"Wait a minute, there's an animal loose..."

Happy Rick Monday day!



I love the shot of Lasorda standing next to the two "animals" - no doubt letting loose on them as bad as he's ever let loose on a home-plate ump. How priceless would it be to overhear that conversation?

Death and to taxes! (and Congressional economic meddling)

Remy's back with another seasonal video (although he came up with this one last tax season). My tax thoughts below...



For the first time since fatherofsonofasillyperson paid his accountant $45 to file a 1040-EZ (quite possibly the biggest ripoff since the income tax itself) for me, I eschewed the ol' pencil and paper method and downloaded TurboTax to aid my annual reminder of why I dropped my Income Tax course in college. I don't think there's any product in existence that can make tax filing pleasurable, but TT at least made it pain-free (well, the process of completing the forms, anyway).

What I really want to discuss today is the government's increasingly frequent exercises in stupidity that they do in the name of "fixing" the economy, namely, diddling with interest rates and the ludicrous "economic stimulus package". I blogged this bit over 15 months ago - well before the adjective "sub-prime" became tip-of-tongue for most lay economists, and it deserves (I think, anyway) re-reading now:

We've had artificially low interest rates for the better part of the last 10 years, and we've seen skyrocketing home prices and the advent of 125% equity loans as a result. But now that interest rates are on the rise again, monthly mortgage payments are going up (even with housing prices staying relatively flat), which means that more and more people are stuck in their homes, because they won't sell their home with their inflated second mortgage and wind up OWING money at closing rather than GETTING it. I'm no Nostradamus, but the future of mortgage foreclosures and student loan defaults should be relatively clear to most people. It's time for government to stop meddling with interest rates and just let the business cycle (boom and bust) run its course.

What's this got to do with paying my taxes, you ask? Plenty, mister, plenty. You already know that daughterinlawofasillyperson and I relocated last summer; you may not know that, due to the aforementioned mortgage foreclosures and the increased-by-900%-over-normal inventory of homes on the market, we were unable to sell our just-a-notch-above-modest home. Without the proceeds of a home sale to finance the down payment and closing costs of a new one, we turned to an emergency fire-sale of the stock options that my employer had granted me upon my hiring 6 years ago, and hired a property manager to find tenants for our Minneapolis house (though we stubbornly kept on trying to sell the house for 3 months more before doing so, but that's another story). Back to the fire sale...

Many of you may see where this is going: the entirety of the proceeds of the options sale went to the bank and/or closing company, so none was withheld for tax purposes. I'm not a live-paycheck-to-paycheck kind of guy, so we have our proverbial rainy-day fund to turn to in order to pay the bill, and as it just so happens, the "economic stimulus" check we're due to receive in a couple of months will just about perfectly replenish the rainy-day fund when all is said and done.

My epitomologically long-winded point is this: "Hey Uncle Sam: stop tinkering with the economy! You're not making any progress toward 'stabilizing' anything, and it's just causing more paperwork for the lot of us!" Not to mention creating a huge population of people that now have to rent houses instead of buying them, because their credit is ruined because of foreclosure! But hey, there's also a growing number of rental properties available because people like me refused to sell low when other alternatives were available.

You see how it all works out? Responsible people who make informed and reasonable choices end up right back where they were before the feds' interference. And uninformed people who make unreasonable choices get the shaft. When are the ego-maniacs in Washington (and Wall Street) going to realize that they can't conjure up a booming economy with spending bills (no matter what pretty names they put on them) and interest rate cuts? In our increasingly globalized world, the supply of US dollars (which is really what they're controlling by tweaking interest rates - if you don't understand that, get this book) holds less and less sway over the domestic economy. Sound tax policy (i.e., low personal and corporate rates) that make people and businesses want to live and operate in your jurisdiction is the way to revive the economy, not shaky fiscal policy. Is it a coincidence that more and more U.S. companies are ratcheting up operations in Europe and Southeast Asia at a time when U.S. tax rates are probably going to go up (thanks to Democrats) and every other advanced economy in the world is slashing tax rates?

It works like this: think for a moment on a purely domestic scale. How do states (like South Dakota and Nevada, for example) drive incredible growth in their economies? Mainly by providing a favorable tax structure vis-a-vis their neighbors. Sioux Falls, SD is witnessing amazing growth because of South Dakota's smart tax policies (i.e., low rates!) and good marketing. You don't listen to talk radio in Minneapolis very long before you hear spots touting South Dakota's favorable business environment; I know a guy considering moving his business from Minneapolis to Sioux Falls right now for one reason - lower taxes will help him keep his business afloat during this economic downturn. Nevada: same story.

Think even smaller-scale. How is it that deep discounters like Wal-Mart and Best Buy are some of the most financially successful business models out there, despite operating on a lower margin (that's profit-per-widget for you non-business types) than their competitors? By earning a smaller profit on a vastly increased volume of sales, that's how.

This is how cutting tax rates produces higher tax revenues (to a point, anyway - no one thinks cutting your tax rates to zero will produce higher revenues) - i.e., the Laffer curve. You rely on an increased number of transactions to produce greater profits, even if individual transactions result in lower profits. Much like a sale at Target. "Hmm, we're not making much money lately - how can we get more people into the store? I know! We'll have a sale! And advertise it! Brilliant!"

Go back to the international scale now. Somehow "outsourcing" has become a 4-letter word that Democrats love to throw around as an epithet, but only GOP stalwarts are putting forth tax policies that make outsourcing less desirable as an operating strategy, much less complete relocation of companies to overseas markets. Hillary and Barack have put forth suggestions that they'll penalize companies that do this, and reward companies who stay put. How do you suppose that will work out? Here's how: Companies who need to relocate or outsource to overseas markets in order to stay afloat will find a way to do so without paying this "relo-tax" - even if it means shutting down (temporarily). And companies who stay put will receive their incentives, only to have to re-invest those incentives in themselves in order to stay temporarily competitive with their rivals who are now located in a more economically-friendly place.

People, this isn't complicated. It takes a left-leaning Congress to make it complicated. Enough with the tinkering already. Let us take our lumps, economically speaking, and let markets work themselves out. Figure out how to cut tax rates beyond what other similar economies are doing (mainly by reducing government spending), and you'll be impressed with the results. Really.

Anonymous sources are ruining traditional media

Three articles I've read in the last couple of days (I'll cite them in due time, relax) have me thinking about one of the major issues ruining the field of journalism: over-reliance on anonymous sources - or, as we often see it referenced today, "a source speaking on the condition of anonymity".

For starters, take the latest flap about John McCain and his "improper relationship" (hat tip to Rob at SayAnythingBlog) with a female lobbyist. As the author points out, "Normally, anonymity is used to protect somebody who would face retribution or violence for sharing certain information." The New York Times reporting of the relationship relies on information given by two anonymous advisers, which could be anything from handlers involved in his campaigns or Senate office - all the way down to people who shook his hand and told him their thoughts on any given policy point during a campaign stop.

Next comes a story from this week's issue of National Review (also available online here) concerning the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran - you know, the one where all of a sudden, the CIA determines that "in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." That report was widely cited in mainstream media; the only problem is, in Senate hearings on February 5th, Director of National Intelligence Mike "McConnell testif[ied] that the Islamic Republic was working to master the enrichment of uranium." Did you hear about that one on the evening news? Me neither. McConnell continued, "We assess with high confidence that Iran has the scientific, technical, and industrial capacity eventually to produce nuclear weapons. In our judgment, only an Iranian political decision to abandon a nuclear weapons objective would plausibly keep Iran from eventually producing nuclear weapons--and such a decision is inherently reversible. [emphasis mine]" There's a big, big difference between abandoning a nuclear weapons program and a nuclear weapons ambition, given the fact that even uranium enriched by civilian power programs can be altered to produce weapons-grade material.

As Michal Rubin (author of the Weekly Standard article) points out:

The recourse of the disgruntled, bored, or politicized analyst is the leak--the bread and butter of any national security correspondent. Journalists who fulfill the leakers' objectives win ever more tantalizing scoops; those who maintain professional integrity and question the agenda behind any leak, find their access cut. The result is a situation in which journalists who might otherwise double-check sources, take a single intelligence analyst at his word, even if he is using them to fight a policy battle.

True, most presidential administrations will replace the senior leadership of agencies like the CIA, NSA, FBI, et al to more closely reflect their policy aims, but it would be both impossible and wholly counterproductive to remove the masses of analysts and intelligence officials that comprise the bulk of those agencies. Each of them will have their own policy preferences, party affiliations, professional axes to grind, and career aspirations that don't necessarily have anything to do with the administration's objectives.

Combine that with traditional media outlets driven by competition with online news sources to be the ones to "break" a story, and what you're left with is reporters who value speed over accuracy. Remember Dan Rather's downfall? In the interest of pushing a story that other news agencies were digging into also, he fell for ridiculous forgeries of documents that "proved" his story about President Bush getting preferential treatment back in the Air National Guard. If you dig into the fallout of that story, the supplier of the "fake, but accurate" (in Rather's unintelligible words) documents had his own agenda for bringing down Bush. Shortly put, Rather found an anonymous source who was willing to fake out a journalist who was pressed for time, and the rest is history.

Now take a minute to read Judith Miller's article from Opinion Journal today. Recall that she's the reporter who spent 85 days in jail on a contempt of court charge for refusing to divulge her sources. Given her ordeal, I'm tempted to cut her a bit of slack, but in this day and age of lives ruined by false or unsubstantiated media rumors, I have to resist that temptation. Here's her main argument:

There are many ways to intimidate or silence journalists. One depressing tactic in this country is to jail them for refusing to divulge the names of confidential sources who have provided sensitive information for articles, or to turn over telephone logs, emails, memos or notebooks identifying those informants to whom reporters have pledged confidentiality.

At the end of the piece, she points to legislation on the matter:

Last fall, the House of Representatives approved, by a veto-proof majority, a bill that would protect the identity of confidential sources -- unless the information is needed to prevent terrorism, imminent death or significant bodily harm, or involves certain trade secrets, health or financial information, or classified information whose release would cause "significant harm"... The Senate version of the bill would compel a reporter to identify a source in a civil lawsuit like Dr. Hatfill's only if the testimony or information being sought is "essential to the resolution of the matter."

Well, what happens when the "only" fallout is a failed presidential bid? Now, I have my doubts that the lobbyist bit is going to have any significant impact on November's election, and as it turns out, Rather's report didn't doom Bush's re-election campaign. But what if it did? Seems to me that something as important as the presidency should warrant double-checking sources, and getting those sources to go on record with their stories by affixing their names to their allegations. That used to be an obvious journalistic standard, and it's long been abandoned, for the ill of our country and our world.

What about the story from last fall about how our soldiers behaving like Mongols, wearing skulls of dead children and taunting a female officer who had been disfigured in an IED attack? Those turned out to be false reports gleaned from, you guessed it, sources shrouded in anonymity. A report like that wouldn't "prevent terrorism, imminent death or significant bodily harm, or involves certain trade secrets, health or financial information, or classified information" - but what if it became the tipping point for public opinion to finally make a less focused president pull our troops out of Afghanistan? Seems to me that Ms. Miller has been jaded by her (understandably difficult) jail experience.

Miller needs to take a moment and consider a paradigm change. Instead of reporters pledging confidentiality to their sources, why not require them to find sources willing to go on record? It's high time for a national conversation to be had about journalistic integrity and standards, and for us to insist on our trusted media sources holding fast to those standards. The last thing we need is for Congress to codify the rules of media operation - we need to vote with our feet, our letters to editors of offending media outlets, and press advertisers to insist on the same. Lives get ruined by garbage reporting like this (ask Scooter Libby, who took the fall for Richard Armitage's leak of "covert" agent Valerie Plame).

There's a word for newspapers that rely on unsubstantiated claims of anonymous sources: tabloids. Tabloids certainly have a place in the supermarket checkout line for those who can't get enough of Britney's photoshopped cellulite or Jacko's latest secret marriage. In a world where any story can get legs and be front and center on every media source's landing page in mere minutes (and any potential retraction can be buried deep in the online equivalent of a newspaper's page 13D), our news sources need to be more focused on accuracy.

The Origins of My Activism (and the malaise of impending political defeat)

Quite obviously (and to the chagrin of motherofsonaofasillyperson - Mom, you can stop emailing me now), it's been a while since I've posted anything of real substance to this space.

Part of it is being overwhelmed by a major systems implementation at work that, most days, leaves me feeling like the fellas in this video.

Part of it is a case of the blahs caused by my candidate of choice, Mitt Romney, losing out to McCain (if you haven't watched his concession speech, do it now - you'll be hard-pressed to find a better summation of today's conservative principles, and you can do it in 22 minutes, or 19 if you skip to minute 3, when the actual speech begins). True, Mitt won the three states I have ties to (ND, MT, and MN), including the two I worked in to get people to the caucuses (ND and MN), but as I pointed out to motherofsonofasillyperson, moral victories are still losses - and any of you who know me well know that I'm a terrible loser, even in competitions as meaningless as fantasy baseball (in which I'm a perennial loser - but I keep playing, and hey, at least I beat Greg).

Part of it is frustration with many of my Republican colleagues falling for the garbage that "there isn't a dime's worth of difference between McCain, Obama, and Hillary." Any regular reader of this space knows that my differences with Senator McCain are many (documented here, here - kind of, here, and here). But as I heard recently on talk radio - can't remember which commentator, sorry - a 60% Republican is a heckuvalot better than a 100% Democrat. Disagree? Try these on for size: Associate Justice William Jefferson Clinton. Attorney General John Edwards. Good-bye.

Part of it is the perplexing rise of Obama to be the odds-on favorite to win in November. No doubt the man's brilliant. No doubt he's inspiring to listen to. And he's skilled when faced with hecklers. But that's about where my praise of him ends. I understand the longing for 'change' and 'unity' - but change toward what? Social programs that already total up to over $850 BILLION? That's nearly a 25% increase in the budget that Bush just submitted - and the Dems keep claiming that we're in a war we can't afford. And unity? His words in a New Hampshire speech (hat tip to the Weekly Standard) are instructive:

"You can talk to people who don't agree with you. And you do so not just because you think that you're always going to persuade them, but because people out in America, outside of Washington, are listening. And they want to see that we can--that we don't have to agree on everything to work on something. That we can disagree without being disagreeable. That's how we can attract independents [to the] change agenda. That's how we can attract some Republicans. That's how we build a working majority for change. .  .  . And you can afford to be courteous. And you can say, "Yes, sir." And "No, sir." "Yes, ma'am." "No, ma'am." But if you're going to be in the way of change, get out of the way--we're pushing you aside. Very politely of course. That's how we win elections."

I hope that if he does indeed get the nomination, Americans for once really tune in and pay attention to the issues in the debates. Because I have a feeling that McCain, less-than-inspiring though his speeches are, will hammer him on specifics of policy.

And the last thing that's stymied my confidence in today's political world is the crap Nancy Pelosi is pulling with regard to FISA renewal. Long story short: the legal authorization for our intelligence community to intercept communications that are suspected to be tied to known jihadist operatives expired last week, and now Congress is adjourned for at least a week. Pelosi ignored a bipartisan vote to bring the bill to extend and re-vamp FISA, which the Senate already passed by the way, to the floor for a vote. It was expected to pass.

This one hits a personal nerve with me. I've shared this with only a select few people, but it's high time I discussed it here. In the fall of 2005, my cell phone started receiving some strange text messages, and I recognized some of the phrases (such as assalamu alaykum, for example) to be Islamic in nature. The first couple of messages were pretty benign, mostly heckling one subscriber (I quickly presumed that my phone number was mistakenly added to an IM distribution list) for his collection of Michael Jackson albums. But they quickly took on a different tone, with the sender encouraging his subscribers to "keep practicing for Saturday" and hoping to "become martyrs, God willing, for his truth." I called the local sheriff's station, they escalated it to the FBI, and they in turn escalated it to an investigative arm of the Pentagon.

My point here is, as I told the small handful of people with whom I originally shared the incident, "if the feds aren't tracing calls and text messages to my phone, then they're not doing their job." I wanted my conversations tapped and recorded. And since I experimented once with posting to this blog via cell phone, I certainly hope someone in the DOD has an RSS feed for this blog, just to make sure. Now, with Pelosi's stunt, that's impossible to do. Well, admittedly not impossible, but illegal. And while I'm not green enough to trust the government wholly, I guarantee that the interception of communications deemed low risk (that would usually be searched only with data mining) is now suspended, and that's endangering us all.

Supposedly, Pelosi is holding out so that the bill can be altered to remove the provision that gives telecommunications companies immunity from lawsuits related to the data they give up at the government's request. I don't know about you, but I sure as hell don't want my cell phone company to be sued by some jihadist for giving up his name and address had the authorities been able to link him to the messages he routed to my phone. That's what Pelosi wants. Do you?

By the way, and I have no idea if my receipt and subsequent reporting of the texts had anything to do with it or not, but about a month after reporting the texts to the authorities, I read about a small cell of jihadists being arrested in Ohio. Again, I have no idea if the two are related - though I like to think they were, just for my own edification - but the possibility of finding a forensic link to terror cells when the jihadists slip up is too important to be relegated to a political stunt like Pelosi is pulling.

This incident woke me up to the need not just to educate myself - as I had been doing by listening to the likes of Dennis Prager and Hugh Hewitt on talk radio, reading book after book - including many written by people outside of my selected political realm, and just in general paying more attention to C-SPAN, FoxNews, and CNN than I did to ESPN and FoxSports. I needed to try to change minds about the political and ideological challenges facing our world today. Hence sonofasillyperson. I know I've had a tiny bit of success in doing that with my tiny readership (though I have work to do still with a couple of my regular readers!) - I hope to continue that.

And that brings me to my final point. True, I'm a bit dejected about the current political outlook, but I'm by no means giving up. I still remember the lessons I took from the '06 elections, and I've attempted to incorporate them into the more substantive posts I've done since then.

One thing that needs to change in the attitudes of people who are generally conservative is their reaction to the phrase "political activist". Like most conservatives, I used to cringe when I heard that term, because I invariably envisioned the nutcases who demonstrate across the street from the White House every day, or the Ron Paul freaks who stood on the Fargo Footbridge in sub-zero temps to try to get people to "honk their horns for liberty." Rather, "politically active" must be thought of in less connotative terms. All it really means is that you participate in something in addition to casting your ballot on election day. Blogging, writing letters to the editor, making phone calls for a local campaign, participating in a candidate's lit drop, all the way on up to running for office are all forms of activism, and it doesn't require you to take on the role of a wing-nut. If we Republicans are going to prevent an Obama (or Hillary) presidency, a veto-proof majority in the Senate, and the loss of state and local seats to Demcrats this fall, that new definition of activism is going to have to be adopted soon.

UPDATE: Lest you think I was truly depressed, a little levity. Here's the real reason for the ol' malaise, via BurlySports again:

More videos from the "Burly Sports Show" channel at Burlysports.com

Obligatory Super Bowl post

I've purposely avoided ESPN for the past 2 weeks, primarily because I can't stand hearing about Tom Brady's ankle, the quest for perfection, the Giants getting no one's respect, and Eli's sibling-inspired inferiority complex ad nauseum.

But, if these two videos don't "get you in the mood" for the big game, the chess club is calling you (warning, if a website named BurlySports doesn't scream "locker room humor ahead", then I'll say it flat out: there's some adult themes in the below videos). You're welcome.

More videos from the "ryanparkersongs's channel" channel at Burlysports.com

More videos from the "Burly Sports Show" channel at Burlysports.com

Oh, by the way, sorry Dolphins fans - New England's going to win. 34-20.

OK, all you Evangelicals out there...*

...break out the riot gear. This apostasy deserves its own "cartoon crusade" to rival the "cartoon jihad" of 2 years ago. Because, you know, Christian fundamentalists are as dangerous as Muslim fundamentalists,




*Quite obviously, this is sarcasm - don't report me for inciting violence, or for God's sake, even consider acting out violently over this - as if I needed to tell you that.

Religion in the bully pulpit

Thanks to Rob at SayAnythingBlog for this snippet.



Rob says: "Now, I understand that Christians believe the word of God (as defined by the various denominations) is the ultimate truth. And I understand that Christians want to incorporate that truth as they see it in our laws. But what we need to remember is that while Christianity dominates America’s spiritual landscape not everyone in America is a Christian."

I'd add: most Christians also tend to recall during discussions like these the words from Matthew 22 (no Josh, I don't have it memorized, I searched at blueletterbible.org - haha): "Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's. When they had heard [these words], they marvelled, and left him, and went their way." Most conservative Christians acknowledge that this passage gives rise to the notion of the "wall of separation between church and state." Of course, Jefferson doesn't say "separation between religion and state", which some on the secular side would like to believe, but in the same sentence, Jefferson alludes to the 1st Amendment's Establisment and Free Exercise clauses, which read: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

I've also got to say this: I really hope that the Republican candidates for President get a clue and stop with all the religious jockeying. Whether it's Huckabee pleading for Christian fundamentalism to be installed in the Oval Office, or Guiliani quoting scripture to curry favor with the religious right, or whatever, it's getting tiring, and it's turning off voters. Romney's "Faith in America" speech pretty much summed up my thoughts (full disclosure, I am working in a small role for Romney's North Dakota campaign, and while I agree with most of his policy points, I don't claim to speak for him or his campaign): "There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church's distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith."

Another passage from that speech is "It is important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions. And where the affairs of our nation are concerned, it's usually a sound rule to focus on the latter – on the great moral principles that urge us all on a common course." Hear, hear. Let's focus on the values that the candidates are portraying in their policy stances, not how much scripture they can quote us.

Huckabee might well be the only GOP frontrunner that I would be adamantly opposed to voting for. What's really troubling to me is that the above video excerpt is hauntingly similar to the "Nightmare Scenario" in Tony Blankley's "The West's Last Chance" (my review here), where a hypothetical situation has McCain calling for sharia law in America. Huckabee's essentially calling for a Christian equivalent to it (though the Matthew verses pretty much assure us that Christians have no theological equivalent to sharia). Anyone who voted for him in previous primaries/cauci should be embarrassed when confronted with the above video, and anyone who votes for him after seeing it should be ashamed. The guy's as loony as Ron Paul...