David Paterson - Another Intellectually Fraudulent Argument
New York governor David Paterson is enacting taxes on unhealthy foods including sugary soft-drinks because their calories and effects on obesity are costly to society. Paterson draws comparisons between the obesity-causing foods/drinks and (cue the evil music) cigarettes. Then in the last line of his diatribe, he uses the political “free parking” card like in Monopoly. “Isn’t it worth our kids’ lives?”
Horseshit. I am all for people being healthier and attacking obesity. I made a lot of choices in my own life over the last three years or so to help make myself better in these areas. But, I think you walk into dangerous territory if you are always working backwards from the question of whether the ends justify the means in terms of government legislation.
On top of that, the cigarette comparison is intellectually fraudulent. The two situations are completely different. The smoking bans came into effect in New York (and many other states) NOT because smoking is bad for smokers. It was passed because of second-hand smoke and employees’ rights to not inhale patrons’ poisonous emissions.
Until fast food joints and Coca-Cola bottles can make you fatter just by walking by them, I don’t think you can truly justify a tax on the foods and the sugary soft drinks for sale in 7/11. In one case you are making sure employees have the choice whether to inhale smoke in their lives no matter where they work. The other case you are legislating preference by discriminating against a certain set of choices.
So stop drawing fraudulent comparisons and please don’t hide behind the “kids” excuse.
Now, if you can make a compelling argument that isn’t fraudulent, I will listen. But as of right now, and your current argument, this dog won’t hunt.
My First Apple Complaint
It has been quite a while since I jumped on the Apple bandwagon. I mean, I certainly don’t have two feet on it because I still love my PC’s, but still. I bought my original 40 gig iPod with the monochrome screen. Then I bought the 60 gig iPod photo. Then I bought my first Nano, which was 4 gigs. That led to an 8 gig Nano as I fell in love with the Nike+ running rig. Mixed into the iPod craze, I bought a MacBook Pro and a copy of Apple LogicPro so that I could do music production at home. Finally, yesterday after my hold button broke on my 8 gig Nano, it was time to buy a new one.
I am a bigtime power user of my Nano. It isn’t Apple’s fault that the hold button broke on my 8 gig one. I use that thing every day for hours and hours on end. In all, over the last year, I have listened to every minute of two national radio shows whose running times combined regularly hit 7 hours per day. Combine that with all the Smodcasts (Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier,) audio books, songs and other pieces of audio that I listen to, I certainly get my money’s worth out of the device.
So, now I needed to replace my Nano with a new one so it could keep track of my renewed interest in jogging with the Nike + system. I spent $200 for a 16 gig of the latest variety of Nano and I started using it. For me, this means plugging it into my PC. It means plugging it in in my bedroom to my Altec Lansing peripherals. It means plugging it in in the car with my iPlay and headphone jack into the car stereo. That is how I listen to it and keep it charged throughout the day.
Well, the latest version of the Nano works just find syncing with the PC, but none of my other charging options work. The Altec Lansing speaker system which has worked on every iPod I have ever owned tells me that charging is unsupported on this iPod. Then this morning it told me the same thing in the car. Great.
A little bit of research reveals that Apple decided to cut some corners. Apparently when apple moved away from the Firewire charging process to the USB one, they begged all the peripheral makers to do it too. This is a change from 12v to 5v in the adapter. So, finally, in this latest generation, Apple has decided to save a few cents per iPod and do away with the converter that would allow me (and countless others) to use the peripherals that I have surrounded myself with over the course of not 1, not 2, but 5 different iPods. All those dollars that I spent are now completely worthless because they no longer serve a purpose in the way I have it set up in my life.
And maybe it isn’t a big deal to me to have to go out and buy a new charging cable for my car and a new speaker system for my bedroom, but that should be for me to decide, not Apple. Backwards compatibility is important when you are trying to make people adopt you into their culture, or even adopt new culture. Since I spent all the time and money doing it, Apple shouldn’t punish me after they have me all committed. Certainly they shouldn’t do it over what some people describe as a few cents.
Wrong Again Jemele Hill… Wrong Again
Jemele Hill is on ESPN’s Page 2 talking about Plaxico Burress today and once again, she is driving me insane. She makes some decent points about how the media is letting Burress’ allegedly complicit teammate off the hook, but then she saves some criticism for New York City Mayor Bloomberg and she falls off the rails.
I’m not saying Burress deserves any sympathy, because the moment he decided to attend a nightclub with an unlicensed, loaded firearm tucked in his waistband, he was jeopardizing his life and the lives of others. But did Burress’ actions warrant Bloomberg’s irrational grandstanding? You’d think the mayor of the nation’s largest city would have bigger concerns than the stupidity of a professional athlete. But since when do politicians pass on an opportunity to make themselves the center of attention?
“If we don’t prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law, I don’t know who on earth would,” Bloomberg said Monday. “It makes a sham, a mockery of the law. And it’s pretty hard to argue the guy didn’t have a gun and that it wasn’t loaded. You’ve got bullet holes in and out to show that it was there.”
First of all, the whole argument of, “I would think this guy would have bigger problems” is a commonly used argument that logistically is a sham. We are complex beings and we can do multiple things at once. I am surprised Jemele Hill has time to write articles when she isn’t keeping herself alive by eating and breathing while living under shelter. You see how stupid that is? The mayor of New York can express concern about someone blatantly violating NYC gun laws while still paying attention to any number of other things. They aren’t mutually exclusive. Please can we stop using this argument?
Jemele further digs into a hole with some race baiting.
Why wasn’t the mayor as willing to stand on his soapbox when New York City police officers shot and killed Sean Bell? Bloomberg called for a “thorough” investigation at that time, but he didn’t damn those police officers the way he did Burress. (All three officers were acquitted earlier this year.)
(Head ready to explode.) POLICE OFFICERS DESERVE THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT. PLAXICO BURRESS IS NOT A POLICE OFFICER. On top of this, if you read about the Sean Bell case it isn’t as clear cut as an athlete who is CLEARLY guilty of having a gun in a place where he wasn’t allowed to have a gun, without a license and also handling it in about as hazardous a manner as you can handle a firearm, short of giving it to a child in a crib.
Finally Jemele cements herself as a desperate columnist who will stop at nothing to make a point even if it is based in non-sequiters and base level emotional manipulation. IE the economy is hurting people right now. I will link Bloomberg to the bailout and Wall Street in order to criticize his opinion on unlicensed guns floating around the city he is responsible for.
I also wonder why Bloomberg didn’t act this outraged after the American people were forced to bail out some of his Wall Street buddies because of their bad decisions?
Do you wonder why? I don’t. He might be outraged, but it isn’t necessarily in his best interest or under his jurisdiction to make a comment about his Wall Street buddies. Someone carrying a gun in the city is a Bloomberg issue. Wall Street’s federal bailout is NOT necessarily a Bloomberg issue. See, there is no need to wonder. It is easy to see.
Then again, what could I possibly expect from a “columnist” who is so consistently off the mark and hypocritical.
Post-Election Political Bullet Point Post
I have been meaning to talk more politics now that it is all over. I said from day one of this election that I was 50/50 on these two candidates. Despite their various smear campaigns, these two candidates were both capable and potentially great presidential material. I think they both had positives and negatives. In the end, it appears that timing and the GW Bush effect made it impossible for anyone to compete with a charismatic, competent candidate like Barack Obama. It was handed to him on a silver platter in some respects, but he made a lot of great decisions along the way too, including not letting Joe Biden get overexposed.
Anyway, I write in bullet points a lot lately over on the sports site, so I am going to stick to bullets here too. I am just not thinking effectively in organized narratives lately. Maybe I am just being lazy. Sue me. It is a blog, people.
First, I am going to wear my Republican hat…
- Now that it is over can we stop saying that John McCain would have been GW Bush’s 3rd term? McCain has never liked Bush. Bush caused McCain more political harm in the 2000 election than Barack Obama ever dreamed of leveling on him. McCain may have voted in favor of some of Bush’s budgets, but that certainly doesn’t mean he cosigned for the complete and utter lack of execution on Bush’s part. Barack Obama sold this talking point, but after a few drinks I am guessing he wouldn’t try and tell you it was any more true than people saying he is Muslim.
- The media coverage of Sarah Palin was overwhelmingly biased. Yes, she was a bad candidate. Yes she was far from prepared. Still, the way Gibson and Couric took those interviews and plastered Palin was heavy handed. The message was sent easily without the unnecessary amounts of piling on. Palin’s lack of experience should have been enough. The negativity further shows how our newspeople are trying to be SNL or John Stewart rather than Walter Cronkite.
- The campaign finance situation is officially out of control. This was highlighted by the infomercial that Obama bought from the networks. I know it was all paid for out of money he raised fairly, but an election shouldn’t be decided based on who can run more commercials because they have more money. Obama probably wins anyway, but the disparity in funds seems wrong to me. It is ironic that Obama, the equality candidate, would opt out of federal funds and get a free pass from the media. Are there any democrats out there who will admit this?
- Speaking of the infomercial, how is it that it is legal for a network, that has a news department, to take money from one candidate to program a half hour in primetime on their station? The stations are supposed to be trusted sources for news as a part of their function. To take money from one of the candidates for programming is really a conflict of interest.
Now for the Democratic hat…
- The best thing about Obama getting elected is increased investment in Stem Cell research. The real reason to invest in that is so it can be this era’s version of NASA. It has the potential to not only help people, but be this nation’s next economic boom. Advancement in medical technology means coming up with new products, processes, professions and industries. As a generation of would-be laborers continues to get lots and lots of college degrees and masters degrees, they are going to continue to need new industries to get jobs in as the old guard continues to die.
- Speaking of which, the other half of this investment in an industry to be named later is new energy. I am convinced that we haven’t seen the replacement to gasoline yet. I think electric cars that plug into the house won’t really solve energy problems. I think there are lots of problems with ethanol. Hybrid seems like a stop-gap technology. The only way to find it is to continue to research it and Obama appears to be more than willing to do that. It could be the key to saving the auto industry and it could be the key to saving the economy as a whole.
- I think Obama could face some harsh realities from time to time when it comes to foreign relations. I think it is his area of least experience. The good news is that all indications are that he will be able to learn, react on the fly and make quick, high percentage decisions. Obama seems to have the wisdom to be able to realize when he doesn’t know something. This is a stark contrast with the arrogance that we have been dealing with over the last eight years.
- Obama definitely has a cultural impact on this country, but I am already finding the stories to be trite, overly dramatic and over-told. I really do hope that Obama continues to have a positive cultural impact on the nation, but those feel-good stories should be separated from those dealing with Obama the politician if the media hopes to do their job reporting and occasionally critiquing the President. Let’s hope the lessons they learned from Bush’s first four years and 9/11 will be carried over to President Obama’s term. I know this makes me sound cold, but this moment of pride is now over and Obama needs to be judged on his accomplishments from now on, at least in the media.
- Another really positive thing to expect from Obama is his take on Network Neutrality.
Said Obama… “I am a strong supporter of net neutrality,” said Obama. “What you’ve been seeing is some lobbying that says [Internet providers] should be able to be gatekeepers and able to charge different rates to different websites…so you could get much better quality from the Fox News site and you’d be getting rotten service from the mom and pop sites. And that I think destroys one of the best things about the Internet — which is that there is this incredible equality there…as president I’m going to make sure that is the principle that my FCC commissioners are applying as we move forward.” This makes me very happy.
As I said before, I was going to be happy with either McCain or Obama. I don’t know that Obama is going to come up with the right plan for health care, education, or the budget. Nobody ever knows those answers for sure. That being said, I think McCain and Obama both had pretty good priorities. Hopefully Obama’s plan works. I do have concerns that Obama’s tax plans and health plans will negatively affect small businesses’ ability to be competitive and continue to employ as many people as possible, but those are clearly outweighed for me by the potential for Obama’s lofty goals if he hits them.
He has certainly raised the bar high and it will be interesting to see what he ends up succeeding on and which ideas end up eluding him. I don’t have that same sense of negativity that I had during the last election. And don’t think that I am saying that just because of George W. Bush. One lesson we learned during this election cycle is just how bad a campaign John Kerry ran. Let’s hope Obama’s effectiveness at campaigning translates better to success in the Oval Office than it did for GW Bush.
Reducing Mortgage Values
During the Vice Presidential debates when Joe Biden said he wanted to enable courts to not only reduce the interest rates of mortgages, but also the amount of the loans I yelped. What the? Who the? We’re going to do wha? I thought for sure my head was going to explode. I understand that people were sucked into market prices on this whole thing, but how is it that we are going to reduce the value of the loans off the top? Last night, John McCain apparently has jumped on the mortgage value reduction bandwagon. ACK! Two parties. Two “choices.”
This is pure insanity. Who doesn’t want the value of their mortgage reduced? But how do you do it? You are going to have taxpayers buy a mortgage with $100,000 owed for 30 years, for example? Let’s say that interest rate is 7%. So that means the monthly payment is approximately $665 per month. So then, in order to reduce the monthly burden on someone, we are going to reduce the value off the top? So now we are going to basically give the person, what, 20% off the top? 20,000 bucks? That puts the value of the loan at $80k and reduces the monthly payment to about $532. That’s great and all, but guess who just gave away that $20,000 bucks? We all did.
How about increasing the number of years on the mortgage or lowering the interest rate? If you take that same $100,000 loan and reduce the interest rate to 5% the monthly payment becomes almost $537 per month. The difference? The taxpayers who are funding the rescue won’t lose 20,000 on paper, and will earn 5% on the 100,000 investment assuming the homeowner doesn’t default.
And if you really want to help out the homeowner even more, increase the number of years to 40 on the loan. Lower the interest rate to 5% and it takes the monthly payment all the way down to about $482 per month.
But please please please, let’s not reduce the amount of money owed on these houses. That really turns this thing into a bailout, rather than a rescue. If you give people free money, it is a bailout. If you help reduce their monthly burden by changing the terms it is a rescue.
But seriously, where are the choices? I know these candidates have some fundamental differences between them. The two of them point it out all the time. But, they also have a lot in common. Apparently they are feeling the same on the bailout / rescue plan. We know they have the same basic policy concerning gay couples and wanting them to have rights, but not the word “marriage.” Sure there are differences, but nowhere near the level of differences that were apparent between Gore and Bush and Kerry and Bush.
Change has been Obama’s mantra, and McCain tried to steal the change thunder a bit. One thing that is guaranteed in this election is a HUGE change from George W. Bush no matter which of these guys gets elected. And if they both want to change the value of mortgages, expect the market value of your house to change bigtime too, even if you aren’t fortunate enough to have your loan reduced.
I Approve This Message Moratorium
Unless you are a politician and you have to do so, nobody should end their commercials with “and I approve this message.” If you are a local car dealer, mattress salesperson, financial consultant, pool cleaner, landscaper, and yes, even an insurance person, you should not look to attempt to “cash in” on the comedy gold of the election season by pretending your advertisement is a political ad. It is right up there with Viagra jokes in terms of being fresh, interesting and funny.
Speaking of which, I had a friend who went to Chicago a couple weeks ago to see Robin Williams. It has been a hobby of mine to watch Robin Williams whenever he is on TV to see if he makes a five-years-too-late joke about Viagra, and when Robin goes into one of his irreverant ramblings, he can’t resist making a joke. Can’t resist.
So, I asked my friend to count the number of times that Robin referenced Viagra in his stand-up performance in Chicago and the answer came back even better than I ever could have hoped. Apparently, Robin Williams referenced Viagra a reported FOUR TIMES.
Can you get any more out of touch than that? What’s next? Jokes about airports and airline food?
Democrats vs. Republicans in a Mortgage Business Beatdown Competition
Well, it appears that a $700 billion dollar bailout deal has at least been struck in principal. What remains are the devilish details. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get this idea in print in time for it to be undertaken by the U.S. Government, but I feel it would have been perfect.
I think we should have had a Democrat vs. Republican competition. Turn it into a transparent reality show. Red vs. Blue.
On one side, the Republicans get to have their team and $350 billion. On the other side, the Democrats have their team and their $350 billion. They are competing to bail out the industry by buying assets and doing their best to turn a profit. On the line are bragging rights and lots and lots of dollars for the American public. Each side will always say that their ideas are the best. The only way to know for sure is to put them side by side and see how it all works out.
I won’t pretend to know all the intricate details of how this competition will work. I was a finance major in college, but I don’t work in the industry so the finite details are beyond my knowledge level currently. What I do know is that in a lot of cases, we have bad mortgages that are valued very very low. Probably even lower than the actual asset values. The supply and demand dictates that something is only worth what someone will pay for it, but if someone out there was capable of incurring the holding costs, say with $350 billion worth of bailout money on loan from the American people, I am convinced that there is money to be made.
So someone get Mark Burnett, Simon Fuller, The Ghost of Merv Griffin, and Howie Mandel on the phone, because I have an idea that is going to change the world. $700 billion dollars is going out, and we need to find out who can bring the most back! And any losses that are incurred will be supplemented by the TV revenue as we put our dirty laundry out there for all the world to see in fabulous HD. Let’s translate it into at least 25 languages to make sure we draw profits from around the world. I am predicting a home run.
Now this is what I call taking lemons and making lemonade.
Keith Olbermann for Worst Broadcaster Ever
I haven’t talked about politics on this site in a while. It bugs me. I am tired of it. But, I want to point something out to everyone. This year is an amazing year in politics. We have two of the most interesting and electable people in my lifetime of elections. Barack Obama is the inexperienced new guy on the block with fresh ideas, and McCain is the maverick who will certainly change things in Washington even at the expense of some traditional Republican ideals. No matter which one gets elected, there will be great change from the current administration. It is going to be huge. And the big point? It will be fine no matter which guy gets in. They both have good and bad qualities.
If you are like I am this political season, you like about 30-40% of what either of the candidates stand for. If you are 100% on board with either of the candidates then I can’t talk politics with you. I have yet to meet the human on earth who I agreed with on most things on a broad spectrum of topics. So if you are that far into either camp for either one of these guys, I don’t understand you. I seriously considered putting both of their signs in my yard this year, but then I moved to a cul de sac. Nobody drives by.
I have certainly come a long way since the days where I was more republican. I voted for lots of Democrats, including the current Democratic governor of the state of Ohio. But more than anything, I clamor for a third party that somehow breaks the red vs. blue, up vs. down, black vs. white, two category system we have now. I don’t know that it will ever happen, but the further I get into my life the less I am impressed by our current system and the lack of choice it provides. If you think about the amount of choice we have in every other phase of our lives, why is it that we settle for a system that allows Barack Obama, Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, Al Franken, and Tim Robbins to all be somehow magically aligned opposite John McCain, GW Bush, Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh and Carly Fiorina?
Anyway, this post is really about that back-stabbing sycophant loser Keith Olbermann. Out of all the people in media that I hate, Keith Olbermann is the worst. He didn’t have the balls to criticize Imus until after he was fired, at which time he said how he wanted Imus gone. He caved, and subsequently buried his co-worker when the Hillary Clinton / Chelsea Clinton / “pimping” hubub came up. You will remember that a commentator said that Chelsea was out “pimping” Hillary. Obermann, the jackass that he is, allowed that comment to be taken literally as in the prostitution way. He didn’t stand up for his coworker in a clear message to try and keep Hillary from being mad at him.
Now, Olbermann has been removed as anchor from MSNBC’s political coverage because he can’t be trusted not to be a douchey commentator when he is supposed to be an impartial anchor, reporting the facts. He most recently went off on this self-important rant during the Republican National Convention. You can see him looking down, presumably reading, his self-centered prepared statement. He feels it necessary to put himself in the story by talking about his loss of people on 9/11. As an anchor, his personal opinion shouldn’t matter in the slightest. Just another entry on the resume of reasons that I can’t stand Keith Olbermann and think his appearances are to television what chlamydia is to the human body.
Welcome Molly!
Jen and I got a puppy!
Craig Joining WFNY
I have always felt a little funny writing about sports here on my site. It feels like half the people here don’t care at all about those stories. Also, the mix of content, whether I am acting like a sports writer, a movie reviewer, etc, always seems a bit unfocused.
As a result, I have decided to take my sports writing hobby and take it to a place where people honestly do care about it. Waiting For Next Year is a collection of Cleveland-only sports bloggers. They are a good group of writers, and they have aspirations for podcasting too. I am lucky enough that they were willing to offer me an opportunity to write and contribute there.
So, this doesn’t mean that I am closing the doors on FilteringCraig.com. It just means that I won’t be doing much in the way of sports here.
For any articles on sports you can check in at Waiting For Next Year.
