Writing versus Reading

Just got done with a year long binge of reading.  Yeah, reading, not cocaine, not porn, not watching the entire run of Weeds.  Well, I did the Weeds thing, how could I not.  I'm from the West Coast right?

As you've seen, not much writing has been getting done around here.  And it's probably because of all the reading.  Apparently, I can't read and write at the same time.  Let me clue you in to the monumental task that it is to keep my considerable intellect occupied.

In the last year, I read:
The Lord of the Rings
Dune
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
God Emperor of Dune
Heretics of Dune
Chapterhouse: Dune
Speaking of Jesus by Carl Madearis
The Next Christians by Gabe Lyons.
Love Wins by Rob Bell
Sex, Mom and God by Frank Shaeffer and that rounds out back to about March at which point it gets a little fuzzy.

Before that, I read Crazy for God by Frank Shaeffer, Rebooting the American Dream by Thom Hartmann, They like Jesus but not the Church by Dan Kimball, and When Christians Get it Wrong by Adam Hamilton. That goes back to when I got Kindle for iPhone in the early part of the year.

If that weren't enough, after Lord of the Rings, I read:
The Hobbit
The Rapture Exposed
Liespotting
Pornland
Fuse of Armageddon
And I'm currently working on Wind Power by Paul Gipe, but that's for class.  I'd read it anyway.

That's a year's reading for me.  I read more books in the last year than many people read in their entire life.  If you're wondering which books to read, I don't often finish a book if I don't like it.  You could read any of these and find them stimulating

But I think I'm going to start writing again.  I've already been working on my beekeeping website.  It's my own personal encyclopedia of beekeeping.  Check it out at parkerfarms.biz.  I also have a beekeeping blog at parkerfarms.blogspot.com.

I'm still looking for ideas, though I have plenty of fodder in politics.  I like hypocrisy especially.  Not to watch it, to criticize it.

I am,
WiredForStereo

@wiredforstereo on Twitter too.

Book Review: Fuse of Armageddon

In modern apocalyptic fiction, there is but one name known throughout the world, Left Behind.  It is a novelized account of what will happen when the beast of Revelation shows up and decides to do his work.  But it's terrible.  Popular among the young and impressionable evangelical conservatives, but to any discerning reader, just terrible.  The plot lines are thin, convoluted, completely lacking in reality or human condition and at some points, patently bogus.  Like the part where as soon as the conservative Christians are raptured away, the world goes to heck in a rocket sled and just signs the whole planet over to the 'antichrist.'  Like liberals could ever agree on anything.  I put 'antichrist' in quotes because of how horribly they misuse the term.  Nowhere in the Bible is mentioned "the antichrist."  In the few places it does appear, it's "an antichrist" or "of antichrist."  The antichrist is not a single person, but anyone with a certain attitude or ambition.

I digress.

Anyway, Sigmund Brouwer and Hank Hanegraaff started their own series which is the partial-preterist answer to the Left Behind series.  It's called "The Last Disciple."  Instead of showing a future plot line, it is historical fiction as what John was talking about took place during the decade or so before the fall of the Temple in 70 AD.  The wrote the first two books and then took a break to write "Fuse of Armageddon."  Fuse is a tomorrow sort of book where you get the idea that the lead up to the climax of the book is taking place right now.  In novel form, it shows what could happen if dispensational eschatologists took their beliefs to ultimate fruition and tried to bring about Armageddon by sacrificing a red heifer and cleansing the temple mount with its ashes.  It shows what could happen if radical christian Zionists get their hands on the controls.

Mr. Brouwer as the novelist is the analog to Jerry Jenkins, the novelist of the LB series, and Mr. Hanegraaff is the theologian behind the story the same as Tim LaHaye.  The prime difference is, Brouwer and Hanegraaff write things that could actually happen.  Their characters say things people would actually say and they do things people might actually do.  Their characters are smart and there's no spiritual heeby jeeby nonsense going on to finagle things in to fitting the biblical narrative counter to the way real people actually do things.

In all my exploration of theology and eschatology, the partial preterist viewpoint is the only one that has ever made sense to me.  And it doesn't rely on doing grammatical douchebaggery to make everything fit together like a jigsaw puzzle of a beautiful sunset which ends up being a mustard stain on a pair of mechanic's overalls.  It fits together and it makes sense and all you have to do is take the literal things literally and the apocalyptic things apocalyptically.  Also throw in a bit of 'tradition is slightly mistaken about when certain things happened.'  I'm always a sucker for getting rid of outmoded traditions.  It works because it makes sense for real people who said these things, who heard these things, and who did these things.

Being told that Armageddon was going to happen in 1997 is tantamount to child abuse in my view.  Hope you had a better childhood.  That's all I got to say about that.

The only trouble I have with this book is something that was a terrible aspect of the Left Behind series, portraying the other side.  How do you write dialog for an argument for which one side is your side?  When should the opposing side be left dumbfounded?  How weak should the opposing side's arguments be?  The Left Behind series portrayed the other side exactly as they saw the other side, the trouble is, that's not how the other side is.  Brouwer and Hanegraaff do a much better job as far as I can see it, but it's still not perfect.  What is perfect?  I don't know.  I'm on their side.  I've never believed the stuff on the other side.  Sometimes you genuinely try to show what the other side believes, and sometimes you're just pushing propaganda.  Walk that line.  These guys don't push the agenda too hard, it's just part of the facts of the story.  In the end, the televangelist doesn't just magically switch sides on the issue, he thoughtfully admits that maybe his view isn't the only one, and that's something enlightenment does to real people.

Overall, I enjoyed this book.  I love the way Brouwer interweaves his plot lines, telling each story in little snippets and moving back and forth between them right at the most suspenseful moments.  I read this book pretty rapidly and would have read it faster had I had more time.  I give it 9/10, for the message and for the story.

I will be reading the next book in the Last Disciple series, it's coming out later this year and will be called "The Last Temple."

Update: Was the New World Translation mentioned as the most accurate translation of the Bible on Jeopardy?

I wrote about this several years ago and I have continued to get plenty of hits on the subject.  So having this subject kept fresh in mind, I have had plenty of chances to go back and re-look for evidence of its happening.

The myth is (via chain email) that on Jeopardy, Alex Trebek once presented an answer to the effect of "The most accurate translation of the Bible" to which the question was "The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures by The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society."

Did this ever happen?

The short answer is no.

I have never found any evidence of it.  Not on YouTube, not on Google Video, and not now that the entire archive of Jeopardy questions and answers is available online.  http://www.j-archive.com/

You are free to check for yourself.  But I have found more evidence for Michael Jackson still being alive.  Michael Jackson was a Jehovah's Witness as well, but that's neither here nor there.

The important thing here, aside from the evidence or lack thereof, is that you need to learn to think critically.

Let's review the situation here:

1.  The claim is from an email forward.  Anyone familiar with these, or Snopes.com or other debunking websites knows that email forwards are almost invariably universally unequivocally always false.  In my estimation, I'd say that upwards of 90-95% of all emails are completely bogus or at the very least offer a real picture with a false explanation.  NEVER place any trust in ANY email forward, it's like going to the casino and betting that you'll win every time.  It doesn't work that way.

2.  The claim is that the topic appeared on Jeopardy, a pop culture and history quiz show where people win actual money, is widely viewed, and features geniuses.  'The most accurate translation of the Bible' is a 100% subjective item, especially between the camps of Jehovah's Witnesses and the rest of Christendom.  Such a thing I dare say would never appear on Jeopardy.

3.  Consider the state of religion today.  If such a thing had happened, it would have been leaped upon by every religious media program there is.  It would be on the Bible Answer Man, it would be heard from the podcasts of innumerable pulpits, and it would be on every apologetics website there is.  However, the truth is, it isn't in any of these places.  There is a simple and overwhelming lack of evidence.  It's as if someone said "in the middle of a cornfield in Nebraska sometime between the years of 1984 and 2005, a man played checkers with a cornbread bust of Abraham Lincoln."  There's just no evidence.

I have heard several anecdotal reports of the question.  However, as we know, anecdotal evidence is one of the most unreliable pieces of evidence there is.  All humans have a propensity to remember things not as they were, but as some sort of glorified or horrified version of events.  The truth is, we make things up and we forget things and in our own minds without corroborating evidence, it always all still fits together seamlessly.  That's how our minds work.  But its only when you go back and watch that old film of the vacation at the lake do you realize that the boat was actually blue and not red.

The best explanation I have found for this happening is that there was some sort of church youth event which taught about different religions and at the end there was a Jeopardy style quiz for the youth to answer questions about what they had learned.  There was a question about which Bible JW's read and the answer was of course the New World Translation.  From there, it morphed into what we know as this phenomenon today where people still insist despite the evidence and logic that they saw that particular episode of Jeopardy even though they can't point to a time and even though the archive of Jeopardy questions contains it not.

It's sad that even today people will hold on to belief in something that doesn't matter in the slightest and that there is absolutely no evidence for.

Let it go.

It didn't happen, and it wouldn't matter if it did.

It's a Great Time for Democracy

Just wanna throw my hat in support for the democratic uprisings we're seeing all over the Muslim world, and in the US too in the fight for union rights.  These are all good things.

WiredForStereo

Nothing's Really Moving Me Right Now

Nothing that I can properly talk about anyway.

Sorry.

I really need to be inspired to make good posts, to write with feeling.

Just not feeling much right now.

I have been working on my beekeeping blog a bit lately, check it out if you're interested in bees at all.  They really are fascinating creatures.  In beekeeping, there's an excellent opportunity to practice organic farming right now.

Once again, I ask for suggestions on subjects about which to write.  I have been thinking lately about the literal-ness of the Bible.  It could make for a lengthy post, but quite interesting.  What do you think?

WiredForStereo

Movie Review: Temple Grandin starring Claire Danes

I've been following Dr. Temple Grandin the person for several years.  Well, let me qualify that, she's over fifty already anyway.  She didn't just get discovered or anything, she designed the handling facilities for half the cattle slaughtering houses in the country.  She's an autistic who has the ability to remember in pictures and has used her abilities to change the way we deal with animals on the way to slaughter.  I have heard a number of interviews with her and a presentation or two that she's given.  She's a very brilliant person.

To the movie.

Now this is acting.  Acting is worthless when you're just watching the person on screen in some form of themselves.  Claire Danes is brilliant in this film.  Her portrayal of Grandin is very close, her mannerisms, speech patterns, and tone.  She's not perfect, but it's hard to know exactly since the good doctor is a bit older now.  When I heard her opening line in the movie, I said "That's not how Temple Grandin talks, but it's close enough."  Of course Danes portrays her when she was much younger than she is now.  Grandin herself in the special features remarks as to how close Danes' portrayal is.

This is one of those stories you wouldn't believe if it wasn't real.  Grandin has done so much with her life, and she came from a time when autistic children were more often than not institutionalized.  She was the first person to explain what it was like to be autistic.

I absolutely loved this movie and I would recommend it to anyone, and in fact, you should really see it. 

10/10

WiredForStereo

The Electric Vehicle Truly is the Future

Electric vehicles are the future.  Anyone can generate electricity and on a small scale, using renewables is just as easy as using the traditional methods, easier in some cases.  Electric vehicles provide the range the vast vast majority of us need on a daily basis and in the winter time, they heat up faster too.  But like everything, they have their downsides.

The first downside and the most important one in my book is the human resistance to change.  We've had fossil fueled vehicles almost exclusively for a hundred years.  We have some electric buses and trains in and near big cities, but many of us don't live in big cities.  There's the concept called "range anxiety" where people are supposed to be concerned about how far their EV can go.  There's the time it takes to recharge, and the availability of charging locations away from home.  And for some reason (obvious source when you think about it) fear is drummed up about the cost of replacing the battery.

First let me address the battery.  There's a fundamental difference between electric and FF cars.  A gas engine can be expected to last around 300,000 miles or so with a few repairs along the way.  After that, it will need a rebuild, or depending on the car, it might have already had one.  But in any case, it will be worn out.  There will be metal inside the engine which will no longer be there.  That's why oil turns black, it's carrying the little pieces of metal that have worn off from the inside of the engine.  A diesel can be expected to last significantly longer because it's built far more competently.  Some diesels can last longer than a million miles.

But an electric vehicle is different.  There is essentially only one movable part in the "engine."  There's a rotor that spins around on the inside of the motor casing inside the coils.  Virtually all production electric vehicles utilize AC motors which have no wearable "brushes" to transfer electricity from the non moving to the moving parts.  What does this leave us?  The only wearable parts are the bearings which are replaceable, and the transmission which unlike a car transmission will not likely have any gears, clutches, or sensors.  An EV has no emissions equipment to go bad, no exhaust system to rust out, no fluids to change, no fan belts to squeak, and because of regenerative braking, the brake pads may last the life of the car.  Typical repair costs will be minimal at most.

But the battery, what do we do about the battery?  Latest estimates have the battery costing between $3000 to $10,000 in an electric vehicle and supposed to last 150,000 miles in California and estimated to last 10 years elsewhere.  But there's an aspect that you don't get if you don't go in depth.  At the end of a battery's projected life, it doesn't just die one day.  The end of a battery's life is 70% capacity.  That means instead of going 100 miles, it goes 70.  Instead of going 300 miles it goes 210.  It's obviously not the end of the world.  There's another aspect that bears investigation as well.  If in ten years you do decide you need a new battery, the batteries available will be far better than the one you have now.  And since your electric car is far from actually wearing out anyway, it will be worth the investment, like doing that engine rebuild.  In fact, it may be worth it to replace the seats, some or most of the interior, maybe even upgrade the motor.  A car can be more like a house as far as capital investment goes because it's not quite so much of a consumable product any more.

Let's talk about range.  This is where my big solution comes in.  Right now, the major electric car available is the Nissan LEAF.  The current LEAF comes with about 100 mile range, more if you like to hypermile.  Aside from the fact that this range easily covers the daily commute of over 90% of the population, think about charging at work.  I would consider it a perk of a job to be able to plug my car in (slow charge of course) at work.  Even if you do charge from dead to full (not likely to happen) with the whole 25 kWh, that's still between $2 to $5 anywhere in the US.  It's just not that big of a deal.  Even if your boss is a tight-@$$, maybe he'll let you drop a fiver for the privilege or do a monthly fee.  Better yet, park nearby at some nice local business who will let you charge.  There are options.  It's doable even if it does put you out of your comfort zone.  Better yet, in two years or so, the second generation Toyota Rav4 EV is supposed to have a range of 300 miles.

But what about long trips?  First, I doubt there will be many households with only all EV's.  I plan on commuting on a motorcycle the majority of the year, an electric motorcycle.  So for long trips, you could keep a vehicle around, it should last a long time since you won't be using it much.  Or you could rent one for trips. 

But I have an idea.  You likely have heard about the Chevy Volt which has a range extender built in, a generator to maintain charge after the battery has run low.  However, this adds considerable weight to the car which you'll have to drag around when you don't need it.  What if you could put the generator on the trailer?  better yet, what if you could rent the generator on the trailer?  What if you could go to UHaul and rent a generator trailer for your electric car?  Or, you could build one out of spare parts.  It can be done.

And it has been done.  Check out this picture of the generator trailer developed for the first Rav4 EV and the tZero.  It uses a two cylinder Kawasaki motorcycle engine and has special steering so that when you back up, you don't have to worry about knowing how to back a trailer.

Here's a Polar Power DC generator that I have been looking at lately.  It uses a Perkins 4 cylinder diesel engine with a permanent magnet alternator.  Since most EV's today use battery packs with voltages below 400, it's no problem to match voltages with the generator.  Check them out at http://www.polardcmarine.com/polarpower/products/dc-generators/ they have several smaller models as well.

Coincidently, the LEAF already has a DC quick charging plug.  It's the one on the left.  Not sure, but I think this could be useful.

You may have read about (or saw on YouTube) my recent generator project where I used a car alternator and a rototiller engine and an inverter to make a cheap fixable generator.  Next on the docket is the Parker Engineering Mark II DC Generator.  I have purchased a used 6 hp Lombardini diesel engine and I'm building a full frame and enclosure for it to make another generator.  If I can find another higher amperage alternator, it I should be able to make a significantly better overall machine, with higher sustained power output, better fuel economy and longer run time, not to mention quieter.  Electric start will be a bonus as well.  Look for it soon.

My point with all of this is that there are a lot of great options with a bit of good ol' American engineering.  An individual with just a little know how and an internet connection can figure out a whole bunch of solutions to use a variety of machines and technologies to produce power.  Modern electric cars will make that even more possible.  They will also bring about cheaper battery technology which will make it easier to build custom electric cars and for homes to be off grid.  Off grid means lower energy usage all around.

With energy, less is better.
WiredForStereo

The Doctrine of American Exceptionalism

What’s the best way to be?  Is it:  Better than everyone else?  Stronger than everyone else?  Smarter than everyone else?  More morally pure then everyone else?  Wealthier than everyone else?

The Doctrine of American Exceptionalism offers you the opportunity to be all of the above.  And you don’t even have to try, you just have to be born here, or successfully immigrate and obtain citizenship and preferably white.

You may have heard of American Exceptionalism.  It is a theory that the United States occupies a special role among the nations of the world in terms of its national ethos, political and religious institutions, and its being built by immigrants. The roots of the position have been dated back to 1630 with John Winthrop's "City Upon a Hill" (you may have heard that in a Reagan speech) although some scholars attribute it to a passage of Alexis de Tocqueville, who argued that the United States held a special place among nations because it was the first working representative democracy.

You may have heard conservative windbags like Sean Hannity say things like “how can Obama be an effective president, he doesn’t even believe in the Doctrine of American Exceptionalism.”

You may have heard or even believe that the United States is the greatest country in the history of the world.  For me, it’s the root of the phrase “God bless America.”  Sure, I want God to bless America, but not by destroying other nations at our feet.  For me it’s “God bless America, and everybody else too.”

America may hold a top-of-the-pile position today, and for the last number of decades or a century or two, but it’s not because we are those things I listed in the first paragraph.  It’s because for the most part, we haven’t had a war on our soil that destroyed our entire infrastructure.

If you listen to conservative talk radio or watch Fox News (I’ve decided that Fox doesn’t report the news, Fox reports the truth, see Jon Stewart’s recent interview with Chris Wallace) you’ll hear that we are so much way more awesome than Europe where socialism is.  I’ve had it told to me that we are way more innovative.  Our economy is way better.  And we have all these “freedoms.”

But to be fair, what really happened?  What is really the case?  And why?

Europe has been a little slow.  But if the US had been the location of two world wars in thirty years, we’d have been slow too.  Much of Europe got the living cuss bombed out of it in WWII.  You’ll also notice how little of our famed innovation has come out of the south where the Civil War destroyed all manner of progress.  I live in Arkansas, where there appears to be only one major university.  As far as I can tell, the greatest density of universities and colleges is in the North East and West Coast. 

When Europe got out of WWII, they were so hosed, they had to go about things completely differently.  We were the victors.  Nary a bomb had dropped on our soils.  Soldiers returning from war came back to the new middle class centered plan of the New Deal.  Taxes on the rich were high.  Unions thrived.  We boomed.  Europe on the other hand was hosed.  Hosed hosed hosed. 

They had massive casualties, fire bombed out cities, bridges destroyed, airports with holes all over them and no oil reserves.  Germany had to pay reparations (again) and Britain was so gutted, they had rationing for years afterward.  But they’ve come back.  They have pretty robust economies now.  They have low unemployment, and don’t have nearly the economic swings we capitalists have.

More and more lately, I’ve come to believe that all that stuff they used to tell us in grade school about being the greatest country on earth is a load of hooey.  They tell us about all sorts of advances in technology, medicine and whatnot.  Where is the first mass produced electric car coming from?  Nissan.  Who has the best healthcare in the world?  Not us.  Where was your cell phone made?  Not here.  Where is your job?  Somewhere else.

They tell us that the constitution is a moral document, that God had his hand in its writing like he dictated the King James Version of the Bible.  We got “all men are created equal” you know, except for slaves and whatnot, oh and women, don’t forget women.  And it turns out that many of the founders weren’t Christians, at least not the kind we’re told they were.  Blasphemy of blasphemies, the great Thomas Jefferson cut out all the miraculous stuff from the Bible and republished his own version!

How’s that racism coming along.  Well, there were some of us who were against it for a long time, but we had to have a war over it, oh yeah, and after we whooped Britain in the Revolutionary War, they abolished slavery decades before we did.  Now we have a black radical Christian Muslim president.  Figure that one out for yourself.  How surprising was it that the day after he was elected, gun sales skyrocketed?  The economy is in the ash can, but you haven’t seen any gun stores closing.  Just recently there are people protesting a “mosque” with a domed roof going up near a freeway in Phoenix which actually as it turns out is really a non-denominational church.  Xenophobia - An exaggerated or abnormal fear of strangers or foreigners.  I was listening to “Christian” radio last night.  Their “news” segment consisted of a guy ranting about how important it was to cast extra suspicion upon anyone who was a Muslim for fear of terrorism.

What about on the moral front?  Surely we are the center of morality pure as the driven snow in the world.  Not hardly.  What did we do to the Indians?  We royally screwed them over.  We forced them off their nice land that they had occupied for maybe thousands of years and we concentrated them out in the desert, and Oklahoma.  United States military forces murdered thousands upon thousands of them outright in cold blood.

Then World War II comes along and we have vast resources that we commit to building the atomic bomb.  And then we drop the most powerful bomb in the history of the world on civilians.  What an cusshole thing to do.  The moral high ground is to act in honor and civility no matter how provoked.  Truman could have called up Hirohito and said “Hey, we got a bomb.  We got a big cussing bomb, and we’re gonna drop it in the middle of Tokyo Bay, and then you got 48 hours to surrender or we’re gonna glass your little island.”  But no, we didn’t drop it in Tokyo Bay.  We didn’t drop it in the sparsely inhabited mountains that make up so much of Japan.  We didn’t drop it anywhere where it would do a little damage but make a big point.  We dropped it on civilians who were just trying to get along with their lives.  If we want to be exceptional, we must always hold the moral high ground, and we are so very bad at it.  But they’ve come back.  They’re doing pretty good, and while they are clawing their way to the top of the Environmental Performance Index, we are screwing our way down.  You wouldn’t believe the countries that are beating us now.  Look it up for yourself, we suck (on that index).

Likewise is our dealing with the Middle East.  Understand this.  Islam is a warlike religion with a tribal history.  It has a strong sense of revenge and vengeance and vendetta or whatever you want to call it.  So when we go bomb the towel heads, we wind up the kind of cuss-storm we can’t truly understand.  They’ll wear us down to the last man, the last dollar, the last bullet, the last bayonet because their sense of revenge is far better developed than ours is.  So what are we?  We’re the invaders.  I’m an active advocate of non-violence, but if someone walks into my country, onto my property with violent intent, I’ll be the first one to be slinging lead around.  There’s a different sort of mindset when you waltz into someone else’s country and start shooting.  And we’ve been on the wrong side of that coin so many times, you’ll never see it paid back.  We’d have to be invaded by two dozen different countries before we even start to get even.

And the thing that bugs me the most is when people say that God is the one behind our supposed greatness.  I guess I can blame God for all the above then?  Why does God get blamed?  Why would God bless the good ol’ US of A?  Is it because we’ve been good?  Not that I can tell.  Are we some sort of chosen nation?  I think that one was Israel.  Is it because we’re white and righteous?  There’s a Mormon reference.  BOOM!  The truth is, our church movement is stagnated and beginning to die.  We’re very nearly post-Christian.  And I for one am glad.  Maybe soon we can stop blaming God for how “awesome” we are. 

If we’re a Christian nation, we’re cuss sure a poor example of one.  But I guess that’s just hyperbole.  I don’t believe it.  I don’t have any evidence that shows it to be true.  And I’ve looked.  I’ve read the constitution, God isn’t in there.  He’s in the Confederate constitution go figure, but not ours.  There’s nothing exceptional about the US.  We got lucky on stuff like natural resources.  We killed off all the natives leaving us vast expanses of land.  We haven’t been bombed.  We were immigrated by people willing to work.  But there’s nothing exceptional about us.  We’re human like everyone else.

WiredForStereo

White House Gives In On Bush Tax Cuts

Don't give up Obama, let the Bush Tax Cuts die!
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

[sarcasm]Now that the Republicans have Won, Abortion will End![/sarcasm]

Before I start, let me assure you that this is my own original political analysis and I have neither seen on TV nor read in any media nor heard on the radio what I am about to tell you.  I just wanted to say that because I get accused of copying Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews and I just want everyone to know that I don't and have never watched their shows.  Not a single time.  I don't even have cable.  I am a democratic socialist.  They are TV pundits.  I am able to make the distinction.  Some are not apparently.

Anyway, my analysis.

I was taken aback by what I heard.  I listened to quite a number of victory and concession speeches.  I listened mostly to republican victory and concession speeches.  I listened to Rand Paul, Christine O'Donnell, Carl Paladino, John Boehner, and others whose names are less recognizable and even less remember-able.  A single issue voter might have me believe that a republican loss would mean a loss for the pro-choice movement.  A republican win should mean victory for the babies!

But none of them mentioned abortion.

Nobody said, "Now that the American people have elected me to office, I will end abortion!"  Nobody said "since our tragic loss, unborn babies all over America will now never see the light of day."  Nobody said anything about abortion.

Not a damn thing.

Not one damn thing.

Because republicans won't do anything about abortion.

Not a damn thing.

It's a hot button issue which they were fortunate enough to have gotten on the right side of 40 years ago.  But it's just a card.  Like a King of Diamonds, or the Ace of Hearts.  It's a card, you use it to make a good hand, then when you won your chips, you shuffle it back into the deck and hope that at some time in the future you can pull it out again and use it to win another hand.  In poker, you play the people, not the cards.

They are playing the people.

Since Roe vs. Wade in 1973, the republicans have held the presidency for like 25 years.  Compare that to 14 for the democrats.  During that entire time, they did next to nothing.  Sure, they campaigned on it like mad, but the weren't playing the cards, they were playing the game, playing the people.  In the same time, they pushed abstinence only education.  Yet, we have the highest teen birth rate in the industrialized world!  They started like three wars.  You know what kills more innocent people than abortions?  WARS!!!

The democrats on the other hand want to pass out condoms, a method which tends to prevent a lot of pregnancies.  The democrats typically lift the poor, which tends to prevent a lot of unwanted pregnancies.  The democrats better fund education, education tends to prevent pregnancy.  Democrats want to provide health care, good health insurance pays for contraception, a reliable method of preventing pregnancy.  Democrats want to provide comprehensive sex education, which has the same effect as any other education like I mentioned before.  But most of them still want abortion to be legal.

The republicans didn't mention abortion because they don't care about it.  What did they mention?  They mentioned taxes, budgets, power, majority, taking things back, taking over, guns, and cuts to everything but the military.  But they didn't mention abortion.  They don't care and they won't do ANYTHING!

It's a card, and you don't play cards, you play people.

If you are a single issue voter, you are being played, and quite successfully.  Congratulations.
WiredForStereo

Fair Tax

Surely, you’ve heard of the fair tax.  It’s big in libertarian circles and in many conservative ones as well.  It is an initiative to replace federal income tax with a federal sales tax.  Proponents say that it taxes wealth, that it is progressive on consumption.  A “prebate” would be paid up to the poverty level to compensate the poor.

I have a few problems with it however.

On the surface, it sounds like a great idea.  Think about it, you get a check to pay for the tax up to the poverty level, and if you spend more, you pay more tax.  Buy a Kia, and you pay Kia tax, buy a Bugatti and you pay Bugatti tax.  But it’s not really progressive on consumption is it?   A progressive tax is one that is greater on greater amounts of money.  A properly instituted progressive tax is the only truly “fair” tax.  The “Fair Tax” is a constant 33% tax, and no matter how much you spend, a regressive tax (one that is more advantageous to the wealthy because they have a much greater amount of money to pay it) still is inequitably applied to those less able to afford it.

Let’s take a few minutes to understand the differences between progressive and regressive taxes.  Let’s make up a few people, some hypothetical circumstances, and use them to understand this issue.  They will all live in Oregon so there aren’t additional sales taxes to bother with calculating.

Person A, we’ll call him Abe, is a low wage earner.  He graduated high school but was unable to attend college and now works delivering Xerox copy machine supplies for 25,000 a year.  Scrimping and saving and being a good steward of his money, he is able to fully fund his Roth IRA with $5000 every year.  The current federal poverty level is $11,000 and under the “Fair Tax” plan, he would receive a prebate for the tax he spent on buying stuff with that money.  He spends $5000 per year on rent and various non-taxed payments and spends the remaining money on what he needs to survive.  The money he has to pay taxes in is thus $4000.  With the “Fair Tax” he will spend $23 out of every $100 spent on sales tax and will be paying $920 in taxes.  That figures to be 3.7% of his income.

Person B we will call Bill.  He is an engineer and makes $100,000 a year.  He fully funds his Roth IRA, spends $25,000 on his house which he is buying and will own and on other non-taxed stuff.  He is also able to invest $10,000 which yields a return of 10%.  Like Abe, he doesn’t have to pay taxes on that $11,000 and so he has to pay taxes on $49,000.  Thus he pays a total of $11,270 in tax, 11.3% of his income.

Person C, Cal does pretty well.  He is a CEO of a company and makes 1,000,000.  He lives reasonably and invests 500,000 at a rate of 10% return.  He spends another $200,000 on things that aren’t taxed leaving $300,000 in taxed expenditures.  He will pay $69000 in tax, 6.9% of his income.

Person D, Don does really well.  He is one of those Wall Street CEO’s you hear about and he makes 50,000,000 a year.  He is able to live on about 10% of that a year and the rest is reinvested at a rate of 10%.  He pays tax on that 10% of his income that is spent and will pay $1,150,000 in tax, 2.3% of his income.  As you can see, if Don chose to, he could stop working altogether and live on the returns from his investments at his current level of comfort.

Finally I will tell you about Person E, Ed.  He founded a software company that went huge and he now makes a sh!t ton of money.  He makes 10,000,000,000 but he only lives on $100,000,000 of it in lavish opulent wealth.  He pays 23,000,000 in tax, 0.23% of his income.  Because he is able to invest so much, he gets $900,000,000 from the investments he made last year, increasing his income to 10,900,000,000, and his actual tax rate is 0.21%.

Do you see where this is going?  The more you make, the less of it you need to live on.  I could make a billion dollars a year and still live in my same house and drive my same motorcycle.  I could not do that when I was working for Xerox.  Yes, the poor get a better deal under the “Fair Tax” because they make less, but the poor currently pay virtually no tax, and in truth often get Earned Income Tax Credits.  The “Fair Tax” wants to tax them.  It places a burden upon them they already can’t carry.  I know I didn’t include it, but the rich guys still get the prebates like everyone else!

Regressive taxes work that way.  As you may have picked up in this analysis, high earners can also afford to invest a large amount of their money and through that earn even more.  I can’t do that, I have to spend a quite large fraction of my family income on a house and cars to get to work and school and food, and speaking of school, I have tens of thousands of dollars in student loans still out there.  By the time I graduate, I’m basically going to be a house and a half in debt.

With a single sales tax rate, you can’t make this tax progressive in the long run.  Even if you jacked the “poverty level” up to $100,000, it would still be a boon for the ultra-rich.  Consider this also:  the “Fair Tax” is supposed to increase the rate of investment.  Who benefits the most from increased rates of investment?  A related question: Who would benefit the most from the privatization of Social Security?  The Wall Street people benefit, the ones who already have vast amounts of money and like to play with it in ways detrimental to all of us.  Either way, they win, commoners lose, the middle class pays more money and bears the burden.  Just like today, the tax rate for capital gains is only 15%.  Who makes the most in capital gains but the ones who have capital, the wealthy.  It’s another system, a gift of the Bush Tax Cuts, which empowers the rich to concentrate wealth and allow them to get out the door without paying their tab.  It truly is “redistribution of wealth”.  But the wealth is going upward.

A properly instituted progressive income tax is the only logical solution.  Consider the great age of our country.  The greatest time for the advancement of civil rights, the greatest time for the advancement of workers rights, the creation of social security, Medicare, the EPA and all of that good stuff.  During that time, the top marginal tax rate was between 70-90%!

Libertarian ideas work in a window.  I’ve said that before.  And you must realize, this is a libertarian idea, and it does work, but only in a small window.  That window reaches up to a million dollars or so and down to a few tens of thousand.  But like other libertarian ideas, if you’re on the low end of the hill, the system works against you, and if you are on the top of the hill, the system works in favor of you.  A properly balanced system will work FOR you.

Be concerned about who pushes ideas.  This is not a bi-partisan idea.  This is a conservative libertarian republican idea.  It benefits the insanely wealthy the most, and the commoner the least.  Most right wing ideas do.

Finally, I’m not gonna tear down an idea without offering one in its place.  It’s a modern version of what we had in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. 

The amount of tax on the amount of money made below the state poverty level is tax free. 

The money made between that and 40,000 is taxed at 10%.  The amount made between 40k and 60k is taxed at 15%. 

The amount made between 60k and 80k is taxed at 20%. 

The amount between $80k and 100k is taxed at 25%. 

The amount between $100,000 and $250,000 is taxed at 30%. 

Between 250k and $1M is taxed at 50 %. 

Between $1million and $2 million is taxed at 60 %.  Between $2 million and 100 million is taxed at 75%. 

Finally, the amount above $1 billion is taxed at 90%. 

Additionally, there is no distinction made between earned income and capital gains.  It counts for total income, anything that you get during the year that you didn’t have at the beginning of the year.

This plan represents a pretty decent tax break for anyone making less than $250,000 which is in line with Obama’s current plans, and sets a truly progressive tax system which will make our system work again like the libertarians want it to work now.  It’s not that I think they are lying and want to destroy our economy, I really think they have the best interests of the country at heart, they are simply fundamentally mistaken about the results of their plans.

Now don’t take this as gospel truth, I definitely plan on revising this in the future and making and spreadsheet and all that, but this is just something to show you in which direction we should be going, and how to get to a place where you really can rise above if you put your mind to it.  

Remember, it is far better to make a billion dollars at 90% tax than it is to make 100,000 at 10%.  Higher taxes on the rich is not punishing them for making more money, it’s requiring them to pay for their footprint in the world. 

Equal is regressive.  Equitable is progressive.  The “Fair Tax” is not fair.

WiredForStereo

Inherent Necessary Inefficiencies.

Since I have been of the mind to pay attention to politics, and I am certain long before, I have heard from politicians and politicians-to-be that government should be run like a business.  I have heard that government needs to be more efficient, it needs to treat money like we who have to live and work do.

Why?

We are inherently different than the system of government.  Business is inherently different than government.

Think of it like a system with a purpose. 

A business is a system whose purpose is to generate money.  What other purpose does it have at its core?  Sure, some businesses and organizations have other purposes but by far, the vast majority of businesses exist to make money, for the owners, for the shareholders, or perhaps as tax dodges so that someone doesn’t have to pay out money on the other side.

A household is a system with a purpose.  Its purpose is to provide basic needs for people who work to earn money, and use that money to pay to maintain the household.  It serves the householders who are part of the same system.  A household would not work if it were maintained with the purpose of generating money.  I don’t even know how that would work.

A government is a system with a purpose.  Government’s purpose is to serve the people.  It serves them by building them infrastructure so that they can carry on business and householding.  It sets policies for imports and exports and regulates how businesses can treat workers.  It regulates what persons can do to each other with the purpose of creating a civil society in which everyone can carry on business and householding.  It prevents overreach of many aspects of society, and necessarily so, it serves humans.

Government to a degree facilitates everything that happens in a society.  Government can’t go bankrupt like a corporation and be dissolved and assets sold to pay debts.  Government can’t be sold like a business or a house.  Government can’t buy other governments. A government cannot be run like a business because it doesn’t create wealth or serve to generate money, it distributes it by its very nature.  It collects money via taxes and fees and provides services based on what needs to be accomplished to move the society forward.

Unlike a business, government serves the people.  Unlike money, the best needs met for people do not lie in what makes the most money.  There are inherent and necessary inefficiencies.  Because government controls so much, it needs inherent drogues to keep it from commanding everything in its path.  It needs to apply drogues to businesses and householders so that they may not overstep their bounds also.

Consider the Senate of the United States of America.  According to James Madison, "The use of the Senate is to consist in proceeding with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom, than the popular branch."  The Senate was necessarily less efficient than the House, more deliberative, less apt to act with haste, a necessary and inherent inefficiency.  At this point in time, progress in the senate has slowed to a crawl because some senators value the business of money more than they value the business of serving the people.  While this is a seriously annoying hang-up, it is an inherent necessary inefficiency to keep the government from overreaching in faster times.

Inefficiency in government prevents great evils from coming to pass if they work right.  As a price for this, great goods are also slowed.

The justice system works similarly.  In order that the minimum number of innocent people are dealt with unjustly, sometimes a known criminal must be released because he was not read his rights when he was arrested or because proper procedure was not followed in some other aspect.  We complain about these miscarriages of justice because we know a guilty party got away with something.  How much more would we complain if we the innocent party were unjustly prosecuted for the same crime?  It is a necessary and inherent inefficiency that keeps the system from running amuck. 

Democracy itself is likewise inherently inefficient.  Why spend so much time debating and arguing and legislating in one direction and then another when we could have some glorious all powerful leader who could make changes to our society en masse?  Because though that kind of government is far more efficient at getting things done, it is also inherently unjust, or so history would tell us.  Democracy, when it works correctly, allows people to govern themselves and move in a direction that generally has the best interests of the society as a whole.

As an aside, let me cut you libertarians, corporatists, plutocrats, autocrats, and republicans off at the pass before you try to tell me that democracies are inherently evil and that the majority will eventually confiscate rights and freedom from the minority.  I have done my best to test that assertion, and I have found it to be categorically false.  I even had a libertarian try to tell me that Hitler was democratically elected.  It’s simply false.  I can’t find an example where a democracy has confiscated rights from a minority.  If you can provide me one, I’d be happy to consider it, but expect to defend your assertion.

Yes, we all know government is inefficient.  We try to make it more efficient.  We want it to work for the benefit of all citizens.  But to do that, there are some things it can’t do efficiently and we need to accept that.  It shouldn’t be wasteful, but some waste is inherent in a system that serves people.  A system that serves money is allowed to be far more ruthless. 

When government becomes ruthless and cold, you know it is serving money and not the people.  When moneyed interests make plans for government, you know they are seeking to change government so that it serves money and not the people. 

But it needs to be inefficient.  It requires, and was designed with, a certain necessary inherent level of inefficiency so that it would fulfill its purpose in serving the people and not the money.

I eventually plan to start a business where one of the stated purposes is to provide jobs, to serve people.  To do that, there will have to be a necessary inherent inefficiency introduced fundamentally into the system so that the sole purpose of the business is not simply to make money, but to serve the people working there.

This post serves to further one of my overall messages that catchphrases, soundbites, and litmus tests are truly useless to our representative democracy.  The truth lies in in-depth study, discussion, understanding, and reason.  The truth and the best good for the society and our nation lies in seeing every side of an issue, in not yelling, not offering incendiary arguments, and not offering catchphrases in place of reasoned discussions and compromises.  Nuance is as important as progress.  Depth of understanding is as important as passing a bill. It’s an inherent necessary inefficiency, that we have to slow down and think about what we are doing.

What Do You Believe?

In our culture today, so many times the question is asked about what we believe, especially in politics and religion.  Do believe in Jesus as your personal lord and savior?  Do you believe that a woman has the right to control her own body?  Do you believe in the death penalty?  Do you believe the earth is 6000 years old?  Do you believe in fiscal responsibility?

It doesn't matter what you believe, it matters what you're going to do about it.

That's my stand.  In the bible, James said:  "Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works."  "Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?"  So I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter what you believe because what you say you believe makes you a liar unless what you do backs it up.  If James calls it useless, than it is useless.  Apart from the Bible, I still say if you can't back up what you believe by what you do, then it truly is useless!

The American Christian (you know what I think about these people) culture today is one in which you are defined by what you believe, or at least what you say you believe.  Are you against abortion?  Are you against gay marriage?  Are you against taxes?  Are you a fiscal conservative?  Yes?  Well then by Jove, you're okay in my book!  But like I said, so?  What I want to know is what are you going to do about it?

Conservatives have been against abortion for forty years.  They have used it for forty years to gain votes, but in the end, what have they done about it?  Little more than nothing.  Well, they won elections, so I guess that counts.  I have recently been encountering atheists who are now approaching the ability to discuss moral issues in a playing field which for so long has been dominated by people of faith.  Jen Roth is a so-called pro-life atheist and she has such a powerful case against abortion that usually argumentative commentators can't but sit and listen to her lay it out.  I'm currently reading a new book by atheist Sam Harris called "The Moral Landscape."  And it's hard to fathom, but atheists are now, at least in my view, making better cases for moral issues than the staid Christian apologists. 

If this plays out, American Christianity is in some sh!t!

P.S.  I really hope it's deep!

But how could I say these things?  I'm a follower of Jesus after all, I believe all the stuff I'm supposed to believe right?  The difference is what I am going to do about it.

Jen Roth with her "Pro Peace" makes the best case, and I'm gonna mix hers and my stuff here for a minute to make an aggregate case for thought, action, and nuance.  Okay, so we all, on all sides can agree that abortion is not a good thing.  Even pro-choice people can usually agree that having less abortions is better.  There's something about the psycho-physical interaction that is a woman that says that the loss of a child is a damaging event.  But pro-choice people still want the option to be there just in case, and typical pro-life people think the benefit of life to the being is more important than the emotional or other state of the woman. 

Okay, so we want less abortions, now what?  The belief is out of the way, so what should we do about it because it's the doing that is the important part is it not?  That's what I said up there, so that's what it is.

What are our options?  Some say overturn Roe vs. Wade.  Truth be told, this is not a viable option.  It's a decision that gives federal rights to people, a whole bunch of people aren't gonna let that happen.  There will be riots and if it does succeed, it will be driven by the American Church and the Church will lose the American people for generations, and probably forever.  In short, it isn't going to happen.  It's just not.  It's not a viable option, it's not a peaceful option.  Likewise, making abortions on demand and free is not going to make their numbers go down like we all want.

Now if we come to the table to form a solution in the spirit of cooperation and reason, you know, being reasonable, both sides need to make some concessions.  This is how cooperation and negotiation works.  This is how it is done.  You can take power by force and alienate your opponents, or you can meet in the middle and step by step, progress can be made.  By the way, that is my definition of progress, moving forward, getting things done piece by piece, thing by thing.  That's why I can be against the health bill because it doesn't do what we need, but for it because it takes several steps in the right direction.

First of all, we just have to abandon abstinence only education.  It doesn't work.  It simply doesn't work.  Teens are gonna have sex.  The good parents can have a good lifelong effect on that, but the schools are gonna have a really rough time getting that to be effective.

People gotta stop trashing Planned Parenthood simply for fun.  Where I grew up, Planned Parenthood handed out condoms on demand.  That was a good thing.  Who knows how many pregnancies were avoided because of that.

The rights of women to not get pregnant if they choose such must be held high.  There are a lot of women who are coerced into getting pregnant.  This creates a lot of strife and is not a peaceful option for the world.  Also, a great many women are coerced into having an abortion by their boyfriends or their families.  That's unacceptable. 



What I mean to say with all this is very important.  We're not going to get abortion illegalized, at least not in my lifetime and not peacefully.  So let us put our beliefs into action to realistically reduce the number of abortions.  Let us change militant attitudes and single issue voter status quos to affect real change.

Because it doesn't matter what you believe, it matters what you're going to do about it.

Shalom
WiredForStereo