SOPA, PIPA and Other Stupid Acronyms

Dear U.S. Congress, don’t censor the internet. I have a right to my place on the internet where I can express myself without fear that someone will block access to my blog without due process of law.

Which is to say that an accuser should be required to prove in open court that something is illegal copyright infringement before any action to block or remove the information is undertaken.

Sure, you will get people putting up some illegal material and then take it down some time later and sure the music and movie industries could say the damage is already done, but that is going to happen with or without this kind of law. The music and movie industry already has the ability (and used it) to sue individuals for copyright infringement.

This really is a question of data protection. Once a movie is out there, it is hard to stop it from being spread illegally on the internet. (I might point out that illegal DVD copies sold overseas in a certain country that might start with ‘C’ probably is more significant than online piracy, but I guess that is a different story) Trying to block sites is never going to be fast enough to solve the movie and music industries concerns and it is much more likely to affect many more people who have done nothing wrong.

It is interesting that so many Republicans are behind this law while at the very same time saying that we need less regulation and smaller government – are they all hypocrites or are they all insane with split personalities?

Which is More Important?

Cute pet pictures, cute baby pictures, or long boring political rants?

Okay how about this for an answer:

My son’s Grandma makes my son push her cat around in a stroller

The Drive Through Effect

I think that humans have a very hard time realizing the long term effects of a specific action even if we collectively have a strong grasp of good and bad. I am not immune to this issue. Diet, exercise, consumption, and so on. I know I should eat better, exercise more, use more sustainable products, but when it comes down to it, I’ll go and get a large McDonald’s fries without a moments reservation. But there are also the bigger and longer term issues that so many people seem to have problems with.

Take EPA restrictions on Mercury and other hazardous chemicals being emitted by power plants. It is not a global warming thing or a energy efficiency thing, but purely hey look 10,000 fewer kids a year are going to die if we do this. You would think the entire right-to-life crowd would be all on board. But no. So the government shouldn’t regulate to help save lives except for abortions when the government should regulate like crazy? I wonder if those people understand the meaning of the word hypocrite?

I don’t know, I mean I don’t like big government but I don’t like big business even more. Don’t people see how much scarier big business is? Water contamination, food contamination, smog, what do these all have in common? They are things that all lead to big company profits and which all lead to you needing more health care which then leads to more big company profits and the cycle continues. I just wish I had the conviction to make radical changes, going off the grid, eating organic non-GMO local foods, producing no trash – but I am too lazy and up ahead is another McDonald’s drive through… well maybe not this time, a small change at least.

Average American

The average U.S. citizen will pay on the order of $500,000 in taxes over their lifetime. (That is federal, state, and local in present value dollars). The average U.S. citizen will receive over $500,000 in benefits from their government. (That is the big ones like social security, education, fire and police protection, and medical, as well as some intangibles like roads, street lights, public spaces, and consumer and environmental protection). Seems like a good deal for the average U.S. citizen, especially when you take into account the other things the federal government spends money on like military and corporate subsidies.

But think about a person who earns 6 times the average. That rich person will pay over $2 million more in taxes than they will get in benefits. Seem so unfair. So obviously we should lower their taxes. Isn’t that logical? Okay, maybe not.

Lets look at it another way. The tax breaks being pushed would reduce the average U.S. citizens taxes by less than less than $50,000 over their lifetime. On the other hand, it would at the same time reduce their benefits by over twice as much. Makes me wonder why so many average citizens are in favor of it. That same tax break would reduce that rich person’s taxes by over $500,000 – so I completely understand why they are in favor of it. I mean that rich person can always buy expensive air purifiers to make sure they breath nice clean air in their house and buy expensive water purifiers to make sure they drink nice clean water and buy expensive food that doesn’t have salmonella or ecoli or rat and have private security patrolling their gated communities and send their kids to private schools and go to expensive doctors for special treatments and so on. So they don’t really care that much if the government reduces public benefits.

I totally understand people who vote based on their views on abortion, marriage or other such topics. What I don’t understand is how so many of them also got hoodwinked into supporting tax breaks that actually will hurt them over the long run while really helping out the rich.

At least there are people out there like Warren Buffet who are willing to say the truth, that they should be taxed more rather than less.

Well, to all out there, average or rich, I still wish you the best during this holiday season and have a happy new year.

I’ll Gladly Pay You in 2021 for a Tax Cut Today

So what the Republicans are offering is to give a middle class tax cut this year but pay for it by saying they will not spend some money in some other program 10 years from now. It seems to me, although I am no economist, that is actually increasing the current debt. What ever happened to Republicans being the fiscal conservatives? You know, the ones who want to balance budgets and reduce borrowing? At least the Democratic plans pay for the middle class tax cut without increases the current debt.

Thanskgiving 2011

No matter what you might think, a Tofurkey roast tastes really good, especially when marinated using a secret blend of herbs and spices that my wife uses. Well, at least a secret to me.

She also made a green-bean casserole from scratch. No can of mushroom soup. No jar of fried onions. She made the mushroom soup. She fried the onions. She works to such a level of perfection.

We also had mashed potatoes, cranberries, rolls, and a sweet-potato pie with whip-cream topping for desert.

Hope you all had a great thanksgiving meal and have much to be thankful for.

So Your Thinking About Going On Vacation

But you cannot take that much time off and so you don’t want to waste time with connecting flights. Sadly it is not easy to figure out direct flight options using travel websites or even airline websites, which sometimes even lie about possibilities. Well, here is an option for you to try:

Go to Google. Type in ‘direct flights from [city of your choice]‘ and hit enter. Look at the top of the search results. Cool, no? Here we are in Chicago trying to figure out where we can go in the Caribbean and the travel websites were telling us San Juan or St. Thomas. But we didn’t want to go to San Juan or St. Thomas. Did the Google search on a whim and there, down the list, was Grand Cayman Island services by Cayman Airways. One flight a week. Now, I don’t know anything about Grand Cayman or Cayman Airways, but at least now I know about the option. Just another example of how Google is changing things for the better.

Occupy

I do support the protest movement labeled “Occupy”. However, I am getting a little tired of all the protest and little progress. Maybe what we need is an international day of civil discourse to try to find some ways that we can all agree on to help improve the economy and get people back to work.

Pro-Choice I Am

When does life begin? Boy, that is a hard question mostly because it is so very open ended. When does a group of cells become a person? Again, still a very open ended question. When does a group of cells earn all the rights and privileges of being a U.S. citizen? At 21 years of age I guess.

Abortion is such a tricky topic. So many views on either side that bring such passion and yes even some extremism. But the recent move to define a ‘person’ to include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the equivalent thereof smacks of the very same kind of extremism that kills abortion doctors (isn’t it ironic that a movement based on life goes around killing people?). First of all, I really do not understand the rationale behind telling someone who was raped or who suffered incest or who could die from trying to carry to term that they cannot get an abortion if they wanted to. In this day of IVF, that could also mean a lot more dangerous multiple pregnancies too or maybe no more IVF.

But in the end, I think that the debate is pointless. A women has the right to choose. Women have the right to choose when they get pregnant and the right to choose to stay pregnant or have an abortion. It is not a medical issue or a population issue or a religious issue. It is the same kind of right for a women as to vote, to get an education, own property, etc. Even the right to wear a veil if they so choose (I am against the law in France that says otherwise).

Investing

I don’t consider myself a novice when it comes to investing but I am no professional. For the longest time I believed that one invested their money in a fund run by people like Janus or Fidelity, but I kept noticing that the performance of those funds by and large were below the average increase in the market. Okay, sure, a couple had really great returns for one year, but never the fund I invested in. So I decided to try investing in the stock market myself. Amazingly, I always had a better performance than the funds I was investing in. Lately I am finding it hard to justify buying any stock. In general, the whole process doesn’t make any sense. The stock market seems to be geared for speculators to make money rather than investors like me making money because a company does something really well without doing anything evil (you know like charging $5 a month for a debit card or foreclosing on people’s homes even when they are up to date on their mortgage payments or spilling oil all over the ocean or polluting drinking water). So I says to myself, self, why not invest in bonds – they should be simple, straightforward, none of the silliness of the stock market. Boy was I wrong.

The lingo was all Greek to me. Actually it might have made more sense if it was Greek. Zero-coupon, mandatory-put, sinking-fund, are just some examples. It was not the simple, straightforward experience I was expecting. If you are thinking of investing in the bond market, here is some advice I can offer:

1) I would stay away from Zero-coupon bonds. The coupon is like the interest rate the bond pay each year normally over two payments. A zero-coupon bond doesn’t pay any yearly interest. Instead it pays the face value of the bond on the maturity date. So the buyer pays a much lower amount when they buy the bond and the difference will be the interest they earn. That is if the issuer doesn’t go bankrupt in the mean time. Our government sells bonds like this which is why you always hear about the interest rate and the price going in different directions. It is really saying the same thing twice but people like you and me understand interest rates better than price for these kinds of things. When figuring out the interest rate you also have to take into account taxes as some government issued bonds will pay interest either or both Federal and State tax free.

2) Watch out for callable bonds. A callable bond is one the issuer can buy back at a specified price on a specified future date. If you don’t pay attention to the call value, date, etc. then you could loose money. Sinking funds seem to fall into the callable category. With a sinking fund the issuer can buy back some of their bond each year reducing (I guess that is where the sinking comes from) their debt load. Seems to me this is more of a loan than a bond but who am I to judge.

3) Look for insured bonds. The insurance adds safety to your purchase. It won’t guarantee your interest but it keeps you from loosing all your money if the issuer does go bankrupt.

4) Watch out for Greeks bearing bonds. Okay, that wasn’t called for. But still, you probably don’t want to take a ‘haircut’ on your bond. So don’t invest in a group that has a lot of debt already. Personally I wouldn’t buy a Bank of America bond, as an example, unless I was Warren Buffet and could a) risk loosing my money and b) demand special terms.

5) On the other hand, look at U.S. municipal bonds. Okay I may be going against the trend with that recommendation but I think it has been decades since a municipality didn’t pay back their bondholders while companies seems to go bankrupt at any time. Sure I wouldn’t buy any municipal bond, but in general I think these are a good and safe investment.

6) Look at the minimum purchase. A lot of bonds will be out of the range of the small investor. I have seen some that start at $50,000. Even if I had that kind of money to invest at one time I wouldn’t put it all in one place. But who know, maybe I will win the lotto and have to figure out how to invest my new found millions.

7) Bond prices (for non zero-coupon bonds) typically are somewhere near 100. But if the minimum is 5, for example, then that is actually 50 times the price in dollars or $5000. Don’t ask me why. You will also have to pay for any accrued interest, so that will increase the price a little more. If the price of the bond is much less than 90, you might want to take a good look at who is issuing the bond as the low price typically means the seller thinks the issuer is going to go bankrupt. If the bond price is over 100 then you are paying more for the bond than the original buyer did. You might want to ask yourself why you think it is worth it.

I am sure this doesn’t cover everything and I don’t promise accuracy but what I do suggest is that if you have any time and desire then invest your money directly rather than using funds and you can earn a better return on your investment. Otherwise, look at bond funds or the like, for example Marshall’s Intermediate Tax-Free Fund (MITFX) or Aberdeen’s Asia-Pacific Fund (FAX).