All posts by jeffersonish

Hello, Pot? This Is The Kettle

Politics, Psrhea, , ,

John McCain certainly seems to be clueless when it comes to picking economic advisors… almost as clueless as he is about the economy in general. Phil Gramm not only was the primary player responsible for banking/mortgage deregulation and making it easier for investment banks to hide their liabilities, but was a co-author of the Enron loophole legislation.

Carly on the other hand, while being a bad choice because of the common perception of her being a horrible CEO, actually withstands closer scrutiny fairly well, at least when using daveydoug’s standards. The problem is, I’m not sure where he gets his numbers from. According to my records, Hewlett-Packard stock (HPQ) during the Fiorina era tracked the Nasdaq Computer sector index almost perfectly. Further, the major decrease in stock price occurred before the Compaq merger which is the subject of the most common criticism heaped upon her. Just about every tech company suffered dramatic losses in stock price in 2000 including other major companies like Intel and Microsoft. This was not the fault of the people running the companies, but rather rampant speculative investing where people were buying stocks with a Price:Earnings ratio well over 100.

Even at that, the numbers are wrong. The highest the stock got was around $136 before the 2:1 stock split of 10/30/2000 and the lowest it got was $10.75, or adjusted to pre-split numbers, $21.50, the week of 7/22/2002. Keep in mind that H-P is a dividend paying stock and the dividend income during this period is not accounted for in these numbers despite the stock price keeping up with H-P’s peers.

Did she do a stellar job at H-P? No, especially if you were one of the people terminated from a company known for retaining employees. Was she competent? I think so. Is her association with the McCain campaign a compelling reason to vote for McCain? No way. The faux pas that McCain committed with Fiorina had to do with the public perception of her. He might as well have put Michael Jackson in charge of a commission to attack child porn, after all, Jackson was never convicted of anything… right? Public perception, right or wrong however, is not on Jackson’s nor Fiorina’s side.

On the other hand, if we use Palin’s logic that she has foreign affairs expertise because she could see Russia from her home state of Alaska, then simply owning H-P stock might qualify one as an economic expert.

– Jeffersonish

Goofy Pluto Resolution

Politics

If we didn’t already have enough evidence that legislators have lost their ever-loving minds, consider the recent California Assembly Bill, House Resolution 36, which 54 Assembly members sponsored or co-sponsored. It is titled, “Relative to Pluto’s planetary status”

I am still trying to figure out how this bill slipped past the legislative aids. I know legislators couldn’t possibly read every bill presented. That would be asking too much. They only receive 6 figures in overall compensation after all, possibly more if corrupt. Well, every lawmaker that signed onto this bill should fire their assistants for allowing them to vote for it. Then, the lawmakers themselves should be fired by their constituents.

The bill starts out innocuously enough with the findings (Whereas…) by indicating the origins of Pluto’s planetary status and indeed the history of the name itself (fittingly named after the Roman God of the underworld) and quickly degrades into assertions like,
Downgrading Pluto’s status will cause psychological harm to some Californians who question their place in the universe and worry about the instability of universal constants.
By “some” they mean the whack jobs like the lady that sued NASA for causing an explosion on a meteorite because it messed with her astrological chart.
The next finding states,

The deletion of Pluto as a planet renders millions of text books, museum displays, and children’s refrigerator art projects obsolete, and represents a substantial unfunded mandate that must be paid by dwindling Proposition 98 education funds, thereby harming California’s children and widening its budget deficits

Now I have to tell you, I was instant messaged the pdf of this bill and when I read the part about refrigerator art projects being rendered obsolete, I had to double-check the url which looked legitimate. I then decided to try and find the fill directly by using the California official website. To my horror, I found it was actual, factual and in all other ways, legitimate. We’re not in Kansas, or even the old California, people.
Apparently, the wonks in the California legislature never considered the slightly less expensive fix to the textbooks — printing supplementary inserts explaining the change until the next scheduled text revision.
The findings continue…
The deletion of Pluto as a planet is a hasty, ill-considered scientific heresy similar to questioning the Copernican theory, drawing maps of a round world, and proving the existence of the time and space continuum

Heresy? Heresy, according to wikipedia, is defined as “at variance with those [opinions or doctrines] generally accepted as authoritative. ” As anyone familiar with science knows, and those who attack evolution as “just a theory” do not, scientific opinions and doctrines are meant to be challenged and, when appropriate, changed. Given the seemingly, relatively equal amount of opinion on either side of the Pluto issue right now, it would seem there is currently no opinion or doctrine that is considered authoritative.
Furthermore, considering that the purpose of this bill is to state opposition to Pluto being demoted from planetary status, it seems odd to place the demotion on the samle plane as questioning of the Copernican theory (heliocentric) or a round world. I will admit to complete ignorance as to what status time-space continuum hypotheses have passed on to theory status other than to say it provided for some interesting Star Trek episodes.
Now the next finding is where this bill gets interesting and where my opening remarks really come into play.
The downgrading of Pluto reduces the number of planets available for legislative leaders to hide redistricting legislation and other inconvenient political reform measures

I am not kidding. If you don’t believe politicians actually submitted this bill on the floor of the California legislature, go to http://www.ca. gov and go to the legistative section, then search for HR 36. It is the one with Richman as the author credit. If you just want the direct link, here it is. In trying to figure out whether the offending politicians were being self-deprecating or were ignorant of the contents of the bill they sponsored or co-sponsored, I quickly came down on the side of the latter. This position was quickly reinforced by the following finding.

The California Legislature, in the closing days of the 2005–06 session, has been considering few matters important to the future of California, and the status of Pluto takes precedence and is worthy of this body’s immediate attention

In reading this, I began to wonder who the sneaky lobbyist was that snookered the law makers to support this bill that exposes them as complete buffoons.

Once all the finding are laid out, every bill has to have a call to some sort of action. Here is what all these findings lead to according to the text…

…now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Assembly of the State of California, That the Assembly hereby condemns the International Astronomical Union’s decision to strip Pluto of its planetary status for its tremendous impact on the people of California and the state’s long term fiscal health; and be it further Resolved, That the Assembly Clerk shall send a copy of the resolution to the International Astronomical Union and to any Californian who, believing that his or her legislator is addressing the problems that threaten the future of the Golden State, requests a copy of the resolution.

Given the prerequisite that Californians wishing to request a copy must believe that their legislator is addressing the problems that threaten the future of the Golden State, I am sad to say, I will have to rely on the electronic version available on the California website. I will also make sure I find out who is running against each and every one of the supporting Assembly members and send them a copy of this article.
Jeffersonish
P.S. I checked the calendar and it is not April 1st.

Not Proud to be an American

Politics

I am proud when something I do turns out good, but being American isn’t something I did. By chance, I was born here. It would take great effort to leave, assuming I wanted to, so I can’t be proud of staying here either.

That doesn’t mean I am not happy to be an American. It doesn’t mean I am not grateful for the efforts of those who secured the freedoms I enjoy. It doesn’t mean I take the resulting opportunities for granted. I was born in a country where freedom really means something and opportunity isn’t just a word in the dictionary and I thank those who made it so.

That said, our freedoms and opportunity are experiencing a down day in the market. These prized commodities haven’t been doing so well lately. The Bill of Rights could use a trip to the restoration shop so as to shine more brightly. Unlike antiques, the patina of corruption, authoritarianism, excessive taxation and judicial activism greatly decrease the value of the most prized asset of our republic. That trip to the restoration shop will take investment of time and effort. Citizens need to supplement their complaints and disgust with action. They need to demand better from our elected officials. When the people they elect vote to infringe our rights, they need to take action to remove them from office. When judges start to nullify the constitution, they need to be removed.

If we don’t make an effort to preserve our freedoms; to hold the government to its constitutional limits; to fight not only threats from abroad, but those from within, the type of country the Constitution demands will be a distant memory. For that we should be ashamed. But if we demand the whole country be deemed a free-speech zone, stand up for gun rights, and anything else that honors the memory of George Mason, without whom, we most certainly would not have a Bill of Rights, then we can be proud that we have left to our children a free country. We can be proud to have invested in the freedom and opportunity they will inherit – a country they will be happy to call home. If they can be grateful for our efforts to preserve and enhance the liberties we ourselves inherited, then we can be proud we made it possible.