Easily the most wonky, policy oriented blog post you’ll read this week. If you want to understand the budgets proposed by Ryan and Obama, it’s important to read.
And I’m not saying that spending shouldn’t be reduced…
“Function 920 represents a category called ‘allowances’ that captures the budgetary effects of cross-cutting proposals or contingencies that impact multiple functions rather than one specific area of the budget. It also represents a place-holder category for any budgetary impacts that the Congressional Budget Office has yet to assign to a specific budget function. C.B.O. typically reassigns the budgetary effects of any legislation enacted within Function 920 once a new baseline update is released.”
Maybe the RNC was just what Obama’s campaign needed…
There were a number of “are you kidding me?!?!?” moments during the republican convention. In particular for me was when Romney made a sanctimonious and sarcastic joke about the oceans rising. Just goes to show you exactly how some Republicans feel about the environment. (or at least, the people that Romney’s internal polling said would be most motivated by that statement)
Anyway, mocking a President for attempting to shepherd the country into a more environmentally-responsible future seems a little rich. Isn’t it a moral issue to treat the environment with respect?
Likewise, with health care. I’ve read a number of posts that basically make a moral case with regards to health care:
“when we as a country have become so small and stingy and mean that we cheer the idea of ripping medical care away from fellow citizens, offering nothing in its place but sanctimony and self-rightenousness… What are we? We’re not a country. We’re not a community.”
“They screwed up the un-screwuppable. This was like having one of the featured guests at the State of the Union drop his trousers on camera. If you botch that, how are you going to execute the more complicated constitutional duties? Mitt Romney can’t handle Clint Eastwood trying to do him a favor, and he wants to take on unfriendly negotiations with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Vladimir Putin?”
I suppose this is not going to change your opinion if you already think Obama is a socialist who believes big government is the solution, but it is worth a read…
It was a day late, but the Republicans’ parade of truth-twisting, distortions and plain falsehoods arrived on the podium of their national convention on Tuesday. Following in the footsteps of Mitt Romney’s campaign, rarely have so many convention speeches been based on such shaky foundations.
It has been a while since I have taken the political compass test, but I love taking little tests like this. (There is a good religion one out there as well, I’ll post that when I find it)
Now first off, I obviously don’t vote this way, nor do I necessarily think that a society of this nature would even work properly. It would probably be total chaos.
If you want to read in to my score – I think what it says is this: I’m pretty libertarian about things in general, but I don’t think you can be a hypocrite about it. Too much government is not a good thing, but limited government to me means something like let people marry who they want. It means that you shouldn’t track my cell phone’s GPS without a warrant.
The socialist in me looks at things like health care and says, look, something like “insurance” works best when you have the biggest pool of insured folks, and thus, something like an individual mandate to buy health insurance makes sense. (You still get to go to whatever doctor you’d like, and it was a republican idea first, FYI) I think single-payer health care makes way MORE sense but that’s for another time.
I guess my views on things like carbon taxes, zoning rules, bike lanes, gun control, and others are really economic questions, and not social questions. I’ll have to think about that.
Anyways, if you take the test, I’d love to hear where you score and what you think!
larry lessig was being introduced by jon stewart on the daily show a few nights ago, and I declared out of nowhere to my wife that he’s one of my heroes. I don’t think I’ve ever declared that I had a hero, but here we go, mr. lessig, you’re my first!
his 2007 ted talk on laws that stifle creativity will give you the appropriate background on where we are today with SOPA, PIPA and the crazy place we are with copyright.
The Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS) is a foundational block upon which the Internet has been built and upon which its continued functioning critically depends; it is among a handful of protocols upon which almost every other protocol, and countless Internet applications, rely to operate smoothly.
I wonder how many congress-people could explain how DNS works in less than a minute. This was mentioned in another blog post I linked to, but the willful anti-intellectualism displayed by our representatives is astounding.
I’m also seriously bothered that Senator Franken is a co-sponsor of PIPA. Unbelievable. Did he come out a little too strong on the side of net-neutrality, and now all of big media is breathing down his neck?
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