If you don't want a Jeopardy! spoiler stop reading. For the rest of you, my television contacts tell me that repeat winner Ken Jennings will lose in a game to be broadcast this Tuesday. Apparently he blows the Final Jeopardy question.

Comments: 4 Posted by david on 29 November 2004 at 8:14 AM

Alright, I've successfully resisted discussing the recent election, but then I read Bob Herbert's column in the NY Times today. In his column he comments on a recent Department of Agriculture report showing that "12 million families [who] represent 11.2 percent of all U.S. households [...] 'were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food for all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources.'" That's right, the poor are starving in America.

So how does this tie in with the election? It's really quite simple: those of you who voted for President Bush on November 2nd cast a vote against the poor in America. We've all heard about the haves and the have-nots, but the Republican party doesn't take part in that struggle. Instead, it focuses all of its energy on a small subsection of the haves: those who have too much. Everything else that you might think the Republicans stand for is really just a smokescreen. A despicable, greedy, bigoted smokescreen, but a smokescreen nevertheless.

How do you verify this premise? Just examine the Bush Administration's enacted policies over the last four years: the only domestic policies passed by the Bush Administration were the tax cuts (which -- despite what you might have heard elsewhere -- were clearly targeted at the wealthy: a study i read recently had the average American getting $300-$600 form the Bush tax cuts while the wealthiest 1% of Americans got in excess of $58,000 in tax breaks.), the under-funded No Child Left Behind education bill, and the creation of the Homeland Security Department. Of these three policies, the rich got their tax cut and the other two were necessitated by politics. The No Child Left Behind act is under-funded because the Bush Administration doesn't actually care about eduction, but some of the people who voted for President Bush do, so this is a smokescreen to deceive them. The creation of the Homeland Security department was a change that the Bush Administration initially opposed and tried to poison-pill in Congress by amending the bill to eliminate civil service protections for its staff; the Bush Administration got on board in end because the country supported it so it was the politically expedient thing to do.

At all costs the rich must be allowed to keep their excessive wealth. Those of you who voted for the Republican party because of your religious beliefs, fiscal conservatism or belief in smaller government need to know that the Republicans desperately want you to listen do what they say, but not to look too closely at what they do. That is why the Republicans must out-and-out lie on the campaign trail. Not even their supporters actually support their policies.

The Republicans still claim to be the party of "small government," but we've come to a point in our politics where no major party can truthfully claim to support small government. The Bush Administration oversaw the largest increase in domestic spending since the New Deal. Both Democrats and Republicans want to spend your money; the question you have to ask is how you want it to be spent. The Republicans believe in tax the middle class and the poor in order to give money to the rich. The Democrats want to tax the rich to help the middle class and the poor.

To those of you who didn't understand this distinction on election day, I apologize. Those of us who understood failed to make the distinction as clear as it should have been.

To the Christian Right (or the "evangelicals" as you call yourselves these days), I ask that you try to understand the difference between a Christian nation and a nation of Christians. The United States is (mostly) the latter. It is not now nor has it ever been the former. Those of you who think the Ten Commandments are the foundations of our laws don't seem to understand the difference between morality and the laws. Morality is something you and I must decide on individually. Laws are designed to protect our society as a whole. The law here in the US has evolved to the point where in many ways it is better than the religious rules that societies were governed by for so long. Our laws give power to the majority while protecting the minority. If you succeed is forcing your morality on those who don't share it, America will be changed greatly from what it is today.

I wonder to, why those of you on the Christian Right feel so strongly only about some parts of your moral code? You rise up in great anger against the gays, but seem not to care at all about the poor and the needy. Because of this, I'm left to conclude that you aren't acting on true religious convictions but are simply using religion as a prop to support your bigotry. America is a multi-faceted society and clearly a great deal of work remains to be done to make our society whole.

With Thanksgiving approaching, I think we should all take some time to give thanks for all that we have. Then we should take some time to think about those who have less to give thanks for and what we can do to help them.

Comments: 1 Posted by david on 22 November 2004 at 9:58 AM

I was reading Slate's discussion about welfare reform when one of the contributors offered up the following passage describing all of the help the government gives the very poor.

We now supplement the earnings of low-income workers through several major programs:

1) about $32 billion in cash, delivered through the tax code in a program called the Earned Income Tax Credit;

2) well over $20 billion in day-care and preschool education programs (including Head Start) that provide care while parents work and often aim to promote child development;

3) many billions of dollars in food and nutrition-assistance programs for both adults and children; and

4) a huge and rapidly growing Medicaid program, supplemented by an additional health-care program, which pays the medical bills of all children in poor families and many additional children living in families above the poverty level but with incomes under 200 percent of poverty (about $38,000 for a family of four in 2004).

In addition, many of these families receive support through various transportation programs, two additional tax credits, several housing programs, and a blizzard of education and training programs. Most of these programs have been expanded or created since the late 1980s. I mention this extensive list of programs both because they demonstrate the nation's substantial commitment to helping poor and low-income families that work and because they provide essential context for considering the question of how much more taxpayers should be expected to spend on these families.

This is a perfect example of citing statistics that don't actually tell you anything; nothing is gained by knowing how much the government spends on low-income workers. You have to evaluate these policies at the other end of the spectrum: are families getting enough? For example, in 2003 about 35.8 million people were classified as living below the poverty line. This means that the $32 billion in cash discussed above comes out to $894 per person. This can easily be a large percentage of a poor person's income, but it hardly makes a dent in helping provide for the essentials such as food, shelter, child care, or health insurance. For example, if you pay a baby-sitter or other caregiver $50 a week to look after your children, you'd have to pay him about three times the amount you get through the Earned Income Tax Credit. And the $20 billion spent on "day-care and preschool education programs" is well intended but totally inadequate to the amount of child care needed by the nation's poor.

(One of the other slate commentators also made this point, but I'd like to remind everyone that the benefits mentioned in the excerpt seem to fall well short of the approximately $89 billion tax break that the Bush Administration gave to the wealthiest one percent of Americans.)

So the next time you hear numbers like this remember that they don't actually mean anything. Whoever is quoting them is trying to awe you with really large numbers to keep you from realizing that "really large" means "not nearly large enough."

Comments: 1 Posted by david on 16 November 2004 at 3:32 PM

Over the past week or so slate seems to have gone to the dogs. Or maybe not. But they certainly have a dog theme going. To illustrate, here are a few headlines from the last week or so:

• Go Ahead, Sleep With Your Dog
• The Truth About Cats and Dogs
• The Watchdogs of Fallujah
• Love My Dog, Love Me

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 12 November 2004 at 7:49 PM

Microsoft announced their new search engine yesterday, but day two isn't looking to good for them -- every search I do results only in the following message:

This site is temporarily unavailable, please check back soon.

Meanwhile, on the same day that Microsoft announced their new search engine, google put the smack down by announcing that they had nearly doubled the number of pages they index; they're now up in excess of 8 billion pages.

As for me, I'm still leaning toward A9's search engine, if for no other reason than the amazon.com discount you get for using it.

Comments: 3 Posted by david on 11 November 2004 at 9:20 AM

I think this robot art installation is pretty cool. But not exactly ideal for those of us hoping to get a security deposit back on our apartment.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 10 November 2004 at 11:33 AM

A lot of stuff happened last week both for me personally and the country. And I'll give you my thoughts on all this micro and macro stuff soon, but today I want to direct your attention to my new side project, the -273 Watching List. The site isn't exactly "done" yet (the archives, for example, are non-existent), but I've started posting things there, so I thought I'd share the link with you.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 9 November 2004 at 2:56 PM

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 2 November 2004 at 3:12 PM