week and holding staff meetings.
Well, golly gee, heck and darn, that sure does make Ms. Palin qualified to be governor of the state! Oh, well, maybe it doesn't. What's that you say? OH! She's not trying to be governor, she's the Republican nominee for VICE-FRICKIN'-PRESIDENT!!!! SCHWEEEEEEEEET!!! I'll feel safer knowing that, if they win, she'll be just one heartbeat of a 72-year-old with recurrent bouts of skin cancer away from being the single most powerful person in the world.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
A little bit of everything
• Well, the 'Pokes took on another Top 20 behemoth from the land of Mormon. And the result was similar to last time - a 40-7 walloping by No. 14 Utah. Hey, at least they scored this time, right?
• I might have been just a tad early on the Dodgers bandwagon. Going down 2-0 to the Phillies is not a good way to start the NLCS, but it's not over yet. If anyone other than Manny and Ethier could get some offense going, the Dodgers still have a shot. And if the Rays and Sox keep beating up on each other they way they are and go to seven games, that might open the door for whoever comes out of the NL to steal the Series.
• I'm thinking the Broncos really need to invest in some Super Glue™ after their first half against Jacksonville so far. It's pretty sad when you're this offensive juggernaut and have dominated the game, but turnovers have sent you into halftime down 10-7. This should easily be a 21-10 lead for the Broncos but they're taking notes from Wyoming on how to kill any chance of winning by turning it over whenever they get a chance.
• I have to give John McCain credit for the exceedingly noble and humane gesture of having the courage to stand up and publicly admit that, no, Barack Obama is not actually an Arab. No other politician would have had the intestinal fortitude to, you know, actually admit the truth and correct one of the lies out there that has been boosting his support. And yes, there's just this tiny, eensie weensie bit of biting sarcasm there. I mean, c'mon, when his own ads have been doing everything they can to cast this mysterious light on Obama's background (when there's two full memoirs in print and widely read that document his background), how can he expect the less-than-diligent followers out there to think anything else?
With all the hate and anger the McCain campaign (not necessarily McCain himself) has been pumping into this race, McCain should have been putting out the word a month ago that the sort of hate and rhetoric that's been circulating was simply false and way over the top. Instead, he corrects some ignorant bumpkin lady that states Obama is an Arab and I hear pundits calling him such a good guy for doing it. Ugh.
• Following up on my earlier post about the electoral college race, I've been taking a look at fivethirtyeight.com the last couple of days. It takes a much more computational approach to interpreting the polls, with various polls weighted based on past performance and agreement with simulations of outcomes. These guys cut their teeth working on statistical analysis of baseball and have done some impressive work there, so I'm interested to see how close their projections come to the poll predictions and to actual results.
• I wish I would have had the camera with me a little bit ago. On the way home from Wal-Mart, Anisa found a red pen and managed to almost entirely cover her legs with red ink... sooo funny! The best part was when she was trying to pull her skirt down on the walk to the front door to try and cover all the pen on her legs, saying, "Jasmine is going to be mad when she sees what I did."
• I might have been just a tad early on the Dodgers bandwagon. Going down 2-0 to the Phillies is not a good way to start the NLCS, but it's not over yet. If anyone other than Manny and Ethier could get some offense going, the Dodgers still have a shot. And if the Rays and Sox keep beating up on each other they way they are and go to seven games, that might open the door for whoever comes out of the NL to steal the Series.
• I'm thinking the Broncos really need to invest in some Super Glue™ after their first half against Jacksonville so far. It's pretty sad when you're this offensive juggernaut and have dominated the game, but turnovers have sent you into halftime down 10-7. This should easily be a 21-10 lead for the Broncos but they're taking notes from Wyoming on how to kill any chance of winning by turning it over whenever they get a chance.
• I have to give John McCain credit for the exceedingly noble and humane gesture of having the courage to stand up and publicly admit that, no, Barack Obama is not actually an Arab. No other politician would have had the intestinal fortitude to, you know, actually admit the truth and correct one of the lies out there that has been boosting his support. And yes, there's just this tiny, eensie weensie bit of biting sarcasm there. I mean, c'mon, when his own ads have been doing everything they can to cast this mysterious light on Obama's background (when there's two full memoirs in print and widely read that document his background), how can he expect the less-than-diligent followers out there to think anything else?
With all the hate and anger the McCain campaign (not necessarily McCain himself) has been pumping into this race, McCain should have been putting out the word a month ago that the sort of hate and rhetoric that's been circulating was simply false and way over the top. Instead, he corrects some ignorant bumpkin lady that states Obama is an Arab and I hear pundits calling him such a good guy for doing it. Ugh.
• Following up on my earlier post about the electoral college race, I've been taking a look at fivethirtyeight.com the last couple of days. It takes a much more computational approach to interpreting the polls, with various polls weighted based on past performance and agreement with simulations of outcomes. These guys cut their teeth working on statistical analysis of baseball and have done some impressive work there, so I'm interested to see how close their projections come to the poll predictions and to actual results.
• I wish I would have had the camera with me a little bit ago. On the way home from Wal-Mart, Anisa found a red pen and managed to almost entirely cover her legs with red ink... sooo funny! The best part was when she was trying to pull her skirt down on the walk to the front door to try and cover all the pen on her legs, saying, "Jasmine is going to be mad when she sees what I did."
Friday, October 10, 2008
Keeping up with political races
A self-described "poll nerd" has put together this site to take poll results and turn them into an estimate of the electoral college outcome in the presidential race. He's also been looking at the polls to see how the Congressional races are going to impact the balance of power in the House and Senate. A very interesting site, so I thought I'd share it.
Friday, October 3, 2008
King John?
When I found this here, I could not believe what I was seeing.
His quote about 35 seconds in:
Ummmmm.... WTF???? Seriously??? He's not joking. He's not kidding. He's saying that with a straight face. This is what you get when you see the real John McCain.
His quote about 35 seconds in:
I’m not saying this is the perfect answer. If I were dictator, which I always aspire to be, I would write it a little bit differently. I would increase the FDIC insured deposits and done some other things.
Ummmmm.... WTF???? Seriously??? He's not joking. He's not kidding. He's saying that with a straight face. This is what you get when you see the real John McCain.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Disturbing thought of the... week? month? #!%@$ century??
I tend to enjoy sports a lot. I also enjoy politics and intellectual insight into the many facets of the world. Rarely are these two portions of my brain engaged at the same time, but Gregg Easterbrook's Tuesday Morning Quarterback column on ESPN.com has been doing so successfully for a long while now and is one of my most favoritest (yes, that's a word - in my world, at least :P ) reads of the week during football season. I may not agree with some of the things he says, but he at least makes me think about things a little more.
In his latest column, he put the recent economic turmoil and the government's response to it into terms that struck a chord with me. So I'm sharing it with you now:
In his latest column, he put the recent economic turmoil and the government's response to it into terms that struck a chord with me. So I'm sharing it with you now:
Last week, TMQ asked why no one was paying attention to the fact that the national debt ceiling was quietly raised by $800 billion during the summer. Well, toss that column: The White House just asked the national debt ceiling be raised another $700 billion, for the proposed financial-sector bailout. If that happens, in 2008 alone, $1.5 trillion will have been added to the national debt: every penny borrowed from your children and their children. Stated in today's dollars, in 1979 the entire national debt was $1.5 trillion. George W. Bush and Congress have in a single year added an amount equal to the entire national debt one generation ago. And the year's not over!If you ever needed more reason to feel sickened by our current state of affairs, there it is. I'm going to go cry while looking at my 401k statement again now.It took the United States 209 years, from the founding of the republic till 1998, to compile the first $5 trillion in national debt. In the decade since, $6 trillion in debt has been added. This means the United States has borrowed more money in the past decade than in all our previous history combined. Almost all the borrowing has been under the direction of George W. Bush -- at this point Bush makes Kenneth Lay seem like a paragon of fiscal caution. Democrats deserve ample blame, too. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, Democratic leaders of the Senate and House, have never met a bailout they didn't like: Harry and Nancy just can't wait to spend your children's money. Six trillion dollars borrowed in a single decade and $1.5 trillion borrowed in 2008 alone. Charles Ponzi would be embarrassed.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
My take on the economy
I was emailed this article today and read it with some interest. There's some good points in there, but a lot that I think is simply wrong. I initially responded directly to the email, but I think it was a reasonably good response, so I figured I'd toss it up on here as well. And so, without further babbling, here it is:
Meh. He far overstates the case.
Did Republicans contribute to the current problems? Absolutely. Their insistence on deregulation and slavish devotion to extreme free market practices led to a lot of this. However, much of the foundation was set during the Clinton administration, albeit with a Republican-controlled Congress. Certainly, of the two parties, the ones to shoulder more of the blame are the Republicans, but the Democrats aren't guilt-free by any means.
The thing is, this isn't a political thing. The government isn't the cause of all this. Yes, they should have been keeping a close eye on things and regulating the housing/mortgage industry a bit more. Bu that's like saying it's the fault of the police when a crazy man goes on a rampage and kills 30 people. Had they watched him and regulated him, he probably wouldn't have killed as many if any people - but are the cops to blame, or the person behind the trigger?
When you're looking at people to blame for this whole thing, the focus needs to be squarely on the bankers and economists directly involved. They got greedy. They saw this opportunity to make a ton of money off of poor people by giving them risky, overpriced mortgages (that the bankers pretty much knew they couldn't afford and knew that their customers were financially naive enough to not realize just how risky it was), the banks made a fat profit and then figured the could eventually foreclose, sell the house and start over again for some more fat profits for little work. On top of that, they saw that the risk itself was fairly minimal because you've got Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sitting at the bottom of the mountain with government-secured financing to back them up. There's no way THAT's going to fail, right??
If they had been able to stay just a *little* greedy, we'd have been fine. Yes, some poor folks would have ended up getting screwed, but not that many. The real problem was that those small fat profits weren't enough. So every year, the banks lowered their standards a little more... exposed themselves to a little more risk... snared even more people with risky loans... and the whole time were telling themselves, "Yeah, it's risky... but it hasn't failed yet. And not everyone can be doing as much risk-taking as we are, right?" And then it turned into almost a competition of "Which bank can have the largest portfolio of risky loans?"
And had it stayed there, we still might have been okay. But then the economists and the stock brokers got involved.They saw the fat profits on these loans and wanted their piece of the greed pie. So buying and selling of mortgages become a trendy way to make money. Investing in these risky lenders became the thing to do. And the whole time, the economists out there are telling us that this is a good thing, that profits are at record highs and that we should all be happy and comfortable, never taking the time to tell us that all of this is a house of cards built on the back of people that can't afford to keep buying more cards to build with.
Now, where in all that do you see Republicans or Democrats? Other than the fact that the bankers involved have some sort of personal politics, you don't see the government involved at all. Granted, that's part of the problem as I mentioned already - 10 years ago, regulators should have seen this starting and said, "Enough is enough. Stop it, you wascawwy wabbits!", but they didn't. So while I can understand the desire to blame politicians, especially Republicans as we're trying to find ways to ensure we don't suffer another 4 years of the vomit-inducing bullshit we've dealt with so far this century, it's simply incorrect to do so.
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