Month: March 2007

Hillary Clinton

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Hillary Clinton is one of the most recognizable figures in American politics today. From a campaign standpoint that is generally a good thing. Hillary’s problem is that she is also one of the most divisive figures in American politics. She has worked hard to soften her image in preparation for this run, but whether she is sincere or not is immaterial in the face of the fact that so many people will not trust anything she says. Even if Hillary were becoming honestly less liberal than she used to be she could never gain the trust of a large section of American voters.

I do not mean to suggest that she could not become president, but I am very sure that if she did her presidency would be constantly hampered by attacks from those who oppose her. If she made even a tiny misstep her problems would grow even larger. While there are many candidates who would do little to unite our country (which it needs), there are few, if any, who could cause the division to grow more than Hillary would.

It is no wonder that Hillary does not have a section on her website that outlines her positions. They are irrelevant to her candidacy. Her name is her biggest asset as well as her fatal liability. I could never endorse a candidate who would have no chance of being effective – therefore I cannot endorse Hillary Clinton.

Tags national candidates, not endorsed

culture

The Best of Times and the Worst of Times

Post author By David
Post date March 29, 2007
No Comments on The Best of Times and the Worst of Times

I enjoyed reading Scott’s It’s Worse, but It’s Also Better and then I was surprised to hear on NPR a piece on how our society is Going Ghetto. It’s easy to get caught up in the idea that our culture is going downhill fast which is why it was so refreshing to read Scott’s take that there are some very positive things happening if we will look for them. I think that Amazing Grace is a good example of that.

On the other hand there is much that we accept and even promote which should be decried. That is what the Ghetto Nation is all about. I found it interesting that some people commented on the slightly racist connotations of the word ghetto as a failing of the argument being made. It is unfortunate if that charge of racism serves to dilute the power of the message being sent. Personally I would have used the word grunge – my grandma would have said “slouchy” – but regardless of the term being used, the argument is sound. We are shamelessly promoting some things which we should be rejecting or improving. When we would speak out against them we are told things like:

It seems to me that this demonization of everything ‘ghetto’ is representative of an underlying societal racism, equal to the way jazz and blues were demonized throughout the first half of the 20th century. (Comment by Katherine Ogilvie on the Blog of the Nation post)

While societal racism has no rightful place among us, I think she’s wrong (about ghetto, not about jazz and blues). It is not racist to speak out against something that is bad even if that something is often associated with a particular race. The arguments against all things ghetto are fairly applied regardless of race. The argument and the term are about a mindset which is unhealthy at the least and downright destructive at the worst.

Tags NPR, reactions, thoughts

National

The Beltway

I heard a story on Talk of the Nation today about the firing of federal prosecutors (Blog of the Nation post). The thing that caught my attention was that they were going to discuss how different the coverage on this story was "outside the beltway." If anyone is unfamiliar with the term – "inside the beltway" is Washington D.C. (specifically the politicians) and "outside the beltway" is the rest of us. Unsurprisingly the conclusion was that this story was getting much less coverage from the rest of us. As I heard that I think I know why that is. I believe that most people outside the beltway hear about these kinds of stories and think "oh boy, another stupid move by a politician – why am I not surprised."

I then wondered why this should be so newsworthy inside the beltway. Surely they are even more aware of the constant stream of questionable decisions by politicians. My best guess is that they find it newsworthy not because they are surprised by the news, but because they enjoy the circus they live in. They do not care about the latest poor decision so much as they care about how the whole political establishment will react and what the outcome will be. They just want to know whose job is on the line and who will benefit politically from the mess.

Perhaps I’m cynical, but if I’m right it’s no wonder nothing really serious can get done in Washington D.C. for the right reasons anymore.

Tags current events, NPR, reactions, thoughts

culture life

All for the Love of Money

I remember being alarmed last year to learn about the number of people using negative amortization to finance their homes. In some areas it was over half of all home loans and the highest rates of negative amortization loans were nearly 2/3. Negative amortization comes in the form of an Adjustable Rate Mortgage (ARM) where the payments during the first years, before the rate is fixed, do not even cover the full interest on the loan so that after the three or five years when the rate gets fixed, the payments balloon and you owe more on the house than when you bought it. The bet for the borrower is that the house will appreciate more than the loan so that you can refinance.

At the time I thought of how that was a sad way to get in to more house than you could actually afford. Today I found an article on foreclosures in the New York Times. The cause of these foreclosures is not necessarily negatively amortized loans, but it is because of sub-prime lending and a combination of careless borrowers and greedy/predatory lenders. Lest anyone think I am heartless, I think that the bulk of the blame – especially in the cases covered in this article – lies with the lenders.

I could rant about how disgusted I am about lenders who would capitalize on those who are least knowledgeable and least able to protect themselves or afford the losses that they face. Instead I would like to point to the root cause of this plague. It is greed – the love of money.

When I purchased my home I dealt with a mortgage broker who had my needs and values central to his decision making process. When I estimated what I could afford in monthly payments he cautioned me against estimating too generously. After pre-approving me for a certain level of mortgage he suggested that it might be to my benefit not to try to find the most house I could fit under the limit. The end result was that my payments are lower than I thought I could afford. I pay what I estimated that I could afford and I am paying off the house faster because of it. This is not the attitude displayed by the broker who would exaggerate your income to look larger to get you into a larger loan so that he can get a larger commission.

It’s too bad that we have so many people (not just in the real-estate business) who claim to provide a service but who only service their own pocketbook. The fact is that the broker has nothing to lose if you default on the loan. Generally speaking, the lender can recoup their costs between the payments you make and the money they get from the foreclosed property. The loss is almost entirely the borrowers loss, and in the case of most of these loans, the borrower does not know enough to protect themselves when dealing with greedy and knowledgeable brokers.

Tags reactions, thoughts

General

Duncan Hunter

Duncan Hunter would make a very credible president for our country. He has years of experience in government and the military. He seems to be very principled in his positions and I like his perspective on how to make our federal government smaller. Representative Hunter may find that those who oppose him can more easily portray him as having extreme views than some of the other candidates, but to see his actual positions is to see that his views are not extreme so much as unwavering. Everything about him as a candidate suggests that I should endorse him, but something holds me back. For some reason I suspect that he can be more effective where he is, in the House of Representatives, than in the Oval Office. We need more men like him serving as strong representatives for their constituents across the country.

For that reason I choose not to endorse Duncan Hunter though I could not fault anyone who did endorse him.

Tags national candidates, not endorsed

culture technology

Mixing Fax and Email

There was a time when I thought that fax machines were obsolete. The more I think about it, the more I conclude that they could be obsolete, but for some reason they aren’t (the same is true of pagers). Rather than arguing that they should be obsolete, I would argue that there should be a way for people to send a fax to an email address.

I am not talking about efax.com or any of the other services that you can sign up with (often for free) to have faxes delivered to your email. Those still require that you have a fax number. Someone sends a fax to your fax number (which is maintained by efax) and they route the fax to your email address. They can even convert the fax into a different file format, like PDF or TIF which can be read by software that your probably already have.

I m talking about a system, perhaps a device that could be connected to the fax machine, that could be used to send a fax directly to an email address rather than a phone number. This allows those that have legitimate uses for faxes to continue using them and have access to the many people who do not have a fax machine. While we’re at it, perhaps we should create some kind of software that can send any printable file as a fax – oh wait, we already have that in the form of fax software programs.

On a side note – this is another example of how technology leaps ahead of us and we have to scramble to keep up with what is available. This scrambling is what leads to mistakes like DRM and obsolete laws like traditional copyright and DMCA.

Tags thoughts

General

Joe Biden

Post author By David
Post date March 19, 2007
1 Comment on Joe Biden

Before I started learning about Joe and his presidential run he was just a name to me. As I studied him and his positions I found a candidate who has lots of experience in our national government. In his own life he has gained sad experience of losing his wife and a child to an accident and subsequently living as a single parent for some time. This experience seems to have given him an appreciation of the hardships that many people face.

On the issues, Joe has a plan for Iraq that deserves to be implemented even before the presidential elections. I think it is the kind of plan we should have had all along because it appears to recognize the realities of that region. In other areas Joe sounds like a pragmatist who recognizes the challenges which we face and that easy answers are hard to come by. Indeed his position on health care, that it is a problem in which we can use the experience of individual states that have tried to tackle the issue, sounds like exactly the kinds of government that we need more of – rather than trying to tackle everything from the federal level only to discover that we are creating one monolithic disaster of bureaucracy after another.

I endorse Joe Biden for President

Tags 2008, endorsements, national candidates

life meta

Reach Upward

I have been wanting to post some thoughts on Scott Hinrichs post Gross Incompetence? As I have come back to it, I realize that I could quote much of the same material he is quoting or I could thoroughly botch an attempt to add something to what he said. Instead I have decided to share this as an example of the thoughtful posts that I have come to enjoy from Scott. He comes up with some good sources and always leaves you thinking.

I agree with him about 95% of the time. The other 5% I consider that I have not yet formed an opinion on the subject. Never can I reject his arguments outright, and never do I finish reading a post from Scott and feel I’ve wasted my time.

Tags connections, reactions

General

Community Activism

I have been involved with a citizens group which is initially acting out of concern over some of the proposals for the Mountain View Corridor. We have met with representatives of UDOT to voice our concerns and today we received the report that they are now more seriously investigating/considering the options which we viewed more favorably for the project – namely the northern freeway alignments. We know that our job is not finished, but it is nice to see that we can have an impact when we get together.

I have previously mentioned this group, and I briefly had a poll on this site where the group could choose an official name. That is still ongoing, but I would like to talk a little more about the group as an example of how democracy and activism should work. First of all, it is local. Activism on a national level has its place, but too often issues which should be managed locally are getting shoved onto a larger stage. Second, the purpose of the group is not a single issue – such as the road we are discussing right now. Our purpose is to help create the best community that we can. Having a goal that is too narrow tends to create short-lived groups, or else the groups are prone to make poor choices that forward their view at the cost of a greater benefit that can be achieved. We hope that by actively considering the long-term good of our community and by proactively working with those who make decisions that affect us we will be able to avoid making choices that are good in the short term but which we will have to correct or reverse later.

This initial impact on the road gives us hope that we can be an influence for good now and in the future.

Tags community, issues, transportation

culture

Political Forgiveness

In covering the confession by Newt Gingrich concerning his affair of the late 90’s, CNN speculates that critics will call the religious right hypocrites if they forgive him for the affair when they are/were so critical of the infidelity displayed by Bill Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. I think there would be an element of hypocrisy to that scenario. On the other hand, forgiving him and voting for him are not the same thing. Some may forgive him and still not vote for him. Others may vote for him without forgiving his hypocrisy.

I know he claims that it isn’t hypocritical, but his logic is the same as the logic used to say that the Civil War was not fought over slavery. Certainly states rights was an issue in the war, just as perjury was an issue in the Clinton impeachment. That being said – common sense says that states rights would not have been an issue worthy of war without the slavery issue, just as perjury would not have been a problem for Clinton without the infidelity.

So if this admission is an attempt to clear the way for a presidential run I hope that Gingrich does not try to cast himself as a clean candidate just because he has paraded his skeletons in public already.

Tags reactions