End of a Busy Week

Quote of the day:
“I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and The Iraq everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the US should help the US or should help South Africa and should help The Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for our children.” – Lauren Upton (Miss Teen South Carolina) when asked why she thought one-fifth of Americans could not locate the United States on a world map.

Today's Fun Fact:
The animal with the fastest resting heartbeat is the hummingbird, at 1400 beats per minute. The slowest is the blue whale, at between 4 and 8. However, the heartbeats of some small animals (such as the hedgehog and ground squirrel) get down to around 5 beats per minute while they are hibernating.

First of all, I'd like to pat myself on the back a little bit for writing a new post every day this week. I have no doubt that Blue Cross is just as thrilled that they have paid me as I did it. Actually, it was a pretty eventful week, so it wasn't altogether that difficult.

So, we now officially have Gov. Quinn. I worked out right after work and then went straight to curling, so I missed both Blagojevich's speech to the legislature and the official announcement that he had been removed. While I still have some reservations over the exact manner in which he was removed, I am very happy he's gone and I hope the state and the country can move on pretty quickly. There is too much to be done on both a state and national level for us to continue to be distracted by this.

So, another day and another piece of grim economic news. A report released today reveals that GDP contracted by 3.8% during the 4th quarter, the largest contraction since 1982. Curiously enough, I can't confirm in any of the news stories if this is real (i.e. inflation-adjusted) GDP or just nominal. I believe that it's nominal, because I don't think that we have the inflation numbers for 2008 yet. While this news is certainly not a shock (analysts had actually been forecasting a 5.1% drop) the seemingly endless roll of daily negative economic news continues and cannot be good for consumer confidence. And in this we have another example of Keynes' "paradox of thrift"; hard times make people spend less and save more at exactly the time when the economy needs them to do the exact opposite. Each piece of bad news just makes people clamp down tighter, which furthers the cycle onward. This is, of course, the flipside to both the dot-com and housing booms, when everyone knew it was a bubble and assets were overvalued but people kept buying and spending anyway.

You can't help but laugh at the irony that on the day we announce the biggest GDP drop in 27 years, Exxon announces that they have broken the US record for annual profit at $45.2 billion. While I am still most definitely a capitalist and defend a company's right to make as much money as they can for their shareholders, I think this is further evidence that oil companies are a lot quicker on the trigger in increasing gas prices when the price of oil per barrel goes up than they are when it goes down. I also think that this is further evidence (as if we needed more) of the need to branch out into alternative energy sources. It is just not good for the country to have such a high concentration of profits in any one industry. Through lobbying and campaign contributions, it simply buys you a far too disproportionate amount of influence in the legislature. And while I don't believe that all oil execs are greedy, soulless, cash whores I also don't believe that none of them are. But I don't think that the key to breaking the energy monopoly is through increased regulation or windfall taxes (though I'm not completely deadset against either). Rather, I think it can only be accomplished when the constituency sends the message that unless their local reps get serious about at least leveling the playing field for alternative energy, they will soon find themselves out of a job.

Finally, and on the lighter side, this story bothered me . As a result of fertility treatment, a woman gave birth to octuplets this week. OK, I'm fine with that. If you wanna get pregnant and can't do it naturally I think it's perfectly fine to utilize all the resources of the modern medical science industry. And sometimes, as a byproduct of that, the results can be too successful. So that's all well and good. Here's the part that bothers me. She already had 6 kids. While I don't think there should be a limit per se on when you are and are not allowed to seek fertility treatment, I think (as in most things) that a healthy dose of common sense is warranted. When you've already got 6 kids and you can't get pregnant again, that's your body's way of telling you to stop. The story also says that amongst her brood are 2-year-old twins. That means that she got pregnant this time when they were only 15-23 months old, so it's not like she tried for years naturally before going to fertility as a last resort.

On a more philosophical level, at what point does it cross into borderline child abuse? How can two people possibly give each child the individual attention that they deserve when there are 14 of them? And this is coming from someone who's dad was one of 10 kids. At least that was spread out over 19 years, so basically 1 every two years. You can definitely see how that can happen if you don't believe in birth control (which, as a good catholic family in the 40s and 50s, they didn't). But this little baby factory has now churned out 14 in 7 years. Talk about unnatural! My question is this: what happens when she goes in for more fertility treatments next year?

Obama Impaled on Olive Branch

Quote of the Day:
“If a woman tells you she's twenty and looks sixteen, she's twelve. If she tells you she's twenty-six and looks twenty-six, she's damn near fourty.” – Chris Rock

Today's Fun Fact:
Despite the images we’ve all seen in our grade school science books, it isn’t possible to draw a map of our solar system to scale. On a sheet of paper, with Earth reduced to about the diameter of a pea, Jupiter would be over a thousand feet away and Pluto would be a mile and a half away (and about the size of a bacterium, so you wouldn’t be able to see it anyway).

So the $819 billion stimulus bill passed the House late yesterday. It passed despite (at last count) exactly 0 Republicans voting for it. While it's not altogether unusual for a vote to line up almost exclusively along party lines, this one was notable for the fact that Obama at least made an effort to achieve bipartisanship on it. How much of an effort you think he made probably depends on your overall opinion of him. In an attempt to garner Republican support, he removed funding for planned parenthood groups and funding to renovate the national Mall (both criticized as wasteful spending by the Republicans) while adding some of the additional tax cuts the Republicans are asking for.

The question now being asked is should Obama have even bothered with his overtures? It seems that Republicans think he is somewhat cornered by his promises of bipartisanship. If he fails to make any compromises they can argue that he is shutting them out of the process and reneging on his promise to work with them, and if he fails to go far enough to meet them they can still vote it down (even though they know it will pass) so that they can criticize it when parts of it inevitably don't work. Basically, they want to morph the Obama "I never voted for this war" platform to "I never voted for this stimulus" in the 2010 elections. In essence, they are gambling that the stimulus will either not work, not work quick enough, or just be unpopular. They would say they are not "gambling", since they seem pretty sure it's not going to work.

Personally, I think the Republicans are playing a dangerous game. According to Gallup, Obama currently has an overall 64% approval rating, and 45% amongst Republicans. That's bound to decrease as the recession deepens (as almost all experts think it will). Still, if the public perceives that the Republicans are more interested in blocking the Obama agenda than they are in stimulating the economy it may end up pleasing the 16% that currently disapprove of Obama at the expense of pissing off everyone else.

So should Obama even bother trying to court Republican support if they seem so intent to rebuff it? The only real point of compromise is to give and get concessions from both sides. Why water down the bill you want in the name of appeasing a group that's still going to criticize the legislation anyway? With future legislation (starting with this stimulus bill in the Senate) I think Obama should take the tactic of sitting down with Republican leadership and saying that while he likes the bill the way it is, he is willing to make certain compromises in order to gain bipartisan support. However, if after making those compromises Republicans indicate that they still will not support it he should tell them he is getting rid of all the revisions and going with the bill as originally written. If the legislation is going to be criticized anyway, let it truly be your legislation that you take the heat for. It's true that Republicans can still fillibuster in the Senate, but that would really be a game of political chicken in this climate. Opposing a bill is one thing, but outright blocking a vote is not likely to win them any new supporters.

A Couple New Things I'm Trying

Quote of the day:
“Now that's using the powers of the executive branch to help people who need help, not unlike what Franklin Roosevelt did when he was president, and he helped Great Britain because Congress was not willing to allow the United States to shore up Britain in its fight against the Nazis” – Gov. Blagojevich

Today's Fun Fact:
The modern military salute has its origins in Medieval Times. When a knight rode up to a castle to announce himself to the lord and lady, he would take his right hand and raise his visor to show that it was really him and not an impostor and then drop his arm to let the visor fall down again.

So I decided that I'm going to try to start my blogs off with a quote and a bit of useless trivia. Why? Why not.

Yesterday as I was going through my mail I came upon some literature for an Evanston mayoral candidate. When I read that his name was Barnaby Dinges I swear that the glass of water I was drinking nearly shot out my nose. Though his website specifies that his name is pronounced DIN-jiss (and not ding-gus) it still strikes me as a rather unfortunate name to have in seeking public office.

Lastly, I need a little bit of help. Every year I come up with a goal (or series of goals) for myself. I don't really refer to them as resolutions, but I guess that's what they are. Two years ago it was to get my MBA and run the marathon, and last year it was to get my CPA. This year I'm having difficulty coming up with some. So far the biggest one I have is in some ways very trivial and in some ways one of the most challenging. In an effort to avoid hangovers, I have made it my goal to never drink more than 6 beers in any 24-hour period. I have, however, granted myself two exemptions to this (Super Bowl Sunday and March Madness weekend). Other than that though, I have accomplished a couple rather pedestrian achievements (modding my PSP and beating the original Legend of Zelda in under an hour) and I only have one more (learn to juggle). I have been "working" on a novel for a few years now (i.e. I wrote 10 pages 2 years ago and haven't touched it since) so I was thinking of making it a goal to finish my first draft of it. Anyone else have any ideas on what aspirations I should set for myself?

Geithner In; Blago (soon to be) Out

So, Geithner was confirmed yesterday and is now officially the Treasury Secretary. Obviously as my post yesterday would indicate I am pleased by this, but I'm ready to move on.

Our embattled governor's impeachment trial got underway yesterday while good old Roddy (or, as the Daily Show dubbed him, "Scumdog Million-hairs") decided to forego the proceedings in favor of a whirlwind media tour. This whole situation has brought up something of a moral dilemma for me. On one hand, I absolutely want him out of office. Despite his claims, I do not believe that it is possible for a number of the phrases he was caught on tape using to be within the bounds of the law in any context. It is abundantly clear to me (as well as to most of the general populace) that he is guilty of trying to personally profit from the US Senate appointment. At the same time though, I do kind of agree with him that the impeachment trial is something of a farce. Basically, the legislature has decided to throw in lots of other politically-motivated charges that would never warrant an impeachment by themselves. And Blagojevich will not be given the full opportunity to defend himself due to limitations imposed because of how they might interfere with the criminal case. I said the other day that "a correct decision obtained through incorrect means is still a correct decision" and on those grounds I guess I have to still be in favor of his removal since overall I do think it's the right decision. But it has made me reconsider my position on recall elections. Previously I have been against them because I think the last thing we need is even more perpetual campaigning and a politician that governs by the poll numbers. However, this is exactly the type of situation where a recall election makes sense. I just can't figure out how you can install a recall provision for cases like this without opening the door to mass political manipulation.

And I don't know whether to laugh or cry at all the ridiculous statements being made by Blago over the last week. At last count he had compared his "courage" in making decisions to FDR, his arrest to Pearl Harbor, and likened his "persecution" now to Gandhi and MLK. Mr. Blagojevich, though I don't agree with any of those, you do remind me of this one guy that went around professing his innocence when the whole world knew he was guilty: OJ. Guess you can hope that your criminal trial goes as well as his did (well, as well as his FIRST one at any rate).

Why I Don't Care About Tim Geithner's Tax Problems

Some of you may have noticed me lighting the fuse on the Tim Geithner discussion and then falling silent once we had a few comments. I was all set to respond but then realized that I had quite a bit to say and decided to make it a separate blog post instead.

For the uninitiated, I will attempt to summarize the Geithner situation using just the known facts. Geithner is Obama's nominee for Treasury Secretary. Normally, this post gets minimal coverage but with the financial crisis front and center and the fact that his predecessor (Hank Paulson) became something of an overnight celebrity there is a great deal more scrutiny than there has been in the past. In any case, it has recently come to light that when Mr. Geithner was head of the IMF he failed to pay necessary self-employment taxes to the IRS from 2001-2004. In 2006, he was audited for his 2003 and 2004 returns and ended up paying ~$15,000 in back taxes. It's reasonable to assume that he knew at that time that he had made the same error on his 2001 and 2002 returns as well, but he failed to file an amended return. It was only during the current vetting process that he paid the back taxes on those returns.

This is another of those "scandals" where I just don't see where the issue is. He owed back taxes and he is now current. To me, that's the end of the story. I suspect that it's seen as a bigger deal because as Treasury Secretary he will be the head of the IRS and it's something of an embarassment to still be owing money to the organization he will be overseeing. Fair enough but it still doesn't, and shouldn't, preclude him from the nomination.

There's also been a lot of remarks about him using TurboTax to file his returns, like that's somehow a negative. I'm a CPA and I have used and will continue to use a TurboTax-type program (TaxAct) for my returns as well. Why? Because it's easier, and there's less chance for error. I will also continue to use calculators and spreadsheets even though I am capable of arithmetic and I will continue to use Word and this blog even though I am fully capable of writing things out by hand.

By the way, pay particular attention to the fact that I said "less chance" and not "no chance" for error. Using TaxAct did not stop me from making an error on our 2006 return.

So on the specifics of this case, I don't think there's anything here that warrants a withdrawal or even a holdup of his confirmation. But in a larger sense, this represents something I am growing increasingly tired of in politics, and that's the over-scrutiny and demands for perfection in the private lives of our public officials. Pardon me, but from a privacy standpoint how is someone's minor tax issues anyone else's business? And it's not me calling these issues minor, it's the IRS. They never even so much as assessed Geithner a penalty for any of his errors (and even we got penalized when I messed up our returns). Before anyone jumps on me for partisanship, you may recall that it was on this blog just a few short months ago that I said that all the talk on Palin's family (whether or not the baby was hers, how long she waited to go to the hospital during labor, etc) should have been out of bounds. And in that case we were talking about an elected official. Here we are merely talking about an employee (albeit a very powerful employee). The debate should have nothing to do with whether or not you personally want Geithner in the position, it should have everything to do with whether or not there are grounds to bar him from it. In my opinion, it's not even close. I believe that the proper analogy is saying that someone can't be made Chief of police because you find out that they have a couple unpaid parking tickets.

Happy Inauguration Day!

Have meetings most of the day, so just have a couple real quick comments.

In the bipartisan spirit, I'm going to say something nice about our soon to be former President Bush. In case you are ever hard pressed to name one good thing that the man ever did, I think this qualifies. By executive order, he is designating nearly 200,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean as conservation areas. This will make him the person that has protected more of the oceans than anyone else in the world. Now, overall I think that policies of sustainability are preferable to pure conservation (in much the way that I believe that drinking responsibly is preferable to prohibition), but given all the challenges and (often) years of time it takes to get such policies in place (especially since so much of it involves international waters) I think that this was a good idea.

As for our incoming President, I was reading the latest Economist this morning on the way in, and I think that this summed things up pretty well:

"The next four, or eight, years may be a disappointment, a triumphant renewal, or something in between. Mr Obama is inexperienced, and right now the world looks especially forbidding. But he is a respectful and thoughtful man, and that is a good start.

Random Thought That Occurred to Me

So don't ask me why I thought about this, but it intrigued me. I just ordered a 1 terabyte external hard drive and while thinking about how awesomely huge that is it got me to another thought. Assume the following: an 80-year life span, the average length of a song is 3.5 minutes, and the average size of an MP3 is 1 MB per minute. If you bought a total of 12 terabytes of hard drive space (which you could do for ~$1200) and filled it with MP3s, you would officially have more music than you could ever listen to in your lifetime. Even if you started playing songs the moment you were born and continued 24/365, you would still not get through them all by the time you were 80. Of course, that begs the next question, which is how long would it take to download 12 TBs of music on the average T1 line? Well, guess that's a question for another day . . .

Changing topics completely, this story disturbed me . A man (Jonathan Reed) in Texas has had his 30-year-old rape/murder conviction overturned. The reason? The Texas Supreme court ruled that "prosecutors improperly excluded black prospective jurors from Reed's trial". The kicker is that Reed is white. The case was apparently built upon a manual "written by a prosecutor in 1969 and used for years later, that advised Dallas prosecutors to exclude minorities from juries" because "they almost always empathize with the accused". OK, that definitely seems pretty obscene, but is this really an effective way to right that wrong? Shouldn't the fact that, you know, there was overwhelming evidence that this guy is guilty carry a little more weight (the roommate of the murdered girl was also attacked but lived and ID'd Reed, and two other residents ID'd him as being in the apartment complex before the attack) than judicial procedure? It seems to me that it's your basic right to a trial judged by a jury of your peers and it certainly seems like he still got that. Thus, if we were talking about a black defendant where all black jurors were disallowed that would be different. Furthermore, since this manual was written in 1969 and Reed's trial was in 1979, doesn't that mean that all decisions rendered within those 10 years now need to be vacated and retried? And, if so, doesn't that mean that the families of any men put to death (Reed was on death row) as a result of decisions rendered during that time can now sue the state? I guess that at the end of the day, my point is that I believe that a correct response achieved through incorrect methods is still a correct response. I think that while lower courts need to be strict interpreters of the law, when cases reach the levels of the state and federal supreme court, I believe that society is better served if the justices are guided by the overall principle of "was justice served in this case?" But, as with the Burris appointment, this is probably another example of where the "right" thing to do comes into conflict with the "legal" thing to do. It's a bit disheartening that those two principles should conflict so often.

Happy New Year!

Before I get into anything else, help settle a debate between me and Mike. How much does the new Pepsi logo look like the Obama logo? Judge for yourself:

Pepsi

Obama

Personally, I don't think they are that close. It's true that both are red, white, and blue and both are circular, but it's certainly not strange for a politician to use the U.S. colors in a campaign (in fact, it's more rare for them not to), nor is it unusual for a logo to be in a circle. You know what I think the new Pepsi logo looks like? The old Pepsi logo.

I think they wasted a couple hundred million on an ad designer who basically decided that the white swoosh should turn up instead of down on the right side. Yep, that's some value for your money.

Next topic. In reading this week's Economist, I came across an article on Turkmenistan. Now, I know that people in most of the rest of the world do not have as simplistic names as we do, but I came across one that is just obscenely long. The current president of Turkmenistan is Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov. Good luck fitting that on a bumper sticker. If they charge by the letter, the campaign could go bankrupt just from printing yard signs. Let me take a stab at phoenetically pronouncing this one. I'm gonna go with Ger-bahn-goo-ly Bir-dy-mook-ham-ma-dawv. Anybody got any better ideas?

I've been following the Israel-Hamas conflict with interest. I don't have a whole lot of thoughts on it, other than that it is obviously a bad thing for stability in the Middle East. That is not at all to say that Israel isn't justified in doing what they are doing (I think they certainly are) but it definitely sets the peace process back quite a bit. During times of relative calm, it's easier for 3rd parties to try to act as a peace broker between opposing forces. But once the conflict turns hot, it pretty much forces everyone in the region (as well as all the major countries of the world) to line up behind one side or the other, and that makes it hard for anyone to be seen as a neutral party capable of mediating. Years of baby steps forward are completely erased overnight. It is times like these when I am most pessimistic about the long-term. I said shortly after 9/11 that realistically I saw only 3 eventual outcomes from the Middle East situation: 1) we wipe them out; 2) they wipe us out; 3) we wipe each other out. Sadly, 7 years later not much has happened to change my mind about that. But, as with climate change, nothing would make me happier than to be completely wrong.

Finally, the unresolved Senate seats make for some interesting January pre-inauguration news. The Roland Burris appointment has unfolded very interestingly. Last week, it was pretty much seen as a given that Burris wouldn't be seated when Congress convened yesterday. Even Burris seemed somewhat resigned to it, telling the Sun-Times that "if he is turned away at the ceremony, he won't make a scene." Then over the weekend, things suddenly took a turn as more and more people came to the conclusion that "gee, I guess Blago is still the governor, and unless we have proof that Burris obtained the nomination through illegal means, we don't really have any legal grounds to not seat him." But, as usual, the Democrats couldn't be pro-active about it. They still chose to not seat him yesterday but now it looks like they will today (or at least sometime soon). Even though it's easy to resolve, flip-flops like this drive me crazy. If there are no new facts to consider, why are you coming up with a different conclusion today than the one you had yesterday?

The other Senate situation still needing to be resolved is the one in Minnesota. On election night, incumbent Norm Coleman led challenger Al Franken by 215 votes, triggering a mandatory recount. Now, after the recount process has been completed, Franken now leads by 225 votes and Coleman has filed a lawsuit challenging the results. I think this is an extraordinarily bad idea for Coleman. Now let me be clear about this. I am not an Al Franken fan. In my opinion, he's the sort of extreme leftist in the Michael Moore type mold that give moderate liberals a bad name. Nevertheless, in the absence of extraordinary circumstances, dragging the election results through the court system does far more harm than potential good. There will always be ballots that can be contested (i.e. where someone marks down both candidates and then crosses one out) and there will always be controversy where some absentee ballots are discounted and then allowed or vice versa. But there is just no way to legitimately win an election in a court room. I thought it was a bad idea when Gore did it in 2000 and I think it's a bad idea now. I don't often say this, but I think maybe that LA has it right. If no candidate gets over 50% of the votes on election night, there should be a run-off a few weeks later. Either that or there should just be an automatic run-off if the result is within 1%.