iBrasten - Blog

House Republicans hold strong

2008-09-29T11:44:00Z

I expected the bailout to pass. I really did. But the Republicans in the House were able to defeat the measure this morning, at least for the moment. Nicely done!.

Now it's time for Americans to dig in and prepare for rough times ahead. Our fast-food, easy-credit society has a hard time accepting that sometimes problems can't be fixed... but this is one of those times. Those of us who oppose this bill do so with full understanding that we're in for some really hard economic situations. But this bailout would have made things worse in the long run for everyone (except, perhaps, a few bankers).

The odd ways we choose our friends

2008-08-11T18:10:00Z

If you listen to the mainstream media here in America, you probably believe that Russia is up to it's old aggressive tricks again and invaded Georgia for some silly reason. Doesn't much matter what the reason is, Russia's bad.

Georgia, on the other hand, wants to be in NATO. And it's a democracy, right? Two thumbs up for Georgia.

Now, I'm generally AGAINST taking sides in foreign conflicts; but, since the media already has, I'll at least make the following point: Georgia initiated armed confrontation by attempting to take back South Ossetia -- a small area between Georgia proper and Russian that declared itself independent in the 1990's. Russia is defending an independent nation from invasion, not invading Georgia. (I'm sure Russia's doing it for their own motives, however.)

You'd think people in these United States would appreciate the right of secession. Hmmm.

On a related topic, 22% of Americans support a state's right to secede. Only 22% support this fundamental right to self-government?

Of Ans and Ics

2008-07-03T12:15:00Z

I've just read that Progressive thinkers have recently come up with a rebuttal to the derogatory term "Democrat Party." Apparently, they are now calling on fellow thinkers to refer to the other side as the "Republic Party." Cleverness aside, here's the problem I see with that...

Republic Party sounds kind of cool to me!

In fact, those who know me know that I now consider myself a member of the Republican Party (after flirting with independent status for a few years) but that I do not agree with a large portion of the Republican Party's current platform. I strongly believe that I'm a small part of a wave of libertarian-minded Republicans that will shape the future of the party.

And for months now I've been trying to figure out a concise way of expressing all that... "Republican, but not the kind of Republican you think!" just doesn't cut it anymore...

Maybe we should adopt Republic Party for that purpose?

Bigoted-right, enlightened-left?

2008-06-28T19:10:00Z

Here are a few clips from various party's platforms regarding same-sex marriage... you may be surprised by which statements belong to which party...

In our country, marriage has been defined at the state level for 200 years, and we believe it should continue to be defined there.
We strongly support ... a Constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage, and we believe that neither federal nor state judges nor bureaucrats should force states to recognize other living arrangements as equivalent to marriage.
We support the recognition of equal rights of persons gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender to housing, jobs, civil marriage, medical benefits, child custody, and in all areas of life provided to all other citizens.
We advocate an end to all government attempts to dictate, prohibit, control or encourage any private lifestyle, living arrangement or contractual relationship.

Recognize your party in there? Maybe you do, maybe not... look it up. Be informed.

The People vs The Public

2008-06-28T17:25:00Z

I support Barack Obama!

... well, more specifically, I support Obama's sudden interest in private campaign financing.

Barack spontaneously understands that The People are best served when they are free to do -- or not do -- what they see fit to do. It is no surprise that his appreciation of basic human freedom comes when such freedom provides him with significantly more financing than John McCain.

On the flip side, John McCain continues to support campaigns financed by The Public -- which is not only a horrible idea but betrays the very principles of personal freedom and restricted-government that The Right should support.

So, as hypocritical and insincere as it may be, Obama's current position is the right one. Now if only he'd support removing the ridiculous $2,300 campaign donation limits and support the removal of all political party protections from election laws. Then we'd actually have a candidate that's interested in an open and free political process. Then we'd have some real change.

... except those things work FOR the candidates and against The People, so you won't be hearing any moral outrage from them on that. Pity. So much for change.

Socially Responsible

2008-06-25T14:35:00Z

"Social Responsibility" is a term that too often benefits the Left in American politics. As I often do, I blame the Republicans for allowing this to happen. The classical Liberal⁽¹⁾ position should -- if argued properly -- stand up favorably in light of 'social responsibility' critiques. Especially when compared to the relatively laughable claims the Left has to the term.

Personal and Social Responsibility

Republicans have focused almost exclusively on Personal Responsibility through my (relatively short) lifetime. While Personal Responsibility is absolutely a critical component of classical Liberalism, it is not a refutation of Social Responsibility in the purest sense. The Liberal feels a responsibility to help those in need and provide time and/or financial resources to help those who are incapable of taking care of themselves or have fallen onto hard times. The Liberal should be donating to charities, volunteering, or providing the unique services and skills according to each person's abilities.

It's entirely accurate that the Liberal is against government-ran charity and welfare programs, but this opposition must be qualified and detached from the sense of responsibility the Liberal feels to those less fortunate. The consistent failures and near-criminal overhead of government programs gives us the moral high-ground from which to argue, but the Republican Party has clung too heavily to the Personal Responsibility argument while letting Social Responsibility slide.

Delegated [Social] Management

In order to fully re-claim the Social Responsibility term, it's important to re-brand the Left's idea of social responsibility. Terminology is important in these types of arguments; this is why you get different terms for the same position like Anti-choice/Pro-life.

I propose we use the term Delegated Management (or Delegated Social Management) from now on when referring to the Left's "charity" agenda. It more accurately portrays the fact that the Left's agenda largely consists of sending OTHER people's money to some distant bureaucracy -- effectively making the less fortunate somebody else's problem. It also provides a favorable comparison for the Liberal who, rather than push the problem on to others, prefers to do the charitable acts and finance the problems himself.

The term "liberal" originally referred to personal-liberty, laissez-faire thinkers. In America, we'd call them Libertarians or classical-Liberals. when I refer to Liberals in this instance, I mean the classical-Liberal / Libertarian.

Who's spending the money...

2008-06-23T14:29:00Z

A favorite critique being thrown around by Democrats lately has been the whole comparison of government spending under Republican and Democratic presidents. That comparison, honestly, comes out looking really bad for Republicans -- the "party of fiscal responsibility."

Reality, of course, is slightly different than the rhetoric. Unfortunately, the Republicans seem content to let the American public turn against them... sooo, I'll do their job for them, I guess.

Reality: The President has exactly NO authorization to spend money under the Constitution. While the President does send a budget to Congress, Congress is under no particular obligation to follow anything in it. It is Congress' job to set the spending levels, and ultimately Congress is responsible for whatever spending occurs under their leadership.

So, with that in mind, I present you with an alternative graph I came up with. It's a work in progress, but it tracks the relative strength of the political parties IN CONGRESS with the change (in percentage) to the National Debt. The center line relates to the debt indicators and represents 0%. Anything lower than that is a reduction in the debt, and anything higher is an increase.

Libertarians do it laissez-faire...

2008-06-02T13:57:00Z

I made $14 in 2004 from CafePress... maybe I can hit $15 this time...

The one complication to that is that at the moment, the two bumper stickers I have up are not marked up.

Hillary Clinton is fighting for me!

2008-06-01T14:29:00Z

"... for the small-business owner saddled with higher and higher energy bills..."

Go Hillary!... except, energy bills aren't my biggest problem; in fact, they're quite manageable. It's my tax bill that's killing me. Whatcha going to do about that?

... Hillary? ... Obama? ... McCain?

... anybody?

2 degrees...

2008-05-30T20:06:00Z

John McCain -- (Wedding Crashers) --> Kathryn Joosten -- (Rails & Ties) --> Kevin Bacon.

Taking back the high ground

2008-04-28T14:11:00Z

Liberal⁽¹⁾ Argument Autopsy

A few days ago I had a fascinating conversation with someone regarding the appropriateness of universal healthcare in America. The thing I found most interesting about it that I ended up getting baited into the exact same defensive posture that I've long criticized the Republican Party for taking. I do not necessarily expect the liberal⁽¹⁾ to maintain an offensive posture; the other side is often more receptive to one's ideas after one has actively listened to their arguments. But there are some common "arguments" used against the liberal⁽¹⁾ for which we -- and the Republican Party, specifically -- have developed awful responses.

It's Easier to Mock You Than Defeat You

Somewhere along the line, my opponent⁽²⁾ posed the following question: "don't you think poor people deserve healthcare the same as rich people do?" Not only is the question horribly offensive -- an element of heartlessness is implied in the asking -- but there is no answer to this question that will ultimately satisfy the questioner. This is a common tactic used by the other side in many various forms, but every form involves the same catch-22: you either agree with us, or you're a cold monster.

In my instance, I was largely unable argue against the twisting and distortion of my opinions that followed. Never mind the 2 hours of friendly and productive discussion that had just occurred. Never mind that I spend a lot of time discussing, reading and thinking about these topics. Never mind that I try to live every day with intense compassion for those around me. In the minutes that followed, my opinions were distorted by my opponent into those of an uncaring, selfish and demented person.

It is that effective.

Attack the Assumption

Questions like these inherently assume that the best way to provide for the needs of the poor (healthcare) is through a government welfare/entitlement program -- or, essentially, wealth redistribution. The accusation, then, is that if the liberal⁽¹⁾ does not want to support said government program, it is because they are willing to withhold that help for some reason; this is precisely why this question is so offensive. If one doesn't address that assumption head on, the inevitable explanations of free-market benefits will be colored by the misperception that the liberal⁽¹⁾ is merely justifying his unwillingness to help.

The most beneficial tactic for the liberal⁽¹⁾ is to attack the unspoken assumption the moment it is in play. The educated liberal⁽¹⁾ has done extensive study on these topics and firmly believes an open market free from government involvement will ultimately help the very people our opponents speak of, and will do it much more efficiently and with better results. The liberal⁽¹⁾ knows those in need are in fact being hurt by the very types of government programs that her opponent is proposing. She understands the intent of her opponent and thus would not question their character in the same way hers is questioned -- but in light of the subtle accusations she probably ought to at least return the favor. He ought to tell his opponent that, yes, those in need deserve these services and that his position is the best, and ultimately, only -- option for helping those in question.

Get your head in the game, GOP

I made this mistake in a conversation, and I paid for it. While I can handle being misinterpreted, ultimately the causes I believe in -- the same causes my opponent believes in -- took a hit. Politics on my level is about winning people over one and a time. Hopefully we can individually learn to address this better.

However, I'm tired of the Republican Party's responses on these issues; seeing them not only perpetuate the misperceptions but accept and celebrate them. I'm embarrassed by the arguments of personal responsibility and constant appeals to fiscal conservatism... as if spending less was the ends instead of the means. I'm frustrated by a Republican Party that talks only about costs and spending and taxes and ignores our strongest points -- the ultimate flaws of Democratic policies and the harm they cause.

Force them to answer for their contradictions when they march kids in front of cameras to blame Republicans for unaffordable healthcare. Demand that they explain how they took income away from children's parents to fund the massive regulatory bureaucracies and create mountains of rules and restrictions and largely created the very problem they're now trying to solve! Make them answer for the world they've helped create where we can't afford our own health insurance and need government help.

Demand a justification for the failure that is the Federal Reserve. Question why the government allows a central bank to fund massive credit booms which inevitably crash. Demand to know why the natural checks and balances provided by free-market fiscal policies are subverted by government intervention and not allowed to prevent situations like we have today. Force the Democrats to explain how it helps anyone when you create massive government programs to help people buy homes, while at the same time regulating mortgage companies so they won't give mortgages so freely.

Demand justification for why we paid billions of dollars for some farmers to NOT grow crops, pay billions of dollars to subsidize blowing up massive amounts of corn as biofuel, then claim they want to "help" people who can't afford rising food prices?

Stand up, GOP. You've lost the hearts and minds of the people, you have to win it back. People aren't stupid, we can understand how a free market solves these problems better than government programs -- but you have to stand up and explain it.

And we're right on the edge of losing it for good.

Free-market philosophy was considered the liberal position back in the day. Central-government politics with economic controls and social behavioral regulation has been around for thousands of years. In the same spirit as several other free-marketers, I desire to restore the term to it's rightful meaning. As such, whenever I use the term "liberal", you should understand I'm referring to those holding free-market, personal-liberty positions.
Opponent is simply the easier term I could think of, but it was actually a good friend. No value judgement of the person should be inferred from the term.

Available: Mildly successful open-source project.

2008-04-14T10:49:00Z

It shouldn't surprise anyone to learn that I haven't been able to work on Scruffy -- the Ruby-based SVG graphing engine -- in a very long time. And yet, it seems like people continue to download and use it more and more. Since my need for a graphing library is nonexistent for the foreseeable future, I don't think I'm the best person to continue working on Scruffy at this point. Software is best written by those who need it.

I do not intend on handing Scruffy to any random person, but if anyone out there thinks they can make a case for themselves you're welcome to contact me. In general, I'm keeping an eye out for someone who has been using Scruffy professionally for some time and has ideally already made significant code changes to Scruffy for their projects.

I'd also like to find someone who has a similar vision for Scruffy as I do. I never intended for Scruffy to be simply a Gruff replacement. Gruff is good enough for what it does. Today, most Scruffy usage involves rasterizing the SVG graph to an image. At the time this was a necessary evil, but I think we're rapidly approaching a time when Scruffy could serve straight SVG. This is, I believe, the ultimate goal for Scruffy and opens a bunch of new possibilities ( layout and theming via CSS, dynamic graph updates via JavaScript, etc ).

I'll be maintaining control of Scruffy for the foreseeable future as I'm not currently aware of anyone I'd trust to take it. But I'd love to hear from anyone who thinks they may be that developer.

A quick summary: Perl and Merb

2008-04-13T20:27:00Z

There are quite a few little topics to catch up on since I've last posted, so I'm going to try and break them up into fewer, smaller posts. This post is just a general overview of what I've been up to over the last few months.

A brief detour into Perl-land

Just over six months ago I took a contract working in Perl. I had never worked in Perl and quite honestly had never intended on working in Perl. Still, the project sounded fun and I enjoy the opportunity to learn new [to me] things. It also provided the opportunity to work for/with a guy who is basically the Perl version of Tobias Lütke or Rick Olson. It's difficult to turn down an opportunity to learn a new technology from one of the best that technology has to offer.

Six months of Perl development later, I'm able to say that Perl doesn't suck as much as I'd always thought. The language itself is tricky, and this seems to have produced an awful lot of horrible Perl code "out there." I discovered, though, if you know how to write good Perl you can produce some decent looking code. With the project soon coming to an end, I'm saddened that I'll not be able to continue using my newly-acquired skills. Getting comfortable with Perl took me a little time, but I think I was just starting to [relatively] rock at it! If the right opportunity came along, I would not be opposed to working in Perl again.

My language-crush on Ruby did not disappear, however. The mental separation of working in Perl and playing in Ruby gave me a chance to play with some personal projects in my spare time -- free of the outside influences of a Ruby-based project. All of which leads me to my second topic...

Merb, Merb, the musical fruit...

This isn't a very elegant way of putting it, but: Merb. Kicks. Ass.

I had honestly begun to feel a bit disenchanted with Rails when I took the Perl project. I quickly discovered that I was not as eager to build a random Rails application in my spare time when I no longer had any financial incentive to work with it. I'm not complaining; I completely respect that DHH did not develop Rails to make Brasten Sager happy. Rails is what DHH needs it to be, and in my completely irrelevant opinion it's still the second-best framework for my purposes.

This post is more of a personal narrative than any kind of technical article, so I'll skip the bullet-point list of Reasons I Like Merb. Instead, here's the one-paragraph explanation. Every time I created a new Rails application I often ended up writing the same code (or copying from a previous project) to solve a whole list of minor annoyances. Merb largely solves all those things for me right out of the box. The Merb guys obviously write web applications the same way I do and they've written a framework that feels the way I want a framework to feel.

Of course, your mileage may vary.

More posts hopefully coming soon, stay tuned!

Breaking the Two-Party System

2007-12-06T23:23:00Z

In all my discussions, I haven’t found many people who really like the two-party political system we have here in America. This is in spite of the fact that most people DO consider themselves a member of one of the parties in question. Most people won’t consider a 3rd-party candidate for fear of “throwing away” their vote, while at the same time candidates like Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel prove that there are plenty of diverse opinions even inside the current parties. However, thanks to the primary system most of those opinions will have no candidate come election night.

One idea often floated is preference voting: selecting your first, second, and third choice candidates. There are several problems with this, the biggest being that votes would need to be weighted and that the voting system would likely become too complicated for some voters.

Vote for all of them!

My idea is a bit more simple. Instead of preference voting, why not allow multiple voting? Votes would be counted in the same way as they are today – with the winner determined by total number of votes. The only difference would be that when you mark your ballot, you are allowed to mark as many names as you wish to vote for.

Consider the following contrived – but not unheard of – example: an election between Mr. Green (with above average support), Mr. Dem, Mr. Repub and Mrs. Liber. In a normal election, the results might look something like the following:

Green: 15,000
Dem: 50,000
Repub: 55,000
Liber: 2,500

Green effectively hurt the cause of the overall left simply by running, yet was no where close to winning. Even so, in an election like this, you know that Dem picked up a substantial number of votes from people who would PREFER Green, but didn’t want to throw away their vote. Also, Green supporters would prefer Dem as a backup plan than losing to Repub.

Under my system, you could vote for Green AND Dem. or Repub AND Liber. Or if you’re a Centrist with a capital-C – vote Dem and Repub. Given the overall sentiment, the election under those rules may end up looking something like this:

Green: 32,000
Dem: 63,000
Repub: 55,500
Liber: 15,000

Free of mainstream parties, empower 3rd-party candidates

Results like this do two seemingly contradictory things: it protects the mainstream parties from spoilers in close elections, while at the same time giving 3rd-party candidates the ability to ACTUALLY compete. Instead of 2 parties attempting to consolidate every vote on one side of the idle to squeak out a victory, you’ll end up with 4 or 5 strong parties more accurately representing their various members.

Dashboard Web Clips

2007-11-06T17:39:00Z

So, web clips are much much cooler than I anticipated. You can change up your dashboard weekly or daily based on interests at the time. For example, clipping out a little Flash object yesterday gave me quick access to a particular fund-raising effort I wanted to track:

Just one thing I can't figure out though... is there any way to package a web clip into a widget that can be uploaded or otherwise transfered to another computer? If you know how to do that, leave a comment!