Schierer Space

As I was watching CNN pan around the enormous crowd in Chicago looking forward to celebrate the election of Senator Obama, I heard Nate cough slightly in his crib.

I realized then, that should these predictions hold (and it looks pretty certain), that Nate will grow up in an America where the President does not have the same skin color he does. Should President-Elect Obama serve for 8-years, it’s quite probable that Nate will carry this as the image of the first President he ever knew. ^[1]

That seems pretty significant to me, and I hope this is just one sign of the beginning of a new, less divided America.

Edit (11:33PM):
I just listened to Senator McCain’s concession speech. You know, if he had been speaking in positive gracious terms like that for the last 6 months, this election might have been much closer. I hope he does return to his more centrist roots and provides a rallying point for Republicans to unify with the Democratic majority. I’d love to see the centrists run this country for a change, instead of the flip-flopping polarized politics of the last 12 years.

Edit (5 Nov 7:20AM):
If you didn’t hear the speeches, I’m really sorry you missed them. Here are the transcripts:

• McCain’s Concession Speech
• Obama’s Victory Speech

1. I’m guessing that at the age of 6, the President is not something that sticks in your head. [↩]

That didn’t take long. Remember that spending freeze I just wrote about… and how NASA is squarely in the group of programs subject to the freeze?

Bad Astronomer discusses a Wall Street Journal article where McCain has promised $2 Billion to support NASA.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE NASA. I think NASA should be funded in much larger proportion to the current budget. Currently the non-military space program gets about 0.6% of the current budget, or $56 per American. I think I spend more than that per month on my cable bill.

What gets me going is how somebody can talk about increasing $17B by $2B and call it a spending freeze. I would love a nice 11% salary freeze right about now too.

Some might call it lying.

So in the final Presidential debate, Senator McCain said “And I recommend a spending freeze that — except for defense, Veterans Affairs, and some other vital programs, we’ll just have to have across-the-board freeze.”^[1].

On October 20th, while campaigning in Missouri, he said “I will freeze government spending on all but the most important programs like defense, veterans care, Social Security and health care until we scrub every single government program and get rid of the ones that aren’t working for the American people.”^[2]

So let’s break this down a bit:

• “Freeze government spending…” Ok, that seems meaningful, I won’t say “good”, but at least meaningful.
• “… on all but …” Uh oh… here it comes.
• “… defense, veterans care, Social Security and health care.” Woah. Could we have picked any LARGER programs to except from the ’spending freeze’? I guess “vital programs” really means “expensive programs”.

So how much of the government budget is McCain really looking to control with this approach?
According to the US Government Budget Office historical data for Fiscal Year 2009, in 2007 total government receipts were $2,568 Billion (thousand-million for the Brits) as follows: $1,163B in personal income tax, $370B in corporate taxes, $870B in social security taxes and $46B from other sources.
Outlays were $2,655 Billion (I’m fairly certain this does not include “Supplemental Funding” like the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or bailouts) as follows: Defense $522B, Human resources $1,672B, Physical resources $165B, Interest $227B, Other functions $138B^[3] and Offsetting receipts -$68B. We need to break down the Human resources further to get to the Senator’s other line items as follows: $119B is Education, $253B is Health, $330B is Medicare, $549B is Social Security and $70B is Veteran’s benefits and services.
I’m guessing that “Health and Medicare” are wrapped up in the “health care” subject.

So out of a $2,655B Federal outlay (not including the wars which undoubtedly fall under the “defense” bucket), $522B + $253B + $330B + $549B + $70B = $1,724B (65%) is completely free to grow. The remaining $931B (35%) gets frozen.

The items which will be capped include (in order of decreasing size): Education, Transportation, Community Development, Justice, Natural Resources & Environment, International Affairs, Agriculture, Science and others.

So strong talk, but if he said it like this “I’m going to freeze spending on 1/3 of the budget and let the rest grow as needed” would it sound like it meant anything? No? Well, that’s really what he’s saying.

Is that what you want? You decide. Vote.

1. Quote from CNN.com transcript [↩]
2. Remarks by Senator McCain in Belton, MO, JohnMcCain.com [↩]
3. General science, space and technology gets a mere $23.6B of this pie. NASA gets about $17B of that, but the DoD space program gets more: on the order of $20B. [↩]

As seen on digg:

I’m not sure that “Elitist” is really the argument I would be making with this image, but it’s hard to argue which set of statistics is more typical of the average US citizen. I suppose if the economy really tanks he can always sell his jet. Are you prepared to give up your jet?

Let me put this in a language that the Christian fundamentalists might understand:

When Jesus sat down with the sinners and tax collectors did he ask for preconditions? Was he naive and irresponsible to do this?

McCain would say “yes”. What do you think?

¹⁰While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples. ¹¹When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ’sinners’?”

¹²On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. ¹³But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”^[1]

1. BibleGateway.com, New International Version, Matthew 9 V10:13 [↩]

One of the big news items in the last few days has been modifications to the failed bailout government bailout bill. One item that just floors me that has had quite a bit of discussion in the last few days is increasing the FDIC insurance limit on accounts from $100k to $250k.

Sounds great at the surface, right? Protect folks savings. Very important. Except, who with any real financial sense, has over $100k in savings sitting in an ordinary account at ONE bank? The current FDIC insurance protects retirement accounts (IRAs, not investments) up to $250k already per person, per bank. So if you have $100k in First Bank of Podunk and $100k in Last Bank of Podunk and $250k in your IRA at Podunk Bank, you’re fully insured by the fed already. So unless you have OVER $100lk in a single bank in ordinary bank accounts, this has NO impact on you.

This combined with the fact that the average savings rate in the US has been negative for years and declining prior to that for decades. I’m pretty convinced that only really really REALLY wealthy people have this kind of cash just sitting around liquid in CDs.

I’d like some more time to research this, but this is my gut reaction. How about reducing credit card rates so people can actually pay them off? That might affect most Americans.

I’ve signed on as a supporter of ScienceDebate 2008. The concept is to get the presidential candidates to have a real debate about issues of science and technology.

Check it out. I encourage you to sign up too! Let’s tell our government that political dogma just doesn’t cut it anymore. We want a leader who can help us make the Unites States a world leader in technical innovation and scientific discovery.

I’ve seen a similar application in the past, this one is interesting because it appears to be European in origin.

As seen on digg:
Electoral Compass

Take a look.

My results:

Based on the responses you provided, you are the closest to
John Edwards and you are the furthest away from Fred Thompson

Here you find an overview of all issues. You can click on an issue to see your repsonses and responses from John Edwards as well as the sources on which they are based.

The results are pretty consistent with other surveys I’ve taken and my own analysis.

On NPR today, I heard a radio version of this Slate article where Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres propose to change the electoral system by having each person ‘vote’ their portion of a Federal election fund. In this scheme, private/corporate/etc. funds which form the majority of the funding in today’s major campaigns would be balanced by a sufficiently large Federal fund. The Federal fund is to the tune of 3 billion dollars, which I admit sounds like a lot, but remember that the 2007 Federal budget is to the tune of 2.5 trillion dollars (US Gov’t Printing Office). I’m not convinced by this scheme, mostly because I can’t imagine it ever getting enacted. I have a hard time imagining a politician suggesting a plan which A) raises taxes (or cuts programs) and B) alienates the influence of their own fiscal supporters. I have my own thoughts on how to reform the campaign funding process (see below), but first I want to talk about New York state.

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