Tuition, Education, and OWS

First off, this was quite possibly the most painful two minutes I've spent in...quite awhile. Since the last time I was forced to sit through an Obama speech. Or Rick Perry's ramblings. This gentleman seems quite confused as to what, exactly, a protest is supposed to be. When a protest/rally has degenerated to the point where, as the interviewer said, the protesters are "putting your Christmas list on a sign and waving it in the air," I think we can definitively say that it has sunk to the point where it will most likely achieve nothing of consequence.

Now, I know that this young man is only one among thousands. And my purpose in this post isn't necessarily just to nitpick on the fact that he doesn't seem to know what he wants. It's more to prove why his wish-list is pretty ridiculous, and why the wish-list of so many others in the Occupy movement are just as far-fetched.

Yes, corporations are bad. They restrict the free market, monopolizing market resources and pooling them into huge vats of capital that they can draw from at will. They also have a bad habit of forgetting the little guy in the midst of their financial orgy. I think it would be a very good thing if they ceased to exist entirely, to be replaced by something more friendly to the idea of liberty. At the same time, corporations and rich people are not necessarily synonymous.

There is a line that needs to be drawn there, in my opinion. Rich people may have gotten rich using a corporatist model. Or they may not have. And even if they did, they still earned the money. Perhaps not fairly, but since when has life been fair? The mere possession of money does not make a person evil or, in the language of my siblings and certain statist Democrats, "mean." It simply means that they were more clever and quicker on their feet than the rest of us. (Nor, I would add, is inherited wealth a bad thing. It was still earned, and should belong to whoever its original owner wants it to.)

What concerns me is not necessarily the idea that corporations or bad, or even the idea that rich people are bad. What does concern me is the very prevalent idea that the government should do something about the badness of corporations and rich people--usually, the idea goes, by stealing money from them and giving it to poorer people. Or, at least, giving it to the government so that it can give it to poorer people.

Or, as the gentleman in this video seems to want, to pay for his college tuition.

I totally get the value of a good education. I think that it is necessary to maintain our standard of living and the society we have now. I do dislike the idea that college is the only place you can get such an education (seeing as I'm probably not going to be attending college), but I also realize that there are some professions that require the specialized education a college course can give one. That said, I think it is far from the government's responsibility to ensure that everyone gets a good education. We've been trying that, through the public school system, for the past thirty years, and the quality of our education has only declined. Do we really want to get the government involved in our places of higher learning?

There is also the libertarian argument that for government to pay for college tuition would be utterly unfair, since it isn't my responsibility to make sure anyone else gets an education. Go get a job and pay for your own college degree if it means that much to you.

Now, this young man may be saying that he wants the evil rich people to pay for his college tuition. But that isn't right, either. If some philanthropic, wealthy individual does want to help him through college, more power to them. But they are under no compunction to do so, and they shouldn't be. That is called plunder, and whether legal or illegal, it is wrong. We simply can't take money from private citizens and give it to other private citizens--or rather, we shouldn't.

And that is my take on this subject.

And Iran is Next

With the recent, most terrifying Big Bad Terrorist Plot that struck just a month after the tenth anniversary of 9/11, it seems that our government is quite ready to invade Iran. Or, at the very least, it's posing quite effectively, making us think it's quite ready to invade Iran. Apparently, two men with links to a Mexican drug cartel decided to try and kill the Saudi ambassador to the US, a target that even to my mind doesn't seem to make much sense. There's also their chosen method of execution.

The Iranians planned to employ Mexican drug traffickers to kill Jubeir with a bomb as he ate at a restaurant, U.S. officials said.

The logistics alone to this seem like a nightmare. From the use of Mexican drug traffickers (who might not even be able to get into the country, much less to DC, and run the added risk of being recognized and thrown in jail for the ignominious charge of marijuana possession), the fact that a restaurant is a rather iffy place to find the ambassador, liable to change at a moment's notice.

Not that it was ever much of a threat, anyway, since the United States Attorney has stated that law enforcement officers were guiding their sources the whole time, and no explosives were ever placed anywhere. In essence, we've arrested a man on the basis of what he might have been able to do if the CIA and FBI had let him.

As a result of all this, Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton have touted the need for further sanctions against Iran, because obviously not talking to them helps them come to our side, just the way social ostracism works in high school.

Throughout all my travels through the internet punditry and news sites, I've not seen any concrete proof of Iranian involvement, except the fact that Mansour Arbabsiar (a disheveled, disorganized, divorced man in never-ending trouble with a long list of creditors) might have had contacts with the Iranian Quds.

Overall, it just seems like a rather ridiculous assertion, and I hope nothing more than a few hurt feelings will come from it. For more, Glenn Greenwald wrote an excellent column on this subject. Enjoy.

Protests, Palin, and Polls

Protests...

I'm sure all of us have had the Occupy Wall Street movement drummed into our heads over the past few weeks. Not that I mind the news media giving popular movements coverage. That's a good thing. There seems to be a wide range of people who are participating in the protests, from anarchists to democrats who just think government should give them more money. The people I especially don't understand--and the ones who seem to be most vocal on the movement's website--are the ones who are upset about their student loans and how evil Wall Street is because those evil corporatists don't pay taxes.

To the first, I would simply say that your choices are yours to make and yours to live with. You decided to go to college, with the idea that it would help you get a job. It obviously didn't, and now you're saddled with mountains of college debt that you have no way of paying off. Welcome to reality, where government doesn't pay for your shoddy decisions.

The second has a bit more justification, because the men who work on Wall Street are sometimes the ones who try to get out of every tax they can in quest of profits. I see this more as a commentary on the stifling nature of our tax code, and how easy it is to buy off the IRS, more than anything else. Should our politics and our money be separate? Sure. Will it happen anytime in the next six thousand years? Probably not. Six thousand years of past human civilization couldn't figure out how to wrest the two apart, and I have no delusions that our highly advanced technology will figure out a way for us to do it.

Of course, being the borderline anarchist that I am, I think our tax code is broken, period, and needs to be completely scrapped and rewritten, preferably in a way that will take up no more then ten printed pages and will be easy for the regular person to read. Hey, I'm allowed to be lazy with my citizenship. But once again, that's not going to happen anytime soon, because the IRS is far too lucrative an agency to be so curbed.

I identify far more with the protesters who are there for causes like ending the wars, or protesting the fact that our government is basically owned by the Chinese one because we owe so much money to them. Or even the people who are protesting the fact that corporate sponsors make up so much of the money given to our politicians (I'm still wondering why Rick Perry needs a whopping $17 million to prosecute his campaign...especially when Ron Paul is doing far better, and has only raised $12.5 million since he entered the race. I'm also wondering why people are still giving that shill money. But I digress). But, then again, as I said above, there's no way we're going to separate the two.

Palin...

Sarah Palin announced yesterday that she wouldn't be making a bid for the job of Spender in Chief. Democrats are disappointed, because their easy victory won't be quite as easy as they'd hoped, Palinites are mad/sad/in the depths of despair, and the rest of us are just happy we won't actually have to put up with her for the next thirteen months unless we are masochistic enough as to turn on Fox News.

I'm really not all that surprised by the move. She enjoys her role as media darling far too much to give it up for actual campaigning, and she knows she has more power as a pundit than she would as a prospective candidate for the highest office in the land. Mostly because she'd never get elected, and I do hope she knows it.

Polls.

With Barack Obama's approval rating down near 42% and his Rasmussen approval index at -24--again--I think it's safe to say that people don't really like him much. And it's not just our Democrat president, but also our Republican Congress that is drawing the ire of voters. According to a recent poll, only 14% approve of Congress' handling of recent business.

Not that Congress really seems to care. To individual congressmen, all that matters is that their individual popularity remains stable. And judging from my experience, that hasn't changed much. People in my district may not be fans of Congress, but they love Mac Thornberry, our valiant Republican knight who votes for bailouts and doesn't know the first thing about the Constitution, judging by his rhetoric. So individual congressmen get reelected, and Congress doesn't change, since people apparently don't realize that if you don't like what they're doing, it might be time to put new blood in there.

After all, it can't be our elected representatives who are statist curs. It's other people's representatives who do such terrible things.

The Markets Are Failing

And, of course, the sole reason is that our Federal Reserve and other central banks aren't printing enough money. Or that governments won't help the big banks. Or both. Probably both. As a NYTimes article says:

"It is the fear that governments may not ride to the rescue that seems to have unnerved markets."

Ah, so now we have it. The government is no longer forming a (nearly nonexistent) safety net for the banks - the same banks that make risky investments on purpose, overextending themselves and keeping little money actually in hand so they can make more money, and then depend on the taxpayer when they inevitably begin to fail.

The fact is that, if banks would make better business decisions, they would have nothing to worry about. If they would just learn to say "no" when a risky investor came along, they would get into far less trouble. Sadly, the profit motive is too much of...well, a motive. But I see no reason why they shouldn't pay the price.

No Matter What Your Problem Is...

Government is, obviously, the answer.

At least, if you're a Democrat. Or a Republican. Or a statist. But this list is becoming repetitive.

It's something I've slowly come to realize about the people around me: no matter what the question they are faced with, or the problem that is confronting them, government inevitably, at some point, becomes the answer. Or, more properly, government money. Which is, of course, only our money taken from us by force then being immediately regurgitated into a behemoth system of government agencies and programs.

That network of agencies and programs is precisely what people have come to depend upon. I'm convinced, at this point, that the "American dream" as it existed for our forebears on Ellis Island is nothing but a pipe dream, a quixotic fantasy that is fostered by the optimistic denizens of American suburbia. That dream has been strangled by the idea that, no matter what goes wrong, government has money for us.

Democrats live this out in their rhetoric - that is, blatantly telling us exactly how they think all problems should be solved. Poverty is rampant? Well, we should steal more money from every citizen in the country to (sort of) solve it. A teenager is pregnant and wants an abortion? Well, we've stolen some money precisely for that purpose! There are people who can't keep their opinions to themselves and live with other people? Well, legislation should fix that right up!

Republicans are, in some ways, more devious. Their ideas of government intervention are more subtle. Most of them actually think they are for limited government and free markets. But then a question arises as to how, exactly, to stop abortions, and it becomes clear how they think - obviously, government is the only entity that can stop that...not individual action, with people reaching out to their fellows. Saving corporate interests, protecting big money, stopping crime, fighting the forces of chaos...all those things are jobs for the government. Quite obviously.

But for the life of me, I can't understand why. Perhaps it can be traced back to the fact that people don't want to be responsible for things. It's far more comfortable to let somebody - or something - else take care of it. This might give rise to the apparent inability of any politician to put their money where their mouth is and actually help a poverty-stricken community or reach out to single mothers and help pay medical bills. Perhaps that's just how governments work; they are inherently designed to reduce their subjects' intellectual capacity to zero through entertainment and then become the answer to everything.

But given our federal government's track record, I can't fathom the overwhelming trust that is placed in it. Our government can't stop a cave-dwelling Saudi with a core base of a couple hundred followers whose sole assets are a satellite phone and an ego as big as Betelgeuse, despite a pantheon of security guidelines, two massive wars and, of course, denying that the Taliban ever offered to give him up. But we can totally and completely trust it to successfully stop a kid from shooting himself up on a cocktail of drugs in a back alley. And we can totally trust our government's plethora of health and safety regulations to never let a drug get recalled. Ever.

All that's not even touching on the fact that the government is the biggest advocate of legal plunder in this country. You can get fined for letting rainwater run off your property! (That's actually a measure being considered in my hometown at the moment. Apparently, my town gets little enough rain as it is, so we don't want it falling on concrete. Exactly how property owners are supposed to prevent that is anybody's guess.) Before we know it, they're going to be fining us for breathing.

Oh, that's right. We release CO2 at every exhale. Us evil polluters, breathing all over the planet.

So I suppose it comes down to this.

Through some twisted process, government has become the ultimate solution to every problem. Because it's so good at solving things. And somehow, if we could just get a different person in there, real solutions would come along, and life would be dandy. If we could just squeeze a little more money out of somebody, all our problems would be solved. Jenny would have a good school that didn't fill her mind with fluff, Rob wouldn't be living in a tumbledown apartment complex in the middle of the Projects, Sarah wouldn't be pregnant at 16 and contemplating an abortion, and Timmy wouldn't be down the well.

Oh, and grandma would be baking apple pie.

If only.

Here's the deal, folks. Government has proven over and over again that it ruins everything it touches. The economy, the medical industry, schools, roads, puppies, the post office, important founding documents, libraries, other countries. They can't get involved in anything and it end up better than when they started. A new administration is not going to change that. More money and more power isn't going to change that. It will just give them more opportunity to twist more out of us.

We're all addicted to government programs. And we all know addictions aren't good. Let's break the government habit. Who's with me?

Muslim Hysteria. Rant.

This is mostly a rant in response to some of the people in my hometown. They're of the "Tea Party" crowd - you know, the We Hate Obama and Hence Muslims Club? Yeah, them. The goodly dose of Muslim Hate they've got in them is mostly what this post is about.

Apparently, there's an Islamic university in Brunei, and someone in my town has a relationship with them. As he owns some land here, he decided to donate land to this organization for the purpose of starting a Muslim community center. Just a quick note: we have about 100 Muslim families in our town, and that number is growing. (We also have a pretty healthy Hindu community. It's pretty fun, but that's neither here nor there.) Currently, the Muslim worship center around here is properly termed a cultural center, and it's about the size of my house. Which is pretty tiny. It's probably some kind of fire hazard or something.

Edit: I have since heard from someone who actually went and talked to our local imam and Muslim clerics that the planned community center is not, in fact, affiliated with the Brunei university. Big surprise there. It's funded by a private individual whose name is Unissa, apparently. Fun times.

Anyway. No sooner did certain people in my town hear about this absolutely awful Big Bad Plot than they started talking about it anywhere they got the chance: on Facebook, on message boards, on news stories, at council meetings. Now, I'm all for getting your concerns out there. That's perfectly logical.

But dear people...why?

Of course, compounding all this is a government investment program geared towards immigrants. Our City Council is (quite misguidedly, in my opinion) planning a grand redevelopment of our downtown area. It's pretty ridiculous and wasteful, for multiple reasons, but I won't get into that here. The thing that is getting the We Hate Muslims Club into such a tizzy is the EB-5 program.

Quick overview of EB-5: it allows foreign investors to gain green cards much more quickly than they would otherwise. Basically, they have to invest no less than $500,000 in a struggling or new business in the US, create 10 stable jobs for 2 years, and they will then get a green card. Note that all regular forms and tests for citizenship have to be completed and performed, no exceptions. In effect, the only thing EB-5 allows foreign investors to do is get put at the top of the list for the 100,000 or so green cards we issue each year. (The cap for green card admittance into the US - that is, total, all the dependents who come with the actual holder, etc., is 480,000.)

There are a few different tacks people in my hometown are taking in opposing this:

1. It's "not fair"
2. We'll let evil Muslims in
3. Or possibly commies, which is even worse, naturally
4. We don't need foreign investment. Because, obviously, national investors are investing in our hometown. Obviously.

To the first, let me just say: life isn't fair. It's not been fair for many years. If you think people don't already buy their way into this country, you are very naive, and probably trust your government way too much. The fact is that people with more money will always get in first, or get preferential treatment, or be the only ones who get in. It's how it works. Yeah, it's not "fair"...but as I said, life's not fair. Get used to the idea.

As to commies and Muslims (or possibly commie Muslims, which is much worse than the two separately)...really?

First, let me make it clear that not every Muslim is radical. In fact, not even most Muslims are radical. The percentages for radicalized Islam are very low. They're rising, but that's more due to our actions in their countries and the foothold bin Laden's ideology took than anything. Just because someone calls itself Islamic - be it a university or a grocery store or a kiddie pool - doesn't mean it's radical. Seeing as there are over 1 billion Muslims on the planet, and only about 400,000 of them actually want to kill us - and probably less than 100,000 actually have anything near the capability to do so - I'm pretty sure we're relatively safe.

Furthermore, let's face facts. If you're bent on causing destruction and mayhem in as cheap a manner as possible (considering you've probably come from a poverty-ridden family in Afghanistan somewhere), are you really going to have the resources or inclination to invest $500,000 USD in a company, stick around for two years while you create 10 jobs, get your green card...

All just to blow something up?

Am I the only one who doesn't see the logic in that? It simply makes no sense for someone to go to all that trouble, especially considering it's not all that difficult to get into this country some other way. Just go to Mexico first, and you can practically dance across the border. After all, we do have such a big illegal immigration problem, it can't be that hard. Right? Furthermore, considering how much Muslims like making babies, they'll out-breed us long before they manage to blow us all up.

As to the communists: we've been there, done that. Get out of the sixties already.

Investors aren't coming to our hometown. There's probably a reason for that. I think it has something to do with the fact that nobody even knows where it is, and even though we're one of the larger cities in Texas, people prefer DFW or Houston to our town. Sorry, but them's the facts. Not to mention, our people make huge talking points out of things like EB-5. And you wonder why people think we're a little bit mad.

So in summary: America's still free, even for Muslims. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And for the love of my sanity, please stop harping on things that don't really matter.

Edit 11/21/11: For a related, more Christian-oriented post, see this post on my personal blog.

Ron Paul Being Forgotten

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And this is why I love Jon Stewart, because even if I don't agree with him all the time, he stands up against things he finds unfair...in his own unique way.

Also, he's right: Pew found that Ron Paul is mentioned less than other candidates, despite his popular support.

I Nominate...

In the spirit of the "ABO" movement, I would like to make my own nomination for the office of President of the United States.

Bugs Bunny.

It makes perfectly logical sense, I promise. Because even though Mr. Bunny lacks the corporate and governmental experience most look for in a candidate, he looks really good in a suit. He's also from Brooklyn, which makes him really interesting and elitist for those of you who look for that. On the other hand, he acts in a casual manner and has an endearing, personable accent that makes him the perfect pick for those of you who like that sort of thing.

An entertainer during World War II, Mr. Bunny played the vital part of making sure children all over the United States retained a bit of their childhood, and also offered firm moral support for the mothers and fathers during that most difficult time.

Mr. Bunny disapproves of sport hunting, but has no interest in gun control, as he prefers to taunt hunters rather than remove the means whereby they pursue their sport. Mr. Elmer Fudd, his longtime antagonist, was unavailable for comment, but I am confident that Mr. Fudd would have nothing to say against Mr. Bunny's impeccable pro-gun rights record.

Mr. Bunny has a wide array of experience, including NASA expertise, an extensive knowledge of the world after travelling around it several times, usually very quickly, and is also very involved in environmentally-savvy activities, having expressed his support for Earth Day several times over the years.

Perhaps Mr. Bunny's most strong platform pillar is his ideas on the economy. As he is a strong fan of carrots, Mr. Bunny believes the United States economy should go completely carrot-based. Since carrots are essentially an infinite resource so long as people choose to plant them, the standard would never fail, and if for some unknown reason the market still crashed, we'd be able to eat our money.

For those of you who want a man strong on defense, Mr. Bunny is your rabbit! He never leaves a stone unturned in the pursuit of victory, and has a canny mind for outwitting the enemy, whoever that might be this episode.

All in all, it is my belief that Mr. Bugs Bunny has the potential to become the greatest leader the United States has ever known. Bugs Bunny 2012, folks. Count on it.

As this is a rather silly post that arose out of a conversation with my mother, I promise that something more serious will be coming soon. I hope. It might be a rant at Rick Perry, but it will be something.

Between Them Both

Pending a post on the Iowa GOP debate and the ensuing drama over the Ames poll, I got into a debate. Sort of. It's not a very strident debate, more like a discussion about the GOP's presidential field and the economics surrounding it. It's with Democrats, a portion of the population I don't get to talk to much. (I live in the Bible belt, and that's obviously synonymous with "Republican Country." Sometimes I wish I could move to California, but I'm sure I'd hate it there just as much, except for the weather around LA which is lovely. New Hampshire, here I come!)

Anyway. Democrats apparently frustrate me just as much as Republicans, mostly because of the inherent contradictions I see in their stances.

Republicans want government to stay out of their pocket and businesses, but it's just fine if the government comes into their bedrooms and tells them what to do.

Democrats want government to stay out of their bedrooms, but if it feels it needs to interfere in money and business matters to keep us "safe," that's just fine.

And it seems to me that, between the two, we're pretty much doomed. The only way those two can compromise is to mandate both sectors. All in the name of keeping us safe and/or righteous, of course. Hush, little citizen. Big government knows best.

O, the Things that I've Missed

And I don't really mind. A quick update - my summer activities are over, which of course means I'll have to start school soon. Sometimes being homeschooled is nice, though. I get to decide when to do my schoolwork. Haha. China was awesome, and I wish I was still there, except for the annoying fact that I couldn't get Facebook there. I love Facebook. But you don't really care about any of that, so I'll get into the interesting here's-what-I-think-about-all-the-junk-that's-still-going-on portion of this post.

Apparently the economy is fixing to crash. Again. In fact, our ole' friends Fannie and Freddie are even in the news again, as credit ratings on those institutions plummet. As if they weren't already in a 5-mile hole it had drilled in the crater made by the last market tank. The cause of the whole commotion seems to be centered around the fact that our Congress has finally realized that you can't expect to both borrow trillions of dollars and pay off trillions of dollars at the same time. (This is especially difficult with trillions of dollars in broken programs hanging onto the trillions of dollars in revenue the government brings in. Just pointing that out.)

In fact, it's apparently gotten so bad that Congress has realized bandaids aren't going to fix their bleeding head wound. They might have to cut more than the $1.5 trillion they'd planned on from the budget deficit. Over the next decade. Of course, we can't get rid of any really important programs like that extra aircraft carrier, Congressional salaries, or the Department on Aging, but we'll see what we can do.

Meanwhile, the 2012 presidential campaign seems to be getting started. Yay. Can't wait for that drama. Something I've observed: adult drama is just as tiresome as teenage drama, they're just older, and political drama is just as tiresome as adult drama, it's just the politicians have more money to spend. (We won't get started on celebrity drama; it's basically just teenage drama with more public scrutiny.)

Rick Perry, Texas' very beloved governor is cementing his run for President, most notably with a day of prayer he hosted recently. Of course, all the conservative Christians are now singing his praises, declaring that they'd love such a righteous president. Blech. Study what he's done to Texas sometime, then come talk to me.

The rest of the GOP field is just as depressing, with the hesitant exceptions of Ron Paul and Gary Johnson: Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Allen West. It reads like a list of who's-who of warmongering Republicans. But I'm being unkind. Can't have that.

I've not really researched the Democratic field, but I'm pretty sure (quite positive, actually) that President Obama will be their candidate. Not only is he in a strong position as an incumbent president, no matter how unpopular, but he still has the hearts of quite a portion of the Democratic voting base. And so, this race will come down to Obama and the candidate who wants to get butchered in the polls.