Silicon Valley Redneck

Preparing the new stimulus package

Hey, I remember how this goes!  I saw this back in high school!

Free money!  Almost ready for you!

Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr demonstrate how it's done.

Expect the free money from Washington to be distributed with rather less class.

(In the 30 years or so since I saw The Magic Christian, I've managed to forget most of it.  A few bits stuck in my mind, though, and the "free money" scene is assuredly one of them.)

Kipling season

What with the outpouring of Monarchist sentiment of late, I'm put in mind of some of Kipling's cautionary poems, in particular The Old Issue and The Reeds of Runnymede.  I expect to be quoting bits of these frequently in the coming years.

Here's a thought for today, as I watch the global economy circling the drain and see the financial pundits speculating on what industries will be favored by the new King's policies.

In a Republic, and a free-market economy, business does not depend on the whim of King or Commissar.  The laws change slowly, after debate in the Legislature, and within the constraints of the Constitution.  Businesses and investors can make long-range plans based on their forecasts of market conditions, rather than frantically scrambling for the favor of the ruling class.

Here's a suggestion for the Republican Party: ponder, for a moment, the origin of your name.  Consider renouncing monarchism and becoming the Party of the Republic.

Yeah, I know: a silly idea.  We've got to have a King.  It's the only way we can get through troubled times, right?

He shall break his judges if they cross his word;
He shall rule above the Law calling on the Lord.
He shall peep and mutter; and the night shall bring
Watchers ’neath our window, lest we mock the King—
Hate and all division; hosts of hurrying spies;
Money poured in secret, carrion breeding flies.
Strangers of his counsel, hirelings of his pay,
These shall deal our Justice: sell—deny—delay.

Well... maybe we'd be better off without one?

Unintended consequences

I'm ambivalent on Proposition 8 - the initiative to amend the California constitution to re-abolish same-sex marriage.

Ambivalent?  Well, for starters, I'm vaguely in favor of allowing same-sex marriage.  So I should be firmly against Prop 8, right?  Yes, except that, in my world, such policy change should come about by democratic processes, not by judicial or executive fiat... and His Imperial Majesty Gavin the First is just so bloody annoying!

The sort of amendment I would support would say, in effect, "Marriage in this state shall be as defined by statute, and nothing in this constitution shall be construed to say otherwise, so there."

Be that as it may, Rick Moen has a fascinating essay on how, when biology meets the legal system, a simple law can (even without creatively perverse interpretation) lead to unexpected results.

Thursday forecast: a double-Eagleton!

There's been persistent speculation that Palin will be off the ticket Any Moment Now.

There's also been such speculation about Biden, and now it's in the L. A. Times.

Will Palin cast off the Mild-Mannered Caribou Barbie mask put on her by McCain's handlers?  If so, will she be dropped for doing so?  If not, will she be dropped for having turned into a bland little nonentity?

Will Biden commit some unforgivable gaffe on national TV?  Will he have a stroke during the debate?

Here's my prediction: after Thursday, they'll both be off their respective tickets.

There are several ways this could come about:

• The debate venue is destroyed by a meteorite strike
• They fight a duel, and are both killed
• The debate venue is the target of a terrorist attack
• Palin misses dinner before the debate, munches on Biden for a snack, and is disqualified on grounds of being an anthropophagous reptiloid alien
• In a surprise turn of events, it's Biden who's the reptiloid alien...
• Both parties hold emergency conventions, replacing Obama with Hillary and McCain with Rudy, and allowing them to choose their own new VP candidates

I'm sure there are many other ways it could come to pass, but just you watch!  And remember: you read it here first!

Vote early! Vote often! Um...

What with election season being upon us, there's the usual push to make sure all the people who use absentee ballots are registered at their current addresses.

There's also a continuation of the push, which has been going on for a few years now, to have ever more people vote by absentee ballot, whether they need to or not.  I get a postcard every election season urging me to sign up for permanent absentee status.  I could vote early!  I could skip the two-block walk (well, it's gotten longer: from half a block to two blocks, and now to three) from my house to the polling place!

Encouraging large numbers of people to vote early has a couple of effects.  Some people seem to feel compelled to vote as early as allowed, so they must rush to make up their minds.  If enough of them do this, it creates an incentive for the politicians to move up the opening day of mud-slinging season, as last-minute mud will completely miss the early-voting demographic.

Something else occurs to me: absentee ballots aren't secret.

Oh, if the procedures (as I recall them) are followed, no government official will see your name and your vote together.  But, unlike the enforced secrecy of the polling place, there's nothing that keeps you from showing your official ballot to anyone else before you mail it.

Which makes it hard to lie to your spouse about how you're voting.  Or your boss.  Or anyone else you encounter on a daily basis, and who can put pressure on you.

And what if your union, or some other organized community, has a Get Out The Vote Early drive?  "We're going to make sure everyone votes in this election!  Bring your absentee ballot to the meeting hall on Sunday afternoon, and we'll all fill them out together!  Be there, or be unmutual!"

If you're the quiet little guy with the minority view - or even with the majority view, but the minority is loud and intimidating - this loss of secrecy is a big problem.

Back when I was in college, absentee ballots were for people who needed them.  Like college students.  Methinks they should return to that status, rather than becoming the default.

This is just silly.

Meg Whitman is thinking of running for Governor of California.

Thinks she can sort out the finances.

Yeah.  Sure.  Anything you say.

California's budget is terminally FUBAR.  Large quantities of FAIL have been hardcoded into the state constitution by a series of initiatives.  Even the very best Governor, with a fully cooperative and competent legislature, couldn't fix it without a constitutional amendment to undo all those spending mandates.  And, with the spending mandates being so popular, and the districts being so well gerrymandered, what's the prospect of either such an amendment passing, or such a legislature getting elected?

Some year, soon, we'll see what the Reset Button looks like at the state level.  Whoever's Governor at the time is going to take the blame for it.  Who the heck wants that job?

Someone doesn't know much about furniture.

"We're not going to come to a conclusion on a three-legged stool here, missing the fourth leg," said angry Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn., upon emerging from the meeting.

Um.

Chris, you might want to re-examine your furniture metaphor, there.

Three-legged stools work just fine.  They're intrinsically stable.

Two-legged stools fall over.

Four-legged stools wobble, if the leg lengths don't match exactly.

Three is a good number of legs for a stool.

And, backing off from the metaphor and returning to the world of government, where do we have four legs, anyway?

Legislative, Executive, Judiciary: three.

House, Senate, President: three.

Or, in the current situation, President, Congressional Democrats, Congressional Republicans: three.  With the Republicans being uncooperative, leaving a two- (not three-) legged stool.

But, then, this is coming from one of the doddering idiots responsible for creating the problem in the first place, so what can you expect?

Update: sounds like the Doddified version of the bailout bill really is a giant, er, stool.  If he's having trouble passing it, there are things to help with that these days.

If Johnny has ten apples...

...and one of them may have a worm in it, how many apples does Johnny have?

Right.  Nine, plus whatever he can salvage of the tenth.

Now, if WaMu has three hundred and ten billion apples, and thirty-one billion of them may have worms in them, then how many apples does WaMu have?

Let's not always see the same hands... OK, J.P., how many?

One point nine billion?

I guess I just don't grok this high-finance stuff.

[Rewritten, on second thought, to substitute apples for dollars.]

Gee, how good an idea is this?

The SF Chronicle, or at least someone hiding behind the editorial "we", has a definitive plan to fix California's budget problems.

Here's one bit that kinda leaps out at me:

Proposition 13: The property-tax-limiting measure was passed by voters in 1978 under a rallying cry from voters who were worried about losing their homes. But the measure also brought an unadvertised windfall for commercial property. Some businesses have been exploiting a loophole that allows them to avoid a reassessment even when commercial property changes hands. Solution: Annual reassessments of commercial property would bring in several billion dollars a year.

Yeah. And it would lead to unpredictable annual increases in the cost of doing business, too.  Way to keep businesses in the state, guys!

If there's a loophole, how about addressing the specific loophole, rather than making life even more unpredictable?

Then there are the inevitable calls for doing away with those pesky term limits ('cause, ya know, the same guys who've been in government forever are the best qualified to solve the problems they've caused) and eliminating the supermajority requirement for passing a budget (sure, and let's see the budget the Democrats would have passed if they didn't have to get it past the Republicans... and an explanation of how they would have paid for it).

Politics raises its silly head again

Now that his gaffes are drawing some public attention, Pinky has started carrying his PromptoSpecs along and using them in places where they're kinda obvious.

This is all good fun until David Axelrod's keyboard develops a stuck key.

Hey, wait a minute... didn't we all (counting myself here; I was in college back then) make fun of Ronald Reagan for being an empty suit driven by a TelePrompTer?  What's changed since then?

Funny how partisans can switch positions according to which party has the empty suit, sex scandal, or whatever... and never even notice they're doing it.