Meanderings and punditry by a computer scientist with penchant for journalism, education, and politics
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.
*cricket* *cricket*
Ron Paul spoke on the House floor this past Thursday, February 14, explaining how Congress could easily enable competing currencies, thus removing the stranglehold of the Federal Reserve bank and improving the exchange rate of all of America’s currencies.
Paul sees three steps, summarized here:
Perhaps I placed too much faith in the Internet community. Perhaps I placed too much faith in people, hoping that they would read a document that takes no longer than 15 minutes to read—time well-spent, considering most people probably posted ye olde “tl;dr” or some other remark, or simply deleted the post, as the folks on the xkcd forums did. I guess I have a little more clout at Notebook Forums and StrafeRight.
Maybe I’m simply losing faith in America. People would rather spend 15 minutes watching five stupid YouTube videos than read—perhaps for the first time—the document that gives them the rights they so enjoy. No, I didn’t come to this realization now. I’ve known this for years. Post the Constitution Day could pretty much be considered a test of that.
Maybe I didn’t reach the audience I thought would care. I managed 12 diggs, a purple rating on Slashdot Firehose, and a single vote on Newsvine (my vote).
The US election system has become a farce. The media picks the two people who vie for president, because the media is entangled in government.
The only candidate worthy of my vote is Ron Paul. He is the only candidate—from either party—who has repeatedly stated that he promises to follow the Constitution. No other candidate has made such a promise.
That is, unless one considers an oath of office for congress to be a promise. McCain violated that promise Feb. 12 when he voted in favor of S. 2248, the FISA Amendment Act of 2008 (I wrote a letter yesterday to Senators Specter and Casey regarding it). Neither Clinton nor Obama voted, and Huckabee is not a senator (nor is Ron Paul). I can guarantee that, if present, Paul will vote against it when it comes to the House.
I already pointed out that the Democrat candidates didn’t reference the Constitution at all during a debate. McCain regularly violates the Constitution (look at his voting record!). At least Huckabee wants to amend the Constitution in order to push his evangelical agenda.
Maybe I’ll just march on Washington.
When XKCD first became popular, some of my friends said they thought it was me writing the comics. Hell, I agreed with them. I remember thinking to myself, “Wow, this guy is pulling thoughts out of my mind!”.* Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who felt this way, and it’s for this reason that the stick-figure comic has become immensely popular. I, personally, love the comic. It’s even inspired me to write/draw a few comics of my own, which I’ll probably post whenever class and work isn’t driving me nuts.
However, it appears that XKCD artist Randall Munroe and I finally have something on which to disagree.
Today, on his blag at xkcd.com, Randall Munroe endorsed Barack Obama.
His endorsement statement seemed to be largely in favor of the Illinois senator’s stance on open government:
Obama has shown a real commitment to open government. When putting together tech policy (to take an example close to home for xkcd) others might have gone to industry lobbyists. Obama went to Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons (under which xkcd is published) and longtime white knight in the struggle with a broken system over internet and copyright policy. Lessig was impressed by Obama’s commitment to open systems — for example, his support of machine-readable government information standards that allow citizens’ groups to monitor what our government is up to. Right now, the only group that can effectively police the government is the government itself, and as a result, it’s corrupt to the core. Through these excellent and long-overdue measures, Obama is working to fight this corruption.
This is a good thing: Obama’s support of open government is well-received.
I will concede that, of the remaining Democratic candidates, Obama is my favorite. Kucinich held that title until he dropped out last Friday.
However, parties matter very little to me. I became a Republican in order to vote for Ron Paul, and even wrote a HOWTO for Pennsylvanians who want to switch parties, as well.
I ask this, then, of Randall Munroe: Why not Ron Paul?
I don’t expect Randall to answer me personally, but I’d expect that before a public answer on his blag. I think I fail to understand his position based on such a short statement. If that issue is of utmost importance to Randall, then I can understand his endorsement—Ron Paul, as far as I know, isn’t as strong in this area, but Paul does wish for something which I feel is much better: an overall smaller government with less need to be secretive.
Note the use of the Munroe Notation for that quotation. He and I even agree on effective changes to English grammar.
I’m blogging from BlogHaus at the Bellagio. I met and spoke briefly with Robert Scoble, the (in)famous blogger who was recently kicked off of Facebook for scraping information with a script (Google it if you’re that interested). He and I have very, very opposing political views (he’s a Clinton fan apparently, given his reaction to the news that Clinton won New Hampshire’s primary election [I could be wrong, though], and I’m a Ron Paul fan). We did agree that Ron Paul does have a long shot now—Iowa and New Hampshire have spoken—but have differing views otherwise.
One person, Xavier of Notebooks.com, explained to me why the gold standard doesn’t work. I’m still trying to digest it, though.
In a nutshell, he explained that the reason the gold standard (or any other commodity) doesn’t work in our current economy is that its doesn’t take into account how we create wealth. The creation of wealth deals with assigning value to new creations. For example, if I create a web site and someone is willing to pay me $10M for it, then, essentially, I’ve created $10M worth of wealth—a lot. In a gold standard economy, or any other commodity, I’d need a lot of gold or that commodity. Even if there was, multiply this by a couple hundred web sites, or perhaps houses on beachfront property, and there’s not enough gold to match the value. If the value were instead matched to the available gold, then its value would be much, much less and everything would have a much, much lesser value. On the gold standard, the dollar would buy a lot more, but there would have to be a lot more smaller denominations in order to make up for the increased value of the dollar.
Essentially, the current monetary system is based on debt. If someone wants to mortagage a $1M house, the bank, the mortgage originator, and all other parties have to agree that that house is worth $1M, even if it was built for $1. If the bank gives the mortgage, it’s essentially created $999,999.
I’m finding it hard to digest, but I don’t have the base of knowledge to be able to dispute nor naivety to blindly accept. I need to investigate this more so I can better understand why Ron Paul is a proponent of it. I can understand if the reason for the gold standard is because the current way of doing things has some unconstitutional basis, but I need to understand why he wants it this way.
…they tell an agency how to spend money it already has.
Ron Paul uses earmarks, but does not trade earmarks for yes votes like other congresspeople do. In fact, most of the earmarks he uses are for programs that return money to his constituents.
Read more in In Defense of Ron Paul’s Earmarks at LewRockwell.com.
If Hillary wins, I’m moving.
I cannot ethically or morally stay in a place where art and freedom of expression are regulated. I know that American companies generate a large percentage of game content, but I will not give my tax dollars to a government that violates the first right it has explicitly granted to its citizens.
I wrote this to editor Carolyn Washburn as a response to the news that the Des Moines Register is excluding Dennis Kucinich from the newspaper’s debates this month.
Ms. Washburn,
I’m sure you have received a plethora of email from Dennis Kucinich supporters, and hopefully supporters of other candidates, as well. Personally, I support Republican Ron Paul, but feel that Kucinich is the cream of the Democratic crop.
“It was our determination that a person working out of his home did not meet our criteria for a campaign office and full-time paid staff in Iowa” is the quotation from the Register, and the article, “Kucinich, Top-Rated Democrat, Excluded From Des Moines Register Debate,” can be found in the PR Newswire/US Newswire archive.
This statement is quite astounding. I fail to see how formal campaign office and full-time paid staff have anything to do with elections. I fail to recall a section of any part of US election law that says that a candidate must have a campaign office with a full-time staff in order to be considered eligible for the presidency. These things are commonplace these days in our elections because of the cost of nationalizing a campaign and maximizing public attention given to the candidate.
I direct your attention to another industry: the software industry. How many companies are run from a developer’s basement? How many companies use the local Starbucks as an office? I can think of a few off-hand, including the company for which I work.
I applaud Kucinich for maximizing the amount of money he can spend on advertising and such by minimizing his physical presence. The Paul campaign has done something similar, and it has raised more money per dollar spent than any candidate in recent years, thanks to the efforts of people like Kucinich Iowa Field Director and State Coordinator Marcos Rubinstein who chose to work from their homes.
I applaud the Register for following the rule, that is, if this rule was pre-existing and stated outright. The problem I and others have is not with the enforcement, but with the flawed rule itself. I see the point to the rule–the Register wishes to deny the participation of people who would declare their presidency just so they can participate in the debate.
However, this rule affects a popular candidate–a federal congressman from a state which has birthed the most presidents, a congressman who is a nationally-known and nationally-supported, viable candidate for the presidency. The effects of this decision can only stifle the election process and cause readers, local and national, to question the Register’s credibility as an unbiased source of election coverage.
I deeply urge you and the Des Moines Register to reconsider this decision and choose to include Dennis Kucinich in the debate. I thank you for your time in reading my message.
–
Colin Dean
Former Editor-in-Chief, The Holcad
I’ve created a Facebook group for people who switched party affiliations to vote for Ron Paul.
Many states have closed primaries, and we, the members of this group, have switched our political affiliation in order to support Ron Paul. We retain our same beliefs, but feel that this clerical change is necessary in order to support the best candidate running for office.
If you want to do the same, check out my post from a few weeks ago on HOWTO Become a Republican in order to vote for Ron Paul in the PA Primaries.
If you’re one of those people who thinks that switching parties for this reason is bad, bugger off. The system is flawed, but, fortunately, it just takes a little bit of paperwork to be able to Do The Right Thing™.
