2014 July
2014 July 31
Bank of American fined $1.3 billion over Countrywide loan program
Without the benefits of fractional reserve banking, handing out credit without sufficiently checking the credit worthiness of the borrowers would not have been so prevalent among the credit industry. Thus, the magnitude of the problem would not have been as bad as it was.
2014 July 30
Humanitarian crisis worsens in Gaza
Gaza has lots of problems, but the main aspect of their suffering is a result of the Palestinians not having a homeland. An argument could be made that the Palestinians could have migrated to the country of Jordan upon the creation of Israel because they were essentially the same people. Regardless of that fact, too much time has elapsed and the fact that for and entire lifetime, the Palestinians are still clamoring for a a homeland there on the West Bank and Gaza means that this population is now sufficiently distinct from their brethren in Jordan. The Palestinians have developed their own significant history and exist in sufficiently high enough numbers, that they deserve their own independent country.
Another very significant aspect of the Palestinian suffering is the unequal management of resources, mainly water. The proper way to manage the distribution of water among territories on earth is to allow people to use water if it falls naturally on their land. Israel often takes water that would rightly belong to the Palestinians according to these guidelines and uses it for Israeli or settlement purposes.
2014 July 29
U.S. accuses Russia of violating missile treaty
Testing of missiles is a negative development, whoever does it. The principle behind this testing ban treaty is backwards. The best way to prevent the development and deployment of weapons is to reduce the actual or perceived need for them. These testing treaties tend to not address the underlying need for such weapons directly, but rather appeal to a shared emotional desire to cease development and deployment. It is only human nature, that when a threat is perceived, measures will be taken to protect one self against it. Treaties of these types or only temporary. Treaties are good, but to be more effective, it is essential that treaties be enforced by an international organization with legitimacy. Only when a solid international framework is developed, with effective enforcement mechanisms, can treaties truly be adhered to.
2014 July 28
Bipartisan Deal Taps Funds for Veterans’ Health Care
Veteran should be paid well during their time of service to the country. Then, just like all other employers (as proposed in these Proposals), the financial obligation between the employer and employee would be ended upon termination of employment. If the compensation for military service is set correctly, then the employee would have been able to save enough money to fund his health insurance needs well into the future. Because military service is a super high risk occupation, compensation for such service would need to factor in all these costs. Actuaries would obviously need to determine what the proper compensation would need to be to effectively compensate an individual to the same degree that he would have received under the current regime.
2014 July 27
New York Times endorses marijuana legalization
Marijuana is the drug that offers the clearest case for why drugs in general should be legalized, but regulated. We must learn from the experiences of other countries that have legalized drugs. Many European countries have embarked down the legalization but regulated course and their populations have benefited from it, both users and non-users. Everybody has generally experienced lower crime rates, and less usage than here in the U.S. Marijuana is the single drug that is responsible for the most people in prison. It is not a hard core drug, it is mainly used for recreational and medicinal purposes. Sure many young people use it as part of their experimentation with drugs, but it is not damaging to anywhere near the degree that other drugs, let alone, the legal drugs of alcohol and tobacco are.
2014 July 26
This threat should naturally be investigated. However, if it turns out that this is a hoax, then perpetrators of that hoax should be found and assessed a penalty associated with a certain multiple of the total financial costs associated with the measures that were taken to guard against it.
2014 July 25
Obama urges Congress to close overseas tax loopholes for businesses
The tax code should be simplified. Everybody knows it should, but whenever specific details are discusses, interest groups block such reforms. That is why we need a clean sweep of the tax code. Knowing what I know about human nature, I don’t have any solutions towards this end short of a revolution. Nevertheless, these policies should be put in place to make our tax code fairer and, ultimately, lower, for everybody (because with less loopholes, the need for tax advisers and tax professional tax preparers is lessened.
Specifically, this income tax on businesses should be implemented and this would make it harder to evade taxes.
2014 July 24
Insurers to refund customers $332 million under the Affordable Care Act
The goal of having every required to have a health insurance plan is a good one, although I do not like government mandates, either. However, it would have been better to just require people to purchase plans from the free market, with their own money rather than with the government subsidizing their premiums. The way to insure everybody would then be to require them , under penalty of fines, to get coverage, even if only catastrophic coverage. However, an additional requirement should be for people to get regular check-ups once a year so that periodic medical monitoring could be assured.
2014 July 23
Russian oligarchs shift assets out of London as sanctions loom
Governments have the right to make policies which they see fit, however, this potential freezing of funds of Russian oligarchs by a government, without the sanctioning of an authorized international agency, just seems to be to much of a haphazard approach to international relations.
A better way would be to have an authorized international organization, much like Interpol, conduct an investigation, and when the right to examine evidence is blocked or when clear restrictions on access to information or locations that may help answer questions are imposed, then the world should be convinced that enough evidence of guilt has accumulated to impose travel or financial restrictions on certain parties.
This would be the ideal world. In this real world, I guess that the next best thing is for governments to act unilaterally as they see fit.
To go to the root of this matter, sufficiently independent groups of people should be entitled to exist in their own independent country.
2014 July 22
Perry sending National Guard troops to border
No state government should ever need to do anything to protect its own borders from illegal immigration. If a state government does have to take measure to protect its borders, then the federal government should at the very least not stop it and, ideally, if should refund the state government for all costs associated with that enforcement.
2014 July 21
Appeals court delays Arizona execution over unknown drug combo
The death penalty should only be imposed if there is conclusive evidence of the guilt of the murderer. Not sure if that is the case in this case, but this standard will reduce the number of people on Death Row. Of course, other people, perhaps many more people, would be put on Death Row if we apply this same standard to their cases. Nevertheless, this particular man guilt may not have reached this standard to earn him the death penalty. I don’t know the particulars of his case.
However, the death penalty should be delivered in a far simpler and far more cost effective way. Why not just shoot the guy? It’s far less costly, far less painful, and far quicker. If you have a team of say, ten sharpshooters, what are the chances that they will all miss the important organs or head?
Also, death by firing squad, under my proposal, would allow the government to collect more quickly on compensation that was paid out to the victims and families of crimes, than death by any other means, which are undoubtedly more expensive.
2014 July 20
False statements like these illustrate exactly how a policy aimed at taxing such statements would benefit all of society. Such a tax would encourage people to rephrase statements in a more correct way, thus not contributing to the dissemination of false information.
2014 July 19
Drug Sentencing Guidelines Reduced For Current Prisoners
Prison should not be the standard, default punishment for people having drug convictions. Prison should only be used for people who actually pose a threat to others or, in some case, property. Many of these prisoners targeted for release are non-violet drug offenders, perhaps merely convicted for possession of drugs. Prison is the perfect place to teach people who to become hardened criminals because there is virtually no significant comprehensive efforts at rehabilitating inmates. It’s unfortunate, but prison is a breeding ground for people who we do not want in society. They all too often come out with skills the civilized world could do without.
2014 July 18
Missile downs Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine, killing 298; Kiev blames rebels
To reduce the chances of this tragedy, some basic societal rules would have needed to be altered. The end result would be that less people would be flying.
This industry is subsidized to a great amount, but because this is the way it has always been, the majority of the public is not willing to sacrifice to the necessary degree to cause the necessary changes to come about.
First, the FAA organization, airports and other infrastructures associated with the aviation industry is subsidized by government agencies of all sizes. If the airlines were to pay for all aspects of their industry, then the costs would naturally be distributed among all the people participating (customers) in that industry. The costs for services would naturally go up, thus fewer people would be flying. Therefore, the chances that events such as this plane being blown out of the sky would have been at least a little smaller.
Second, because of the very high volume of fuel used by this industry, the subsidies imparted to the petroleum industry are very significant. If these subsidies are removed, the costs of air travel would go up very significantly, causing a reduction in demand. Thus, there would be fewer planes to shoot out of the sky, reducing, by at least, a little, the chances that this particular plane would have been shot down.
Naturally, this shooting appeared to have been a targeted event. As such, perhaps any airplane that would have flown anywhere around that area at anywhere around that time would probably have been shot down. Therefore, none of my previous suggested policies may have affected the final outcome of this event. Nevertheless, such policies would have reduced the likelihood of such events.
2014 July 17
Democrats fail in attempt to reverse Hobby Lobby contraceptive ruling
This article could have been a little clearer in regards to what types of ‘birth control’ this legislation refers to. The article does say that this health insurance company does pay for 16 of 20 forms of contraceptives. The main point of contention is whether the government has the right to order a private health insurer to cover contraceptives, the main objection to which is, presumably, abortion. Abortion is the destruction of a fertilized egg, thus after a ‘life’ has begun, and should therefore be illegal. Apart from this method of ‘birth control’, virtually all other methods should be allowed. The problem arises when government funds are used to subsidize (tax-exempt status, etc.) a private provider of services, such as religious hospitals. One way around this dilemma is to just remove all these complications to the tax code that create all these gray areas. This way, no body could argue that their tax money is being used in ways that are not appropriate. Privately funded (entirely privately funded) institutions would have a greater leeway is determining what products and services to offer without many of the political complications involved with public financing (or subsidizing through tax exemption).
2014 July 16
Report: 2.3 percent of Americans gay or bisexual
Unfortunately, it may be discovered that more and more people will be gay, bisexual, transgender and exhibit other forms of sexual anomalies due to the ever increasing anthropogenic pollution of our natural and anthropogenic environments. It is known that pollution alters the mental function of organisms, exposure during certain periods of development, and stresses resulting from biologic responses to pollution can all affect an organisms mental/behavioral health. The mind is the most complex of all human organs and since it is responsible for behavior, it is only natural to expect that greater and greater deviations from normal are to be expected with behavior and ‘what people feel like’. As science allows us to identify pollution-induced cause and effect relationships to a higher degree of accuracy, and as science moves into the ever the more ‘invisible’ areas of mental cause and effect (as opposed to the more obvious physical deformities), it may very find that such common behavioral attributes of sexual identity and preferences are more common.
2014 July 15
The Church of England has found unity on its own terms
The harsh division between male and female roles within religion may very likely be more a result of human origin rather than divine direction. With the modern recognition that both males and females, as a group, are adequately capable of performing virtually all tasks equally well (with the exception of tasks requiring physical strength), and with the understanding of the dynamics of human relations (generally those with greater physical strength use that power to oppress), it is understandable how such doctrines of male dominance became so ingrained within religions.
The best way to resolve these problems is to educate people more about religion and to just have people talk more about them.
2014 July 14
Stolen car, Greyhound bus collide; 1 dead, 19 hurt
Many events in this story could have been minimized or eliminated altogether if the following policies had been put in place.
First, the chances that the vehicle that crashed into the bus being stolen could have been reduced by instituting a system of public policing, having many video cameras around, making it easy for anybody to determine roughly what the financial penalties for any particular crime would be, and instituting an effective system of rehabilitation of people identified as leaning toward criminal behavior.
Second, since the Greyhound bus was on a long trip to New York, it is likely that if there had been a system of trains connecting all the major cities, these passengers would instead have chosen the train to travel, thus reducing their chances of being involved in a traffic accident. Train travel has been shown to be safer than road travel.
2014 July 13
Space station shipment takes food, stink-free gym outfits, to astronauts
Manned space flight is a waste of money and other resources. Far more bang for the buck, in virtually all other areas of space exploration, including material sciences, could be obtained through robotic missions.
2014 July 12
Dutch Supreme Court Blocks Extradition of Al-Qaeda Suspect to U.S.
Unfortunately, the baggage that the U.S. has associated with its image may have helped the Dutch court decide against extraditing this suspect to the United States for trial. We have proven to the world that we are not above reproach when trying suspects accused of terrorism. We have tortured far too many people, unjustly, for the world to trust us now. We need to abide by these strict rules of torture in order to rebuilt that trust which we want to have with the world again.
2014 July 11
Obama Speaks With Netanyahu, Offering to Broker Ceasefire With Hamas
The international setup should be such that no President or leader of any country should be required to volunteer or be the key role in brokering a resolution between any two parties of which that leader is not a party to the dispute. Such disputes should always be primarily resolved through the use of an international mechanism that is designed for addressing such disputes, like an International Military Organization as proposed here. To have one party, like the U.S., brokering any agreement, just leaves a bad taste in the mouths of a significant portion of the parties to the dispute, inevitable reducing the final authority of the resolution.
2014 July 10
He lost 153 pounds, won his first triathlon
Perhaps a junk food tax would have helped discourage him from eating some junk foods. His father dies of liver disease. Alcohol abuse is the largest cause of liver disease in the country, so maybe this was what took his father’s life and made Kerry Hoffman decide to lose wight. This junk food tax would also have helped persuade his father to stop or slow the drinking because it was always so expensive.
2014 July 9
Moscow accuses United States of ‘kidnapping’ Russian hacker
Perhaps this is true, but I would be quick to assume that the reason we did not inform the Russian government is probably because we do not trust that the Russians will act in good faith to bring this individual to justice. This would be something like our not telling the Pakistani government about the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden, namely because they were untrustworthy. Ideally, we should work together with other countries, but naturally, exceptions should be made when corruption interferes.
2014 July 8
CDC Media Statement on Newly Discovered Smallpox Specimens
This is why we need an international body with full authority to inspect facilities without notice. The implications of this discovery to our enemies and everyone else around the world are tremendously damaging. The only thing we can say is, I’m sorry.: But that’s just not going to cut it,
2014 July 7
Obama seeks money, fast hearings to curb young migrant surge
This is the right decision that will also send the message to future illegal migrants that the US is a little less tolerant of illegal immigration.
2014 July 6
Family Wants Officer Held Accountable In California Highway Patrol Beating
This is why video cameras are so important. Officers should also wear cameras on their body, or at least audio recorders so more information could be obtained when incidents like this occur.
2014 July 5
Moldova bans Russia 24 TV from broadcasting in its territory
Every sovereign country has the right to take any action it chooses within its borders. Any retaliatory intervention by Russia should be condemned the the international community and quick actions taken against such retaliatory action.
2014 July 4
London Freezes British Jihadists’ Assets
I wonder what took so long to freeze these assets. Did the government just realize that such a video existed? They should have frozen them immediately (after a due process time of about one week).
2014 July 3
Examples of Crimes and Their Punishments:
Followed by my version of what the punishment should have been.
Of course, my verdicts are based only on my interpretation and extrapolation of what I think the original crime was.
For some reference point, here is a good summary of what probation violations are. To begin with, I think probation is an improper and illogical form of punishment and should be banned.
In California, the average per day cost of housing a jail inmate is $129 ($47,421 per year). Even though these crimes were adjudicated in Del Norte County, California, I will use the California average costs for critiquing these punishments.
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These are the misdemeanor and felony sentencings provided by the Del Norte County Superior Court for the dates of June 27–July 3: • David Mingelen, 54, Smith River, was sentenced to eight months in jail and termination of probation for two probation violations. I’m glad his probation was terminated, but why did the courts choose to spend $27,360 to house him for 8 months? Unless his crime was a violent one, wouldn’t it be better to just charge him for the damage of his original crime? Or at least, we could charge him for the cost of his jail stay so that the taxpayers don’t need to pay it. • Daniel Nunez, 29, Crescent City, was sentenced to 10 days in jail and 3 years of probation and fined $670 for illegally obtaining utility. So this guy stole either water, electricity or cable from the fire hydrant, his neighbor, the city, cable lines running on the power pole or whatever. Perhaps for a $2,000 worth of utility that he stole, he is rewarded by having the county pay for 10 days of board and care at a cost of $1,140. Wouldn’t it be better for him to pay back his victim the estimated amount of the utility he stole plus a punitive multiple? Furthermore, why place him under a ridiculous 3 year probation in which if he steals a pack of gum he would face jail time (which would obviously be a disproportionate punishment)? • Jenna Skeen, 30, Crescent City, was sentenced to three years of probation and fined $1,477 for possession of a dangerous drug. She merely possessed a dangerous drug. The fine is great. But what’s up with the probation? Just punish her for the crime and move on. • Tammi Gaches, 50, Klamath, was sentenced to 15 days in jail and three years of probation and fined $1,454 for driving on a suspended license. Gaches was also sentenced to 15 days in jail and termination of probation for a probation violation. She should have been fined a couple thousand dollars for the suspended licence. But 15 days in jail for perhaps failing to call her probation officer is too severe and too much of a cost to the taxpayers. Criminals should make money for the taxpayers, not the other way around. • Larry McLellan, 56, Crescent City, was sentenced to 180 days in jail and fined $630 and a $61.87 city fee for public intoxication. He was fined a total of $691.87 for being drunk in public. But his jail time costs the taxpayer $20,520 for 180 days. Essentially, the taxpayer effectively pays this man nearly $20,000 for being drunk. The taxpayers effectively gave him 6 months of free housing. • Shawn Hill, 28, Crescent City, was sentenced to 41 days in jail and three years of probation and fined $920 for battery on a cohabitant. When you are violent against another person, then jail is a good place to be. However, jail must be rehabilitative, which means that intensive counselling, intensive education, and intensive skills development take place. The fine of $920 is too low and every time you hit someone, I think it should be more like a minimum of $2,000, plus whatever damages resulted. • Eduardo DeLosSantos, 34, Grants Pass, was sentenced to three years of probation and fined $833 for wet and reckless driving. This is basically a drunk driving conviction. The only logical penalty would be a revocation of the drivers license for a certain length of time plus a hefty financial penalty. Three years probation, like all types of probation, is not a good form of punishment. • Gerald Tippetts, 41, Brookings, was sentenced to one day in jail and three years of probation and fined $671 for petty theft with a prior. That one day in jail ($114) and three years probation, even though the criminal does pay for some or all of the probation costs, is not a logical form of punishment because any offense committed while on probation is blown way out of proportion. • Rebecca Say, 36, Eagle Point, Ore., was sentenced to one day in jail and three years of probation and fined $630 for insurance fraud. Insurance fraud is not a violent crime. Her only punishment should have been a heft fine and restitution to the victim as well as paying for all court costs. • Randy Arnold, 50, Lake Elsinore, was fined $630 for trespassing. This punishment may be about right. • Anthony Simas, 50, Crescent City, was sentenced to 30 days in jail and fined $671 for petty theft with a prior. The penalty for the prior should have been dealt with before. That prior should have absolutely no bearing on this new crime. The item that was stolen should have been assessed a value and the criminal should have been fined the value of that item plus a punitive multiple. In addition, he should have to pay all court and administrative costs associated with his crime. • Brett Kirkpatrick, 42, Crescent City, was sentenced to 15 days in jail and fined $920 for battery on a cohabitant. Battery is a good reason to jail someone, but the fine should have been more and the criminal should be required to pay for the cost of jail. • Manuel Vargas, 57, Crescent City, was sentenced to 45 days in jail for violation of supervision. Does this mean that he failed to call or show up to his probation officer? Why not just arrest him and charge him for that crime, individually? |
2014 July 2
The Decimal Point or the Decimal Comma = Confusion
This does generate too much confusion. There is no reason why there should not be a global standard. A period is used as a full stop punctuation by around 60% of the global population and another 24% use the comma. The period should be instituted as the global standard. Furthermore, number separators should not use commas but single blank spaces to further reduce confusion.
2014 July 1
The science that stumped Einstein
Government subsidies should be used for important scientific research like discovering the nature of superconductivity. Naturally, a virtually infinite number of scientific projects could be proposed in search of such subsidy funding, so the government needs to be selective regarding which ones they choose to fund. Nevertheless, because this field has, perhaps, one of the greatest potential benefits to humanity because it directly involves the generation and transmission of energy (the basis of modern life and most of its benefits), it should qualify as a priority.