Archive for 'political' Category

2011.04.21

Fixing California

I have little to argue with this article on the late, great California legislature. It points out three creeping, insidious and long term failures affecting the California legislature that inhibit and stymy the performance of its duties.

1: Term limits kill any experience from accumulating in our representatives. Essentially term limits as they stand now are a knowledge drain, and the result is sewage.

2: Proposition 13 needs, at a minimum, to be reformed. Not only does it keep housing taxes at a fixed rate more-or-less in perpetuity, but it requires any new taxes of any kind to require a 2/3 vote in the legislature. I’m not saying new taxes are always a solution, but let the legislature hang itself with the taxes when we vote them out when they screw up.

3: The article’s advocation of eliminating individual campaign contributions is the one item I have an issue with. I think this is a field that could be reformed or, better, completely revamped. I propose that to run for a legislative seat you should a certain number of signed petitions (say 100,000). Once underway, anyone can contribute to that election. The candidates all pull equally from that pool. Individuals, corporations and special interests can all contribute to the pool without limits. This way the candidates have equal footing so long as they can make the ticket.

The final piece I think is missing from the article is a reform of California’s referendum system. The referendum system is clearly broken with almost every single one requiring government spending (often mandatory) with no inclusions of where the money will come from. In some few cases it is used to limit the rights of others, and in other cases to cover for a cowardly legislature.

Now that I think about it, maybe what California really needs is a complete reboot. A new constitution, a clean wipe of all debts and existing laws. Let’s just make sure to get it right this time.

2011.04.18

American Aristocracy

When we were taking the train to Sevilla for our honeymoon, Rosa had picked up a copy of ¡Hola!, one of the numerous Spanish gossip magazines, to pass the time. Like the junk we have here in the States it covered “the important” people, but one of the main differences I saw was that many pages were devoted to the comings, goings and doings of the Spanish aristocracy. Spain, like England, is a constitutional monarchy (kind of like the many other European countries at the link).

It struck me that there was so much coverage, and gossip, of royalty, a class I personally consider dated and extinct. It’s something we in America hear about but rarely experience directly except our multitude of celebrities and their often disasterous lives. In a sense, from the perspective of the scream sheets, celebrity is the American aristocracy. I had told this to Rosa, even, but lately I’m thinking I am wrong.

America did away with European nobility on our shores and replaced it with something new and publicly secret: the rich, or as most of them should be called, the overclass.

Take any of the old rich (Rockefellers, Du Ponts, Venderbilts, Astors, Hearsts, etc) and you’ll see they are still wealthy. Take any of the newer rich (Koshs, Hiltons, Bushes, Waltons, etc) and you’ll see they are blatantly passing wealth and power to their children, too. They have manipulated the system so that their wealth stays inside their families so that within a generation you have people who have known nothing but excessive money and have only grown more of it because the system as it exists now allows them. This sounds stikingly like noble families, who have also known nothing but their power and influence.

Take, for instance, the debate around inheritence taxes, which conservatives call a “death” tax. Statistically 91% of Americans inherit nothing (except, often, debt). Those that do inherit are already in the top 10% of wealth (which, generally speaking, are millionaires or better). While technically not a “noble” class with titles and “royal” blood, they are an effective oligarchy with the richest 400 families controlling $1.27 trillion, little of which “trickles down” to the rest of the nation. When power and wealth remains concentrated in the few and is handed down generation to generation within the family, then we no longer have anything akin to democracy in a republic; we have a plutarchy.

We do have our own form of aristocracy here in America. The gap between the rich and the rest of us is only increasing. When will we get back to our roots and have a revolution?

Unfortunately, not until we all realize the idea that any one of us could also join that upper class is as likely as any one of us being struck by lightning (~1/750,000) the exact same moment we learn we won the grand lottery (~1/120,000,000): statistically impossible.

2011.03.25

Religion on the Decline

Some say religion is on the decline in many parts of the world. In fact, it is supposedly heading towards extinction. Read this and tell me that wouldn’t be a bad thing. I know the article about Pi is satire, but it rings so true that I don’t think I would miss this brand of Republican, nor the religion that inspires them. I’m not slamming all religion, mind you, just the ones that aren’t dealing with reality and could think that Pi (?) could equal three, or that the Earth is only a couple thousand years old, or that the Earth is flat and the sun, planets and stars orbit us. There are a shocking number of people who fit this category…

2011.03.05

Taxing the Rich

At one point we had no national debt. No deficit. A thriving middle class. Poverty on the decline. Now we have all of that in its opposite form. What changed? Reduced taxes on the rich.

I’m not saying we necessarily need to tax them at the 90% rate we used to, but it seems to me that they do need to share more of the burden, and their political apologists and excuse makers need to be booted from public life.

Rich people have no interest in anything except wealth (it’s accumulation or expression). There are minor exceptions, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, but even there they are getting tax write offs that, to one degree or another, help them (and most don’t even do that much). Besides, the Gates are so wealthy it is mind boggling.

2011.03.04

Revolt!

It’s clear to most people that many things in America are broken. We have two primary parties (I’m not Green, BTW) that, while they espouse different philosophies, generally no longer side with the public good. We have state and federal programs (sometimes set up secretly) that were set up for the public benefit and yet seem to use their money to fund their friends and other powerful individuals and to line their own pockets. We have governments at every level running out of money and running on deficits despite paying sports coaches millions of dollars. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and the middle class in America is not improving.

Revolution. It worked here in 1776. It worked in France. It seems to be working in portions of the Middle East right now (and at least people there seem to care enough to try). I’d like to see a movie about this kind of revolution. I’d like to read a book where this revolution comes true. I’d like to see Anonymous participate. I’d like to see average Americans join the cause.

That’s all I have to say about that because ultimately revolutions are, to one degree or another, violent. And I’d hate for you to read my honest opinion.

2011.02.08

Reagan’s Legacy

Even though Ronald Reagan’s birthday was two days ago he’s still pretty heavily covered in the online news I check out. What I find astonishing is that every conservative out there lauds him as practically a demi-god. Every single one of them tries to make comparisons to him and attempts to hearken back to his Presidency as if it were the most perfect Presidency ever.

It was not, and Reagan was just a man. A man with some very admirable traits, who did some good things, but who was not infallible. Remember the Iran-Contra Affair? Remember the first substantial increase in our national debt? Remember the single largest (at the time) tax increase in US history? Remember how Nancy Reagan consulted an astrologer and not the Bible to help set Reagan’s schedule? Read more here and here.

Despite all of his foibles, however, I still think kinda fondly of the old Gipper. I still tear up even thinking of his comforting words after the Shuttle Challenger disaster, and I remember clearly watching him and Gorbachev together and thinking, “OK, the world just might not end in nuclear annihilation.” He was the cusp of old-school, accountable Republicans and the new-school, proselytizing show boats we have today (there are always exceptions, but I’m generalizing).

The fact is, Reagan was just a man and not a myth. Men sometimes deserve the respect they earn, a place in history, and to have their legacy viewed realistically and in context. He doesn’t need or deserve the blind worship that conservatives and others give him. It’s sad that they would claim his legacy to start wars in the Middle East when he worked so hard for peace in this world (amongst a laundry list of things he would hate about Republicans of today).

RIP, Gipper; you gave me -at the time- great hope for the future. Cheers.

2010.11.19

The Party of WTF

I am, despite what many people think, not a Democrat (speaking in terms of American politics). However, I am definitely not a Republican. As time goes on I have less and less respect for Republicans as well. Recently they have made headway into Congress (taking back the House and gaining enough seats to bust up a Senate majority). OK, whatever.

But now they are now showing hypocritical zebra stripes. For example Andy Harris, a Republican from Maryland, won his race partially by vowing to repeal “Obamacare”, the new national health care initiative. Yet upon his Congressional orientation he wanted to know where his (government supported) health care would kick in. When told it would take a month he got pissed and wanted to know what he was supposed to do in the meantime. Hey, Mr. Harris, why don’t you go get private insurance? With your new job and its $174,000 a year (significantly more than most of us) should allow you to afford something out there.

Of course not all Republicans are men. Some are women and some of those women won positions in the new Congress as well. Which is confusing because they must have participated in preventing equal pay to women. Yep, Republicans have just voted to not close loopholes which would see that businesses must pay women equally to men (estimated at 77 cents per every dollar a man earns). I have an idea; since there are women in Congress let’s pay them less for being there and only give them $133,980. I’m sure Andy Harris, Republican from Maryland, would approve.

Finally, the Republicans have always billed themselves as the party of National Security. To prove this they have increased our military spending, invaded not one but two countries, passed laws limiting our privacy (and more; remember the USA PATRIOT Act?), created the Department of Homeland Security with its Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and their wonderfully invasive scanners and pat downs which has even caused Florida, a traditional Republican stronghold, to think of firing the TSA. Oh, there’s more, but I’m not writing a book here. So what do these Republican, protectors of national security, do next? Well, they oppose the new START Treaty of course! Why would we want to limit the world’s nuclear arsenal, inspect Russia’s nuclear arsenal, or even prevent nuclear war by passing this treaty? Don’t answer that, it’s rhetorical.

It’s very frustrating to see Republicans stooping even lower than their previous label of the “Party of No” (even within their own Party!) to something even worse: The Party of WTF.

Revolution!

2010.04.30

American Ex-Pats Giving Up Citizenship

More and more expats are giving up their citizenship. This is not a good thing, but I had no idea we still had to pay Federal taxes when living abroad, nor did I realize that various recent (post 9/11) laws make it very difficult for us to live abroad, especially if we just happen to need a bank.

Stringent new banking regulations — aimed both at curbing tax evasion and, under the Patriot Act, preventing money from flowing to terrorist groups — have inadvertently made it harder for some expats to keep bank accounts in the United States and in some cases abroad.

Hopefully something is done about this in our government, but I’m certainly not holding my breath. It makes me rather happy I earned so little money (relatively speaking) when I was in Prague; they can’t come after me for tax evasion!

2010.04.08

Obama and Some Polls

I’m not a big fan of polls. However, some that aren’t designed to weigh in on whether a person should do a thing but rather what a population’s perception of the person is can be illuminating. This Harris poll is rather scary, because they are all about how Americans view President Obama.

He is a socialist (40%)
He wants to take away Americans’ right to own guns (38%)
He is a Muslim (32%)
He wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one world government (29%)
He has done many things that are unconstitutional (29%)
He resents America’s heritage (27%)
He does what Wall Street and the bankers tell him to do (27%)
He was not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president (25%)
He is a domestic enemy that the U.S. Constitutions speaks of (25%)
He is a racist (23%)
He is anti-American (23%)
He wants to use an economic collapse or terrorist attack as an excuse to take dictatorial powers (23%)
He is doing many of the things that Hitler did (20%)
He may be the Anti-Christ (14%)
He wants the terrorists to win (13%)

Unsurprisingly, the percentages for Republican are much higher than these averages, as are the percentages for the less educated.

I’ll refrain from extensive editorializing aside to say: What a freaking pack of idiots we have in this country.

2010.02.06

Cutting Services

I read this article and my first thoughts were, “Holy shit!”

COLORADO SPRINGS — This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won’t pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

Yet the more I thought about it, the more I came to appreciate what was happening, especially in places where people are averse to taxes. “You don’t want to pay taxes, then here are the consequences.” I think this is pretty much what the state of California needs to do. You don’t want to repeal Prop 13? You want to keep heaping on voter initiatives that cost the state money? Then you will have to deal with the consequences and, like Colorado Springs, it will be painful.