Michelle had talked with her earlier about voting and told her about my decision to not vote for any of the Presidential candidates. So she said, “Mommy said you didn’t vote for one.” I told her, “If you had to vote for food, and you had to pick tomatoes or sausage (two things she doesn’t like) which would you pick?” She said, “I wouldn’t vote for either.” And neither did I.

In other news the barbie lamp won in a historic vote, defeating fish by a narrow margin of one vote and “play games on iPhone” defeated “go to sleep now” by a similarly narrow margin.

He gave some additional brief commentary as to why none of the Presidential candidates is fit to take office. If you think there is still some reason to choose one over the other but aren’t sure which you may want to listen, it could give starting points for further investigation.

I decided some time ago that I will not vote for any presidential candidate. It was with that decision in mind that Dr. Peikoff’s statement takes on a tragic humor and does cause me a brief chuckle.

The politicians have been blaming the “greedy” capitalists. But those capitalists that are so greedy, are the ones that create wealth and jobs.

The long term outlook of government intervention in the economy is clear and clearly terrible.

*[MSM]: Main Stream Media

Senator Casey,

Thank you for your words on the bailout, I mean stabilization bill. I do agree with your sentiment, “I’m angry about the climate of deregulation and deference to Wall Street over the last eight years that got us into this mess.” If only the congress actually understood what deregulation means, but instead of actually deregulating the economy they have been adding new regulations nearly weekly. Hopefully through this unprecedented power grab and the inevitable resulting economic destruction to follow, in terms of years, people will finally learn that even the first sliver of government involvement in the economy puts us on the road to economic destruction.

Oh, wait, upon re-reading your letter you seem to think that you are actually doing the right thing here and are actually solving problems not just making them extremely worse. Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you and I were in on a joke together, oh well, maybe the next Senator will understand individual rights and economics.

Well I can say one good thing about the “stabilization.” 9 Trillion[^1] is such an odd number, so boring. But 10 Trillion, well now, that is excellent. A number you can really sink your teeth into. And you almost entirely triggered the change with the passage of one bill. Tremendous. Maybe with all the other entitlement bills that passed this year we’ll even hit 11 Trillion that is great, and prime! Nothing is better than prime. If Keynes were alive I am sure he would send you a thank you note and maybe even a box of chocolates. Must stabilize the economy by continuing to spend, heck, throw in some flowers too.

I for one will do my part. I plan to apply for several more mortgages and loans. It’ll be a great win for the economy. The builders will get paid, and all the people who sell to the builders will also get paid. There is no discrimination, I can get my loans even if I am considered high risk, so no one can cry “UNFAIR LENDING PRACTICIES.” There is no bank failure, they aren’t allowed to fail, you said so yourself. And there is no way I can lose my “property.” I mean really we can’t have banks going around seizing property, that is something that is best left to the federal government.

Thank you for your time.

Anyway, I feel much better now.

[^1]: Referring to the National Budget Deficit

So not even digging into real numbers but just a thought experiment. Say there are 1000 people who make $100,000 for every 1 person who makes $1,000,000 a year. Just for dead simple math. If they were all taxed 10% that would be: $100,000 from the rich guy, and $1,000,000 from the non-rich group. This is total tax revenue of $1,100,000 and the rich guy accounted for only 9% of it. Looking at the number that way it seems small, the “working class” paid 91% of the tax burden. Of course individually they each accounted for only 0.09% versus the rich guy who paid as much as 100 of them combined. The real story is exceedingly more complicated than this, but the thought experiment is telling.

Also as a further and the only real argument against increasing taxes on rich. It is a penalty on the good for being the good. In order to be rich, you need to be very good at something. I have often heard there is some percentage of people who achieved wealth through fraud, theft or other less savory means. But I argue if they exist, they are the rare exception. To be a thief and get rich you have much more working against you. So if you are very good at something, does that mean you should be rewarded or punished? Of course rewarded. Should you have your reward taken by force because someone else “needs” your money. As wealth is created, it makes no sense to fairly distribute it as if it were an unowned natural resource. There can be no right to goods or services that need to be created by others. This includes wealth.

The rich guy had to use their mind to get rich. Without him there is no money to steal. I have to use my mind, my skill, my effort to design a communication system. If you “need” a communication system, does that give you the right to send armed thugs to my house and threaten me with imprisonment to force me to build it for you?

As a final interesting twist in my thought on this, I came across an article in the Wall Street Journal: Taxes are about fairness that addresses my point exactly and even brings up the question, that was posed to Senator Obama, and his answer. (which came up in my discussion mentioned above.) > … even after ABC’s Charlie Gibson noted that the record shows increased taxes on capital gains – which would affect 100 million Americans – would likely lead to a decrease in government revenues: “Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.” > > Translated into ordinary English, what that means is that it doesn’t really matter whether a tax increase actually brings in more revenue. It’s not about robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Robbing from the rich will do, especially if it’s done in the name of fairness.

Reason is man’s means of survival. To see this, open your eyes, look around. You can’t miss it. Government exists to protect each individuals survival, their use of reason, through protecting rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. Infringing on the rights of one man for the benefit of another is always wrong.

By the way, please don’t interpret this as support for the Republicans. Their allegiance with the Religious Right is an outright attack on the first amendment and until they renounce this partnership I cannot even consider supporting their candidates.

A person believes in the 2nd amendment right to own a gun. When it comes time to vote they look myopically at their most important concrete value, the right to gun ownership. They then not only vote for the person or party that is for protecting this right, but speak out in favor of them, defend or ignore their wrong ideas, and drop any contradictions. They actively, and often rightly, attack the other parties candidate all the while ignoring the flaws in their own choice. They latch on to their candidate and argue with others with the zealous devotion an Eagles fan describing all the failings of the Cowboys or Giants to one of their faithful.

This is the thinking behind those political tests which decide where you are on some political chart and then tell you who to vote for. Of course they try and make it slightly more complex not limiting it to one issue but 5 or 15[^3]. But using these tests are like trying to decide your morality with a calculator[^4].

> Murder = -100, Being Honest = +1, Self sacrifice = +5, so if I want to kill 2 people I’ll have to be honest most of the time and give money to charities.[^5]

### Cause ### The cause of the problem was fairly obvious once grasped. It is the assumption that first you need to choose which of these two gangs you are with. And then if you do have some reason to pick one over the other that you should then support that candidate. It was this article “Indeed” Indeed that made this clear to me. The idea is that when you join a group to support them you have now made your ideas, especially those contrary to the group, a non-factor. Your vote is already counted. And on the other side of that coin if you start your own party you are also a non-factor, your vote is already discounted, therefore so are your ideas.

The parties goals are to get elected and to meet that end they will throw out principles for pragmatism. This is evident by the fact that both the Democrats and Republicans are basically indistinguishable at this point. They are all scrabbling for the same votes and are therefore pandering to the same groups. The more success the Republicans have going after the religious vote, and sacrificing the first amendment in the process, the more the Democrats will do the same. And there are numerous other examples where, for all their differences, they are all basically the same. Therefore the people with the power to change ideas are the people who have not blindly committed their vote for one or two baubles, tradition, or other irrational factor.

### So What? ### This is not to advocate catering to pragmatists to get bread and circuses. This is rather a call to moral judgments. It is wrong to give sanction to the evils of one party just for one or two principles that haven’t been wiped out yet.

To further the goals of individual rights you must remain uncommitted to the groups acting to destroy those rights. You must then act to spread these ideas. The only way to fight bad ideas is with good ideas and the way to support good ideas is to show everyone. Man must live through means of reason, he must learn what it is he needs to survive and then act to obtain it. The only way to have a society of man that promotes life is to promote reason and the way to do that is to bar the initiation of force from social relationships.

> The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law. –Ayn Rand

So I remain an independent, free to use my mind to chose my values and my government. I will, most likely, vote for someone, but in the time when I am not pushing that button I will devote time to advocating good ideas.

[^1]: Or belongs to a party that had at one point defended this value. [^2]: I originally wrote “defend to the death” and removed for readability of the sentence, but put it down here because it is very apt in this context. [^3]: Gus Van Horn has a nice comment on these tests too, that helped me figure reach this post. [^4]: This of course is how many people actually do it. And probably how the Iraqi war is to be decided. [^5]: Of course even in this contrived example you could leave the murder part out and just rank self sacrifice as a positive virtue and watch the corpses pile up.

Of course I don’t know the knife is in there. And it turns out they don’t either, even though I noticed the TSA worker looking quizically at my USB drive, and checking out my ipod. It wasn’t until I was talking to Michelle a few minutes ago that I noticed the knife while I was looking for my cell phone charger.

Dammit. I have at least 3 more airplanes to get on. And to pass TSA security at least twice more. A knife has to light up like a christmas tree on the XRay machine, otherwise why the hell is the xray machine there. I could check my bag. What a PITA, especially since my original 2 flights and 1 of my subsequent flights were cancelled today. Where would my laptop end up?

So I decide to try the “At your service” line at the Marriot I am staying in. Well they hook it up, a fedex envelope is filled out and set to be shipped back toward my home, for hopefully not too much money. Now I can avoid becoming a mainstay on the terrorist watch list, or avoid further disgust and embarssment as my tax dollars at work to protect the airways continue to miss finding a knife in my bag.

Would Kerry have been significantly different than 4 more with Bush? In many aspects, no. Some of the policies they fought so bitterly over in the debates were nearly identical. My only political course of action at this time is to do what I always do, when I see things happening at the Federal level that I disagree with, then I will contact my representation and let them know. And if I see things that I want to happen, again make the reps do their job, even if that means willfully ignorning my input, but at least dealing with it in some way.

Anyway here are some general thoughtoids I have manufactured, and had thrust upon me recently.

• Some of the Republican principles are very acceptable: minimal government, less taxes, responsibility. Hopefully the elected from that party can enbody and enact some of those principles.
• If in four years things have changed for the percieved worse, the current administration will not have the excuses of an already declining economy and (hopefully) there will be no massive civilian loss of life on the homeland.
• I like Bush’s Social Security plan. I hate watching that counter on my paycheck tick off without the ability to manage the investment of my money!. Even though I feel many will oppose me holding my funds back from the general social security coffers, I would really like this to become a reality. I will let my (All Republican) federal representation know about my thoughts. Heck even better, just cut me a check for everything I have contributed in my name (number rather) and I’ll roll it into an IRA.
• I think the repubs are pushing federal tax free medical spending accounts too, like the kind all you people who work at big companies have access to. Well I will push for this too. Yeah, yeah the last two are the fabled promises and I know the fall of Rome came from the electorate voting for more Bread and Circuses, but I just want the bread I earned.
• I have seen my current thoughts and feelings compared to how a more mature generation felt when Nixon was re-elected. Their advice: “Get over it.” If the current administration is as bad as many feel it is, they now have enough rope to hang themselves.
• The media’s portrayal of the partisan standoff and bickering is a little over done. Maybe the pundits hate each other that much, but I don’t feel it accurately portrays what happens on CSPAN .

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.

In grading student papers over the weekend, I’ve learned the following:

• It’s not fair to remove a president from office before he finishes a war he’s started.
• The war on Iraq was unjust, the president doesn’t seem qualified, and the facts presented in “Fahrenheit 9/11” are disturbing, but it’s unpatriotic to question the president and wrong to vote against him.
• Gandhi was a “coward and a suck-up” and “soft”
• During the 1960s, “some slavery” was beginning to be abolished.
• Americans never get to hear Bush’s side of the story
• Direct quotes: “you are a liar” (to me), and “Michael Moore can eat *&@!”
• Gandhi is more like a “Care Bear” than Malcolm X
• It’s “fucking awesome” that Bush was a cocaine addict and alcoholic

Those are the building blocks of some fine arguments.

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.

But if you don’t want to participate in that, at least register to vote in the general election and do it.

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.

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.

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.

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

But is suffrage really something to make this trade off with. People have and are currently dying for the right to vote, the right to have a say in the way their country is run. If you are going to vote, it is your responsibility to understand for who and for what. So take a minute to try and understand if someone may be right to run the country, don’t just vote republican because your dad did and so did his dad, and that is just the way it is. Stop voting in the lizards.

If the result of this law is that random people claiming to be press are unable to get personal information about me from my dealings with medical establishments, I am all for it. I hadn’t ever considered the fact that someone could walk into a hospital that I visited and expect someone to divulge any personal information about me. The argument made in the article is ridiculous , reporters should have no reasonable expectation that trusted medical personel would hand out information on their patients. As far as I am concerned if a reporter wants to use any of my personal information to sell newspaper advertising, they can come request it directly from me.

Certain other people felt the need to respond to the posting, and Declan will often aggregate responses and publish them to the list. (If I hadn’t been so far behind reading Politech, I might have been counted among the respondents.) But some Privacy and informath consultant Robert Gellman also felt my outrage and responded in kind, with quite a bit more detail and precedent. The remainder of the follow-up including a response by the author of the article to some criticism can be found here.

Basically the response to Mr. Fitzgerald’s article is, we do not feel your pain, and as a matter of fact are outraged to know that your profession has routinely requested and even received, and *gasp* even published personally identifiable information about the victim’s of tragic accidents without their knowledge or concent. So bugger off, jerk.

Saw it at Freedom to Tinker

However, we live in a democratic society founded on fundamental constitutional principles. In this society, we do not quash fear by increasing government power, proscribing those constitutional principles, and silencing those speakers of whom the majority disapproves. Rather, as Justice Harlan eloquently explained, the First Amendment demands that we confront those speakers with superior ideas …

By the way, if you are interested in following this type of information more closely, check out Declan McCullagh’s Politech, very high signal to noise ratio mailing list, on politics relevant to technology.

Green Bay police are on the lookout for a monkey named Jasper, who they say isn’t armed but might be dangerous. Jasper dashed out the back door of a tavern where he and his owner are regulars, Lt. Mark Hellmann said Monday. Hellmann described Jasper as small, dark and hairy, but didn’t know what species he is. The police department’s humane officer said Jasper may try to harm people if he’s scared and advised anyone who sees him use caution.

Since the war is over, we might as well pass around the soma and get back to our happiness.

Luckily I was able to come across this article to this using my freedom-computer on the freedom-internet, looking at WWDN. Time to get back to some freedom-work for my freedom-job.

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Yesterday: cnn.com:

At 10:15 p.m., Bush gave his address to the nation. “On my orders, coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance to undermine Saddam Hussein’s ability to wage war,” he said.

…

At the White House, officials said that just before Bush addressed the nation, he pumped his fist, winked, and said “I feel good.” He then delivered his address, which lasted four minutes.

The man enjoy’s his work.

Ironic isn’t it? In the same way, they used our airplanes to kill our people and devastate our economy, now they are using our own government to kill our people and devastate our economy on a scale 10 times larger than the original attack. In addition, they are using our own government to increase the chance of future terrorist attacks on America. All with the majority support of the American people!

The core value of America is freedom. But the terrorist have also leveraged our own government into taking away our freedoms at home, via the Patriot Act and Patriot II.

The terrorists have won. They have successfully convinced America to attack itself.

While I don’t completely agree with all of his premises or conclusions, he makes some good points and certainly brushes many major issues. I am a big fan of the United States, and I like living here. But some of the recent dumb things: Freedom fries, Ready.gov, The Patriot Act, etc…. Have made me even more skeptical than usual of our elected leadership. But the die is cast, and when the head bashing is done, hopefully there will be some changes and enlightenmt in my fellow Americans.

If that kind of stuff is interesting to you, contribute to the Electroninc Frontier Foundation and you’ll certainly find Declan McCullagh’s Politech interesting reading.

In the event of a nuclear explosion, drive around it.

The current regime’s terrorist propoganda has spawned the FUD promoting site Ready.gov. Fear mongering at its best.

Luckily there are great generic images there that have been appropriated for the purposes of comedy. Apparently adding new captions is highly entertaining and fun. You can see a bunch of this at the Internet Infidels Discussion.

Thankfully there is the Crackmonkey list, or I might never have seen this. And then where would we be?