Each and Every Note Another Octave

I voted today.

My lovely spouse had gone before me (while I was taking the children to school), and called to say we weren't on the registered voter list. She mentioned to me that the volunteer had said that sometimes people just drop off the list. She reminded me to have my driver's license handy.

When I got there, I went to the registered voter line, organized alphabetically. I handed the volunteer my driver's license, so I wouldn't have to spell my last name (which is easily misspelled).

Still, it got looked up wrong, and I was told I was not registered. I pointed out the error, and after flipping back a page, my name was found, immediately following my wife's unsigned line.

Then I mentioned that my wife had already been there, and that she had been informed that she was not registered, and that she had registered again, and that she had voted. I was assured that her vote would count. Which makes sense, after all, it's a secret ballot, how would they know which one was hers? Since she doesn't plan to return and vote again under her registered name, I think she'll be able to vote in future elections, as well.

Our volunteer looked rather embarrassed about all this, so I told her that it was still pretty early, and she'd probably only had one cup of coffee so far. Her fellow volunteers laughed, and I went to retrieve my ballot.

How did it go, you ask?

I voted to increase the local property tax, because I have seen the school district budget, and I know how the state money has decreased, while the need to educate our children has not. Also, some of the school buildings are so old, they are out of code; they need repairs or replacement of certain fixtures.

I voted against all incumbents, because sometimes I'd rather have "the devil I don't".

I voted for everyone running unopposed, because they need affirmation, too.

I did not vote for anyone in the race that I had not researched (Judge 3, 10th District Court), a fact that bothered me. I should have looked at the sample ballot on the Secretary of State webpage, so I would have been better prepared. I won't be missing this one in 2012.

Until another time,
Salt

A Cry For Help, Look At Yourself

Critics drive me crazy.

The way I was raised, if you didn't have a better solution, you really have no right to go after the people implementing "bad" solutions. An example of this kind of behavior would be the Tea Party activists. Their rallying cries of "we're going to get spending under control" and "we're going to cut taxes" are just criticisms of government, not solutions to real problems.

The problems are very real. The solutions are not obvious. However, the screaming and clanging of bells tends to drown out the actual facts. I don't expect anyone besides me to actually read the budget of the United States Federal Government or the Statement of Public Debt, so I'll do my best to sum them up.

In the year 1998, the actual total budget authority (found in the 2000 Budget) of the US Government was about $1.6 trillion. Of that, about a quarter of a trillion was spent on interest. There was an actual surplus of about $69 billion. The actual debt stood at $5.5 trillion dollars.

To scale this back, suppose a household netted (after taxes) $35k. They have a mortgage (debt) of about $120k. They spent $6k on interest, but didn't pay down their mortgage at all.

In the year 2008, the actual total budget authority (found in the 2010 Budget) of the US Government was about $2.98 trillion. Of that, about a quarter of a trillion was spent on interest. There was an actual deficit of about $459 billion. The actual debt stood at $10.0 trillion.

Going back to our scaling example, our theoretical household is now a $60k household. They now have a $200k mortgage, and they just borrowed $10k to make ends meet (including paying about $6k on interest).

Pointing fingers (criticizing) is easy. Implementing change will be hard. No solution will be popular, because every good solution will be painful. Fixing the Social Security Ponzi Scheme will be an incredible task for any President. Health care is another issue that will likely be wrestled with again (and again).

Whatever mistakes have been made need to be corrected (without dwelling on the reasons the mistakes were made), and it's going to be more painful the longer we wait. In 1998, there was a budgetary surplus. For most of the 2000s, there was an actual deficit of $450 billion per year. The debt has climbed by over $1 trillion per year since 2008.

My solution would be to raise taxes, to reduce the deficit. Unpopular, yes. Would fix the problem? Also, yes. My original reason for looking up the budget was to find something to cut. Flat 10% across the board cut, and raise taxes. I don't have a solution. Before you vote this November (state and federal levels), please make sure the person you cast your vote for has a real solution, that addresses real problems; not just a "they screwed it up, elect me to fix it" platform.

I'd like to close with a statement from a Republican President (Theodore Roosevelt), on critics.

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

Until another time,
Salt

And Together We'll Spread The News

Some guy in Florida is looking to have a book-burning.

(apparently, his sudden notoriety has overrun his expected bandwidth, and the site is down. Maybe this Google cache link will work)

This country is big believer in rights. He has every right to do this; it's a mode of free speech. However, the rest of the world is going to do their best to shout him down; also, a mode of free speech.

I do not see how inflammatory actions like this will result in any kind of positives. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind (as is is believed M. Gandhi once said). This is not turning the other cheek, nor is it "spreading the truth," as he claims he is charged by the Bible to do. This is ideological warfare, and firing a salvo of insults that will be used for extremist propaganda is just poor judgment.

All that can be said on this has already been said, and much of it was said by people who are far more eloquent than I am.

However, I hope someone sets up 1,000 chairs for the event. So that when 900 of them are empty, they appear in all the media.

When Christianity turned 1400 years old, the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery were starting. The world as they knew it was being reworked. As Islam turns 1400 years old over the next 20 years, what changes will be brought to that culture?

Until another time,
Salt

Watching Some Good Friends Screaming

I don't listen to as much talk radio as I used to.

This is a good thing, according to my wife; my blood pressure also thinks it's a good thing (I have less exposure to stupid people, who make me want to rant). However, I feel less informed about the world.

Maybe I have not mentioned that my car (whom I've named Bridget, just so you know) has Sirius Radio in it. Well, it does, and it came with a six month subscription. I really only listen to about ten stations, of which all but two are music (one is sports, the other is "golden era" radio re-broadcasts).

So, it took me a while to hear all these people whining that we can send a person to the moon, and we can make a phone call around the world, but we can't plug a leaking well?

I started a list of things that would compare and contrast these accomplishments. How many years of aerospace engineering went into putting a man on the moon? From Kennedy's promise to Armstrong's words, just over eight. How long did it take to lay the first Trans-Atlantic Cable? Eight years of failed attempts before one worked, and even that one failed within a year and had to be replaced. From Marconi first sending a wireless telegraph signal, to getting a wireless signal across the Atlantic: six years. These feats were over time spans not comparable to the blown well.

Regarding the well itself: it took them several months to drill it, what would make a person think it can be plugged in much shorter of a time frame? Additionally, it is over a mile underwater. This is not an insignificant distance, considering that it's through water, straight down. The pressure at that depth is something like a ton per square inch (depth divided by 33 feet [to get atmospheric pressure equivalency], then multiplied by 14.7 psi, the pressure at sea level). Yet, the oil just billowed out of it, indicating that the pressure on the oil was that much greater.

Now, since it's been capped, and they are monitoring the pressure of the oil on the cap, it's something like 3-4 tons per square inch. So, in just under three months, they managed to cap a blown-out well at one mile underwater, containing pressure of 6000 to 9000 psi.

Time span and difficulty aside, this is a human-caused disaster that is unprecedented. Should they have had a better disaster plan ahead of time? Yes. Should they have used better-quality material in the first place? Yes. Could this have been prevented? Ehh...that's harder to answer. A bubble of the size they estimate ruptured the well would have exerted something upwards of 50,000 psi....and that's a lot of pressure.

Until another time,
Salt

Not Like the Brazen Giant

Sorry I'm really late with this, but reading immigration text makes me dizzy (from all the "spin") and it is also very boring. If you don't know why I'm reading (and writing) about immigration, you're reading the wrong blog; I'm not news, I'm commentary.

Several states have tried immigration laws in the past, but a landmark Supreme Court decision dating from 1849 has determined that immigration is "foreign commerce," which is spelled out in the Constitution as business reserved for Congress, not individual states. This is probably sufficient grounds to overturn it, in time.

To the best of my knowledge, the first Federal immigration law in the United States was passed in May of 1882. For a relative timeline, that's less than 100 years after the ratification of the Constitution, 17 years after the abolition of slavery, and about 38 years prior to the founding of the ACLU. It was a law that prevented immigration from China, canceling a 14-year old treaty with China that had been amended just two years prior.

This law (the Chinese Exclusion Act), started a period of about 40 years of immigration laws creating various exclusions from various countries, followed by 20 more years of bureaucratic maneuvering, which brings us into World War II, where Japanese-Americans were interred in "relocation" camps, because of fears that they were still loyal to Japan (hey, I know it's not related to immigration, but I felt that as long as I was showcasing xenophobia, I thought it met the criteria).

At this same time (1943), the drain on labor caused by the war gave way to the "Bracero Program," which was a guest-worker program that the Mexican and United States government agreed on, to funnel workers from Mexico to work on farms and the railroad. The official end to the program was in 1964, but it was during this time that the groundwork was laid for future "undocumented workers."

Now we finally get to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and four more years of qualifying legislation, to close any gaping holes (for those of you keeping score at home, that's about 100 years after slavery was abolished).

The Hart-Cellar Immigration and Nationality Act was passed into law during this time, in 1965. It got rid of all the immigration exclusion laws that were based on nationality and gender, and introduced laws based on family unity, refugee status, and "needed skills." It set the visa quota at 300,000 per year, 170,000 of which could be from the Eastern Hemisphere, and no more than 20,000 from any single country (but unlimited for family reunification).

300,000 per year. In 1965. Back when the world population was estimated to be about 3.3 billion. It's double that, now. Assuming that interest in immigrating to the United States has remained a constant percent starting at 300,000 that first year (we've hit the quota every year, I can't find anything to the contrary), we've got a backlog of visa applications that would amount to a minimum of 6.9 million (assuming a linear progression) applications...which would take 23 years to work through...if we didn't get any additional applications.

They are already here. Many of them hold jobs. Yes, they need medical care; yes, they need education (English, written and spoken). Probably in that order.

Blanket legislation targeting an entire population because of a few bad apples has never gotten us anywhere, and it won't get us anywhere now. So what can be done?

Deportation? Attempting to send just over 11 million illegal aliens back to their country of origin would be a task of Herculean proportions (the illegal immigrant rate from 2000-2008 was approximately 1,250 per day). Supposing the process was streamlined so that you could arrest and deport 3880 persons a year for immigration violations (the regular arrest rate in the US is about 38,800 per day, so a 10% increase), it'd take about 11.5 years to arrest them all, assuming nothing else changed. Cost? It'd be 10% of whatever the current expenditure on law enforcement is, plus transportation, less fines collected. Personally, I believe that since the time taken to remove them all is so spread out, the impact to the economy of removing some 8 million workers would be somewhat mitigated.

Amnesty? This is a solution I could get behind, if there were some kind of penalty (monetary, not incarceration) before enactment. The problems with this solution, I think, are a little less severe than the deportation solution, but the future ramifications are potentially worse ("Hey, I broke a law, and got forgiven! I wonder if I can do it again..."). I don't think the tax revenue streams would increase by much, but I'm not certain how usage of low-income supplemental programs would change. I think it would be a generation before the impact of this was truly felt.

Ultimately, it will be some suits in Washington who will decide, after all the soundbites and posturing is done. It's not up to a statue on an island; she made her statement 124 years ago.

Until another time,
Salt

Think About The Reasons, Not The Numbers

I think about taxes about three times per year.

I think about them in September/October, because there are candidates running for office trumpeting their fiscal skills and tooting numbers that appeal to the masses. I think about them in December, because I need to get all my ducks in a row. The last time I think about them is generally in March, when I submit my tax forms to the respective state and federal government agencies.

As I drove to work, I heard an ad on the radio, for a website, "Tax the Richest". It's just a website, full of hyperbole, doom and gloom, and really large numbers. I could criticize that they provide no solutions, only a blanket rallying cry. I could also take cheap shots at their site design, but instead, I'd rather talk about "The Facts", as noted on their site, on the header menu bar. The document they reference is MN Dept. of Revenue, 2009 Tax Incidence Study (the top link, page 44 in the document, but page 58 in the PDF). But they don't link it, they don't want you to read it for yourself. They want you to take their interpretation, and believe what they want you to believe.

Their spin is that the lowest earners pay the highest taxes...let's check it out.

Let me get into some estimated numbers (you see, this is all estimated on 2011 numbers, which hasn't happened yet). The MN Dept. of Revenue estimates there will be 2,575,557 taxpaying Minnesotan households in 2011, 57% of which will find themselves in the lowest two income deciles (that is, 20%). This 57% of the population will provide $4,759,459,000 of the estimated $21,675,104,000 taxes collected in the year 2011, which is about 22%.

(Those of you thinking critically will say, "Wait, 22% is more than 20%, they really are paying a larger share of the taxes on their share of the income!" And you'd be right. So, we see their facts point to a flaw, but it's not nearly as big as they want you to think.)

It's generally accepted that a sales tax is regressive (meaning it costs the poor more and the rich less), because a poorer family will have to spend more of their income, exposing them to more sales tax (percentage-wise). However, the income brackets they have chosen are by population decile (10% segment). Since nearly 60% of Minnesotans find themselves making the lowest quarter of incomes in the state, this skews the data significantly. If you shift your perspective to income decile (back to the MN Revenue link, page 54 in the document, but page 68 in the PDF), you'll see that almost the entire skew of the "Percent of Income Spent As Taxes" comes from the sales tax issue.

2% is almost exactly the skew from Sales Tax being regressive. Suppose then, that instead of a 7.75% sales tax on purchased goods, we abolish the Sales Tax, and instead increase the State Income Tax by 2.2% (the state average sales tax paid). This would decrease the (estimated) tax burden on the lowest two income deciles by .5-1.5%, and increase the (estimated) burden on the highest two income deciles by .8-1.3%.

Look, a possible solution, to an identifiable problem, achieved through critical thinking!

A possible hangup with this solution, might be the loss of revenue from out-of-state persons who had been paying sales tax, and now are not liable for it (and who obviously don't pay our state income tax). I'm having trouble finding those numbers, though, so if anyone has a finger on those, that'd be great. I can't imagine it's more than .5% of the state income. I hesitate to say, "Raise Taxes on Business" because we all know they just raise prices and pass their costs directly to the consumers.

You know, we could use some critical thinking in politics. I'd run for office myself, but I doubt my platform of "Cut Spending and Raise Taxes!" would be very popular...but we wouldn't be worried about a deficit, or foreign powers owning our debt, or a myriad of other large problems you don't hear about from mainstream politicians.

Until another time,
Salt