The Absurdity Of The Budget Debate

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The president makes an appearance at La Raza—which stands for The Race: which race? the race—and announces that it would be keen if he followed Woody Allen’s advice and dictated his desires to his subjects, who would be required to heed.

His exact words were, “I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own.”

The audience responded: “Yes, you can! Yes, you can! Yes, you can! Yes, you can! Yes, you can!” Which encouraged The Man Who Never Heard No to say, “Believe me — believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting.”

Considering, and doubtlessly chilled by these words, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, warned that Republicans are attempting to impose a “dictatorship”, which is being imposed upon them by “extremists” in their caucus.

Tea PartyShe claimed that the tea partiers “incite their caucus with, essentially, violent movie clips — pushing their people to inflict pain and hurt people.” Perhaps Schultz had in mind the fellow pictured on the left.

It wasn’t just members of the race that egged Obama to assume the accept publicly the crown which he has in private imagined himself wearing. Journalists who see it as their duty to lead the lesser beings who are their readers are also making the call.

Michael Tomasky of The Daily Beast is one of many who shout, “Obama Should Stop Being Reasonable,” and that he should “raise the debt ceiling unilaterally.” It’s true the Constitution forbids this. But it is a living document, capable of reinterpretation by journalists to fit the times, in much the same way those who populate health food stores wile away long winter evenings mining the words of Nostradamus to discover what will come.

And then we had Al Franken—whose fame was found in comically portraying simple idiots—head to the Senate floor with an enormous blue and yellow-lettered placard that shouted “WELCOME TERRORISTS.” Franken’s argument is that if we don’t allow the government to borrow and raise taxes without limit, then the terrorists will have won.

Al Franken Welcome TerrroristsFranken’s appeal did not fall on deaf ears. Each one of his compatriot Democrats were so overwhelmed by the possibility of terrorists running amok that all of them wrote a letter to John Boehner saying they would not pass any bill sent to them.

Democrats want to take more money from citizens so that politicians can use it for their own purposes. Some of this money would be used to create a nationally run and directed news service. At least, if Columbia University’s Lee Bollinger had his way. Bollinger feels that “state-controlled media” has a “global reach” and are a “wave of the future.”

How much money can the government finally coerce? Obama and the Democrat party say a “fair” share. This implies, of course, that there is an amount which, if exceeded, would be unfair. What is that amount?

Ed Henry, from the hated Fox News, asked White House Press Secretary Jay Carney this question. Specifically, he asked where, on paper, is Mr Obama’s budget plan? Carney replied that this question was a Republican “talking point.”

Henry retorted that this was an evasion and where, exactly, was Mr Obama’s budget? “We put forward a budget, we put forward a framework,” Carney said. But he was unable to produce one.

Perhaps our readers can help Mr Carney and Mr Obama out. How much exactly, precisely is fair? At what point is taking away somebody’s possessions unfair? Is the maximum confiscated a percentage or a dollar amount? Please to define.

Meanwhile, HotAir reports what our readers saw yesterday: that the size of the federal government has doubled over the last ten years. According to the OMB, the federal government spent $1.86 trillion in fiscal year 2001, steadily, nay inexorably, increasing to $3.82 trillion in 2011.

This rate, as the pictures yesterday showed, far exceeds GDP growth. It is in fact exponentially increasing. Simple, non-partisan math shows that this rate of increase is not just “unsustainable”, to use the banal politician’s word, but impossible.

If the government continues to grow at this rate, it will, in about a decade or so, be larger than the public sector, which will then cease to exist. The government will have bled its citizens dry, will have consumed them, and have taken control. (This is no exaggeration: the USA’s GDP is just over $14 trillion. It grows, but does not match the rate of government growth, and it must slow the more wealth the government confiscates.)

Unless those in office are stopped now, and reminded they are just us, temporary elevated to public office and are in no way the superior beings they feel themselves to be, the end must come.

Update We now have China—China—lecturing us about how to live within our means. Via Xinhua via WSJ:

With leadership comes responsibility. It is unfortunate and disappointing that when political leaders in Washington spar over who is doing good for their country, they take little account of the world’s economic soundness.

In the same issue of Xinhua, they have an editorial announcing “Aircraft carrier reasonable for China’s peaceful development: newspaper.” One of three stories about China’s increasing Naval presence and capabilities.

Update Just when you thought it couldn’t become more absurd, California’s own Nancy Pelosi reckons the budget fight against Republicans a matter of life or death for Mother Earth herself. “We’re trying to save life on this planet as we know it today.”

The Case Against Raising Taxes: Spending Drives Debt

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The argument is simple: let the government raise taxes (Obama’s “balanced” approach), and the government will not only spend all of this increased revenue, but will spend more than that, borrowing against future “expected” revenues, which will plunge us further into debt.

Here is the proof.

Spending per capita

This is federal government spending per capita, adjusted to current (2008) dollars. Note carefully that this (familiar) picture shows an exponential increase.

This is matched by the per-capita debt (in 2011 dollars). It is also exponentially increasing. This is money we the people owe. Meaning money you owe (if you are an American).

Debt per capita

Finally, this, which shows that outlay drives debt (in case it wasn’t obvious):

Spending Drives Debt

The government—which means the people we elect and those that populate the bloated and ever increasing bureaucracy—must be stopped from taking any more of our money.

I will be curious to hear from those who feel that taxes should be raised and how they think these increases will alleviate the debt.

For a story which shows the economic depressing effect of bureaucracy, click here.

Are Movies Getting Worse?

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It depends on who you ask. The average citizen in the street might say no. Movies now have 3D, wonderful sound, and computers have all but removed the necessity for actors.

But film critics might say yes. What good is 3D when two will suffice? What good is stereo-hydro-thrillo-ponic sound when you give the actors nothing to say? And computers have been responsible for some of the biggest messes ever put on screen (think Michael Bay).

So when were the greatest movies made? Recently, or in the past?

Having just finished reading, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era by Thomas Schatz—highly recommended—and drawing on experience, yours truly is convinced that Hollywood’s so-called Golden Age really was golden.

The 1930s to 1940s (plus or minus a year or two) saw the release of Gone with the Wind, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Double Indemnity, All About Eve and many other classics.

The 2000s have seen Transformers a-plenty, Memento, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , WALL-E, and many other computer-animated cartoons. Each of these, except Transformers, has something to like about it, but all are polarizing. Many out there thinks at least one of these is the “best movie ever“, while many others would be inclined to put them at the bottom. You don’t find that kind of sharp divide in top movies from the Golden Age.

Schatz’s thesis, in part, was that when discipline ruled, there was a more of a chance that a production would be good. He didn’t produce any quantitative evidence of this, but I wondered if it could be found. So I compiled lists of the “100 Best Movies”, as judged by both critics and citizens.

I joined all the critics together and noted in what year their 100 best movies appeared. And then I did the same for citizens. The sources I used are these:

  • The American Film Institute is the best known critics list. The one used here is the current, 2007 version.
  • Rotten Tomatoes is another critics list. The ranking is by the number of reviewers giving the movie 100%. This list appears to have been generated recently.
  • The Internet Movie Database has a list based on reader’s votes. It is generated automatically. Only the top 100 (out of 250) were used.
  • Mr Showbiz, now defunct, but at one time quite popular, had two lists (maintained here): one of critics and a users choice. Neither list was updated after 2001. This will introduce bias to the extent that top movies came out after 2001.

Best Movies

 

I joined together the citizens and critics list separately and plotted the frequencies of the years of their top movies. Citizens thought the best flicks were in the mid to late 1990s. Critics picked the Golden Age.

According to citizens, movies are getting better, at least until very recently—however, this late drop off is very probably a data artifact because the Mr Showbiz data stops before 2001.

Critics feel that movies have been getting worse—and there is still the chance of bias right at the end because of Mr Showbiz.

An objection might be that there is a bias introduced by using internet-based voting systems, such as IMDB’s. There is a bias to the extent that the IMDB list does not reflect the average, non-IMDB-using citizen. That means old people. This means, probably, that younger people like that with which they are familiar. No surprise there.

But this criticism doesn’t work for the critics guides. Critics really do think that movies are getting worse. I agree. The decline is steady, and given the trend towards the spectacular and character-free glitz, it is likely to continue.

Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal Review

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Short version: it stinks.

Ubuntu is a version of Linux, an open-source and free operating system. I’ve been using various flavors of Unix for the past twenty years, and prefer them over anything that Windows or Apple offers. Ubuntu is not necessarily the best of all the Linux “distros”, but it is easy to install and operate and has, I think, a plurality of Linux users.

New versions of Ubuntu come out about every six months. These are usually improvements over the previous implementations, but not this time. Everything fundamental was changed, and abruptly.

There is a new default interface called Unity, coded by engineers evidently infatuated by both tablets and Apple. For example, for no good reason and after many years, the “Maximize, Minimize, and Close” buttons were moved from the right to the left of all windows (although this was attempted in the release prior to 11.04). I can only guess this is because Apple has theirs this way. Fortunately, these can be moved by fiddling with some code.

The big change is that the Unity graphical interface thinks everybody is a tablet, which only a small minority of users are. It’s slick enough, but not of much use to those who use their computers (not tablets) for work. I.e., those who have multiple open windows, desktops, command lines, etc.

Unity also removed apps from the top bar, which were very handy. Example: I have a dictionary app that I use frequently. In classic Ubuntu, the dictionary app rested on the top bar, and when used would open a window attached to the top bar with a definition and thesaurus. You could then use other programs (such as Firefox, etc.) and have the dictionary app window left open and viewable. No more.

To replace the apps, Unity has the idea of “notifications”, buttons which allow an anemic semi-interaction but which really just announce which software is running. Finding out how to add or remove these notifications is like reading some obscure occult treatise.

The old folder system is also gone, replaced by a bizarre file finding sequence, which does have pretty images, but requires clicking too many things and often lands you in places you don’t want to be. Worse, this system finds files you don’t have on your system, but might like to download. All this might be nice on a tablet, but it is of no use whatsoever to legacy users—who are the majority—and who have all their files in a hierarchy of folders. (And let’s not forget that to Linux, everything is a file.)

11.04 does allow you to log on with Ubuntu Classic, which I now do routinely, and so life continues as it used to. Except for the constant freeze ups, which require hard reboots. This is because of the switch from Open Office to Libre Office and the latter’s inability to talk to the new kernel.

I never use “office” software unless somebody sends me, say, a Word of Excel file. Open Office worked fine with these, although it couldn’t handle some of the more intricate document formatting. This never bothered me since I never use its equivalent of Word to write (I use Latex).

But Libre Office—even with Javascript turned off—causes the Ubuntu screen to freeze. Sometimes the mouse will move, but it won’t click. Typing is impossible. The only thing that can be done is to reboot, losing whatever information that was not saved. This is an extraordinarily annoying bug.

Incidentally, my experience of trying to roll back to Open Office was like trying to conduct open heart surgery on myself. Everything went wrong and I eventually gave up and re-installed Libre Office. I just try not to use it. (Gnumeric can be used to open spreadsheets, but it is a very limited.)

The working version of Firefox is 5.0, which is mostly nice, but it broke with Yahoo’s new version of webmail that came out last week. Since I use Yahoo as a server, this affected me. I had to roll back to version 4, but in doing so I lost some mail in my Inbox (partly my own fault; long story). So if you have emailed me recently but have not received a response, it’s probably because I lost your recent email.

I’m writing this review this morning instead of my usual post, since I suffered both the freeze ups and email lose all this morning, which left me in a mood that is none too nice.

I am now pondering whether a return to straight Debian or Fedora (which I use on servers) would be wise.

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