Still fearful after all these years

Raise your hand if you remember where you were 10 years ago today.

I'll bet almost all of you remember it like yesterday. I sure do. Watching thousands of people murdered on live television is not something you can easily forget.

It was a time of strong emotion: confusion, fear, grief, anger. We mourned together as one country, and we plotted our revenge together.

But it has not been satisfying, nor have we obtained closure. We attacked two countries, but saw mostly quagmire. The economy has never regained its pre-attack strength. The unity after the attack was quickly replaced by the bitterest partisan bickering this country has seen in a long time. Even the taking down of the 9/11 mastermind, Osama bin Laden, didn't generate more than a momentary sense of satisfaction.

Thirty-two years ago, a President gave a speech in which he talked about our country's malaise. The voters hated him for it, choosing to fire Carter and bring in the optimist Reagan. But today, politicians are competing not to deny the malaise but to pin it on the other guy.

What happened to us 10 years ago? Why can't we get out of this funk? Did we take a bite of the apple, lose our innocence, and get tossed out of the garden? Or are we suffering from PTSD and showing symptoms of depression that just won't disappear?

We're going about this thing all wrong

I'm talking, of course, about the economy. It's annoyingly broken, and for some reason just refuses to fix itself.

The tea party gang would have you believe it's as simple as spending less money and reducing the deficit. However, they can't actually believe that will work. Every economist and his brother-in-law tells us that cutting government spending will just send the economy further into the toilet. Economies in the toilet, as we've seen recently, tend to result in larger deficits.

Of course, Obama and the Democrats don't have a much better plan. They're banking on stimulus that's so tepid that Republicans might even vote for it if they hold their noses. Tepid stimulus leads to, you guessed it, tepid recovery.

I have a modest proposal.

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Talking the Talk

A few months ago, I wrote that Sarah Palin and other Tea Party darlings were fanning dangerous flames with their violent imagery, but that they were within their First Amendment rights to do so.

I also predicted the public would lose its sympathy for Tea Partiers after an event like Tucson's assassination attempt.

It's too soon to say whether my prediction will come true. However, it is clear there's been a backlash, in the form of calls for "civility." I'm opposed to those calls.

It's not that I'm opposed to civility. I'm not. Civility is greatly underrated.

But the principle of free speech is a foundation of this country. The way to protect against speech you don't like is not to tell people to shut up. It's to make a convincing argument why they are wrong.


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Scary Monsters

The Republicans have been working on their Halloween costumes for weeks. This year they are dressing as Founding Fathers.

Last month they introduced their "Pledge to America," giving the rest of us a frightening vision of their costume.

The basis for this pledge is the idea that the citizens of this country do not consent to our government and its actions. It echoes back to the Declaration's explicit dissolution of our bounds to Britain. Why is that frightening? Our nation is a representative democracy that depends on peaceful elections and transitions of power. Talk of revolution pretends that process is optional.

It's not. That process has held this country together for over 220 years.

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W's last laugh

It's not totally correct to blame the pending tax increase on Bush. Although the 43rd President did push for and sign the law, it was Congress (primarily the Republicans) who came up with this clever scheme and wrote the laws that will raise all of our taxes on Jan. 1.

The tax acts of 2001 and 2003 included temporary tax cuts followed by corresponding increases. Republican marketing at the time focused on tax relief, but today's press focuses on the tax increase, conveniently while the other party holds the Presidency and Congress. The GOP gets all of the credit and none of the blame, in an election year to boot. Brilliant.

Of course, at the time there was no way to know Democrats would be in power when the tax increase was scheduled to tax place. That's just happy coincidence.

The sunset provision was purely a political ploy. By keeping the tax cuts in effect for fewer than ten years, Republicans could sidestep rules that would have required paying for them, a tacit admission that tax cuts do not pay for themselves.

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Deepwatergate

Eleven men dead. Wildlife dying. Livelihoods lost. Beaches fouled. Oceans polluted. Unknown deep-sea impact.

Someone must be to blame.

Some say this is President Obama's Katrina. But what can he do but fly to the Gulf, sound sympathetic, and talk tough to BP? Neither Obama nor anyone in his administration knows how to stop the flow of oil, much less eliminate the oil that has already spilled.

Some environmentalists and scientists say Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is to blame and should resign. After all Salazar's Minerals Management Service was responsible for regulating the drilling operation and screwed up. Literally. MMS staffers were partying and sleeping with the people they were supposed to be regulating. Talk about strange bedfellows.

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Take Me to your Leader

Everyone is making a big deal out of Scott Brown's recent victory in the Massachusetts senate race, but I can't figure out why.

The Democrats have the presidency and large majorities in both houses of Congress. One party having this level of control is not unheard of, but it certainly is not the norm historically.

The loss of a filibuster-proof majority is significant, but this supermajority only existed for about six months anyway, after Al Franken took his Senate seat in July.

When Obama ran his campaign, he was very clear about his priorities. In fact, much of his plan to help the economy included dealing with the long-term issues of health care, energy and education.

To summarize, Democrats won the presidency and increased their numbers in both houses of Congress after clearly telling us what their plans were. Then they started working on those plans, but found it hard to get agreement on the details. And now a large number of people are ready to dump the Dems before they even get a chance to put their plans in place.

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Keep on Clunkin'!

The cash for clunkers program may be many things. However, environmentally friendly isn't one of them.

Look at it this way. Suppose you trade in a car that gets 18 MPG for one that gets 28 MPG, and that you driver 12,000 miles per year. Also, assume that you will keep the new car for the typical six years.

For each of those six years, you will be burning 428 gallons of gas instead of 667 gallons. You save 238 gallons per year, or about 35% of the gas you would have burned.

A study by Toyota showed that as much as 28% of the carbon dioxide emissions generated during the life of a car occur during its manufacture and its transport to the dealer. That means that up to 38% more CO2 is generated than the CO2 generated from the burning of fuel during normal operation.

So, you emit 35% less CO2 during operation, but the act of buying a new car results in up to 38% more CO2 just to get you that car.

Ignoring the economic impact, the very best thing you can do is keep driving that car until it doesn't go any more.

The only exception I can think of is if you put lots and lots of miles on your car every year and plan to keep it a long time. Then, it might make more environmental sense to buy a new, more fuel-efficient car, and donate your old car to charity.

But scrapping the old car, as is required by law under this program, is pure waste.

Obama's New Direction on Economy: Declare Success and Move On

The Obama administration is ready to announce a completely new direction in its attempts to rescue the economy, according to new information from Christina Romer, the head of the President's Council of Economic Advisors. In an interview with David Gregory, to be aired Sunday on Meet the Press, she discussed the idea, originally put forth by the President's newest advisor, Gunduz Caginalp. Caginalp is a mathematician from the University of Pittsburgh and past editor of the Journal of Behavioral Finance.

Obama was intrigued, according to Romer, by Caginalp's work, and by the idea that the economy is driven by human nature as much by "invisible" market forces. Within a month of entering the office, the President launched a behind-the-scenes project to see if psychology could be leveraged to help solve the current economic crisis.

If it works, it will certainly be a first in human history.

Nobel winning economist Paul Krugman, not a fan of the President's efforts so far to fix the economy, accused Obama of being nothing more than "an armchair psychologist". "There are real problems here," Krugman said, "problems that have been fueled by over two decades of bad policy. If the President thinks he can just click his heels together and wish the problem gone, he is indeed living in the land of Oz."

Romer, paving the way for the President's new plan, was definitely upbeat. "The American workers are sound," she said. "We have a good capital stock. We have good technology. We are just temporarily in a mess."

When asked how Obama's new plan would work, Romer would not give specifics, saying that the details would be given in a speech to the nation next week. But she did give Gregory an outline of some of the key points.

Obama intends to explain to the American people that the economy truly is sound. Nothing has changed since a year ago, when people weren't worried about their houses and jobs. The only thing that has changed, Obama will tell us, is that people got worried. They stopped spending, they stopped borrowing, they stopped hiring.

Romer would not tell Gregory exactly what the President's full message to the people would be. But she hinted that Obama would tell us that the future of the economy is not in the hands of Congress, it is not in the hands of Wall Street, it is not in the hands of the bankers. Any improvement in the economic situation will depend on the actions of all of the American public.

So, apparently, the President is going to tell us all to go out and spend, borrow, hire, invest, build, and pretend that this whole economic meltdown never happened.

"That's just crazy," Krugman said of the plan. People are hurting because of wishful thinking. And now the President of the United States, possibly the smartest man to hold that office in the past hundred years, is wishing on a star, crossing his fingers, and saying the magic words, hoping that we all won't notice what is happening behind the curtain."

Caginalp has not been available for interview by anyone. But one of his former colleagues, economist Vernon Smith, and like Krugman a Nobel laureate, said, "This is just crazy enough that it might work." But he added, "Of course, it would be nothing more than a smoke screen. If we were lucky, it could last to the end of Obama's term in office, and hs successor would be left with double the mess to clean up."

But Romer summed up what many people are privately thinking: "Let's wait to see what Obama has to say." We know he is a great salesman, and it may be that a great salesman is exactly what this country needs right now.

And so the country waits to see if the man behind the curtain can really give us a heart, a brain, and some courage.

AIG on their Faces

So, whose fault is it that AIG is using their bailout money to pay huge (by most people's standards) bonuses to the very people who made the bad decisions that brought them to where they needed the bailouts?

Well, clearly there is plenty of fault for Bush and the 110th Congress, as well as Obama and the 111th Congress. They tell us that these bonuses were required by contract and had to be paid.

But didn't the big automakers just get some bailout money, and wasn't one of the conditions that they had to renegotiate union contracts? Clearly it can be done.

Also, retention bonuses are paid to keep good employees on board. What's the worst that would have happened? These great employees would have left?

But I think a huge part of the blame falls to all of us, who seem to require quick action from our government in preference to correct action. We've seen it many times, and rarely do the legislators involved ever get called to task for responding to this primal fear.

It seems to me that the best time to enact protections against the things that contributed to the current economic crisis is when writing "emergency" legislation. Wouldn't it make sense to tie any stimulus or bailout money to regulations and protections against financial abuses, rather than spending the money and then going back later and trying to pass the new regulations when memories have dimmed?

Let Him Have It

It is especially important for those of us who support Barack Obama to strongly criticize him when he screws up. He must know that it is not just the conservatives who will voice their disapproval, but also the very people he depends on to do his job and keep him in office.

When he nominates several people for important administration positions that seem to have serious ethical or competence problems in paying their own taxes, it means that he is not doing what he said he would. Yes, the country has many serious problems that need serious, immediate attention. But that doesn't mean that you should appoint just any old person to fill that job. With 350 million people in this country, there must be at least one for each of these positions that is knowledgeable, creative, capable, energetic, competent, and ethical. Plus, I'm guessing that most of us do a reasonable job at paying our taxes.

So, Mr. President, please consider this our version of tough love. We speak our minds not just when Republicans make mistakes, but when any elected official makes mistakes. We realize that you are under lots of pressure and still learning on the job, but I hope we elected a fast learner.

Remember, this hurts us much more than it hurts you!

The Bush Tax Increase

One of John McCain's biggest campaign issues this election, and a favorite talking point among conservatives is the so-called Obama tax increase. But what I don't get is why they are blaming Obama, when it was their own man George W. Bush who signed the tax increase into law.

That's right. Our very own President Bush signed into law the tax plan that will result in taxes increasing after he leaves office. The only way he could make the budget math even sort of work was to put an end date on each of his tax cuts, expiration dates at which taxes would increase. Otherwise, the fiscal damage would have been even more obvious at the time and they never would have passed Congress.
And now the conservatives are blaming Obama for raising taxes even if he does nothing and lets some of the tax cuts expire. That's just plain dumb. George W. Bush and the Republican Congress are totally responsible for raising taxes.
So, Bush is a tax hiker. And we already know that John McCain is as well.
Barack Obama is proposing to follow the Bush tax plan -- letting the Bush tax cuts expire as Bush put into place. Meanwhile, John McCain has proposed a brand new tax (his tax on health care benefits). But don't worry, he tells us, it will only be a net increase on 5% of people, the people who can most afford it.

I smell hypocrisy here.

McCain Claims his Tax Increases will Hurt Economy

Senator McCain has told us that Senator Obama's planned tax increases will harm the economy. And he's promised us that he, himself, Senator McCain will raise taxes on nobody.

But here's the rub. Just like President Bush, McCain has proposed raising taxes as part of his health care proposal. The only thing is, he doesn't call it a tax increase.

It's not just a tax increase. The Senator from Arizona has proposed a whole new tax. In McCain's plan, employer-provided health insurance will be taxed as income. He has also proposed a tax credit to offset the cost of health insurance. But if an employer provides a really good plan, that tax credit may not be enough to offset the new tax.

Even McCain has admitted that some some people will see increased taxes because of his plan. But, he denies that this qualifies as a tax increase, since there are compensating tax reductions.

Consider, though, that Senator Obama's "tax increases" that "will hurt the economy" also decrease the tax burden on a large majority and increase on a small number. And, both plans claim that the tax increases are offset by the tax cuts.

So, Senator McCain, you have to tell us. Are you going to admit that you are proposing a tax increase just like Obama? Or are you going to give Obama a pass, because in reality he is proposing nothing different than you are?

Or are you going to continue these silly word games?

An Oath and a Pledge

When our next Commander in Chief is sworn in, he or she will make the same oath as George Washington:

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.

Yes, our founding fathers thought it so important that they made it explicit in this oath. Protecting the Constitution is more important than protecting the Flag, protecting the Citizens, and protecting the national interest.

And yet, not all Presidents have taken this oath seriously. Our current President, George W. Bush, has taken abuses against the Constitution to new lows. Yes, you can argue that he is doing the same things as his predecessors. No doubt that is true, although he has gone much further than any in recent memory.

That is why, to me, the most important issue in the Presidential race this year is the candidates' stands on protecting the Constitution. If a candidate can only keep us safe from terrorists by locking us all up, then I say, don't bother we'll take our chances with the bad guys. If the only way to maintain a healthy economy is by scrapping freedom, then we'll scrounge for bread crumbs. Remember, our founding fathers were willing to give up their security and risk dying to create this institution. We shouldn't be so ready to give it up to keep the securities we have collected over the years.

And that is why it's not surprising that a liberal group and a conservative group with very similar names have taken on this very issue. The right-wing American Freedom Agenda and the left-wing American Freedom Campaign have both created 10-point pledges for the candidates, outlining specifically how they will undo the damage done to our founding document by the current administration.

Rep. Ron Paul, whose campaign has gotten lots of interest but few votes, was the first to sign on. He even introduced a version of the pledge as a bill on the House floor. None of the other Republican candidates (neither McCain nor Huckabee) has followed. However, all of the Democratic candidates have signed the pledge (Obama) or issued similar statements (Clinton).

Here's the bottom line, and why the founding fathers felt so strongly about this. When it's your guy (or gal) in the White House, then abuses of power are all for a good cause. No harm, no foul. But beware. The other team is bound to get a turn in control. And when that happens, they are sure to use all of the same new powers, and are likely to push them even further.

So, if you trust George Bush to decide who is an enemy combatant, would you also trust Hillary Clinton to make the same determination?

Here's the list from the conservative group. See if there's anything on here that's not a no-brainer:

• Prohibit military commissions whose verdicts are suspect except in places of active hostilities where a battlefield tribunal is necessary to obtain fresh testimony or to prevent anarchy;
• Prohibit the use of secret evidence or evidence obtained by torture or coercion in military or civilian tribunals;
• Prohibit the detention of American citizens as unlawful enemy combatants without proof of criminal activity on the President’s say-so;
• Restore habeas corpus for alleged alien enemy combatants, i.e., non-citizens who have allegedly participated in active hostilities against the United States, to protect the innocent;
• Prohibit the National Security Agency from intercepting phone conversations or emails or breaking and entering homes on the President’s say-so in violation of federal law;
• Empower the House of Representatives and the Senate collectively to challenge in the Supreme Court the constitutionality of signing statements that declare the intent of the President to disregard duly enacted provisions of bills he has signed into law because he maintains they are unconstitutional;
• Prohibit the executive from invoking the state secrets privilege to deny justice to victims of constitutional violations perpetrated by government officers or agents; and, establish legislative-executive committees in the House and Senate to adjudicate the withholding of information from Congress based on executive privilege that obstructs oversight and government in the sunshine;
• Prohibit the President from kidnapping, detaining, and torturing persons abroad in collaboration with foreign governments;
• Amend the Espionage Act to permit journalists to report on classified national security matters without fear of prosecution; and;
• Prohibit the listing of individuals or organizations with a presence in the United States as global terrorists or global terrorist organizations based on secret evidence.

Now, go vote based on your candidate's willingness to follow the Presidential Oath of Office.

Colorado Caucus: In Which Thousands of People Pretend to Vote

The other day, I decided to go to the Colorado Caucus for the first time, to see if I could figure out whether it makes sense in this primary season. You see, about five years ago Colorado decided to dump its primary to save money. Then, for this election, the replacement caucuses were moved up to Super Duper Tuesday to give us the illusion that our votes matter.

Well, it turns out that record numbers of Coloradans had the same idea as I did, and decided to give the caucus a whirl. There were overflow crowds across the state, and Boulder was no exception. But did our votes matter? I still haven't figured out how this works. But in our precinct we elected seven delegates for the county convention and assembly, in March. At that forum, delegates will be chosen to go to the state convention in May. There, Colorado's delegates to the national convention will be chosen, and they will hopefully bear some resemblance to the delegates chosen in the individual precincts. But then there's something about super-delegates chosen by the party. So, when they say that Colorado voted for Barack Obama, it seems to me to be just an interesting theory for now, one that will hopefully be borne out in a few months.

We headed over about 6:20 (to a neighborhood middle school), wanting to get there in time to register. And when we were half way there, we started noticing the heavy traffic. This is strange, I expected that there would only be a few political wackos showing up. Instead, the school parking lot was full, and people were parking in the neighborhoods blocks away, and walking back to the school on the snow-and-ice-covered streets.

We walked around to the front entrance of the school. People were handing out campaign stickers for Obama. Again strange. I know that it is illegal to electioneer within 100 feet of a polling location in Colorado, but I guess the caucus doesn't count for some reason.

Walking in the front door, we see the registration table. But there is also a line of people waiting. We follow the line down the hall around the corner, down the next hall, and just keep going. Eventually the line splits in two and heads for the back of the school. It winds through the lockers by the gym so that people don't have to stand outside behind the school in the cold. We find our place in line at the end of a row of lockers.

Well, this is crazy. There are probably a thousand or more people waiting in line to register, and maybe five volunteers checking them in. I know the caucus is supposed to start in twenty minutes, and line isn't moving. Is this going to be a 2:00 AM commitment?

Ten or fifteen minutes passed and we made it past one row of lockers and into one of the main hallways. It was clear that nobody had expected this level of turnout. Someone started handing out registration cards to people in line, but there was no sense of when they would be needed. Until there was a rumor that they had stopped registering people. Were we just supposed to go home? No, everybody was gathering in the cafeteria, or maybe the assembly hall, or the gym. We followed the crowd, and crammed into a big room with no space.

Well, at least we were in the right place. After a while, the chair of one of the local precincts (it turns out that eight of them were caucusing at the school) got up to talk.

The first order of business was to give us the agenda for the night. The good news was that we absolutely had to be done by 8:45. That's PM. Less than two hours. Then each a representative for each candidate got to speak for exactly two minutes. Not a second longer, as the emcee was literally dragging them off the stage if they went over.

When the big group broke up, the original plan had been for each precinct to take over a classroom for its meeting. That plan was obviously out the window. So, our precinct, along with two others, went to the gym, and it was pretty tight in there.

Each of the precincts had to pick someone to be in charge. Then we had to figure out how to actually count the votes. You see, another difference between an election and a caucus is that there is no secret ballot in the caucus. You have to public state who you are supporting. So eventually we had all the Obama supporters stay in and near the bleachers, while the Clinton supporters went to the other side of the room. The uncommitteds were to stand under the basketball hoop. My wife and I split up, not to see each other until the night was over. Each group counted itself off. For Obama, 121. For Clinton, 33. The uncommitted group was deemed nonviable. Since we got to pick seven delegates, that meant 5.5 for Obama and 1.5 for Hillary.

Well, we couldn't very well split a delegate in half, so we needed to resolve the rounding issue. One more count. And this time, with the undeclared recommitted, the totals came out 121 to 34. Hillary won the round-off. Then the two groups had to select the five or two delegates, plus alternates for the county convention and county assembly next month.

With the presidential choice selected, a number of people left. We went through the same process to select our party's nominee for Senate (Mark Udall won all seven the delegates.) Then, our congressional district (Jared Polis got four delegates and Joan Fitz-Gerald received three.) Again, we had to select delegates.

The final order of business was the survey on the party's platform. But it had been published only on the web and nobody had filled it out or brought copies. So that was pretty much a waste of time. It's the thought that counts?

What did I learn? Well, a caucus is pretty much the opposite of an election. Secret vs. open. Neat vs. messy. Electioneering illegal vs. electioneering encouraged. For the masses vs. for the people who have very strong opinions. Designed to fit into your life vs. you'd better work your life around it.

The other thing that is obvious is that people are very much into this presidential election. I understand that last time only one person showed up from our precinct, and in the last presidential election there were only 12. This time it was 155.

Plus, I'm not even sure to what extent my vote last night actually influenced the selection of the party's candidates. You'd think with fewer people voting than in a primary each individual vote would be worth more. But then with such an arcane, byzantine process, who knows?

Obama is Greater than McCain

Senator Barack Obama recently had a job interview, I mean spoke, at Google, hoping to impress the nerd crowd. And, just like he did previously with Senator McCain, CEO Eric Schmidt asked a trick technical question, although slightly differently this time. No doubt he read my criticisms of his earlier question and tried to tune it up a bit.

As I wrote, McCain lost a good opportunity to profit off his version of the question, "How do you determine good ways of sorting 1 million 32-bit integers in two megabytes of RAM?" He merely laughed it off. But, when Obama was asked for "the most efficient way to sort a million 32-bit integers", he actually made a reasonable but incomplete answer, "I think the bubble sort would be the wrong way to go."

Of course, Obama must have read my earlier blog post and knew that a question like this might be asked. He probably also prepared his answer in advance. But still, he didn't actually answer the question, he merely listed one incorrect answer.

So, what is the right answer. Well, Schmidt again didn't define all his terms. Primarily he didn't say what he meant by "efficient".

Well, to me, efficient means it takes me the least amount of time. So, if I were to be asked this question, the answer would obviously be, load the numbers into Excel and select the Data Sort menu option.

But that is probably not the right answer for candidate Obama. It would depend on exactly what the numbers are and why they needed to be sorted, but in most cases the best method would be to tell one of his interns to sort the numbers and come back with just the top three.

By the way, in my earlier post I said:

Full disclosure. This log is hosted by Blogger, which is owned by Google. So, if this post never shows up in any Google searches, I think I'll know why.

Well, it turns out that there was a huge spike in the number of people visiting my blog with search terms related to sorting of integers right around the time of Obama's interview. This can only mean that the folks at Google are using my blog to help them write better interview questions.

Does this mean I get a cut of the referral bonus?

And, Mayor Giuliani, are you paying attention?