From bailouts to reform

It was clear to me back when the bailouts were announced that they were a bad idea. From various articles and forums around the Internet, it looks like it was also clear to many others then, and since then it has become clear to many more that the bailouts were a bad idea.  


It's disgusting that all taxpayers are paying for business blunders of some fat cats who should really have been forced to declare bankruptcy, because that's what they created for themselves with their own decisions. 


It's clear that our government simply isn't equipped to handle a handout and audit of this magnitude. Much smaller projects have failed or later been discovered to be crooked many, many times. This is about people; the people that we elected and the people they hired just aren't strong enough. That means WE are not strong enough, because they and we are all Americans.  


So after the smoke clears and we all realize just how much was stolen from us during this bailout, and we begin to rebuke our decision-makers, we need to go further and talk about how we can prevent this from happening again. Because this problem we have is not new, and it's name is corruption.  


We are hypocrites because our country is a victim of the largest corrupt schemes in history and at the same time we are trying to "clean up" the rest of the world. We have to admit failure at home so we can fix it and move on and regain our self-respect as well as the world's respect.  


Corruption happens because individuals aren't strong enough to withstand the pressures of their position. Let's not be naive and believe we can eliminate the pressures - corporations both profit and non-profit will always attempt to lobby for their interests, ladder-climbers will always be kissing up to the person above them, and bringing home the bacon always looks good to the masses who don't understand what was traded away for it.  


We need to focus on strengthening the system in which our elected officials and their hires operate. To strengthen our system we may need to add new laws, remove existing detrimental laws, and amend other existing laws. 


The national discussion should be about what can be done in order to strengthen our system for posterity - not just react to the latest blunder.

Government Investments

I was reading an article in the newspaper about Goldman Sachs and how they apparently defrauded lots and lots of investors by selling them subprime-mortgage-backed securities that they knew were junk, right before the housing crash of 2007.

Goldman Sachs says they're innocent, someone else points the finger at their association with the Secretary of the Treasury, and some fishy money movements around the world, yada yada.

What caught my attention is that Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, "whose state lost $5 million of the $6 million it had invested in Goldman's subprime mortgage-backed bonds in 2006..."  WHOA, STOP - the STATE of Mississippi invested in corporate bonds?? WHY???

States have money that belongs to taxpayers. States need to either use that money for the benefit of society or keep it in a limited-size reserve for future years, and return any excess to the taxpayers!!  States must operate as a non-profit institution.

The idea that a state is investing money is infuriating.  Mississippi voters, on hearing their Attorney General's remarks,  should pause to ponder who was in their congress when the law was passed which authorized the state to invest taxpayers dollars,  and dismiss those politicians who either voted for the measure or failed to vote against it.  Their careers must end.

Investments are for people who are willing to tolerate risk.  In general, government should not be taking any risks.  In executing its duties to govern citizens, it should be following the safest course practical, and disclose to the public any remaining risks.  We already know some exceptions to the general rule:  any military, police, or rescue action involves risks, and the public normally accepts those risks; on the other hand, the public rails against decision-makers who take unnecessary risks or are negligent in the discharge of their duties.

Investments are for people who are willing to tolerate risk. Investments are not for government. When a politician says, "this ultra-fast levitating railroad is an investment in our future", it's fine because the railroad will exist and be useful.  A stock market crash may put the railroad company out of business but the state, who should position itself as a creditor of the railroad company, can then repossess the equipment and continue using it for the public good.  When a politician says, "we're going to buy corporate bonds that don't have any intrinsic value", he should be stopped because if the purpose is to "make money" for the state, then the correct solution is to increase taxes or decrease spending. It's THAT simple.

Proposition to ban divorce in California

Judaism and Islam both allow for divorce so this law means Christianity would be the only religion that can really be practiced in California. 


I'm angry about this proposition because it hurts freedom of religion. If Christians don't want divorce, then don't get divorced, but keep hands off my precious American freedoms. 


This proposition is only possible because of another misguided set of laws that did pass, a long time ago -- the ones that give marriage a secular legal status and allow "civil marriage" to be performed by a judge. In a state with freedom of religion, marriage is none the state's business. That's where we went wrong, that's why Proposition 8 was ridiculous, and that's why this proposition is ridiculous. 


If the state wants to give tax advantages to people who are living together, or to people who are raising kids, that's fine -- those people don't have to be married, and they don't have to be heterosexual, and they don't have to be religious, to do what they do.


And what are abused spouses going to do?  It's hard enough to get away from an abuser WITHOUT the state getting in your way. Are abusive husbands going to get the benefit of law enforcement in tracking down their wives who run away, because separation will be a criminal matter???

Mayor power grab in Sacramento

Sacramento's Mayor, Kevin Johnson, is pushing the city council to approve a law that would give him more power than any other Sacramento mayor had for nearly a century. Apparently, he thinks its necessary because doing things the republican way (lowercase r, not "the party") is too slow for his taste.

If he's not a good enough leader to, uh, lead the council, and if the council members aren't wise enough to have some common vision of what's really important for the city, they should all step down and let a new government take charge of Sacramento.

Stupid Mistakes

I read this in an article about Afghanistan today -

"[US Army General] McChrystal's latest assessment calls for redistributing troops to focus more on protecting population centers and less on chasing Taliban fighters. It also says it will take several years to build a more professional and capable Afghan security force, without saying how large that force should be."

And I'm feeling very angry and sad at the same time. He's saying that we are getting our ASS KICKED and that he wants to take a break from the HARD WORK of trying to kill all those Taliban (which is not something we should be trying to do anyway) and SIT ON HIS HANDS, letting the bad guys take the initiative and kick MORE ass.

We should have left Afghanistan immediately after we completed our objective of destroying the existing Al Qaeda camps there. Yes, they would have returned afterwards. But we could have just struck them again when they re-established themselves. We could have maintained a presence there on the cheap, hiring and training spies to report to us the whereabouts of the terrorists and striking them at our convenience, instead of trying to defend the entire country.

But that's a hypothetical situation. Here's reality - we are there now, and even if we had some objective in mind before, it's definitely not going to be served by defending the population centers. Why? Because that means we're giving the REST of the country to the Taliban. And since we're wasting our effort doing something that will NOT lead to defeating the Taliban, we may as well just leave and cut our losses. We have better uses for the money right here at home.

We are tiring ourselves out trying to hold on to worthless pieces of dirt in Iraq and Afghanistan. What is that doing to our ability to defend ourselves here?

Worst Job Search Sites

I have a feeling I'll need to find a new job soon so I am updating my resume and looking for some jobs online. I ran into a few sites that really sucked:

You Found Jobs (http://youfoundjobs.com) - a disguised bait & switch, they make it look like you're filling out THEIR registration form but you're really signing up for a bunch of stuff; if you're not careful you'll authorize some shady company to charge you through your phone bill. Very nasty.

Career Finder (http://career-finder.org) - a clean bait & switch, they promise job listings but first you have to request information from a bunch of schools. It's annoying that they claim that you're signing up to receive information from schools because it shows employers that you're education minded and, apparently, employers like that sort of thing... because probably none of the employers listed there (if they have any) care or are even aware that you've requested information from a bunch of schools. It's meaningless. Degrees and certificates count; spam in your mailbox doesn't.

Job.com (http://job.com) - they do have jobs but the signup procedure is alternating pages of job-related data and "offers". Some of the data entry is repetitive. At least they let you skip each offer as it is presented. Sometimes they show pop-up ads.

Career Arrow (http://careerarrow.us) - same scam as You Found Jobs. Both of them go to a page at http://ian.smileymedia.com with the phone charge scam and who knows what else after that (I didn't dare click on anything once I saw that page, I just closed the browser).

Objective-C

I'm learning Objective-C and I am really stewing over a few things:

First, there's a lot of punctuation in Objective-C.

Second, I don't like that the annoyance of writing header files is extended by having to write @interface et al. We should know by know how to write implementations and have a tool to create the header files from publicly visible methods. I get really annoyed when I'm writing things twice. #import is a nice improvement over #include though.

Third, I don't like that the word @interface is used for the declarations in the header file. Because the header files don't do anything for the programmer, we have a new word @protocol to describe the same thing that "interface" does in Java. But at least Objective-C has its @protocol word, because that's a really useful programming technique.

Fourth, I don't like the way are declared on classes and variables. It looks awkward to be in a class declaration after the parent class, and it looks extraneous in a variable declaration. I like the Java way better, where I can just clearly write "class ... implements ..." and declare variables with the interface as data type so that both me and the compiler know what they can and can't do. After all, when they conform to an interface, it doesn't matter to the programmer what type they really are.

Fifth, I don't like the arrangement of functionality in the Foundation framework. The NSString class has methods for handling file paths and that seems out of place. I guess that because it's so much more cumbersome for the programmer to create new instances in Objective-C with the alloc/init/release formula, the Objective-C guys found it more convenient to stick a bunch of methods into related using objects so they can be accessed directly instead of in a package where the functionality is grouped together. At first I thought it might have been added with a category (mix-in... neat) but the documentation for NSString doesn't mention that so I think it really is built-in.