Month: September 2008

“Transformer glitch shuts down biggest atom smasher.” Today’s headline from Yahoo News. And my first thought was, “Oh really?”

As the LHC supposedly gears up, Harvard physicist Kevin Black, based at CERN, investigates rumors that the particle accelerator may, in fact, soon be shut down—by ripples from the future. [source]

Hmmmmmmm….

Among the list of things I will never be good at is wiring. However, I think this project is well worth the multiple failures that will ensue.

Beer keg speaker. Aw yeah.

DIY Beer Speaker

Too lazy to research candidates for the Presidency on your own? Then let a Flash cartoon from ABC News help you out. In 20 or so questions, a cartoon that lets you choose between quotes from the candidates will animate the way to your deicision for who to vote for as we decide the leader of the free world.

Or, yah know, you could read up on them. Just a thought.

ABC News: Match-o-Matic

Tomorrow is 9/11, Patriot Day. No politics. No partisanship. A day of remembrance. 

Today, however, being 9/10 it’s worth noting that Osama Bin Laden still walks this Earth in relative freedom. It’s worth noting that, seven years later, 9/11 has become the emotional wedge used for the repression of our freedoms in the name of “security”. It’s worth noting that 9/11 has become the iron that one side uses to brand the other as cowards or traitors. 

Tomorrow, we will remember those who died in and around the towers, as they deserve. Tomorrow, we should forget our politics, like we did seven years ago. But we won’t, because we can’t. The scars of that day are still very fresh in the minds of many, but only because we never stop picking at them.

Instead, tomorrow we’ll see countless editorials about the importance of various laws, programs, and policies. Tomorrow we’ll hear that, somehow, by supporting a certain political party, we’re somehow supporting terrorism. Tomorrow we’ll see opinions that don’t just border on jingoism, but relish in it. Tomorrow, instead of honoring the dead, we’ll use them to further the power of the living. 

2 years ago, Keith Olberman sat in front of the hole in the ground at Ground Zero and used that backdrop to highlight the corruption of the goodwill that followed the attacks on the World Trade Center. Today, new buildings may be rising in their place, but the rhetoric and fear-mongering continues unabated. Reading or watching that comment is as relevant today as it was then.

So, tomorrow, I will not post about the election or any of the idiotic or maddening articles I will read. I will not talk about George Bush, John McCain or Barack Obama. I also will not parade myself around in a flag to prove my patriotism or allow anyone to disparage someone who dissents. 

But today, I will unequivocally say that I believe, firmly believe, that this country has lost its way in the last seven years. I will not pretend that my life is more secure than it was on September 10, 2001. I will continue to wish that every soldier were home from Iraq and that no more were being deployed there. And I will continue to be angry at the way a national tragedy has been turned into a cultish denunciation of anyone who dare offer opposing opinions on how we should run one of the most powerful countries on the planet. 

We, none of us, will ever forget 9/11. Some have just forgotten what it was like before.

Taxes. We all pay ’em and we all hate ’em. Both candidate have set forth their tax plans should they be elected. The Tax Policy Center, a non-partisan think tank, crunched both campaigns’ numbers. Business Week (hardly a lefty publication), has the details.

Len Burman, a former Treasury tax official who is now a senior fellow at the Urban Institute [ed. part of the Tax Policy Center], says if Obama’s proposals—which include plans to rescind the Bush tax cuts on couples making more than $250,000, close corporate tax loopholes, and tax private equity earnings known as “carried interest” as ordinary income—were adopted in 2009, for example, married couples with earnings in the lowest quintile of the population would see their aftertax income rise 5.8%. Those in the next quintile would see an increase of 4%. Those breaks would be paid for by those with high incomes: the top 1% of taxpayers would see aftertax income fall 8.4%.

Under McCain’s proposals, by contrast—including an extension of the Bush tax cuts for all taxpayers, a corporate tax cut, and a larger reduction in estate taxes than Obama would support—far more of the benefits would go to the top. If his plans went into effect in 2009, married couples in the bottom fifth of the population would see aftertax income go up just 0.2%, while those in the next quintile would see a 0.7% hike. But those in the top quintile would see a bump up in aftertax income of 2.7%.

And the middle class? Yeah, we all get a 0.7% increase with McCain and a 4% increase under Obama.

And how about that deficit the Bush administration is leaving us?

[Under Obama] those moves would bring an estimated additional $734 billion to the Treasury over 10 years.

…

… McCain’s combined proposals would slash tax revenues by an estimated $253 billion over the 10-year period.

Brilliant. An income increase for the richest of the rich and no meaures to increase revenue to the Treasury. Of course, as the article points out, this is all based on their plans being implemented as promised, which rarely happens. So what’s the value in this kind of analysis?

“It gives us some sense of their view,” says Burman.

Exactly. And that view is pretty telling.

Obama vs. McCain: Taxing and Spending

Good read for those who couldn’t care less about race and gender.

Part 1: Examining key differences between Obama and McCain — Newsday.com.

Part 2