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Adventures in Travel and Political Ruminations
Despite the scare in the weather here on Friday (6" or so of snow) I managed to pull off my super secret plan so secret I didn't mention it on LJ. :) Plan: LARP succeeded, and I had a lot of fun playing ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
buzzermccain's game, meeting her Chicago friends, and getting to hang out with her, sapphohestia and to a lesser extent (cause she had to leave) swan_tower. My character basically accomplished her/his goals, too, which made me very happy. The story of this, by the by, was that my mother agreed to buy me a plane ticket to Chicago that I couldn't myself afford as a thank you for my help with my grandfather. I left on Friday night and got back this morning, and everything went of smooth aside from the minor insomnia which combined with other factors to ensure that I only got an hour and a half of sleep last night. :)
This morning on the plane, I finished the best book I've read recently. One of my goals for 2008 has been to read a LOT more than I have in previous years, and I've been more or less succeeding. At my grandfathers, I was selecting books from among those that my mom has sent up there over the years, the last of which I picked up was The Alienist by Caleb Carr. I didn't expect all that much, honestly, but the book was phenomenal (though I wasn't as happy with the ending as I might have wanted to be). It made me feel all my deficiencies as a writer (and, happily, made me want to work hard to over come them rather than give up) in that he accomplished with admirable results something I started to attempt much more lamely in the last project I started - the book is set in 1896 New York, and NYC is definitively a character in the book. It was exhaustively researched and excellently written - so much so that it could have been nonfiction if I didn't know better.
However, that wasn't really the point of writing this. The next book on the queue is Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope. I voted for him, and I'm starting to really like it, so I thought I aughta read it. I'm impressed with it so far, but I decided on the walk home the last leg of my trip that I wanted to think out and elucidate some of my own political views on issues big and small before going and further, because I'm noticing ways in which I agree and don't with him already. So here goes...
It's hard to know where to begin something like this, so I'll just tackle the issue most important to me, and go from there. By the way, I'd love to hear questions or challenges to any of these as well as people are interesting in talking reasonably rather than flinging out disagreements (or agreements!) blindly. Oh, and I've certainly missed stuff - point um out, if you're bothering to read this. ;)
My number one issue is freedom of speech. This isn't that public an issue, and a lot of politicians support censorship quietly without us ever hearing about it, in the form of restricting sales of video games, cursing on television, that sort of thing. I believe in the absolute truth of freedom of speech and its paramount importance to this country. I don't believe that we have to believe or agree with everything we hear, but that doesn't mean that we have the right to say that because we disagree it shouldn't be said, simple as that.
I believe strongly in the importance of personal freedoms in general. I don't believe in legislation that touches our bodies on the social level as long as our behavior harms no one but ourselves. Thus, I'm obviously pro-choice, but I also believe in the legalization of drugs, prostitution, and other such issues, while I'm against smoking in restaurants (to name one example). I suppose this is an odd position for someone who is straightedge - I've never been drunk in my life though I'm known to have a drink once or twice a year, I've never tried a drug of any kind even once including tobacco - but I do think that stigmatizing and criminalizing this behavior has not done any good. It prevents women from getting health care,people from seeking to get clean, not to mention a whole range of social ills. Meanwhile, this also applies to all manner of religions, to gay rights and marriage, and various other areas.
I supported the war in Afghanistan, but not the war in Iraq. I haven't changed my mind, either. I remember on 9/12, I was walking across Binghamton campus when some lady part of a small protest against retribution attempted to convince me that fighting was not the answer. I thought she was nuts, and I stand by that reaction. However, Iraq was unwarranted, and I wish it'd end already.
I see a lot of issues with National Health Care. If it could be done well without costing a bloody, stinking fortune, I'd support it, but I don't think either of those things is all that likely. However, I'd be interested (as someone who doesn't have health insurance!) to see what the possibilities are.
I do not support welfare as it currently exists. Handouts are useless. I do believe in all manner of work force training, job support, and public works employment. I'm rather distressed by social security, but I don't know much about it and don't have the first clue what to do about it.
While I can't say I like that jobs move over sees, I do fear that it is somewhat unavoidable, and that simply saying "that's bad" doesn't solve it - I can't imagine what WOULD solve it.
I believe in opening our borders for the most part and protecting and supporting immigrants. I think it's sad that people are so against this, closing the borders of the "land of opportunity." I know it causes problems, drives down wages, but I feel like strengthening our economy would be a better solution, improving minimum wages, finding other ways of decreasing this competition, rather than turning people away or making it impossible for children to stay.
I am against the death penalty. I think that the prison system is a disaster, and needs reforms beyond my ability to begin to list. I believe in gun control, though I'm torn on it, and I've heard very strong arguments against gun control, arguments that I can't say I disagree with. It makes me sick to my stomach that we violate privacy to the extent of posting sex offenders on Google Maps, and that what this says about our faith in the "Correctional" system is sad commentary indeed.
I believe absolutely in equality of chance, regardless of class, race, gender, religion, the day of the week, or any other reason. I strongly disapprove of affirmative action for a variety of reasons, though, the primary being that I don't approve of selection based on race or gender for any reason. I believe in meritocracy, and that the most capable people should be selected for opportunities. Private scholarships are different - endowing parties can name whatever restrictions they want, that's their right - but that the government does it makes me angry, and I think is unfair to those it benefits by adding to them the permanent stigma of never knowing if they were actually good enough, opening the door to the possibility of everyone who meets them wondering if they are only there because they are a woman, or African American, etc. I think that the solution to this isn't affirmative action, but is instead to work on the underlying social ills that cause it. I believe that if we're going to have a system of giving people leg up, it should be based on socioeconomic factors instead of race or gender - it's a much better measure of who actually needs help.
Global warming sucks. The environment needs to be protected or we're all gonna die. Simple. However, progress is also necessary. Some species will go extinct. There are no absolutes, but we need to find a balance.
I'm terrified of a political machine that tells me that the issues in this election are a list of 17 items, which includes items like "economic stimulus" and "taxes" with the same weight as "stem cell research" and "gay marriage." It terrifies me that things have gotten so skewed that we don't have a sense that these things aren't equivalent. (Oh, and I support stem cell research).
I consider myself an idealist. I also consider myself a cynic. As a kid, I thought politics were fascinating. Among the short list of careers I named as my future as a kid, I aspired to scientist with the lone exception of president. Yet as I've grown up I've grown increasingly jaded and certain that nothing will change. It's been delightful to realize that I'm genuinely interested in this election year and have an actual stake in things. I wonder what will happen?
buzzermccain's game, meeting her Chicago friends, and getting to hang out with her, sapphohestia and to a lesser extent (cause she had to leave) swan_tower. My character basically accomplished her/his goals, too, which made me very happy. The story of this, by the by, was that my mother agreed to buy me a plane ticket to Chicago that I couldn't myself afford as a thank you for my help with my grandfather. I left on Friday night and got back this morning, and everything went of smooth aside from the minor insomnia which combined with other factors to ensure that I only got an hour and a half of sleep last night. :)This morning on the plane, I finished the best book I've read recently. One of my goals for 2008 has been to read a LOT more than I have in previous years, and I've been more or less succeeding. At my grandfathers, I was selecting books from among those that my mom has sent up there over the years, the last of which I picked up was The Alienist by Caleb Carr. I didn't expect all that much, honestly, but the book was phenomenal (though I wasn't as happy with the ending as I might have wanted to be). It made me feel all my deficiencies as a writer (and, happily, made me want to work hard to over come them rather than give up) in that he accomplished with admirable results something I started to attempt much more lamely in the last project I started - the book is set in 1896 New York, and NYC is definitively a character in the book. It was exhaustively researched and excellently written - so much so that it could have been nonfiction if I didn't know better.
However, that wasn't really the point of writing this. The next book on the queue is Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope. I voted for him, and I'm starting to really like it, so I thought I aughta read it. I'm impressed with it so far, but I decided on the walk home the last leg of my trip that I wanted to think out and elucidate some of my own political views on issues big and small before going and further, because I'm noticing ways in which I agree and don't with him already. So here goes...
It's hard to know where to begin something like this, so I'll just tackle the issue most important to me, and go from there. By the way, I'd love to hear questions or challenges to any of these as well as people are interesting in talking reasonably rather than flinging out disagreements (or agreements!) blindly. Oh, and I've certainly missed stuff - point um out, if you're bothering to read this. ;)
My number one issue is freedom of speech. This isn't that public an issue, and a lot of politicians support censorship quietly without us ever hearing about it, in the form of restricting sales of video games, cursing on television, that sort of thing. I believe in the absolute truth of freedom of speech and its paramount importance to this country. I don't believe that we have to believe or agree with everything we hear, but that doesn't mean that we have the right to say that because we disagree it shouldn't be said, simple as that.
I believe strongly in the importance of personal freedoms in general. I don't believe in legislation that touches our bodies on the social level as long as our behavior harms no one but ourselves. Thus, I'm obviously pro-choice, but I also believe in the legalization of drugs, prostitution, and other such issues, while I'm against smoking in restaurants (to name one example). I suppose this is an odd position for someone who is straightedge - I've never been drunk in my life though I'm known to have a drink once or twice a year, I've never tried a drug of any kind even once including tobacco - but I do think that stigmatizing and criminalizing this behavior has not done any good. It prevents women from getting health care,people from seeking to get clean, not to mention a whole range of social ills. Meanwhile, this also applies to all manner of religions, to gay rights and marriage, and various other areas.
I supported the war in Afghanistan, but not the war in Iraq. I haven't changed my mind, either. I remember on 9/12, I was walking across Binghamton campus when some lady part of a small protest against retribution attempted to convince me that fighting was not the answer. I thought she was nuts, and I stand by that reaction. However, Iraq was unwarranted, and I wish it'd end already.
I see a lot of issues with National Health Care. If it could be done well without costing a bloody, stinking fortune, I'd support it, but I don't think either of those things is all that likely. However, I'd be interested (as someone who doesn't have health insurance!) to see what the possibilities are.
I do not support welfare as it currently exists. Handouts are useless. I do believe in all manner of work force training, job support, and public works employment. I'm rather distressed by social security, but I don't know much about it and don't have the first clue what to do about it.
While I can't say I like that jobs move over sees, I do fear that it is somewhat unavoidable, and that simply saying "that's bad" doesn't solve it - I can't imagine what WOULD solve it.
I believe in opening our borders for the most part and protecting and supporting immigrants. I think it's sad that people are so against this, closing the borders of the "land of opportunity." I know it causes problems, drives down wages, but I feel like strengthening our economy would be a better solution, improving minimum wages, finding other ways of decreasing this competition, rather than turning people away or making it impossible for children to stay.
I am against the death penalty. I think that the prison system is a disaster, and needs reforms beyond my ability to begin to list. I believe in gun control, though I'm torn on it, and I've heard very strong arguments against gun control, arguments that I can't say I disagree with. It makes me sick to my stomach that we violate privacy to the extent of posting sex offenders on Google Maps, and that what this says about our faith in the "Correctional" system is sad commentary indeed.
I believe absolutely in equality of chance, regardless of class, race, gender, religion, the day of the week, or any other reason. I strongly disapprove of affirmative action for a variety of reasons, though, the primary being that I don't approve of selection based on race or gender for any reason. I believe in meritocracy, and that the most capable people should be selected for opportunities. Private scholarships are different - endowing parties can name whatever restrictions they want, that's their right - but that the government does it makes me angry, and I think is unfair to those it benefits by adding to them the permanent stigma of never knowing if they were actually good enough, opening the door to the possibility of everyone who meets them wondering if they are only there because they are a woman, or African American, etc. I think that the solution to this isn't affirmative action, but is instead to work on the underlying social ills that cause it. I believe that if we're going to have a system of giving people leg up, it should be based on socioeconomic factors instead of race or gender - it's a much better measure of who actually needs help.
Global warming sucks. The environment needs to be protected or we're all gonna die. Simple. However, progress is also necessary. Some species will go extinct. There are no absolutes, but we need to find a balance.
I'm terrified of a political machine that tells me that the issues in this election are a list of 17 items, which includes items like "economic stimulus" and "taxes" with the same weight as "stem cell research" and "gay marriage." It terrifies me that things have gotten so skewed that we don't have a sense that these things aren't equivalent. (Oh, and I support stem cell research).
I consider myself an idealist. I also consider myself a cynic. As a kid, I thought politics were fascinating. Among the short list of careers I named as my future as a kid, I aspired to scientist with the lone exception of president. Yet as I've grown up I've grown increasingly jaded and certain that nothing will change. It's been delightful to realize that I'm genuinely interested in this election year and have an actual stake in things. I wonder what will happen?
Re: holy crap, I hit the character limit.
Have you seen pie charts of federal expenditures? 1040 booklets used to have some in the back. Wikipedia's got one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget,_2007
Paul Krugman called the feds "a pension plan with an army", and it fits. Top expenditure is SS, followed by defense and Medicare. 80% of the budget is SS, defense, Medicare, interest, and safety net stuff like food stamps for mothers with children. As far as "waste", Medicare has 1-2% overhead, SS is probably similar -- all it does it cut checks and review disability applications -- the others you can judge for yourself. Everything else -- NASA, EPA, highways, pork barrels, Israel, FEMA, TSA, NSF, etc., all that big and sprawling -- fits into 20%.
One can argue for dumping a lot of the other stuff on regulatory or freedom grounds, but from a pure taxpayer POV, the only way to make a big difference is to cut off old and disabled people, followed by cutting off children and shrinking defense somewhat. Anything else is noise in the data.
Universal health care would mean combining the Medicare and Medicaid slices, then increasing them somewhat, but private premium payments would be going down at the same time, possibly faster than taxes went up given relative overhead.
It can be tempting to think we shouldn't be paying for the poor choices of bad mothers, but the children will get born anyway. Certainly some will, even if some others are born just for the checks, as some conservatives claim. And if they don't die off, the deprived children grow up to affect the rest of us.