Andrew Busey: My Musings

This is a really good article on capital gains from the WSJ:

Obama’s Capital Loss

The fact that it is in response to an Obama position - that raising capital gains to 20-25% is ok - is not what makes this article interesting. It actually has some pretty interesting stats that show increases in capital gains materially decrease tax income because the higher tax changes peoples behaviors.

Another brilliant example of our government at work: Banks: Planned Net-gambling curb could disrupt e-commerce

My favorites:

The 2006 law forces banks and other financial intermediaries to police money flows that could be related to Internet gambling. It never received a formal up or down vote in the entire Congress; instead, Republican congressional leaders simply glued it on to an unrelated port security bill that was approved nearly unanimously.

Got to love the largely libertarian Ron Paul. I wish more of our politicians thought about things this way:

Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian-minded Republican candidate for president, said that could lead to more Internet regulation: “Though I do not endorse gambling per se, people should make their own decisions. It’s a personal choice. I’ve always been concerned about this type of regulation and legislation–it’s likely to open the door (to control and regulation) of the Internet itself.”

And, the one issue I agree with Barney Frank on:

Rep. Barney Frank, the Democratic chairman of the full House Financial Services Committee, used the chance to talk up his bill that would effectively legalize–but closely regulate, including with criminal background checks and financial disclosure–the online gambling industry.

Why can’t we have a govenment that acknowledges personal responsibility?

I am rapidly beginnging to feel like there is no possible good outcome in the upcoming election. I’m also beginning to feel like government bureaucracy and inertia is going to kill our country.

This article about the $53 trillion asteroid is a pretty depressing look at our grand retirment (cough cough entitlement) system and how it’s screwed. I’ve been reading a lot about this recently. I should have linked more of it. One article said we should have turned the social security fund into a sovereign wealth fund - which is a brilliant idea. However, I can’t seem to find the article.

Anyway, on to the other topic. I had been leaning strongly toward voting for Obama. I voted for him in the Texas primaries - the first time I’ve ever voted for a democrat. However, I’ll admit that I was swayed by the whole preacher incident. I’m not a huge fan of religious influence in government to begin with, but Obama calls this guy his “spirtual advisor.” Which, even if the guy wasn’t over the top, is disturbing. Although this is even worse, since from what I have read Jerimiah Wright is just plan nuts. It’s note like you can just ignore this either, Obama has been going to his church for 20 years - he had to know this person’s opinions, especially given the spritual advisor stuff. It’s just a sign of bad judgement and bad people selection. (Which are probably also the root causes of the failure of current administration.)

Anyway, this article (The Audacity of Rhetoric) was pretty interesting. It was written by Thomas Sowell at the Hoover Institute / Stanford. I don’t necessarily agree with everything in this column, but it’s definitely a point of view worth considering.

I haven’t written Obama off yet, but this thing has certainly killed off my enthusiasm. I went to a rally and even met him while he was in Texas - so I definitely put in some effort. The whole situation really disappoints me.

It’s a shame to put this in a negative post, but hey:

I will say Obama certainly has charisma and gravitas.

Democrats	Republicans	Me
Socialist Leaning	Free Market Capitalism	R
Big Government	Small Govermnent	R
Big Spending	Fiscal Conservatism	R
Socially Liberal	Socially Conservative	D
Secular	Religious messages	D

The high-level positions are broad and represent the traditional positions. They are changing - for example the Republicans aren’t doing a particularly good job on the small goverment and fiscal conservatism fronts right now. And the democrats are starting to pander to the religious crowd.

Where-oh-where is a good party:

• Understands and supports capitalism and free markets.
• Keeps a leash on government spending.
• Keeps the government small - bureaucracies are never effective.
• Let’s people basically do what they want as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.
• Doesn’t push a religious agenda down people’s throats. (Yeah, like an abstinence policy is ever going to accomplish anything.)
• Never mentions religion.

The biggest thing for me is:

PERSONAL RESONSIBILITY

If someone messes it up - it’s their fault. Don’t bail them out, let them take their lumps and grow and move on. And for the love of god get rid of the tons of lawyers out there suing our soceity into oblivion. If someone spills hot coffee on themselves - it’s not McDonald’s fault, it’s the persons fault. This type of crap is just getting out of hand.

That’s probably the biggest reason why I lean toward Obama. He at least acknowledges the personal responsibility issue. And he did it at the one rally I attended. Anyway, I think this is possibly the single biggest issue facing the future of our country. If people don’t take responsibility for their actions then we’re screwed. We will become a soceity afraid to take risks, afraid to go outside, and afraid to interact - all while looking over our shoulders waiting to see if we are about to get sued.

/rant

I think I’ve said this before, but I’m not a big fan of Hillary. This article:

Political Perceptions: Vice President Clinton?

Is interesting. And scary… to me at least.

I’m not a Democrat. I used to be a Republican, but they’ve so sold out to the religious right / evangelicals that they horrify me now. So I’m kind of screwed. See my next post for more info.

Anyway, as one of the undecided this would be a huge mistake for Obama. Right now I’m leaning towards voting for him. (I did vote for him in the Texas primary.) However, I WOULD NOT vote for Obama / Hillary.

Hillary just seems fake and plastic to me. Like she’ll say anything to get elected. I know she’s smart, but she just seems to lack common sense and vision. I read something comparing here to that overachiever in the front row who always raises their hand for every question - that resonated with me. (I’d cite it but I can’t remember where I saw it.) Anyway, she has booksmarts but no passion or vision.

I also think it would be a shame if we elected someone because of their spouse and that seems to be the main reason most people are voting for her. And maybe because Rush Limbaugh told them to.

And if McCain picks Huckabee as his running mate.. I guess then I’ll be screwed because I refuse to vote for them either. The last thing we need is a former preacher as Vice President - that will do wonders for the perception of the country around the world.

Let me be upfront: I’m not particularly excited about any of our choices this year. Although I think they might be less appalling than the last one… but I’m not entirely sold on that yet.

Anyway this is a quote from Hillary (Clinton looks to stop Obama in aftermath of 10 losses):

“We need to make a choice between speeches and solutions, because while words matter greatly, the best words in the world aren’t enough unless you match them with action.”

And this choice (ah the irony) sound bite:

“It is time to get real,” Clinton said, “to get real about how we actually win this election… It is time to move from good words to good works — from sound bites to sound solutions.”

WTF. She was a First Lady and a junior senator. Full time, permanent politician. What has she ever done? (BTW, I’m not suggesting some of the other candidates have done anything more, but given the crap she is spouting is silly in that context.) I just want to puke everytime I read these speeches. They are so full of shit that it is unbelievable. I wonder if they actually believe the crap that comes out of their mouths.

Like “Hilary the Christian” and “Hilary the Woman of Action”…. I’ll add “Hilary the Plastic Doll”. Anyway, I just find all this stuff both very hypocritical and very fake.

Brief digression: it also pisses me off that these senators get to run around and IGNORE their real job - ie: miss votes - to run for president. If you want to run for president you should have to resign from Congress - make it mean something. If you cared about the people who elected you to that position you’d do that and let them get the representation they deserve.

I’m not sure about Obama and McCain is a bit of a wildcard, but at least they’re both passionate and mostly real (I’m not sure there is such a thing as a “real” presidential candidate). So I hope we get one of them. Or better yet maybe Bloomberg will run - he’s the only candidate I think I could really get excited about.

However, I think I might to go to an Obama function tomorrow - maybe even get a chance to meet him. It will be my first ever donation to a Democratic candidate, but I think it’s worth taking a look.

/rant

 Article from News.com:   Net taxes could arrive by this fall

Yikes.  It’s here again - net tax debates.  The U.S. operates under a federalist system and has a long history of protecting states rights on all sorts of fronts.  However, this model is clearly showing signs of wear and if anything is going to break it, my bet (I wish I could bet) is on the Internet being the cause.  

The guy who thinks the Internet is made of pipes, Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens said he would like:

“to see an impregnable ban on taxes on the Internet.”

Wow!  Well Ted and I finally agree on something relating to the Intarweb… I mean Internet.   I say:  DON’T TAX THE PIPES… or anything flowing through them.

Here is why Internet taxes are bad:

1. They are a huge burden on entrepreneurs.  Some states (like California) are pretty obnoxious about “nexus” which determines if you owe taxes to them or not.  It’s hard to keep track of and easily activated (like a sales person in California…. or possibly even one that visits a lot).  Anyway, collecting sales taxes is an incredible burden and just creates jobs for accountants and a requirement that entrepreneurs buy crap tax accounting software that makes developing cool and interesting applications very difficult.  This whole issue will be more critical as more entrepreneurs develop cool and interesting web businesses.   Whether it’s selling stuff on eBay - a big generator of new small businesses, but when does this qualify for sales taxes? - or a Web 2.0 innovator that has a cool new service that costs a few bucks a month or year for a premium service?  The burden on these business is quite significant.  Amazon and Dell can probably afford the accounting overhead, but not a small business. 
2. If you think state governments are bad, imagine how obnoxious some of these little townships are.  I can’t wait until some backwater town decides to tax the Internet in some stupid way.  You know it will happen.
3. Someone will decide to try tax e-mail or some bullshit like that.  That will be fun.  Let’s have various national, state, county, and city, governments tracking our every Internet activity so they can tax it.  Not to mention the joy someone in that chain will take in knowning what everyone is doing.  I’m sure nothing nefarious could happen…. uhm yeah.

If the bureaucrats who are so effective at wasting all the money we already give them insist on taking more, here are my recommendations:

• Create a national sales tax and redistribute it to the states so at least it will be uniform to collect and pay.  (And if we’re lucky cause a panic and never pass.  Because, just like income tax, once they get their hand in the cookie jar they will never take it out.)
• Only tax companies that do a large amount of business over the Internet.  Like $100mm or more so that the cost of developing systems to manage and pay all these gazillion different taxes (in Texas the sales tax is different in every county…. imagine having to sort that crap out as a small web site.)  

God save us from these jackass like Senator Michael Enzi from Wyoming who wants to mandate taxes on Internet purchases.   I’m glad that the National Governor’s Association is lobbying for this.  BTW, I bet those hypocrites don’t pay the voluntary sales tax now.

The states are collapsing into financial ruin from missing this sales tax so far.  Let them whine some more.  Besides, if they actually get money from some new windfall like this they’ll just waste it anyway.  No, I’m not cynical about government spending.  Not at all.  If only they were run like businesses. 

Oh and while I’m on the subject I love this one: 

“I’ve got to spend this money now or my budget will get reduced next year.”

Way to encourage the right behavior.

/rant

Wow, this is the kind of stuff that scares the crap out of me:

Schumer calls for subprime bailout (New York Democrat wants funds to help subprime borrowers.)

What we should be doing:

• Borrowers:  If someone took one of these loans and they can’t pay, there should be a foreclosure.  However, I’m all for allowing them some kind of class action against the shaded mortgage brokers and banks who gave them the loans.  But really it should just make them whole and it shouldn’t come from other tax payers.   The mechanisms for this already exist and I am sure there is no shortage of shady class action lawyers looking to jump on this bandwagon.
• Lenders:  The government should crack down on these clowns. 

There are two principles near and dear to me at play:

• Responsibility:  If people are too stupid to read their loans or do some simple calculations they probably shouldn’t be buying a house.  This country already lets people abdicate personal responsibility way too much.  Buying a house is a big responsibility, people shouldn’t be rewarded for being stupid in the way they do it.  It’s not fair to all the people who were.  The problem is politician’s love to position themselves as “helping the little guy” when in fact they are just letting people shirk responsibility for being stupid.
• Wasting Money:  Anytime my tax dollars go to fix someone elses mistake IT PISSES ME OFF.  What a waste, I don’t pay taxes to fix other people’s mistakes - I pay them for infrastructure, security, and advancement (ie: science, research, etc.).   Of course our government pisses away a lot of money on stupid stuff.  But this is really stupid.  Let the system sort it out.

Schumer and everyone else behind this:  Stop grandstanding and shut the fuck up unless you are going to actually do something reasonable to fix it.

/rant

COPA:  Child Online Protection Act

Now I’ve felt for a long time that COPA is yet another example of misguided, stupid legislation coming from Washington.  It’s purpose is noble:  protection children from the Internet.  It’s purpose is also misguided.  How do we protect children from the Internet?  Well, in my opinion, you can’t easily do that at a macro level withouth pretty much breaking the Internet (the web specifically) as we know it.

As an entrepreneur I found COPA particularly annoying becuase it creates a substantial amount of overhead on anyone who is starting a site.  In theory you are supposed to verify someone is over 13 anytime they register.  Really, it is when you “collect personally identifiable information” I think, but since that includes an e-mail address (although everyone who knows the Internet is not made from TUBES knows that e-mail is hardly personally identifiable - any moron can get 100 e-mail address that are not remotely traceabe unless you work for the NSA or FBI).   That’s why all these stupid agreements ask if you are over 13.  Although some lawyers argued that wasn’t enough.

I once got a bill for $10k for COPA compliance work.  WTF.  We ended up ignoring 75% of what the lawyers said anyway because if we had one it no one would have every registered for the site.  So we did mimicked what Google did, which according to our major law firm was not enough.  I’m not going to kill my site because of legalese, but it did worry me a lot.

Thankfully it has been mostly beaten down:  Net porn ban faces another legal setback

I really like news.com but this title really pisses me off.  COPA is a lot more than a porn ban, but I guess that doesn’t make a good headline. 

And NO my site was not a porn site.  COPA messes a lot more crap up than just porn sites.  It basically forces webmasters to maintain all sorts of checks to make sure kids don’t access the site.   Some of them are virtually impossible.   But of course no one in Congress thought this crap might make live difficult on web entrepreneurs.  Do it for the kids!  Keep your kids safe!

I’m not a parent, but I’m going to solve this problem for Congress.  Here is how you keep your kids safe from the Internet:

1. Don’t let them have unsupervised access to the Internet!  (ZOMG, this might require parenting!)
2. Assuming that is that is to inconvenient, install a filter.  You can buy a ton of good filters that will stop your kids from going to almost all inappropriate sites.  (ZOMG, this might cost $50 and require a parent to “install” something on their computer.)
3. Assuming visiting bad sites is only part of the problem, you can also configure your router (which you almost certainly have) so that access to the outside world is only available during certain times.

Wow!  Three easy steps and your kids are safe!

Oh wait, parenting isn’t a requirement.  Soundbites are good.  We must protect the children.  What the hell.  Yet another example of the failure of personal responsibility / accountability in the United States.  Sad.

Anyway, I hope they don’t bring this albatross back.

/rant

So people have been talking a lot about “game addiction recently.  This Blogma post (from C|Net):  Subliminal rescue for game addicts? kind of scared me.  Two things about this scare me:

1. Subliminal shit that makes you not want to play games… Seems like it could make you not want to do anything.  Mind control stuff is just creepy.  I mean who verifies that all it is doing is making you not want to play games?  Soon we’ll need a “subliminal verification agency” that makes sure all this crap is only doing what it says it’s doing.  And can we really trust the agency?
2. Games addiction…. uhm yeah.  I wish people would get their heads around “personal responsibility.”  Sigh.  I’m not going to get started on this.