From maker to taker

John Stossel recently wrote a column where he said:

Americans in "open rebellion"? I'm skeptical. Handouts create fierce constituencies. The tea-party movement is wonderful, but it takes strength to say no to government freebies.
(source)

Not all of us want a country where the government is the nanny, the government takes care of us. But I think if we're ever going to get out from under a nanny government, we will have to work for it--I mean work hard. And stop accepting handouts we don't need. Start giving voluntarily before we do it by government.

Unfortunately, our system is designed to punish those who have personal philanthropic initiative--you don't get any easy tax exemptions for donating to charities. Sure, you can get deductions but not credits.

What if my brothers and I all decided tomorrow that we wanted to pay our parents for retirement, instead of our 7% social security and other fees? (actually, it's 15%, but half of it is hidden because employers have to pay it--and that inevitably means lower wages to remain competitive). Our parents would probably be far better off if we did that. But it's not an either-or decision. It's a government mandate. I'm definitely in favor of staying out of prison and obeying the law. But it illustrates an important point.  For me, at least.  YMMV.

The importance of Honesty

Just a few half-baked thoughts.

The most important characteristic of any politician in office is honesty--in personal and public life. You cannot be sure of anything else until you are sure of their honor.

Admittedly, it can be hard to find honorable men for office, not because there are few, but because dishonest ones aren't always detectably or consistently dishonest.

But to put it another way--would you rather hire an employee with poor communication skills and something odd growing on their face, or an employee who has bragged about lying to friend or family? Would you prefer to grow up in a home where you're never sure when your parents are lying to you, or in one where they're consistent and honest, even if not perfect?

One of the things that really bothered me about Clinton is that he was patently dishonest, but got left in office. He was willing to lie in his personal life, and clearly to the public as well. What else could he have been willing or able to lie about? It troubles me, deeply, that he wasn't removed from office. I heard a talk show host excuse him: to paraphrase, he said "Come on, he's the president of the United States. Give him a break!" -- Give me a break. I don't want someone who is absolutely trustworthy in office. Yes, I hold men and women of public office to a higher standard, because they have to be in order to stand up to pressures to take advantage of their power or misuse it, even a little.

I would rather have an honest fascist in office than a lying patriot who professed my favorite political opinions.

Nobody in the USA is under the illusion that there aren't liars out there. There are just too many contradictions in the media, in the government, in all aspects of the national infrastructure. Good luck trying to get everyone to agree on who's lying, though.

We need God's help to discern who is trustworthy to hold office.

Eye drops for dry eyes

My eyes water whenever I am about to give myself eye drops. It kindof defeats the point of actually using the eye drops. I can just threaten my eyes to moisten them up. I love irony.

Some reasons I oppose government healthcare.

Since it's in the media and my friends and family are talking about it, here are some reasons I oppose government healthcare. Read my document on it, at google docs:
https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AdRugBTHTSy5ZGQ0cnBreHFfODR2OGZoamNoag&hl=en

A quote on freedom

"The right to be right (in your manager's eyes or in your government's eyes) is irrelevant; it's only the right to be wrong that makes you free."

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001205.html

RSS Feeds - Perusing the Archives

I subscribe to RSS feeds in order to become more educated about things, or because I want to participate in a discussion. RSS is terrible at these things, because (1) feed readers don't have any features to help you browse archives from before your time, and (2) Feed readers never include the comments sections of a feed post. This is true for Google Reader as well.

With that said, I think Google Wave has also completely failed to address the problem of perusing archival data. I need something that will help me avoid "Tab Explosion" while also helping me to track what archived posts I *have* read. While doing all of that, it shouldn't distract me by saying the past 10 years (3650 posts) of Dilbert are unread when I am trying to catch up on current dilbert comics.

That's one of the strong-arm features that a lot of internet sites are poor at, really. Email clients are starting (really just starting) to get good at helping with archival data -- gmail did wonders for helping me realize the value of having an archive instead of a trash bin. When will feed readers, blog sites, and so on get the same sorts of features?

Online Privacy

This is a great article on how privacy (doesn't) exist online.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/technology/17privacy.html