American Election Processes

Introduction

The American election system is the most complex in the world. It is also completely privatized and federalized for the Presidency. The Presidential cycle has been designed in a way that makes it completely possible for the majority of the voting population to oppose you and you can still win the election. The Senate and House of Representative elections depend on what state you live in. Because there are so many Senate and House elections and how they are all slightly different, I am going to focus on the 108 Presidential primaries, 50 states, 6 territories, and 1 for Americans living abroad.

Republican and Democratic, equally corrupt

The Republican and Democratic primaries are as confusing as they can be, but can be understood by breaking the election into several cycles:

1. Pre-election, this is the year before the first primary.
2. Primary season, this is the time between the first primary election in January and the last in June or July, an election season of just under 6 months. The longest single election in the world. Both major parties have similar systems.
3. Pre-general Election. Parties hold conventions, big lush events with thousands of people where they celebrate their candidate. The Democratic and Republican candidates begin to debate and attack each other.
4. General election. The simplest part of the entire election which is still quite confusing.

Pre-election season

During a President who is seeking re-election the third year of that person’s presidency will consist of people stating who is going to run against the incumbent, and if the President is a lame duck than both parties will begin their primaries. This begins in January or February of the previous year depending on who is currently president. It used to be much later. Once there are several candidates they start talking on talk shows and debating each other informally until December when the first debate hosted by a major private network will put them all on a single stage.

Primary season

The first election is traditionally in Iowa. It doesn’t have to be, but it usually is. Then New Hampshire, and then each party has a few other states which go first. There then will be different states voting until June  with the majority in March. The last states to go often don’t vote because the delegates are already proportioned and they don’t bother. The middle states are usually random and are selected by the Party leadership.

There are two sets of delegates in each party, they have the same system. There are pledged delegates which represent their states depending on how the State party leadership determines their votes to be split, or not split. There are also superdelegates, appointed politicians who can vote any way they want in the primary regardless of election results. Both pledged delegates and superdelegates have equal voting power. The winner of the delegates becomes the Party's candidate in both parties, regardless of what the popular vote was.

Pre-general election

All parties have now selected their candidates and the general election begins in July. There will be 3 or 4 debates between the Republican and Democratic candidates on different networks. CBS and ABC always have one. People start deciding who they are going to vote for and the ads are all over the news airwaves on private networks trying to get voter's attention for these four months. People discuss and debate, often quite passionately, who they are going to vote for and why. Throughout this time there are many polls trying to get a picture on who is going to win the election. By late October the polls have determined the probable candidate and ballots start to be mailed out.

General election

Every registered American voter gets a ballot in the mail or goes to a poll on the second Tuesday of November. How the general election is done differs state to state, but the number of each state's return is always together without party biases. Each state records their votes and the popular vote is determined. Everything up to this point is done by party decisions and conventions. The next three sentences are the only de jure parts of the election cycle. The President is determined in reality by the Electoral College. Each state has a number of electors equal to their representatives in Congress who vote along with their state in most years, but every so often a faithless elector will vote against the wishes of the voters of that state, which has never been enough to this point to change an election. The winner of the electoral college becomes President and his/her running mate becomes Vice President.

This was originally published in 2011, but I accidentally deleted it because I couldn't see anything not realizing the font was white and the content was there.

The Future Economy

What would a stable economy look like? What would the goals be, and how would we get there? There are a few ideas that I think will make a big difference. Most are based heavily off of Keynesian economics.

1. The government will make a business-friendly environment. Businesses will be easy to start and small businesses will be common. Countries with low barriers to entry for businesses to start tend to be more developed and vice verse. EG This is why Indonesia is not seeing rapid economic growth yet Georgia is.
2. There will be high wages to drive consumer demand. It doesn't matter how many things you make, if people can't make ends you won't be able to make any money by being an entrepreneur. People will have disposable income in the ideal economy. People had this in America in the 1950s when our economy grew the fastest, unemployment was low, public investment at an all-time high (my grandparents paid a low sticker price for college compared to me and my parents with inflation), and the growth was larger and shared by all.
3. The government will insure that all of their citizens have access to high-quality health care and high-quality education. It doesn't matter how many jobs as programmers are available if no one knows how to do it. If another country is training people to be the best the jobs will go there. That's the current world. Its not going to change. Don't fight it, work with it.
4. The government will run low debt year to year during the good times. Running a large debt means that tax dollars will go to paying interest to investors instead of growing the infrastructure countries require to be successful which is a waste of money. If times get bad the government will run a deficit to make the economy get better as quick as possible. It is the lesser evil to watching the economy go in freefall like from 1929 to 1933 when the debt was prioritized higher than jobs and growth.
5. To fulfill these job-growing strategies there has to be a cost, and that means a progressive income tax. It will be very progressive, meaning people who make the most money will pay the most in taxes (and, as my previous post showed, they will keep the most as well). This will create an economy where people with enough drive can go from rags to riches.
6. Most of the economy will be a free market, except for health care and education which are requirements and tend to form oligopolies, the military, and printing of money which the government must do. There will probably be subsistence housing for the homeless. Mass transit and maintaining roads and railways are required. Managing air traffic is a necessary duty. Reasonable regulations on health and safety are needed.  I am being deliberately thorough. Everything else will be on the free market.

Some people say keeping debt low and having a high quality of living is not possible. This however is misguided. Here are a few case examples of highly developed countries with world-class health care and world-class education with high median ages and low debt. There are a few rich oil nations that have low debts, but I will ignore them to show you don't need to have high exports to have a high quality of living, low debt, and economic growth. (data from the IMF which I have found to be closest to raw data sources www.imf.org/debt)

1. Switzerland has one of the best standards of living in the world, and a GDP per capita over $40,000. Their debt is worth 19% of their GDP. Hardly unsustainable with what would be deemed a welfare state by many here in the United States.
2. Luxembourg has a GDP per Capita, debt percent of GDP, and welfare system comparable to Switzerland, and a debt worth 21% of their economy. Also, despite the constant criticism of how the Euro is bad for Europe that is the currency Luxembourg uses. Most countries that use the Euro have Debts worth less than their GDPs. Hardly a cause for alarm. Other factors are at play in Greece as I have already blogged about. Get off the stupid currency high horse global media, it doesn't reflect reality.
3. So, these two previous examples are small countries and are heavy with the banking, but what about Australia? Finance doesn't make nearly as much of the economy of Australia as Switzerland and Luxembourg, they also have world-class education and health care systems, the 2nd highest quality of living in the world by HDI (behind Norway, but not by much) and their debt is worth less than 23% of their GDP. It is not known as a tax haven. It is not a net exporter of oil. Most of the country's land is practically economically useless. It is not particularly small in population or area. Why does Australia have such a low debt and such a high amount of investment? Their lowest tax bracket is 0%, their highest is 45%. They make enough revenue every year to balance the budget, and there are also some extraordinarily rich Australians. That is how you have a sustainable high quality of life and a low public debt while not being a tax haven and not being a net oil exporter. This system I described at the beginning of this post is in place in Australia, the only major economy to avoid the late 2000s recession. Also, Capital gains are taxed as regular income, which is another proposal I have made in a previous post. It works for them, why not us?
4. Another example, if Australia wasn't enough, the country most right-wing Americans will claim has one of the most out of control bureaucracies and welfare states is Sweden. Their education and health care are fully paid for by taxes, and from all the griping you would expect a huge debt. Well, the opposite of what laissez-faire advocates claim is reality once again. Sweden has a debt worth 37% of their GDP. Like Australia, Sweden is not a major oil exporter neither are they considered a tax haven, and they have a lower debt than their often referred to as wise counterpart Norway. Unlike Norway, Sweden is in the EU (although they don't use the Euro) and unlike Norway Sweden does not have massive reserves of oil, yet Sweden has a low debt compared to most other countries. You see the same type of tax system as Australia has, very progressive without treating Capital Gains like the holy grail of the economy. Government is entrusted to provide education and health care, they have a high quality of living, stable economy, low barriers of entry to business, and low debt.
5. Other examples of debts below 50% and a GDP per Capita above $20,000 are Taiwan, Czech Republic (a Eurozone member), Denmark (with a government system very similar to Sweden and a member of the EU), Slovenia, Finland (yet another Eurozone member), Norway (which has a larger debt than Finland, and doesn't use the Euro and unlike Finland is a net exporter of oil and like all of these nations above has a strong welfare system and low debt).

Basically, to say that there is a choice between prosperity and low debt is a fallacious argument on several major counts. Only 12 nations on Earth owe over 100% of their GDP in public debt, and 3 of them have GDP per capitas under $10,000. Low standard of living, poor education, poor health care, and high debt. What are the real variables at play here? It clearly doesn't work to say that high quality of living and high government services = high debt, with 8 of the most developed nation, several of which are not net exporters of oil, are not tax havens, positive economic growth in most of them even today, all of which have aging populations, and some of which use the Euro, there are other factors at play than are usually blamed. I would try to find the root cause, what is so similar between Australia, Sweden, Taiwan, Finland, and Norway that is so different from Japan, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, and the United States?

The following are similar: They are all rich nations. They all have high qualities of living, and all are democracies. They all have social safety nets of varying degrees, and one could successfully argue that the nations with the lower debt have the larger social safety nets which is like so many facts is contrary to popular belief. They all have aging populations as measured by median age relative to the rest of the world. What is so different between these nations to make such a striking difference in their debts?

The following are different:

1. The governments of the United States and Japan in particular are under conservative governments frequently, while the most conservative governments of Australia, Sweden, Finland, and Norway are in power far less frequently. One must wonder whether these "conservatives" are truly "fiscally conservative" given their massive deficit spending that doesn't exist in these "welfare state" governments which have far lower debts and higher standards of living when ranked fairly. Which matters more, a government that is out of people's pockets with high deficits or a high quality of living with low deficits? I choose a high quality of living and frankly couldn't care less about the size of government, that is the wrong question to ask. We need to ask whether the government works for the people, not whether it is "too big" or "too small" both of which are relative and impossible to fairly gauge.
2. Their tax structures couldn't be more different. The tax structure of the United States for all intensive purposes has the shape of a bell curve. While people who make next to nothing will pay no taxes thanks to standard deductions, the people who pay the most are people who make most of their money from wages and don't invest in the stock market. People who make the most money pay a middle-class rate, which has been raised to 20% as opposed to 15% recently, but still is far lower than the 39.6% if that same massive amount money (think hundreds of millions of dollars) had been made through wages. That means the government loses out on billions of dollars of revenue every single year. Australia on the other hand doesn't see a difference between capital gains and wages in terms of taxes and taxes both equally for the same amount. They also outrank the United States on a variety of quality of life measurements year after year, have more government services for the things that matter, and have a lower deficit relative to GDP year after year. They also outrank Japan on most factors. That is the only clear difference I can find to explain the difference in debts. Taxes.

There is not a choice to be made between good economics and a high quality of life, in fact, after reading the statistics one might argue the opposite that good economics will tie in with a high quality of life.

Progressive Capital Gains Taxes Make Sense

I have developed a tax code which I published previously: http://stidmatt-views.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-new-tax-code.html

I already know the least popular part of this plan will be taxing capital gains as regular income is going to be the claim that I am hurting investors. There is some merit to this, but it only looks at the individualistic side of the picture. People will claim I need to tax capital gains at a lower rate than regular income, that capital gains keep the economy running, that taxing capital gains as regular income introduces double taxation,  but there are some problems with this. Most arguments come from this far-right think tank’s article on why they claim to oppose a progressive capital gains tax: http://reason.com/archives/2013/01/06/why-double-taxation-must-cease

1. The biggest problem with this article is that the way we currently tax capital gains (which I would never change) does not introduce double taxation. The Capital Gains tax is only on the amount the investment made, which means that despite what many will claim, all income is only getting taxed once.
2. Another thing, is that you are only taxed once you pull the money out, if you leave the money in a stock for over a year you will only pay taxes the year you pull your money out. http://www.irs.gov/uac/Ten-Important-Facts-About-Capital-Gains-and-Losses
3. Taxing capital gains as regular income will give the government enough revenue to fix the debt without touching spending. 10% of our government spending in Fiscal Year 2012 went to the debt, and that money should be going to the American people in the form of health care and education, or a lower tax burden.

These types of groups write sensationalist loaded language that is designed to make people who already agree with them to be outraged (and frankly, I have occasionally been the victim of some left-wing groups doing the same tactic) and should be ashamed of themselves.

Taxing capital gains as a progressive tax is just fair and actually makes good economic sense.

• If someone invests their money early and keeps it in for decades they could have billions of dollars if they select right, like pretty much everyone on the Forbes 400 list. A progressive capital gains tax will encourage people to keep money in for the long term and withdraw gradually.
• If Capital Gains are taxed at a fixed rate and you have a billion dollars in the stock market and the market collapses and you pull everything out along with your billionaire peers the market will collapse further and companies will have less capital to invest with, which will put them at odds between the continued growth of the company through assets and employees, or giving their investors their annual/quarterly dividend and increase to their stock, and we all know which usually takes priority.
• To stabilize the stock market we need to give an incentive for these mega-investors to keep their money in for the long term so that companies can use their money efficiently, downturns can be short, and unemployment can be lower than otherwise which will preserve our economy’s demand curve. By preventing large market collapses it will help people who have their money in the market from losing all of their gains, and companies will continue to have capital to invest and grow, and hire more people which will raise the demand curve, decrease unemployment, and make a stronger economy.

This is why a progressive income tax that treats capital gains as regular income is just healthy economics for America and the world.

Another closely related issue with the corporate world is how much people should be paid. www.ethisphere.org is a collection of stocks that beats the S&P 500 every single year in growth, and are selected not for their stock returns (which are considerable) but for their morality. By paying their workers more every year than their counterparts they have lower turnover, lower training costs, lower hiring costs, and their employees make fewer errors which cost any company money, giving these companies money to either grow, and/or pay their investors more money than their minimum-wage and/or Chinese slave driving competitors. (http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/slaverya21stcenturyevil/2011/10/2011101091153782814.html) By paying people more money this helps the corporation immediately by getting and keeping the best workers in the market and making them valued which makes a difference. In the long term at the societal level it raises the demand curve for goods and services which means that more people can afford the goods the corporation makes which increases their demand and means that a stable relationship between company owners, employee, investor, and consumer can develop. This is just good economics from every perspective for the reasons I outline above. As Henry Ford said, “There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.”
Read more Ford quotes at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/h/henry_ford.html#UsAPu4ARukU4mAvm.

I also hope I don't have to defend taxing gambling winnings at a progressive rate.

To finish I want to make clear that even if we tax capital gains when they are sold at progressive rates, the best investors will still have more money. Using the tax code I designed I link to at the top, the amount kept for the following withdrawals per year are as follows, assuming cost of living is $20,000. These numbers are gross income from all sources, as I made my plan above to do.

• Someone making $20,000 or less in Capital gains where that is their entire income will pay nothing.
• Someone making $100,000 per year will keep $92,500 after taxes, 4.6 times the cost of living, and pay only 7.5% of their income.
• Someone making $500,000 per year will keep $402,500 after taxes, 20 times the cost of living, paying 19.5% of their income.
• Someone making $1,000,000 per year will keep $722,500 after taxes, 36.1 times the cost of living, paying 27.8% of their income.

Some people would say paying 27.8% is a horrible tax, but when you are keeping 36.1 times the cost of living after your taxes, you are doing well enough in my opinion.

Looking at countries in the world here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP we see a trend that most developed nations (by every measure) have the highest tax burdens, with exceptions of Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. What is the difference between these three countries and the countries next to them? I have identified a few:

1. Ease of doing business ratings are at the top of the list. The governments make it easy and people can easily trade while there are high barriers to entry and doing business in the less developed nations with similar tax burdens and much worse Human Development Index ratings. They are heavily involved in health care and education. They also tend to be small.
2. Chile is also developed as measured by HDI and have a low tax burden, along with large markets for exports.
3. They have low barriers to trade with other countries, which allow goods to be exported and goods to be imported at low cost.
4. All countries that are highly developed, except the United States, have universal health care which has no change in tax burden.
5. The connection between tax burden and quality of living is a correlation with a heavy concentration with developed countries (with a few exceptions) at the highest percentage, and a heavy concentration of undeveloped countries (with a few exceptions) at the lowest percentages.
6. The countries with a low tax burden and high growth tend to be trade and banking centers where goods pass through while the countries at the top of the list are highly developed and aren't transit points for international commerce like Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong in their special situation.
7. Countries at the top of the Ease of Doing Business Index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index have low unemployment, their GDP growth beats their Population growth, with an exception of Japan which is hard to explain and I think it is something besides a large elderly population which is for another post when I will look at what it could be which at this point I am not certain, while the countries at the bottom of the list tend to be third world, with an exception of Venezuela leading me to detect other factors.
8. Of the top twenty countries in tax burden, only two that look to me like a truly third world country are Zimbabwe and Kiribati, and of the bottom twenty countries are mostly Sharia law countries with high oil exports, followed by third world countries to make the rest of the bottom 40. The top 40 countries by tax burden consists of many of the world's most highly developed or quickly developing nations. The trend is more or less clear with few exceptions to these rules.
9. Most countries at the top of the list have GDP growth that beats population growth and high levels of income equality, meaning high consumer demand and growing wages.

The statistics show me a correlation that is pretty strong with taxation around 40%, a strong health care system, a strong education system, an easy free market for new businesses (which I see as a key part of economic development), and low health care costs. The statistics show me another clear correlation between depressed economies, low taxation, poor health care, poor education systems, low GDP growth, and I feel the most important difference is high barriers of entry for new businesses. The popular correlation between high taxes and poor economic growth does not match the statistics.

To sum everything up, a progressive capital gains tax will help businesses and consumers, it will free up capital for businesses to use to grow, it will reduce the government debt which in the future will free up tax dollars to improve our schools and access to health care or send surpluses back to tax payers, and most importantly will encourage investors to keep their money in companies for a long time so that they can grow better creating more jobs, which will decrease the severity of economic downturns, and provide an incentive to increase wages for workers to reduce turnover and decrease training costs for businesses. This is why I think we should tax capital gains as regular income.

Please be Reasonable with computers

Dear world, yes, I understand you want privacy and you don't want to feel trespassed, and regarding some things I feel the same way, but please be reasonable. Yes, bank accounts, social security numbers, and personal information you don't want to share isn't public unless if you choose. But for the love of GOD you have absolutely no reasonable right to privacy when you are in public places or in view of the street, are we all supposed to put our eyes to the ground while you walk around downtown Miami in a bikini so you don't feel "exposed"? because that is how I feel about this needless obsession with privacy regarding Google Street View and other extraordinarily useful technologies. Be reasonable please, it's a real drag when it is taken to the unreasonable extreme. Taken to the extreme it just is a drag to everyone because privacy is the most popular myth in the world, and if your relative with you in your will who you haven't talked to for a while has money for you, do you want to lose out on a nice sized paycheck? It happens. Thank you.

 If I am going to travel to a new city and I am going to need to find my way around I want to know what my destination looks like so that I won't get lost as easily, or if the voters of a region don't want my tourist money they always have that right. If they want me to be lost in a new city then I guess they don't want my business. Just be reasonable.

To politicize or not to politicize, that is the question

I just heard about the massacre in Connecticut (though if it happened in many countries it would be a non-event, in America over 20 people being killed at once is such an outlier it counts as a massacre.) that happened just today, and felt sad of course, because no one has the right to take another person's life and no one has the right to expect that that could happen to them, and of course I want a solution. I saw a friend on facebook saying we should not politicize the issue, which struck me as funny, and I wondered, what are the leading causes of death in America? Another acquaintance posted a quote claiming that we don't need to ban guns but just need to pray and turn to God. This was from a father of a son who was killed at Columbine, and can be read here: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bldarrellscott.htm

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr60/nvsr60_03.pdf gives data for the deaths of Americans 2009, the top Google result.

12 of which are related to health care (heart disease and cancer are the top two), accidents comes in number five, suicide is comes in number 10 (which could be argued is a health care issue when it comes to mental health),  and assault is number 15 with almost 17,000 deaths, drugs also made the list (but for some reason aren't listed in the top 15) with almost 40,000 deaths in 2009. Almost 25,000 people had alcohol as part of the problem for their death in 2009. The top causes of death related to health care totaled over half of all deaths.

Now, the most obvious solution to bring down our death rate would first be to use universal single-payer health care and finance health research to decrease the death rate among the 12 health-care related causes of death, and this is what liberal Democrats (not the centrist leadership, but real left-of-center people like my self) have been pushing for 80 years to do and the Republicans and DINOs will do everything in their power to stop.

Suicide is a health care issue, and the best solution would be to provide the mental health services necessary for people to go back to being productive happy members of society. It is the greater good.

Compared to other developed nations, the United States is not an outlier in the death rate category, but we can still do better. (I compared our death rate and median age to countries in Europe and we are not doing badly compared to them, we're actually doing a little better, but we can still do better. We should be the best.)

The three worst school shootings of all history (as of today) have all been American, and they all involved guns, the worst involved an automatic rifle. Shootings are the one category where a lot of progress can easily be made. The victims are always innocent and we have a duty as a people to do whatever we can to protect those who are most vulnerable, our children.

There is no reason that in the United States people should have any reason to fear going outside, going to the store, or going to school. If there are background checks for welfare there should be background checks and licenses required to buy guns. The constitution states "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." and we are not following the first part, because we are not safe when people can get guns at gun shows without identification. Who knows who is getting them, murderers? Rapists? Drug Dealers? Almost certainly. There need to be protocols that prevent people from getting guns that will probably use them inappropriately, and if there is going to be a gun show everyone admitted needs to have a license to have a gun, you would never sell a car to someone without a license and insurance policy, and the same should be for guns.

I do not support banning all guns and weapons. Some people carry pepper spray with them for defense, I have friends and family that do this and I have comfort knowing that they will not be attacked. For people who are smaller, especially young small pretty women, carrying pepper spray is a good defense if the woman is attacked. However, it is not acceptable that large guns can be easily acquired. Arizona is a massive gun dealer point and the reason Fast and Furious was done in Arizona was to track the purchases of cartels in Arizona. To have no regulation of guns clearly brings anarchy because those who are unscrupulous in nature and dangerous will buy the most powerful guns that puts everyone at risk. This is not appropriate or acceptable for any civilized nation. It risks lives. However, I do understand why having guns available can be a good thing. Our founding fathers gave many good reasons why people should have guns. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

One only has to look at the gun violence in this country to see what the cost of this "freedom" is. I just want to point out that the party that is so supportive of this "freedom" to own guns passed and still support restrictions on the freedom of speech to "protect" people. Words have never killed people. Words are blunt, they can only cause damage through action. However, a gun is a weapon, a gun can kill people and a gun can kill innocent children like happened this past week in Connecticut. There is absolutely no reason people in a civilized nation should ever have the reasonable expectation that they might be shot by a mentally disturbed person in a school in any free nation, and there is a reasonable expectation that could happen right now, right here in the United States.

We need a balanced approach. To own a car (which has a useful purpose) requires a license, because if driven dangerously can cause damage and needs education to know how to use. Should we ban cars because it is one of the leading causes of death? No, of course not. Cars are useful and as long as our mass transit system in this country is weak we will need them. Guns are the same story. There are only three reasons to own a gun, to hunt for food, to defend oneself by injuring another being, or to kill another being. That is all guns can do. You can not get to work with a gun. You can only kill or injure another being. With such a powerful weapon it is prudent that we protect ourselves from the mentally ill and instate laws so that they can not hurt others. We owe it to ourselves, we owe it to our children, we owe it to our country. Guns can be useful, if you are camping in the woods for a long time they can provide food, or if you just enjoy hunting. But with their use comes a massive dark side which must be contained, that of death if used by the wrong person. There is some truth to the saying that guns don't kill people, people do. So we need to make sure that in order to have a gun you must be deemed sane. My only proposition is that the requirements to own a gun should be no more lax than the requirements to own a car, as they currently are, f you don't know how to use it and you are not deemed sane by the licensing through a background check you have no right to own one because the need (of safety) of the many will always outweigh the desire (to own an item) of the one.

It comes down to the old debate regarding guns of freedom vs. safety. Is it more important to be able to own a gun, or is it more important to be safe from the mentally disturbed who currently can get hold of guns? That is our choice. A balanced approach can fulfill this.

The other opinion, that the problem is in our hearts, has some truth to it, however, we will never be able to make everyone safe to hold a gun as not regulating guns like cars has shown. We can pray as much as we want, these children will not come back to life. We can pray as much as we want and the evil and crazy people in this country who currently have access to guns will not listen. They don't care how much you pray to your God, they will continue to murder. Sorry, that's life. The current movement to legalize concealed weapons for people who have permits (which is the way it is going, as can be seen in Michigan http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/12/sweeping_changes_in_michigans.html) is the wrong direction and bad for America, we need to protect our children, our seniors, our weakest, and if you are a Christian (as 70% of Americans are), I recommend you read the Four Gospels again because I just finished them and that message to take care of your weakest was one of the most clear. Jesus never condemned gays, (which many seem to believe) but he was extremely clear that we are supposed to take care of our weakest. We have failed America. 27 dead bodies from gun violence, 20 of them children, counts as a failure to protect our most vulnerable in the one place they should be 100% confident that they should be safe, which is school. By allowing people to carry concealed weapons, there is no where in America where anyone can reasonably feel safe. Sorry that is my opinion on the common belief that guns make people safe, because 20 dead children being shot in their classroom sure doesn't make me feel very safe! It is a cultural failure. Britain when they had one massacre when only 17 deaths (ten fewer than the one that happened Friday) back in 1996 increased restrictions on guns and that is still their worst record. We have had two that have exceeded that body count since 1996, Virginia Tech and the massacre on Friday. This cannot be considered a success, the only thing this can be considered is a complete utter failure of our government to protect its people and a failure of the American people to protect their weakest.

But in the end, this entire debate comes down to a very simple debate between two values, individual liberty vs. communal safety. I choose communal safety. The needs of the many will always outweigh the desire of the one.

Speaking about the Laffer (think Laugher) Curve

So, the Laugher curve is one of the most cited and least understood principles of economics. The Laugher curve is the theory that there is a hypothetical point of where the optimal tax rate is where revenue is at its maximum and that if you increase taxes beyond that point you will have a net loss in economic output. This is heavily cited by conservatives, and is a hypothesis. It is not a theory. The reason I say that is because I can't find anyone who has graphed real-world changes in tax-rates and has come out with the Laugher curve. However, there is a graph on wikipedia that is from economicdynamics.org which cites the National Bureau of Economic Research as the institute who does the research that tried to prove the Laugher curve.

http://www.economicdynamics.org/meetpapers/2012/paper_78.pdf

If you just want the graph, here it is on Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Top_tax_rates_and_average_growth_1975-2008_v3.jpg

Oops, not information found to prove, but a good amount to disprove from a valiant effort.

If the laugher curver was real, the chart above would be a quadratic equation, which is not true, it is a flat line with a statistical outlier of Ireland, which because it is so unusual is probably due to other factors.

So, here you are. Real absolute proof that despite having wildly varied differences in their tax changes over 30 years there was no considerable difference in their economic growth. Spain and Switzerland kept about the same tax rates and they had very different economic growth rates. The United States had a substantial difference in their top marginal tax rate, yet had about the same level of growth as Germany that barely changed its top rate.

Of course, the Neocons will ignore this survey as propaganda, without presenting any evidence of their own demonstrating their Laugher curve as reality.

Because when you get down to it, there is no evidence for Reaganomics ever doing anything good for the world, as we saw with President Herbert Hoover, who was an absolutely perfect president when it comes to his religious observance of laissez-faire, Reaganomics, or Austerity, whatever you want to call it. With the longest economic downturn in American history lasting four years with absolutely no movement from the free market to move it up he is rightfully ranked as one of our worst presidents.

Of course, the Neocons will ignore this because it conflicts with their view of how the world should be.

This leads to my number one wish for economists. GROW. UP. Economics should not be as controversial as it is today. In every other branch of science if you make a claim you need to present some level of evidence that your claim is real. Economics is a science. If a pseudo-biologist walked into a conference and denied evolution, the first thing the biologists would ask him is for some proof for his claim, because he made the claim he has the burden of proof. He would of course be unable to present any evidence to contradict the DNA, fossil record, geological record, and short-term mutations in bacterial genomes that have all been observed that prove evolution beyond a reasonable doubt and he would be embarrassed and leave the conference a fool never to be invited to another conference again.

In economics, people routinely deny things that have been observed, e.g. that cutting jobs raises unemployment, unemployment hurts the economy, the government can create jobs, there are two sides to the economics equation supply and demand, and they never raise their burden of proof expecting themselves to be believed on faith alone. This is immature, and no one is special enough for such treatment.

Denying facts does not make you cool. Denying facts does not make you smart, it makes you look like an idiot. Adults don't say things without backing up their claims. Adults don't expect people to believe them on faith alone. Children expect people to believe their claims without backing it up, which is exactly what people like Laffer behaves like, and every Neo-conservative economist I have ever read expects to be believed not on their proof but because they sound good.

Don't believe anyone on faith alone. Trust statistics which are measured from reality and use the statistics to formulate your viewpoint, and if the statistics don't fit your preconceived notion do not twist the facts, do not deny the facts, and do not claim the facts which are empirically measured are wrong just because they don't fit your previous beliefs. Real economists use real facts to back up their claims, real historical events, and look for other possible explanations for why things may happen, and before they even publish their paper on their claim will try to refute it using hypothesis testing. Before publishing that the Laffer curve is real Laffer should have included another hypothesis, which is that he was wrong and try to disprove it. Every economist needs to do this, otherwise we get bogus pseudo-economics that don't fit what has been empirically observed, like the laffer curve.

I am right here going to say I read only two economists, Robert Reich, and Paul Krugman. I don't agree with them on everything (and I have a previous post about how I disagreed with their original analysis on Europe's austerity crisis) but I read everything they post. I don't do this because I already agree with most of their viewpoints, because Robert Reich is a Keynesian economist, Democrat, and former secretary, and Paul Krugman is another Keynesian Democrat economist, and certainly not because he is a Nobel Laureate, but because of how they formulate their viewpoints. They use real facts and source where they get it from. This is the only reason I trust them.

"Conservative" economists need to stop calling themselves conservative and call them what they are, Mercantilist. They aren't interested in increasing economic growth, they are only interested in improving their own wealth. They are only interested in reducing costs to their corporations, padding their pockets, and they don't care about the rest of us. We are collateral damage and they don't care.

Please economists, if you are going to claim a new theory, provide data and evidence to back up your plan before putting it into force. Don't expect to be treated differently because people already agree with you.

The same message for political theorists.

Our new Secretary of State

http://theweek.com/article/index/226849/replacing-hillary-clinton-5-top-secretary-of-state-candidates

Now, I am going out on a limb here and my preference almost certainly won't be selected, but that doesn't matter, what matters is that my choice is I believe the most qualified candidate to be our next Secretary of State.

I choose Keith Ellison. The link at the top lists potential nominees for the Secretary of State's office. Here is why.

He is in favor of Israel's existence, and is in favor of more rights for the Palestinian people. After that last Gaza War last month it is clear to people across the world that there needs to be a solution. This is why the Palestinian Authority now has some representation at the United Nations. Unfortunately the US opposes their joining the UN as a recognized state which is why I do not want Susan Rice to be Secretary of State. Keith Ellison has the drive to bring a real solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict which when a solution is found will save thousands of lives and free up millions of American tax-payer dollars to do something useful.

He has criticized China for their harsh policies in Tibet.

Most other potential candidates for Secretary of State don't have the enthusiasm or values of Keith Ellison. Most politicians blindly do whatever Israel's government requests, regardless of their party affiliation, Keith Ellison is a man of the future where values matter.

As a freshman senator he visited Iraq and stressed that leaders need to understand what situations the soldiers are really in. This makes me want him to be Secretary of State even more.

As a 49 year old I expect a lot from him, and I hope President Obama nominates him as Secretary of State.