No Fat Chicks

Tony,

Your last question is ridiculous.  If someone wants to be an NFL lineman, he needs to be way stronger than the average American.  If he wants to be a kicker, he needs to be able to kick the ball better than the average American.  If he wants to be a running back.... (I think you get the picture).

If someone wants to be president, she should be way smarter than the average American.  Sarah Palin is arguably dumber than the average American; that is why she is mocked.

Your Answer is Too Simple

Tony,

I did answer that allowing the tax cuts to continue could potentially hurt the economy, for the exact same reason that spending a bunch of money might.  Now, whether the negative of increasing debt is outweighed by any sort of action taken by people (or corporations) keeping more money is a difficult question.  There's uncertainty, and I think that intelligent people could fall on either side.  Limiting it to "short term" doesn't make it (the tax cuts) any more clearly positive, because the strongest positive of a tax cut is more investment in business, which arguably won't necessarily happen immediately.  As we discussed before, I believe that a rational corporation will hire approximately the same number of employees regardless of the tax rate.*

Then, your next question "then why not continue them?" basically removes any sort of "short term" modifier that you wanted in the first place.  The argument against keeping them is that it amounts to increased debt, and that the money might be better "spent" elsewhere.

Which gets us to the next question- how does taxing/printing money help the economy?
It helps the economy in that it goes straight to the demand curve.  Basically, the more stuff that is produced and sold, the better off our economy is.  The choice is between having more cash in consumer's hands to buy Coca-Cola, or allowing Coke to keep more from every can sold.  My argument is (and always has been) that most of the people arguing we will all be better off if Coke keeps more from every can of Coke sold are either highly educated and happen to own shares of Coke, or not particularly qualified to speak on the issue.

Then, the question about whether the stimulus should have had a bunch of tax cuts- it's the same question, but framed a different way.  Again, I don't know the answer, but it's definitely not obviously "yes".

Finally, regarding "deregulation", that seems like a totally separate issue.  You might argue that with more regulation in the first place, the stimulus would have been unnecessary.  Not sure what it's worth, but I think you'd be echoing Alan Greenspan if you took that position.

In summary- I don't really know anything.  I do know that some of the conclusions I've heard are wrong, or at least not clearly right.  And, I really object to labels- (not saying you're guilty of this), but we wrote briefly about the mosque.  A bunch have people have made up their minds knowing nothing more than the religion of the people behind it, without understanding the religion.  In this particular issue, like two years ago w/ "socialists", Murdoch has spent the past year introducing "Keynesian" as a term to describe a bunch of people as outcasts lacking in common economic sense.



*You might argue that having more employees is a riskier position, and with taxes diminishing the maximum "reward" for a successful corporation, that the companies will hire fewer workers.  But, if you take the approach that dollar amounts are known (it costs x/hr. for an employee to make y widgets, and the price is z), then the optimal number of employees will be the same at any tax rate.

Did you read the article?

Tony,

I have a few things to say in response to your recent posts.  First is that "Keynesian" has become the new "socialist", in that it's thrown around in a semi-descriptive half-truth sort of way; I would lay 5-1 that the majority of people using it couldn't even define it.

A basic principle of Keynesian economics is that the invisible hand doesn't always work exactly right (that a bunch of self-interested actors, left to their own devices, won't necessarily lead us to an optimal position).  Sometimes, it's necessary for the government to step in and guide the economy, whether it's spending in one place, taxing in another, or cutting taxes someplace else.  My reading of her conclusion wasn't that we need to adopt a Reagan-esque (the myth, not the man- he actually spent a buttload of money) tax-cutting and spending-slashing policy- it was basically a "deficit be damned we need to do everything we can to breathe life into the economy now; cut taxes and spend".

I don't disagree that that might be a good short-term strategy, but it's obviously not sustainable in the long run.

The second thing I want to say is, even if Keynesians believed that it is important to steal from the rich and give to the poor, and assuming that Ms. Romer changed her beliefs, why is that like a smoking gun?  Just like the Muslims with no knowledge of what might go into the "Ground Zero Mosque (Eff you Jesus, America, and football)"  (which I think is the new official name for the thing) shouldn't be able to speak on behalf of the Muslims who want to build the thing, I don't think that her words should carry any more weight when she falls on the other side of an issue than they have for the past couple years.

Finally, to get back to the question that you asked a week ago, whether it could possibly be good for the economy to let some tax cuts expire, the short answer is yes.  The argument is:
(1) tax cuts will lead to less tax revenue (a position that's generally difficult, but not impossible, to argue with)
(2) all else being equal, less revenue will mean less of a surplus or a larger deficit (impossible to argue with- depending on a person's intellectual honesty, he might succumb to the temptation to throw "you liberals could just spend less" in there, but that would be ignoring the "all else being equal" part.  If you allow finger-pointing, then it gets very difficult to make subtle points)
(3) a larger deficit (or less of a surplus) makes it harder for the country to borrow money, it also means that there is less faith in the dollar, which will make it weaker relative to other currencies.  (tough to argue w/ this)
(4) if the dollar seems to be weakening, people w/ capital and the ability to invest elsewhere will, which will slow down the economy.

Basically, if you believe that a deficit is bad for the economy, then you have to be at least partly behind the idea that a tax cut could be bad for the economy.  If you don't believe that a deficit is bad for the economy, then you're probably not one of the people complaining about out of control spending.

The Ground Zero Mosque

I want to get up on my soapbox and speak briefly about the whole "ground zero mosque" controversy.  In my opinion, this is everything that's wrong with our dysfunctional mess of hyper-politicized news, including the fact that the news stations prey on people who are unwilling to even consider subtlety.

Let me start by saying I totally understand the initial reaction that the mosque being placed there is in poor taste.  The headline itself, "Ground Zero Mosque" is a funny mix of words that pulls out the xenophobia in me; I'd imagine it does the same thing to others, as well.  However, although the headline is true, it's my understanding that it's not exactly accurate.

First of all, according to a member of the forums at Slickdeals (I know, not exactly like citing case law), the area in question used to be a Burlington Coat Factory.  It's two blocks from "ground zero", but the site of the WTC is, apparently, huge.  According to this user, a two block radius from the WTC is a few square miles in NY- which has an incredibly dense population.  The proposed mosque will not be some substantial shrine to the terrorists- it will be one of a bunch of buildings, dwarfed by others up to 10 times as tall.

Further, the mosque itself sounds more like a YMCA than anything else- it apparently will have a swimming pool, a gymnasium, some shops, and other stuff.  Also, to contrast with the church nearby that the government is "not rebuilding", the investors here are paying for the whole thing and aren't breaking any zoning laws.  (the other church was apparently offered $60 million to rebuild and turned that offer down)

In my opinion, assuming all of this is true, the reality of the situation (nondescript building, one among many others in the area) is far different from a temple being constructed on the rubble of the WTC (the image I get when I read "Ground Zero Mosque").  With that in mind, I want to take a look at some of the other stuff being said.

First, there's the "admission" by some Muslims that this is a shrine to the terrorists.  Those Muslims aren't part of the committee behind this, so their thoughts are only speculation.  I don't like that the fact that someone is Muslim means that person can speak to the intent of every other Muslim out there.  I'll address this more later (when I talk about the initial terrorists themselves), but I know that I don't want a lazy white male Christian speaking on behalf of all other lazy white male Christians.  I don't think that a bunch of white business owners would be too happy about me admitting, on their behalf, that our country is racist and intentionally holds minorities down.  The fact that my skin is the same color doesn't give me some magical ability to read their minds.

Next, I want to talk about the freedoms we enjoy as a country.  I still don't know all of the amendments, but I'm pretty sure that the government isn't allowed to discriminate based on religion.  That means that you can't forbid Jews from building a temple someplace where you would allow Christians (or something very close to that).  Here, the problem isn't that there's going to be a place of worship in the area- the problem is that there's going to be a Muslim place of worship.

So, the question becomes- do we punish an entire group of people based solely on the acts of a few radicals who happen to practice the same religion?  The answer is obvious.  I know that this is a low blow, but we don't prevent Catholic churches from existing within a few blocks of schools, even though a few rogue priests were perverts.  I don't see a meaningful distinction here.

As a matter of fact, this situation isn't totally unprecedented.  Pearl Harbor was horrible- we had a lot of righteous angry energy, and we decided (in the name of anger and paranoia) to take it out on an entire group of people, most of whom had absolutely nothing to do with Pearl Harbor itself.  That reaction is something that I, as an American who wasn't even alive at the time, am ashamed of today.

I think that, if we figure out some way to prevent the mosque from being built, we will someday realize that we maximized our losses following September 11th.  In addition to the actual lives lost that day, we have already given up our time (see airport security), our common sense (again, see airport security), and a large chunk of our optimism.  If those who oppose this mosque emerge victorious, we will have also given away our principles and have exposed our national hypocrisy.  We will have treated a group of people worse than another, at the whim of the majority.  In less than a century, we've moved from throwing people in internment camps to integrating schools, to electing a black president.  I don't want to take a big step backwards.

On that note, I also want to complain briefly about the common thinking that president Obama "backpedaled" with his statements.  He first said that it would be legal for the mosque to be built (or something like that).  He then said that it's legal for the mosque to be built, but that he's not going to comment on whether or not it is poor taste.  Those two positions are hardly contradictory.  The man was a constitutional law professor- surely we can forgive him for basing his initial answer on a legal analysis of the merits of the situation, rather than how it will play among a bunch of brainwashed zombies who won't read past the headline.  Saying that something is legal is far from endorsing it.

Reply to The Warning

If two people come to two different conclusions about the same thing, there must be a reason.  If you're talking about a math problem, it's easy to retrace steps and find where the two people diverged, and it's clear which one of them was wrong.  For example, take 7 + 3 x 10.  If someone says that the answer is 100, you can tell that she added the 7 to the 3 before multiplying, and that was a mistake.  There's even a correct way to describe each step.  When you multiply 3 and 10, you're finding the product.  when you add 30 to 7, you're finding the sum.

With the topics that we've been touching on so far, it's way more difficult to figure out where the thought processes diverge, but they obviously do.  An event happens, and for whatever reason, person A chooses to view it through the filter A (Fox News), person B chooses to view it through filter B (say, CNN).  Once the facts that either filter chooses to relay make it to person A and B's brain, they both process the facts and make their decision based on their own set of values.  There's also other sorts of noise that may influence things.  If person A or person B hears person C's opinion on the matter, they might be inclined to agree or disagree based on the level of respect they have for person C.

Anyway, the point of all of this is, at every step, person A and person B are making a decision.  Person A chooses Fox News because he thinks it's better than CNN.  Implicit in that decision is a relative lack of respect for CNN.  When the facts are being pondered, a person's values dictate what is and is not important.  In forming our opinions, we are acting as judges, and our verdicts are the sum of multiple smaller judgments.  For example, a person might say that it's more important for gay people to be able to say that they're married than it is to protect the definition of marriage.  In doing so, it's hard to believe that someone can come to the opposite conclusion without "missing" something.

Now, the methods we might use to convey this sentiment vary, but the feeling is universal.  Someone might excessively use quotation marks as a relatively subtle way to challenge the legitimacy of something, someone else might choose a more blunt method.  Is there a difference between:  "How's your 'son'?" and flat out saying "I think your wife cheated on you?"  Maybe, but not a significant one.

Thus far, with this blog, my posts have been fairly blunt.  I haven't gone out of my way to offend anyone, but I also haven't gone out of my way to soften anything up.  I know that there's not always an exactly right answer, but if we can get back to the math problem example, we're making different choices from the get go.  One of us is adding 7 to 3, the other is multiplying 3 by 10.  I think that this blog has a chance to be interesting if we can avoid the superficial "agreeing to disagree" and start talking about and maybe even attacking thought processes and values.

I would love for all of us to say "This is how I see it and this is how I got there.  You're wrong because of X".  Then the next person responds by saying "my thoughts on X are right because of Y", and so on down the train.  X and Y could be anything, and defending the branches we thought as we came to our conclusions, I think, will be more interesting than parroting someone else's thoughts.  One side-effect of this process is that the questioning might eventually rub an open nerve.  (I also think it might be interesting to periodically explore why the nerve itself is open)

Anyway, I would love for you to continue to contribute to this blog, but if you expect your values to be characterized as fundamental truths that are out of bounds, then it's not going to work.  You haven't talked about prop 8 yet, but expect me to ask you where the definition of marriage that you advocate comes from, and whether or not that's something that should be separate from the state.  Likewise, I expect you to challenge me: If I have a problem with single-issue voters, how come I don't have a problem w/ "Rock the Vote"?  

Anyway, moving forward, I really do want to get try and have deeper discussions even at the expense of brushing open nerves.  However we do it, though, let's just be honest.  If you think I've been brainwashed, say it.  Let's not say "Good sir, I do believe that your "daughter's" BMI is a tad high", and then act like we didn't just call someone's wife a slut and daughter fat.

Reply to the Reply

First, I want to address the assertion that the question is really about the definition of marriage, like it's a pop-quiz or something.  Sure, it's possible that the average person might say that a marriage is when a man and a woman put rings on each others' fingers and decide not to see other people.  That's one definition, but it's superficial and it shouldn't be the end of the discussion.  That would be like saying that poker is about having a better hand than everyone else.

You can put together another 4 paragraph semantic argument, and talk about something being "indirect", but we both know that prop 8 was aimed right at homosexuals.  The result of it passing wasn't something obscure, like a dog not being able to marry a cat- the result was that a man could no longer marry a man.  The assertion that it's just a proposition aimed at (re-re)defining marriage that might indirectly impact homosexuals, if that's the assertion you're making, is a lie.

Second, I want to talk about this idea that there's a bunch of social engineering (policy) behind not letting dudes marry dudes; that the government doesn't need to incentivize marriage for gays because there won't be any kids, or that the government shouldn't incentivize it because then everyone would be gay and the human race would die out.  On the surface, that seems to make sense, but I want you to tell me three things that gay people don't have access to through civil unions or something that is available to married people.  I'll bet you can't do it. If there aren't any conventional social engineering carrots to be gained by allowing "marriage" to apply to the gays, then (1) that argument doesn't hold water, and (2) it starts to really like prop 8 exists solely to strip status from homosexuals.

Thirdly, let's look at the problems with society and/or marriage that don't seem big enough to fire people up.  Some large percentage (again, too lazy to look this up) of marriages between men and women end up in divorce, even with young kids involved.... Men cheat on their wives all the time; the opposite is also true.  Last week, 1saleaday had a gold-plated ring on sale for $3 (+5 shipping).  I was only half-joking when I offered to buy them for a bunch of guys coming out for a bachelor party next weekend because it would help pick up chicks.  I could go on; I just find it ridiculous that marriage has just kind of existed for the last however many years- it's been made fun of by every single sitcom ever- even your post had the classic "be careful what you wish for" sentiment, men have been beating their wives and cheating on them, women have been doing the same, there are websites devoted to matching up married men w/ married women.  All of this happens and people shrug their shoulders.  But if gay people want to get married, that gets everyone out to the polls- suddenly, marriage is something sacred that must be protected.

Finally, I want to talk about the assertion that it's lazy to dismiss a person's vote because he's dumb, or has different motives.  My question is, simply, "why?"  A frequent rallying cry on fox news is this idea that a president can retain power by establishing a welfare state.  If you're harming a few and helping the masses, the theory goes, the masses will never vote against you, and the poor doctors and lawyers and small business owners simply won't be able to protect themselves. Compare that to this situation.  If it's a problem that someone's going to try to retain power by pandering to the unwashed masses through handouts, is that somehow worse/different than pandering to the bigots to get something bigoted to pass?  I can't see where you can draw a distinction that doesn't make the second example worse.  At least, theoretically, you might be helping the poor through some form of wealth transfer.

It's been a few days

I was planning on giving me cowriters a chance to chime in with something, but they've said nothing the past few days, so here I am again.  I'm going to try and keep this brief, but I did want to at least address Prop 8.  There are two points that I'd like to make:  First, I think it's ridiculous that it even existed in the first place.  There might be some legal merit to the pro-prop 8ers argument, but morally, I think that it just falls apart.  Second, I want to complain briefly about our legal system; about the fact that something as serious as this can be gamed, and that the pro-gay side seems to have a flawed gameplan.

Ok, first with prop 8 itself.  It seems like there are a few different kinds of people who were arguing for prop 8.  The easiest to dismiss were the flat out bigots.  People who don't like gays and would do anything to marginalize them.  I know that the constitution would frown upon this, but I think that those people should be marginalized; at the very least, we should take their right to vote away.  It frustrates me so much that you can have an intelligent person sit down, weigh the pros and cons of something, and cast a vote, and then Cletus Van Damme can come in right behind him and cancel him out.  I don't have a great solution for this, but it still pisses me off.  If you just threw the flat-out bigots out of the voting, prop 8 would have lost at first anyway.

There are a couple other subsets of people who seem to vote against it.  Rather than listing every group, though, I want to focus on the only one that I think makes sense: the people who are afraid that gay marriage will make gayness more acceptable- that it will somehow lead to more people being gay.  In a perfect world, I would require a person who was going to vote that way to confess to something along the lines of "if it weren't for peer pressure, I would be a homo myself".  If they say something like "that's ridiculous", then my response would be "you're a liar".  Either you're lying about your own repressed homosexuality, or you're lying about your reason for voting, and you belong in line w/ Cletus.

Also, the arguments that are made are just so offensive- The "slippery slope" argument, that allowing gay marriage is only one step away from promoting pedophilia or bestiality.  That's just flat-out ridiculous (and I know a thing or two about ridiculous arguments, I once wrote a paper advocating the removal of the soft-serve machines from my college cafeteria b/c the "freshman 15" were costing the young ladies attending school there thousands of dollars in future earnings.)  Anyway, the reason that I say these arguments are ridiculous is there's no relation between homosexuality and pedophilia or beastophilia.  If anything, there's a closer link between catholocism and pedophilia :p  I know that's a low-blow, but I can't help but put myself in the shoes of some gay person; it would enrage me to be compared to someone who likes to get boned by horses or bone little kids.

On to the legal system itself.  Like everything else, I don't have a solution, but it sucks that now this case is going to be escalated (eventually to the supreme court), and instead of there being seven independent legal scholars up there, we have seven people who were hand-picked by someone who, by definition, is wrapped up in the ridiculousness that is politics.  I know that some justices have changed their perspectives since getting to the court, but some certainly haven't (and I'm not just complaining about the conservative justices).  In this case, it appears as though there is plenty of law on either side of the debate for an intelligent person to make a sound legal argument.  That means that the supreme court isn't compelled to rule one way or another, so they're going to be going based on their own personal beliefs.  There will be a majority, and there will a dissenting opinion.  I just hope that Scalia and Thomas are joining or writing the dissent, not the decision.

Finally, to the game itself.  If you win, you obviously can't appeal a case (there are probably some exceptions, but I was absent the day they taught the law in law school).  So, until the gays attacked prop 8 (and won), there was no way for a higher court to make a ruling.  There's probably something compelling them to attack sooner, rather than later (something like the statute of limitations), but with a Democrat in the White House, I think they should have waited.  All of the judges are old dudes and ladies.  Any one of them could have a heart attack at any time, not to mention the fact that they could die in a car accident, plane wreck, home invasion, any way that the average person might die.  From an "advancing your own agenda" point of view, the fact that there's a Democrat president means that any judge dying isn't a bad thing.  If it's someone who leans left, his replacement will be the same.  If he leans right, his replacement will vote the other way.  It seems like, as of now, the court leans a little bit right.  If I were trying to maximize the chance that prop-8 remained dead, I would have waited until the last possible second to get things rolling.

Also- this seemed topical.  The book "The Nine" talks an awful lot about the extraordinarily political nature of the supreme court.  I read it a while back, but I've lost my copy.  If you're pressed for something to read, it's worth the $11 that amazon is charging.

The assailant responds

I was going to try and head to bed a little early tonight, but after being accused of assailing both traditional values and economic policy, I felt compelled to respond.  (I would like to note that I, too, work full time)  Actually, I first felt compelled to look up the word "assailed" and confirm that it's some derivative of "assault".  Then I felt compelled to respond.

Let me begin (continue?) by saying that I generally try to avoid assailing anything.  I have no problem with traditional values- the first post in question had more to do with brainwashing than anything else (to catch up, the post in question is here).  If a person believes that students should be responsible at an early age, great.  My issue was that the questionnaire went so much further than that.  I doubt that a person who fell anyplace left of "far right" on the political spectrum (yes, including someone who happened to lie in the center) and answered the questionnaire honestly would be able to get a job at the school.  If every single person in a position of authority is far-right, then how are students supposed to have an intelligent discussion or develop their own opinions?

More interesting, though, is the assertion that things are rarely as simple as they seem on the surface.  I couldn't agree with that more.  Even if none of you fools who happen to read this ever click on a damn ad, I will consider this blog a success if we can at least stimulate a deeper level of thinking and dialog.

The trouble is, I don't really know how to do that.  The trouble with trying to have a discussion about politics is that it's so damn hard to know what is accurate, and what isn't.  I know this has gotten cliche (shoot, even Starcraft II makes fun of it), but Fox News' level of bias is roughly equivalent to that of a beat sports writer.  Excuse the contrived example, but imagine that the grim reaper showed up at your house and offered to spare your life if you could choose the story with less spin- then he handed you a printout from raiders.com and a printout from Foxnews.com (or any of Murdoch's other properties, including the WSJ).  I might eventually choose the Fox article, but the fact that a person would have to actually look at the article and think about it hopefully illustrates my point.*

*In all fairness, I don't really watch any other news stations, and I only watch Fox when my father-in-law is over.  It's entirely possible that I'm a hippie who is less sensitive to liberal propaganda, and they're all equally guilty of this.  Actually, it's likely.

The reason for that rant wasn't to just complain about cable news, it was to illustrate how hard it can be to figure out what the truth is.  With football, at least, the Raiders are 5 weeks away from watching Chris Johnson run through their improved defense for 300+ yards, and we can start to really appraise their playoff hopes.  When they're mathematically eliminated in week 13, we can look back at the stuff posted on raiders.com this summer and know what was totally inaccurate.  On the other hand, with Obama, there never will be a stat sheet.  Even if Obamacare eventually materializes and it's the key to utopia, Fox will run a story on how little progress the pharmaceutical companies have made in the past few years because their incentives have been destroyed.

Frankly, I don't know if we can have a deeper discussion, because I don't know how practical getting to that point might be.  I do know what we shouldn't do: we shouldn't link articles to make our arguments for us.  I think we should realize that the news stations exist not because they're doing the work of god, but for some other reason.  If the person pulling the strings is motivated by profit, then there's always going to be that incentive to run stories that his audience wants to hear.  Therefore, I guess that the first step in having a deeper discussion would be to unplug from the cable news.  If we want to debate something, the easy way out is to click over to our propaganda machine of choice and print out an article written by someone who decided to whore out his intellect and/or reputation in his old age.  I think the better debate, though, comes from taking 5 or 6 steps back and figuring out what, exactly Keynesian means or what the Laffer Curve is, rather than saying that the Laffer Curve predicts X.  If we understand things on that level, we can intelligently talk about whether a tax cut for the rich might actually yield more tax revenue.

Maybe it's not practical to have that level of discussion on this blog; that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be awesome.

The real danger of the TEA Parties

So this evening my wife was going through the mail and she got a note from the county assessor back in CA.  Our condo's assessed value continues to drop (yay!), but what spurred this entry was the fact that the note mentioned the Prop-13 value of the home.  To make a long story short, Prop 13 pisses me off, and it reminds me why a person might want to be cautious before jumping on the TEA Party bandwagon.

In case you're not familiar, proposition 13 dates back to about 1980, and basically limits the amount by which the assessed value of home may increase every year.  It starts with the value of the home when you buy it, and the rate of increase is something like 2%.  (I could probably look that up, but this is my blog, so I'm just going to wing it)  On its face, that doesn't seem bad or good- it's only when you look at the application of the rule that you can see where a problem might arise.

On a very basic level, it limits a revenue stream for the state.  Some people might see that as good (what the state doesn't have it can't waste).  I don't agree with that, but I don't see it as particularly nefarious.

Where it starts to piss me off is when you consider how the rule might play out.  First of all, look at who it actually helps- it helps someone who has owned his house for long enough that the assessors' opinion of its worth is something greater than the original value plus 2% per year.  Who doesn't it help?  People who are renting, people who have recently purchased a new home, and people whose homes have dropped in value to something below what they paid for them.  So, if you just finished school and are just starting out in the working world, it's not working for you.  Just retired and want to downsize?  Not working for you.  Do you have a mansion in Bel Aire that has been in the family for decades?  You win!  Your property tax bill is half what it might otherwise be.

If that weren't bad enough, what really pisses me off is the fact that it was sold as a way to help old people on fixed incomes from losing their homes due to rapidly escalating property taxes.  That's an appealing story, but it ignores reality.  If the house has increased in value so much that taxes have doubled, the old people living there could always sell the house and have a nice chunk of money.  What's more, I would bet that most old people who live on fixed incomes would fall into the group that downsized after the kids moved out, or who rent.  Those people aren't helped at all by this.  As a matter of fact, if you consider that tax money is used in a way that theoretically helps everyone, everyone who isn't helped by Prop 13 is, in fact, hurt by it.  Whether it's because more of the tax burden is shifted to these people to compensate for the money saved by the mansion-squatters, or due to the fact that there's less money to go around to fix roads or fund schools, your neighbor saving tax money doesn't help you.

What's insulting about the whole thing is the fact that this likely only really benefits a few rich, powerful, and intelligent people.  CA is in the middle of a budget crisis, but because the people who gain the most from it are opinion-makers (or at least know someone who knows someone), any mention of this in the mainstream or fringe news channels will describe it as the "third rail" and note that prop 13 is untouchable.  Sure, Arnold can lay off thousands of workers or drop their pay to minimum wage, but it would be political suicide to allow some hypothetical grandma's property tax bill to increase by more than 2%

You might be wondering how this ties back into TEA Parties.  It ties in because this is the type of thing that gets passed when there are a few very intelligent puppet masters and a lot of emotional puppets.  People are mad because the country isn't perfect, and they think that it's the government's fault.  I wouldn't be surprised to see the TEA Party movement get behind a bill that "limits the size of government" but also happens to hugely favor the financially elite, and disfavor the hard-working masses who can't see the forest for the trees.

Strange Questionnaire

So I had planned on my first post being an introduction, just in case we someday get a fan or a follower or something.  Yesterday, though, something strange happened, so I'm going to start with that and get to the intro later.

Briefly, my wife attended a job fair for a well-respected and high-performing private elementary school.  Before she could even sit for her interview, though, she had to fill out a pre-employment questionnaire.  This isn't all that unusual, but the questions definitely were.  I'd post the whole thing, but there's a copyright on the bottom and there are some litigious mofos on the internet these days, so instead I'll just summarize:

The questionnaire was a liberal-hunt.  The questions it asked ranged from stuff like "should a parent pay her kids an equal amount of allowance if they don't do an equal amount of work?", to making a determination of what's more important to our nation's health:  Globalization or Sovereignty (A word that I've never spelled correctly without spell-check), to an incredibly subtle "In two sentences describe the benefits of socialism".

In my opinion, such a questionnaire is ridiculous.  First of all, just because a person thinks that it's OK for a mother to redistribute wealth among her children doesn't mean that person necessarily thinks that we should live in a communist state.  Second, (and I'm just guessing that there are right and wrong answers to the questionnaire, which seemed to be the case) it seems misguided to want an entire staff to share the same political views.  How are those students supposed to develop real critical thinking skills if they only see one perspective throughout elementary school?  Especially when you consider that most parents who would consider sending their children there probably have the same perspective, I don't think that "brainwashed" is an inappropriate term to be throwing around.

I'm sure that the other authors will have something to say about this, and I'm looking forward to an interesting and disrespectful conversation.

Finally, to test this more than anything, I'm including a link to the Football Outsiders Almanac, from Amazon. At about $15, it's cheaper than it would be direct from the Football Outsiders website, and it's an amazingly insightful book for a serious football fan.  Instead of the superficial crap you see in all of the fantasy football magazines (Tom Brady is accurate, Chris Johnson is fast), they take a look into a lot of subtleties of the game.   They have a lot of cool stuff going on, but the most interesting thing is that they try to measure the performance of non-marquee positions, and they also use unconventional stats.  For example, when you're watching a game, you know that a carry of 3 yards on a crucial 3rd and 2 is better than a carry of 5 yards on 3rd and 7.  They measure and adjust for that.  So, without boring you more- spend the $15 and buy the book.