Tag: Politics

Net neutrality is not net neutrality

Obama pledges Net neutrality laws if elected president | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone via Boing Boing

Net neutrality, of course, is the idea that broadband operators shouldn’t be allowed to block or degrade Internet content and services–or charge content providers an extra fee for speedier delivery or more favorable placement.

Actually, net neutrality is a problem that would just go away if we had real broadband competition in the United States. Techdirt repeats this ad nauseum. Broadband operator_ should_ be able to offer different levels of service for different prices. In fact, they do now. No one seems to think that Verizon offering a cheap DSL connection, then a more expensive fiber optic connection, is a horrific affront to the fundamentals of the internet. And broadband operators should be able to prioritize content.

If people really had choices in the broadband market, this would cease to be an issue. Provider A could degrade whatever they wanted, and Provider B would step in and take all their customers. Look what’s happened in Japan, when they forced sharing of infrastructure. OMG, fast cheap internet! And competition! Without net neutrality laws!

I won’t blame Obama for this – I imagine he has good intentions, but isn’t getting the whole story. The rest of the Democrats are right in line with him on this, too, so it’s not just his mistake. It’s just funny how people want to promote the freedom of the internet by adding regulation to it.  And, frankly, I think the Republicans are mostly against it as a knee-jerk “no regulation is good regulation” sort of thing.  I doubt they actually took any more time to understand the issue than the Democrats did.

Why am I not mad?

I just can’t seem to get worked up over the DC voting rights push.  Sure, it bugs me that I don’t have a representative.  But when I see the “Taxation without Representation” license plates (which aren’t the choice I thought they were – they’re standard issue DC tags) and I read about the “injustice” that this is, my immediate reaction is, “Stop whining”.

It may be that I moved from Virginia into the District knowing full well that we had no representatives, so I feel a little silly complaining about it now.

I really do want to have someone speaking for me at the national level.  I think it’s the right thing to do.  And I’m even okay with this little deal with Utah to placate Republicans who see giving DC a vote as a Democratic ploy to gain a seat.

Maybe there’s some argument that would strike a nerve and get me worked up over this that I just haven’t heard yet.  Anyone know what that argument might be?

Columbia Heights associations meeting

Last night, the wife and I went to the joint meeting of three Columbia Heights community associations. Muriel Bowser (councilmember from Ward 4) and numerous high-ranking members of the police force were there.

The biggest topic of conversation was a letter that went out to many residents that, among other things, called the park at 14th and Girard NW a “hellhole”.

As you can imagine, many people who spend time in that park took offense. Much of this anger, I think, is because they feel this is an attack by the rich white people moving into the neighborhood on the poor black people who have lived there for years. And they probably have a point.

As one of the white people who has recently moved into the neighborhood, I try to be sensitive to this kind of thing. I don’t want to remake Columbia Heights in the image of Fairfax County. I don’t want to drive out the long-time residents. I LIKE Columbia Heights. Sure, there’s some crime, and I want to help get rid of it.

I think there is a communication problem. For example, I frequent the Columbia Heights Community Forum.  There are people there who want to close the park.  They think the shootings recently on the 1400 block of Girard originated at the park, and I think they are totally wrong.  But I didn’t see them at the meeting.  They communicate online.  And frankly, that’s my preferred way of communicating.  But it has to go beyond that.  The people at the meeting last night don’t read the forum.  I think many people on the forum would think differently about the park if they listened to the people who spend time there.  I was also disappointed that there was no representative from the Latino community at the meeting.  Columbia Heights has a large Spanish-speaking population, and I didn’t see it represented.  I don’t know whether this is from the meeting organizers not reaching out, or the Spanish-speakers not responding, but it needs to change either way.

I wish I knew what to do about it.  I want to stay in Columbia Heights.  I want to raise children here, and I want to be able to send them to public schools and know that they’re safe, and that they’re getting a good education.

But I don’t really know what to do.  I think we’ll keep going to the meetings.  The police attendance at this one was not the usual, and this meeting felt rushed, so maybe normal meetings are different.

NB:  I changed the name of the post from “Columbia Heights associations’ meeting” to “Columbia Heights associations meeting”, because the second version is correct.  HOWEVER – I wasn’t as dumb as you think the first time.  I really did mean to use the plural posessive.  However, I don’t think the plural posessive is appropriate here.  Arguments welcome in the comments.

Spying on ourselves is bad

Boing Boing: Police camera spying on the rise in California

Backed by millions in Homeland Security dollars, California law enforcement authorities are quickly expanding video surveillance camera spying in public rights of way, a move the American Civil Liberties Union says is stripping away privacy rights while failing to dent the intended purpose: crime.

We were just talking about this last night, in the context of the hit-and-run accident early Sunday morning. The wife and I saw the victim lying in the middle of 16th Street, face down. The driver has not been caught.

We were talking about the trade-offs: privacy vs. safety. Would you be okay with more cameras in public spaces? When something like this happens, and we want to catch the driver, and more cameras would certainly help.

But, on the other hand, do you really want to be on camera all the time?  It’s not that I want to be able to break the law and not get caught.  It’s just that I don’t want to be watched all the time.  I don’t mind if there’s a camera at the ATM, or if I walk past a monument and I’m in some tourist’s vacation photo.  What I have a problem with is being watched all the time.  While cameras on 16th Street probably could have gotten the license plate of the speeding white SUV that hit this guy, they’d also catch all sorts of other things.  I know you don’t have any reasonable expectation of privacy in the middle of the city, but you have a reasonable expectation of not being filmed every moment you’re out of your house.

So, what’s the proper balance between safety and privacy?  Well, the current administration hasn’t found it yet, although by all indications they aren’t actually looking for balance.  Ideally, there would be a camera on everyone committing a serious crime, and no cameras anywhere else.  I don’t suppose that’s really feasible, though.

And, as you can see above, the ACLU doesn’t think that it’s helping to stop crime.  I don’t know what the ACLU knows about crime rates.  They certainly know a lot about protecting civil liberties, like the freedom to not be on camera all the time.

Like rats from a sinking ship

Top Bush Aide Karl Rove Resigns, White House Confirms Bush Political Strategist Is Heading Home To Texas – CBS News

He said he decided to leave after White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten told senior aides that if they stayed past Labor Day they would be obliged to remain through the end of the president’s term in January 2009.

So, Rove is resigning rather than sticking it out for the last sixteen months or so.  Maybe he wants to go work for another campaign.  Maybe he’s about to get indicted for something really nasty and was told to distance himself.  The above article says it’s very common for top aides to get burned out and leave before the eight years is up, but I would have thought he’d have gotten out before now if he was going to.  Although I suppose sixteen months is a long time.

Anyway, it can’t be good for the White House if he’s leaving.  It can be neither good nor bad, but I can’t think of a scenario where this is good news.

I hope the next time he’s in the news is when he announces his retirement from politics to pursue his true calling – pulling the wings off of flies.

A partial explanation

I got an explanation on health insurance from my mother-in-law. She tells me that “anything taxable to the employee is generally taxable to the employer”, which I guess I knew but didn’t really think about, since I’ve never been the employer.  So, if health insurance is not taxable, then it becomes a relatively cheap benefit for the employer to offer.

I still think saying that it “encourages employers to offer insurance” is a little strong.  It encourages them to offer it instead of other benefits that might be taxable, but the real “encouragement” is that (another thing I learned from my mother-in-law) most states require it by law.

Certainly it seems likely that fewer businesses would offer health insurance if they had to pay taxes on the money.  So I’m still not exactly clear on who this proposal is supposed to help.  I’ve sent another email to my mother-in-law seeking further guidance, but I believe she’s out of town for the weekend.  And I’m out of town starting Monday, so we may all have to wait.

Im trying to understand this

Bush Tries to Resuscitate Health Insurance Tax Plan

Under current law, workers who get health insurance through their jobs do not pay taxes on the value of the insurance, which encourages employers to offer insurance as part of their benefit packages.

So, why does this encourage employers to offer insurance?  Clearly this encourages employees to want insurance through their employer in order to get the tax break.  And, obviously, this is a benefit to the employee, which makes the employer more attractive.  But the employee still benefits from the health insurance whether or not they are taxed on it.  I’m just not seeing the extra benefit for the employer beyond being able to offer a slightly better deal to employees.

Anyway, more importantly, what effect would Bush’s proposal have on this?

The Bush plan, unveiled in January, would substitute that tax break with a standard deduction that would go to any taxpayer with insurance.

Bush has recently said that “he might be satisfied with replacing the existing tax break with a tax credit, rather than a tax deduction.”

So, let’s say we stop offering a tax break (And by that I include credit and deduction and whatever else) on only employer-provided insurance.  Assuming that current practice actually does encourage employers to offer insurance, will changing the law discourage it?  It seems like an important point that the article suggests but doesn’t address.  And I can’t address it myself without seeing how it encourages employers to offer insurance in the first place.

Can anyone explain this to me?

Leaning left vs. right

My wife accused me of being a Republican a little while back based on things I’ve written here. And after my last post, in which I didn’t exactly present a Democratic Senator in a totally positive light, I thought I might address that.

I’m not a Republican. I’m not a Democrat. I think both parties suck. However, I think I just can’t complain about the Republicans anymore. I did, a lot, and they still suck. I guess I kind of feel like the current crop of Republicans in office is a lost cause. They’re going to continue to do stupid and possibly illegal things, and there’s not much we can do about it.

_As an aside, can I say “the current crop is” and then “They are”? It seems wrong, but grammatically I’m not totally sure. I’m referring to the same group, but in a different way? Anyway, if it’s wrong as I’ve written it, I apologize. _

The Democrats should take it as a compliment when I complain about them. It means I haven’t given up on you them yet.

What that means is that the day you see me start complaining regularly about Libertarians or the Green Party or some other political party, that will be the day that I’ve given up on everyone.

The Republican debate

Here are my notes from the debate. I watched about 2/3 before we were suddenly summoned to appear at Clyde’s in Gallery Place to hang out with a friend in town from NYC.

  1. Good for McCain being the only one with the courage to say that he doesn’t hate Mexicans. I mean, that English shouldn’t be the national language
  2. The Republican crowd applauded about 300 times as much as the Democrats.
  3. Lightning struck not once but three times while Guliani was speaking, interrupting the feed on his mic. A sign of something.
  4. The wife is proud of Guliani for sticking by his guns even if it kills him in the polls – that he’s personally against abortion, but thinks states should decide.
  5. Huckabee actually got up on stage and said he believes that God created the world.
  6. Wolf is not being equal in his time allotments – McCain, Romney, and Guliani get as much time as they want, the others get cut off.
  7. The wife really likes Ron Paul.
  8. Romney thinks that oil companies should use profits to reinvest in infrastructure, as if he as President should be able to tell private companies what to do with profits. That’s pretty insane.
  9. No one thinks gays and lesbians should be able to serve openly in the military. It boggles the mind who people DON’T want to allow to die for our country.
  10. Tommy Thompson made a funny joke about not sending Bush to the UN.
  11. Duncan Hunter is a coward and won’t answer a question about pardoning Scooter Libby.
  12. No one would pardon Libby “without an appeal process”, which is actually less insane than what Guliani and Romney had to say on the subject. Guliani thinks Libby’s sentence was way too harsh. I forget what Romney said, but it was equally insane.
  13. Ron Paul wants out of Iraq now, which is the first thing he’s said that I disagree with.
  14. Tommy Thompson has some good things to say about working for wellness before you’re sick to take some pressure off the health care system. You know the old saying about “An ounce of prevention . . . ” – well, he’d like to implement that with our healthcare system. I don’t imagine it’s quite that simple, but a good idea.
  15. It’s really too bad Ron Paul is unelectable. I like almost all of what he had to say, and he’s not nearly as crazy as the fringe Democratic candidates are.
  16. Romney speaks really well. A debate between him and Obama would be really fun to watch. Romney deflected a rather obnoxious but relevant question about religion pretty well.

Now Im a donor and an independent

I got my DC license today. It was a pretty painless experience, contrary to what I’d heard about the DC DMV.

I had two choices to make that I had totally forgotten about. No, not whether or not to lie about my weight. I’ve been losing weight, and last I checked I was under 200 pounds, so I’m good with my real weight. The questions were my political party and whether or not I wanted to be a donor.

First, the donor question. I’ve never been one. It kinda creeps me out. I mean, I’m not so paranoid that I think the paramedics are going to let me die so some adorable little kid can have my liver. And I do, on some level, like the idea of saving some lives with my body parts after I don’t really need them anymore.

But I also like to think of myself as solid all the way through. I don’t like the idea of veins and organs and whatnot. Frankly, it makes me queasy. I nearly failed biology in high school because of it. Or maybe it was because I was lazy and bored in class. Whatever. The point here is that I don’t like thinking about my organs or what’s going to happen to them.

However, as I was filling out the form, I decided that my desire to help others outweighed my queasiness at checking “Yes” on the donor section. So I’m a donor now. I’ll try and take care of my organs. Someone might need them one day.

I also decided to register to vote in DC as an independent. I know that means I can’t vote in the primary, and that pains me a little. I know that I don’t get to vote on a lot living here, and I shouldn’t be voluntarily giving up opportunities. But I just couldn’t bring myself to register with a party. I might change my mind if there’s an important primary, but right now I can’t do it.

I was a Democrat when I was little because my parents were. I had a Dukakis sticker on my lunchbox in middle school. I didn’t really know what that meant. I know that one of the guys in my class who had Republican parents gave me a lot of crap about it. Then, in college, I was a Republican, probably because a bunch of my friends were, and it seemed like a good idea. I really do agree with a lot of the Republican ideals. Not that the current crop of Republicans demonstrates any of those ideals, but that’s not the point.

The point is that I don’t see either the Democrats or the Republicans working for the people. Their first responsibility is to the party, and I can’t get behind that. Do people really go into politics thinking, “I really love the RNC. I’m going to dedicate my life to increasing their fundraising power”? I can’t imagine they do, because I like to have a little more faith in human nature than that.

So I’m an independent and a donor.  I’m pretty happy with that.