The Flow of Consciousness

By this time next week, the initial hullabaloo of the election will be finished and hopefully—barring a Florida-2000-scale mess—the United States electoral college will have chosen a new president for the nation. The people will have spoken, having chosen from the two candidates the media has spoonfed to them since the candidates’ nomination.

On one hand, we have Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois. The Democrat hails from Chicago, where he was a lawyer before finding himself in the Senate in 2000. Opponents have connected him with various unsavory characters throughout his short political career, yet the man overpowers their cries with his charisma and eloquence.

Obama is basically a socialist. His plan to tax the wealthiest Americans more than the poorest is a clear indicator of his desire to redistribute wealth amongst the people, as if his plan for universal healthcare wasn’t socialist enough to prove it. He’s in favor of pulling troops out of Iraq, but, to my knowledge, he plans to keep them in Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, and all those other 137 countries where we have bases. He’s in favor of more economic regulation and more Federal meddling in education.

Obama has, however, supported network neutrality and wants to see more transparency in the federal government, but that doesn’t really mean anything. There was a study a while ago (I don’t recall if I blogged about it or just twittered it) which showed that transparency in government does little to reduce the corruption.

Honestly, Obama wants to do good. He’s just not willing to stay within the rights granted to the Federal government in the Constitution. In fact, I’ve not heard Obama say the word “constitution” in all of the debates I’ve watched.

Then, there’s this elderly guy from Arizona by the name of John McCain. He’s the senior senator from the state; a warrior by training. He was a soldier in Vietnam, staying in the Hanoi Hotel for several years. He’ll remind Americans—"my friends," as he calls them—of that every chance he gets, even though it has no bearing on his policies whatsoever. His supporters also tout this at every opportune moment. Annoyingly.

McCain promises to lower taxes, like Obama. The former is lowering them for everyone, especially the $250K+ crowd who already pays more. The latter actually plans to raise them for that crowd, while heavily lowering them for everyone else.

Before having an orgasm because of this tax thing, keep reading.

McCain however wants to tax healthcare benefits. Yes. Insurance. He’ll give you back money from your income taxes, but he’ll turn around and take it all away in insurance taxes.

McCain is a warrior. He fights wars. He wants to keep our foreign presence active for eternity, no matter the cost. Oh, and he makes laws like McCain-Feingold, which he’s almost broken several times.

McCain would give an education credit—a voucher—to every parent who wanted one so that they can send their children to another school if their school is failing. Yes, this means that McCain fully supports No Child Left Behind. That support alone is sufficient to lose him support of any teacher who is in his or her right mind.

Short story: both McCain and Obama’s tax policies suck. McCain’s is better for the rich, Obama’s is better for the poor and middle class. Neither is fair, really. Neither really wants to do anything sensible and new about foreign policy. Both voted in favor of the bailout, so neither has a sufficient grasp on non-Keynesian economics to understand why that was a bad move. Neither acknowledges that the Federal government has screwed up education royally.

Shorter story: Neither McCain nor Obama are fit for the office of President of the United States of America.

I’ll not be voting for either, and I urge you to vote otherwise, too. I prefer to vote for a candidate based on principle, not on fear that another who is worse would win. I vote for a candidate as if I am personally responsible for everything that candidate does, good and bad.

If more people voted like that, we’d have a good president for the first time in a long while and his (or her) name would not be Obama nor McCain.

My predictions: Obama will win. It will be a 8-9 point difference. That is, if the election isn’t stolen. In that case, McCain will win by less than 1 point. Obama would face an assassination attempt before the end of the first year, because some crazy redneck doesn’t like the new black president. It won’t succeed. McCain probably won’t survive the four years, as his health is already arguably declining.

I’d rather have President Biden than President Palin. The latter scares me more than anything, even more than a President Huckabee (at least Huckabee supported the fair tax).

Locally, Jason Altmire will defeat Melissa Hart for the PA 4th Congressional seat by double digits. He’s worlds better and will make for excellent opposition when I potentially run for Congress sometime after 2010, when I turn 25.

I don’t care much for the other races, other than a really local one (Michelle Brooks will defeat Duke Whiting…again in the PA 17th state legislative district). Brooks is pretty cool (met her in July in Erie) and opposes Real ID, so she’s got my vote.

I’ve learned a lot in the past year. I’ve become an independent person, living on my own and making my own money.

At this time last year, I was living in the Phi Kappa Tau house at Westminster College while taking a single graduate-level education class at Robert Morris University. I had just graduated from Westminster, and had taken during my last semester a class on American history and literature from 1492 to 1877.

The content of the class was heavily focused on the independence of the colonies, the American revolution, the founding of the nation, and the building of it. We spent only the last two of the 14 week semester on the civil war, but I didn’t mind. The civil war is interesting, but what caught my interest far, far more was the actual reasons for separating from Britain and the persons behind the movement.

I read Jefferson’s and Franklin’s autobiographies, as well as Paine’s Common Sense. At the onset of the class, I read Emerson’s “American Scholar” even though it wasn’t written until well into the 1800s. All of these documents affected me and my concept of scholarship, liberty, justice, and freedom.

It wasn’t until October or so when I heard of a Pittsburgh-native Texas Congressman named Ron Paul, an OB/GYN who’d found a calling in public service. Having recently read up on Barack Obama, I was interested to see who’d be challenging the senator from Illinois (yes, I called that early).

I was impressed with Dr. Paul’s platform. His focus on the Constitution and the restoration, or rather, a return to the observation of its powers, as well as his persona and depth of knowledge—and ability to explain his economic and foreign policies convinced me that he is the man to support for president of this great country. I drew a lot of lines between his desire for a conservative budget and non-interventionist foreign policy and those of the aforementioned forefathers and their peers. Dr. Paul really is, in policy and belief, a founding father.

Since that time, I’ve read some of Dr. Paul’s books, as well as books, blogs, and other works by other liberty-minded folks and fully believe in the restoration of traditional American liberty and a return to the traditional American foreign policy of non-interventionism and the traditional American free market economy. I hope to attend the R3VOLution March in D.C. on July 12 to hear Dr. Paul speak and participate in a rally and demonstration to show that 15,000 Americans want real change in Congress, not the superficial change promised by the remaining candidates.

Something which I recently realized I take for granted is my own freedom and independence: my freedom to speak my mind, my freedom to own a firearm, my freedom from unwarranted search and seizure, and the many other rights granted by the Constitution to me and every other American citizen. Conscription is all but dead here, and it’s fairly widely-accepted that there never will be another draft.

I took a job in May at a company in Pittsburgh and moved there, too. I have many coworkers, but only a few actually live in the US and work locally.

Recently, a foreign coworker of mine finished a degree in computer science at a top technical university in his homeland. He graduated on Saturday, and moved into a new flat on Monday to live his life as an independent person. Wednesday, he got a call, and was told he’d been drafted by his country’s military for compulsory service. For the next year, he’ll be patrolling the streets. He won’t have access to a computer for weeks or even months, if at all. He won’t be able to practice his art of crafting code. He won’t be able to enjoy the freedoms I enjoy. “I have no words,” he said to me. “All this higher education, and I’ll be police,” he said.

Another coworker, who left that country before he was conscripted, said that he would not be treated as we’d think. Our American military is a heaven compared to this former Soviet country’s military. There would be beatings meant to “toughen him up” and whatnot—the guy weighs just more than 100 pounds and doesn’t have much muscle on him. He’d not have the health care, benefits, and leave that American troops get. He’d not have much of anything except what the military gives him.

I know that duty is duty and, if asked, I would probably join the American military if I saw that I could be of use during a time of just war. However, since the US has been in but three just wars (one of which, WWI, is arguable, though, depending on the company discussing it), I doubt that I would join the military. My local coworkers and I want to help this man, but there’s nothing we can do.

While I’ll be enjoying Independence Day today and returning work and my apartment in Pittsburgh next week, yesterday was his last day working for us for a year. We’ll be glad to have him back when his conscription comes to a close; when he is once again independent.

Warning: this article gets a little ranty, but please, bear with me and help improve my thoughts by commenting.

Doc Searls of Linux Journal linked recently in his article Is government open source code we can patch? to an article by Britt Blasser entitled “Oh, if only government went in for an open source make-over…”. The article indirectly cites through a reference to Phil Hughes’ own Our Internet article two articles, FCC: Moving Beyond Network Neutrality and Our Internet!, by Bob Frankston, who Doc Searls recently interviewed for Linux Journal in Beyond Telecom (non-free registration required, subscribers can get it free).

In his article, Searls says:

Democracy is by nature “our government”. The open source twist on that we put it together and can hack improvements to it. Think of elected officials as committers and maintainers and you start go get the idea.

The analogy isn’t perfect, because by nature open source code is purely practical: it has to work. While government often does not. All government is buggy. In the worst cases it crashes outright and is replaced or supplemented by corrupt alternatives.

This analogy is fairly strong. However, commenter Frymaster supplies an addendum which strengthens it:

The US Constitution itself is open source, if you will, and editable. “The Framers” intended that Americans would change it to meet changing times, hence the series of amendments covering key rights like voting, and, most importantly, consuming alcohol. But they set the bar high, requiring super-majorities in both houses of Congress PLUS each of the states.

The Constitution certainly is open source. We’re free to change it, and other countries, fledgling or long-established, are welcome to take our code—our elemental specification of government—and adapt, implement, and utilize it. We’d like to receive contributions back, because they might be worthwhile enough to include in the trunk code. Even if these modifications aren’t strong enough for trunk, they might be strong enough for that government to maintain as a branch.

The Constitution is inherently good. Some might argue that it is outdated, but these folks are in error and their sentiments should be dismissed if they believe that it is irrelevant and should not be followed. The Constitution establishes a rule of law, wherein all citizens of the land give rights to a union of states, called the United States of America. It establishes procedures for updating it through amendments, which require a majority vote not only by two small bodies of people, but a majority vote of the several states, as Frymaster reminds us. This amendment process keeps those two smaller bodies of 535 people from legislating away the rights of their constituents.

I digress.

A government can never truly be open source, at least realistically. There will always be secrets; unpublished code, per say. These secrets are matters of national defense: military operations during a time of declared war, location of the president and vice president so the two are rarely together (for obvious reasons).

However, most of the goings-on of the government should be open. Obama pushes for “open government.” Ron Paul pushes for less government and, presumably, open government, since there would be far less government to hide!

However, open source projects thrive on the involvement of the people. Our current election system does not encourage responsible voting. Take, for example, Pennsylvania’s primary election results. 90,836 PA Republicans voted for Mike Huckabee, who dropped out of the race March 4, 49 days prior to the election. This is like allowing all of the Linux users in PA, regardless of technical knowledge, vote on the addition of one of three kernel features, and giving them only the name of the feature—no description, background, author, codebase, language, performance evaluation, or source! Even more appropriate would be that the developer of the feature conceded that one of the other two features is more efficient and worthwhile than his own!

I’m not saying that only those in-the-know should be allowed the vote. Mistaking my words for that would be fallacious. I believe that every person deserves the right to vote. I believe that every person has the right to have evidence of their vote. I believe that every person has the right to request vote totals for every level of complexity in the elections system: precinct, county, congressional district, state, and federal.

As versatile and open as the Constitution may be—and yes, I believe that it may need some updating to reinforce personal liberty and states’ rights—the government and governance which exists now cannot be patched.

When working on a project, a developer comes to a point where he or she realizes that there is a major defect in the software. He or she (for sake of my fingers, I’m going to use he henceforth, pardon my faux pas) has two options: patch or rewrite. He knows there are serious bugs, bugs which are inherent in the design of the code, as it has been patched since it was written. These most of these patches were good things, but some introduced more bugs which have yet to be fixed.

Should the developer continue to patch the code? Or should he rewrite it, integrating the features of the old version with more manageable code and lessons learned since it was first written?

If he continues to patch it, he treats the problem, but may not actually fix the problem. The problem might be inherent, or the problem may be caused by a combination of other features.

If he rewrites it, he’ll spend a lot of time redoing work he’s already done, but the result will be a more efficient program with fewer bugs (hopefully) and more manageable, cohesive code base. Of course, this new version will have its bugs, too, but they may be easier to find if the code is more manageable.

What the United States needs is a rewrite. The foundations of our government are solid: the Constitution, capitalism and free market economy, liberty for all. These are like the basic functions that make a program tick, “the algorithm,” per say. There are other parts that work, too. However, the maintainers of our government have diverted our attention from the core of the government, preferring us to view the only the parts it wants us to see, i.e. the bling.

The founders—the original authors of the U.S. base code—have long since gone, and they would be disgusted by the mess that is the program and its code base—the federal government—today. Things aren’t going they way that they would have wanted, and there’s a growing part of the population which seeks to return the these ideas, to a set of ideas not much different in theory from the software philosophy of “do one thing and do it well.” The government is bloated, more bloated than any application to which I might possibly compare it.

The founders outlined in the Constitution—a white paper or base algorithm, if you prefer to keep up the programming analogies—the specific functions of the U.S. government. It outlined a process by which the white paper or algorithm itself could be changed to allow more functions or remove functions which endangered the users and their data. However, rather than use this process, the maintainers simply implement functions or remove functions without regard to the users’ opinions, data, or the fact that the users are supporting the maintainers financially.

A fork is nearly impossible. There is no more undiscovered land on the face of the Earth, and it would be difficult for a state to secede. It would be economically infeasible, as well as diplomatically infeasible. The citizens of the new country would have their rights and their government as the Constitution of the U.S.—and of their new country—defines, but they would not have the resources to be self-sufficient, and things imported would cost more.

Fortunately, our government is not setup like the Linux kernel maintenance group in that The President of the United States is not a benevolent dictator (at least not on paper, haha). There are, however, 50 branches of the U.S. kernel which all have their own quirks and maintainers. Like a few projects, perhaps the Debian project included, the U.S. government does have representatives, people who supposedly represent their constituents in the decision-making process having been chosen by those constituents.

The ears of the maintainer are closed. He doesn’t want hear from the users; the people. However, the representatives’ ears are open, and they must be, by definition. In order to change the course of the program; the United States, we, as users; citizens, must elect representatives who believe as we do and not settle for anyone lesser. These representatives will then make the decisions we would make if we were in their position, leading to a program which is more useful, usable, smaller, and most of all, open.

The Video Game Voters Network is at it again, this time sending letters to the presidential candidates.

I changed the title to Responsibility Education, Not Unconstitutional Regulation to more closely match how I feel about the policy.

Video Game Voters Network: Write the Candidates

Check out the Congressional letter-writing campaign, too!

I wish I could say that I wrote this, because it’s a fantastic overview of McCain’s FEC debacle caused by his own McCain-Feingold act. Colleen Smith wrote it, and if someone can find where this has been publicly posted, I’ll link to it. I’ve added a few things for clarification and edited for brevity.

Presidential candidate [McCain] (yes, candidate, not nominee) has a bumpy road concerning economics.

First, he admits not knowing economics very well (1) (2).

Then, he states that he knows economics very well (3) (4).

Apparently, the first statement holds true as he has now broken his own law and he will no longer have enough delegates to be the Republican nominee (5).

Chairman of the commission David Mason, however, warned McCain last month that his withdrawal request had not yet been granted. McCain has two problems with this issue:

1. If the FEC allows Mccain to withdraw from FED matching funds he will be revoked from many delegates in states that he was able to be on the ballot without the required number of signatures therefore he will lose any delegates for him in those states.
2. If the FEC doesn’t release him from matching funds he will be capped at 50 million dollars and will kill his run for president because he will not have the money to compete.

The problem is even more complicated than this. McCain used the matching funds eligibility to avoid having to collect signatures to qualify for ballot access in several states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Those state wins must be voided according to most experts on the issue. That means he does not have the necessary delegates. Ironic that it was his law (McCain-Feingold) that got him in this mess.

McCain broke the law.

Please sign the petition and take action to remove his delegates. UPDATE: Digg the petition, too.

The delegates in these states need to file the motion at their conventions for McCain to be revoked of all his delegates in those states for failure to comply with election ballot state law requirements.

Perhaps John McCain should consult with the ranking member of the House Finance Services Committee? If there is one person specifically expert enough to iron out John McCain’s financial blunders and to provide insight as to how to repair our nations economic problems it is the ranking member of the House Finance Services Committee.

McCain wants additional war spending and am interest rate of zero.

Where are we headed?

What can be done to soften the impact of the looming crisis?

And then there’s the irony of Petition Online’s advertising system.

Saberwolf of the Pittco Forums pointed out an interesting table on the Presidential issues in a Hillary or Obama thread.

It lists several issues and is very understandable. I might do a more in-depth post on it later today or this week.