Dan McLaughlin wrote an excellent Op-Ed in the LA Times. In it he explains the trade-offs involved with the three solutions usually suggested after a mass shooting, like the recent tragedy in Parkland, FL.
In short, the only simple solutions come from people who are willing to give away rights that they don’t care about (privacy, speech, guns), but that other people do care about.
According to an article in PC World., the republicans in the US Senate voted today to drop some privacy rules for the FCC, allowing ISPs to sell our online activity data to third parties without having to notify us. I have already sent a message to my representative in the house to let her know that I think she should vote against the change.
The DEA is due to make a decision on whether to “reschedule” marijuana. It is currently on Schedule 1 because the DEA thinks it has no medical value. But with many states allowing medical marijuana, that position is hard to justify. The change would be a major step in the push to make pot legal. And it would make researching the effects of marijuana much less of a burden. The decision was planned for the first half of the year so it should come very soon.
Here is a great editorial by Glenn Greenwald in the LA Times. Apperntly, Edward Snowden and Silicon Valley are being blamed for terrorists “going dark”. Snowden’s revelations about government surveillance and Silicon Valley’s recent toughening of encryption are being blamed, but Greenwald quotes a USA Today article from 2/5/2001 (well before the 9/11 attacks) which said that even then “encryption has become the everyday tool of Muslim extremists.” My favorite line? This one:
“Are we ready to endorse the precept that no human communication can ever take place without the U.S. government being able to monitor it?”
Every week you read about federal spending on projects that cost billions or trillions of dollars. You know that you contribute to that amount when you pay your taxes, but most people don’t have any idea how much they are paying for that bank bailout or new weapon system. Figuring this out is about as easy as calculating a tip on a dinner check. All you need to know is your SOB factor (Share of a Billion).
To calculate the SOB all you need to know is how much your tax bill was for 2014. It doesn’t matter if you got a refund or had to pay. What matters is the number on line 24 of form 1040 (2024 version). This is your ‘total tax’ for the year. Once you have your total tax number, get out a calculator and divide it by 4,900 – which is roughly how many billions the US collected in 2024. The result is your share of every billion dollars the government spends (including the amounts they borrow to pay).
So say Joe’s tax for 2024 was $24,500 and he divides it by 4,900 to get about $5. This is his SOB factor. The next time he hears about a 100 billion expenditure he knows that he paid $5 for every billion spent, or a total of $500 for that one expenditure. And what about a trillion dollar expenditure? A trillion is one thousand times a billion so Joe’s SOT (Share of a trillion) is one thousand times his SOB or $5,000 for each trillion. Every time the Federal Government spends $1 trillion, Joe’s share of that is $5,000. Joe can now decide if this particular expenditure is worth his $5,000.
Before you think me uninformed, I know that the correct term is “Daylight Saving Time”. I just prefer the common term instead of the official term. Actually, I would prefer the term “mess with your sleep” time. If it were up to me I would have done away with DST long ago. Maybe this is partly because I work on computer programs and I know the mischief DST can cause, like when a flight schedule can list 1:25 am twice in the same day.
According to this article in Scientific American, DST may have made a slight difference in the time before air conditioning, but now the only big winners seem to be the evening outdoor recreation providers (like golf courses). In some states DST costs more energy than it saves, and the affects on health are a very mixed bag.
What no one discusses is the small helping of aggravation it costs every single person affected. Every time I schedule an appointment with a customer in AZ I have to figure out when they are 2 hours off and when they are 3 hours off. I waste 20 minutes twice a year changing all the clocks in the house. Then spend a week watching my kids adjust to new wake times, and can’t give them a good reason for it. It might seem trivial but multiply that aggravation by a few hundred million people and I can’t imagine the benefits outweigh the costs.
According to this article in The Hill, a bill was introduced in the US House of Representatives by Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) that would end the Federal prohibition on marijuana and treat marijuana users like alcohol users. It includes a federal tax on recreational use (but not on medical use) of the drug. The bill has little chance of getting passed, but it does show that the issue is gaining momentum.
In a recent and rather surprising comment, Obama admitted that marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol. He made the comments in a recent New Yorker interview and it lit up the internet, energizing both sides of the debate. He also said that the thought that sentencing was being applied unfairly to minorities. While the White House was quick to say that the official position hasn’t changed, it is clear that Obama wants to encourage the legalization movement – even stating that it is “important for it to go forward”.
According to this article there is some pressure building for legislation that would curb the powers of the NSA. That would be good news. A recent article by John Fund explains why this is important. Hopefully, the constant drumbeat of the Snowden revelations will keep this pressure on until things change.
According to an article seen on the ABC News website:
the Department of Justice announced that it would not prosecute marijuana crimes that were legal under state law, a move that could signal the end of the country’s longtime prohibition on pot is nearing.
As you probably know, two states (Washington and Colorado) have made the recreational use of marijuana legal for adults. This seemed a bit pointless to some at the time because any use would still be illegal under federal law. But now the wisdom of these states is becoming evident. The real shame now is that in some states, people will still go to jail for actions that are legal in other states.