My views

Prior to my looking at the third-party candidates and reviewing them I am going to quickly describe my views so my reader(s) know from what direction I cast my gaze. I doubt this will be all encompassing (and I am sure it will be too long, certainly for my wife), but should serve to give a bit of a flavor. I haven’t been shy about my political leanings, so regular reader(s) probably won’t find much surprising. My goal with each section is to state my ‘were I in charge’ desires, then the sorts of things I would like to see in a candidate’s speech/writing that would engender my support. (I am too lazy to search through my archives (wow! 670 posts up to this point!) and try to find previous posts to link. Besides here I also have some maunderings at the Book of Keith.)

Taxes

I firmly believe that corporate taxes are a burden to society. Corporations simply pass the cost of taxes onto their customers, so really all corporate taxes do is hide the true cost of taxes to the consumer. Worse, in my mind as an entrepreneur, large companies game the system and reduce their taxes thus creating an unfair, un-level playing field where they have excess profits (or lower margins) that keep smaller competitors from being a threat. I believe that taxes should be highly visible, but accept the reality that people should not have the true rate waved in their faces. Thus, I would go with a much higher sales tax, but require that to be built into the advertised price so that no one would get an unexpected surprise when they bought something. Much like how gasoline prices are advertised at their final (tax included) price.

Regarding income tax, a sales tax is regressive in that people who make a lot of money and don’t spend it, don’t pay any taxes. Because I firmly believe that the wealthy have a disproportionate obligation to support their society, I believe in a progressive income tax system (that _must_ be indexed for inflation so that middle class do not wind up as ‘rich’ like the stupid AMT). In my consideration I believe a 40% tax at the highest levels is a reasonable exchange for a highly functional society with a vast robust economy. I believe that the poor should not have income taxes because they already pay a disproportionate amount of their income as sales and payroll taxes. Also, _all_ income should be taxed at the exact same rate and I also like the idea that deductions (because I feel there are some legitimate reasons to incentivize people with lower taxes for certain behavioral changes) be capped at an inflation adjusted figure (perhaps customized to the local economy, so someone in New York City would have higher deductions than someone with the same income in, say, Kansas).

Clearly there won’t be such radical changes like this anytime soon, but at a minimum would like to see a candidate support _increased_ taxes on those who can afford to pay them, not decreased taxes. I have a very strong moral objection to anyone with higher income paying a lower rate of taxes than I do and I do not feel overtaxed (though, like everyone else, I complain about the taxes I pay). Capping deductions is also something I would like to see as well as a permanent removal of the idiotic AMT. We need to eliminate as much as possible the loopholes and special deductions that apply only to the wealthy (individuals and corporations) and ensure a level playing field.

Civil Liberties

I believe there should be a nation-wide picture identification requirement. I tend to get a bit creepy to the average person in what I consider OK for our government to know. The idea that people should be able to live in our society without any identification is something I just don’t understand. I have no problem with there being an official, nation-wide fingerprint, iris, DNA, etc., registry database. I think the idea that people should be free to commit crimes until caught is rather idiotic. If you commit a crime the investigators should be able to compare their evidence with every person living and dead in our country in seconds (right out in the field). That this is somehow an invasion of privacy is something I don’t quite understand.

My focus would instead be on working toward a more fair (or less unfair) justice system. I strongly object to the ‘war on drugs’ and consider it a huge waste of resources. I have written earlier about some middle ground between our current idiocy and full legalization and favor that approach. Decriminalize things that don’t have any real impact on society (like prostitution) and wham, bam, thank you mam, we wind up with a whole lot fewer criminals, our courts get cleared up and our police and prosecutors can focus on crimes that actually have a negative impact on society (like driving under the influence, why do those people continually get passes?).

I don’t expect a nation-wide ID system soon, but I do think that a combined driver’s license system makes a lot of sense. By eliminating people’s ability to get a license in multiple states (what conceivable legal reason is there for that?) and standardizing ID, there is a pathway forward toward. I would like to see a candidate come out against the war on drugs and the decriminalization of things like prostitution, but given the prison-industrial complex winding down the prison system has to happen gradually to keep from crashing the economy.

Abortion/Contraception

I am a misanthropist so see absolutely no reason to bring unwanted babies into this world. I think that our (eroding by the minute) nation-wide legal right for abortion is the right way forward and do not think that support for making this a state-by-state approach is wise. The women who need this service the most are those who are most likely to be trapped in a state that decided to make it illegal. I support the idea that contraception should be readily available (for boys and girls!) and that sex education should educate about sex, not abstinence. I believe that an informed population makes better decisions so girls and boys who know exactly how sex happens and how to protect against diseases and pregnancy will be more likely to take the appropriate steps to avoid those consequences.

At a minimum I would want to see a candidate support for leaving Roe v Wade alone and reversing the erosion that has been happening the last couple of decades.

Immigration

I believe there should be no limitations on immigration. I strongly believe that any foreign student who gets a graduate degree should be greeted as they come down the aisle with citizenship papers and tickets to fly their family members here. Creating barriers to immigration is no different from the war on drugs, it creates criminals out of people who are not doing anything to harm society. Indeed, those who choose to immigrate, in my opinion, tend to be the best, brightest and most entrepreneurial of the population in their home country and thus bring up our nation with their arrival.

I don’t expect the barriers to come down immediately, but I would expect any candidate to support those ideals and not (as Obama has done more than Bush did) specifically target the current illegals.

Energy

I think that current petro fuels should be used as long as they are cheaper than alternatives, but I also believe that there should be a tax on them that is used to fund efforts to reduce use. I believe that the best ‘bang for the buck’ is to make our consumption a lot lower (our current _rate_ of consumption is totally unsustainable in any sort of physical sense, so at some point we need to cut back; we can do it in a controlled method or via chaos when the fossil fuels run out) which is going to help when we do get viable alternatives (which I firmly believe are possible and practical, but not until the economic cost of petro versions reach around $10/gallon of gasoline equivalent). The government should not be investing in specific companies (i.e., “picking winners”), it should be providing demand for industries by subsidizing purchases of the product. By providing demand the government allows the marketplace to decide the most efficient method of achieving a given end and helps to reduce the incentive for corruption. At a minimum I would want a candidate to talk about reducing the incentives to petro-fuel companies and to use those incentives to reduce demand instead.

Environment

Our society must assign the costs of all consequences to the source of those consequences. Meaning that waste produced cannot be put into the environment for free, it must have costs associated with it. When a company dumps waste into the environment it is society that suffers, so this is not a situation like the war on drugs. Society must shoulder the burden of enforcing environmental laws and that cost must also be added onto the direct environmental costs of the waste. I believe, with this as incentive, that most ‘waste’ would be seen as a valuable raw material to someone, somewhere, and recycling would increase. I believe this extends to the use of landfills, we should not be creating problems for our heirs to deal with and should resolve all waste issues directly. At a minimum I would want to see a candidate support the EPA and its regulations. Science must drive regulation, not lobbying.

Military/Foreign Interests

Our military is unnecessarily large and a huge drain on our economy and society. We could cut it by 90% and _still_ have the strongest defense in the world (and still be several times stronger than any other country!). The US needs to stop meddling in the affairs of other countries, after all, it is that meddling that lead to 9/11. I would like to see any candidate propose to immediately eliminate our involvement in our countries (I particularly abhor our drone program), but winding back the military industrial complex has to happen gradually since it is such a pivotal part of our economy.

FED/Finance

I believe ‘too big to fail’ means unequivocally that entity needs to be broken up. I believe if your organization was kept solvent by taxpayer dollars that executive compensation should be more in line with executive compensation of government employees. No executive should get bonuses based on tax payer dollars, thus, since all money is fungible, that means that no executives get bonuses before the taxpayer monies are repaid and for some time period afterwards. If this causes a massive loss of senior executives at these companies, I would consider that an excellent side effect. I think that the FED (Federal Reserve Bank) should be ‘nationalized’ (I didn’t realize it _wasn’t_ part of the government until a few months ago, did you?) and should be operated by government executives and not by for-profit financial entities. A Constitutional amendment to ensure that the control of the nation’s economy stay in the hands of government executives is clearly necessary.

At a minimum I would want to see a strong focus on eliminating the sources of the problems that lead to the collapse (they are manifold and primarily due to deregulation). There will be huge resistance from the finance leaders and any efforts of a President would be massively diluted by Congress and lobbyists, but I would want to see an espoused commitment to seeing this sort of direction taken.

Education/Student Loans

I believe a new financial crises is in the offing due to the massive amount of securitized student loans that are outstanding and are never going to be paid. I believe this is a huge and unsustainable burden on our society and believe that the companies that made these loans should be forced to absorb them. Student loans should be bankrupt-able/re-organizable like any other debt. I believe that state colleges and universities should be almost fully funded by the state and federal government, the primary cost of education should be room, board and lost wages. While the latter part (‘free’ education) is not something I expect any time soon, I would like to see a candidate support a path to reverse the student loan bankrupt-ability. If students can renege on those obligations through bankruptcy, lenders will be a lot more likely to evaluate their ability to pay.

Healthcare

I strongly favor the idea of universal health care. I doubt there is any political will in the US to pursue it, but I would like to see a candidate support the idea.

Jobs/Infrastructure Bank

I would like to see the government offer long-term and stable funding for infrastructure maintenance and improvements. I see the best way to do this is to offer government-backed infrastructure bonds that, much like Freddie and Fannie guarantee mortgage loans (though without the astronomical executive compensation and profit motive!), the government could access the several trillion dollars a year that are necessary to rehabilitate our infrastructure. Given today’s interest rates, I fully believe that just the bare stimulus of flooding the market with money will repay interest and principle on the debt and the massive shot in the arm to society by having modern infrastructure will just be a huge bonus. Based on my research there is little keeping the President from making something like this happen, so it is something I would want a candidate to fully support.

Something good from global warming

Ozone hole at smallest size in decades
Warm Antarctic temperatures help preserve UV-protecting layer
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/346068/title/Ozone_hole_at_smallest_size_in_decades

Just like the thawing of the ice at the North Pole opens up huge lucrative shipping opportunities, the warming has resulted in a shrinking ozone hole over the South Pole. People insist on insisting that there are nothing but bad consequences for a warming planet, I would suggest (if I wanted to be vilified) that on balance the globe will actually be a better place for humans with the warming we are expecting to see even with the hysterical worst-case scenarios projected. Of course, some places like Miami will have to learn from places like Amsterdam and build huge sea walls to keep out the hurricane storm surge, but hey, think of all the stimulus dollars!

Third party case

The progressive case against Obama
Bottom line: The president is complicit in creating an increasingly unequal — and unjust — society
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/27/the_progressive_case_against_obama/

I am not totally sold on the author’s case for the third party. There is the plausible case (as DaWei has argued) that we know unequivocally that Obama is evil and since there is the greater than zero case that Romney might not be evil (because he lies constantly no one knows what the hell he thinks (and I believe it is quite plausible that he doesn’t actually think anything, so any policies will be by his advisers (of course, he won’t tell us who those might be either, but how much worse can it get than what Obama has?))), so we are better off not voting for Obama. However, since Romney appears highly likely to continue the Bush/Obama path of strengthening the oligarchy at the continued expense of the middle class, rather than staying home or voting for the lesser evil (as I have made the case regarding Obama), the author argues that by voting for a third party candidate you are creating power for the future. At present, since we are left with a binary choice of death by hanging vs death by firing squad, most intelligent people will choose not to choose, thus abandoning the process all together. By casting a vote for a third party (why are they _all_ third parties?) you are lending credence to the alternative and creating/amplifying a political voice. It might mean diddly squat in the near term (almost certainly, anyway), but in the longer term, when we have the inevitable next crisis, a vote cast for a third party helps to create legitimacy for any actions championed by third party actors.

Writing this has shifted my attitude (reading the article did, but to a much lesser extent; I guess writing forces me to focus on arguments and reading doesn’t), I think I will start to promote third parties to my reader(s). If you believe, as I do, that there really isn’t any significant daylight between the two parties (I am convinced they are entirely beholden to the oligarchy and am repeatedly confounded when wealthy people (and relatives) label Obama as a socialist), then it is very easy to elect not to elect and just stay home (something I was intending to do prior to reading this article). However, the idea of lending support to the concept of third parties (though with the attitude that it will be a long-term effort to build support and knowing that that support probably won’t be ready for the next crises (or several)) helps to elevate the idea from pointlessly/uselessly casting a vote to helping to build a consensus that could lay the groundwork for some way of swinging the pendulum away from the feudal lock in by the oligarchy.

Of course, it might still be a waste of time, but if you cynically view the situation as a lost cause already, as I do, then it really costs nothing to cast your vote to a third party and since it has a non-zero chance of helping, then your vote is not 100% wasted. Of course, first you have to do the research to find out who the heck is on the ballot, expect to see some of that here in the future…

Bacteriotherapy

‘Faecal transplant’ clue to treating gut bug
The gut infection Clostridium difficile can be defeated by a cocktail of rival good bacteria, experiments in mice show.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20081895

I talked a bit earlier about problems with antibiotics and their interference with your gut ‘microbiome’, the article above has some very strong experimental evidence that this is indeed the case. The idea of carefully blending a collection of bacteria grown on petri dishes rather than collected from someone’s poo certainly goes a very long way toward producing something that could get FDA approval!

Wage theft

Walmart supply chain: warehouse staff agencies accused of wage theft
‘They prey on people living on the edge,’ claim workers, who are already among the most vulnerable and lowest-paid in America
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/oct/18/walmart-supply-chain-agencies-accused-wage-theft

I can state with authority that this isn’t limited to little people living on the edge of poverty. Some large government contractors (who will remain nameless since I don’t care for a lawsuit) will often require employees to work well north of 40 hours per week, charge their customers for every hour worked, yet only pay their employees for 40 hours. Since, as contractors, the company is basically paid 2-3 times what the employee gets for regular hours worked, that profit margin leaps up when the ‘overtime’ is added in. Of course, we pampered class making high salaries aren’t likely to get much sympathy from people struggling to survive on less than minimum wage, but my point is to highlight that this phenomenon is far from unique to the bottom rung of society.

I am also quite certain that Walmart is far from the only one who is (at least passively) guilty of this practice. It is certainly no cheaper for a company to directly hire and manage people according to the local laws and regulations so the very fact that the company is going with contractors is proof, in my mind, that they are expecting (deniable) shenanigans to happen which will result in less cost to them. Any alternative is simply an accounting trick to reduce the labor force (something our government has done a number of times; pay a contractor 2-3 times what an employee costs just to get that employee off the direct payroll) and comes at the expense of the stockholder. Corporations are generally incentivized by our collective short-term decision making to inflate the appearance of current profits at the expense of future profits and the long-term health of an organization and ‘outsourcing’ labor through contractors who are then incentivized to short-change their employees to make a buck is one way to get those year-end bonuses.

Endangered species!

Is the middle class an endangered species?
After losing ground for four decades, middle America increasingly looks doomed. Here’s how it happened
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/24/is_the_middle_class_an_endangered_species/

This is likely to be a rambling post, brace yourself… I have felt in my gut for a long time that the middle class was endangered and on the wane and had read most of the stats the article refers to in bits and pieces over the years. However, having it presented in such a monolithic, organized block really drives home the current situation. I can no longer claim to be a member of the middle class, though. While I grew up in a middle to upper middle class environment, once I had recovered from my bout with homeless destitution (I was _really_ stubborn about giving up more than a decade of education and experience to switch to a career in IT) it only took a couple of years to elevate into the upper middle class and today we are certainly in the top 5%, likely even in the top 2.5% depending on how one measures things. Still, intellectually I think middle class and financially, because of our very substantial investment in our second home construction efforts (shameless promotion) we largely live paycheck to paycheck (the decisions that lead to this state have been a subject of review a number of times, believe me!). As a consequence, I still think a lot like someone in the middle class. Even my education (BS in Biochem, MBA) doesn’t make me feel that much better off since it is largely irrelevant to my current career (though I am sure having a graduate degree helps to check some boxes that enable my resume to get reviewed by hiring managers, so it is not _totally_ useless). I have often had an acute feeling that I am really not that much better off than my parents were 40 years ago. While my parents were always cagy about their income (something I don’t really understand, but emulate to a certain degree because it seems to a social requirement) I figure that back in the late ’70s they were probably right at the median ($50K based on the article). Interesting (horrifying) to me is that today’s median income is, wait for it, right at $50K. According to the article inflation has averaged 2.5% each year since then which according to a spreadsheet I quickly assembled means that the median income should be over $100K today (about $115K if my spreadsheet is to be believed). That would just be to keep pace with inflation, yet I am quite certain that as a percentage of income houses, cars and education have increased much faster than inflation in that same period.

If real wages have actually shrunk by over half in the last generation, yet our economy has grown, where is all that money? The article also shows it, and I am sure to none of my reader(s) surprise, it has gone almost exclusively to the top 10% with the bulk of the gain going to a fraction of the top 1%. I believe I am a bit better off than my parents were when I was a kid, not a lot, but a bit. I have more education (that I am _still_ paying for (with about a decade more to go!)), more cars (that are all _at least_ 10 years old and all with over 100K (a couple over 200K) miles) and more houses (though my parents did own lots of property over the years, they only built once and we rented while that was under construction (note that my wife and I built our own second house almost exclusively ourselves, by our own hands, while my parents paid someone else)). My income is higher than I estimate theirs was, inflation adjusted for today, but that doesn’t account for my very strong impression that costs for big ticket items has gone up faster than inflation (the a fore mentioned education, cars and houses), so really I feel largely in the same gross financial/economic/societal role that my parents held when I was a kid (30-40 years ago). However, now I estimate that rather than being at the median I am certainly in the top 5% likely top 2.5%. That is a huge demographic shift where median ‘real’ income/purchasing has shifted all the way to the top! That, to me, is unequivocal endangerment of the middle class species!

I agree strongly with the sentiment expressed by the author that our country need not have traveled down this path to have achieved the same ends (meaning the globalization of our economy). I believe it is largely (perhaps nearly exclusively) attributable to the short-term thinking of executive decision makers (corporate as well as political) that has lead to our current situation. As Henry Ford is said to have said: “I want to pay my workers enough that they can buy one of my cars”, a strong middle class leads to a strong consumer class (day job vs night ‘job’, insofar as our economy is concerned) which leads to a strong economy which leads to higher achievement all around (meaning the rich get richer also). However, as I have babbled before, once someone has achieved a certain level of wealth they no longer really care about society’s ability to do well, indeed they are actually incentivized to do harm to the economy. The short-term thinking (aimed at maximizing quarterly stock prices) that has engulfed our decision makers means that a thousand bucks a year from now is worth less than ten bucks today. That attitude is largely due to the decision makers who elect/appoint decision makers (i.e., corporate boards and political voters) thinking incredibly short-term as well and failing to reward anyone for successful long-term decision making. A bonus in the hand is worth more than 10x (or 100x) a bonus promised next year! Particularly when you won’t be here next year and your rival will instead.

Is there any remedy? Well, within our current political system I would have to say no. Unless the sheeple suddenly start voting for people who have their best interests at heart and I just don’t see that happening. Perhaps the oligarchy will realize that they need to throw a few bones to the ‘middle class’ and will (re)create the illusion that the government actually looks out for the little guy, thus staving off the inevitable for a while, but I don’t see much need for that either. The sheeple have been so proven to be trivially lead-able that it would be a mark of insanity for anyone in power to even think that they could fight against the tide, even from within the oligarchy. I have babbled about the looming ‘apocalypse‘ a number of times (two good examples here and here) and while my definition of the apocalypse (see the second post) is really not that apocalyptic, it sure means that life sucks for the non-oligarchy. I personally might be a bit lucky in that by maintaining the ’70s middle class standard (thus having moved up the food chain to arguably the top 2.5%) I can be one of the few who attach themselves to the oligarchy as the rest of the nation wallows in deprivation and depression, but that isn’t a source of happiness to me as I would rather be in a society where everyone benefited from the economy, not just the very top.

Of course, if I am really lucky, I will look back on these posts in a decade or so and wonder how I could have been so wrong at predicting bad times. I would really _really_ like to be wrong! Happily wrong! Willing to lose an expensive bet wrong (which won’t cost me much because the economy will be cooking along (indeed, I probably won’t be able to collect if I win, so rather pointless to bet)). I can’t bring myself to be enthusiastic about the prospects of being wrong though. The frog has sat so long in the heating water that it is now frog soup!

Our police state is complete

It seems that there is no longer any point in droning on and on about the ‘impending’ police state, it is now fully embedded in concrete:

Obama moves to make the War on Terror permanent
Complete with a newly coined, creepy Orwellian euphemism – “disposition matrix” – the administration institutionalizes the most extremist powers a government can claim
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/obama-terrorism-kill-list

How long did this take? Less than a generation, it seems. Thinking back, pre 9/11, it seems that there were limits to what our government would do, at least openly (I have no doubt that the US equivalents of 007 ran around whacking people, but it was deniable and not widespread or institutionalized). When Bush Jr. started to grab at executive power the Dems put up a vociferous show at being objectionable, but when Obama went even further (way further!) the come up with idiotic rationalizations that all is well. Constitution? We got no stinkin Constitution!

What happened to Ron Paul? Is there any chance to write him in and get him elected?

Thank goodness for grandma!

Longevity Traced to Grandmothers
http://www.voanews.com/content/grandmothers-longevity-24oct12/1532183.html

I talked a bit before about group evolution and that post-child-bearing adults are valuable to families. The grandmother hypothesis is a variation on the same theme. Looking over the wiki page it seems to me that a particular bias (or blind spot) is visible on the reported research. Researchers are using today’s reports of menopause and grandmother effects (of course, that is pretty much all they have) as opposed to what was highly likely to be extant during the period where this sort of behavior would have had an evolutionary effect. Given that other primates do not appear to have the same sort of longevity that humans do, it is hard to develop a conclusion that our longevity was just a quirk that is unique to our genes and not some product of evolution. It might be that the initial changes that lead to our (relative) longevity was indeed random (well, duh!, that is indeed the case for all mutations) but if it didn’t have a strong survival characteristic it wouldn’t have become or remained dominant. As such, I firmly believe (but doubt that, absent a time machine, that any of this could be proven) that the advent of dramatically reduced child bearing by older adults (in my mind, that would be in their 30’s; back then as it is quite likely that child bearing started as young as 9-10 years of age and likely women would remain constantly pregnant for the better part of the next two decades) made the group much more likely to do well because it freed up experienced people to focus on teaching and child care as opposed to a likely somewhat desperate effort to keep fed and to feed children.

Of course, theories without evidence are just nice stories and I can’t see how we could get evidence for something like this, so perhaps stories is all we will ever have.

Are we really collectively that dumb?

A Simple Fix for Farming
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/a-simple-fix-for-food/

I read many years ago about a rancher in the mid west that decided to forgo the hugely expensive and time consuming effort of clearing shrubs and bushes, killing ‘invasive’ browsers (like antelope) and hunting coyotes and see what happened. They discovered that their _profit_ was unchanged (though their revenue dropped) and their product (cows) was healthier. The discovered that the coyotes didn’t kill healthy animals (even babies) and were really only taking down animals that were dying anyway. I was quite impressed with their results but became increasingly surprised over the years that the number of people adopting their approach were miniscule. Here we have a case where some extra rotation in crops actually winds up with a better, more diverse product offering (and the same _profit_), yet, even though the work was sponsored by our government, not a peep is heard. Of course it doesn’t require an active conspiracy to explain this, lots and lots of people in the agricultural business have cross ties with lots of other organizations so it might not even require conscious thought on some people to suppress the information. I bet, coupled with things like no-till farming, we could dramatically reduce the impact to the environment while simultaneously increase yields AND save money at the same time. What is not to love? If I weren’t already committed to aquaponics I might get really interested in dirt farming as it seems to me that there are some significant advantages that could be put in place to yield some outsized margins (just where I like to live).

BTW, the article appears to be freely available if you are interested:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0047149

Maybe it is easier to teach them to talk to us

WHITE WHALE spent 4 years trying to tell us something, then stopped
Startled diver ‘given orders in English,’ say boffins
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/23/whale_speaks_english/

I have always felt that whales and dolphins are (at least) as smart as us and wanted to be able to fund some serious efforts to communicate with them. However, based on the above report, it seems it might be better to teach them to talk to us instead!

I am reminded of the novel The Mote in God’s Eye where human linguists quickly realize that they will never have more than a very basic comprehension of the alien’s language, but that the aliens could learn our language with rather frightening speed.