Gun ownership

I wanted to write down my thoughts about gun ownership.

As with almost all of my political beliefs, my thoughts are based on the Declaration of Independence... and in this case, two particular phrases:

that they are endowed ... with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty ...

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government

I believe that every person has the rights to Life and Liberty. An immediate (and reasonable) implication is that you also have those rights necessary to protect your Life and Liberty.

There are 3 primary threats to our Life and Liberty.

Threats from other individuals
Threats from other nations
Threats from our own government

Threats from other individuals

It is fortunate that we have a police force, but the fact is that their primary job is to catch someone who has committed a crime, NOT to prevent a crime from being committed. It is true that the presence of a police force does tend to deter some crimes from being committed, but certainly not all, and in almost all situations, the police become involved only AFTER a crime has being committed.

So how do I protect myself (and my family) from others who want harm us? The most effective way is to be as well armed as the person who wants to commit a crime that could deprive me or my family of our right to Life.

My right to Life is an unalienable right. It was not granted to me by the government, and it must not be taken away by them. My right to protect my Life is a necessary condition to this right, and the right to bear arms is a fundamental component of that right. It is absolutely not sufficent for them to provide a police force capable of punishing a criminal.

One unfortunate weakness in our constitution (or more accurately, the Bill of Rights) is that the right to bear arms to protect Life is not mentioned anywhere. The 2nd amendment is the only one to address the right to bear arms, and it does not address this directly. As a result, gun controls have been passed since they do not seem to violate the 2nd amendment.

The wording of the 2nd amendment needs to be made stronger. Something
like the following would be much better:

The right to keep and bear Arms, being necessary to the protection of Life, shall not be infringed. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, shall not be infringed.

Of course, the right to bear arms is not without limits. For example, if someone has committed an armed robbery or assault (or some other crime), they may have forfeited the right to bear arms.

It is also reasonable to place some limits on when and where it is appropriate to bear some types of arms.

For example, I have the right to bear arms in order to protect my life, but it would not be appropriate for that to include a stick of dynamite since it would be virtually impossible to use such a weapon in a way which did not endanger the life of other innocent individuals. Similarily, it would not be appropriate to use a machine gun for self-defense in a public area... there is too much danger that someone other than the criminal would be hurt, and just as my Life must be protected, so must the Lives of other people who might be hurt by my use of arms (even if the intent is strictly to protect my Life).

It is also not unreasonable to require that a person be properly trained to use a weapon before being allowed to carry it. This also would help to protect innocent bystanders.

Threats from other nations

At the time the constitution was written, the militia consisted primarily of citizens who provided their own weapons. As such, restricting gun ownership effectively weakened national defense.

The situation is very different now. Given the nature of modern warfare, the use of personal weapons to protect us against a foreign power would be nearly useless. The weaponry owned by even the smallest of nations would make it nearly impossible for individuals to protect their lives.

Fortunately, the military has also evolved over time. We now maintain a standing military with weapons supplied by the government using our tax dollars. Although there are a number of valid reasons to complain about specific ways that our military budget is spent, the general purpose for maintaining a military are sound, and perform a necessary function.

The purpose of the government is to secure our rights (including the right to Life). As the individuals' ability to protect their Life from foreign powers has decresed, the government has stepped in to fill that role, and that is actually a very legitimate use of the government who's role it is to secure our rights (even though it doesn't always do it).

Threats from our own government

The third purpose of private gun ownership is to protect our rights from threats from our own government.

The founding fathers recognized only too well how a government could deprived individuals of their rights. They had repeatedly tried to work with the government of England to secure various individual rights, but been repeatedly rebuffed. It is quite instructive to read the Declaration of Independance which lists briefly some of their attempts, and the reaction they received. Ultimately, they recognized that the government of England was not going to recognize their rights, and so Thomas Jefferson wrote the following (from the 2nd paragraph of the Declaration of Independance):

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

This, perhaps more than any other reason, was the purpose of the 2nd amendment. The founders of this country recognized the need for citizens to bear arms in case they needed to abolish a government that was depriving individuals of their rights, and replace it with one that would secure those rights.

Unfortunately, as our military has evolved to protect our nation from foreign powers, it has also evolved beyond the point where privately owned weapons will be effective.

The constitution is all about checks and balances. Each branch of the government was given powers necessary to carry out it's function, but checks were placed on it to prevent it from exceeding it's constitutional authority.

Unfortunately, many of these checks are eroding. The use of the military in "police actions" instead of declared wars has been used as a way to circumvent checks. The use of executive orders is used to circumvent the constitutional order of enacting legislation. Recently, there was discussion of making a change allowing congress to override a Supreme Court ruling. The 17th amendment removed a critical check that the states had on the federal government making this amendment (in my mind) the most damaging change to the constitution ever made.

The right to bear arms was a check that citizens had on the government. The government could never feel secure in stepping on the rights of citizens knowing that at any moment they had the means to rebel.

That check also has eroded (though this has been through technological advancement rather than political maneuvering).

The single most important change that could be made to our government would be to somehow restore the checks on power that have been eroded over time.

Some checks are easy to understand (for example, the 17th amendment could be repealed, which would be a good first step to restore that check).

Unfortunatly, I do not know how to fully restore the check that armed citizens have on our government. However, it is absolutely critical that the right to bear arms be maintained. An armed population bearing handguns and rifles would not be terribly effective against the full power of the military... but it's better than an unarmed populace!

Final thoughts

One question which I periodically revisit is the question of whether gun ownership should be mandatory.

I'm sure that many people immediately reject such a notion... and I'm not convinced that it's a good idea, but I'd be more in favor of that legislation than on laws that infringe on the right to bear arms.

Our rights must be secured. Our right to a government that derives is's power from the people is a basis for the fact that we elect officials through voting. It is critical that people exercise their right to vote.

Likewise, it is critical that people exercise their right to bear arms.

We risk losing any right that is not secured and exercised!

Even so, I don't think that it should be a crime not to own a gun (or not to vote)... so at this point, I don't feel gun ownership should be mandatory.

I DO feel though that you are not securing a vital individual right if you do not own a gun!

Obama and the Peace Prize

So, Barak Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

When I look at the winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics, Chemistry, or Medicine, they celebrate (as they always have) accomplishments that are recognized by the scientific community as outstanding accomplishments that have revolutionized their resepective fields.

Typically, they recognize accomplishments that have occurred decades in the past and have proven, by the test of time, that they are genuine. Certainly there have been some controversies in these prizes, but almost without exception, they are of the form "someone was overlooked who's accomplishment was even more spectacular". Although it is a shame that some individuals' work have not been recognized, it does not mean that those people who have been awarded the prize did not merit the award.

The award for Literature is harder to guage since the criteria for defining great literature is not something you can define with any level of accuracy. But within it's limitations, the award has been given to people who are recognized as making contributions to world literature, and the awards are typically given after decades of writing, so it's generally accepted that the recipient merits recognition.

Then we come to the Peace Prize. It's absurd to award the Nobel Peace prize to a president less than a year into office. Regardless of whether or not I agree with Obama's policies, he simply has not been in office long enough for any of his policies to yield significant results.

It's true that his policies are "perceived" as being significant... but a certain amount of time is necessary to see what will actually happen.

The Peace Prize should be awarded to "the person who shall have done the most or best work for fraternity amoung nations". That is NOT Obama at this point. He should not have even been nominated at this point (the deadline for nominations was mere weeks after he entered the office).

Frankly, Obama was given the award for one reason... he's not Bush... and that's a poor reason to get a primary school award, let alone a Nobel prize.

The Fair Tax

I am strongly in favor of discarding the current income tax system and replacing it with a sales tax system. One proposal to do that is the current Fair Tax system.

I'm not going to discuss what the Fair Tax system is in any depth. It is described in depth in many places. A good starting point is fairtax.org. Basically, it is a plan to replace all income taxes with a national sales tax. This idea has been tossed around in various forms for quite a while, and there have been a number of changes suggested over time. In general, I'm pretty neutrel on most of the specific variations, but I am strongly in favor of the concept.

I wanted to list some of the reasons that I personally want to see a sales tax used. Some of these are pushed by Fair Tax supporters, others are primarily personal reasons, but I feel strongly about each of them.

Tax consumption, not production

A tax serves, not only as a means of generating revenue, but as a factor that affects some type of behavior. When a behavior is taxed, the tax acts as a natural deterrant to that behavior.

For example, if you increase the tax on cigarettes by a reasonable amount, the behavior (smoking) changes as a result of the tax. Nobody (sane) looks at the tax and increases the amount they smoke because of the tax, so people fall into certain categories. If the tax is small, most fall into a category of people who ignore the tax. They continue to smoke the same amount while paying a smal amount more. This group accounts for the increase in revenue due to the increased tax. Other people may reduce the amount they smoke. Either they cannot afford even the small increase so they are forced to reduce their smoking, or the increase provides incentive to them to reduce (or quit). Tax revenue from this group will decline.

Of course, if the tax is an unreasonable amount, the behavior changes dramatically, but in ways which are usually not desirable. For example, if a $100/pack tax were placed on cigarettes, revenue from cigarettes would fall drastically, since very few people could afford them. Cigarettes would then become the equivalent of an illegal drug (people would start selling them illegally in order to avoid paying the tax), and the primary result of this tax would be to create a new criminal society (illegal providers, and the users). The net affect would be that tax revenue would disappear, but expendature would increase (since you have to add resources to drug enforcement branches to police this).

But let's say that we only tax a reasonable amount (whatever that means) so that we're not creating illegal behaviors, a tax still has a damping effect on a behavior. The damping may be greater with some behaviors than other, and it will depend on the size of the tax, but it will always be there.

Let's compare the current system of taxing income with the proposed system of taxing purchases. What are the behaviors being impacted? With income tax, the behavior that is impacted is that of earning money, of working, or in other words, the behavior of producing. With sales tax, the behavior being impacted in that of consumption.

Some people would argue that the two are similar. The argument that can be made is that if you tax consumption, fewer things are consumed, which means that fewer people are needed to produce those things. Although certainly true, I like to keep things simple and direct. In general, the primary impact will be greater than the secondary impact (unless you make the primary impact so large that a snowball effect is started, and this falls under the category of applying an unreasonably large tax).

So, if we tax income, the most important damping affect is on production. The secondary impact is on consumption. With a sales tax, the primary damping affect is on consumption.

I do not feel that anyone benefits by damping production. I'm not talking about damping the production of one item (we could certainly produce too many loaves of bread, or television sets, or some other item), but of production in general. It is always better if everyone is working.

This reason alone is enough for me to want the Fair Tax.

A simple way to make sure everyone pays

Taxing income is very difficult. The question of what constitutes income, and which types of income should be taxed, and at what rate are very complex (and have been made even more complicated). As a result, there are many ways to avoid paying taxes.

Any type of illegal income (the sale of illegal drugs for example) is not taxed. Many people use many different loopholes (some legitimate, many NOT) to hide income and shield it from taxes.

It is an impossible task to monitor the income of hundreds of millions of individuals, and expect them to report that income accurately so that they can pay an honest tax on it.

The end result is that many people are not paying taxes on income which should be taxed.

The Fair Tax system is so much simpler to administer.

Instead of monitoring every individual AND business, you only need to monitor businesses. That automatically decreases the complexity enormously. Second, you're only monitoring one type of activity: the sale of a product. Every business already does this (though you still have the problem of getting accurate reporting).

Most importantly... everyone pays. Everyone buys things, whether they are drug dealers, illegal immigrants, rich people who can afford great tax lawyers, or your average middle-class citizen. A sales tax makes sure that they are all paying their taxes, and it doesn't require that they report anything.

Easily graduated

Most people believe that a graduated tax system where people who make more money pay a higher tax rate than those who make less.

I'm actually not necessarily a believer of this... I believe that everyone who benefits from living in the country should pay taxes. However, I'm much less interested in this issue than with others, and one benefit of the Fair Tax system is that it can be made to fit either scenario quite easily.

A graduated tax system is available is easy to implement by taxing luxury items at a higher rate than necessities (and some necessities may not be taxed at all).

Tax users of a benefit

Another benefit of the Fair Tax system is that the tax for some things payed for by taxes can be specifically targeted to those who profit from them.

For example, all costs for maintaining roads could come from a sales tax on gas. Any number of regulatory agencies could be funded by sales related to that industry. For example, an agency that regulated radio and television could be funded by taxes on the sales of radios and televisions, cable television bills, etc.

Doing this does mean that the tax rate will vary considerably from one item to the next, but it has the advantage of giving you a lot more control over what taxes you pay.

If I absolutely disagree with a specific tax, I can "refuse to pay it" by not buying items which have that tax while I lobby to get the tax changed.

Immediate knowledge of what tax I'm paying

Under the current system, it is difficult to know how much tax I'm paying. Indeed, I won't know how much income tax I'm paying until next year (long after I've paid the tax). I may know how much is withheld from my salary, but it's not until I fill out the income tax forms that I actually know my tax.

With a sales tax, it is immediately obvious. If the price tag says $100 before taxes, and $150 after taxes, I know exactly how much tax I pay.

As part of the Fair Tax code, I would support a requirement that the tax be listed on the price tag so you could see in advance what the tax is.

In any case, there would need to be a tax site where you could plug in some item's tax code and see exactly what tax rate applied to that item, and what taxes were included in that rate.

Several years ago, I wrote to my congress person asking them to support a Fair Tax bill. I received a letter back saying that they did not support it because, according to numbers given by some agency, that would mean a 70% sales tax.

I was outraged... not that the tax would be 70%, but that the congressperson would thing that it was in my best interest to hide the number from me. I'm paying the taxes already in one form or another. If the taxes I'm paying are equivalent to a 70% sales tax, I want to be reminded of that every day, and I want everyone else to be reminded of it too. If everyone realized just how much they were paying in taxes, perhaps they wouldn't be so apathetic about them.

Of course, I'd also be upset if a 70% sales tax were needed to fund the government... it would tell me quite clearly how bloated the government was. I think that a total sales tax (including both federal and state portions) should be around 25%.

Hidden taxes

When you buy a $20,000 car, how much of that is due to taxes? I'm not talking about the taxes that are added in when you go to pay for the car. I'm talking about taxes that are included in the actual price of the car.

The company that dug the iron ore out of the ground and made steel paid an income tax which they have to cover by including it in the cost of the steel they sell.

The company that bought the steel and used it to manufacture car parts also paid an income tax, which they tack on to the cost of the car parts when they sell them.

Next, the car company that takes the parts and builds a car also pays an income tax. To cover that, they have to charge a higher price for the car.

On top of that, you have to pay sales tax when you buy the car, but an unknown portion of the $20,000 price tag goes to pay the taxes paid by the companies as described.

With a sale tax many of the hidden taxes could be eliminated. I would favor taxing only consumer products and services. By not taxing all of the intermediate products, the hidden taxes are virtually eliminated. They are not completely gone of course... companies make use of some of those end products, and they have to pass the cost on to consumers, but these tend to be a fairly small portion of the cost to run a business, so the hidden taxes would be minimal.

Reduce the size of the government

It would not be possible to get rid of the IRS of course (no matter what form taxation takes, there will still be the need to monitor and regulate it, so there will always be a role for the IRS), but by eliminating income tax, it would be possible to reduce the size of the IRS drastically.

The IRS would have virtually no contact with individuals. They would work directly with businesses (which they already do), but there would be no need to have direct contact with other people.

It can be fixed by itself

So many of the problems in government are incredibly complex, and fixing them involves making so many different changes that it is difficult to come up with a plan to really fix them.

The tax problem however can be isolated from other problems with relative ease. It can be changed in many ways without impacting other government functions. It is also one of the very few systems which could be totally redone without having a large negative impact on the majority of people (tax lawyers and accountants being one of the few groups that would be impacted).

As a result, the tax system lends itself well to a complete fix whereas most other systems (health care and social security for example) will require changes to many different systems, and an "ideal" solution can probably not be achieved in one step (and may not be achievable in many steps).

The Neighborhood

The other day, my wife and I were discussing the change in neighborhood social structure over the past 30+ years. Heather said she missed the days when neighborhoods were environments where kids grew up playing together, neighbors watched out for each other, and people didn't have to lock their doors at night.

Here are some of my thoughts.

Change in the family structure

50 years ago, the neighborhood family structure was predominantly "traditional American". The family consisted of stay-at-home moms, working fathers, and some number of children. Now, the predominant structure consists of two (hopefully) working parents and children that have gone to daycare.

The impact this change has had on the neighborhood is huge. A single example illustrates this.

Before I got married, I knew a few of my neighbors, but only one of them very well (and that was because I knew them from church, not because they lived next to me). After I got married, Heather moved in and got a job, so for the first year of married life, the neighborhood structure (or at least, how we fit into it) did not change.

When we had our first daughter, Heather and I had both decided that we wanted a stay-at-home mother raising our children, not daycare. So, when our daughter was born, Heather quit her job and stayed home.

I didn't notice much change until our daughter was old enough to walk at least a bit, but at that point, Heather would take her out for little walks around the neighborhood. She got to know all of the close neighbors, and over the next couple years, got to be friends with many of them. Although I don't know them as well as her, I now see them on a regular basis through her.

Heather visits with our neighbors on a regular basis. They often bring over cookies or muffins or some other thing they cooked, and Heather does the same for them. A couple of them bring small gifts to our daughter on a regular basis.

It's only a small niche... and it mainly involves older retired people, because the younger ones are at work during the day, but I can easily imagine how that neighborhood would exapand if there were a stay-at-home mom in most of those homes, many of them natural networkers (as women tend to be anyway, and women who are raising kids are even more inclined to be if only to get a little adult interaction for a few minutes).

I'm not going to go into any detail (at least not now) of the reasons why this change in family structure occurred, either to criticize it or justify it. There were very valid reasons for some of the changes, and some very poor reasons for others. It's unfortunate that it has had such a huge impact on the neighborhood.


Change in children's entertainment

Probably the second most important change has been in the forms of entertainment available to children. 30 years ago, much of the entertainment was outside. Neighborhood children played with each other, either outside, or at each others' homes, and it was inevitable that this would bring the neighborhood together. Even with the significantly reduced adult network, the network of children would still hold the neighborhood together, at least to some extent.

The neighborhood has almost always provided organized events for children (little league, 4-H, scouts, etc.), many of which were run by working parents.

These programs still exist of course, but more and more entertainment is coming from forms that A) involve less interaction between children and B) involve less work for parents.

It's so much easier to buy the latest Nintendo/Wii/XBox than to organize a little league soccer team. When soccer is played on the game box, rather than the field, the neighborhood loses an essential component which could keep it alive.

Massive online communities now provide environments where people can interact with each other in ways that was never before possible. Although not necessarily a bad thing, the new definition of the neighborhood has come at the expense of the old neighborhood. It would be much better if the new definition could supplement the old one.


Change in communication

I just read about a "texting competition" in the news. A 15 year old girl won a contest because she was able to text messages. Earlier this year, there were stories of teenagers who would send tens of thousands of messages each month... often at a rate of one or more per minute every waking minute of every day.

Even without these extremes, for many people, the amount of communication done face-to-face is less than that done in some other way (phone, texting, email, etc.).

When the face-to-face is gone, the physical neighborhood no longer has any meaning.


Solutions?

I have some ideas which would help to reestablish the local neighborhood... but it's a lot of work and social reengineering. Still, I've seen a change in my family due to Heather being at home... it's not the establishment of a complete 1950's neighborhood, but it's more of a neighborhood than was there before, so I know that at least some improvement is possible.

We need to make family and neighborhood a priority. If parents are unwilling or uninterested in being part of a neighborhood, nothing else matters. You can stop reading, because nothing else I can say will make any difference.

I'm very glad that my wife has helped to create a little bit of neighborhood in our life.

We need to include some "old-fashioned" forms of entertainment and communication in our lives. I'm not advocating that we discard the new forms entirely... but we do need to recognize the value of the other ways too.

We need to make sure that at least some of our entertainment and communication is not on the computer/phone/gamestation. It's not even that hard to do. Like my wife, most people look back fondly at that simpler way of life. Just like we did, our children will enjoy the types of activities that can occur outside in the neighborhood, provided they are exposed to them. If a small number of people get together in a neighborhood and organize just one or two small actities, it can rekindle the neighborhood concept.

I really think that we need to investigate the structure of the family. So many people think that the family structure is "expendable". That it's better to have two incomes than two interested parents.

That is not to say that a complete return to the traditional family structure is the only solution. There are several alternative family structures available which preserve the strength of the family and the neighborhood which may better serve the needs of those families.

One alternative that I really admire is a traditional oriental family structure. In that structure, grandparents often raise the children. Parents both work and support both their children and their parents, who live with them. While they work, the grandparents raise the children.

I really like that solution as it expands the concept of family by including an extra generation into it in a way which could potentially strengthen the traditional family structure rather than weaken or replace it.

I also like a more communal family setting. This has been used in many different societies. Children are rasied by a neighborhood instead of by a single set of parents. Some of parents (or even older children) watch the younger children while other parents are working.

I work with two people who practically co-raise each other's children. At least a couple times a week, the children spend time at the other family's house, to the extent that practically any event that involves one of the two families involves the other one too.

Heather and I are trying to do this with some other couples that we know, and it's been a really rewarding experience. The children are becoming quite close to each other after only a short time, and the adults are closer too. We get to share the load of parenting, without ever losing the primary responsibility for our own children. It's a very nice system that I want to continue.

Anyway, there's lots more that I could say, but I think that's enough for now.

Random ideas

With all the major problems facing America (the economy, social security, health care, etc.), I thought I'd share some ideas I've had about how to improve the situation.

I won't go so far as to say these ideas would actually solve any of the problems... but they should improve the situation in ways that will not conflict with implementing real solutions.

So with that said... if I were in charge, here's some of the things that I would do.

Social Security

I believe that the federal government should not be involved in retirement at all (other than in the role of protecting the rights of retirees). Retirement should be the responsibility of the person who wishes to retire. Period.

Unfortunately, we're now in a situation where people have come to depend on social secutity for their retirement, but since it was never set up as a retirement fund (i.e. a fund that people pay into and then draw out of at retirement), there seems to be no solution. If you cut off social security, retirees will be faced with the prospect of living on virtually no income. If you continue it, it will just propogate the problem.

So, I'd favor immediately changing social security from "retirement" into "employment". The employment would not be physically difficult... but would entail real work. The work would become less taxing (both in terms of the type of work being done, and the number of hours worked) the older you get, but, barring health issues that prevent work entirely, it would continue for the lifetime of the recipient.

There are several objections that could be raised to this:

First, is it really fair to put these "retirees" back to work? I believe in consequences. I believe in PAYING those consequences... NOT in avoiding them. It is an aboslute fact that the social security system, as it is currently implemented, was put into place by people that retirees voted for. The problems with the social security system have been well understood since the day it was founded, but people have chosen to ignore them, and to vote for people who maintained the system, rather than fix it, or (the better solution) abolish it. Is it fair that the very people who have voted for the status quo for their entire adult life be forced to pay some of the consequence? YES!

A second, and far more important objection is this: is it a good idea to take jobs away from younger adults and give them to retirees? My response to this is that the objection is irrelevant, at least in the long term. The impact from such a change will have many ripple affects... and many of those will be positive. Imagine if ten million retirees who were producing nothing suddenly become productive individuals who are producing something of value to society. There is no way that that can be considered a negative. The "retiree" who is required to continue thinking and working (in a capacity for which he or she is physically capable) will be physically and mentally healthier than someone who stops working at retirement.

In short, this system will take a segment of population who were non-productive resource consumers and turn them into productive members of society. I am absolutely certain that the overall impact will be positive.

One side-effect of this solution is that the current working-age population would be required to take responsibility for retirement themselves. If they relied on social security, they wouldn't be able to retire.

One thing to note is that the types of "employment" available for social security recipients would NOT be a "punishment". When a person retires, one benefit of social security would be to put them in a new type of job. Just changing employments would be good for them mentally.

Education

There are several problems with the education system. I have an idea which would potentially improve two things. The classroom size has increased to the point where it's difficult to effectively teach one-on-one.

Budgets can be (and are) stretched (to a point) very easily in education... just increase the student to teacher ratio. If you double the ratio, you can cut your salary base by two. Very few other jobs can be stretched as easily. No matter what you do, a construction worker cannot build two houses in the same time they built one before. A secretary cannot type twice as many documents. But a teacher can give a lecture to 50 students (or 100 or 500) with virtually the same amount of effort that giving the lecture to 10 or 25 students would entail.

This could be solved (at least to some extent) by taking people from the pool of new "employees" created by my Social Security suggestion and putting them in the schools as teaching assistants. They would NOT be teachers, so they would not displace the teachers. A requirement for getting these assistants could be that a school war required to maintain the current number of teachers. The assistants would be placed in the classrooms at a ratio of perhaps 1 assistant per 5 to 10 students. Much of the one-on-one would come from these assistants who had a lifetime of experience to draw on.

Bailout Blues

It's been a long time since I added a blog entry. I'm very bad at keeping a journal of any kind. I've debated abandoning it, but I really do like the idea of writing about some topics. I'm just not good at doing it on any schedule.

Also, I've been trying to avoid talking only about politics, but that's the topic that interests me the most at this point in time, at least as far as blogging. There are many other topics that I like to talk about, but I haven't felt the need to write about them. I do feel the need to write about my political beliefs, so I guess that I'll give in to that need, and put most of my time in that direction.

I WILL talk about other things from time to time, but I really want to air some of my feelings about what's going on.

And there are a lot of things to talk about. Bailout issues, federal budget, recession, etc. I'll talk about several.

My reasoning for talking about them is this:

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. -- Thomas Jefferson

I have always been very vocal about my political beliefs. It's even more important now since we are being led by two political parties that seem determined to take this country as far from the vision of the founding fathers as possible.

I want to share a few thoughts on the bailout. This includes so many issues that I can't comment on all of them, but I want to comment on a few.

First of all, automakers. I think it's important to make sure that there is a strong automotive industry in the United States. We are probably the largest consumer of this industry, so if we build them here, it provides jobs here, it reduces the impact on the environment from shipping them all over, etc. I'd like to encourage good quality vehicles built right here.

I think there's an obvious solution.

The solution being implemented: throw billions of tax dollars at companies that have a demonstrated history of producing poor quality vehicles and terrible business models.

A better solution: get the government out of the car business. The total tax on a $20,000 car should be the same regardless of the manufacturer. The same environmental regulations should apply, regardless of the manufacturer. Every government regulation should be the same! What will happend? Honda, Toyota, and other companies that have sensible business models, and who produce quality vehicles will actually be free to grow faster in the United States. They will provide jobs lost by Ford, GM and others. It may take a bit longer, but instead of an industry supported by the government, we'll have a healthy automotive industry. It'll be built in America and driven in America. Who cares if it's called Toyota!

I'm going to stop for the moment, but I want to comment about some other aspects of the bailout as well.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

It's been a long time since I updated my blog, so I'm just going to post a couple short, and totally unrelated thoughts.

Two of my favorite parts of the day are when I put our daughter to bed, and later, when I check on her.

Most nights, I put Elizabeth to bed. She's really good about going to bed. No matter what she was doing, or how excited she was, she's almost alway cooperative. Even the days when I say it's time for bed and she fights it, as soon as it's inevitable (when I'm holding her in her bedroom), she's invariably calmed down. I usually hold her and pat her back for just a minute before I put her to bed. She has her head laying on my shoulder and her arm draped over my shoulder. As I pat her back, she pats mine. I love that!

Later, just before my wife and I go to bed, I usually go to check on her. She's a pretty restless sleeper the first couple hours she's asleep, and she's often facing different directions, and she's almost always kicked the covers off. As I put the covers back on her, she usually wakes up a bit, but immediately goes back to sleep. She looks very peaceful, which is quite the contrast from the rest of the day, because she is NOT a very quiet toddler. I like watching her for just a minute at that time too.

Another thought. This one is about football. I really wish there was a college football playoff. Living in Gainesville, and as a fan (though not a HUGE fan) of the Gators, it was fun to watch them win the championship game a couple weeks ago. But I'm left not absolutely sure that we're the best, and I don't like that. I'm not too worried about Texas... based on their bowl game, I really don't think they have a huge claim to being the best... but Utah and USC do! I'd really like to see them play each other, and us play the winner. Then I'd feel pretty confident that the winner was actually the best team.

Going in to all the bowl games, I was hoping that Texas, Utah, and USC would either lose, or at least not win in exciting fashion, and that we would win. Then, I think it would have been pretty solid to think of the Gators as number 1. Texas mostly came through for me... but Utah and USC didn't. They both won, and won convicingly. I can't see any way to say definitively that we're better then them (of course, I also don't think there's any definitive way to say that either of them are better than us).

Oh well. We're the champions (whatever that means). Let's see how next year turns out with most of the big names coming back.

Another random thought. Our daughter loves "Barney", "Signing Time", and "Blue's Clues", and therefore, I've gotten to hear LOTS of them. It's not as bad as I feared it would be.

Barney is mostly inoffensive (the same can NOT be said about the other dinosaurs... especially Baby Bop... boy I'd like to get rid of her). True, it's got the rather annoying "I Love You" song (it feels like the world is going mushy every time it plays), but quite a few of the other songs are not bad. Not songs I'd actually choose to listen too of course, but they don't drive me crazy by any means.

Blue's Clues is actually very good. I really like watching Elizabeth watch Blue's Clues. I've read up a bit on the show, and it's amazing at how much thought went in to the show. Other shows oriented to toddlers seem to be just silly, but someone really understood how to make a show that appealed to toddlers, engaged them, and showed them fun and interesting stuff... and Blue's Clues is the result. I'm really impressed.

But Signing Time is the best of all. Many of the concepts that are in Blue's Clues are in Signing Time (the simple animation, of course the educational aspects, the short time spent with any one topic), but there are a lot of other things going for it. There's so much attention to little details. I love how the Rachel (the "host") always wears exactly the same clothes. She becomes very identifiable. And her songs are good! Way beyond the "not bad" level of Barney. Several of them are VERY catchy.

I won't talk about Care Bears though!

Another thought. This one political.

The best job description that I ever heard for politician is that it is their job to amass power. For any career politician (with a very few exceptions that I've ever seen), I honestly believe that their primary motivation is to get power. All the rhetoric and promises are just ways of saying "if you give me power, I'll do XXX for you". XXX may vary depending on whether they are democrat or republican, whether they are running for congress or president, but ultimately, I find very little difference between the various parties.

Until Bush came along, people were mostly reluctant to give too much power to the politician. They got it of course... but they had to be much more subtle about it. They had to make lots of promises (and occasionally even follow though on some of them).

Then 9/11 came, and for the first time in my lifetime, a politician was given nearly carte blance... save us from the terrorists, and you can have all the power you want. And boy did he (and most other politicians) take advantage of the situation. I'd love to think that when news of the attacks came, Bush's first thoughts were about the loss of lives, and the damage done to so many people. But part of me (most of me) thinks that his first thoughts were along the lines of "how can I make this work for me".

Now, people are growing concerned. So what do they do? Along comes the anti-Bush/anti-Republican candidate (i.e. Obama) and people flock to him.

How many people are now saying "take as much power as you need... just save us from Bush"? It's another golden ticket, this time for the other party. Perhaps Obama is someone who saw a problem and stepped up to the plate to deal with it. Or perhaps he's a politician who saw an opportunity.

It remains to be seen what the result will be. It would be wonderful if Obama is one of those VERY rare politicians who actually thing the job description entails more than "get power". But even if that is the case, the amount of power given to the president MUST be curbed, becase even if Obama is everything he says he is... the next president probably won't be.