I have to vote in an election coming up. This one is somehow more interesting than a lot of local elections, because it’s a california state senate seat. In case you don’t know, the California state legislature is fundamentally broken in the same way that the federal legislature is broken – they refuse to compromise. [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Politics'
An upcoming election
August 10th, 2010 ·
Tags: Politics
Stock markets are a Ponzi scheme
April 16th, 2010 ·
Like many small investors, I have recently started thinking of the stock market as nothing more than a Ponzi scheme in which companies and financial services companies conspire to print lottery tickets. Many of us have mostly sat on the sidelines while the DOW went from 7,000 to 11,000, while financial services companies who received [...]
Tags: Economics · Politics · Rants
The annual tax torture
April 4th, 2010 ·
Every year when I fill out my taxes, I am amazed at how screwed up our taxation system is. If you are an average wage earner, perhaps with a mortgage, then you end up with a really simple procedure for filing your taxes. If you have a business (sole proprietorship, partnership, etc) or if you [...]
Tags: Economics · Politics · Rants
Censorship goes both ways
January 12th, 2010 ·
It’s odd that Facebook was blocking post of a link to this. For the humor impaired, this should be recognized as satire.
Tags: Politics · The internet
The California Budget Problem
May 31st, 2009 ·
I find myself fascinated by the California budget process. Much of the stuff I have read about blame for the crisis makes no sense at all to me, and has made me even more cynical about the state legislature. The shortfall in revenue this year amounts to about 10% of revenue. That doesn’t seem so [...]
Tags: Politics
Ronald Reagan endorses Obama
October 29th, 2008 ·
Thanks to Spafford for linking to this. I used to think of Ronald Reagan as a horrible president, but then along came George W. McCain. I particularly like the part about whether the US is more respected than it was four years ago.
Tags: Politics
VOTE! Don’t forget to VOTE!
October 23rd, 2008 ·
When I was a young man, my country was engaged in a supremely misguided war in southeast Asia. Once again, my country is engaged in a supremely misguided war. While it can be said that every election is important, few elections are as important to the future of a country as this one in the [...]
Tags: Politics
It’s about trust
October 8th, 2008 ·
As I look around at what is happening in the world today, I keep seeing evidence that it all comes down to trust. As someone who spent a great deal of time working on information security, the subject of trust is one that I tried to design for, but I always regarded trust as a [...]
Tags: Politics · Research · security
OMG
October 2nd, 2008 ·
President Palin. I think I’m going to puke.
Tags: Politics
Don’t underestimate the redneck vote
September 28th, 2008 ·
In January I made a bet with a friend of mine that any Republican candidate for president will beat any Democrat, provided he gave me 2 to 1 odds. Since then, everyone has been assuming that the democrats would win because Bush looks so weak, but all along I have been thinking about what I [...]
Tags: Politics