No long introduction because none is needed. Everyone knows the situation.
Step 1 (in progress): The budget of every department in the government is published on a single website. Check. www.usaspending.gov has it all. But the second part is that you need to be able to go down the department's budget line by line on the internet. A link to website is at the top of every government webpage. This is the first step to cut wasteful spending. President Obama presented this.
Step 2 (close, but not good enough): Every law is easily read and is at the top of every government website where people would see it. This is at thomas.loc.gov.
Step 3 (not even close): Every bill focuses on a single change or program, like in the New Deal. They are posted on Thomas as soon as they are proposed. They must be precise and to the point, and use normal English.
Step 4 (just a thought, risky though): There is a government news-feed on a website that only tells of all the bills, resolutions, and amendments, money spent, and every other government action on an easy-to use feed.. It runs in parallel to private corporations to give the information out in a concise non-confusing way so people can understand. It would allow people to see what every department is doing in chronological order which will make it harder to be corrupt in government and seek out corruption. You could turn a department on and off to see each department's budget. There would be an option to see what your Senator/Representative is supporting. The only argument against this I can see is government-controlled media. But this will be alongside the commercial press giving everyone one site that has everything relating to the government.
Step 5 (sadly not on the horizon): The people of America believe in how Democracy works (which has been proved for thousands of years, Greece) and they use their power to be one big check and balance to the politicans on Capital Hill. We listen to multiple sources, use tools like Google News to get 5 sources per day at a minimum, and are not pessimistic about the government, because that is what I believe to be selling Capital Hill to the corrupt, which is somwhere between an unpatriotic attitude and Treason. Our country cannot survive without people participating.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
Eggs
The Economy and EGGS
By: Matthew Stidham
Part 1: Recession
Overview
The economy is in trouble, there is not enough money flowing through the economy.
The eggs are in trouble, they need more salt.
The economy needs more money.
The eggs need salt to be added.
What Will Happen:
The eggs will get more salt.
The economy will not get the money it needs and will continue to slow down because people don't know how recessions work.
What Should Happen:
The eggs should get more salt.
The economy should get more money flowing which will speed it up getting it back to equilibrium.
Who will do it:
The people who eat the eggs will add salt.
The people who are part of the economy will not know how money flows. They won't understand that if everyone starts spending like they used to money will flow and everybody who works will get money back. That means that the problem of money not flowing will not be fixed. However, this requires a majority of the people in the economy to do this, which if they don't know how it works, won't be done.
If the people don't, assume the banks won't offer loans because they won't expect jobless people to be able to pay them back, or if they do will be at high interest rates, and companies won't expand because they won't expect people to buy their product. Those are 3 out of the 4 sectors of the economy. The only one left is government. If the government doesn't keep the economy running, no one else will because the people who do know how it works will be betting on most people not understanding, which will make them not spend, which will exacerbate the problem as happened from 1929 to 1933.
Part 2: Overgrowth
Overview
The economy is booming, people and businesses are overspending.
The eggs are too salty.
The economy has to slow down and have less money be transferred every day.
The eggs need to either have the salt be removed or the eggs remade.
What Will Happen:
People will through away the eggs and make new eggs.
The economy will get even more money flowing through it until so many people, banks, and businesses will have loaned money out that very few will get their money back, which will mean that everyone will all pull back which will slow down the economy dramatically, which will lower stock prices causing people to panic, which will continue to exacerbate the problem, causing a recession.
What Should Happen:
People will through away the eggs and make new eggs.
People should stop overspending which means the economy will slow down so that the problem of spinning out of control doesn't happen and people won't lose their life savings on debt. This would also mean that there wouldn't be a period of three months to four or more years where the economy isn't working how it should.
Who will do it:
Unless if the salt can be scraped off, the person eating the eggs will remake them.
The people will not slow down and stop borrowing and purchasing because they are making so much money per year. The businesses won't stop expanding because they are making record profits, which will mean that they will make too much product or have too many stores which means that they will have to drastically pull back or go bankrupt which in the case of a large company will put thousands of people out of work, exacerbating unemployment. Banks won't stop lending because they will be making billions of dollars of interest. 3 out of the 4 sectors will not be thinking in long term, as has happened at least twice before. Again, there is only one part of the economy to make sure that the economy doesn't spin out of control, and that is government, which can slow the economy down with sales taxes or temporary limits on borrowing, which will be unpopular, but necessary.
Conclusion
The Same Principles That Apply to Eggs Also Apply to the Economy.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Why passing a stimulus package in a recession is a good idea.
There is a lot of talk on Capital Hill about passing another stimulus package. Many Republicans are saying that the first stimulus package was a bad idea, and they are looking in the 4th dimension. In order to be a true leader you need to see in the 5th dimension.
Dimensions. The first dimension is a line with no thickness. The second dimension has vertical and horizontal axes. The third dimension is what we see with our eyes, vertical, horizontal, and depth. The fourth dimension is time. The fifth dimension is parallel universes, or what would happen if something didn't happen.
Many people on the conservative right say that we need to allow leaders of companies to have their companies fail if they do economically risky things. This is an extremely capitalist viewpoint. They forget that who the burden really falls if the company, be it Chase, Bank of America, Washington Mutual, US Bank, Ford, Chrysler, Dodge, General Motors, etc., fails. It fails on the millions of workers who work for those companies. The 7 car manufacturers I mentioned employ 390,200 people in America which would be a huge hit to the economy. The 3 banks I mentioned that still exist hold $4.6 trillion that would then have to be spent by the federal government to make sure that their customers keep their life savings. It is scary to think of the Federal Government spending $4.6 trillion in one year making sure that people don't lose their life savings as opposed to spending no more than $1 trillion in order to avoid spending $3.6 trillion dollars more (more than the annual budget) to make sure people have money to live.
Another thing, the GDP of America decreased from 1929 to 1933 when the government under Herbert Hoover's administration did nothing. Hoover could have proposed to Congress to stimulate the economy, but he didn't. In 1933 President Roosevelt proposed a stimulus (New Deal) to bring us out of the depression, which it did.
Food for thought: Where would America have got the money in 1933 to go to war? How did America have enough to go to war in 1941 without running trillion dollar 1940s dollars deficits as opposed to the much smaller amount in 1941-1945?
Dimensions. The first dimension is a line with no thickness. The second dimension has vertical and horizontal axes. The third dimension is what we see with our eyes, vertical, horizontal, and depth. The fourth dimension is time. The fifth dimension is parallel universes, or what would happen if something didn't happen.
Many people on the conservative right say that we need to allow leaders of companies to have their companies fail if they do economically risky things. This is an extremely capitalist viewpoint. They forget that who the burden really falls if the company, be it Chase, Bank of America, Washington Mutual, US Bank, Ford, Chrysler, Dodge, General Motors, etc., fails. It fails on the millions of workers who work for those companies. The 7 car manufacturers I mentioned employ 390,200 people in America which would be a huge hit to the economy. The 3 banks I mentioned that still exist hold $4.6 trillion that would then have to be spent by the federal government to make sure that their customers keep their life savings. It is scary to think of the Federal Government spending $4.6 trillion in one year making sure that people don't lose their life savings as opposed to spending no more than $1 trillion in order to avoid spending $3.6 trillion dollars more (more than the annual budget) to make sure people have money to live.
Another thing, the GDP of America decreased from 1929 to 1933 when the government under Herbert Hoover's administration did nothing. Hoover could have proposed to Congress to stimulate the economy, but he didn't. In 1933 President Roosevelt proposed a stimulus (New Deal) to bring us out of the depression, which it did.
Food for thought: Where would America have got the money in 1933 to go to war? How did America have enough to go to war in 1941 without running trillion dollar 1940s dollars deficits as opposed to the much smaller amount in 1941-1945?
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Why renewables are the answer to the high costs of fuel.
Everyone knows that gasoline is expensive all over the world. Exxon Mobile makes gigantic profits year after year and there is nothing to stop them. This is because they have a near-perfect monopoly on oil sales throughout the entire world. There is no incentive for them to lower their prices because it will decrease their profit and that is not what a rational company does. Being rational and being benevolent are completely different.
There is a simple solution to this problem. It has been done before too, and it worked. Early 1900s, Standard Oil owned more than 90% of the world's oil reserves making Rockefeller the richest man in the history of the world. He had no reason to decrease the prices because there was no competition and he created the market price. In the 1940s the US government decided that Standard Oil had to be divided, and the prices went down because every company had to take the market price determined by supply and demand.
There are solutions, and they are being taken after being put aside for at least a decade. The US government is funding more research into renewable energies to make them efficient, which will make them viable competitors to internal-combustion engines.
First, the idea of drilling in the arctic is a short term solution. What do we do when the oil there is depleted? We have to move somewhere else and spend more money moving equipment to other places and more research. An extremely short-term and inefficient solution to the oil crisis.
So, the US government funds scientists and they work hard over the next ten years making fuel cells extremely efficient. We need to make sure that the fuel cells have hydrogen to run. The solution to this is simple. Water is a common resource, hydrogen is a limited resource. What we need to invest in is a way to use nuclear fission to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water atoms and then put them into cars. We put the hydrogen into the cars and you drive off. Simple. The argument that hydrogen is flammmable is true, but not viable because gasoline is also viable. Light a spark next to gasoline and it will start combustion at an uncontrollable rate. Hydrogen may not be stable like water, but neither is gasoline. Nothing in terms of safety will change, and the transportation of hydrogen is silly because we will produce it on-site, which makes it better than gasoline.
Now, who will provide the converters? Companies of course! There will be many companies eventually and people will purchase them, there will be competition, and it will work.
Another thing is, what about the desert? If we can make hydrogen out of water, we can make it out of any thing in the Universe. We just need to improve nuclear fission.
There's the answer to the energy crisis. In essence, it is water.
I don't claim these as my ideas. I am merely putting together ideas from many places.
There is a simple solution to this problem. It has been done before too, and it worked. Early 1900s, Standard Oil owned more than 90% of the world's oil reserves making Rockefeller the richest man in the history of the world. He had no reason to decrease the prices because there was no competition and he created the market price. In the 1940s the US government decided that Standard Oil had to be divided, and the prices went down because every company had to take the market price determined by supply and demand.
There are solutions, and they are being taken after being put aside for at least a decade. The US government is funding more research into renewable energies to make them efficient, which will make them viable competitors to internal-combustion engines.
First, the idea of drilling in the arctic is a short term solution. What do we do when the oil there is depleted? We have to move somewhere else and spend more money moving equipment to other places and more research. An extremely short-term and inefficient solution to the oil crisis.
So, the US government funds scientists and they work hard over the next ten years making fuel cells extremely efficient. We need to make sure that the fuel cells have hydrogen to run. The solution to this is simple. Water is a common resource, hydrogen is a limited resource. What we need to invest in is a way to use nuclear fission to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water atoms and then put them into cars. We put the hydrogen into the cars and you drive off. Simple. The argument that hydrogen is flammmable is true, but not viable because gasoline is also viable. Light a spark next to gasoline and it will start combustion at an uncontrollable rate. Hydrogen may not be stable like water, but neither is gasoline. Nothing in terms of safety will change, and the transportation of hydrogen is silly because we will produce it on-site, which makes it better than gasoline.
Now, who will provide the converters? Companies of course! There will be many companies eventually and people will purchase them, there will be competition, and it will work.
Another thing is, what about the desert? If we can make hydrogen out of water, we can make it out of any thing in the Universe. We just need to improve nuclear fission.
There's the answer to the energy crisis. In essence, it is water.
I don't claim these as my ideas. I am merely putting together ideas from many places.
Monday, March 1, 2010
On Perry v. Schwarzenegger
To find the information on the current case see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_v._Schwarzenegger and http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/tag/perry-v-schwarzenegger
I think this case is extremely important. Gay rights are just right in a free society for the following reasons:
1. Love makes a Family. People need to have the right to marry whoever they want. If we don't give people the right to love they will be miserable for no reason, and anyways, healthy families are built on love.
2. The arguments made are based on religion. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. This is the American creed. The arguments against gay marriage are based on religion and gay marriage should be allowed because of this.
3. They are no different than heterosexual families. We need to get past the idea that women and men are completely different. People generally don't follow the extreme right's assumption that they are different. I have met many people and people are diverse beyond what form their body takes.
4. Connecting to my second point, other nations that punish gay marriage include Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia who kill gays among others. Nations that allow gay marriage are Canada, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, and Belgium. There are also some parts in America and Mexico City. We need to decide to side with free nations as opposed to genocidal (Sudan), unfree (Saudi Arabia), unstable (Somalia), and bureaucratic nations (Iran).
5. People that go against Gay marriage include Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Osama bin Laden, and many others.
6. They are a minority and are committing a victimless crime.
Because of these 6 reasons, gay marriage must be allowed in the United States of America.
Originally written on 18 January 2010
I think this case is extremely important. Gay rights are just right in a free society for the following reasons:
1. Love makes a Family. People need to have the right to marry whoever they want. If we don't give people the right to love they will be miserable for no reason, and anyways, healthy families are built on love.
2. The arguments made are based on religion. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. This is the American creed. The arguments against gay marriage are based on religion and gay marriage should be allowed because of this.
3. They are no different than heterosexual families. We need to get past the idea that women and men are completely different. People generally don't follow the extreme right's assumption that they are different. I have met many people and people are diverse beyond what form their body takes.
4. Connecting to my second point, other nations that punish gay marriage include Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia who kill gays among others. Nations that allow gay marriage are Canada, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, and Belgium. There are also some parts in America and Mexico City. We need to decide to side with free nations as opposed to genocidal (Sudan), unfree (Saudi Arabia), unstable (Somalia), and bureaucratic nations (Iran).
5. People that go against Gay marriage include Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Osama bin Laden, and many others.
6. They are a minority and are committing a victimless crime.
Because of these 6 reasons, gay marriage must be allowed in the United States of America.
Originally written on 18 January 2010
The Greatest Threats to American Freedom
I have talked to many people about political issues and through these I have grown to become more centrist. I am taking Economics at my local community college and have become a lot more centrist than I used to be, but also have found that some policies make sense, regulating health care, not being afraid of intervening in the economy through a Stimulus or New Deal, or looking over banks, keeping them from doing shady deals that put the economy of the entire world in danger.
There are many threats, Terrorism, drugs, shady deals, there are too many to count! But when you get down to it, the one threat that I think is the biggest threat is two closely related threats, 1. The distrust of all elected Politicians regardless of party, and 2. The fear of knowledge.
I define my first one is the belief that no matter what you say the politicians will always only do what they want and will not listen. The second one means being afraid of Websters, meaning not looking things up, which means when you reach a big word you won't expand your vocabulary.
This threatens us all because it makes so that the corrupt politicians really can do whatever they want because the average American will not look up what their Representative, Senator, Governor, or President are doing beyond the corrupt news media on both sides of the aisle. (the only American sources I have seen that are neutral are NPR, and CNET.) People honestly believe that the politicians are out to get everyone, and they don't care about the people at the bottom and the middle. They need to look at what their representatives, senators, and the President are doing from an open mind, and listen to any addresses that they might have.
One prime example is someone I love. He/She said that Obama isn't for bipartisianship. He/She said listening to the State of the Union was a waste of time, and doesn't listen to the Weekly Addresses. He/She frightened me by his fear of Democrats. He/She decided to look at summaries of the State of Union and assumed he/she heard everything. By not doing this he/she is worse than a slave because he/she is being manipulated every day by Fox news spreading only the things that make Obama look bad. He missed one important detail from the speech and I quote: "That's why I've called for a bipartisan fiscal commission, modeled on a proposal by Republican Judd Gregg and Democrat Kent Conrad." ~Barack Obama State of the Union. The summaries wouldn't report this because it makes him look good. It isn't the President who is locking out Republicans, it is the Senate and the House. They should be ashamed. He didn't hear that or any of the Weekly addresses, which means that he doesn't hear this message. When Rush Limbaugh, or Fox quotes the President they will quote "We want the taxpayers’ money back, and we’re going to collect every dime." which makes it sound like he will hike taxes up. What he really said was, "Many originally feared that most of the $700 billion in TARP money would be lost. But when my administration came into office, we put in place rigorous rules for accountability and transparency, which cut the cost of the bailout dramatically. We have now recovered most of the money we provided to the banks. That’s good news, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s not good enough. We want the taxpayers’ money back, and we’re going to collect every dime." The first one makes it sound like he will hike up taxes on families, when in truth, he will actually be having Banks pay back the stimulus, just like a loan.
Second, I hear people say that someone proposed an amendment, but they won't look and see if it passed the vote. You can propose as many pork amendments as you like, but if they don't pass the vote it won't happen.
Finally, there is the problem, but how does it hurt our freedom? It makes it so that when Congresspeople vote on a bill without anyone reading it they will all be fired if they do enough serious offenses. When the media says that Congressman Joe Bob from Mecca made an amendment that would give all Meccans a tax break on said tax, they will assume it is part of the bill. They do not go to the bill, download the text, and then press ctrl-f and type in Mecca, and then see that the amendment isn't part of the bill because it was voted down! This makes it so that good legislation is shot down when it could save the economy. Yes, I am talking about the Health Care bill. We need to not be afraid of long texts and know that we can pull a single uncommon word out of Ulysses on a computer in less than 10 seconds if it runs. We must do this. If we don't than lobbyists that are not there for charity will continue to rule Capital Hill. If we do, than we will not shop at those places, they will close, which means that the purpose of lobbying has gone away.
America, please do not be afraid of your politicians. They are literally your servant and if enough people look and report the truth of what they are doing they will have their careers ruined, which solves the problem of corruption because it will not benefit anyone. If every able American spent at least 5 minutes a day, watched the speeches, looked into the bills, than they would be unable to do the amendments because their in-boxes would be full and then be voted out at the next election. Democracy is strong and beautiful, and good votes rely on information, but as the display at my local fire station says "The Majority Rules, but only if the Majority Votes."
How to win the War on Terror
The most pressing issue today is how to defeat terrorism. Personally, I am not a Christian and don't want to be, I'm UU so I feel that while the Terrorists are treating people in my country as Christians that what I say here is not trying to expand any religion, but to save lives. People have the right to worship
The radical so-called Muslims at the top have perverted their religion and have distorted it to where they worship one out of 5 pillars, Jihad. Jihad means "struggle for the faith." One American Religion, Mormonism has a practice that I believe is supposed to be what Jihad is meant to be, to spread the faith and word of God. The Quran says in the Cow: "62. Those who believe (in the Qur'an), and those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Christians and the Sabians,- any who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve." The Terrorists conveniently forget this all the time. By fighting the Western World, which is mostly Christian, they are going against the very religion they say they are part of. They are no Muslims. The Quran has all the major figures of Christianity and Judaism. Becausethey believe in what Jesus taught, than they technically believe in "love your neighbor," which means that by fighting they are further Blasphemizing against their professed religion. There is also the fact that if they scroll the Quran they will find that some parts bash Christians while others don't, just like any old religious book that was written by multiple people.
This brings me to my major point. Because the people of Afghanistan and other nations where they get there recruits from mostly can't read, the way to defeat terrorism is for peace-loving nations around the world to send people to those places to teach people how to read so that they can read the Qur'an and the Bible so that they can know that by going with the terrorists they are blaspheming against their religion. If this is done thousands if not millions of lives will be saved and Peace can be on Earth and the Human Race may prosper and this type of Evil may go off the face of the planet. It won't stop all of them, because there are people who are mean and unintelligent who don't ask questions and want to mean things in many places. But if more people in the Middle East and North Africa who are Muslim are able to refer back to the source of their religion, more people will decide to follow their religion and do what is right to every good person's perspective, no matter what his/her religion is.
Originally posted on January 3, 2010.
The radical so-called Muslims at the top have perverted their religion and have distorted it to where they worship one out of 5 pillars, Jihad. Jihad means "struggle for the faith." One American Religion, Mormonism has a practice that I believe is supposed to be what Jihad is meant to be, to spread the faith and word of God. The Quran says in the Cow: "62. Those who believe (in the Qur'an), and those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Christians and the Sabians,- any who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve." The Terrorists conveniently forget this all the time. By fighting the Western World, which is mostly Christian, they are going against the very religion they say they are part of. They are no Muslims. The Quran has all the major figures of Christianity and Judaism. Becausethey believe in what Jesus taught, than they technically believe in "love your neighbor," which means that by fighting they are further Blasphemizing against their professed religion. There is also the fact that if they scroll the Quran they will find that some parts bash Christians while others don't, just like any old religious book that was written by multiple people.
This brings me to my major point. Because the people of Afghanistan and other nations where they get there recruits from mostly can't read, the way to defeat terrorism is for peace-loving nations around the world to send people to those places to teach people how to read so that they can read the Qur'an and the Bible so that they can know that by going with the terrorists they are blaspheming against their religion. If this is done thousands if not millions of lives will be saved and Peace can be on Earth and the Human Race may prosper and this type of Evil may go off the face of the planet. It won't stop all of them, because there are people who are mean and unintelligent who don't ask questions and want to mean things in many places. But if more people in the Middle East and North Africa who are Muslim are able to refer back to the source of their religion, more people will decide to follow their religion and do what is right to every good person's perspective, no matter what his/her religion is.
Originally posted on January 3, 2010.
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