No Rest for the Voter

Just when we thought is was over, commercials are coming on TV for the November gubernatorial election. The one I have seen the most so far has been the one that replays Meg Whitman's wholly non-responsive response to a question about her not voting over the past 28 years. While she was nominally taking responsibility for her record, not giving the reason is going to keep this an issue.

My advice on this matter is to again take responsibility but to also embrace an emerging demographic. I would suggest an answer like this.

"It is true that I had not voted for many years. The reason I did not vote is that I was complacent. Government was not an important issue in my life at the time. At least, I did not think it was important. During those years, the Legislature, Governor's office, and regulatory agencies in Sacramento were expanding their budgets and granting themselves ever more influence in our lives. While they were doing that, I abetted it by being complacent. And over those same years, the rates of voter turnout have dropped while Sacramento careened out of control.

"The commercials imply that it is hypocritical for me to be running for Governor when I have not performed the minimum asked for of citizens in the past. I answer that it is not hypocrisy but an awakening. My neglect, and the neglect practiced by millions of other voters, have ultimately created the crisis we now face, and now we have to wake up and see the problem fixed. That awakening is happening, and the citizens of California need to either lose their complacency and engage the process or to re-engage by overcoming the despair that their vote cannot create a difference."

Those who haven't voted in the past but are now pissed off enough to get out on the streets.

Reflections on a Bumper Sticker

I passed a car with a bumper sticker calling for the repeal of Prop. 13. First time I had ever seen one like that, probably because almost everyone likes the control on property taxes. It makes it quite easy to be able to count on politicians being bound from jacking up taxes at a moment's notice.

Sounds kind of like rent control. I wonder what bumper sticker owner thinks about keeping landlords from raising rents whenever they feel like it.

This Would Truly be Ironic... I Think

It is really hard to know what exactly is ironic, but this situation would be if it happens.

Imagine: a Category 5 hurricane is barreling down on New Orleans. The damage is expected to be devastating, to say nothing of the oil slick that the storm surge will bring ashore.

Then, as the storm hits the site of the Deepwater Explorer fire. The oil slick, coating the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, prevents water vapor from rising up and feeding its heat into the storm. Starved for heat, the Hurricane dies out and hits the coast as little more than a tropical storm.

My Family History

There is a Certain Tactical Advantage

I can see some possibilities for a clandestine uprising in this story out of Saudi Arabia. Imagine a Virtue Cop stepping up to harass a woman, but said woman takes a gun out of her hijab and shoots the cop. Then she drops the gun mob style and disappears into a crowd of similarly concealed women.

There is a certain flavorful irony in taking advantage of the rules the state sanctioned thugs are charged to enforce to make them afraid.

Bad ass cleric

Where the Cuts are Felt

Powerline has an article referencing another poor care scandal in the government run hospitals in England. One part hit on a thought floating in my head:

An independent inquiry found that managers at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust stopped providing safe care because they were preoccupied with government targets and cutting costs. ...

Out here in California we voted down a series of tax increase initiatives disguised as budget controls. Since then it feels as if the state government is determined to punish the voters for denying the funding. In one Case, when the idea of furloughs was just being mentioned, some state beaches closed their showers, claiming lack of personnel to do the labor. If I recall correctly, that didn't fly because the cleaning was done by people doing Community Services terms.

That drove home what is the biggest ground level difference between the public and private sectors. Government agencies tend to resort to service cuts at the first sign of budget shortfalls. Meanwhile, a company in a competitive market would try to conceal those cuts from their customers for fear of losing them to the competition.

I will grant that not all corporations follow that logical path. Cable and insurance companies have the worst reputations. So my issue is not against the public sector as much as toward monopoly. The British story from their single payer (by definition monopolistic) system is classic.

An Intriguing Thought, But...

Meg Witman is running for governor of California on the premise that she has been successful at establishing a large corporation efficiently and profitably. I think that she is setting herself for one hell of a culture shock.

I would question the capacity for a successful executive to manage a government. My view is that a large corporation starts its slide and loses efficiency in direct proportion to the degree that it begins to act like a government. For said large corporation then, it would follow that an executive is successful in how she prevents that type of culture from developing.

So if there is was to be an executive that I would particularly feel good about voting for would be one who has taken an ossified, hidebound corporation and turning it back into an innovator. For instance, taking Microsoft and developing a consistent slate of products that would generate buzz on the level of Apple.

Creepiest Ad From the Super Bowl

Granted there is a minute plus left, but I don't think this one will be topped:

Are there any paranoid fantasies about environmentalism that they didn't use in this commercial? The worst part is that people are supposed to feel good about these scofflaws being punished. *shiver*

Starting the Cycle

The government is making noises that a sub $250,000 per year tax cut would lead to new jobs being created. How I see it is the cycle working like this:

Step 1: Consumers have more money to spend.
Step 2: Consumers purchase goods from corporations.
Step 3: Corporations have more money.
Step 4: Corporations hire more people.
Step 5: Return to Step 1.

Not too bad on the face of it, but there is one assumption that does not fit into the history of some of the actors involved. At the moment when Step 3 comes into effect the usual suspects will take offense and demand a remedy. In short "Tax Them!"

How to Make a Hockey Stick

Haven't finished reading this myself, but I plan on following the steps as an exercise in learning statistics.

Poitics by way of the Football Sidelines

Liberals vote for Head Coaches who will fire them up and lead them to victory.

Conservatives want an Equipment Manager who will take care of the gritty stuff so that they don't have to concern themselves with it.

I Thought Government Was All About Popularity

"It's been a thrill to be part of the best economic news story in America," Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement. "Now we are working toward an orderly wind down of this very popular program."

Just think about how well they will handle the popularity of affordable health care.

The One Sign You Need

I might have added Amtrack but the point is made.

Charlie Foxtrot

All of This Will Has No Backing

Kings most commonly, though strong in legions, are but weak in Arguments; as they who have ever accustomed from thir Cradle to use thir will only as thir right hand, thir reason always as thir left. Whence unexpectedly constrained to that kind of combat, they prove but weak and puny Adversaries.

Milton, Preface to Eikonoklastes
Via Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson

I have been seeing billboards for the new season of The Tudors (Yeah!). The series really makes Henry VIII a bad ass who has some difficulty mastering his appetites. The billboards are quite simple, Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII on his throne. Parts of the Lord's Prayer are used as taglines. One is "Thy Kingdom Come", and the other is "Thy Will Be Done". The one about Will got be to recall the quote above.

I have observed in the past that many people seem to equate sincerity with Correctness. If they well and truly believe, and if they have more belief than those who oppose them, then the world will reward them by conforming to their desires. Basically it is political science by The Secret.

These beliefs break any political problem into easily manageable solutions. The solutions are so easy, in fact, that there is no legitimate reason not to get with the program. The result is a neat little morality play with virtuous wishers on the one side and the malicious deniers who hide behind excuses of "too expensive" or "not feasible" on the other. Especially vile are those people who have great will but choose to do nothing. Who are these people? They are The Rich, who have the physical representation of Will in the modern world: Money.

This mode of thought is the only way I can think of that would allow people to think that more money to the same old programs will solve the problems that they have failed to solve in to past. Obviously, we as a Society have failed to exert enough Will to get the important things done.

How do you prove how sincere you are? If you have a legislative office, the answer is easy: you measure your sincerity with money. Nothing says "I believe" like an appropriation bill with lots of zeroes. Even better if you remove the capacity to exert Will upon the world from those without the best of intentions.

Sometimes it gets hard to comprehend the shear scale of the numbers being thrown around by the government of late. If I start seeing numbers like that at work I have to shift over to larger units (mega Newtons, giga bytes, kilogram, etc.). Dollars don't have neat prefixes, at least not yet. Unless the government gets a rein on the budget right quick, MegaBucks ain't gonna be just a Lottery.

Controlling Health Care

The Government says that they just want to control the costs. Too bad you can't do that without controlling the health care. Rationing and deciding who gets what will be inevitable.

The cliche says that nothing is more important than your health. So why shouldn't we have to pay for it? I admit that we are absolutely paying more for health care than we did in the past. Then again, wouldn't you agree that we are getting better health care now than we ever have? Given that the care it better than it was in the past, it must also follow that we are getting more health for our money.

So How’s Your Rainforest?

I know that most people who believe in government “solutions” to economic problems do so sincerely. I can’t understand the mental gymnastics necessary to believe that, and this thought is intended to point out the contortion.

Whenever you hear someone say that we need to raise taxes to get the money necessary to fix the economy, remember that they are using the same logic that would say: we need to harvest more teak to get the money necessary to save the rainforest.

My Uninformed Opinion-Oscars Edition

So here is my rant regarding the Oscars that bugs me every year.
One of these years I am going to get into a prize oriented Oscar pool. The basic plan I would go with is that any leading actor/actress that is playing in a biographical film is going to be the front runner.

Lets go to the history:

Julia Roberts- Erin Brockevich '00
Marcia Gay Harden- Pollock '00
Jennifer Conally - A Beautiful Mind '01
Nicole Kidman - The Hours (Virginia Woolf) '02
Charlize Theron- Monster '03
Jamie Foxx - Ray '04
Cate Blanchet - The Aviator '04
Phillip Seymour Hoffman- Capote '05
Reese Witherspoon- Walk the Line '05
Forest Whitaker- The Last King of Scotland (Idi Amin) '06
Helen Mirren-The Queen '06
Marion Cottilard - La Vie en Rose (Edith Piaf) '07
Sean Penn - Milk '08

Granted, I haven't seen either performance, but I can't help but think that having a role as a real-life politically correct hero put Sean Penn over Mickey Rouke's fictional character.

I'm seeing something of an objective bias in the academy despite their pleas of artistic subjectivity.

Random Thought

Few things piss people off more than something good happening to people they don't like.

Save us From the Bad Rich People

Its all about decentralizing the power.