2016 April 1

2016 April 2

Legislature approves minimum wage increase, sending historic measure to Gov. Jerry Brown

The good thing is that the minimum wage would eventually be based on inflation. However, the actual formula for calculating the minimum wage should be based on some more local (county level) calculation of the earnings distribution of that area.

2016 April 3

How Zika became the prime suspect in microcephaly mystery

Children born with Zika (or any other disease) and show very significant defects should be euthanized. They should be euthanized either before or after the birth. Generally, the sooner the better because of the reduced chances of significantly developed personal relationships between parents and the fetus/child and emotional ties.

2016 April 4

Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite’s tax havens

Tax havens should not exist because of their inherent unfairness.

2016 April 5

Trump reveals how he would force Mexico to pay for border wall

Taxing a portion of the remittances sent back to Mexico is a feasible way to pay for the ‘wall’. However, it may too hard of a hit to raise so much money from the people and families who desperately need that money. Although a proportionately larger share should probably come from remittances, a better approach may be to impose an across the board tariff surcharge on all Mexican imports into this country until the required funds are raised.

2016 April 6

Obama calls for Congress to close corporate tax loopholes

Clearly, all kinds of loopholes need to be closed. The best way to close them and immunize any tax code against such loopholes is to make it simpler and more logical. Otherwise, the lawyers will have plenty of material to work with.

2016 April 7

GOP congressman: Voter ID law will help Republican presidential candidate

There is nothing controversial about the idea that picture ID requirements for voting will help Republican candidates. Because Republicans tend to be more conservative (and by nature, better rule followers) it naturally follows that they will be the ones that more consistently turn up at the polls with proper ID.

2016 April 8

Ted Cruz cosponsors bill with New York Democrat to recover Nazi-confiscated art

Oftentimes laws are passed which gives a person pause because one would think that such activity was already illegal and addressed by existing laws. Why do we need a law that allows a person to file legal suit to recover artwork or property that was wrongfully taken?  Do we need a special law that allows store owners to seek to recover their shopping carts that were take off their premises? We should just be able to create legal principles that would cover all stolen property. How about creating a law that says that anyone could sue anyone for any reason? Combined with it of course, would be the requirement that arbitration is required before jury trial, and that the losing side would likely pay the winning side’s legal defense bill.

2016 April 9

The View Of Gaza, On 24/7 Video

This is the most effective way to highly secure a border—through remote observations. One person can monitor several screens. We should apply some of these strategies for effectively patrolling our own borders. Although, the only thing we are lacking in the US is the political will, not resources or technology.

2016 April 10

Two men allegedly involved in Dunkirk Cocaine Ring plead guilty in federal court…

This crime of distributing cocaine should not require jail time. This is not a violent crime. The $1 million dollar fine is more proper, but I don’t know what the justification for that fine was. Punishments must include rehabilitation and education about both what the crime’s ramifications are as well as education for permanent rehabilitative purposes (skill development, etc.).

2016 April 11

Kerry says Hiroshima ‘gut-wrenching’ reminder world should abandon nuclear weapons

The only way to get a control of nuclear weapons is to have all such weapons under the control of an international military organization.

2016 April 12

‘Scarier than we initially thought’: CDC sounds warning on Zika virus

People are travelling too much for the regulations we have in place to ensure the safety of the global population. We need to ensure that people are healthy and are not transmitting diseases to new parts of the world. We need to have a more healthy global population, but specifically need to ensure that travelers have been screened to ensure they are not carriers of dangerous diseases.

2016 April 13

Panama papers: Mossack Fonseca headquarters raided

Everyone who is the subject of a criminal investigation should just know (by making it common knowledge) that any actions taken to cover up or destroy any information to make the investigation harder or for any other purpose, would be treated as an additional crime and would just add to the ultimate penalty (plus punitive multiple) that would be imposed.

2016 April 14

Russian jets buzz U.S. warship

The US operating consistently so closely to the shores of other countries who do not particularly welcome us should give us pause and try to think about how we would feel if the tables were reversed. One a representative international military authority would have the moral justification for operating consistently anywhere in the world.

2016 April 15

US Senator recommends bombing Vieques all over again, in order to ease Puerto Rico’s debt crisis

It is necessary to have military proving and training grounds, however, whether it should be at Vieques or elsewhere could be debated. Nobody really wants such a facility, but if compensation is good enough, it will be accepted somewhere. The military must clean up after itself.

2016 April 16

Changing climate:10 years after An Inconvenient Truth

The only real way to reduce the amount of carbon entering the atmosphere will be to increase the cost of carbon. The best way to do that is to first remove all subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. Then applying normal sales taxes to all economic activities will result in lessened demand for goods and services, thus the need for fossil fuels in general. Then additional specific taxes would be applied to the extraction of these fossil carbon sources to further reduce demand, could be justified.

2016 April 17

This microbe makes a meal of plastic

Only with an increasing cost of disposing of waste will the market become dramatically and critically attractive towards alternatives of disposal, such as developing this bacterium on an industrial scale.

2016 April 18

Life insurance industry under investigation

Any life insurance company that did not distribute the necessary funds after having knowledge the that policyholder has died, should be charged with theft of that amount of money and should be required to pay restitution plus a punitive multiple to the proper beneficiaries, their children, relative or their beneficiaries.

2016 April 19

300 arrested at Democracy Awakens protest against money in politics

It is unfortunate that it takes people to take days out of their lives to do something that should be logical and not require such efforts to convey this message. People who job it is to engineer a successful society should just know that it is correct to take private monies out of politics and only allow public financing of campaigns.

2016 April 20

On global warming, world seeks “Viking leadership”

Everything comes down to economics. If the rules and regulations are constructed correctly, there wouldn’t be a significant environmental problem. Fossil fuels need to be more expensive. Their current prices are subsidized far too much, thus making their demand and consumption far higher than would otherwise be the case.

2016 April 21

Obama, Saudi king discuss strained alliance, Middle East conflicts

Our dependence on oil is unavoidably affecting our relationship with many nation, including especially Saudi Arabia. We need to be fair with everyone we do business with. We should not intervene in the internal affairs of other nations. We should not encourage the artificial manipulation of the types or amounts of goods (or services) that any other nation exports. The US should just accept the price of oil, whatever that price may be.

2016 April 22

175 nations sign historic Paris climate deal on Earth Day

One of the hardest aspects of running this world is that the rules and regulations in place are not nearly as conducive towards a natural solution rising to the top of range of potential policy proposals. This fact leads to so much waste of resources, time, money, human efforts, etc., that it results so often in examples of various interest groups joining forces in unusual way and for unusual and often competing purposes. This global warming deal has the support of various interest groups and the whole topic has created its own bureaucracy in virtually every country, and internationally. The intriguing thing is that none of these needed to happen because global warming is not something that should be addressed directly. Carbon dioxide emissions are so ubiquitous and result from numerous, very complex interactions between humans and the environment, that it would be wiser to direct regulatory efforts intended to reduce these emissions towards more fundamental aspects of human activities, such as resource extraction taxes, pollution taxes, proper subsidy policies, fair trading practices, proper international relations, etc.

2016 April 23

Fiat Chrysler is recalling 1.1 million cars because of weird electronic shift levers

This design flaw could potentially have been avoided by standardizing transmission shift levers. More products need to be standardized to allow for easier manufacturing and use.

2016 April 24

It’s ‘Possible’ Hillary Clinton Could Be Better President than GOP Pick, Charles Koch Says

Charles Koch has such a highly disproportionate influence over the funding of political speech, that his opinion really, really matters. Political campaigns should be publicly financed and media outlets should be sufficiently diverse so that there is effectively a free exchange of ideas throughout society.

2016 April 25

JUDGE REJECTS PSYCHOLOGISTS’ MOTION TO DISMISS CASE FILED ON BEHALF OF THREE CIA TORTURE VICTIMS

This lawsuit should continue and these psychologists should be punished severely if they are convicted. The torture used on these and other people who should not have qualified for such torture because they were not shown to have had immediate, time-sensitive information.

2016 April 26

Judge upholds controversial North Carolina voter ID law

Although illegal voting is not a significant problem, it is good to have safeguards against this potential. But instead of requiring documentation up front, voters should just be told to visually verify their information (as they do now) and be told (or just understand) that if this information is incorrect, then they will be fined.

2016 April 27

Pentagon adopts Israeli tactic in bombing ISIS: “Knocking on Roofs”

I don’t know how effective this warning explosion is in getting civilians out of the way.

Surely, if civilians can get out of the way, then the military targets can also get out of the way. This appears to just be using too blunt of an instrument to deliver a warning and appears to be mainly only a public relations move.

2016 April 28

Capt. Kristen Griest makes history as Army’s first female infantry officer

It’s good that women are allowed into all military positions, although the bad thing is that men will need to get used to it. While there are significant physical differences between men and women that do affect their performances in several tasks, all the various new needs may very well be met with practice, training and and just the mere coexistence with each other. However, females will naturally suffer an increases in the number of sexual verbal and physical assaults since it is often single, immature, young males with with feelings of power that will need to be tamed. Such behavior has been a problem since time immemorial, so this is nothing dramatically new. However, our society (and the military in particular) needs to do a far better job at making sure that everyone gets the message about how to treat each other, especially when it come to sexual matters. The movies and all other media, education in primary and secondary schools, the justice system, and the surveillance systems, all need to more thoroughly ensure that every individual is properly educated and properly controlled and surveilled.

2016 April 29

Abortion Rights Leaders Call On Cruz To Dump Extremist Anti-Choice Adviser

The rhetoric on both sides is charged. However, the logical inconsistency with pro-abortionist arguing for unfettered access to abortion is also staggering. I understand that it is very convenient to end a pregnancy just a few days or weeks after it has started because nothing really has visibly changed with the mother.  In other words, the fact that another human being is not visible makes it all the more easy to terminate a pregnancy.

So the question, naturally, is when a life begins, or more specifically, when should a life have the value given a post-birth human being? It’s sort of like asking when does an asteroid pose a threat to Earth or when does a drinking water source become polluted? An asteroid poses a threat to Earth when it gets knocked into a collision course with Earth, not when we first discover it is on a collision course. A drinking water source becomes polluted when the rail car carrying the oil derails upstream and spills it into the river, not when the water filtration plant sucks in the dirty water.

Life begins at conception, not when we first discover that the fetus has implanted itself onto the uterus, or when the first heartbeat is detected, or when the life is viable outside the womb, or at birth.

However, the mortality rates of zygotes are impressively high, with less than 50% of pregnancies naturally graduating to the fetus stage of development. Because of the complexity of the process of human biological reproduction, the amount of statistical ‘noise’ concerning survival rates at these early stages of development and even the hard to practically pinpoint moment of conception, would lead any unbiased observer to say that natural processes are far riskier to any conceived child (zygote) than any human policy could be.

In order for any abortion policy to be respectable, it cannot apply the label of ‘human life’ to zygotes which naturally have a higher than 50% chance of being naturally aborted. There are just too many things that a woman can unknowingly do that would induce a natural abortion at this stage of development, like exercise, eating the wrong foods, etc. Yes, actions deliberately taken to induce abortions at this stage, including taking drugs that prevent attachment to the uterine wall, could be treated as murder, but trying to prove that from the statistical noise is a very unwise endeavor.

Policies should be applied when the statistical noise has settled down to a point where far more predictable statistical outcomes are known. This means that there is a significant ‘gray area’.

Given the huge life impact that a new person would bring to the parent(s), and given that sexual intercourse is such a common activity, and given the huge statistical natural variance that normal developments entail, and given the huge demand for abortion services, and given the potentially huge resource demands that successful and effective prosecutions would entail, it would be beneficial from a resource conservation standpoint, and from a social stability standpoint, to determine an alternate point on the timeline at which to begin enforcing ‘human life’ protections.

In other words, the designation of ‘human life’ and the associated protections should come at some point after conception.

There are no hard mile-markers along the rest of a pregnancy as there is with conception, so it makes finding another logical point much more difficult. The current 24-week limit may going a little too far, as I would prefer somewhere still within the first trimester.

2016 April 30

Humans have pondered aliens since medieval times

We have learned so much about our world/universe and how it works that even common people should know enough to know that there are so many variable that need to be just right for any advanced life to exist, and even for any type of life to exist, that most of the research done for the express purpose of looking for life can be deemed a big waste of money. Such resources should be going to far more useful scientific endeavors, like archaeology, and historical research because these sciences are suffering a loss of information with every second that goes by.