a thought or two

I know it is 95+ degrees outside,but it is crazy to watch people cross the street and almost get killed just to get to a bus,especially when one comes by every ten minutes or so. Saw this multiple times today in downtown. People darting through cars and cars having to hit brakes as they come through traffic. Slow down and be careful so you can enjoy labor day.

People make a big deal about English as an only language, well that is impractical, but really you can rely on English being the primary language. I know a person who is of Latin descent and said hates it when people greet in Spanish. This is America and they should greet all even Latin looking people in English, now if the person being greeted prefers Spanish they can ask to speak in Spanish. This person feels even though many speak Spanish or whatever language the primary language should be the first offered in public situations. This person is actually offended and feels profiled ( their word profiled) because they are Latin looking when people immediately speak Spanish or presume Spanish. Yep folks everyone feels a certain way about any topic. Interesting that Spanish speaking people can be as ethnocentric as Americans... ha ha ha

I have always like Clint Eastwood and some of the movies he has directed I feel are really good. Unfortunately I missed his speech at the RNC last night, turned it on late. Sorry to hear all the talk about it.

Yes I am avoiding talking about the RNC and will do so for the DNC. Why give anybody credit for not doing a good job. The time for new parties is now. I will say this and this is only appreciated by a small audience. The RNC was so boring it made the Nixon Agnew events look like rock concerts.

Glad Issac wasn't too bad, still people did get hit, lets help where we can.

another what the ?? and this one well......

I was minding my own business trying to eat a bit of lunch today, thinking about how to talk about Social security and some other ideas without getting bogged down in the details, when I check CNN news on the phone today and there it is. A neighbor of mine just a few hundred miles to the west of me has decided to just dive head first into a dust swimming pool.

This wonderful elected Judge in Lubbock has decided to prove to the rest of the world what a sub par education system for generations can produce.

With the elitists in Wall Street and the crazed Obama haters it is becoming increasingly difficult to convince people there is a rational conservative argument. If we don't want big government, but a somewhat effective one we need to vote out the neo conservatives destroying any shred of credibility of a decent conservative platform. The Republican party has grown so inbred there is no way we will be able to get decent policy out of Washington until the great unwashed can get a decent group of people running the show.

And again lack of decent education for generations has really hurt us and it will take a couple of generations to get back on track. Until then we have to hope that sooner rather than later common sense will take hold.

I know I generalize and there are many who do well, but when you read what this Judge had to say, ..........

God save the Constitution the Constitution is dying.

What the ??

According to Google, my account was compromised. Interesting, I cannot see why. I have quickly checked and I don't see anything changed, but I am not able to go back and reread everything. Bothers me though that someone was able to randomly figure out my password. For most people passwords are based on something personal. Google says which city it came from and I don't know anybody there and basically this is an anonymous blog so it really bothers me.

No way to know if random or what. Anyway for what ever accounts you have keep your passwords safe and keep changing them. I hate the hassle, but if anyone wants to hop on a random blog for whatever reason God only knows what else people may do.

Trying think of the appropriate punishment for identity theft.

And we got rain, praying you get some too.

Lets talk Ryanism

Truth be told I didn't know what to call this post because is a bit more than Ryan but is much to do with his budget plan.

First of all the timing of the announcement is curious. Many others in the political analysis world have already discussed the timing so I won't spend much time on it, just wanted to say it seems desperate at most. Maybe rushed etc, but this weekend not much going on in the political world and with the convention two weeks away and a national stage, probably better served to wait. I know most analysis are on board with the wait, but I had to chime in. Romney needs a way to generate momentum coming out of the convention and announcing the running mate now takes away one of his chances to do such.

Lets be honest, I am not a fan of our huge deficits and anything to reduce them has to be considered. I know the Republicans will go back to blaming the deficit on the Democrats with Ryan's budget plan on the table, however, the reality is both parties are to blame for our deficit. I do agree Democrats are responsible for building up an entitlement program that adds to our deficit problem that overall is not solving the problems they are suppose to solve. Most federal government spending though is from both parties.

Deficit spending is a problem, but will Ryan's plan really solve it.

If you look at Ryan's plan in a vacuum and I do mean in a vacuum it is something worth discussing. If you could say lets balance the budget and not worry about anything else reduction of spending will work. Problem is the budget discussion cannot be held in a vacuum. We have real world problems with our economy that need solutions to the problem. The Democrats at least try to deal with our problems, but their tired old ideas are failing the people they are meant to help.

So why is Ryan's plan an issue. There is the truth that if the government were taking up less of our capital then that money could be invested to help the economy. Pretty straight forward and yes we want that to happen. Federal spending doesn't create long term jobs. I wish I could remember who said this, but I heard a good example awhile back. You cannot make a profit filling potholes. Yes a company could charge the government to do it for them, and they would generate a profit for their company for a short amount of time, but there is no real production for just fixing the infrastructure. It needs to be done and we need to find ways to afford it, but in the large economic picture it doesn't add to the economy. Our economy right now needs new industries creating new products not only for jobs here, but for trade balance issues. We need earned capital coming back to our country.I don't hear this too often from Obama or Romney, they maybe saying and I apologize if I have missed this issue, but it is something I want to hear more of.

So why am I not happy with Ryan's plan? I will try and break it down a bit and this is not an all inclusive list of the plan, but just some talking points for now. I do want to mention that I said a few posts ago I would bring up an idea for Social Security and I will soon. Not that my idea is improving, I just come across some other ideas while I have time to sit down, but the first point of Ryan's plan I want to address is his ideas for Medicare. Now some people would say that is a solution to a problem if you read a bit about his plan. Moving some of the expenses to the private sector with vouchers or whatever you want to call them.

I will first address some of the problems with this idea from what I heard from Mr Forbes on Fox News yesterday. Mr. Forbes mentioned this is good because it will allow competition from hundreds of insurance companies and that will hold costs down. I really don't see hundreds of insurance companies with the ability to provide health coverage on a national level. Or if there are hundreds of companies, how does anyone sort through all the choices? Who gets the business? And if only a few companies are able, where is the competition? One of the pieces of Mr. Ryan's plan is that competing plans are suppose to offer a level of benefits at least as good as Medicare. Okay who determines that? And then if there are few how are premiums determined? There are stipulations about how much they can charge, but if there isn't hundreds of competing companies, how is the public protected from price fixing.

And now how does this fix the real problems facing our country? The high cost of health care. How can private insurance companies which run on a profit be held accountable to costs? There is no incentive to hold down costs of healthcare by them if their customers are subsidized by health insurance vouchers which are based on rates they control? Again in a vacuum it sounds good to put Medicare in a competitive pricing world. You get out of the vacuum and what do you do about the continuing growth of costs.

And then we have health of ourselves? We are not the most healthy nation on the planet. The libertarian in me says we cannot tell people how to live their lives so how does one rectify controlling health care costs against how we live. That is quite frankly an issue we need to find an answer. I previously posted we could base how much health care you get from Medicare or the government based on how well you take care of yourself. (an aside this is one of the reasons I push a progressive conservative party than being a true libertarian I cannot stand by the values of a true libertarian if I see some control in government rules being allowed) Yet in some ways we can hold ourselves accountable if we rely on tax payers money to help us. Ah but the but, technically we already make premium payments to medicare, if you get paid by paycheck read your stub, there is a medicare tax now separate from the Social Security deductions. So we are already paying ahead into Medicare ( and yes I am not naive enough to know there are problems with how that money is being managed right now). To the point, though, you can say we will save money somewhere down the road if we just give everyone an equal amount of money to go buy equivalent insurance to Medicare. Basically you are saying that somehow through some magical world of competition we will all get good insurance to buy good health care at whatever amount is approved by a future Congress based on what they are told by the health insurance companies that fund their campaigns. And somehow this is going to be cheaper than Medicare starting ten years from now. Too many unknowns, too much can happen, and too much is already being spent by the American worker to feel comfortable about what will happen.

And again the actual health of a human being plays into this equation. Do health insurance companies do what I, as a libertarian, say we cannot do and tell people how to live? Or they get charged higher? They already do that by charging higher premiums for cigarette smoking and honestly I am for this type of thinking.. Do they though get to do and again to make a profit what we don't want our government to do? Yes I am arguing a bunch in circles, but for a reason that I can't kick out of my brain right now. Long and short is giving over control of medicare to private interests that will put their interests first on a program we have built through our taxes is not going to give us the savings we are promised now.

I promised something on how to help social security previously so I have some ideas, but will hold the specific till a later post.

Another issue I see that sounds good in a vacuum is our infamous government safety net for the poor. And he does have some good ideas here, like requiring food stamp recipients to go through work training programs. This fits into actually trying to solve the problem. The problem with his plan is there is no incentive to be successful. He wants block grants to hold down costs and make states try to hold down costs. So states get left with the burden on how to manage costs without any accountability for helping people get off welfare. And this is a part of a major problem in our country, the generational poverty and welfare that we face. Cutting costs without finding a way to reduce poverty/people on welfare will not solve the problem and create a huge cost to society in other ways. Where do the poor get help? Can we rely on there being enough money from charities? The real issue is to hold accountable and motivate welfare recipients that they don't want to be on welfare. And this will not happen overnight just because costs are cut. Truly solving the welfare problem in this country is going to be tough. We have created multi-generational families on welfare who know no other life. This is where I say the Democrats have failed. You cannot throw people money and expect them to feel good about themselves if you don't give them something to live for. So just cutting costs by block grants sounds good in a vacuum, but leaves on the table one of the biggest cancers facing our nation.

Tax rate and who pays. That is an issue for another day and I have previously posted some scattered ideas on tax policy before. Trying to say who pays and who doesn't fails to look at the whole. I have talked previously about not wanting to hang out religion and Bible verses because I feel your relationship with God is your business, but in the Bible it does talk about if one suffers we all suffer or if one is held high we should all. Yes this is simplified, but in general you have to feel our taxes should fall under that thought whether you believe in God or not. Just some basic common sense. There are some Nuns actually advocating for this thought. And Nuns are some pretty under rated people on this planet. You may not be Catholic, but you could admit they go the extra mile on this planet more so than any other group of people I know or have heard.

And since this is getting way too long and I am not being as succinct as I would like to be I will finish with this thought/worry. There is also talk of reductions in education expenses. And right now this is the last thing we need to cut. Our education system is not where it should be and yes money alone won't solve the problem. I have even proposed a rough draft sketch of some ideas I think are better than our current system. Yet we cannot think about reducing the investment in education. And really I cannot think of why anybody who cares about our country and democracy would think of cutting education. The only reason to dumb us down even further is because you don't want others to be successful, think through problems, or maybe because you want a dumb electorate so you can get away with crap. Cuts in education are stated by people who are treasonous bastards to our constitution. Education gives us true democracy, a better opportunity, the ability to move people off welfare, to make better health care decisions throughout our lives, an understanding of public policy so we can all make informed decisions and learn to spend less on public policy, you know build a better country.

So next time people talk about the budget remember we live in a dynamic world, things change, so if you want to hold down government costs etc (AND WE DO) you have to solve the problem that is causing the expense or you will only find the expense creeps up somewhere else and will probably be even more.

Hope you had a good weekend and still praying for more rain for our country.

just how big is the tax issue

A few days ago I posted a comment on a CNN blog for an article about Romney's taxes. Basically there is so much" I'm right you, aren't that; I just had to say something.

I stated that this issue poses a trap either for the democrats or republicans. For the dems they need to watch out for Romney's taxes being good. He could wait till mid October and release them and gain a huge spike of momentum right before the election. For the reps they may want to know for sure there is no illegalities before the convention or face a total lose of faith in the electorate if something comes out later. Now they still have chance to scramble, post convention they are hung out to dry.
Anyway this election MAY hinge on an issue that has nothing to do with the country. Both sides might want to check and recheck their facts on this one. This side issue shouldn't be the deal maker.

oops still thinking

And I had a thought, you know there just seems to be too much hatred and apathy in the world and not enough common sense. And if you follow the Darwin theory you would think there would be more common sense because common sense helps the species survive and flourish and better evolve.

oh the paranoid post

Been spending time reading and thinking, well a little bit of time reading and thinking, always a bit dangerous to do that.

This is about a paranoia trip, you know the kind that produces movies like Zeitgeist or the commercial Enemy of the State

Goes back to an article on CNN awhile back about the election. The author was talking about it would be good if one side either democrat or republican won the election handily. The author's fear was that if close it would only create even more political problems. A tight election in today's climate would only increase the political rancor going on between the two parties. I think for some of us Congress not getting anything done right now is better than what they may come up with, but that was not his point. Felt we need to have a clear victor, wasn't to concerned about which side, just a solid victor.

So... I am not real fond of either party so I don't care which side wins, but it got me to thinking what is the real choice we are facing in this election. Is it what we have always had or is it something different, so the paranoia grew.

What if the real choice we are facing is a true test of democracy surviving, what if the election isn't about the two parties, but the choice of whether the uber rich finally get complete control of the country or not. No I am not talking about Romney v. Obama and Obama saving us from the rich electing Mitt. No, under my paranoid scenario, it is the choice of continuing as we have with what we have being controlled by an economic oligarchy that grows stronger each year. Choosing Obama over Romney may at best only delay the inevitable. Congress is the real problem in this scenario. The House of Representatives is suppose to be the part of the government that is to be the most responsive to the people, general populace, but they are so controlled by lobbyists now that pulling the puppet strings on them and I do mean all of them that the control by this small group would be so easy if not already in place.

Yes I know I have gone down this path before in previous posts, but not this direct. So what is the choice, well one might say lets give up the ghost now, why waste time fighting the inevitable. Lets quit voting for people and let our elected representatives be chosen by our little group here. Why not I say, most primaries nowadays ( and maybe historically to a different degree) are just a vetting process of who the party heads want to get elected. They let people go through the ranks of a political career or choose certain business people that have the right attitude and let them be successful. For someone to really rise up and challenge the party elite would be nice, but... Some people may point to the Tea party and say they are bringing up new blood, but I say this new blood is vetted and is more beholden to the people that brought them to power than you believe. There is a very small group of power brokers behind the tea party ranks of the Republicans. There are pretty sure of who they are getting no matter this talk of grass roots movement.

an aside here:
And this little economic oligarchy group I fear is also a bit of an exclusive club as you might think. And I say this based on the obvious, but lately there may have been some house cleaning. Interesting to note the comments of one Sandy Weill. Recently he has been all over the news with his comments about maybe getting rid of Glass-Steagall Act. Now why on earth would the architect of the demise of that legislation decide that was a mistake. I can think of two reasons and I may be wrong. One is he grew a conscience, maybe just maybe he realized that it was a mistake to give too much power to a small group of people or that maybe mistakes can be made and that people need protection. Or maybe he got kicked out of the club so he is trying to build up a base of support for him to try and get some power back. Wild thoughts on a Thursday night to be sure, but since we are on the paranoid trip why not through some wild ideas out there. Anyway it was pretty obvious there was something amiss here and got to give credit where credit is due. I was going to post on this the first night out and missed the window. Then saw Jon Stewart go after it fairly well on the Daily Show. So I am left to put my brain ramblings on this post as this aside to my greater fear discussed tonight.

Going back to the point, so do we give in to the obvious, there is no hope, no time left, the whole country is floating down the Potamac into the Atlantic and the only thing left is what gets washed back up at high tide. Is there even still a choice?

I fear not because the only solution I see is a complete house cleaning of Congress and there is no apparatus to do such. I know I have hinted around that we need a new party, true new party and being a conservative and that I feel most Americans to one degree or another are at least slightly conservative that we could put together a party that really represents the majority of Americans or a large portion of us. A party that works with practical conservative solutions with an eye to planning for the future, and respect for human dignity. Yep a pipe dream.

Another aside, and this goes to the human dignity thought. Illegal immigration is a problem for this country. We do need to do something and there are practical solutions. My fear is the amount of comments on CNN blogs, Yahoo blogs, ( I read Fox, but I can never find comments on their site, and I fear what those would be) and other news/internet media sites that really treat illegal immigration with hatred and fear. And the fear is the same tool the Nazis did with the Jewish people. They blamed all Germany's problems on this group and we all know what happened there. People tend to forget there is a difference between being conservative and being a right wing fanatic. And that is growing in our country, and something my little economic oligarchy group can exploit for their benefit if they aren't already behind it (tea party). Blaming problems on one group at the expense of another is a dangerous sign my good friends. What causes problems like this: lack of quality education, economic stress, and an ineffective or manipulated government come to mind, and well that equation exists.. yes another trip down paranoid lane.

So what is the choice, my little perfect party doesn't exist, getting back on the map would take much work just to get a few Congressmen/women elected in 2014, yes 2014 and years to build. It was tried in the early 1900's and got a start, but well it kind of disappeared, helped out by the same group of people that brought you the current central bank. Most smart economic oligarchists know Americans are generally conservative so they play on it, hence the ability of the Republican party to maintain such a strong hold on the electorate. And the carrot of economic success on the individual level always works, hey their rich, I want to be rich so they must have the best ideas. So down the road could we get a responsible conservative party, well we could if we could keep the boat of democracy afloat until it can come back on the next tide to actually keep our country great.

So how do we do that, there is one crazy idea, and you have to have a crazy idea to fight the demons of the paranoid trip. And the great thing is it is not some wild anti government debacle, but just actually washing Washington with what we have now, but it would take such a leap of faith for the American electorate that it probably won't happen. Americans are too ingrained in believing that Republicans and Democrats are they way to go. But if , but if but if you could get a majority of Americans to take that leap of faith and still vote their side, ie liberal v conservative, we might get enough people in Congress at least temporarily beholden to the people of this country long enough to actually get some work done that benefits the majority of the people. And this apparatus is in place, not everywhere, but enough and that is the libertarian party and the green party. If we could wash out enough of Congress to get a majority in the house and some in the senate (enough to scare the rest or give it till 2016) we might could get some real workable compromises between the liberal and conservative element to help our country and us. Yep elect these people with a very small mandate, ie work on the economy, the budget, poverty (rebuilding the welfare program to something that works and is affordable) education (new ideas with better goals, not dumbing down of the system with standardized tests) another words real education, we might put something together that in a generation or two the rest of the world will really envy us like we think they do. We would have to give up social legislation for awhile and that will be difficult because that always brings people out more so than solving problems, but it might be better to wait on social issues anyway till we get a better education system in place to have people who can better discuss these hot button issues more rationally.

Anyway that is my choice, do we accept the inevitable slide into complete dominance by a select club of uber rich or do we find the cajones to actually put people into office that can think for themselves long enough for the people to demand to keep a better government. And boy will the uber rich fight it, yet what is funny to me is that if our country got better, stronger, democracy was healthy, they would still be uber rich and still running a huge economic machine. Yes the demise of the good ole USA really hurts the people I fear are at the heart of or taking advantage of what is happening to us. And they are so greedy they can't see they are their own death kneel. Yep they would last for awhile, many almost uber rich misguidedly following along thinking they are part of the gang, but as time goes on, greed takes over so the big fish keep eating the smaller fish till there are no more healthy fish in the sea, only a bunch of bottom dwellers that won't be enough food for the uber rich and then they will turn on themselves and we are left with something totally unimaginable in a normal conscious. Or the worst fear of the uber rich a complete totalitarian socialist state run by bureaucrats caused by the backlash of the people against them. And yet they keep going down their path thinking that they will be successful.

So we need the middle size fish to revolt and pursue economic growth in our country, two new parties that represent true conservative and liberal thinking on a practical level that can work together to put policies into place that benefit the people, rules and laws that don't let the uber rich make the rules and laws, ie another thing for my new parties would be to create laws that limit lobbyists access to elected representatives. You could never win banning lobbyists, but you could impose restrictions of when lobbyists spoke to elected officials like all policy discussions have to be on the record,,, ie in front of a committee or sub committee or some such nonsense or is it sense. no free rides or lunch meetings, ethics kind of thing or something so people know what special interests are pushing, you know fair and open government.

So that is my paranoia and the two choices that have nothing to do with the way we look at choices nowadays, ie Democrats v Republicans and the article being a moot point.

And I promise my next post will go back to believing the country is all still good and on the up and up and I will propose what I think is a practical idea to work on a couple of problems we have in this country and that is water and social security. Wow to me if we could get the right people in office. There are so many good ideas out there, I just hope some of mind might meet that ideal. The ideas are there, can we get the people in place to implement them.

Hot as hell throughout the country and we do need long term practical solutions to water in this country and as a conservative I propose it is not all up to the federal government, but a variety of interests that are competitive, but can work together to benefit all.

Anyway stay cool best you can and have a great weekend. Pray that a few tropical storms,, not hurricanes can find there way through the gulf to our country's mid section for now.