Thoughts Before The Alarm Sounds

     Recently a friend told me she didn't understand why so many people are opposed to President Obama's healthcare plan, especially since it was one of the major programs he championed during his highly successful campaign. I told her that the main reason is because it has been so rigorously badmouthed by the conservative right (along with every other program the President has presented). Joseph Goebbels said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”      A major objection voiced by the party of “no” is that requiring everyone to have health insurance is unconstitutional – the government cannot force people to buy something they don't want.      There is one major argument that says it can: all states require that drivers buy liability insurance to protect the innocent driver from incurring expenses which are not his fault. It's an easy step to apply the same logic to he...

     In 2001 the Bush administration passed an income tax bill which lowered the tax rate for all taxpayers. The lowest tax bracket was decreased from 15% to 10%, and all other brackets were decreased by 3 percentage points except for the highest one, which decreased 4.6 points. In addition, all taxpayers that filed a return for the year 2000 received a rebate ranging from $300 for single filers to $600 for married couples. Capital gains taxes decreased from 10% to 8%. Child care credits were increased, and the exemption for the Alternative Minimum Tax was increased. Additional adjustments were made in 2003. In order to get the bills through Congress, President Bush agreed to let them expire on January 1, 2011.      Now there is a huge disagreement in Congress – Republicans want to extend the rates, etc. for all taxpayers, and Democrats want to extend them only for families with income of more that $250,000 ($200,000 for single taxpayers). The Republi...

     It seems there are two competing definitons for the term “small business”; to no one's surprise the Democrats are using one and the Republicans are using the other. For the convenience of anyone who doesn't know which party he prefers, here are the definitions: 1.) A small business is a business which is not very large, e.g., a corner grocery, a machine shop with a couple of employees, a mom and pop enterprise, etc. Most Democrats use the term in this context. 2.) A small business is a business which operates as a pass-through tax entity, e.g., most of the businesses in def. 1.) plus most mega-farms, some manufacturing firms, and practically all high-tech and professional firms. These organizations use the individual proprietorship, partnership, S-corporation, limited-liability company (LLC), etc. tax reporting format. Under this definition the business could have anywhere from one to thousands of employees. For example, with over 163,000 employees worldwide, t...

     Recently I purchased a Philips “GoGear,” a gadget that holds music and/or pictures. It is 1-1/2” x 2-1/2” x 1/2” in size, and holds up to 900 songs or 1,500 pictures. If you have read previous entries in my blog, you know of my interest in music. I don't have 900 songs in it – yet - but I do have almost 800. Younger readers probably would not recognize the artists in my collection.      The GoGear not only holds the songs - they can be replayed either in the order they were entered into the device, or by individual selection. One can also replay them in random order, or by artist, album, or individually tailored playlist. The gadget cost me $40 at Walmart.      Now I am telling you this because the device is an example of the rapidly increasing amount of information which can be stored in smaller and smaller volumes. When I was young (a contemporay of Alley Oop), a collection of 900 songs would have required a minimum of...

     The primary election season is over, and experts are scratching their heads as to what the effect will be on November 2nd. Two months ago the Republican party had stood to gain many seats, possibly enough to gain control, in both the House and the Senate. However, with the nomination of Tea Party candidates in Nevada, Kentucky, Alaska, Colorado, Florida and Delaware, no one is sure how this shift to the very far right will affect the voters.      Not all Republicans, including most of the party leaders, are enamored of the Palin/Limbaugh/Fox line – will those voters stay home on election day, or will they reluctantly decide to vote the party ticket regardless of who the candidate is?      Meanwhile the Democrats believe that the further to the right the Republicans move, the better their own chances. I am not sure if that is true, but they have their own problem: so far their members appear unenthusiastic about the elect...

     Although people have rung in from all points of the political spectrum with complaints about President Obama, there is one big argument in his favor: he has kept his campaign promises. He promised a tax cut, and his stimulus package delivered a cut (conveniently forgotten by the opposition) of $282 billion over two years. He promised to get troops out of Iraq – only 50,000 remain. He promised to agressively advance the war in Afghanistan – he has done so. He promised to create a universal healthcare plan – there is no doubt that he has done that. And he promised to bring the parties together for peace talks in the Middle East – the talks began last week and are continuing tomorrow.      But with all that, why has his approval rating sunk so low? As Bill Clinton said, “It's the economy, stupid.” Obama wasted a huge portion of his political capital on a stimulus that was way, way too small. I have written several times about the inadaquacy of ...

      As I mentioned in my posting of August 26, Americans always need to find some event about which they can disagree. Another such event has come along in the last week.       Terry Jones, the pastor of a church with a congregation of about 50 in Gainsville, Florida, threatened to burn 200 copies of the Quran. He feels that this is an evil book - one which incites its followers to kill non-believers. (In that respect, it is similar to certain sections of the old testament.)       As with the proposed civic center and mosque near ground zero in New York, there is no doubt that this kook has the right to do so, but having the right and doing the right thing are two completely different subjects. The trigger for his attitude is really the proposed center.       I have always felt that if one does the same as one's opponents, one is lowering himself to their level, and this is one of th...

      As I mentioned in my posting of August 28, the difference between a fact and a belief is, “When an event, idea, system, theory, etc. is supported by evidence, we accept it as a fact; when there is no supporting evidence we have a belief. Notice: we accept facts, we have beliefs.” Today I want to further explore the relationship between the two.       Facts can affect beliefs, but beliefs cannot affect facts. It is an asymmetric relationship: it applies in one direction only. Although it rarely happens, one's beliefs can be changed by facts. Here is a well-known example: Throughout the Middle Ages, Ptolemy, who died in 168 C.E. was considered the reigning authority on astronomy. His system explaining the movement of the heavenly bodies was based on the idea that the earth was the center of the universe, and everything else revolved around it. It was a belief held by everyone; the church in particular would allow no other expla...