The video is here.  Yes, it’s long, and old, but it’s good to reflect now and then on just how terrible Bush really was.  Really gets rolling at about 4 minutes in and 13:20 is my favorite.  After about 16:30 it gets sort of lame.

So I’ve been batting this one around in my head for a while, and then I read this article (very, very hyperbolic and one sided,  but still fairly informative none the less), which set me off a bit to finally write this up.  The idea (really sort of 2 ideas together) still definitely has issues, but it’s at least something to think about.  This one’s admittedly equal parts idea and rant, and parts are half joking, though also half not.

Now, in an ideal world, politicians would actually care about representing the views of the people who they are supposed to represent. No US Senator from Minnesota would vote for a bill unless he thought that the people of Minnesota would support it. No Minnesota State Congressman would vote for a piece of legislation unless he thought that the people in his specific district would support it. They would do frequent opinion polls among the people they represent (not national polls) on relevant issues.

However, I think we all know that not how things work. If a drug company promises some money to a campaign in exchange for slightly stricter intellectual property laws, it will probably go through. If the head of the TSA has a side business that has clients that sell body scanners, we’re told we need body scanners in every airport to stay safe. If the steel industry wants higher tariffs to make higher profits to have more money to donate to politicians, the circle of political life goes on.

While there are many, many groups I can give money to as an individual in order to try to elect a given politician, there’s not much I can do to influence him/her after the election until they start making campaign promises the next time around. In short, while companies and interest groups can influence politicians while in office, the average citizen only really comes into discussion around election time.

So, here’s my idea – political bounties (for clarity, so I don’t have the FBI knocking at my door, I’m referring to bounties on laws getting passed/repealed, not on politicians’ heads). Now you may be saying, wait, you want to just buy laws? Well, yes. It basically works that way now for companies, I just want to be more blunt about the government representing the money rather than representing the people. Aside from that, as it stands, companies don’t just have the same rights as individuals, they have more rights.  While an actual person can only donate up to a specific amount of money, corporations basically can spend whatever they want.  I’m just proposing equal rights here.  However, the real key to this idea is that the bounties are only awarded to a politician (or more specifically their reelection fund) AFTER they accomplish what the bounty is for, and that they will be for very, very specific changes.

For instance, I think it’s stupid that I can’t buy beer on Sunday in Minnesota, and I’d like to see that changed. I don’t care which politician introduces the legislation, or what party they’re from. I just want to be able to go grab a bottle of wine for diner on Sunday. So, if this were all set up, I would start a political bounty for legalizing the sale of alcohol on Sunday in Minnesota, and I would contribute a few dollars. And anyone else who thought it was a good idea could also contribute a few bucks. The key here is that the bounty continues to sit and grow until someone introduces a piece of legislation that passes to change the law. No one gets the money until the law is changed.  Basically, we shift the focus for individual campaign contributions from campaign promises to realized results. This would also work for non-incumbents, they could take out loans to campaign on, and pay them back when they got some results and got bounties (or not get elected and go bankrupt I suppose).

Another sort of complimentary idea for this would be that we shut down all direct campaign contributions. Instead, each citizen is allocated $100 (arbitrary number, adjust as you see fit). The $100 comes from tax money, so actually the rich are contributing way more, and the poor way less, but they all get equal say, thus leveling the field some across economic groups that way. Also, I say allocated rather than given because you don’t actually get this money, this money is held by the government and you instruct them (probably via a form on some website) on which campaign to contribute it to and how. This could have a short list of options, such as making the contribution conditional on specific campaign promise being fulfilled. For instance, $50 to Person X unconditionally, and $50 split equally among all politicians who vote to repeal the Patriot Act, if the repeal succeeds. You could also contribute it an interest group, who could then use it to advertise about a specific issue rather than for a specific politician. The key here is that this would be the only money they would be allowed to use. This would help to make it so the government represent (or at least plays to) the people instead of corporations, and it would give all citizen equal say in their government (or again, equal influence over the election).  Politicians would be strictly banned from using any other funds in their campaigns.

The obvious problem with this part, is that you basically have to limit free speech in order to keep companies and rich people from buying their own advertising. And it sort of presupposes that elections are decided by how much advertising you can do, rather than what people actually think, which gets a bit to the heart of the issue that most people know almost nothing about politics, but are still responsible for choosing politicians. In order to make it manageable, you would also have to limit the list of conditions that you could apply to your contribution. Maybe you could make it so the $100 can be payed out at your will throughout the elected politician’s term?

There’s also the elephant in the room that any change like this would have to be put in place by, you guessed it, politician.  And we’ve already covered where they currently get incentives from.

Ugh.  Politics makes my head hurt, and make me nauseous. This is why I haven’t had much on here about it for a while, and will probably continue that way for a while.

I’ve been collecting links for this one for a while, though admittedly I still haven’t really come up with any particularly cohesive argument about it, more just presenting it as something to think about.  The idea/argument/trend/anti-trend is what’s referred to as Free Range Kids.  Basically it’s  the counter to the current trend towards “in the world we live in, you just can’t be too careful, especially when it comes to kids”.  Free Range Kids would tend to say that it’s probably okay if you let your kids go outside and play without an adult hovering over them or gps enabled tracking bracelets strapped around their ankles.  As many others have said it better, here’s a few links:

• Lenore Skenazy, the woman who sort of kicked off the movement/firestorm, introducing it in her own words here.  She also had a blog here.
• Here’s a more lengthy interview with her on Salon.com (via Boing Boing)
• A more local take with a few links to other stories.

The comment sections (where applicable) tend to be interesting for the mix of adults fondly remembering wandering and exploring as a kid, and cynics assuring anyone that doesn’t hover over their child that the child will end up dead or a heroin addict.  They tend to get pretty fierce, even by internet standards.  A few more articles for the sake of the comment sections here, here, and here.

Discussions of free range kids tends to draw to the surface quite a few pretty hot button issues/debates, such as:

• It takes a village to raise a child vs stranger danger.
• At what point is society allowed to step in and tell someone how to raise their children?
• How marketing and the news media / cable / cop dramas affect our view of society and how we interact with it.
• The sliding scale of how okay people are with letting children roam vs the size of the city / percent of nearby neighbors that the parent knows.
• The affect of two parents working outside the home, and therefore there being less adults at home during the day as a default safety net.
• How being very protective of children both responds to and creates a culture of distrust / lack of community / suspicion of everyone / (stretching a bit) a culture of fear and isolation.
• Have you ever walked past a playground and glanced over and smiled at the joy of children at play?  Have you gotten a dirty/suspicious look from a parent on the playground for doing so?
• Keeping children young and helpless forever so parents can always be important.

There also seems to be some parallels in here for that other major freedom vs safety debate of our times – terrorism.  How much should we modify our lives and how many freedoms should we give up to try to foil the terrorists / pedophiles?  How does the media affect our perceptions of these threats?  How much should the parents / government always be the ones to make decisions for what’s best and safest?  How much does one lead into the other, with the government replacing parents as an authority figure that can tell us what’s safe?

They wore wigs.  They wore tights.  They wore ruffles.  That’s right ladies and gentlemen, our country was founded by drag queens. Fancy drag queens.

I got a flyer in the mail today about the upcoming Minneapolis elections.  Apparently, we’ll be using ranked choice voting:

I know people tend to have pretty strong feelings one way or the other about ranked choice voting, though I have to admit I’m not really well informed enough on the issue and how it affects things to really have a strong opinion.  However, in reading over the flyer, I did find the candidates and their party affiliations interesting, let’s zoom in on that a bit:

I like it.  Though a little odd that a couple of the parties fielded multiple candidates for the same race.  Someone dropped the ball on strategy there, or there’s some rebels in the party.

On a vaguely related note, does anyone remember the Giant Sloth Party (named for the full sized (huge) giant sloth in the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History) that used to run for positions in the University of Iowa student government?  Are they still around?

You know, they could have just gone to work for the Empire and then formed a union too.  That totally would have stuck it to them.

Man, I need to get out of Minnesota.

Via Boing Boing

As a side note, just because I like this particular video, I’m not really trying to promote the guy who made it or his view of how to fix things.  He’s absolutely crazy.  Like his whole own brand of crazy so far beyond bat-shit crazy it needs its own new term.  This guy is llama vomit crazy with tinge of gopher bile psycho.

via Pundit Kitchen

Via Graph Jam

Via Pundit Kitchen

Via Pundit Kitchen

Via Pundit Kitchen

What do you call 533 idiots in one building?

Congress.

(Yes, I know, there’s 535 people in Congress, but I like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.)

Remember when Chrysler / Jeep / Dodge did their “Let’s Refuel America” guarantee of $2.99 gas for 3 years for anyone buying one of their new vehicles, in order to offset their cars being gas guzzlers?  Given that gas has been cheaper than $2.99 since October of last year (so they haven’t had to pay a dime to this program since then) how are they not swimming in cash?  How terrible of financial shape would they have been in if gas prices had actually kept going up?  How much more of your tax money would they be holding on to for you then?  Remind me again why we have any faith at all in them to not blow through every dime we give them?

Why we don’t let them fail, and let other car manufacturers buy up their facilities and equipment at bankruptcy sale prices and actually build decent cars with it that will sell under a realistic business model?  Honda and Toyota already have plants in the US.  Yes, that Japanese Honda Accord is made in Ohio, and that Japanese Toyota Tundra is made in Texas, in fact, most of their line up is built here.

Or, break Chrysler up under anti-trust laws into the three brands they’ve already made themselves, so parts of them can fail without taking out a huge sector of the economy.  (Same for GM.  Ford I’ll be gentle on for the moment since they actually show signs of being in tune with the market, have a reasonably sized line up, and didn’t take government funds.)  Anti-trust laws exist so the words “too big to fail” should never be uttered.  Too bad the government hasn’t really enforced them since the early to mid ’90’s.

I’m not going to even try to talk about the government’s involvement in the health care system here (at least for now), but it really made me laugh when I heard Wisconsin’s government sponsored health care program is called BadgerCare.

Found via News Cut.

Read the article, scroll down for the first comment.

Today the Iowa Supreme Court deemed a law limiting marriage to straight couples to be unconstitutional.  (Go Iowa!)  I’ll probably do a longer post on this soon, but for the moment, a bit about the news coverage.

I turned on CNN tonight, and figured they’d probably have something on about it.  I picked CNN because I don’t have cable, so it’s the only all news channel I have.  So, when I turned it on, they had a story about some shootings.  Okay, gruesome murder, tragic loss of life, you’re a news network, it’s what you do.  After a few minutes they had about a one minute bit between the host and some random correspondent live from some lawn somewhere, which basically consisted of:

“So, Chuck (not his real name, but I forget), I hear Iowa passed gay marriage today.  Is that so?”

“Yep.  And, for those of you who don’t know, Iowa’s in the Midwest.  It’s not on either of the coasts, and in fact doesn’t even touch any major body of water.”

“Fascinating stuff Chuck.  After this, Madonna’s attempt to adopt a second child from some country you’ve never heard of blocked by a judge there.  What do you think?”

That was it.  Maybe 30 seconds, followed by celebrity gossip.  “Okay,” I thought, “I’m sure there will be something on their website about it.”  So, I went to cnn.com and searched the front page.

Nothing.

Not one single link to a single story about it.

Now, if CNN’s front page was Google-like in its Spartan-ness, I could forgive that, but there’s a lot on there.  By my count, there are 94 links to specific stories on their front page right now, not counting broad categories (politics, entertainment, national, …) or regular shows (Larry King, Anderson Cooper, weather, …).  No, 94 specific stories about specific topics that were deemed worth putting on the front page of the website instead of gay marriage being legalized.

For comparison, MSNBC has a short (16 second) video clip on the front page right at the edge of the bottom of the screen when you first open it, and then a headline a few inches below that in fairly large type.  The clip is captioned “Iowa becomes first in Midwest to legalize gay”, and yes the formatting cuts it off right there. Sounds little more Fox News style that way. Speaking of which…

Fox News has a four large print headlines at the top, and the first headline below that is “Iowa Court Strikes Down Same-Sex Marriage Ban”.  Easily visible when the page loads.  It’s basically the fifth headline. Fairly prominent, and not as overly derisive as one would expect from Fox News. The article is actually reasonably balanced, not really the “In another step on the way to defining marriage as between a man and a box turtle” that I’ve come to expect from Fox. (Okay, it wasn’t Fox, but you had to check didn’t you?)

So, what are some of those 94 stories CNN deems more important than this fairly major civil rights ruling?  Let’s take a look:

• Ticker: Mrs. Obama makes fashion faux pas?
• Judge denies Vick’s bankruptcy plan
• Gang of villagers chases away Google car (that one’s actually listed in 2 places, so it’s 2 of the 94 stories that are more important than legalizing gay marriage)
• Guy coughs up rusty, 30-year-old nail (with video)
• Strangers dress guy suitably for his job (with video)
• Teen knits duct-tape prom dress (with video)
• iReport.com: 1,052 Waldos smash world record
• Review: A great time in ‘Adventureland’
• ‘Idol’ Megan Joy talks about being voted off
• From ‘Sex’ to ‘Rings,’ film tours excite fans
• Two new reasons to worry about insomnia (hope that one doesn’t keep you up at night!  Oh, see what I did there, cause, … ah, yeah…)
• 9 bold MLB predictions for the ‘09 season
• Prolific NFL QBs who went to new teams
• Local bank makes good
• Charged twice for my Cayman Islands hotel

Quick quiz – how many of those did I actually take from The Onion rather than CNN?  Unfortunately, none.

CNN, please turn in your journalistic integrity badge and company coffee mug at the front desk.  Here’s a box for your things.

• Thief scared out of his shoes, and rightfully so.  Make me laugh a lot.  Also a great argument for wearing a cape all the time. Via Boing Boing
• Kind of related to the last point….
  
  Via Graph Jam
• An upside to the Somali pirates?
• Finally, our tax dollars being put to good use: a $400,000,000 piece of surveillance equipment you could take out with a BB gun.  Bet Bin Laden’s shaking in his boots (or dialysis machine) now.
• Local politicians (even when they’re some one else’s local) are funny.
• This one’s in really bad taste, but I just couldn’t pass up the headline.  Have you heard of the Quiverfull movement?  It’s basically a puppy farm where a human is the bitch.  Wait, I mean…, nope, that was what I meant.  It’s where you let god decide how many children you have, and don’t interfere with birth control (even if it means having 18 children and not being able to support or care for them).  It’s like Jesus is your condom…
  
  Via Pundit Kitchen
• And, hell, since we’re at it (and after that last bullet point, I’m probably headed there anyway)…
  
  Via Pundit Kitchen
• And while we’re at it… this made me laugh a lot too.

(Note, the point of this post is well towards the end, but I got on a rant that I’ve been meaning to post for a while, and it got a little out of hand, skip to the end if you’re in a hurry, read it all if you’d like more of a laugh.)

When I first moved to Minnesota from Iowa, I had a jolting experience.  I was out of beer and wanted to go pick some up.  I went to a liquor store.  It was closed.  So, I went to another, which was also closed.  So, I went to a grocery store, but I couldn’t find the beer section.  I asked someone at the check out.  They said they didn’t sell beer there.  So, I went to a gas station.  By this point I was pretty annoyed, but was happy to find that they did have beer.  Though the cooler was locked (with a bike lock around the handle to the shelf inside, thus forcing the door to the cooler to stay open – not really important to the story, but it seemed weird to me at the time).  So, I asked the girl at the counter.  She mumbled something to the effect of “isthreetwo.”

“Um, yeah, a twelve pack of Budweiser if you have it.”

“Yaknowisthreetwo?”

“Um, sure.”

So, I got back to my apartment that Sunday evening (oh, did I mention that it was Sunday?) and searched online to figure out what this, “three two,” was that the clerk was referring to as I was drinking my beer, which didn’t seem quite right.  I found that when it comes to liquor laws, I’ve practically moved to Utah.  You can’t buy alcohol on Sunday.  You can’t buy alcohol at any place that sells groceries.  But you can sell beer that is 3.2% alcohol or less at a gas station on Sunday to unsuspecting recent transplants, which is a cruel joke which made me think about moving back to Iowa if that’s the kind of thing they pull up here.  (deep breath)

Now, as often happens when you have ridiculous laws, there are ridiculous workarounds.  So, a grocery store can’t sell alcohol, right?  Well, you can have two stores set up next to each other, in the same building even, sharing a glass wall and a name, one selling groceries, and the other selling alcohol, as long as the check outs are separate and there’s a solid wall or a space between them (I think).

For instance, Trader Joe’s (awesome) in St. Louis Park has a Trader Joe’s grocery store, and five feet away they have a Trader Joe’s beer and wine store.  Seen here, Trader Joe’s sign to the left = liquor store, Trader Joe’s sign to the right = grocery store.  Legal.

Another example?  Surdyk’s Liquor and Cheese Shop.  What’s that?  Cheese and Liquor in the same place?  Criminals!!!  Nope.  But wait, it’s one building, with one sign!!! Crooks!!! Nope, two doors.  Legal.

But still, no alcohol on Sunday, no matter how many doors you have.

Because Jesus rose from the dead that day, and separation of church and state is strong here on the frozen tundra.

Wait, scratch that.

No alcohol sales on Sunday, because it’s the 102,804th seven day anniversary of the day that the Catholic church picked arbitrarily / symbolically many, many years after the event to commemorate Jesus rising from the dead, not to mention making a symbolic break from Judaism’s Sabbath, while still coinciding with pagan rebirth/fertility celebrations.  Can’t you at least stock pile alcohol on Saturday for that?!?!?!  Screw separation of church and state, Jesus became a freaking zombie for your sins – buy alcohol on Saturday, not Sunday.  Isn’t the link obvious?  I mean, if you’re really a heathen, you can drive to Wisconsin if you forgot to stock up on Saturday.  They sell beer on Sundays there (sinners!!!).  At gas stations (blaspheme!!!).  With only one door.  Insanity, I know.

It’s even in the Bible, and, apparently, therefore the Constitution.  Ah yes, in Matthew 3: mumblemumblemumble it says:

After my death, the Norwegians shall go forth from their homelands and settle in a far off place.  They shall govern an area roughly bounded by the Red River, the St Croix River, the Mississippi River, Lake Superior, 43° 34′N Latitude, and variety of lakes near Canada.  There, from roughly one thousand, nine-hundred years after my death, for at least 90 years, they shall prohibit the sale, but not consumption, of any fermented liquids on the day of the week on which I rise from the dead.

Upon hearing this, the apostles were uneasy.  “You’re not going to eat our brains, are you?” they said unto him.  And Jesus walked up a mountain.

</rant>

But really people, there’s not much of anything that will make me say Wisconsin is better than anywhere else (as both an Iowan and a Minnesotan (still doesn’t feel right calling myself that), I’m obligated to make fun of Wisconsin where ever convenient), but this will make me say it.  Wisconsin is better than Minnesota on liquor sales laws.

The important part:

With the economy in the toilet, the state government’s budget is also going to crap.  Minnesota has a very “progressive” (hate that term) tax code, which lends itself making the state government being flush with money in good times, and massively in the hole on downturns.  So, law makers are looking for places to fill the holes.  And where do you get money?  Tax sin goods.

There is now a bill in the Minnesota legislature to allow alcohol sales on Sunday in Minnesota.

I give you, HF0155.

It’s to allow alcohol sales on Sunday, and give the tax revenue to child social service.  Won’t you think of the children.  You don’t hate children, do you?  Needy children at that.  Not supporting alcohol sales on Sunday in Minnesota is the equivalent of kicking an orphan in the face.  There, I said it.

Now find your representatives and let them know that you want to be able to buy beer on Sunday, or this could be Minnesota’s future, forever:

(bonus, it’s Slovenian)

Though there have been a ton of spoofs of the Obama logo/portrait thingy (something like 50,000 of them on this site alone, quite a few of the top rated ones are pretty funny), this one is far and away my favorite:

Via /Film, via LiveJamie, via… I forget how I got there, okay?

Anyway, it’s also avalible as a sticker from the guy who made it.