I was finalizing some research for my vote tomorrow morning, and I noticed that the vote-smart site didn’t seem to have all the Pennsylvania races that are of interest to me. So I found that congress.org seems to have some more complete listings. So I am looking at PA attorney general, auditor general and state treasurer tonight.

I also found that the League of Women Voters has a nice 2 page PA statewide voters guide that gives a good summary of all the major races.

Find out where you are supposed to go to vote at MyPollingPlace.com.

It’d be a real shame if you went to vote-smart and did all of your research, and made sure you were registered, and then didn’t know where to go.

Heck just read this whole thing. It tells you what to do if you know you are in the right place and you aren’t being permitted to vote for some reason. Basically you can still cast a provisional ballot.

Since the election talk is on the minds of many and there is so much focus on the office of the President, everyone please make sure and do a little research on the other important governmental offices.

I had a conversation with Mike about which office on the upcoming ballot is the most important to an individual, his argument succinctly stated is “Your representatives in the U.S. House and Senate are exactly that, your direct representatives.” It is important to try and understand all the offices and questions you may have on your ballot. So go to vote-smart.org find out who is on your ballot and do enough research to help you make a decision.

I am sure many of you checked out all or part of the debates. And if you are like me you often wondered if some of the exact, very conveniently round figures that were thrown out by the candidates resembled in any way the truth. Well it seems there is a seemingly good resource on the Internet for that analysis: FactCheck.org.

So it seems Bush does own a timber company.

Not that it matters much, but at least there are some other things there that we can review and look for a kernel or two of truth.

Well I am glad I stumbled upon Schneier’s blog today, it gave me some lunchtime reading material, and I found he recently wrote on a topic I have had interest in and displayed scorn for, DHS terror alerts. I published a cynical email I sent to the DHS back in April of this year. And so Bruce Schneier’s blog entry from a couple days ago: Do Terror Alerts Work? obviously struck a chord with me. Not only because his essay echos my sentiment, but because he is a respected security expert who does a good job of analyzing the terror alert system and the current government misuse of them.

Sure it’s a bit long and obviously not as profound as my letter, but I certainly think it is worth a read and some consideration, and even a few emails to your congress critters to let them know that if it really is simply a choice between political CYA alerts or a new pair a shoes, that you would prefer to opt out of paying Tom Ridge’s salary and head right to the nearest cobbler’s shop. Of course we could always have them keep the tax dollars, since they already have them, and do something that would actually be effective in providing for the security of the homeland.

Woah, I must not have been paying attention. I never really noticed before how often people resort to a false dilemma to try and prove their point. This is especially prevalent in this presidential election year, everyone is choosing up sides and if you are not wholly with us you must be against us.

I have been paying particular attention to people’s rhetoric and reasoning for a couple years now having read up on the more common logical fallacies and having read most of Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking. And while it is true that personal attacks and made-up statistics constitute 65% of all of these flawed arguments out there, it appears that creating a false dichotomy is gaining steam.

These false dichotomies are easily found in the suprisingly prevalent and terrible argument which states, if you question or denigrate the government at such a crucial time then you are a traitor. However, it is no limited to this arena. I have noticed that often if you even call up for debate a person’s conclusion immediately the response turns to, you must be one of THEM! While I understand that when the fruits of your brain sweat are questioned it is easy to get defensive but if you are really interested in convincing the person of the validity of your viewpoint calling them a communist isn’t going to get it done.

This came to mind when I was reading through Declan McCullah’s article John Kerry’s real tech agenda where Declan calls into question some of Kerry’s voting record when it comes to tecnology. I glanced at the bottom of the page and noticed the comments section, which was full of venom toward Declan and his article. There was not much in the way of correcting him on any errors in his reporting, but the false dichotomy, that if you question anything John Kerry every did you must be a George Bush supporter, is so omnipresent that the commenters immediately broke it down into an opportunity to call each other right wing nut jobs and liberal wieners. It occurs to me that the point of the article is not to support Bush vs. Kerry rather it is to state that electing Kerry is not some panacea for all the political wrangling in the technology sector.

I guess the trend in popular culture is to separate winners from losers, and there is only one winner. We learn that from all types of popular entertainment, be it reality television, the National Footbal League or Highlander. However, I think the zero sum games that we are bombarded with constantly are poor representatives of our lives. Rarely do we have clear cut winners and losers in our every day dealings. So maybe spending a little introspective thought, before responding to what you perceive to be an attack on your ideology, is warranted. Anyway the point here is fight nice kids.

Nothing can be so bad, that it can’t be made worse through federal regulation. -Kevin McAllister

Yeah, that’s right, I quoted myself. So what?! Anyway, the trigger to that utterance was a rather innocuous article about digital cable, and some federal regulations that have been created to somehow make things better by requiring some technology be put into televisions which alleviates the need for a separate set top box to receive and decode digital cable.

But it got me to thinking, how does my ability to get digital cable without a separate box help to, “… form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity ….” Which, of course, are the reasons for the formation of the federal government laid out in the constitution. The simple answer, which is clearly visible from my lofty position as the one who seems to completely understand everything, is that the regulation does none of those things. Yet it exists.

So what recourse do I have to prevent dumb regulations from being enacted? I can ply my congress critter’s many minions with my insightful rhetoric, and hope that he cares to take my opinion under consideration when he is doing his duty in this republic. But as it says right there on the label, he is not a proxy for me, he will ultimately make his own decision. Of course I will continue my vigorous assault on all who dare to represent my interests, but it would be nice to have other options.

Well then, while I was googling to see if my quote above was indeed original, I stumbled upon Regulations.gov. I have long known about the Federal Register, where various government output is revealed in all its infinite, and excruciatingly boring, minutia. And I had even read through some of it for a while. But I never knew there was an easy way to give comments and feedback on proposed regulations. So, it seems, this Regulations.gov was created to fulfill exactly that purpose.

So learn from my stumbling. Do your civic duty. Not only shall you vote, but now you shall have your voice heard when the feds start trying to swat flys with buicks. I think I will have to try at least weekly to comment on one proposed regulation. And maybe I can pass this practice on to my offspring and other disciples that habitually enjoy my prose. In this way we can continue to teach the lesson that was so eloquently summed up by President Clinton, on the Simpsons, “If things don’t go your way, just keep complaining until your dreams come true.”

By the way, Register to vote. Now! The deadline for registering to vote in the General Election is October 4, 2004.

Today I noticed a reference to the US Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory System in an article I was reading, and decided to see what I could find out about it. Basically I couldn’t find out much, but I noticed a helpful link to contact the Department of Homeland Security, so I submitted the following message:

To Whom it may concern:

This message is to question the role of the Threat Advisory Level and the legitimacy of the Low and Guarded levels. In my short experience with the system I have the following comments:

1. I don’t know what it means or how to react to changes in the threat level. I did see there is a link to a “Citizen Guidance on the Homeland Security Advisory System” at http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/interweb/assetlibrary/CitizenGuidanceHSAS.pdf However, the link did not work and resulted in what is known as a 404 or Resource not found error, as an additional problem I was not permitted to view the standard 404 error page “http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/error_404.jsp” as I was given an “Access Denied” or 403 error. I would appreciate it if you could provide a legitamate means of obtaining this document for my review so I can understand what the threat level means to a citizen.
2. I have spoken to a few police officers, they don’t seem to have any understanding of what the different threat levels mean, either. This is troubling, as this department is now the recipient of funds withheld from my paycheck I would like to know that the most numerous supporting cast for Homeland Security (police officers) have some level of procedures and understanding about what this most public vestige of the department means.
3. Are there any plans to utilize the Low or Guarded levels for the threat advisory meter? Throughout the time since the inception of this meter it seems that the level has been “elevated” or “high.” Are the lower levels destined to go the way of the “small” soda at McDonalds or is there actually a purpose for them? There are numerous childrens stories which are embedded in the US culture that extol the benefits of not being overly enthusiastic in making claims of emergencies that don’t seem to be actively materializing. (See “Chicken Little” ISBN: 0694010340, or “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” ASIN: 0553372327).

While this message may seem overly critical, or seem like a big joke, I assure you that it is not. I am a concerned citizen and I am doing my civic duty by requesting more information and pointing out what appear to be problems in the perception of the current policies and information sharing of this newly formed, very large, and expensive branch of the US federal government.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Kevin McAllister
Citizen United States of America

In the unlikely event that I receive any kind of feedback I will post it here.

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p>Found some working links to the Red Cross documentation on the Advisory System.