March 24, 2004
5:00 PM
A little down time at the end of the workday here, so thought I'd take a moment to slap a few reflections up on the web.Feedback to Monday's blast e-mail has been positive so far. In fact, there was a response better than I anything I had been hoping for.
But I've learned to take everything one day at a time in my short 29 years on this planet. We'll see if anything concrete comes of my efforts (other than the $10 my dad says he threw the way of the Bean campaign ;-)).
And had better start my taxes first thing tomorrow, before it's a rush job. At least I'll be getting a nice refund this year, having bought an apartment in January '03.
March 22, 2004
2:55 PM
Made a quick update to the "running" page...yep, bombed at the CCC Half-Marathon, but I'm still confident regarding the Texas Marathon on Sunday. Sure will be a heck of a lot flatter...March 19, 2004
5:00 PM
Yep, turning out to be a weekly thing here. Everything is finally falling into place...doubled-up on bandwidth for the Unity site, posted the first endorsement, put a poll to the group for the second, and wrote up a draft of Monday's announcement e-mail.And even checked out the ballot reqs for NYS, which has the advantage of being the only state in the Union which permits a candidate to appear on multiple party lines. Nominate a member of the political establishment, then show 'em just how many people would vote for our platform if they knew they weren't throwing away their vote. Monday morning...bring it on...
And here's the final of the three "spoof sponsor" essays. Not my best work, but it backs up our point, which is, well, the point:
The burden of America's national debt has been growing for over a century now. Even after accounting for inflation and the ever-increasing size of the American economy, America's debt burden has increased exponentially over the generations. Government deficit spending has been used to finance internal improvements such as highways, and to finance the struggles against Facism, Communism, and Terrorism.
But the days of care-free American borrowing are rapidly drawing to a close. The American national debt today stands at a staggering $6 trillion. That's trillion, and the debt increases daily. Interest payments on the national debt alone will total $343 billion in Fiscal Year 2004. And that's assuming interest rates will not soon be raised by foreign lenders dismayed by the American government's exploding deficits.
It's high time that the American people force their representative government to establish its priorities. Obviously, survival and solvency are the first priorities for any nation. In order to defend itself against those who wish to destroy it, a nation must buy the guns and other weapons its armed forces need.
But a nation must consider the prospect of future threats as well. Tomorrow's wars cannot be fought with today's debts. Any good strategist will keep a reserve, and sometimes that reserve must be financial. Just as there are men and women kept in reserve for times of crisis, there must be a reserve of credit to properly support them when the crisis comes.
Americans would be wise to force a choice not only between today's butter and tomorrow's guns, but between today's pork and tomorrow's bread. As the Roosevelt administration proved throughout the Great Depression, Keynesian efforts to "prime the pump" of the national economy through deficit spending have limited effectiveness. And more often than not, spending earmarked for "jobs and growth" is just pork barrel spending, money wasted and turned into debt that will rob the workers of tomorrow the jobs and growth they deserve.
The argument used to justify the buying of votes with public money is that today's stimulus wil create the tax base to pay tomorrow's debts. But it is unlikely that those extra tax dollars will outweigh the extra interest payments resulting from that extra debt. That extra debt will instead turn today's stimulus into tomorrow's depressant, forcing up interest rates and thus slowing economic growth.
It is even more unlikely that America will be able to pay off $6 trillion worth of debt any time soon. No, the most Americans can hope for their children and grandchildren is a Balanced Budget Amendment, a halt to the useless frittering away of the taxpayers' hard-earned money. Long-term damage has already been done, but hope still lies in the fact that further damage can be avoided, and that an American economy on a sound fiscal footing can spend the next century outgrowing the debts of the previous century. And it would be gratifying to see that, for once, the public money the federal government spends really needs to be spent.
March 12, 2004
5:00 PM
Time to start wrapping things up here. Had a very productive week all around...finally put the nose to the grindstone and brushed up "s.t.u.d." And even got it off to a publication.We shall see...if it's rejected, I'm seriously considering posting that story with a link from my fiction page, as another small example of what I'm capable of as a writer. Not that you had any doubts, right reader? ;-)
And got those two e-mails off to those campaigns. Will they get back to me? We shall see...
March 9, 2004
12:39 PM
Just plugging away here at life. Signed up for the Colon Cancer Challenge Half-Marathon this weekend. Boy, can't wait to wear that t-shirt.
But colon cancer does remind me of this little essay I wrote for the Unity Runners site. We haven't even been listed by Yahoo (sigh), even though I e-mailed them to suggest our site. But we are in Google of course, and we'll see how my Big-D e-mails shake things up.
But these innovations haven't come cheap, and nor will possible future advances like the ones which could result from stem cell research. Americans are living longer as a result of medical advances, and longer lives mean more years of proper health care needed to maintain quality of life.
Unity believes the best way to help Americans maintain their health throughout their lives is through targeted tax cuts. Unity's "Thirty Over Thirty" tax plan, which would eliminate up to $4,310 in income taxes for each and every American making less than $30,000 per year, $4,310 which would cover a high-quality health insurance plan, would also help more affluent Americans pay for health coverage when combined with a full health care tax deduction. For all Americans making over $30,000 per year, a combination of the "Thirty Over Thirty" plan and a full health care tax deduction would mean that 30% of their health care costs, whether it be health insurance premiums or out-of-pocket expenses, would be deducted from their tax liability. A Head of Household earning $40,000 annually and spending $10,000 per year on health coverage for his or her family would pay zero income tax. That's right. Zero.
A health care tax deduction, when combined with other proposals from the Unity platform, such as the "Thirty Over Thirty" plan and a Balanced Budget Amendment, would allow America to both live within its means as a nation and to make the basic necessity of health coverage affordable to all. Working families would be able to afford health care, more affluent Americans wouldn't see their income eaten up by health care costs, and seniors on fixed incomes would see the impact of rising medical costs softened with this new approach. And the incentives for the medical and pharmaceutical industries to keep developing safer and more effective medical treatments would remain in place. In short, with the implementation of Unity's proposals, modern medicine would not only continue to advance, but would even become affordable.
March 1, 2004
5:00 PM
Hmm. A new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project says between two and seven percent of "adult Internet users" keep their own blogs, and only ten percent of those update theirs daily. Good to know there are plenty of fellow slackers out there.
Skipped the Oscars last night. Nope, didn't get an invite (sigh), but didn't even watch it on TV (though yours truly does live around the corner from Elaine's). And glad I didn't waste my time watching: though I loved the last "Rings" installment, its wins were no surprise. Hollywood, the builder of so many bandwagons, certainly knows how to ride 'em.
And just thought I'd slap up here an essay I wrote earlier to support Unity's position on the carbon revenue measure (it's posted on that site's Unitade page):
The single most effective way to 1. fight global warming, 2. balance the budget, and 3. enhance American power abroad (particularly in the Middle East) is to impose a revenue measure on the carbon content of fossil fuels (such as coal and oil) as they are either drawn from the Earth or imported into the United States.
The consensus of the scientific community at the beginning of the 21st century is that 1. the Earth is warming, 2. this warming could have dire consequences for the human race and other species, and 3. human production of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane is at least partly responsible for this warming. It could very well be that the scientific community is wrong on the last point (much like scientists of past centuries were wrong to assume that the polar icecaps must melt beneath the never-setting Artic summer sun). But the evidence against the prevailing theories of global climate change is much sketchier than the voluminous evidence in favor. In fact, the current administration bases much of its doubts about a human role in global warming on the theories of the climatologist Richard Lindzen, a smoker who also happens to doubt the correlation between smoking and lung cancer. Hmm.
The theory that the human race has been at least partly responsible for global warming (and can do something to halt the process) rests on much more than doubts. A recent study by Bill Ruddiman, emeritus professor at the University of Virginia, suggests that an ice age which should have began 5,000 years ago was averted by human activity in the form of deforestation, planting crops, and raising livestock. If pre-industrial humans were able to disrupt 400,000 years of established climatic patterns with such activity, one can only conclude that the global warming which has occurred during the Industrial Age will not only continue, but will accelerate. The Sahara and other deserts will continue to expand, the oceans will continue to rise and threaten coastal areas, species that might harbor future cures for human diseases will continue to die off.
Naturally, just as it is not a one hundred percent certainty that one will die of lung cancer if one continues to smoke, it is not a one hundred percent certainty that humankind will die off as a result of its own activities. But in matters of life and death, of existence or extermination, it is often wise to err on the side of caution. And it is doubly wise when there are significant fringe benefits to playing it safe. Much like the smoker who could save a small fortune by halting his or her purchase of cigarettes, America could improve its budgetary outlook by deriving revenue from the extraction and importation of carbon. Such a revenue collection measure is much more sensible than discouraging the creation of wealth (see Unity's "Thirty Over Thirty" proposal), and could easily be adjusted on a frequent basis to balance the budget (see Unity's "Balanced Budget Amendment" proposal).
Eventually a carbon revenue measure would be effective in reducing fossil
fuel consumption by reducing demand and accelerating the use of alternative
energy sources already in development. This reduction in carbon consumption
would not only slow global warming and conserve deposits of coal, oil, and
natural gas for the continued economic well-being of regions dependent on their
extraction and refinement, this reduction would also enhance American power
abroad by making this country less dependent on foreign sources of oil. The more
power America has to persuade its Middle Eastern and Russian allies to promote
democratic values on their own soil, the better it is not only for America, but
for the rest of the world.