The Cogent Analyst

Deficits Will Be The Death Of Us

2010-06-29T13:03:00.004-06:00

Many people I have heard speak or whom I have talked to have said something to the effect of, “Deficits aren’t all that bad for the economy. We’ll be OK; our economy will be fine in the long run.” Many other people I have spoken with are ignorant and/or apathetic about our country’s deficits and debt. So I thought I’d write up a few points to consider about out debt and deficit.

First, a few base definitions that will help for some of you:

GDP (Gross Domestic Product) - Basically everything a country produces in both goods and services for a whole year.

National Debt – When the government spends more than it takes it, it issues treasury bonds and bills (and a few other things) to make up the gap. The sum of all those outstanding bonds and bills is the debt.

National Deficit/Surplus – The amount the government expects to bring in (receipts) minus the amount the government expects to spend (outlays), usually measured over 1 fiscal year.

And to be clear, I am not including in any of these discussions any of the debts or deficits of all the state and local governments, although those are also very big problems in their own right.

Ok, so to start, how large is the current government debt? A little over $13 trillion, or about 90% of GDP. That comes out to about $43,000 for each and every man, woman and child in this country. When a new baby is born in this country today, they are instantly put in bondage by our government, to the tune of $43,000 and growing, just for the privilege of being an American citizen. Welcome to America.

How big is the national deficit this year? Last year it peaked at almost $1.5 trillion, or roughly $5,000 per American, higher than ever in part to the massive bailouts that occurred. That’s more money we’re all borrowing folks, it doesn’t just go away. This year the deficit is forecast to come down to about $1.2 trillion this year, or roughly $4,000 per American added to our existing debt. Theoretically that number will go down in the future. But wait…

Look at the table below (you'll want to click on it and open it to a new window or tab to see it clearly). This is part of the White House’s 2011 budget projections, released in Aug 2009. A couple important things to remember about these projections. First, they are simply guesses, and often reality is far different than projections. Two, regardless of who is in the White House, the projections will always look as good as they can realistically get away with. Three, the farther out a projection is made, the higher the probability that it is wrong. Fourth, all these numbers are as a percentage of our GDP. Fifth, the farthest part of this projection will cover times when our children and grandchildren will be (hopefully) enjoying a few children and grandchildren of their own. Now, with that in mind, let’s cover just 5 of the important highlights from this table, which I have highlighted with red lines and arrows, and numbered them for each point:

#1 – You’ll notice that while the White House thinks they’ll get decrease the deficit in the short term, in the very long term they see it running out of control, far out of control, up to 62.3% of our country’s GDP in 2085, and that’s the rosy outlook.

#2 – You’ll notice that the amount of debt is going to continue to skyrocket until in 2085 it will be more than 8 times the size of our entire country’s output, which is about 13 times bigger compared to our GDP than right now. And that’s the rosy outlook!

#3 – See how the “discretionary” part of that spending stays solid at 6.1% of GDP? What is “discretionary” spending? Sounds optional, right? It isn’t. It includes things like national defense, law enforcement, and all the necessary items that government should do (along with a number they shouldn’t be doing).

#4 – At the same time, “mandatory” spending is going through the roof. The category of “Mandatory” in this chart spending includes items such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. See how huge a portion of the spending that becomes?

#5 – Interest, the pied piper of debt, comes calling. The interest on our debt will become HUGE, 38% of our national economy (and still growing monstrously) by 2085. You can see where this is heading, and in a hurry.

Now let’s talk about the elephant in the room that might explain a few questions: Unfunded liabilities. What in the world are unfunded liabilities? Unfunded liabilities are promises our government has made for future payments, but which it hasn’t set aside any extra funds for. The main culprits are Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. Out government officials, often in order to get elected, have made all kinds of promises for the future, without having to actually go set money aside to fulfill those promises. Unfortunately, they’ve gotten their power and have stuck us and our grandchildren with the massive bill for their power mongering. The reason “mandatory” payments start to get so huge is because of these promises. If a company did its accounting pensions like the government does for “mandatory” spending these days, every last one of those company officers would be vilified and crucified on the government’s altar, then thrown in prison. Not so with the government.

So how much are we on the hook for? Right now the estimate from the congressional budget office is somewhere around $110 TRILLION dollars! That’s about $350,000 per American! It is about 10 times our national GDP! Take every single penny of what this country makes for 10 years and that’s how much we have to come up with to pay for these promises that our power-hungry lawmakers have made.

It is hard for our brains to comprehend a number as large at 110 trillion, so let’s do a couple comparisons to help out. If you had $110 trillion in $1 bills, it would weigh more than 1,200 fully loaded Nimitz class aircraft carriers. If you had $110 trillion in $1 bills and stacked them flat on top of each other (like when they get rubber-banded by banks), the stack would be 7,465,278 miles tall, which is like going to the moon and back more than 15 times! If you had $110 trillion in $1 bills and put them together end to end and side to side to make a dollar bill carpet, it would cover almost 440,000 square miles, which would cover the whole south east part of our country (Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida combined)!!

And folks, that’s just how bad it is right now. It continues to get worse and worse as time goes on and politicians make more and more promises. And it doesn’t count the current national debt, and it doesn’t count the current debts of all the individual states, counties, and cities, nor the unfunded liabilities of all the individual states, counties, and cities.

I’m here to tell you, when it comes to the future of our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, we have a BIG problem on our hands. Decisive action MUST be taken if our country is to survive. And every year that our country puts off decisive action is going to make our problem that much harder to deal with. We’re all sitting on a bomb, and it is ticking, with no idea how long until it goes off.

Fun With Sheep

2009-03-19T11:44:00.005-06:00

Well, with all the gloom and doom lately, I thought it would be fun to post something... well... fun!

Check out this fun video of some extreme shepherding... maybe this will be an Olympic sport some day, lol.

Click in the video screen to start the playback, then expand to full screen (button in the bottom bar, right side) if you want to get rid of the buttons along the side buttons.

[Via Kontraband.com]

Courtesy of Kontraband.com

Structural Shifts

2008-12-09T15:21:00.002-07:00

There are some changes happening around the world which I believe have already begun, and are important for anyone who wants to understand both the economic future of our country and the implications of that future for jobs, stock prices, and the lifestyles we live. I want to be clear that the events happening around us (this year especially) will greatly affect the rest of our lives, and the lives of our children and grandchildren, so I believe they are important to know about. Let me begin with brief description of a sad event:

In June of 1995, in Seoul, South Korea the Sampoong Department Store was packed with thousands of shoppers. Just after 6PM, the roof gave way, and a large portion of the 5-story structure pancaked into the basement. About 500 people died there that day, another 1000 were injured. The tragic collapse was due to poor planning, construction, and corruption. A building not only has to be designed correctly for the loads and stresses to be placed on it, but that planning must actually be implimented.

How does all of this relate to the economic future of our country? To put it simply, our current level of economic growth and prosperity (the load to be held up) is based on a very real set of supporting principles (load-bearing structures) which hold up the load, and help it resist the regular buffeting forces of bumps in the road. I believe that many of those load-bearing structures have been moved, altered, or weakened, in such a way that we will have to take some of the load off the building, and rearrange the rest in order to keep ourselves from a collapse. Here are some of the structural supports that have held us up in the last century, and how they are changing:

1- Population Growth. World population growth rates have been in decline for 50 years, with Europe leading the way. The US still has the highest population growth rate of any western country (due to higher immigration), but it too is significantly slowing. Growth is important because the more people live in this country, the more people need goods and services. If we had another major baby boom for the next decade or two, the demand for baby goods and children's goods would shoot up, spurring those industries, etc. But when growth slows, there are fewer and fewer new customers for products and services every year. That means less economic growth. Additionally, it means less government revenue growth as well, which has implications for national budgets and deficits.

2- Demographic Shift. The baby boomers are just now starting to retire. Take a look at the chart above and look at those big humps in the middle. Those are the boomers. As they all start to go into retirement, a few very important things happen. First of all, when they stop working and start living off their retirement savings, they stop putting money away every month into stocks and bonds, and start taking that money out so they can have a monthly income. Second, more of them draw on Social Security, which is a huge problem we're all going to have to deal with very soon, because we can't even come close to paying what we owe on that. Third, as people get older they need more medical care, and will spend more of their income on medical care than they did before, and less on other things. That bodes better for the health care sector, and worse for anything discretionary in nature. And lastly, old people die at a faster rate than young people, putting even more pressure on the growth problem I outlined in point 1.

3- Government Theft. More and more of our money is going to be taken by Uncle Sam. With an $11 trillion debt, trillions more pledged for this year's bailouts, trillions that will probably go to Obama's version of the New Deal, and over $1 trillion in deficits projected for next year alone, the debt burden of this country is shooting out of control. Let's be clear that in one way or another the country's spending needs to be paid for. Let's look at the options, none of which are pretty:

Borrow. The country can issue more debt, on which it has to pay interest. Last year the government spend about $500 BILLION to pay interest on our national debt. At almost $1700 per person in this country, that's a lot of interest to pay. But with the national debt ballooning, you can rest assured that interest bill will go up, WAY up. That takes a bite out of government spending unless more revenue (taxes) are brought in or more spending (programs) are cut.
Cut spending. This is how must of us try to get out of debt. But lower government spending would of course drag on the economy, and the government certainly doesn't want to do that, in an economic downturn especially. This is the long and painful way out as I see it, but the least likely one to happen.
Increase taxes. We all pay more of our heard earned money to Uncle Sam. This isn't just income taxes, but also in the form of higher prices on products (companies have to pay taxes too). Taking more money out of the pockets of consumers definitely slows down the economy, as consumer spending accounts for 2/3 of the country's economic growth. It's hard to make a case for raising taxes when the economy is in the dumps and people are out of work.
Monetize the debt. Basically this is just printing money. Let me explain. Let's say the government takes in $90,000 but needs $100,000 to do what it does, much like the deficit we're in now. So it issues $10,000 in bonds to the public. But then the government doesn't want to (or can't) pay the additional interest on that $10,000 so they decide to monetize it. They fire up the printing press, print themselves $10,000 in money, and use it to buy back the bonds from the public. So now they have the $100,000 they need, but the total amount of money in circulation has climbed by $10,000. As you may know, this means inflation, and now everybody's dollars are worth a little bit less, and buy a little bit less, and thus the prices you see at the store (and for every other physical material) actually move up. If you end up with lots of inflation, you make everybody more poor. See my article from September 5th to see some effects of too much inflation. So the problem here is that we end up with high inflation to try and wipe away our debt, and in the process we all become poorer in real terms, which is not a very desirable for anybody.

4- Spending orgy. We have, as a nation, gone into immense amounts of private debt in order to finance our grandiose lifestyles. We have lived far beyond our means for a long time now, and it is finally catching up to us. Hard. Look at the chart from my November 19 article to see just how far into debt we're really gotten ourselves. The savings rate in this country is almost zero, so as a whole we spend every penny that we make. And all this during good economic times, when we really should be saving for a rainy day. Now people can't pay their debt, can't buy discretionary items, can't pay their mortgages, are defaulting on loans, etc. Every time we hit a bad patch in the economy, people are forced by the economic gods to remember that they should save, and the national spending rate goes up. But if it returns to a "healthy" level of 5%-8%, where do we get all that money to save? From not spending it! And if we don't spend money, we have a big problem with economic growth. And no growth means more hard times.

Are there any answers? I believe there are, but that it will take pain and hard work to get there. I believe we can take some load off our damaged building, repair the building a little bit, and rearrange what is left, so that the building does not tragically collapse on us. I believe that it will require personal responsability, and a major shift in attitude. It would be very hard for a while, but we're going to have to do it now or later. I believe our leaders should lead us by telling us that we need to spend less, save more, be ready for a rainy day, not by pandering to every group of people that walks through their doors. They should do what their constituents tell them, but they should also be active in informing and extholling them to do things that will benefit them and everyone else. They should be urging us to be conservative and frugal in our personal spending, and lead by example in our government spending. But I've not seen more than a handful out there who have the backbone to do not only what is necessary, but what is morally right AND necessary to get our contry back in the right direction.

The Real Bogeyman - DEBT

2008-11-19T10:45:00.000-07:00

As we have watched this year's financial debacle unfold, legions of analysts, political candidates, pundits, and economists have tried to blame the mess on one thing or another. Everyone is looking for a bogeyman on which to blame the current calamity: The housing slump, Wall Street greed, chinese currency manipulation, democrats, republicans, bad luck, economic cycles, etc. Very few have actually named the real root and culprit, the actual bogeyman: DEBT.

This country has for decades been infected with the disease of debt. We use debt to purchase things beyond our means and live ever more lavish lifestyles. We see what our parents have now and want to have it now too, rather than work hard for 20 or 30 years to get it. We view our credit and everything we own as an ATM from which we can borrow and waste (spend) money frivolously. It is a disease that has been transmitted to the rest of the world too. It is the cause of much of the boom times of the last few decades. And it is now starting to catch up with us, big time.

How bad is it? Pretty bad. Take a look at this chart. This shows how much credit we have currently in use as a nation, divided by the nation's GDP (the total production of our country for a year). You can see pretty clearly that the growth and prosperity of the last few decades has been due in large part to the ever increasing debt which we have used to purchase more and more stuff. This is what is meant by leverage, and we, as a society, have leveraged ourselves to the hilt! You can see we are WAY past historical norms, and WAY past even the amount of leverage we had before the great crash and the Depression.

Now, leverage sure feels nice when values are climbing, because it means that we're earning a much higher return than we otherwise would. If I'm leveraged 3 times and prices move up 100%, I make 300%. But the same holds true on the downside, which is what most people forget. If one is leveraged 3 times, the prices only have to move down 33% for the entire investment to be effectively lost. And that's only on 3x leverage. Where do many people have a ton of leverage without even realizing it? Their homes! If you own 20% of your home, and the rest is on a mortgage, you are leveraging yourself 5 times. If you own 10% you leverage yourself 10 times. If you own 5%, you leverage yourself 20 times.

Let's look in a little more detail what happens in this scenario. Let's say you go to buy a $100,000 home and put down a respectable 20% ($20,000) and made interest only payments (for ease of calculation). Let's then say that over the next 5 years the value of your home goes to $125,000 and you sell your home. You used $20,000 of your own money (and $80,000 of borrowed money) to then turn it into $45,000 ($125,000 sales price minus outstanding mortgage), and thus made 125% on your investment. Price moved up 25% and you made 125%. Leveraged 5 times. On the flip side, let's instead say that the price of your home declined by 25% instead, and you had to sell it for $75,000. You have now lost 125% of your investment! You've lost your entire investment plus another $5,000 you have to come up with at closing. Price moved down 25% and you lost 125%. Most people are leveraged and don't even realize it.

Now look back up at the chart... with every big leveraging there needs to then follow a big de-leveraging to get back to normalized levels. So between mortgage and consumer credit, we're going to have to take some serious pain for a while as we get back to more normal levels.

How about the public debt? The US public debt? That's not looking good either. I've taken the debt levels for the last few years, plus some basic projections out to 2020, to come up with the chart you see here. That is pretty depressing to me. What's more scary is the amount of money necessary just to pay the interest off at that point. If we have to pay 6% interest (slightly higher than now, but lower than the historical average payout) on about $23 trillion, we'll have to pay about $1.4 trillion every year just to keep up on the interest, even if at that point we do balance the budget! That's getting close to $5,000 a year for every single person in this country, just in interest payments alone. Have a family of 4? Your share will be $20,000 a year in interest payments to uncle Sam. Even scarier is that if we let it get that big and then want to pay it back down to zero over the following 20 years (to 2040), we will need to pay over $2 trillion a year (close to $7,000 per person, or $28,000 a year for a family of 4) to pay it down.

Oh, and incidentally, about 25% of our public debt is owned by foreign countries, with China now being the biggest holder of that debt. And what do the debtholders get? The interest payments! Our government is now shipping hundreds of billions of dollars out of this country every year to pay interest on our debt, the biggest single portion of it going to China. So not only do we have a massive trade deficit with China that takes hundreds of billions a year from our pockets and puts it in theirs, we also borrow from them too and send them tens of billions more every year! Who else sees a problem here?

So as a country we are in debt up to our eyeballs, both privately and publicly. Savings rates have fallen to basically zero. Debt for spending is what got us into this mess, as we have overleveraged ourselves terribly. But how are our policymakers trying to solve our problems? Borrow more money and let others borrow more money! They want us to borrow ourselves out of this problem, caused by borrowing! That is a TERRIBLE idea!

How come I don't hear our policy makers telling us to be more prudent with out money, save more money, spend less, spend wisely, etc? Because 2/3 of the growth of our economy is now based on consumer spending, that's why. We've gotten addicted to the consumer spending, made possible by the debt we've taken on, and now nobody wants to get off the drug and go through the terrible withdrawal pains that would certainly follow.

But that is the only answer. We must take pain, we must go through the withdrawals. And we should let everyone do it on their own, paying for their own mistakes. Not giving bailouts and handouts and redistributing the taxpayer money from those who made good choices to those who made bad choices. Companies need to be allowed to fail, people need to be allowed to fail. Our government loses credibility with its people every time they punish those who make good decisions and reward those who make bad decisions. The bogeyman is now too big to be stuffed back in the closet and we'll have to shrink him back down to size before we can ever hope to put him back in.

Bailout Nation - A Shredded Constitution

2008-11-12T16:01:00.000-07:00

For those who haven't been keeping track, our government has now spent about $3.5 TRILLION dollars on bailouts the last few months. That's right, trillions with a big, fat, T. How can this be? Didn't congress only vote on a $700 billion bailout (known as TARP)? Yes, yes they did. But the Fed apparently has the unconstitutional authority not only to print money out of thin air, but also to make "emergency loans" to companies all over the country without any congressional approval, oversight, or any other form of responsibility. Here's how it breaks down so far:

$2 Trillion in "Emergency Loans"
$700B TARP (the official bailout voted on by congress)
$300B Hope Now (the gov's year-old attempt at saving troubled mortgages)
$200B Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac nationalizations
$140B Tax Breaks for Banks (which the IRS quietly enacted without fanfare)
$110B: AIG (in addition to $40B of TARP money)

What? You didn't realize how much money was being spent? Yeah, well... not many people do.

Oh, incidentally... that $2 trillion in "Emergency Loans" that the fed has already dished out (without constitutional authority, or oversight)... yeah, they refuse to tell anyone who they have lent that money to, or what kind of collateral they got in exchange. Talk about scary. That's $6,700 for every man, woman, and child in this country.

And the TARP money? Tens of billions of dollars of that bailout money are being used to pay corporate executive bonuses. BONUSES?!? WHAT?!?

But oh, gentle reader, don't get the false impression that the bailouts are over. Not by a long shot. There will almost certainly be hundreds of billions (if not trillions) more given out to the financial industry. And let's not forget the automakers, who are almost certainly going to get tens of billions of dollars. And what about the government's pension guarantee corporation, which is getting hammered and will likely need additional funds to take all these failed pensions on its books? How about FDIC and NCUA, which insure bank and credit union deposits? They're probably going to need billions by the time this is all over. Then there the airlines, quietly waiting in line for their turn to ask for a handout. And the list goes on. Where will it ever end?

Trying to add up the true cost of the bailouts is very difficult, and won't really be known for years. But just think about the fact that $3.5 trillion is about 25% of the entire US economy for a year, and about 35% of our current national debt, and you may start to be alarmed. Unfortunately, hyperinflation and/or sharply higher interest rates seem to be where we are headed. Hyperinflation is always terrible, and sharply higher interest rates would deal a terrible blow to this already crippled economy. However you look at it, it isn't pretty.

The constitution has in the last 50 years become nothing but a nice idea, a historical note, to be used as a trumpeting call to rally people, but to be completely ignored by our government. There are tens of millions of people in America who still believe in it and want to see our government restored to it original principles. Principles which have been slowly twisted and perverted over time in order to centralize power in fewer and fewer individuals. The governments of the last 40 years are primarily responsible for this mess, as they have moved farther and farther away from the constitution and the principles of small government and personal accountability.

What we need is a charismatic leader to rise and lead the tens of millions who want to return to a government FOR the people and OF the people, not one that is OVER the people. We need leadership to help organize massive (and peaceful) rallies across the country, to get our leaders to pay attention. Our government leaders have long forgotten what it meant to be "afraid" of their constituents, and unless we start reminding them of that, things will never improve. I hope such a leader appears soon.

Obamunism

2008-10-30T20:44:00.002-06:00

In 5 days we will elect our new President, along with many of our state and federal representatives. The polls seem to indicate that Barack Obama will likely be elected as President, and that Democrats will make gains in congress. While today's GOP, on average, is not really all that much more fiscally conservative than today's Democrats, I think we will now see the country dive closer to socialism than ever before, and do so faster than we have ever seen it before.

I have already started using a new term for what this era will bring us to...

Obamunism

Yes, Obama has been making promises and comments that would make Karl Marx himself smile with glee. The back door has been open to socialism in this country for a long time... but I think this election will be marked as the date when the front doors were thrown wide open and the red carpet was rolled out in welcome of socialism in America.

It's sad really. This country once was unique in that people had a small and non-intrusive government, they were accountable for themselves, and wanted to work hard to get ahead in life. That was the American dream, wasn't it? That you could come to a place where if you worked hard, you could actually own stuff, and not have the government take most or all of your property from you? Well, the American dream has slowly been pushed aside, and within the next 4 years it is likely to be thrown under the bus.

Aparently it is ok to take from people who work more hours to give to people who actually choose to work fewer hours so they can still qualify for other taxpayer's money. Aparently it is better to be stupid and untrained, and not improve one's self, because if you do you will get punished by higher taxes so that the lazy among us don't actually have to do anything productive. Aparently the American dream is not all that great after all, since the new American dream is centered on how the lazy can get the government to steal other people's money and give it to them.

Welcome to our new country, the USSA. Where Obamunism is the main ideology, and where Comrade Obama is our newly elected dictator. A bloodless revolution that has been 100 years in the making. And one where people still have the illusion of freedoms and choices.

For Good Men To Do Nothing

2008-10-28T10:53:00.001-06:00

It is Edmund Burke who is credited with saying, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." I have never known another statement to be so true, so applicable, and yet so unheeded.

I firmly believe that the majority of the people in this country are basically good people. Yet I also believe that too often all these good people "do nothing" about the things going on around them. Part of it, I believe, is the inherent fact that good people are often busy taking care of themselves, their loved ones, earning a living, doing the everyday things that need to be done. And while that is certainly not "doing nothing" it often means that nothing is being done about the big picture around them. And that is the challenge. How to continue to fulfil our obligations while yet still making a difference for good in the larger world?

Human beings are funny things when we get together in groups. We most often try to act like the group, and take our cues from the group as a whole. When the group doesn't seem to have much of an opinion or action, then the group takes its cues from the 1 or more people who actually speak up and/or do something. Then the group tends to adopt that viewpoint or action. Take politics, for example. In politics it is often the obnoxiously loud minority who is heard the most, and therefore sways many of the fence sitters. It is the relatively few people who will gather for a street protest who gain the attention and the political focus. It is the few individuals who show up to caucuses, party meetings, and primary elections who really guide what happens in their parties.

Is that bad? Sometimes it is. Why? Because it is not always a representative sample of the whole. When an opinion poll is taken, in order to get a result that is 100% correct with 100% degree of certainty and no margin of error, you have to sample every single person. But that is hard and expensive. So we take sample sizes, and with mathematical formulas we determine that if we interview a certain number of people, we can be 85% confident that their answer (plus or minus the margin of error percentage) is representative of the whole. However, 15% of the time the answer is different, and not even within the margin of error. And those numbers go up even higher when the sample is a "self selecting" one. That means people choose themselves to be part of the sample group. So what you end up with, politically, is the most vocal people are seen as a representation of the whole, and the silent majority is assumed to be represented by these people.

In today's day and age, our government is HUUUUUUUUGE! It does many things which most of the country's citizens would likely oppose if they got into the details and saw what was actually happening. For example, I just downloaded our current tax code from a government web site, and to print it out would take 8,590 pages. It contains about 3.7 million words! Now honestly, I have yet to meet a single person, regardless of party affiliation, who feels like we actually need an 8,590 page tax code, nor the hundreds of thousands of employees and contractors needed to maintain it, update it, and (most of all) enforce it. Nobody wants a tax code this long, confusing, and in many cases blatantly unfair to some people.

What's the point? We are allowing evil to triumph by doing nothing! Whether it is bad government, bad people, bad media, or whatever, we sit around and do nothing most of the time. We should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, not just assume that we can let that duty fall on others. The elections are coming up next week, many can vote now. Let's all do our homework, look at the MANY candidates and parties (not just 2) out there for president and for the other offices. Let's vote for the one that REALLY represents us. And what's more, let's be active in promoting those things to the others around us.

Paying the Piper

2008-10-07T15:19:00.007-06:00

You have a certain debt. You may have thought you knew about the debt. You were most likely wrong. Your personal portion of the debt: $186,667

Are you surprised? Did you honestly think that the current $10 TRILLION dollar national debt was the only government debt we had? Well, you should probably check your figures, because it is closer to $53 TRILLION as of the end of the last fiscal year. That was the sum of our country's public debt, accrued civilian and military retirement benefits, unfunded but promised Social Security and Medicare benefits, and other financial obligations. And that number was as of about a year ago. By now it is probably closer to $56 TRILLION!!

Can we even wrap our heads around how big that is? If you had to give someone a $1 bill every second (24 hours a day, 7 days a week) until you gave them $56 trillion, it would take you 1,775,748 YEARS to give them that much money. By the time you are done, you have enough dollar bills to stack them (flat, like a regular stack of bills) up from the ground to the surface of the moon more than 16 times! And they would weigh (on earth) almost 62 million tons, which is about the same as 637 fully-loaded modern (Nimitz class) US aircraft carriers. Getting a better picture of how big this number is now?

Your portion of that debt (equal for every man, woman, and child in this country): $186,667

Have a family of 4? Congratulations! Your family owes close to $750,000! What an exciting thought!

Yeah... we're in trouble.

The fact of the matter is that we are going to have to pay the piper sometime. As much as we would like it to, debt will not just go away. At least not without massive war and bloodshed. No, it will not go away. We will have to pay the piper every penny, with interest. All of us will. We must get our country's fiscal irresponsibility under control, and we must do it now. Our country is moving towards communism faster than most of us realize or would like to think. Just think how different we are from that bright time not so long ago when our founding fathers liberated us from such government oppression. Oh, how far we have come from those times.

In the last 5 years I have come to the full realization that the more we are in debt as a nation, and the more services we provide for people, the more we give up our personal liberties to do so. We are brainwashed into believing that we must choose 1 of 2 political parties, and that they are vastly different. But in reality, both of those political parties are very similar. Just 2 sides of the same coin.

I have seen enough to know that as a fiscal and social conservative, voting for anyone in either of those parties is just a vote to slide further into socialism and debt. While no political party can ever match a person's beliefs exactly, the two major parties aren't even close to mine. And honestly, I don't think they are the closest match for most people who vote for them. But we have this desire to fit in with the crowd, to be a winner, to vote for a winner. And so we stay with 2 parties, most of us do. It is like the movie "The Matrix" except that instead of being used to power machines, We The People are being used to power other power-hungry people.

I choose to unplug myself from "The Matrix" and to do the hard work necessary to find the political party that most closely matches my actual opinions. And for me, that is the Constitution Party. Their views center around a return to the limited government instituted by the US Constitution, around family values, and fiscal responsibility. I would be willing to bet that in a blind test, if asked to choose between what the Republican party actually does, and what the Constitution party espouses and does, that most of the registered republicans I know would actually choose the Constitution Party viewpoint.

So in the end, I'm going to stick with the only people willing to bring us back to the limited and controlled government that we started out with. I'm voting Constitution Party.

Welcome to the USSA, comrades!

2008-09-21T16:09:00.002-06:00

If any of you haven't heard what is going on right now in the financial world and in our government, you must be hiding under a rock. Many firms are losing great deals of money and failing. Our government has been nationalizing these firms, and bailing them out, and giving them money, and all manner of other help. Why? They claim that if the firms fail, it will be too great a burden on the American people.

And honestly, it makes me sick that our government would do that.

Why? Well, there used to be a place called the USSR, the Soviet Union. They were pure communists. Communism one form of socialism and is the polar opposite of free market enterprise. It is the absolute lack of freedom. If you share my theological beliefs, it represents the plan of Satan as opposed to the plan of God. To me, it really is that simple and that evil.

So now our government is spending TRILLIONS (yes, that was a TR, not a B) of dollars to bail these companies out, claiming that it is in the best interest of everyone.

So let's see... for many years all these very smart people at these firms have been taking on a lot of risk, and making a lot of money for it. Now that the risk is coming home to roost, they want to walk away from the risk, dump it on the taxpayers, and still keep the money they made for taking the risk in the first place. That certainly doesn't sound fair to me!

Why should people who play by all the rules, work hard, pay their taxes, work to be self-sufficient, volunteer in their communities, obey all the laws, and only take appropriate risks now have to pay for those who took too much risk and simply don't want to pay for it?

Remember... if you answer that it is for the best common good, you are a socialist. Socialism takes away your choices and basically puts a gun to your head and says, "you will pay your taxes so we can choose what to do with your money, or you will go to jail." Much of the taxes we pay today is just a system of redistributing wealth. Rob from the rich (often known as the people who are smarter, wiser, harder-working, etc) to give to the poor (often known as the people who are lazy, and thus don't improve themselves or work as hard). This isn't like Robin Hood, where the rich stole from the poor in the first place. This is stealing hard-earned income from the people who earned it, to give it to the poor. Socialism.

Do you know what the US national debt is right now? It is almost $10 TRILLION dollars. That means every single man, woman, and child in this country owes over $31,000 thanks to the government. And it is growing rapidly. Every year the interest on that debt is over $400 BILLION dollars. That's over $1300 per man, woman, and child in the US. So my little family of four owes around $125,000 in debt, and accrues $5200 or more in interest payments every year. Oh, and we keep adding to that debt each and every year.

Enough is enough! I just wrote e-mails to my 2 senators and my representative in congress, and voiced my opinion that this bailout must stop, and that we must get our country out of debt, now. I hope you all do the same, because until they hear it from enough people, they won't listen.

On our current path, we will be calling each other Comrade within 30 years, because the government will have to nationalize everything private in the US just to pay its debt and avoid a complete world meltdown. They will say they have to do it to save the world, and that is how this formerly-free land will become the most powerful socialist state in history.

The government needs to let these companies that took the risk and made the money fail. It will be hard on everyone in the country, but we need to let it happen to save our country in the long run. No good parent would let their child run around doing whatever they want without consequences, and no good government should remove people's consequences either. Let them fail, let their creditors fail, let the whole system come down on itself so we can raise a new one from the ashes that actually takes care of itself.

But the politicians like their power, and won't do it.

Welcome to the USSA (United Socialist States of America).

Where To Park Your Cash

2008-09-05T12:00:00.005-06:00

A friend of mine called me up today. He asked me about where he could find a better interest rate on money in a bank account. As I work in the financial field, it also reminded me how many of our clients have similar questions, and how many people leave money on the table when it comes to the money in their banks.

A little primer on inflation: Some people actually still hide money "under the mattress" in a place where it accumulates no interest. They are losing money every single day, in a very real way. Due to inflation, the money you have today will be worth slightly less tomorrow. In the US, annual inflation averages around the 3-4% range. So if it is 4% this year, that means that $1,000 today will be effectively worth $961 next year if it just sits under your mattress. It will still be $1,000 if you count it, but will only buy $961 of today's goods. Thus, in order to keep your money's value stable, you need to earn 4% on that money in the next year. Anything less and you'll be losing money, and anything more and you'll be gaining money.

Some countries have terrible inflation problems due to bad policy (usually from dictators or highly corrupt governments). Take a look at this heat map around the world, and you will see what I'm talking about. The worst inflation by far is in Zimbabwe, and it just reached 2.2 million % per year! In other words, if it costs you $1 to buy a loaf of bread today, it will cost you $2.2 million to buy that same loaf of bread next year. And we panic when we get close to 5%... This horrible inflation is a direct result of the country's president, Robert Mugabe, and his corruption and nationalization campaigns for the last 20 years. What was once one of the richest of African nations is now in financial ruins.

Ok, so you need to keep up with inflation as best as you can. But if inflation is at 4%, and your bank's checking account only pays less than 1%, you're losing at least 3% of your money in the bank each year. How do you stop the bleeding?

One option that I like is the direct online savings accounts. Big real banks start online-only branches that give you very little service and have everything done electronically. Thus they avoid buildings, employees, and most all other costs. Then they give you a higher rate on your savings account than in their regular "bricks and mortar" banks. Right now you can get rates between 3% and 3.5% at some of these online savings accounts. They have links to your regular bank account and you transfer money back and forth as you wish. They typically have no fees, no minimums, and no restrictions.

If you want to look at a few for reference, try www.ingdirect.com, www.emigrantdirect.com, and www.hsbcdirect.com. And if you want to keep at least $1,000 in as a minimum, you can get a little higher rate at www.dollarsavingsdirect.com, which is also owned by Emigrant Bank. Make sure that where ever you put your money it is FDIC insured in case a bank implodes, and always read all the fine print when it comes to putting your money anywhere.

Rankings Or Popularity Contest?

2008-09-02T15:52:00.006-06:00

Anyone who knows me could tell you that I am a competitive person by nature. I also enjoy watching others compete. And one thing I love to watch is college football! Unfortunately, every year there are big disagreements between many people about the rankings of those teams, and which teams should be ranked higher than others. No real good answers have been put into effect, as the ongoing (and often heated) argument proves. Currently, college football teams are ranked weekly by 2 major polls, one voted in by members of the associated press, the other by college football coaches. But this presents problems.

Ranking polls and thus all the systems that rely on them (the BCS rankings in part) are inherently flawed due to human nature, greed, a team's viewability, a team's history, and more. Coaches have absolutely no incentive to cast votes in the most accurate and uniform manner, and neither does the press for that matter.

A possible solution to rankings of teams uses one of these very weaknesses in the current system (greed) as the method of really deciding how well a team played each week. And thus, collectively, how it has performed throughout the season. How? Use people with "skin in the game" so to speak: bookmakers. Every week, bookmakers around the world put odds on NCAA football games. All the best odds makers in the world typically zero in on a certain spread, over/under, etc. If they're right, they make money, if they're wrong by much (cumulatively) they'll lose their shirt. So they have a vested interest in getting the spreads as close as possible to the correct result.

So how do we use this? No pre-season polls, first of all. All teams start equally ranked. Before each game, its official spread is locked in. If a team beats its spread (win or lose), it gets bonus ranking points. If it doesn't equal its spread, it loses bonus ranking points. The more it beats the spread by, the more bonus points it gets, and vice-versa. Rankings are then decided simply by team record, with the tiebreaker being how many bonus ranking points each team has. Thus, after week 1, roughly half the teams will be 1-0, and the other half will be 0-1. No 0-1 team will rank higher than any 1-0 team, and the top ranked team will be the 1-0 team with the largest number of bonus ranking points (ie the team that beat its spread last week by the most points). This will incentivize both teams to play hard for the entire 60 minutes of the game.

Of course, you may say, "Wait, would this kind of system entice strong teams to schedule a bunch of pansies, and also penalize teams in supposedly "strong" conferences?" A valid concern indeed. And one that can easily be addressed with one additional numerical modifier. It could be called a "strength of schedule" modifier, much like the one which has been used in the BCS system. For example, the combined winning percentage of all your opponents could constitute the modifier. We just need to get people to sit down and work out the math, and try to take into account all variables.

Sure it has its potential problems, but it is a start. And breaking the status quo is the only way that many great teams and players out there will ever be able to compete (in the rankings) on a level playing field.

Emergency Essential: The Rechargeable Lantern

2008-07-30T14:24:00.007-06:00

Last year we had a power outage of several hours, due to a fire on a nearby mountain. I decided to drive to a store that still had power and look for a lantern. Lo and behold, what I found turned out to be one of the best emergency preparedness items we now have in our inventory: A great emergency lantern! OK, maybe that doesn't sound too exciting, but stick with me here.

This lantern has multiple ways to be powered: You can plug it into a regular outlet, plug it into your car, you can put in 3 AAA batteries, or you can charge the internal battery with the hand crank.

What do you get out of it? You can get a nice amount of light off the 20 LEDs, and that light is somewhat adjustable with a dimmer built into the switch. It can also flash a red light to signal for help. It has a built-in AM/FM radio and antenna, and even allows you to use the internal battery (and the crank) to power or charge devices like your cell phone or other small DC devices. All you have to do is buy an inexpensive set of DC conversion jacks somewhere like Radio Shack, and then make sure you have whatever your device requires for charging, and you're set. It has a nice handle, with a hook to easily get it up high where it can brighten a large area.

For less than $40 to get a new one, it is a great item for your emergency kit, or even for camping. It is the Garrity 20 LED Rechargeable Crank Lantern, but there are several companies that make similar ones. I'd give it an 8 on a 1-to-10 scale (which is really high for me) and would highly recommend it to anyone.

A Bright Future For Solar

2008-01-14T13:11:00.000-07:00

Much hype has surrounded renewable energy solutions, especially in recent years. But still, the problems with these renewable sources center on expense. They produce power in a way that is just not cost-competitive with fossil fuels.

However, that may be about to change. A California company, Nanosolar, says it has found a way to produce solar cells so cheaply that they can compete with coal. Their technology uses thin-film solar technology, which does away with expensive and bulky silicon, and centers around being able to print these cells (made of a concoction of metals and nano-particles on a foil backing) much like a printing press prints newspapers. They have already sold out all their manufacturing capacity for the next year, and in doing so will become the biggest solar manufacturer in the US.

Some of the richest people on the planet have invested in the firm. And if the technology turns out to be even half as good as they say it is, those people will become much, much wealthier. But it is exciting for all of us peons as well. Soon this technology will be available to anyone, to use on their home. Or even as part of the building materials themselves, such as roofing or siding for homes. Such a huge leap forward could do much to move us towards energy independence and cleaner air in our cities. I, for one, hope Nanosolar is a wild success, and that we can all soon enjoy the benefits of cheap renewable energy.

Cars that drive themselves?

2008-01-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

Have we finally reached the point where cars might actually be able to drive themselves, with little or no input from their passengers? It has long been the stuff of science fiction and movies (as in the Tom Cruise film The Minority Report), and has been whispered about in recent years by many scientists and engineers. But now General Motors has come right out and said that they want to make this happen in a decade.

Now, I don't know about you, but most of the time, I am in a car because I want to get to somewhere else, not because I want to be in my car. And if I have to spend my time in the car, I would sure love to be able to take a nap, or read a book, or work on a laptop. But of course, that's not possible for drivers today, and most of us can't afford to hire a driver to shuttle us around. So the idea has a good deal of appeal to me.

There are of course many hurdles, not the least of which are technical in nature. Driving a vehicle really is a very complicated task. A person needs to continuously calculate their speed relative to a myriad of objects around them. They have to respond quickly to unexpected situations in which there are many variables to consider. So getting a computer to see and do all this is no small task. Then there are the legal questions of what happens if a car gets into a wreck when it is driving, etc.

But I for one am excited for the day I can spend my driving time doing something more important or enjoyable. I think the first systems will take care of the driving only on the freeways. But hey, for me that's a great start. When a 1-hour freeway drive can become a 1 hour nap, I'll be a happy camper.

Click here for the story.

Wolf In Sheep's Clothing

2007-07-26T13:08:00.000-06:00

It is very trendy in today's day and age to publicly announce how green you or your company are. But we must also remember that just because some people claim they are green, doesn't necessarily make it so.

Case in point, a CNN article about using ice cooling in large buildings in New York. They claim that by freezing water into ice at night, and then blowing air over it during the day to cool the air, they are saving money and helping the environment. Well, they most certainly ARE saving money. And they most definitely are lowering their PEAK-TIME energy usage. But are they actually helping the environment overall?

Everyone knows that it takes energy to make ice. And it takes energy to keep it as ice until you need it. It takes more energy to make ice, than to cool the air at the time you need it. Simply because of inefficiencies in materials, etc. All these companies are doing, is shifting their power usage from a peak time in the afternoon to an off-peak time in the middle of the night. And overall they are actually increasing their energy usage. It just costs less at night, saving them money. But they want to make this big hoopla over it. And yes, I'm sure that they are saving some little bit of pollution since off-peak power generation is more efficient and environmentally-friendly. But what about the added power being used to cool all that ice? And what about the environmental cost of building all that machinery?

Wouldn't it simply be better to find TRULY innovative ways to save money and the environment? Look at IBM, they have a bunch of telecommuting employees, and they save big $$ doing it. Most of these companies could have at least some of their employees work part-time or full-time from their homes. That way they don't even have to come into the city, or use up office space that needs to be heated and cooled. The real key is eliminating excess, not just adding more of it and calling it environmentally-sound excess.

Read Story Here

Brain-Controlled Toys

2007-06-22T09:42:00.000-06:00

Using your brain alone to control objects and games will be the big interface trend of the near-future. I think that within 10 years, there will be consumer devices available for people to buy that will use brain scanning. One obvious implementation could be in video game systems. Another would be in a computer interface to replace keyboard and mouse. By the time my child is a teenager, I think it will be entirely possible that she will be playing the video games of the day simply by thought.

Click To Read

The Postal Joke

2007-05-02T10:24:00.000-06:00

Who likes the USPS and thinks they do a great job? Raise your hands now. Did anybody hear the question? Why didn't anybody raise their hands?

One of my favorite economist writers makes the case of why most of us don't care for the USPS, and why it really should change. Read up on it here:

Privatize the Postal Service (for Starters)

Supreme Meddling

2007-04-02T09:39:00.000-06:00

What DOESN'T the US Supreme Court (and many other courts, for that matter) get its hands into anymore? What was once devised as one of the 3 checks and balances, has become all 3 pieces. There is nothing the court won't touch, if it wants to. It is simply a partisan display of politics and government intervention most of the time. Here is yet another example:

Story

The AP Bans Paris Hilton

2007-03-02T09:27:00.000-07:00

It appears that the AP decided to run a 1-week ban on Paris Hilton stories, just to see what would happen. That fact alone is enough to make me sing their praises (where I am usually just deriding them). Turns out that nobody actually called up and asked for a Paris Hilton story, during the whole blackout. Hmmm.... sounds like all these celebs are actually not as newsworthy to people as the media make them out to be. See my recent blog about this media-fed craze. Maybe if enough of us would tell our news outlets and the AP that we don't care about every detail in the life of Paris Hilton, Brittney Spears, or Anna Nicole Smith, they would finally get the hint, and quit pushing these useless celebs' lives upon us.

Read the AP article.

Useful GPS For The Masses

2007-02-23T09:13:00.000-07:00

Imagine for a moment that you and a friend are on a day hike in a remote area. You get disoriented, and can't find your way back to the car. After a few hours you are really lost, darkness is starting to fall, and you start to panic. You've long since run out of water, you have no food, you haven't seen anybody else all day, and you're not dressed for the cold night temperatures. Now imagine that you have an escape route. A way to tell people exactly where you are, and that you are in trouble and need help.

That is the kind of useful technology that Isaac Daniel hopes will save people's lives. Because of an incident with his 8-year old son being reported as missing, he has created a line of sneakers with a built-in GPS tracking. They allow you to push a button on the sneaker, and send a wireless alert is sent to a monitoring service. In some emergencies (such as a lost child or missing Alzheimer's patient), a parent or guardian can ask the monitoring service to activate the GPS remotely in order to find the missing person.

What's next? This shoe is meant for emergencies, but I imagine that in the near future we will have more of these types of products around for everyday use. So for example, you will be able to create a "virtual fence" area from which they can't leave without triggering an alert to you. So if you child goes outside the neighborhood when they are supposed to be at home, you get a text message. Or if they leave school grounds during school hours (possibly due to an abduction), you get instant notification. It is always better to know about a possible abduction right away, rather than waiting a few hours until the child doesn't show up on time. It could literally mean the difference between life and death.

Read the article on CNN.com

Turn Garbage Into Clean Energy

2007-02-22T11:54:00.000-07:00

Read the article on www.PopSci.com

It looks as though the concept of turning garbage into energy rather than dumping it into a landfill has finally come of age. These trash converters aim to use the principle of plasma gasification to turn just about any trash (including chemical weapons, metal, and concrete) into a synthesis gas, which can be used to generate electricity, and an obsidian-like glass which can be used as a building material. It takes electricity to start the reaction, but once the reaction is going, it produces excess electricity, which can then be used to power surrounding buildings or sold back to the power grid. We're going to need a lot more of these types of converters if we hope to take care of the world's energy and garbage problems.

Urban Road Race For Robotic Cars

2007-02-21T12:40:00.000-07:00

Read the full story on CNN.com

This is the kind of technology I've been yearning for all my driving life. Sure, it is still many years off, but at least I can now have a glimmer of hope that it will be available to me in my lifetime.

Imagine getting in your car, telling it where you want to go, and then sitting back and relaxing, maybe taking a nap, or getting an early start on your day's work. You don't have to worry about getting in an accident because your car and every other car out there are driving themselves around, without the flaws of human judgment.

One potential downside? Maybe technology (coupled with ubiquitous ultra-high-speed internet) this will encourage people to commute farther to work. After all, if you can do a lot of your work, or anything else, while driving, the driving doesn't seem like so much of a waste of time.

Of course, some will say that this technology will ultimately become fairly useless, as the promise of affordable flying cars starts to look more like a reality (see companies like Moller for more info on the future of flying cars). The concept would be the same, as you tell it where you want to go and then sit back, but the challenges of navigating through roads in the sky will be much less difficult than navigating around on the ground.

But the idea of using your driving time to do something enjoyable or productive is so alluring, that we can hardly afford not to reach for it. So raise a glass to the computer chauffeurs of tomorrow. And hope he doesn't crash as often as the computers of today.

Silent Supersonic Jet?

2007-02-20T10:44:00.000-07:00

Read the story on CNN.com

Is it finally possible to make a "quiet" supersonic jet? The folks at Lockheed Martin's fabled Skunk Works think they've designed just such an aircraft.

With advanced design and technology, they believe they have designed a plane that can cruise at about 1100 MPH, while producing only 1 percent as much noise on the ground as the recently decommissioned Concorde. All this while obtaining considerable range (4,600 miles, Chicago to Rome), and some fairly fine luxury seating.

I for one hope that they succeed. I hope that this spurs the development of affordable and quiet supersonic passenger jets. For the last 50 years, passenger planes have gone the same speed. We have not realized any gains in the speed with which we travel through the air, despite 50 years of technology evolution. It is definitely time to move around the planet faster.

Irresponsable Media

2007-02-16T12:26:00.000-07:00

There have been many stories in the news lately, as there always are, about world events. But in recent weeks, one story has consistently made headlines more than any other.

It concerned the death of a woman named Vickie Lynn Marshall. She grew up in Texas, with several half-siblings, in a broken home. She moved in with her aunt, and failed miserably in school, never gaining more than an 8th grade education. She decided at the age of 17 to marry a 16-year old boy and then have a child. The two seperated a year after the child was born, and she started to work at Wal-Mart, and then as a waitress at Red Lobster.

She apparently didn't like working for low wages, and decided to become a stripper. But she got a "big break" in 1992 when she got in to Playboy Magazine. She married an old billionaire, who died 13 months later, leaving her a fortune. She had a daughter by some other unknown person in 2006. Later in 2006, her son, who was a recovering druggie, died at age 20 from a combination of drug-addiction medications and anti-depressants. She finally died this year at age 39, from as-yet unknown causes. Heavy drug and alcohol use are suspected as possible culprits, as having shortened her life.

By now, you may have realized that I'm speaking about Anna Nicole Smith. Just about anyone who has read the newspapers or seen the internet has seen countless stories about her death in recent weeks.

But why is the press (and through them the American People) so intent on dwelling on this particular life? Why is it that the press puts so much attention on a stripper who one could argue has done nothing constructive for the world? Many would argue that this was a miserable failure of a human being who got lucky enough to look good nude. Many would say that she never contributed anything to society, but that she in fact helped pull society downward, and destroy value more than create value.

The sad fact of the matter is that the media loves to dwell on people like Anna Nicole Smith, and get the public to dwell on it, because of the nature of lust and greed. The really great people of the world (of whom there are many), are rarely mentioned in the press. And even when they are, it is only a quick and fleeting story, printed once and then forgotten. How many Nobel Prize winners can the average American name? How many great, ordinary, every day people who sacrifice and help those around them, are mentioned on the news when they die? How many good examples are mourned by the media today, when they pass, compared to the bad examples who only destroy our society and everything around them?

Shame on the media, for systematically destroying our values, and our society.

Elections - 2006

2006-11-08T09:42:00.000-07:00

Voters went to the polls to cast their ballots yesterday. I, for one, did not. I cast my vote on October 27th, during early voting. This is because I would be spending all of election day (6 AM to 9 PM) working as a poll worker.

Why did I sign up? Several reasons. First, I wanted to help out. I had seen that in several places in Utah there was a shortage of poll workers. I felt like I was in a position to help, as I am able to take time off work more easily than some, and duty-bound to do so. Second, I wanted to get an up-close view of the voting process. I've always voted in every election. But, like many voters, my experience consisted of going to the polls and voting, and then going home. I wanted to see the details, understand what is happening, and understand how robust our voting process is.

What was it like? It was a lot of work! I was one of 7 dedicated and hard-working poll workers in my location, setting up and running 10 new voting machines for the 3 precincts that voted at that location. I spent much of the day helping people to cast provisional ballots. That's where someone comes in, thinks they are registered in the precinct, lives in it, but isn't in the register. In such a case, we establish their identification and that their current address is in the precinct (using the ID or bills they get at their address), and then give them a paper ballot to vote on. These ballots will be looked at individually at a later date by the county, to decide if they count.

We did some rotating of jobs so that everyone did most jobs they wanted to throughout the day. We took people's names, encoded voting cards for them, explained the machines to them, helped them when they had problems, etc. Our compensation for 15 hours of work? $80. Here are some conclusions/impressions drawn from my experience yesterday:

TOO FEW PEOPLE VOTE - In our precincts we had 2716 names listed on the register. We had a total of 416 regular and provisional voters throughout the day. There were another 50 or so on a list we were given of people who were in the register, but who had voted early or absentee. That's a pretty low turnout if you look at it that way. But really, I think that the number of people in the register is too high. More about that later. I think we as a society focus too much on voting as a right and a privilege, and not enough on voting as a duty.

PEOPLE ARE VERY UNINFORMED - From my interaction with several hundred voters, it seems like most people are uninformed to one degree or another. Some voters knew most of the things they cast votes for. But many were totally oblivious. We had people who came in and got to the machine and asked us who to vote for. Of course, we couldn't help them decide that, but it was eye-opening. Many expressed vocally that they were here to do their duty (mainly the elderly), but didn't really know anything about any of the candidates, so they were just going to vote by party, knowing nothing about the candidates and almost nothing about the party. The number of business professionals that I saw come in was much lower than the elderly or the college students. Did these people vote early? Who knows. But I have a lot less confidence now in the voters' decisions due to the massive amounts of ignorance I saw at the polls.

THE PROCESS IS STILL CUMBERSOME - Despite the new voting machines, which I think were an improvement over paper, the process of voting is still very old-fashioned and cumbersome. As a voter you walk in and (if you haven't had to wait in line too long) soon meet a register clerk. This clerk asks your name and looks you up in the register. In 99% of cases you don't have to show ID. As long as you said that is your name, you can vote. You sign the register and move on to the poll book. A poll worker then asks your name and writes it down in the poll book. He/she then tells the register clerk which number voter you are for the day, and the register clerk writes that number down next to your signature. Once that is done, you move to the ballot clerk, who encodes a ballot card with your precinct number and hands it to you. At this point you can start voting. This process is much longer if you're not in the book and need to vote provisionally. This process is also, in my opinion, very easy to fool in order to commit fraud. Realistically, we can do all that and more with a computerized system and only 1 or 2 workers rather than 4 or 5.

POTENTIAL FOR FRAUD - The new voting machines are, I believe, much less succeptible to fraud. However, it would still be an easy matter to get names out of the poll books and have others vote there as someone else. Or, someone could easily vote in a district they no longer live in. The fraud potential is biggest where there is the most human and register interaction. The registers need to be updated more aggressively than they are now. We should all at some point be required to show proof that we are who we say we are, and that we still live where we do.

INCONVENIENCE - The new early voting is a nice upgrade to allow people to vote more conveniently. But I would like to see that kind of thing expanded. Why not expand the number of early-voting locations? Even if early-voting is only open for a week or so before the election, having several key early voting areas around the city would really speed up everything on election night, and allow a county to have fewer machines to worry about.

I still believe in the right of the people to cast their votes for what they believe in. But when I see the potential for fraud, the cumbersome nature of the process, and the ignorance displayed by many voters, I fear for what kind of decisions are being made by the people as a whole when they come to the polls.

School Shootings - How will a summit help?

2006-10-10T23:15:00.000-06:00

Bush administration hopes to quell school violence - CNN.com

People talk and talk about how to keep children safe when they are in school. Sometimes they even come up with a solution that will hopefully quell the problem. Often, that means metal detectors and/or security personnel, which costs the cash-strapped school districts plenty of money, leaving even less for the core business of teaching. But in all their talks of looking for solutions and answers, they never seem to understand that the entire premise that the current public education system is a huge hindrance to any good solution.

The basic fact is that if there was no "public" education system, as we have it now, but all we had was schools run by companies, there would be A LOT more security in place in a lot more schools, compared to what we have now.

Think of it this way: If you normal shop for groceries at Smith's, but you hear about a shooting at a Smith's somewhere, wouldn't you feel less safe every time you went to a Smith's and walked right in the door without so much as anyone giving you a second glance? Wouldn't you worry about the guy with the big coat, that maybe he's going to rob the place or shoot it up? Then after another Smith's shooting, wouldn't you seriously consider not going back to Smith's if you could go somewhere else?

Now let's say you see an ad on TV for Albertson's. They've seen all the shootings, and have decided that they want to put in place some serious store security. So they advertise it, tell you they have security, and that you're safe at their stores. Well, Albertson's is right across the street from Smith's. So why not go there instead, where you feel safer?

So, when safety is a concern in the business world, the companies that provide more safety enjoy more customers and more revenues. Those that don't lose money and/or go out of business. Well, in the world of public schools, it is as if we have only 1 company in the world that provides this service, and you have to go there. If they don't provide good security, you can't go anywhere else, because they are all run by the same company and all provide the same lousy level of security. Catch my drift?

So if we had school run by different private companies, and everyone got to choose where to send their kids, then security would be a SELLING POINT for these schools, something to attract more customers, not something that they can't do anything about, like today's public schools.

But since few people out there realize that a public education system is one of the 10 planks of communism, as Carl Marx wrote, we're not likely to move away from the socialist school system any time soon. So can we be more intelligent about how we design and/or operate our schools so as to improve security without spending inordinate amounts of the education budget? YES! Here are a few ideas:

Fewer Entrances - If you've ever been to a primary, middle, or high school, you probably know that there seem to be more doors into the school than you could ever keep track of. Well, the truth is that the school can't keep track of them. I think back to my High School, which was built in the 80's, and is probably pretty typical. It had literally dozens of entrances into the building, all of which were unlocked during school hours, and none of which were ever monitored. Anyone can walk in by these doors and have easy access to plenty of students. We need to design schools to have only a handful of entrances, all of which can be continuously monitored in real-time. You can always have a bunch of emergency exit doors if you need to, but regular entrances and exits should be limited.

Access Control - These building house our greatest asset, our children! We'd never think of storing piles of gold in our schools the way they are designed today. But we'll send our most prized possesions, our kids, to them each and every day without a second thought. We should be guarding our schools like they were Fort Knox! Ok, maybe that would be a bit overboard, but you get the idea. Why don't we have swipable picture ID badges for all kids at a school? They need to swipe it to get into the school (at any of the very few entrances), and they can then swipe them to verify they are in class (rather than taking roll), swipe out of class when they leave, swipe them to pay for their lunch (rather than a seperate card or cash), and finally swipe them when they leave the building for the day. This makes it easy to make sure that only those who are supposed to be in the school are in the school. And it keeps track of where students are (in class) or aren't.

Armed Security - At these secure entrance points you would have a few highly-trained armed security people in place. They would check those students who beeped going through the metal detectors and always be on duty to take care of security risks. They could respond instantly to any violence or intruders in the school.

Eyes and Ears - How can administrators run schools effectively and safely if they are deaf and blind? That's what they're effectively trying to do today. Schools should have a barrage of cameras and microphones covering every inch of the building so they can always know what is going on at all times, and can instantly reference back to the video and audio from any camera at any time. Knowing where dangers are in a school and being able to verbally warn people to stay away from those areas can be quite effective at saving lives. Much more so than running around trying to figure out what is going on and only getting a partial understanding of the dangers at best.

While these concepts could be helpful in securing schools, I still feel that private companies would do a much better job of running the schools than the current public system. But, I don't think we'll ever find out for sure.

Iran Suppressing Freedom Again

2006-09-05T22:20:00.000-06:00

Here we are again, with Iran's President trying to rub out any ideas of freedom in the country by trying to silence those who may encourage free thinking. This is the very definition of a dictatorship, keeping the people thinking only what you want them to so that you can control them.

The "Wasteprint" Concept

2006-06-30T16:51:00.000-06:00

Lately as I've thought about the resources that we use, and how we use them, I've come up with a general concept cloud of ideas that I've started to call my "wasteprint" concept. The concept includes some of the following ideas:

-There are many resources on this planet which we can and do use. Some of them are more scarce than others, and some more used than others. But what do we actually "use" and what do we "waste" instead?

-Although that question will probably be a bit different for everybody, I think there are some generally accepted forms of waste: Stuff that goes in the landfill, electricity that we waste (like leaving lights on when we don't use them for anything), using excess gas in our cars, heating and/or cooling our homes inefficiently, etc.

-All resources that we use have been made available to us by God, our Creator, by whichever name one chooses to call him. As such, I think He is pleased when we use them wisely and correctly, and saddened when we waste them or use them for evil purposes. As such, the less we waste, the closer we can be to God.

You can think of a wasteprint as a footprint of waste. Or, how much impact does my individual waste make on the world around me? I may put up a web site to explore and define this concept further, as well as to solicit input from others around the world.

Celebs Teach Ingratitude & Theft

2006-06-13T15:49:00.000-06:00

CNN.com - Daryl Hannah removed from tree - Jun 13, 2006

This story really does reek of ingratitude. If the facts in this story are all accurate, which may or may not be the case, then all of these people who are illegally using this man's land should all be thrown in jail as trespassers.

So the guy has left his land vacant for 15 years, and people have gone there to grow vegetables, for free mind you. In fact, the land costs him $25,000 to $30,000 a year to own. Does he pass that on to the people who use his land? No. Does this suddenly mean that they have a RIGHT to any of the land? NO!

These freakshow socialist celebrities (Daryl Hannah, John Quigley, Willie Nelson, Danny Glover, Joan Baez, Julia Butterfly Hill) want to take away some guy's stuff (his land) to give it to people who are continuously breaking the law by being there and are ingrateful for the 15 years that he gave them for free. They are pathetic.

They (the celebs) have plenty of money. If they really cared that much, they could purchase that land or even other land or buildings nearby and then turn that land or buildings (after demolition) into a garden. Put all those celebrities together, with all their money, their connections, and all their fund-raising potential, and you could raise a good sum of money to buy that plot or another. But no, they would rather FORCE some other guy to give up his right to the land he bought and owns, rather than put up some of their own time and/or money for it. Good role models, these celebs... teach everyone that it is better to STEAL than to legally own, if you think you NEED it.

Immigration Rally in Salt Lake

2006-04-09T22:37:00.000-06:00

Today there were quite a few marches and rallies across the country, including in Salt Lake City. For the most part, the demonstrators want fewer restrictions on immigration and citizenship for those already here illegally.

Me personally, I can't say that I agree. We live in a country that is only as great as it is because it runs based on the rule of law, in the form of a Republic. If we have a law on the books, we need to enforce it, or we need to get it off the books. Just because enough people are committing a certain crime doesn't mean we shouldn't prosecute them.

I saw today the story on TV of a man who was counter-protesting across the street from one such rally. He could see signs that people were holding saying things like, "I'm illegal, I work hard." He called up his local authorities and told them there were people openly admitting to being here illegally in front of city hall. They told him they were aware of the situation, but weren't going to do anything about it. How much more of a failure of our government can we have than that? If we had a bunch of pot smokers out there rallying to legalize marijuana, and one had a sign saying, "Look, I've got some marijuana right here, and I'm smoking it," then we'd have cops busting him on the spot. The law is the law. We cannot choose what we want to enforce and when. We must enforce all laws equally, and without bias.

I also feel that people who are here illegally are naturally predisposed to break the law more than those who come here legally. They break the law just to be here, and justify it saying they want a better life. Well, that's not very far from also saying that stealing from someone or from your employer is ok because that will help them get a better life. How about free medical care? That way they can have a better life, right? It is all about them having a better life, and they don't care about what that does to other people, or who pays for it. As long as they are going to get a better life, then they can say it is all ok.

We need to decide, as a country, on a simple, and easy to enforce set of immigration laws, then we need to put them in place. Once that is done, we need to put in place a STIFF penalty for an employer who has hired someone who is illegal. If an employer was forced to pay $50,000 for every illegal worker every time they hiring them, they would very soon lose the financial incentive to hire illegals. With that drastic drop in the hiring of illegals, they would soon realize that there is virtually no work here for them. Also, the ones who do manage to find work could be paid much less, and they would have much less incentive to try to stay here illegally. Don't try to stop the supply side of the equation, cut off the demand for illegal workers, and the supply will dwindle on its own.

Warning Labels on Soda?

2006-03-20T22:07:00.000-07:00

So now we have some nutritionists calling for warning labels on soda products. They say sodas are the leading cause of obesity. Give me a break!

They already have a warning label, and it is called "Nutrition Facts", just like every other food product in this country. Just because people choose to ignore it doesn't mean it needs a special label. Here's a couple reasons why:

Nutritionists say that 28% of what we drink is soda. Well, if 28% of what we ate was McDonald's or microwave dinners, we'd all be fat. But those are choices we all make. These products don't contain anything addictive or any carcinogens, like cigarettes. What's next, candy? Maybe pizza? Too much of almost anything is bad for you, but that doesn't mean we should put a label on it, or that it would help. People already know it is bad for them.

Putting all kinds of crazy warning labels on everything would quickly have the effect of desensitizing the population to such labels. Imagine right now looking at the store shelves and seeing the warning label on half the products out there. Are you going to care anymore? Nope. You already have nutrition facts on everything, and many people ignore that. So what makes someone think that anyone will be any more responsive to a warning label?

America's lifestyle contributes just as much as what they eat. I know people who work their butts off by running, going to the gym, etc. These people can eat whatever they want and not gain an ounce. They may not be getting all the vitamins they want, but they won't gain weight. I also know people who seem like they don't move off their couches and chairs but 5 times a day, usually to eat. These people are all fat and can't seem to do anything but gain weight.

Let's just keep giving people the facts and let them choose what they want. We can't force everyone to choose what we think is best.

Cost of Housing Prisoners

2006-03-18T11:31:00.000-07:00

The prison system doesn't work. It is too cushy for prisoners, and costs taxpayers way too much. The government statistics I could find say that in 2005 there were 2,135,901 prisoners locked up in all federal, state, and local prisons, and that the long-term increase rate was 3.4% annually for prisoners in the system. The same federal statistics also said that in 2001 it cost an average of $134 a day for each state prisoner to house, feed, supervise, give medical care to, etc. It also said that the long-term average increase of those costs per prisoner were increasing at a rate of about 6.2% per year, about twice the rate of inflation. That would mean that this year it will cost about $181 a day to supervise an average state prisoner. Multiply the cost by the number and you get $141 billion spent by the federal government, all state governments, and all local governments. With 296,191,330 people in the US today and 2,135,901 of them in jail, that leaves 296,191,330 free men, women, and children in the country to each pay $476.46 this year alone for housing and supervising and feeding and giving medical care to those prisoners. That is 1.78% of the per capita (every man, woman and child in the entire country) income of Americans for this year.

The worst part though, is that while inflation really is only about 3% a year, the cost per inmate is increasing by 6.2% per year, and the number of prisoners is growing at a rate of 3.4% per year while the US population is only growing by 0.9% per year, so the percentage of prisoners is getting higher. I put together a spreadsheet with all this data and the increase rates for the next 25 years, and it is very disturbing. If current rates that I found hold up over the next 25 years, then in 2031 it will cost $297,000 a year to take care of a prisoner, there will be almost 5 million prisoners, the total cost will be almost $1.5 trillion for that year, which will result in a cost per capita in the US of $3,976.74, or 3.4% of per capita in come, as compared to 1.78% today.

No, we need to trim down prisons, make them a punishment, not a benefit. There are too many people who don't care if they go back. Some people even commit crimes just to go back because it is a roof and 3 square meals they don't have to work for. Prison time should be hard, and uncomfortable, and unpleasant. The cost to taxpayers should be MINIMAL. Right now, we're not deterring crime with our prisons, which is why we are getting more of it. When people are afraid to go to prison, they think much harder about committing a crime. Think Soviet-era gulags here, but without the torture. Think small, basic solitary cells, basic food, no recreational facilities, TVs or the like. Almost no communication with other inmates or guards. Visiting days come once a month rather than once a week. Exercise time is spent alone, in a small courtyard. Meals are served in the cells, and they will be small (but healthy), as you don't need too much energy to sit around your cell all day. Approved books from a small collection in the prison is your only recreation in the cell, and these would all be educational books about real-life skills. Too many people don't have a fear of going to prison. We need to re-establish prisons as a deterrent, not as a convenient motel when you don't want to work.

Taxes on those who can't do math.

2006-02-19T09:47:00.000-07:00

Many people in this country play the lottery, hoping beyond all hope that they will win a big prize. The lottery in this linked story pays out $365 million over time to a single winner. But your odds of winning are about 1 in 146 million. How bad are those odds? Well, let's take some examples having to do with your untimely demise as a US resident (stats found at http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm):

Your odds of dying unexpectedly due to an accident or injury are 1 in 2698, each year! They are 1 in 35 for your entire lifetime! But your chance of dying by accident this year is still more than 54,000 times more likely than your winning the lottery.

You are 16051 times more likely to commit suicide than to win the lottery (probably from wasting all your money on that lottery in the first place).

You are 24,525 times more likely to die in some kind of transport or vehicle accident than to win the lottery.

You are 8,943 times more likely to be killed by a violent assault than to win the lottery.

You are 1,748 times more likely to die by drowning than to win the lottery.

You are 1,602 times more likely to die in a fire than to win the lottery.

You are 180 times more likely to pass out and die from drinking too much alcohol than you are to win the lottery.

You are 33 times more likely to be killed by lightning than to win the lottery.

You are 20 times more likely to die from contact with hot tap water.

You are 16 times more likely to be killed in an earthquake than to win the lottery.

You are 5.07 times more likely to die of a poisonous spider bite than to win the lottery.

You are 2.54 times more likely to be killed by a fireworks discharge than to win the lottery.

So, with all these examples before us, why not spend that same money on an insurance policy? Seems like you have a much better chance on your family collecting on it if you die (or you collecting on your spouse's if he/she dies) than of winning the lottery.

Many lottery players routinely spend $50 a month on lottery tickets. If they started, at age 21, putting that $50 a month into an investment account (with an average long-term market return of 10%) rather than playing the lottery with it, and did so until they retired at age 65, they would have a tidy sum of almost $474,000 in that account. With that amount and that rate of return, they could withdraw $4,000 a month FOR EVER and never drain that account. That means their entire retirement and for the entire lives of their children and grandchildren, etc.

But, in the end, lottery is pushed by states because they make a nice percentage off the ticket sales. So the people who have a 100% chance of winning the lottery are the state governments, and the company putting on the lottery. Let's see... sounds like a tax on people who can't do math. Hmmm... 1 in 146 million chance, or 1 in 1 chance, which do I prefer more?

The Chains of Debt

2006-01-31T08:30:00.000-07:00

The lure of easy money now and a payment date that seems far away into the future is quietly but efficiently gaining ground in the war for the souls of men. That great dungeon master, debt, is binding more and more people to a life of slavery every day. The debt of individuals, companies, and governments alike is reaching staggering levels.

In October of 2004, USA Today reported that $84,454 is the average household's personal debt and $473,456 is the average household's share of government debt, including Medicare and Social Security. In Fiscal Year 2005 alone the US federal government accrued $352.3 billion in interest on outstanding debt! That's over $1000 of interest for every man, woman, and child in this entire country.

Debt can be a crushing force, robbing us of our freedoms to do that which we please, and chaining us to our obligations. The following is a story from a Yahoo Finance article:

"It took William R. Love a full decade to get through college, mostly because he kept quitting to make what money he could at places like Burger King and Friendly's Ice Cream. Then, when he finally graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2002, he couldn't find a decent job. His wife, Jessica, pressured him to take whatever he could find, and eventually he did. But he begrudged her; she was disappointed in him. A year later their marriage collapsed.

Now, at age 31, he is about to finish his master's degree in business at RIT. William is charming and highly capable and has lots of ideas about what he might do. He thought of moving to Chicago, a city he regards as full of promise. But he's realizing that to secure the $70,000-a-year job he hopes for, he has to be willing to go pretty much anywhere. He would, though, like to stay within driving distance of his parents, who live in rural Pennsylvania; money for plane tickets home may be hard to come by. William knows he will have to live frugally for years so that he can pay off the $71,000 he owes in student loans and the $40,000 balance on his credit cards.

William lives with his girlfriend, Savita Thakur, who is a 28-year-old technical writer and part-time student in the same MBA program. But he won't be in a position to get married, have children, or buy a house for a long, long while. 'I have to meet my financial goals to pursue my career properly. I can't take on more debt and do that,' he says. In this, he is not alone: Fourteen percent of graduates said in 2002 that they had delayed marriage because of their loan obligations, compared with 9% in 1987. (Young and Broke: Your Money - Yahoo! Finance)"

Like William, many have crushing levels of debt, which forces them to make choices they wouldn't normally make if they could avoid them. In this case, he and his girlfriend are putting off marriage, children, and a house because of the debt. Are these people really free to do what they wish? Not really. They are essentially locked away in a prison of their own making, performing slave labor for those who get rich off their interest payments. The lenders are the masters, the debtors are the slaves. Debt is a form of bondage. We think we own things, but in reality, our things own us.

I dread the grave consequences that, I fear, must come to pass when the already crushing weight of all this personal, corporate, and governmental debt comes crashing down on all of us. The great economic and personal tragedy that will result will have horrible effects upon society as we know it. The great stock market crash of 1929 was precipitated by high levels of debt in stocks. I fear that the high levels of debt in life will bring an economic crash the likes of which we have never seen before. My advice: Get out of as much debt as possible, as soon as possible, and start putting away a year's worth of food and emergency supplies (as we already should be doing).

Minimum Wage

2005-11-22T22:05:00.000-07:00

The government regulates the labor market by setting a minimum wage that firms must pay their workers. So is a minimum wage worth it? It has the same effect as a price floor on a product. If the equilibrium wage is higher than the minimum wage (price floor), then the minimum wage has no discernable effect on the market, since the equilibrium point will be above the minimum wage. If the equilibrium wage is below the minimum wage, however, then there will be a surplus of labor: at the artificially high minimum wage, demand for labor is lower than supply, meaning that there will be unemployment (surpluses of labor). In this situation, not every worker who is willing to work for the minimum wage will be able to find a firm who wants to hire them.

There are strong arguments for either side. On one hand, if the minimum wage were removed, there might be lower unemployment, but workers might not make enough money to support themselves and their families. On the other hand, with the minimum wage in place, the employed are able to make more money, but many more workers are forced into unemployment and forced to take welfare, while making no contribution towards national productivity.

Whom does the minimum wage hurt the most? Firms will always want skilled workers who can make large contributions to productivity. When the minimum wage is installed, however, it is the least productive workers who are cut from payrolls first. The skilled workers will keep their jobs, perhaps even with higher pay; but the unskilled workers, because their marginal revenue product is lower than the new minimum wage, will be unemployed. The irony of the situation is that most people who advocate a higher minimum wage are hoping to help out the workers at the bottom of the ladder, when in reality, a higher minimum wage could very well put those workers out of a job.

My Opinion: The government should not be telling people what they can and cannot pay an employee. Let the market forces work it out without installing artificial price floors.

Federal Pork on its way to Utah

2005-11-21T00:59:00.000-07:00

"OREM, Utah (AP) -- A section of Alpine Loop would get a $2 million study in a federal spending bill agreed to by House and Senate negotiators on Friday.

The bill would bring $21 million in federal spending to Utah, and Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, said that $6.3 million of that is for his 3rd district, which covers parts of central and western Utah.

The House passed the measure 392-31. If approved by the Senate and signed by President Bush, it would bring:

-- $600,000 to Provo for the city's new performing arts center,

-- $500,000 to Orem to widen Geneva Road from 1600 North to University Parkway

-- $200,000 to Eagle Mountain for community development and park improvements."

Now, as much as I like freebies, this is one I'd rather not be getting (not least of all because it isn't actually a freebie). I don't like the idea of every American's tax dollars paying for a road that only we in this area use. And I really don't like the idea of every American's tax dollars paying for a performing arts center in Provo and for "community development and park improvements" in Eagle mountain.

The sad part is that this is exactly the kind of government spending that happens all over the place all the time. My tax dollars are probably paying for some performing arts center in Iowa and a bunch of parks in California. These aren't things I will ever use, so why should I pay for them? Conversely, the people of Iowa and California won't ever be using the parks in Eagle Mountain or the performing arts center in Provo, so why should they pay for them?

The underlying issue really is, why are people being forced to pay for these services at all unless they are actually using them? Should the government be allowed to essentially steal money from people to pay for these things? Why can't these things be paid for directly by those who use them? Why does the government have to decide which services we the people "need" and should all be forced to pay for?

Sadly, the answers to those questions are probably too simple, which is why the government and the people of this country can't figure them out.

Socialist Mayor Rocky Anderson Proposing Letting Fuel Efficient Cars Park for Free

2005-11-17T09:17:00.000-07:00

"[Salt Lake City] Mayor Rocky Anderson is pushing an ordinance to allow drivers of alternative-fuel, fuel-efficient and low-polluting vehicles to park free at all city metered parking."

This is insane. Here we go again trying to use the government to legislate morality. Hmmmm... I think pollution is bad and so I think I am going to try to force people to pollute less by making them pay more for parking if they don't. Never mind that the next guy has to pay for that spot and he pays just the same in taxes every year as the guy who runs that hybrid.

This is essentially a fine for people who don't buy a certain type of legal vehicle. This is also another scoot closer to socialism. The goverment needs to control less, not more. Let the people keep their freedoms, don't take them away under the banner of "saving the world" from itself.

55-Year Prison Sentence For Dope Dealing

2005-11-15T14:34:00.000-07:00

Due to the mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines, Weldon Angelos (a 25 year-old father of 2), has been sentenced to 55 years in prison for selling drugs while in posession of a gun. Many call the sentence extremely harsh, and even the judge who had to hand down this sentence said that it was, "cruel, unjust, and even irrational."

I have always advocated stiff penalties for crime. Yet, even I agree that in this case a 55 year prison term for this offense (in which the gun was not even used, but was present) is probably much too harsh.

We have a problem in this country. Or sentencing guidelines are too complicated, and in some cases flawed. What's worse, people who get sentenced to a long prison term often get out much earlier due to things such as overcrowding. We need to come up with simple, fair, and enforceable prison sentencing guidelines. Someone should be sentenced to an exact amount of time, and good behavior should be able to get them out a little earlier, but not a lot.

When you go to the grocery store, do you see a price tag that says "$5.99 - $15.99" on anything? Of course not! And do you also think that you'll be able to take it to the checkout stand and have a good chance of only paying $2.99 for it? Not a chance. Each crime statute should have a specific sentence. Mathematical modifiers should be tacked on for repeated offenses. Good behavior should only be able to get you out of 10% of your sentence, at the most. For a 5 year-term that is a whole 6 months. If you're convicted to 5 years in prison, you should spend 5 years in prison (minus up to 10% for good behavior), not 2 years, not 5 to 15 years. What kind of message are we sending? And what kind of an unfair system are we sponsoring here that can reward people because too many others have committed crimes and so there isn't enough room in the jail for them?

Medicine for "Addicted" Gamblers?

2005-11-11T11:10:00.000-07:00

There are aparently many people who claim that their gambling habit is so bad that they can't possibly stop on their own. And even worse, they claim it is not their fault, that they are somehow chemically difficient in a way that keeps them addicted. Now, while I believe that certain people are more predisposed to some types of behavior than others, I don't believe that anyone has truly lost their freedom to choose whether or not they gamble.

Let's say for a moment that someone was chemically difficient, to the point where they truly cannot stop themselves from gambling. Why go to work? Isn't it easier to commit crimes to get more money faster and for free rather than going to work? Why don't they just mug the first guy they see? If you look at a person who actually is chemically altered to where they can't control themselves anymore, such as a person who is very high on certain illegal narcotics, they truly act like maniacs. Many police officers around the country can attest to that. They made the active choice to take the drugs in the first place, which then took away their freedom to make choices while they were high. And while they are high they don't care about anything else, which then makes them very dangerous as they tend to hurt anyone around them to get more drugs. This is why they are arrested in such a state and why narcotics are illegal.

So if some people can truly be chemically altered by gambling, then shouldn't it be illegal too? And shouldn't these people be locked up long enough to go through the gambling withdrawal symptoms, just like a druggie? I mean, really, if they're really chemically altered then they could just mug someone or kill someone so they could have more money to gamble. But, we don't do that, which I am glad for. The reason? These people aren't really chemically altered so they can't stop gambling. It is simply a lack of personal control. They do not have the personal fortitude to decide to stop. They get a rush from it just like a junkie does from drugs, or a runner gets from adrenaline, or some other regular person gets from eating a certain food.

Let's not take every instance of people who don't want to change their lives bad enough to do so, and turn it into a clinically diagnosed disease and then try to come up with a medicine to fix it. Let's encourage personal responsability to both the gamblers, the casinos, and the institution that lends money to gamblers. Let's not just throw taxpayers' money at research and an attempt for a "cure" when really all we're doing is making Joe Taxpayer pay for people's gambling habits. This is a land of freedoms, and personal choices, and (less and less) personal responsability. Let's take some and quit passing the buck.

Highway Problem & Solution

2005-10-05T11:38:00.000-06:00

Almost 2 months ago I wrote about all the pork in huge highway spending bill. Today I want to continue the discussion on that topic and explore a great solution made possible by technology.

Why is congestion so bad on today's freeways? That seems like a no brainer, right? Too many cars and not enough road. So defining the problem seems relatively simple. But, I assure you that it is not that easy. The deper questions of "Why are there so many cars on the road at a given time?" and "Why haven't the recent higher gas prices done anything to curb that?" are still out there to be answered.

The deep down reason that there are still so many cars on the road is that driving is too cheap, especially at certain times. Don't believe me? Let's look at just one instance of how this works in our lives. Why is a matinee movie cheaper than an evening? Because there is a much higher demand in the evening, so theaters can charge more. Some people who are cost conscious will go to the matinee, which wouldn't have done so before, smoothing out some of the congestion. If matinees were even cheaper, or evening shows more expensive, there would be an even bigger move of people to matinee movies.

One economist gave this example: "Try this thought exercise: Imagine that we operated our public golf courses like we operate our public roads. We would charge all taxpayers to help build and operate the course, regardless of how often they play golf -- or even if they don't play at all. Then we would charge very little to play and, most important, all golfers could tee off whenever they showed up. Would it be a little too crowded at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday when 127 golfers tried to tee up their drivers? You bet. We'd soon be reading about "golf rage," which would be particularly dangerous given all the swinging clubs."

The way we allow government to run the roads is very similar. It always costs the same, no matter when you drive, and it is relatively cheap. Many will groan when they hear that driving is cheap as they are spending $3 per gallon on gas. Look at Europe and you'll see they spend at least twice as much on gas. Why? Mostly because of taxes which build the infrastructure. We pay about 25% of the price of gas in taxes while they pay 75% in taxes. And yet, our taxes and user fees (auto registration, fees, and taxes) don't even cover the full cost of road construction and maintenence.

Thanks to technology, we can now increase and decrease the price of a highway as the traffic on that highway increases and decreases. I envision a system with some aspects of the I-15 FastTrak in San Diego. To ride on the freeways a person must buy or rent a small, device mounted on the dash of their car. Upon entering the freeway system, the device signals to a scanner that you are entering, and the system picks up your point of entry. Upon leaving the freeway it does the same thing, but marks it as your point of exit. Sounds like a regular old toll-road, doesn't it?

Well, here's where it gets different. The price you will pay to be on the freeway is dependent on the amout of traffic on that part of the freeway. So, a person may pay as low as 1 cent per mile if the traffic is very light. But they may also pay as much as 10 cents a mile if their section of freeway is packed with traffic. There would be sensors to determine traffic density, and electronic signs on all entrances and all along the freeway to tell you what the current rate in that area is. In addition, your vehicle could be weighed while getting on the system and be given a weight modifier. An average car would have a modifier of 1, which is normal. A heavy car or large car might have a modifier of 1.15, reflecting its increased wear and tear on a road, and a small car might have a modifier of .85, reflecting its less-than-average wear and tear on a road surface.

Paying higher prices to drive when it is congested will encourage people to drive at different times, take alternate routes, consolidate trips, carpool, take mass transit, and live in places where they have to drive less. It is much better than our current system of paying for everyone to cause congestion.

Ariana Christine

2005-09-13T09:38:00.000-06:00

Our daughter turns 8 weeks old today. With all the negative things I see around the world today, it is a wonderful feeling to be able to look at her and think about all the good things in life. I am probably biased, but I think she's a pretty cute baby.

She likes to look at the ceiling fans. She likes to look at the wooden slats on our headboard. She sometimes sticks her tounge out a little when she's concentrating (just like her Dad). She laughs in her sleep, and sometimes wakes herself up doing so.

Family is the most amazing, uplifting, and supportive thing in the world if we allow it to be. Families are like small, independent support systems. They are the building block of a good society when they are whole and functional. Prophets and Apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ have stated unequivocally that, “The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities. By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation. Extended families should lend support when needed.”

Backpack harnesses pedestrian power

2005-09-12T16:06:00.000-06:00

(CNN) -- Mobile phone users or iPod addicts could soon be spared the hassle of having to recharge batteries by a backpack that converts energy from walking into electricity.

By harnessing the backpack's up-and-down motion, researchers say the device is capable of generating more than seven watts -- more than enough energy to power several portable devices at once.

Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania devised the technology after being asked by the U.S. military to come up with a light rechargeable battery that could be used by troops one the battlefield.

Soldiers currently carry up to 20 lbs in spare batteries to power high-tech equipment such as global positioning systems and night vision goggles.

But Professor Larry Rome, who led the research, said the technology could benefit anyone who needed "power on the go."
Details of the "Suspended-load Backpack" are revealed in the latest edition of the journal Science.

"As efficient as batteries have gotten, they still tend to be heavy. Field researchers, for example, have to carry many replacement batteries to power their equipment, which take up a lot of weight and space in the pack," said Rome.

"The Suspended-load Backpack could help anyone with a need for power on the go, including researchers, soldiers, disaster relief-workers or someone just looking to keep a mobile phone charged during a long trek."

The backpack consists of bag suspended from a fixed frame by vertical springs. As the bag is moved up and down by the wearer's walking motion it creates enough mechanical energy to drive a generator mounted on the frame.

Portable devices such as mobile phones typically require less than one watt, but by carrying loads of 40-80 lbs, the research team were able to generate more than seven times as much power.

Instead of carrying extra batteries, Rome said wearers could compensate for carrying a heavier load by packing high-energy snacks.

"Metabolically speaking, we've found this to be much cheaper than we anticipated. The energy you exert could be offset by carrying an extra snack, which is nothing compared to weight of extra batteries," said Rome said.

"Pound for pound, food contains about 100-fold more energy than batteries."

Education Part 1: The "Traditional" School Year

2005-08-22T16:38:00.000-06:00

This is the first in a series of several written opinions addressing the subject of education in America.

While I am a HUGE believer in a private system of education as opposed to a socialized (public) system, I also realize that there is too much ignorance and greed in America for such a system to ever be put into place. Most people are unaware that one of the main tenets of the communist system was to have a public school system. As such, the government can to some degree have control over what is being taught and what the children are being brainwashed into. But today I don't want to talk about why a private system would be better. I want to talk about practical solutions that could be applied to improve today's socialized American school system.

One of the main obstacles to learning is the "traditional" school year that gives kids and teachers a 3-month summer holiday. Children in most industrialized countries go to school more days per year and more hours per day than those in America. Most American children are required to go to school 180 days a year, and spend about 5 hours a day in an actual classroom. And we wonder why the rest of the world is catching or passing us in education.

First, the problems with this system. Out of about 250 business days per year, only 180 at most are days that kids are in school. That's about 72% of possible business days. What a waste of taxpayer money to let school buildings go to waste for more than a quarter of the year. But more importantly, what a waste of time for kids. We've all seen how happy kids are to get out for summer break. But within a few weeks, most are fairly bored most of the time, and are inventing ways to spend their time, which sometimes gets them into trouble. Then, come fall, teachers spend weeks reminding the kids of the information they forgot over the summer. It takes the average child until the age of 18 to learn very little, where it could all be taught to the child by age 16 if so much time were not wasted.

Some easy solutions come to mind. Unfortunately, most of these would be outright rejected by teachers and their unions, because it takes away their precious summer break and makes them work more. Don't get me wrong. I feel that teachers are woefully underpaid to do an immensely important job (teaching the adults and leaders of tomorrow). So I sympathize with them. But in my plan (which will be discussed at a later time), teachers get paid a lot more than they do now.

My solution is to have children attend school for 210 days a year (as opposed to 180), and for 6.5 to 7 hours of classroom time per day (say 8 to 3:30 with a lunch and 5 minute breaks between classes). This would give a child an extra 465 to 570 hours in the classroom each year. Currently there are 900 hours a year of classroom time, and this plan would increase that dramatically by more than 50% to about 1400 hours a year. Imagine what a child could learn with almost 50% more hours in a good classroom environment. To graduate from HS (grades 1-12) it currently takes 10,800 hours in a classroom. If we divide that by 1400 hours a year instead of 900 hours a year we get 7.7 years. So by the end of the 8th grade a child could have just as many hours under this system as a HS graduate does now.

Of course, everyone needs a break from time to time. This 210 day system would consist of 4 11-week terms and would include a full 3 weeks off around Christmastime (the last 2 weeks of December and the first week of January), 3 weeks off around the 4th of July (last 2 weeks in June and first full week in July), and 1 week off between the first two terms and the last two terms (roughly last week of March and last week of September, respectively). The school year would start in January, and end in December.

This would still give families plenty of time for a long summer vacation (as long as most parents' work schedules will provide), but also give families more time off around the end of the year and a week for mini vacations each spring and fall. But it saves parents from having to find day care for their kids all summer long. Too many parents can't even afford that, and end up leaving kids at home alone, or with just an older sibling all day. Rather than learning from Mr. Smith or Mrs. Jones in school, as they could be, the kids are learning from Mr. TV and Mrs. X-box at home.

So rather than letting our kids waste too much of their childhood, or worse, let's increase learning and extend the school year to something more intelligent than the 100+ year-old "traditional" system.

Huge highway bill full of pork

2005-08-10T13:46:00.000-06:00

President Bush today signed a $286.4 billion transportation bill into law. Incidentally, that comes out to about $1000 for every man, woman, and child in the US today. That seems a bit stiff to me. Of all that money, about $24 billion (which is about $81 for every man, woman and child in this country) went to the 6,371 "special projects" that legislators got for their states.

Now, I have a family of 3, and I don't know about you, but don't really like the idea of paying $3000 in taxes for road work when the bill is so long (1,000 pages) that I will never read it or know anything that is contained in it. And I like the idea of paying $243 for some legislators' pet projects even less.

One of the reasons this particular issue irks me so much is that I use roads very little. I telecommute, and my wife is at home with our baby, which means that our road use is pretty light. On the other hand, someone who drives on the roads for hours a day still has the same amount of taxes going towards the roads that I do. And what about all those trucks? They take up lots of room on the roads, cause more pollution, and cause much greater wear and tear on the roads than a passenger car or even an SUV. Most of the time, a road or freeway must be built much tougher because of the weight of trucks.

I have a solution. Not everybody will like this solution, but that will be mostly the people who currently use the road system on the backs of others who pay for it. The solution consists of two parts: The use of toll roads, and the use of a vehicle's weight in determining its rate of payment. It makes sense to me that a person who uses a road more than another should pay more. And it makes sense to me that someone who drives a heavier vehicle (or a semi) should have to pay more than someone who drives on that road with a geo metro (because heavier vehicles force the roads to be constructed thicker, which costs more, and causes the roads to deteriorate faster, costing more in rebuilding and maintenence).

The practical application is that freeways and other long roads are paid for by tolls, and shorter and local roads are paid for by registration fees and gas taxes. Tolls for freeways are more than viable, and with today's technology they can be cheaper to run than ever before. A car could register to pay automatically and would then be tracked electronically as it entered and exited the toll area to determine the price, which is either billed to the owner, or payed for in advance. Registration fees can be adjusted based on a vehicle's weight to account for the damage of heavier vehicles, and gas taxes typically already tax heavier vehicles more than light vehicles.

We need to move more to a society where you pay for what you use, rather than one where everyone pays for everything (otherwise known as socialism), and this would just be one small step in that direction.

Study: Uninsured cost insured $900 more

2005-06-08T23:33:00.000-06:00

Its about time that someone actually wrote the facts on this matter. To put it simply, "Socialism doesn't work, it just creates a vicious cycle during which members of society are trained to become lazy, stupid, and worthless."

Every time someone who is uninsured gets medical care they can't pay for a third gets picked up by the government (ie, you and me, in the form of taxes), and the rest by insurance companies (ie, you and me, in the form of higher insurance premiums). The end result: People who don't want to get insurance or don't work hard enough to get it basically get a free pass and force you and me to pay for all their medical care.

Now, until my recent graduation I was working 40-50 hours a week, carrying a very heavy full-time senior classload, performing 5 to 8 hours of service for my church each week, filling a volunteer position in my HOA, and spending some time with my pregnant wife, who was also working 40 hours a week, taking some classes, and giving 5 to 8 hours of church service a week. But because we both worked our tails off and didn't go waste all our money or spend it on things we didn't absolutely need, we didn't qualify for any socialist programs that so many others our age benefit from.

So, let's see, the government is basically trying to teach us that working hard doesn't get you anything, because you get all the same stuff if you're lazy and get the government (ie, you and me) to pay for it. This is called socialism, and communism is just a form of socialism. We, as a country, have slowly been heading towards it for the last 100 years, and if we don't realize it and do something about it soon, our country will start to crumble just as surely as the Soviet Union did.

Real Estate Speculation and Interest-Only Mortgages

2005-06-07T12:14:00.000-06:00

I firmly believe that some people will bite the big one in some areas when home prices level off or start to decline. Most people don't realize that buying properties as investments can be much more risky than investing in the stock market.

Take for example a family that stretches their income to buy a $500,000 home today with the expectation that next year it will have appreciated to $600,000. Let's assume they got an interest-only mortgage (all the rage these days) at a variable rate of 6%, which gives them a minumum payment of $2500 a month on the house. Then by year's end the interest rate has moved up to 7%, making their payment now over $2900 a month. Let's then say that the housing market has cooled off and has started slowly declining, due to oversupply and the increase in interest rates. So now they can't sell their house for more than $475,000, a $25,000 difference from what they owe, and are saddled with $2900 monthly payments which could continue to increase. They can't sell the house because they'll still owe $25,000 on it and will just have to buy another house, but with home prices sliding who wants to buy a home that will devalue? They could end up losing the property completely and then be out a lot of money and time and have to find a new place to live.

These interest-only mortgages are big-time traps. It is no better, in my opinion, than renting. None of the money you pay each month will be yours in the form of equity. The rates are usually variable and will only go up. They are very much a true gamble, like something you'd find at Vegas. The gamble is that the price of the home will increase at a greater rate than their interest rates and all their home maintenence and insurance expenses. In essense, it is like buying all the risk without buying any of the property. If you wanted to do that in a stock, it would be like you borrowing all the money to buy a stock and then hoping it moves up so you can make some kind of profit, and if it doesn't then you could lose all the money you borrowed and walk away with nothing, as well as owing someone money. Brokers can't let you do that because it is way too risky. If you want a margin account (the ability to buy securities with borrowed money) they require certain minimum amounts of actual cash in your account so that if things go south for you and they have to sell all your stock, they still have enough to pay for everything, leaving you broke. But regardless, you walk away at worst having lost all the money you started with, compared to losing money you don't even have in the real estate scenario.

The Golden Parachute at United Air

2005-05-16T12:46:00.000-06:00

This cartoon pretty much sums it up for the poor employees of United Airlines.

However, for the rest of us, we shouldn't think we're safe from all this. That unfunded pension money isn't just going to be forgiven, it is going to be given over to the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation. In the end, all taxpayers may end up paying to bail out the PBGC. A rough translation goes like this: United has dumped its obligation to pay pensions to its workers directly into the lap of all taxpayers. So next time you see a retired United Airlines worker you can take pride in knowing that you paid for their retirement and they won't be around to pay yours. So who will?

Study: Nation's traffic jams worsening

2005-05-09T20:33:00.000-06:00

Well, people still don't get it. They got used to it, but they don't get it. How much of life is wasted in a car, specifically in a commute? Well, in 2003 the average daily commute was almost 25 minutes. Let's assume then that the average person spends 50 minutes commuting each day to work and back. There are typically about 250 business days a year, multiplied by 50 minutes equals 12500 minutes a year, or just over 208 hours a year of commute time. That's like working an extra 5.2 weeks a year for free!

In addition, there are the costs of running a vehicle. An average car costs 33 cents a mile to operate, including all costs (probably more so now with the higher gas prices). If they average 30 MPH while driving for those 50 minutes then they drive 25 miles a day to work, costing themselves about $8.25 a day. Over the course of a year that comes to $2,062! And if you make $40,000 a year then your time is worth $20 an hour, so that 50 minutes a day becomes another $16.75 or so. Add that to the $8.25 and you get $25 a day or $525 a month or $6250 a year just to commute for the average american! Is there anything we can do?

First of all, some employers can begin moving some of their operations away from central offices and into people's own homes. One example of this is JetBlue Airlines. I believe most of their reservation agents and customer service people work out of their own homes, telecommuting. This is a big long-term cost savings to the company, and actually increases their worker's productivity in many cases. I also telecommute, although I don't work for JetBlue. I work as the operations manager for a financial management firm, and everyone in my company telecommutes. It is great! It saves us all a great deal of time, keeps our stress down, and allows us to be happier while we are more productive. I have never missed a full day of work at this job due to illness, it is great! While this isn't practical for many employers, for some it would be a good option, but they need to be open-minded enough to do it.

Secondly, more efficient and intelligent roads need to be constructed. More input devices near intersections need to be developed and deployed so that one car doesn't wait for 2 minutes with no cross-traffic only to then trip the light while 30 others quickly stop and then have to accelerate again. Also, barriers between oposing freeway lanes should be much taller, so tall that the other side of the freeway can't be seen. There are WAY too many delays and additional crashes just from people rubbernecking. And how about inexpensive large tarps or other coverings that can be set up immediately on an accident scene so that passing motorists can't see anything? If people know they can't see anything, they won't try to look and traffic will flow better while reducing secondary accidents. Lastly, on major non-freeway roads we could eliminate some stoplights by raising the roadbed for one direction and lowering it in the other, in essence creating mini freeway like interchanges. By dropping one roadbed 9 feet and raising the other 9 feet and allowing for 3 feet of support for the top deck, that leaves us 15 feet of clearance, which can be handled with a 10% grade going 50 feet in each direction of the intersection. This will reduce the number of businesses which may be affected.

Lastly, we need to come up with better forms of transportation. We've been doing the car thing in one form or another since the late 1700s, and it is time for us to stop thinking about just improving what we already have and to start thinking of making something altogether new. Enter the proverbial "flying car" idea. This has of course been a dream of many for a long time. However, I believe we are at a point in time where true VTOL cars are technologically possible and feasable for everyday americans. Take Moller International, a company in California developing such a vehicle. If such a vehicle could be refined and mass produced as a luxury vehicle, many thousands would surely sell each year to those who could afford it. They could practically fly themselves and whisk people around at 200 MPH very quickly and without stopping. No more building huge roads, which wastes so much land and space. Commutes could be cut down by a factor as high as 10. One of the big auto makers is going to eventually decide to take this idea and run, and the faster the better.

If we ever hope to get out of our gridlock and stop wasting our lives behind the wheel of a car, we're going to have to start thinking outside of the box.

Mind Over Matter

2005-05-03T16:13:00.000-06:00

This is some pretty amazing stuff. Being able to implant electrodes into the brain to allow someone to think about moving a mouse on a screen or change a TV channel and it actually happening is just an amazing possibility. Imagine the serious increase in quality of life for anyone who has lost movement.

On a side note, if this really takes off, it could be a great sector to invest in. The first company that starts making these devices commercially should deserve a real good look from any investor.

Bush presses argument for Social Security overhaul - Apr 30, 2005

2005-04-30T14:49:00.000-06:00

All this talk of social security reform... and yet there is no real reform here, simply an attempt at slight restructuring, as I see it.

Social Security started because the government felt that people needed to be protected from their own lack of foresight in saving for the future. For some reason, since most people were too weak-willed to save and put away money for the future, the government felt the need to force everyone to save through Social Security, whether they wanted to or not.

Changing where you put the money that you are forced to give to the program isn't a reform, it is just a change. And making it so people who work harder have to put in more to the system and get out less is just wrong, and just teaches people to be lazy so they can get more "free" stuff. I have a better idea...

The name of this idea is Personal Responsability. It goes something like this: The government pays out all benefits currently required as one lump sum, getting into a large amount of debt obviously to do so. The pain of doing that is unfortunate but must happen, and will only happen once. Long before this happens, and once such a move is announced, many private firms will begin plans to offer serivces to americans to make up for it. Some of that money will undoubtedly go into people's existing retirement and personal accounts. Other people won't know what to do with the money and won't have existing accounts, which is where new and existing firms will pick up the baton. Now people are responsible for their own destiny, and nobody is taking their freedoms away by forcing them to pay into a retirement program.

Actually, I also envision a move away from the Welfare program to be simultaneous. Rather than forcing people to pay out more money in their income taxes, that money goes right to people, who then must decide how responsible they will be with that money. Private firms will come into existence with something akin to auto insurance now, but it will be unemployment/underemployment insurance. To apply for it, you'll have to give a lot of information, much like auto companies now look at your age, driving record, claims history, dedcutible, coverage amounts, etc. Some information that would probably be required for the company to know would include: age, employment history, education, skills, monthly payout amount that would be needed, maximum number of months that benefits would be received, etc. Although people wouldn't be forced to have nemployment/underemployment insurance, if they became unemployed or underemployed, they would be on their own, which some people may choose to do and just put money away.

The point is that it is not the goverment's job to force us to give up what we earn (in effect legalizing stealing and taking away our freedoms) so that it can "protect us" from ourselves. As long as the government sees fit to let us get away with as little personal responsability as possible, society will continue to deteriorate into a litigious, self-centered, "me-me-me", "I deserve this" society.

Federal Panel Sees Too Many Tax Breaks

2005-04-25T08:22:00.000-06:00

Its about time! Somebody in government actually looks at the tax code and all its deductions and credits and sees it for what it really is: a complicated, unproven, untracked, inefficient waste of our tax dollars in an attempt to legislate morality. Maybe there is yet a glimmer of hope.

But a glimmer is probably all we can hope for. The commission's chairman, former Florida Sen. Connie Mack, said, "Anytime you've got a benefit, wherever it happens to be, whether it's spending or taxes, people don't want to give them up."

And so we'll run into the same old problems... there are things in the tax code that should be fixed, but that nobody in the government will have the guts to stand up and get to work on. Too bad... I was starting to think our government actually had a chance to do the right thing.

More legislative squabbling...

2005-04-17T23:24:00.000-06:00

You know, sometimes I just get tired of hearing about all the squabbling and fighting that happens between the two major policical parties. I know I'm not alone.

But one thing that has truly confounded me is the question of why there are only two major political parties. Is it truly possible to fit most of America's political opinions into one of two boxes? In America, of all places, the people are known for their desire to have many choices. American individuality and individual differences in tastes, opinions, and preferences usually mean that there are 20 different choices in just about everything. And yet, when it comes to politics, somehow 99% of americans fit neatly and nicely into one of two descriptions: Republicans or Democrats.

Is it laziness? Are people just too lazy to put forth the effort necessary to inform themselves of what all the parties believe so that they can choose the one which truly represents them? In the 2004 presidential election, about 60% of americans turned out to vote, one of the higher percentages in a while. That's means that 4 of your 10 friends didn't vote at all. Are these people lazy? Are they disenfranchised? Do they just feel that no vote at all is a protest vote? Can that many americans be so indolent that they do not even vote once every 4 years?

Is it ignorance? Due in part to laziness and in part to stupidity, do people not realize there are more than two choices to pick from? There are at least 30 political parties in the country that could be considered at least regional, and at least 6 to 8 which could be considered national parties. Do people not know these exist? Do they not know what these parties believe? Do they not even know what they themselves believe?

Is it money? Is this two party-system due to two parties getting a majority of the funding and therefore capturing a majority of the advertising and publicity? Wouldn't it be a shame to have american politics now decided by two parties just because they had the most money?

Is it attitude? Americans like to be winners. We've grown up where our country is always a winner, where a lot of importance is placed on becoming a winner, or at the very least, liking the winners. This phenomenon is well shown by watching the sales of a professional sports team's apparel and other items when they go from mediocre to great. Suddenly everyone likes the team, because it is number 1, and everyone wants to identify with and be associated with the winner. So does everyone gravitate to one of the two major parties simply because they are the biggest winners and seem to have the only chance to win an election? I hear people say that they didn't vote becase they wanted to vote for a third party candidate, but figured it didn't matter since that candidate would never win, so they either didn't vote, or voted for the major party that was closest to their belief. I've also heard people say, I don't really like this party, but the party I normally vote for fielded a candidate I didn't like so I voted for the other party. Isn't that insane when you think about it? So rather than voting for something closer to your own opinions, you vote for something that is almost a complete opposite? That doesn't make a lot of sense.

For whatever reason, we're now stuck with two major parties. Even though we want to choose between 10 value meals, 8 different models of camcorders, endless models and colors of vehicles, and millions of different pieces of clothing, we still only want to have two choices when it comes to politics. And that's what has gotten us into the mess we're in.

House debating Schiavo bill

2005-03-20T22:37:00.000-07:00

Here we go again with lawmakers trying to take powers for themselves. I feel bad for the woman in the middle of this, Mrs. Schiavo. But really, congress has no place stepping in here. Last I checked, the republicans wanted to deny marriage rights to gays and lesbians, with which comes the ability to make medical decisions for a spouse. Now they are trying to deny those same medical rights to Mr. Schiavo, who is legally, lawfully, and heterosexually married. This is a matter for the court system to work out on its own, in its own due course. When one part of government feels like it doesn't like what another part is doing and tries to make its own rules where it doesn't belong, then you know government isn't working. Why doesn't congress stop wasting time and go back to work on what it is supposed to be doing?

Texas Capitol's Ten Commandments at the Supreme Court

2005-03-16T08:52:00.000-07:00

One thing bothers me here. It is the way that in one breath we cry for the first ammendment to protect free speech and then in the next breath use it to quash the religious principles and heritage that founded this great country. If a large erotic (but not pornographic) mural were donated and put up in a public building, those crying for its removal would be labeled as anti-american because they want to tread on the first ammendment protection of freedom of speech. Yet, if a large mural of something stated to be religious is put up, those same people who look down on others for treading freedom of speech turn around and cry that this isn't freedom of speech, but a government endorsement of religion.

A religion does not have to be formal or formally recognized. Webster's first definition of religion is, "a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usu. involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code for the conduct of human affairs." So, let's see. If I believe that the world was created naturally, through physical and evolutionary processes, that the purpose of the universe is for me to simply live in it, that humans evolved like all other animals and developed their own intelligence and agency, then I go out and plan a weekly hunting or fishing trip that can be seen as a ritual to nature, and create a moral code for the conduct of human affairs in nature (such as don't litter, don't kill what you can't eat, don't destroy nature), then I would have all the necessary points to be considered a religion. We'll call it the Church of Nature (I don't know if there is a body named as such, and if there is I mean no offense). Now, as a member of the Church of Nature, I paint a beautiful scene of mountains and forests and streams. Can that picture be put up in a government building since it is an affirmation of my religion and beliefs? What if I also add to the bottom, don't litter, don't kill what you can't eat, don't destroy nature?

This example is a little extreme, but it was to make a point. Will we get to the point where everything is somehow religious or offensive to somebody? What then? Will there be no decorations, no murals, no pictures of any kind? Where does it end?

The best solution is to first minimize the amount of land and property that government "owns" in this country. Government should not "own" land because that simply means that it is owned by all citizens equally. And unless all citizens have the same opinions, then all citizens should not own the same piece of property, as there will be continual squabbles over it. If everything is owned privately, then this whole problem is circumvented.

Social Security plan backed in Utah

2005-03-15T23:21:00.000-07:00

Well, although the President's plan seems like it might be a step in the right direction, it is far too little. Social Security has always been a socialist policy, and will continue to be so as long as people are not given a choice of whether or not to participate, and as long as any money is forcibly removed from people to pay for it, whether as taxes or anything else.

Socialism is defined by Webster as, "a theory of social organization in which the means of production and distribution of goods are owned and controlled collectively or by the government." A second definition states that the Marxist theory calls socialism, "the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principless."

So what does that mean? It means a system where individual controls and freedoms are given up to the government or the group to control. People put up a big stink about big brother and the Patriot Act taking away their freedoms, and yet they are more than happy to give up their freedoms because they think they are helping others and that the government needs to protect us from ourselves.

The part that really scares me is how Marxist theory says that socialism is just the stage between capitalism and communism, on the way to communism. And the way this country is headed, we're running towards communism with open, yet unsuspecting, arms. As soon as the government starts to take control away from the individual, and starts telling people what they can and can't do with their own property, that nation is in trouble. That began with income tax, and has continued with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.

Oh what a subtle snare this is! Make people think they are helping themselves by letting government protect them from themselves. But they don't realize the freedoms they are giving up. In essence they are allowing the government to steal from them. And oh how this weakens society. Remember the old saying, "The chain is only as strong as its weakest link." As the people allow government to group us together and take our property from us to distribute it amongst everyone, the entire chain becomes weaker still.

We are in essence rewarding people for being lazy or stupid, while punishing those who work harder and/or smarter. Did we learn nothing from Darwin's theory of Natural Selection and from evolution? In nature, a weak animal cannot be saved from preditors by its friends, it is sad but true. If an animal becomes lazy and weak, or doesn't want to work hard to get food, or isn't smart enough to adapt and eat, then it will die, and there is nothing its compatriots can do. However, we keep trying to save the lazy and dumb, providing for them a means for survival and rewarding them for their laziness by giving them a handout. Then they pass that on to their children (which can be many since we give people an incentive to have more), who learn the lifestyle. So society as a whole deteriorates, becomes weaker, becomes dumber.

Where does all this lead? Why, to communism of course! Just as Marxist theory says! When enough people are lazy and dumb and don't want to work for their meal, they will become the majority, and the lawmakers will be elected by them. Slowly but surely, the laws will become more socialistic, until one day we find ourselves in full-fledged communism. If that day comes, don't say I didn't warn you.

Judge Says Calif. Can't Ban Gay Marriage

2005-03-14T23:02:00.000-07:00

You know, it is amazing to me how many people end up getting so upset with an issue when it shouldn't have been an issue in the first place. At least not one the goverment should have put their hands into.

It seems that every time government tries to legislate morality we run into problems and divisions, as a country. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for morality, and wish that everyone would live highly moral lives. I'm also of the personal belief that the heterosexual, monogomous, chaste-before-marriage lifestyle is the way to go. However, when legislators and goverment try to tell the people what is and isn't moral when it comes to things that don't directly affect others, then things start to get crazy.

The recent upheaval over Gay Marriage is the obvious example. How come we let people live together (whether heterosexual or homosexual) but when they want to "marry" as homosexuals we say no? Why do people get automatic benefits as a spouse at all under government rules? Another example that comes to mind is Polygamy. Why is it illegal to marry 10 women, but not to sleep with 10 outside of marriage? How about prostitution? Why is it that a person can engage in as many sexual relationships as they want so long as they are not paying for them directly? Is that to say that somehow the exchange of money is more powerful or important than the exchange of feelings? Whether by money or by pleasure, everyone gets paid something for consentual relationships.

No, the answer is not to dictate morality through legislation, but rather to leave it to churches, families, and individuals. I have come to the conclusion that the answer is not to recognize marriage legally at all. Marriage is a religious rite, not a legal partnership. A legal partnership may be drawn up by two or more individuals, and will be binding in a court of law. So if someone wants to get married they can do so, in their own religious way. At any time before or after their religious ceremony of choice (which no government should need to sanction nor collect a fee to allow), they can enter into a legal partnership which states whatever divisions of property, conditions, requirements, benefits, or obligations that the partners wish to create. That way government stays out of legislating morality, and sticks to enforcing contracts, which is exactly what it is supposed to do for citizens.

Original Intent and the Income Tax

2005-03-13T20:18:00.000-07:00

"Oh, look how far we've come!" That is what those who are in favor of socialist policies say, and point to all the people that "we" have "helped" with programs like social security, welfare, medicare, and all the others.

I, on the other hand, wonder how we got this far down the wrong road, taking away people's freedoms by taxing them heavily and then using that money to promote laziness and reliance on government. It is simply legalized stealing, forcing people to pay for things they never use so others can use them, forcing people who work harder and smarter to pay for people who are lazy and/or stupid.

Everything that government can do, the private sector can do better, and much more efficiently, without usurping the rights of the people to make their own choices.

After all, we Americans claim that we're free! But what are we free from? What did we gain freedom from when we declared our independence? Freedom from tyrrany? Freedom from oppression? Yes! And what does that mean? Freedom from government!!

Avian Flu

2005-02-21T08:25:00.000-07:00

One Nasty Bug�

Well, this is one thing I hope not to see happen, the spreading of avian flu to people. In addition to the human suffering and death, can you imagine how it would affect economies? If this thing starts spreading in a world as connected as ours is, people will be afraid to go outside, many businesses would fail, and fear would permeate the hearts of people all the time.

What a waste of the courts

2005-02-05T13:48:00.000-07:00

Girls sued for delivering cookies

Ok, is this lame or what? The lady sued two teenage girls for bringing her cookies. She claims to have been so scared she spent the night at her sister's house and then went to the hospital because she was shaking and had an upset stomach. I mean come on, this is pretty sad. The entire award was for $900 to cover the medical costs, but the girls parents had already offered to pay those costs and the woman refused! She was so bitter that she just HAD to use the legal system to get vengance. I wonder how many thousands of taxpayer dollars were spent just hearing this case. The taxpayers should sue her for not accepting payment of medical bills from the parents and instead wasting the court's time and taxpayer dollars!

Legacy Highway Debate Continues...

2005-02-03T19:41:00.000-07:00

Legacy Highway Debate Continues
When is this debate going to end and how much is it going to cost the taxpayers? The tree huggers are out there trying to save wetlands of all places. Has anyone actually seen the wetlands? They smell, they're hard to build anything on, and they are a breeding ground for mosquitos, which now can carry West Nile Virus. Are the wetlands really all that important?

Regardless of that debate, the whole point would be moot if the true underlying issue was confronted. The true issue is land ownership and the government's place in it, as well as in road building. As with most things, if the government does it, then it gets messed up, takes twice as long to build, costs twice as much, and is run as well as a 5 year-old runs a lemonade stand. It is not government's job to own or try to "protect" land, nor is it their job to build roads. Government's main job is to defend us militarily, and enforce property and ownership laws. If government was returned to doing just that (like it was in the beginning) then we'd pay very little in taxes and we'd pay for the things we use and not for the ones we don't.

Zombie trick expected to send spam sky-high

2005-02-03T00:04:00.000-07:00

Click here to read.
As I've predicted in the past, SPAM is far from being vanquished by the so-called spam-blockers which have recently been highly touted.
The best way to deal with spam doesn't involve a single magic bullet, in my opinion. It is going to have to be a combination of several approaches, none of which include legislation, which I feel is ineffective and is not the government's job.
One technique is simply to use a good challenge/response e-mail system. Tecnically speaking I'd go with a "Third party delete from pop3 auto blacklister / whitelister, with bayesian filtering, collaborative filtering, user subject line filtering, and optional challenge-response", such as the one currently being brought into the market by Spameater and others. This basically means that the first time someone sends you e-mail they will get a response back that says that they are an unknown address to the system and that they will have to type in a word shown in an image in order to get their e-mail to you, after which their address will be whitelisted (unless you blacklist them) and they won't have to go through it again. Spammers most of the time wouldn't even receive an auto-reply e-mail, and even if they did, they don't have the time to reply to millions of these e-mails.
Another technique would be to have an agreement by the computer standards organizations about an upgraded SMTP protocol. This could then reject all messages without a true and valid SMTP stamp, which would act much like caller-ID now works for phones. If e-mail tries to go through any major servers without the valid SMTP stamp it would simply be killed. This would also be useful as ISPs or individual users could automatically reject e-mails without valid SMTP information or at least see where it is coming from before they open it.
A technique for individual ISPs would be to set limits on how many e-mails a day can be sent out by users. Most users wouldn't need to send out more than a few hundred a day, ever. But in those cases where that is legitimate, then those accounts can be sent up to another level where they can send more e-mails after a review of why they are sending so many.
Individual users can be smart about where they use their e-mail address. They can also create "shells" of e-mail addresses that then forward on to their main address for those times when they have to sign up for something. Say for example that you want to sign up for a newsletter called Joe's Newsletter and that your address was JohnDoe@whatever.com. Users simply create a new address or alias called JohnDoe_JoesNewsletter@whatever.com and point it to forward to their normal address. Since you'd never reply to this address but would only get stuff from it, then as soon as junk started coming from that address you'd know they sold it and could kill the address, and if necessary give them a new one, informing them that the address you originally gave them and only them had started receiving spam and that you suspected they had sold it.
I think a combination of these types of techniques could go a long way in curbing the spam problem. But, what it all comes down to is that there are enough people responding to spam to make it profitable. As soon as that number becomes too small to make money, the spammers will stop. Whether through education, filters, ISP efforts, or whatever technique is used, when the money stops flowing so will the spam.

BYU Engineers Create Revolutionary Lightweight Mt. Bike Frame

2005-02-02T23:06:00.000-07:00

Click here to see the news story from KSL News

This is such a great new concept! The possibilities of this IsoTruss material are virtually limitless! Lightweight and strong bikes, planes, and even entire buildings!