I was shocked and saddened to learn that Jon Stewart is going to be leaving the Daily Show later this year :(. Here is his video sharing the news.

I’ve been watching the Daily Show for a long time, and over the last 12+ years Jon Stewart and the show have rebuilt my faith in the political process. I won’t go into too many details as it is unimportant, but I was really into politics when I was younger, and I wanted to work in government. That feeling turned into disgust and disbelief as I learned more and watched what has occurred over the years. Over time Jon Stewart helped me to better understand our system, and served as a hero, someone who shed a spotlight on the big problems, abuse, hypocrisy, and corruption. Jon Stewart consistently stands up for the little guy, and he calls out big money and those with undue influence. We need that, and we need that on a national scale. It is a sad state of our current media that he is the best news show on TV when he is also on the comedy channel.

When I try to explain to people in other countries who Jon Stewart & The Daily Show are I explain that he is a saint, and probably the most important person in our country for exposing the corrupt parts of the political process. We don’t really have a working media IMO, he is the sole bastion of what the media should be doing and investigating.

I am hopeful that he is leaving a new generation behind who have a similar purpose and comedic style, specifically Colbert and John Oliver. I am hopeful they will find someone to continue his very important work.

This is a very sad day :(

Check out this great article on a lesson a teach used to show the class what privilege looks like (and the facts around social mobility). Might be a good lesson to run through with all your white friends who watch fox news and don’t seem to understand how many barriers are removed from their path at birth. Here is another good article to read too.

Nice to see even our shitty Congress unanimously say NO to some group of assholes trying to destroy the very fabric of the internet and free speech online. Along with the EU, Canada, Aussies, etc etc.

The 27 EU member states also voted unanimously, joining the U.S. to fight the ITU’s WCIT-12 plans as a unified bloc. The E.U. is backed in its stance by Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and other countries who are also members of the ITU.

Nice!

“We need to send a strong message to the world that the Internet has thrived under a decentralized, bottom-up, multi-stakeholder governance model.”

Holy shit a Republican said that? I know it makes your mind want to explode because it’s logical and not some nonsense about the social fabric of this country disintegrating. Quick nobody tell them about all the porn and abortion online :)

Find out in this great article by Michael Lewes entitled Obama’s Way. Honestly it’s amazing anyone wants to do that job.

A while back President Obama was giving a speech somewhere and stumbled while delivery of line and said:

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

The “that” in that line was the roads and bridges, but when delivered sounded like he was referring to the business. IE, you didn’t build that business. Republicans have used this in ads and as a theme. This is very similar to something Elizabeth Warren said a while back too:

“I think the basic notion is right. Nobody got rich on their own. Nobody. People worked hard, they build a business, God bless, but they moved their goods on roads the rest of us helped build, they hired employees the rest of us helped educate, they plugged into a power grid the rest of us helped build,”

So why does this annoy the hell out of me?

Because it’s true! The United States is the greatest business platform in the world right now. And I’m lucky enough to be able to launch my business on that platform.

The USA is like the app platform you use with your smart phone. Apple/Google provide the hardware infrastructure that delivers your product to consumers. The USA provides the road, power, and other infrastructure that make commerce possible. Apple/Google provide the software that runs those apps and the standards that enable a good playing field. The USA provides the standards through the FDA, Health Department, FBI, etc to provide a good playing field to business. Apple/Google take ~30% to cover that infrastructure, and so does the USA (less actually).

I totally understand and love the independent vibe, its part of what makes us Americans. That raw wild freedom that is our hero story, the American who goes west, who rides off into the dark wilderness to tame, build, and master. Who creates something out of nothing. I personally have an incredible addiction to this image, it is a struggle for me to find and develop a community because I so value being highly independent.

BUT… It’s simply not true. The modern global world is one that is built on everyone’s strengths and is interwoven beyond everyone’s comprehension.

I’m a business owner and entrepreneur.
I work my ass off to create and built my business.
But, I didn’t build this all by myself.

PS.
Each year I pay taxes and invest in the American system. I’m not happy with a lot of the regulations on small businesses, and a lot of the licenses that states create, but it is idiotic to imply you are building this on your own. I’m embarrassed for Republicans, the Republican party used to have good ideas, I used to like parts of their platform, just like I only like part of the Democratic platform. But in the last 10 years the Republican party has jumped into the crazy pool. This really sucks because there is no real debate on a macro level any longer. And I find that worrisome as there are some really important macro problems that need to be solved. But the choice in most national elections now is to vote for crazy idiots who don’t say anything but soundbites, or the Democrats who are floundering because they have no one to debate real ideas with. Eeek.

Wow check out this great post on gun control by Jason Alexanders. He makes some great points and I hope people listen and a constructive dialogue emerges. Which is unlikely :)

Having 14 people die at a movie theater sucks. Personally I’m torn on the issue. On one hand I like the cowboy violent psycho culture of the USA, I think it’s a big part of America’s culture and why we excel and fail at so many other aspects of our society. The notion that a citizen has rights to weaponry to defend themselves from a tyrannical government is pretty awesome. Sure it’s stupid right now, but in 50 or 100 years it might not be (highly unlikely but we (Americans) are also super bad at math/risk analysis).

But I can’t help to wonder that maybe it is time to take a step back. We loose so many people each year to gun violence and we are loosing the future those people could build. What if one of them cured cancer? Went into politics and changes the course of history? Was an amazing teacher that impacted hundreds of people? Started a new business? I’m just not sure the loss is worth it on society.

Maybe in order to own guns you have to attend a class every 6 months to be evaluated mentally. Or you have to be part of a “militia” that has similar requirements and seems to be what the constitution was more aimed at (who knows though what they meant?). What can we do to prevent 75% of the current gun fatalities?

Maybe it is time to scale things back and limit it to single shot bolt action hunting rifles only. Our national guard and army are made up of citizens, do we really think they would somehow rise up against us? Do we really think that at some point the fabric of what it is to be an American will so disintegrate that the individuals making up the military would turn on their own people? Not impossible but it seems so unlikely.

The NY Times released this awesome tool that allows you to go through and apply different items that will help to fix the budget and shortfall for 2015 and 2030. Check out the tool here but be warned it is super addictive!

Here are my my choices! And a couple notes:

1. Farm subsidies, Joel made a convincing argument on these, and I left them only because i want the subsidies moved towards promoting better eating. So away from corn…

2. Reduce the federal work force, this one I’m a tad split on and left it unchecked. I think we need to lower it but do it smartly. There are some offices that need more resources and some that do not. Personal need to go towards areas such as education, energy policy, SEC and bank monitoring and investigation, and other protective areas. I did however cut the 250k in government contractors.

3. On military I reduced our nuke and space spending, duh. I feel strongly we should keep troops in Asia and Europe and really push that up, its good for the country and for our ability to project force abroad. Which is also why I didn’t vote for reducing the navy and air force fleet as they enable us to do that. I cut some of the terrible programs like the osprey, we need to drop the cold war race against our self. And not cutting veterans benefits as that seems insulting. And I voted to reduce the troops to 60k by 2015, I’d love to do 30k but I don’t think that is as feasible.

4. With health care I voted to cap medicare growth as I’ve read some on that and it makes sense, and to enact medical malpractice reform. I also wanted to vote to reduce tax breaks on employer provided health insurance, but this should be done once we have a base government provided health care or at least something that you buy yourself. Then the added extra insurance through your employer should be taxed.

5. Social security… I voted to reduce social security to those with high incomes and use an alternative measure for inflation. I’m not huge on increasing the retirement age just yet.

6. Existing taxes. This is a big one for me and I would vote for the most moderate one by Lincoln, the Obama one is good too as its the same as Bushes. Investment taxes, we need to go with Obama’s proposal. And on the bush tax cuts I want to allow expiration of taxes for incomes above 250,000 a year. And allow the payroll tax for those above 106k a year.

7. New taxes… The millionaire tax needs to happen. In terms of overhaul I’m very for the Bowles Simpson plan, we need to bring corporate tax rates down while cutting loopholes and other tax deductions. Plus reducing mortgage deductoins for high income households.

This puts me at 43% savings from tax increases and 57% from spending cuts… It puts me around 42 billion over the 2015 shortfall and it puts me 185 billion in surplus over the 2030 shortfall.

Now, I am very interested in a national VAT tax of 5%… I like consumption taxes as right now Americans just consume consume consume and this might break that a bit and bring in much needed money we could focus on doubling teacher saleries and redoing our energy grid…

So here are my results to view.

This is a really sad vote right here, click here for the names of 19 Senators who want to censor the internet. Sad day.

This is hardly a surprise but, this morning (as previously announced), the lame duck Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously voted to move forward with censoring the internet via the COICA bill — despite a bunch of law professors explaining to them how this law is a clear violation of the First Amendment.

Hopefully the courts knock this down if it even passes out of committee… Al Franken how could you? Although maybe they didn’t read the proposed bill… Or maybe this was slipped in, regardless this should never have been voted aye on. (Although maybe they just voted this way to get part of it out of committee and then will strike this BS out or count on the supreme court removing it).

Still super busy so can’t post much but I highly recommend this article on how to grow rich using a charter city idea. Very cool idea built on it’s success in history.

A great idea and I can’t type more as I’m super busy but you should check it out! Read The American Nations Plan… This is a great first step!

I love this video.

I went to sleep in a land of freedom and democracy, I’ve awaken in a socialist, communist, fascist, nazi nightmare of a country because of a watered down health care bill that was voted on by people the country elected to vote on things. Glenn Beck please send me your delicious crazy tears to add to my vodka martini comrade! Yum!

Great news! The health care bill passes! Although trying to get a copy or real summary to see the changes.

Hopefully this brings some real change to the industry! One of our companies just got hit with 20% to 30% raises on rates this year, and they also had the audacity to tell us the insurance company says they are working hard to sell us on what they call “educating” consumers to buy plans with higher deductibles and so on (ie make more money). I don’t blame them as they are businesses, which is why the government needs to run their own health care, health care needs to be a right or it will continue to hurt our nation and our economic growth. My personal health care rates increased about 20% this year and I have a pretty low end plan meant for emergencies.

So scary, the Sarah Palin / Glenn Beck ticket of crazy insane idiots.

I just watched the new Michael Moore movie Capitalism: A Love Story, it is my least favorite of those he has made thus far and I found my self disagreeing with about half of the movie. He makes a lot of good points but the thing that frustrates me the most is he fails to place a lot of the blame for the housing market on Americans being stupid and getting a second mortgage or trying to live beyond their means. Although he makes good points that this is just the death rattle of bad economic policies of the last 20 years that have stripped low income and middle class families of their ability to prosper and their ability to create wealth decline.

That said people are just dumb, people buy things on credit cards, people take out second mortgages, and people get themselves into trouble (I know as I’ve done it). If people are signing documents that put their house payment real low for a few years and then 2x or 5x years later that is basically gambling that you can afford it by then, and that is dumb. Same thing with college loan, college is probably not worth $80,000 dollars in debt, you can go to a State school for a lot cheaper or find some place in state. And overall it seems the real failure in this mess is the government. The government’s job is to protect Americans but a lot of Americans loosing everything are the same jack asses who call for small government and seem to think private enterprise is good when in fact it just took their house and FFFFed them in the A.

I like FDR’s proposals and wish we had followed through, I think America needs to step it up, if socialism is a dirty weird call it the Capitalism Contract. This contract would draw a line so that Capitalism is adjust slightly towards protecting it’s participants and this helps the system because you have a base of consumers who are better off both when they are in the system and after they retire.

Capitalism Contract

– Government health care. Health care is a right and should not be provided by a company, it should be provided by the government.

– Very cheap college education. I think school should cost something, but it needs to be a lot less. It needs to be something you can afford working part time at minimum wage and paying rent. There needs to be a State school that is quality in every state that is doing medical and scientific research while educating students at a very reduced rate.

– Retirement. The dreaded third rail of american politics. This system needs improvement but I do like it. The problem I see now is not many people are saving for their retirement, I would like to see how much we contribute to retirement increased and handled on the government side of things.

– Higher tax rates on the top tax tiers. For people making over 1,00,000 a year or higher tax that at 50%. The current rate is just 35% after $357,000 and that is low if you look at history. I love business and the motivation behind creating businesses needs to be there, but at some point its not about the money, it’s about the freedom it brings and having enough money to be very very well off. For anyone making over a million dollars a year taxing the remaining portion at 50% is a fair social contract when that money is creating the system that created the opportunity for their wealth.

– Every third Friday of the month is a holiday so you get a 3 day weekend, this is only for 10 months and not for Nov/Dec. Basically would result in 10 extra holidays. I’m not sure how this one would work but I like it, and I think it would be good for Americans on the higher end of the work spectrum who already put in a lot of hours.

– Some type of government run Training Centers or at least informational website. With the speed the economy is going to shift and shift again over the coming years I would like to see a partnership with private companies that are having trouble finding qualified people. So for example with Wind and Solar and them needing people, there needs to be a national website that lists where you can receive training and where jobs are in the country. And maybe tax breaks if you move there to get a job. Not entirely sure how it would work but we need something along these lines, the people who get fucked such as when the car industry melts down need help finding a new industry to work in that is actually going to grow. Otherwise they will remain a burden on the system. I know we have a hard time finding qualified people for basic support all the way up.