on politics...

so i voted this morning. i hope most of you did too, after doing your research of course. here is a collection of random thoughts on voting and on this election...

on throwing away your vote...

i voted libertarian today. a lot of people think voting for a 3rd party is throwing away your vote. i would argue that the only votes that are thrown away are:

• those which are not cast (due to either lack of interest, or disdain for both major party candidates)
• those which are not cast for the candidate that you think would make the best president. but instead cast for someone just so the other guy doesn't win.

in either case, you've wasted your chance to speak up about who you would like for president. if you don't like either of the candidates, vote for someone else, there are plenty of other options (green, constitution and libertarian are the most well known). sure, they have no chance of winning, but with enough votes, they get federal funding for the next election cycle and that's a start.

at the very least, you can get a bunch of free food if you vote today, which is probably about as a good a reason as any to vote.

on voter turnout...

before voting, watching the morning news and after voting, on my way into work i heard an awful lot about voter turnout and how this is expected to be one of the biggest turnouts in recent history. i can't figure out why, when it seems to me that there is such a small difference between the democratic and the republican parties as they both move towards the center. regardless of who wins the election today, our government still spends too much money and that's not likely to change. our economy will still be in a slump and we will give away billions trying to fix it, the only difference is who those billions are going to. neither party is willing to place any blame at all on the people who took out mortgages they knew they couldn't afford. neither party is truly willing to stand up for gay rights (democrats might say they are, but they won't back gay marriages, just "domestic partnerships", which is a cop out to avoid alienating borderline voters). i could go on.

so in a seemingly irrelevant election, why the large turnout? am i totally wrong here? does anyone have any theories?

on voting systems...

lastly, i'd like to voice my support for alternative voting systems. the problem of people voting just so the other guy doesn't win really bothers me. i think everyone should be able to find a candidate that they support, not just one that they don't hate as much as the other one. one way to fix this problem is to change the voting system.

there are many alternatives and i haven't researched all of them, but my favorite so far is an approval system, where each person votes for as many people as they would approve of being in office, instead of just one. the person with the most votes wins. similarly, a ranked system would allow you to, as the name would suggest, rank in order of preference the candidates for office. today with presidential elections being as close as they are, only a tiny fraction more above 50% (or in the case of 2000, less than half) of the people got their chosen candidate in office. in an approval or ranked system, maybe not everyone gets their first choice, but maybe 75% could get someone in their top 3 choices. some people also predict that these systems would reduce attack ads, which would be a tremendous relief. unfortunately, it would take congress, which is comprised of nearly all republicans and democrats to actually pass a bill to give up their stranglehold on power and it will never happen.

you should be outraged.

dan's economic bailout plan

it's been pretty hard to avoid all this news about economic bailouts and the failure of various large banks and investment corporations. your leaders are about to hand out $700B to banks who made and or bought risky mortgages. you are going to end up paying for it. i won't get into all the reasons why i think this is a bad idea, but i will propose an alternative.

the government buys any personal residences that are:

- upsidedown on their loans
- was listed on the market for at least six months and the sellers did not refuse any "reasonable" offers. (definition of reasonable is yet to be determined)

at which point, the government disposes of the house at market value, pays the mortgage company with the proceeds of the sale. the difference between the market value and the proceeds of the sale is loaned to the mortgage company by the government with interest. that same amount is added to the ex-homeowners tax bill at little to no interest.

why i think this is a good idea?

1) people who can't afford their houses have some motivation to get out of them and don't get to keep them. if i have to pay for my house so does everyone else damnit.

2) people who got in over their heads can get out, but still have to pay for it in the long run.

3) the banks don't get free money. they'll get some from the portion of the homeowners who are willing to accept the fact that they can't afford their house. they will eat some losses from stubborn homeowners who just don't care (i'd be interested in what the percentages would be). some will fold, which i consider a good thing to a certain extent.

4) the final bill will be paid for by the people who made the mistakes.

one of the problems with my plan is that it would take a while for their to be any effect and probably in the meantime, more institutions would go belly up. i'm generally opposed to government interfering in the free market, but on the other hand i'm not particularly a big fan of the idea of the entire american economy collapsing either.

my work sponsored vacation to hawaii

in between hours of fighting the man, trying to get some actual work done, i did get to do a few touristy things while i was in hawaii. some of the fun things i did include:

• ate enough pineapple to make my tongue hurt
• lots of walking around waikiki
• did a lap in the rental car around round top / tantulus drive
  
• walked all the way from the hotel around the base of diamond head
• hiked up koko head
• snorkeling at sharks cove and haunama bay
• stopped by pali lookout
  
• *very* briefly considered jumping off the cliff at the spitting cave
  
• instead jumped off the big rock at waimea bay (video of someone else)
• ate at the shrimp trucks on the north shore
• had a haupia pie from mcdonalds
  

there are tons of hilarious japanese people in waikiki, lots of them wearing shirts with really great nonsensical english phrases. the benefit of having so many asian people around is that 7-eleven there sells sushi and pork buns and little bricks of rice with a slice of spam on top. okay, well i don't know if the rice+spam brick is a benefit but it was certainly interesting.

why bloated government sucks and why you should care

the federal government is out of control. true to its people, it spends way more than it brings in. early projections for this year are $250 billion (or put more scarily, $250,000,000,000.00). if you're like me, you're wondering how long this can continue. more and more americans are learning what happens to you when you can't pay your bills anymore. you lose your house. just wait and see what happens when the so-called credit crunch hits the federal government and the federal government can't get loans to pay its bills (here's a hint). then we're in real trouble.

it's not much better on the local scale. maryland's projected 2008 budget deficit is $1.7 billion. when you have a budget deficit there are two things you can do 1) spend less or 2) make more. if you live in maryland you probably already know the answer is not "spend less", and to prove it, you already got shafted once this year. sales tax went from 5% to 6%. that means you just got 1% poorer. now your elected officials are at it again. maryland senate bill 232 is on the table and it calls for

Increasing the State tax rates for alcoholic beverages in Maryland from $1.50 to $4.50 per gallon for distilled spirits, from 40 cents to $1.20 per gallon for wine, and from 9 cents to 54 cents per gallon for beer; expressing the State tax rates for alcoholic beverages alternatively as 89.1843 cents for each 0.75-liter container of distilled spirits, 23.7825 cents for each 0.75-liter container of wine, and 5.0625 cents for each 12-ounce container of beer; etc.

this is a 600% increase of the tax on beer and a 300% on wine and spirits, not including the increase in md sales tax. people, if ever there was a time to act, the time is now. write your elected officials.