Change This Government!

2/6/05

On other boards, I like to smack around Liberal and Democrat policy. I'm always immediately called a Conservative, even though I beg them not to use that label for me. If I'm lucky, they'll change it slightly and say that since Republicans and Conservatives are essentially the same thing, that while I may not be a Conservative, I may as well be. I also get complaints from them that people like me have only complaints, rather than solutions (new ideas) about their policy. So I've given some ideas, and I'm going to put them here. This place will be my repository for ideas on change in government and policy.
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We have too many federal laws

1) Lets come up with an algorithm which can quantify each law and give it a score based on a set of metrics (e.g. How many people does this law affect, social vs. economic impact, impact of enforcement -- or non-enforcement, even the actual length of the law, in words, because that can indicate how complicated it is). Then let's start out with a goal, like repeal laws until our total Legal Code Quantifier (LCQ) is, say 50% less than current. Set a timeline for this phase-out, like ten years. Then, we say our LCQ is locked at that number, and for every law created, its LCQ must be calculated, and they need to repeal laws with a total of that LCQ to maintain the balance. Of course, we add emergency stipulations, but these would need to be temporary overages with defined and short timetables for the resolution, or the emergency law is automatically repealed. The LCQ's are recalculated annually. This would eventually be a fully automated process.
2) In addition to the LCQ ceiling, every law that is passed must have a sunset date, not to exceed a reasonable amount of time (less than 15 years). This forces congress to revisit these issues, and gives them a convenient way to make needed changes. They will have to. The lobbying forces (and Conservatives!) won't be able to prevent a law from reconsideration, although the law may not be changed in the end.
3) We need to sort out all the laws that were supposed to be reserved to the states and erase them. Some of these would be the drug laws, hate-crime legislation, and another class of stuff that never should have been. This has to do with federal dispursement of funds to states with strings attached. My favorite example of that has to do with connecting federal highway grants to a state's legal age for consuming alcohol. That should have been considered an unconstitutional manipulation of law back when they invented it.
4) Unfunded, or partially funded mandates on states should be constitutional ammendments. Or, they should at least take that much effort to pass.

Congressional Term Limits
We did it to the President, we should do it to Congress. House members can be elected six times (12-yr max); Senators twice (12-yr max). No concessions for non-consecutive terms. We shouldn't have career politicians, at least not the kind that stay in the same elected job for decades.

Executive branch Legislation
Any and all policies devised by the various agencies, commissions, &c. which set enforceable standards or activities need to have that power shifted back to Congress.

Spending
We need a balanced budget law with teeth. The budget must be either balanced or with surplus, with certain very specific qualifications. An example is during recession/depression, or if we can figure out one is coming, we can take preventative action. War time also is a good qualification. After the emergency time has passed, we go immediately back to the balanced budget requirement and we have exactly thrice the amount of time we acted in emergency mode to re-pay the debt. We need to do away with these 'Omnibus Spending Bills'. I think those things contain most of our pork projects and other stupid spending projects. I don't want the President to have a line-item-veto, but I think spending bills need to be separated and organized by topic. If they can't figure out how to do that, then they need to just have a bill for each spending item until they can get their act together.

Taxes
1) Tax law needs a makeover. This could go along with my first idea, since it is part of law. There is no good reason for our tax situation to be as incredibly complicated as it presently is. I like the graduated income tax, I like the basic deductibles like mortgage interest, number of kids, &c. But, although I know sometimes it is necessary, I hate this pattern we have where an entire industry pops up and thrives, just so the average citizen can be in compliance with a law. So the tax specialists would be up-in-arms over this change, but I don't much care.
2) Let's do away with this thing where we have several line-item taxes that work in different ways because lawmakers have decided to not call some of them taxes. Why must I have a) the federal income tax b) federal social security tax c) federal medicare tax, and so on. It seems as though the lawmakers raid all those other so called trusts to pay the bills, so why can't I just pay one big federal income tax?

War
Since the Truman Doctrine of Containment was proclaimed, Congress has been more than happy to illegally defer its responsibility for declaring war to the Executive, through spending measures and other wierd resolutions. This gives them no political stake in the Cause, and casts all responsibility on the Executive. The Constitution was very clear about which arm of government has the authority to declare war, and we need to honour that again. The President is the Commander-in-Chief, but he needs to wear that hat only during war time. Our "policing" campaigns need to be re-classified and changed.

Tort
1) Plaintiffs can sue for actual, quantified damages. 'Pain & Suffering' needs a definition.
2) We need caps on punative awards. I hate the idea, but juries and judges across the country just can't control their emotions because of very good litigators. So, we cap the punative awards AND those monies do not go to the plaintiffs or their lawyers. They go into the government's treasury, like fines, or fund remediation programs, or whatever. This goes along with my theory of American Communism.

Elections
1) I really like someone's idea ("#46) about the Instant Run-Off (IR-O) election scheme and doing away with the electoral college. We should adopt it for all elected federal positions.
2) Drop all the campaign finance laws. They don't work, anyway. Just toss them out.
3) Electronic polling devices for all! We had them in my little rural precinct last November, and they worked great! I don't want internet voting, because I still like the idea that voters need to get off their butts and go stand in line to vote with their neighbors.

Define Privacy
Let's give us some constitutionally defined privacy rights. We shouldn't be granular about it, since technology will continue to adjust what we call 'private'. Let's find the right, broad verbiage that will guarantee our privacy rights. When it comes to exceptions, that's when we get very granular about it.

Mission Statement

<NOTE audience="those who care">
I am a Republican who probably wouldn't be wanted by them. What I mean by that is that I don't stand with republicans on most of their hot-button social issues, so I would be cast as a Moderate, which by many in the party is a signal of shame. I will take time in this blog to explain my mentality in some detail.
</NOTE>
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Like everyone, I have opinions and ruminations about this great world in which we live. This blog is a place for me to unfold a theory that I've had brewing in my head for six or seven years now. It is essentially a theory and statement about the modern American political environment.

I'll probably start it with a bang, i.e. I'll get the nut of the theory out there quickly, and then spend the rest of the time explaining how I ended up with it. I tend to meander through tangents, so that should be expected.

American Communism: Redistribution Through Litigation

I've decided to go ahead and post the conclusion to a theory that I've been developing for many years now. I understand that no idea is new, but I do profess that I have not heard my particular theory advanced by anyone else, and those few with whom I've shared parts of it have seemed at least a little interested in it.

The premise here is that the U.S. has created a new form of Communism, and that our variety is centered squarely on the use of the litigation process in our courts. Communism, by political principal, is the redistribution of assets from the "haves" to the "have-nots", generally with force (people, even rich ones, are generally loathe to give their stuff away -- when it's not their own idea). This is opposed to the tenets of Marxism, as I understand them, which involve an equal distribution of assets among a happy and productive populace. We have seen this doctrine of equal distribution attempted in our era, most notably by the Russians and their empire, the Chinese and their periphery, and a few banana republics (Cuba, petrolium-rich nations, &c.). In these situations in which the revolutionaries were generally quoting Marxist ideas, they slaughtered (read murdered) the wealthy and just took their stuff. I will try not to go too far into the well-known histories of these nations. I can say that our particular brand of Communism has merit in that blood need not be spilled, and that when the juries offer their awards, the "haves" will generally just give it up.

I will be honest in admitting that I have not read the formal doctrines of Marx, Lenin, Mao, et al. I am no political genius, nor any other sort of genius. That is my qualification of the day.

The content of my blog are (C) 2004. I will always cite my sources when I am using them consciously. I will likely use ideas that many others have had and published, and have sort of made it out to the public domain. If anyone wants to use my thoughts in their work (a form of flattery that is beyond my own comprehension), please cite me as a source. If you find any of my writings mirror something that you or someone else has published, please contact me with the reference and I'll include it, as long as I agree that it should be cited.

I am going to try to keep my list of topics short, so I'll follow up each major topic through the add comment mechanism. I welcome anyone who feels inclined to chime in to do so; my remarks will always be from me, PolishKitty.

Deep Thoughts

Here's a place for fun or interesting tidbits of "news junk".

Good Atheists

13 December 2004
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I was just at my company Holiday party, and a co-worker started prodding me a little bit about my Atheism (she's a died-in-the-wool liberal who knows that I'm a Republican). All of my liberal friends do this; I guess it's just irrestable to them because they think I'm freaky for being atheist and Republican. So, she starts out with something like, "What do you do when people stand and pray? Just sit down?" I thought this was a curious question because someone had just given a prayer for the whole mass of us, and she was standing right next to me (I was standing). So I thought for a second and said, "Well, it depends on the situation. When you're at a funeral, or a wedding, or a church service, I just sit or stand like everyone else does. When they pray, I might bow my head a little, but I keep my eyes open." I do this because I have no agenda, I'm not pissed off, and those aren't the kind of situations in which I want to offend people who are taking spiritual meaning from them. I keep my eyes open because I don't want to mock the people that are actually praying. I'm not praying; although I usually like the prayers, I know I'm not talking to God.

So I started trying to tell her the difference between good atheists and bad atheists. A good atheist has his or her own convictions (in this case, not believing in God), but isn't interested in making a public statement about it at an inapproriate venue. As a matter of fact, good atheists aren't interested in converting religious people away from their beliefs (contrasting some religious people who very often try to convert me to their beliefs). The good atheists understand that they are a minority, and are happy for the rest of the people that have faith-based belief systems. Honestly, it is something that I envy. Then you've got bad atheists. They look down on the rest of the world and think they are brain-washed into believing whatever it is that they believe. These are the people that don't want the word "God" in anything. They're assholes.

She asked me if I wanted my daughter reciting the pledge because it has "God" in it. I said, "Heck yeah!" I have reverence for those old documents and the old American traditions, and I also understand that this nation was grounded and created by good christians. I also know that those same people gave us the freedom to worship (or not) however we want. I am in the debt of christians to have the right to not be one!

Bad atheists give the rest of us a bad name. Sort of like how Jerry Falwell can sometimes make christians look bad. Bad atheists have an agenda, which is usually to get their 15-minutes. They fail to recognize that our country is a vastly God-fearing one. They take the (good) part of the Constitution that prescribes separation of church and state, and they go too far with it. We good atheists really wish they would just shut up.

The "God" thing

4 January 2005

Boy, do I get a lot of interesting conversation when it's revealed that I'm an atheist. So, today a well-meaning co-worker of mine treated me to a website with a Scientific Proof of God's existence in the context of how atheists have it all wrong. His only real problem is that he is fixated on this one thing, and doesn't really know what he's talking about. That sort of defeats his argument.

The original page is here. Following is the copy with my comments in blue:
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A PRACTICAL MAN'S PROOF OF GOD

The existence of God is a subject that has occupied schools of philosophy and theology for thousands of years. Most of the time, these debates have revolved around all kinds of assumptions and definitions. Philosophers will spend a lifetime arguing about the meaning of a word and never really get there. One is reminded of the college student who was asked how his philosophy class was going. He replied that they had not done much because when the teacher tried to call roll, the kids kept arguing about whether they existed or not. Most of us who live and work in the real world do not concern ourselves with such activities. We realize that such discussions may have value and interest in the academic world, but the stress and pressure of day-to-day life forces us to deal with a very pragmatic way of making decisions. If I ask you to prove to me that you have $2.00, you would show it to me. Even in more abstract things we use common sense and practical reasoning. If I ask you whether a certain person is honest or not, you do not flood the air with dissertations on the relative nature of honesty; you would give me evidence one way or the other. The techniques of much of the philosophical arguments that go on would eliminate most of engineering and technology if they were applied in those fields. The purpose of this brief study is to offer a logical, practical, pragmatic proof of the existence of God from a purely scientific perspective. To do this, we are assuming that we exist, that there is reality, and that the matter of which we are made is real. If you do not believe that you exist, you have bigger problems than this study will entail and you will have to look elsewhere.

THE BEGINNING
If we do exist, there are only two possible explanations as to how our existence came to be. Either we had a beginning or we did not have a beginning. The Bible says, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1 :1). The atheist has always maintained that there was no beginning.

Wait! I have never maintained that there was no beginning! In fact, as a subscriber of the "big-bang" set of theories, I understand that there was a distinct beginning. It's really all down-hill from here. It is funny though. He keeps making more stupid statements, and as he builds on each of them as he reaches his conclusion.

The idea is that matter has always existed in the form of either matter or energy; and all that has happened is that matter has been changed from form to form, but it has always been. The Humanist Manifesto says, "Matter is self-existing and not created," and that is a concise statement of the atheist's belief.

Well, he got one thing right...

The way we decide whether the atheist is correct or not is to see what science has discovered about this question. The picture below (note: I left his pictures out. You can see them on the original site, but you're not missing much) on the left represents our part of the cosmos. Each of the disk shaped objects is a galaxy like our Milky Way. All of these galaxies are moving relative to each other. Their movement has a very distinct pattern which causes the distance between the galaxies to get greater with every passing day. If we had three galaxies located at positions A, B. and C in the second diagram below, and if they are located as shown, tomorrow they will be further apart. The triangle they form will be bigger. The day after tomorrow the triangle will be bigger yet. We live in an expanding universe that gets bigger and bigger and bigger with every passing day.

Is he smart, or what?

Now let us suppose that we made time run backwards! If we are located at a certain distance today, then yesterday we were closer together. The day before that, we were still closer. Ultimately, where must all the galaxies have been? At a point! At the beginning! At what scientists call a singularity!

Yea!! Wait, did he prove anything?

A second proof is seen in the energy sources that fuel the cosmos. The picture to the right is a picture of the sun. Like all stars, the sun generates its energy by a nuclear process known as thermonuclear fusion. Every second that passes, the sun compresses 564 million tons of hydrogen into 560 million tons of helium with 4 million tons of matter released as energy. In spite of that tremendous consumption of fuel, the sun has only used up 2% of the hydrogen it had the day it came into existence. This incredible furnace is not a process confined to the sun. Every star in the sky generates its energy in the same way. Throughout the cosmos there are 25 quintillion stars, each converting hydrogen into helium, thereby reducing the total amount of hydrogen in the cosmos. Just think about it! If everywhere in the cosmos hydrogen is being consumed and if the process has been going on forever, how much hydrogen should be left?

Wait. Remember that forever thing? See, he's going to build on it now:

Suppose I attempt to drive my automobile without putting any more gas (fuel) into it. As I drive and drive, what is eventually going to happen? I am going to run out of gas I [sic] If the cosmos has been here forever, we would have run out of hydrogen long ago!

Huh? How long ago? You had lots of fancy numbers and such above, where's your formula for this one? There's more. Here come some facts.

The fact is, however, that the sun still has 98% of its original hydrogen. The fact is that hydrogen is the most abundant material in the universe! Everywhere we look in space we can see the hydrogen 21 cm line in the spectrum_a piece of light only given off by hydrogen. This could not be unless we had a beginning!

Okay, remember, that was Proof Number Two. I'm not going to bother to look-up or dispute his numbers or other scientific mumbo-jumbo. Where he actually uses numbers and the spectrum thing, he seems to use them correctly. But I really have no idea how much hydrogen there is, or how much the sun consumes, &c. I really don't care about the raw numbers that much when it comes to high-level theory. He's really fixated on this nonsense that atheists don't believe in a beginning. Am I alone on this? Anyone that subscribes to any of the big-bang-related theories knows there was some kind of beginning.

A third scientific proof that the atheist is wrong is seen in the second law of thermodynamics. In any closed system, things tend to become disordered. If an automobile is driven for years and years without repair, for example, it will become so disordered that it would not run any more. Getting old is simple conformity to the second law of thermodynamics. In space, things also get old. Astronomers refer to the aging process as heat death. If the cosmos is "everything that ever was or is or ever will be," as Dr. Carl Sagan is so fond of saying, nothing could be added to it to improve its order or repair it. Even a universe that expands and collapses and expands again forever would die because it would lose light and heat each time it expanded and rebounded.

Whoa! I am aware of the entropy principle, but I don't follow his tie-in with the big-crunch theory. It should also be noted that big-crunch never really made it into the realm of accepted big-bang dogma. It's been hanging out there for a while, but a year or so ago, the last thing I heard was that the data is pointing away from that theory (universe will expand forever). But my FAVORITE part of that last passage was the thing about the universe losing energy upon each big-crunch. Who came up with that? I've never heard that, even when they were still talking about it. I think he's just making that up. Really!

The atheist's assertion that matter/energy is eternal is scientifically wrong. The biblical assertion that there was a beginning is scientifically correct.

I would like to offer a re-wording of that statement, removing the dumb part, and also dropping the religious bias. It's still wierd, but a little better:

The assertion that matter/energy is eternal is scientifically wrong. The assertion that there was a beginning is scientifically correct.

At this point in his case, we're still at square-one because we both know there was a beginning.

THE CAUSE
If we know the creation has a beginning, we are faced with another logical question_was the creation caused or was it not caused? The Bible states, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Not only does the Bible maintain that there was a cause_a creation_but it also tells us what the cause was. It was God. The atheist tells us that "matter is self-existing and not created." If matter had a beginning and yet was uncaused, one must logically maintain that something would have had to come into existence out of nothing. From empty space with no force, no matter, no energy, and no intelligence, matter would have to become existent. Even if this could happen by some strange new process unknown to science today, there is a logical problem.

Yes, that is a problem. I sure wish I knew the answer to that one, too. But now he's going to really go far out there...

In order for matter to come out of nothing, all of our scientific laws dealing with the conservation of matter/energy would have to be wrong, invalidating all of chemistry. All of our laws of conservation of angular momentum would have to be wrong, invalidating all of physics. All of our laws of conservation of electric charge would have to be wrong, invalidating all of electronics and demanding that your TV set not work!! Your television set may not work, but that is not the reason! In order to believe matter is uncaused, one has to discard known laws and principles of science. No reasonable person is going to do this simply to maintain a personal atheistic position.

WOW!! Boy, he really zinged us on that one! I guess he never bothered to finish reading his books. Last I heard, we all know about the law which prevents energy from being created or destroyed. However, this law does not apply to the singularity. No laws that we know of apply at the point of the singularity. It's a big mystery. Once the universe banged, then all those laws that we know and love came to apply to the newly generated universe. Where did the singularity come from? Like I wrote above, I don't know.

The atheist's assertion that matter is eternal is wrong. The atheist's assertion that the universe is uncaused and selfexisting is also incorrect The Bible's assertion that there was a beginning which was caused is supported strongly by the available scientific evidence.

Okay, time to level the field again. His assumptions of our assertions are interesting, but his evaluation of those assertions has not been supported by what he has written. He's really consumed by this beginning thing, on which we do not disagree. The Bible does not assert that there was a beginning, it plainly states it. I'm cool with that. The big-bang states the same thing.

THE DESIGN
If we know that the creation had a beginning and we know that the beginning was caused, there is one last question for us to answer--what was the cause? The Bible tells us that God was the cause. We are further told that the God who did the causing did so with planning and reason and logic. Romans 1:20 tells us that we can know God is
"through the things he has made." The atheist, on the other hand, will try to convince us that we are the product of chance. Julian Huxley once said:
We are as much a product of blind forces as is the falling of a stone to earth or the ebb and flow of the tides. We have just happened, and man was made flesh by a long series of singularly beneficial accidents.
The subject of design has been one that has been explored in many different ways. For most of us, simply looking at our newborn child is enough to rule out chance. Modern-day scientists like Paul Davies and Frederick Hoyle and others are raising elaborate objections to the use of chance in explaining natural phenomena. A principle of modern science has emerged in the 1980s called "the anthropic principle." The basic thrust of the anthropic principle is that chance is simply not a valid mechanism to explain the atom or life. If chance is not valid, we are constrained to reject Huxley's claim and to realize that we are the product of an intelligent God.

Well, we all have our opinions, don't we? I like the 'product of chance' thing. For me, it's not too far out to imagine how the atoms formed, how heavier atoms formed, how planets formed, and how molecules began (by chance) to multiply themselves and conceive life.

THE NEXT STEP
We have seen a practical proof of God's existence in this brief study.

No, we haven't. What we have seen is you insisting that the universe had a beginning, and because it did, it must therefore have unfolded in the manner of how the Old Testament said so. You used a cheap, emotional string-pulling stunt when you mentioned us looking at our newborn children (I do have one!). You didn't offer any reason for supporting the biblical account, you didn't explore any alternatives. I guess the main problem is that the cornerstone or your argument doesn't make any sense, and then you just assume that the scriptures are the only alternative truth. I would recommend further study of physics, quantum physics, chemistry; all at the post-high school level. You also should speak with some atheists who know a thing or two about debating, because you really need some practice. If I may be so bold (why stop now, right?), I also suggest some more introspection and thought on your part about this whole thing. If you're going to go Christian and big-bang, that's fine. I know a lot of christians who do that. They're not wholly incompatible. But, you haven't proven anything in your proof, and if this is how you're dealing with these two interesting topics, then you might have to rethink your philosophy.

A flood of questions arise at this point. Which God are we talking about? Where did God come from? Why did God create us? How did God create us?
All of these and many more are answered in the same way_by looking at the evidence in a practical, common sense way. If you are interested in pursuing these things in more detail, we invite you to contact us. We have books, audio tapes, video tapes, correspondence courses, and booklets available and all can be obtained on loan without cost. Just request our catalog from:

Ah-Ha! And now we come to it! This was all one big sales pitch!! Pretty sneaky...
[I have omitted the links, you can buy his stuff by going to his site, to which I linked at the beginning]