There is a time for discourse and we need such discourse to keep things balanced, but as of late, the discourse has turned into a ruckus. Wait, ruckus is too nice of a word, full out brawl is better. We have Glenn Beck making some of the most random comments I’ve heard while on the left there is a general consensus that everyone on the right is a bigoted racist who wants to invade Mexico. All of the chatter is like a giant ray gun pointed at my brain. I just can’t take it anymore.

I thought I could away from it by avoiding television news. I wouldn’t have to listen to Katie Couric read us a page from her notebook or Glenn Beck ramble on about freedoms. I thought I would be able to manage my Twitter account well enough to somewhat block out the continual rants from both sides. It all still trickles in. My primary source of news has long been articles written by actual economists and political science writers but I’m relying on it even more now.

What really amazes me is that people are still ranting about Sarah Palin. Really? If she is as useless and unimportant as people claim she is then if you stop talking about her, maybe she’ll stop being so important. By ranting you’re just perpetuating the whole thing.

That brings me to the issues that currently face the country. A jobs report came out today and it was not good news. The national unemployment rate continues to stay in the 9.5-9.7% range. This is an issue that President Obama and the House and Senate should be discussing fervently. Not pushing agendas, not looking for the best opportunity to drop a sound bite, but simply talking about options. Of course, this is only one issue, there are many others and I think for all of them, realistic discussions in which political prowess does not come into the mix would be a good thing.

The other thing that has my raised my blood pressure significantly lately is all of this talk about the Constitution and people’s rights. There are two camps here, both claiming that their understanding of the Constitution is the right one. To be honest, I think they’re both wrong. One side wants you to believe that the Constitution is a completely living document, open to interpretation and meant to be applied as needed. The other believes the Constitution is a completely strict document that needs to be taken literally. Both of these views go to the extremes. The way I see it is that the Constitution is living, but not in the way most think of it. It was meant to be changed, but only by amending it. It was also meant to be interpreted but not to the extreme that we should break it down to minutia and apply to every single possible permutation of an issue. To do so would not only be time consuming, it would be next to impossible.

What we need is a true understanding of a Constitutional republic. As a nation we have become so much more complicated than when founded, it is making adaptation difficult. It makes me wonder if people still really believe in the concept of states making their own decisions when it comes to politics. If people do then a lot of the bickering seems mighty overblown. We can be positive and yet have discourse if we remember how to actually debate something rather than parrot what our favorite television personality says. We need more readers of history and less of Twitter. We need more action and less activism. We need to grow up a little.

Other posts that may interest you:

1. Mass. High Court Rules for Gay Marriages…
2. So It’s Official
3. Another Monday

Now, I am not naive, I know the U.S. government has policies in place to monitor phone and internet traffic, but I do not see them bullying companies to turn over the data. Instead, they’re sly and probably employ a large number of hackers to help them monitor the airwaves. What bothers me about Saudi Arabia is their need to push the issue of monitoring under the guise of “safety” rather than what they really want, which is to know what their citizens are doing when they are not being watched in public. Sharia is the law of the land and as such, personal freedom takes a back seat to governmental moral “clarity” and cleansing. In plain terms, this ability to monitor BlackBerry traffic is going to be used not just to watch for terrorist activity but to enforce Sharia

Other posts that may interest you:

1. Shell, The First Broadband Provider?
2. Back in Sugar Land
3. In the market for a new phone

He’s somebody who’s at the end of his career. I’m sure that what he wants is to be able to end his career with dignity. And my hope is that it happens

Watch the video here

My first thought when I saw all of this was that the President’s words were simply twisted to make it sound like he wanted Rangel out. After reading more commentary on it and listening to the entire interview (I wasn’t able to find an online version) it does sound like Obama is embarrassed by this and wants Rangel to resign.

In my opinion, this was the wrong course of action for the President. Rangel has a very large support base and rightly so, he’s a Korean War veteran and has served in the House for 39 years. In preparing for the interview, I would think that the President would have said, “we need to handle this tactfully and respectfully”. Instead, we received a poorly worded rebuke of Rangel that essentially outlines his resignation.

The philosophical high ground would have been the following,

We take ethics violations very seriously and we know that Congressman Rangel will be held accountable and we will back whatever the trial decision is.

As I was about to hit the “Publish” button when I came across this article that points out the Obama administration making similar comments to my suggestion above.

1. What Do the Europeans Want?
2. Countdown to school startup
3. Obama Predicts Years of Deficits Over $1 Trillion

Can’t see the video? Click here.

Other posts that may interest you:

1. Stressful week
2. Dean Wormer Passes Away
3. what’s coming up??

It seems that Gruber’s thinking is along the lines of what I had in mind; If you are going to respond to something that someone writes, you should be able to do it in long form instead of short quips after a post. How many times do people go back to a comment they wrote on a blog to see if there has been a reply? Does commenting really generate discussion or allow trolls to interject themselves into worthwhile postings on the internet?

What say you? I am going to leave comments open for this post to see what people think, but in the future, they will probably be turned off.

Other posts that may interest you:

1. Moving back to Lubbock
2. Returning E-mail
3. money and the internet…

In 1979 a well named Ixtoc I was being drilled in the Gulf of Campeche about 62 miles offshore. At some point in the operation drilling mud circulation was lost and the well experienced a blowout. The blowout preventer was, at the time, not in line with the drill collars, rendering it ineffective. The spill is almost exactly the same except for the fact that Ixtoc I was in 161 feet of water. In the end, Pemex, the national oil company of Mexico and the owner of the well, lost 3.5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Rather than paying residents on the coast of Texas who had experienced damage or loss of livelihood, Pemex claimed sovereign immunity and spent only $100 million to clean up the spill.

The Ixtoc I spill has gone on record as being the worst accidental spill in history (incidentally, the worst spill in history was Saddam Hussein burning the Kuwaiti oil fields). Until the BP leak is completely sealed up and the areas effected by it cleaned, we will not know the full extent of the damage and how it compares to Ixtoc I, but I am going to guess that Ixtoc I will still take the prize as the worst accidental spill in history.

BP could have done the cowardly thing and run away from this spill much like Pemex did in 1979 but they made a conscience decision to clean it and fix it. Sure, their handling of the issue has been less than perfect, but they could have turned tail and run, leaving the British government to decide what to do. I really wish what was reported on the news was not the same old, “worst disaster in history”, not just because it isn’t true, but because it’s sensationalism at its worst.

A lot of folks are calling for the suspension of deepwater or even offshore drilling and I think that is a poor way to go about the future. The Deepwater Horizon tragedy is the first U.S. offshore spill in 40 years. It was the first offshore spill on a rig anywhere in the world in 20 years. These incidents are few and far between and yes, while there should be more rigorous safety checks on the platforms, the idea that getting rid of offshore drilling would completely rid the world of oil disaster one-offs is absurd. Rather than blaming the oil, blame the people who caused the spill and figure out ways to keep it from happening again.

Other posts that may interest you:

1. My dissappointing team…
2. Shell, The First Broadband Provider?
3. Boycott BP, Or Not – A Lesson in Distribution

I saw these two things this morning and decided that something, no matter how little audience I get, needed to be written. There seems to be a large misunderstanding of how the industry operates and how people are able to pump gasoline into their cars each and every day. I aim to clear that up, if only by a little bit.

First, it needs to be known that oil is traded and sold at a very fast pace all day long. Because of this, refineries share crude oil, or feedstock. This type of sharing allows the refineries to be constantly supplied and making end products. Some refineries only make more feedstocks, usually for chemical plants. Others produce gasoline and diesel fuel and chemicals. The gasoline that is produced is moved to terminals that are located all over the country in strategic places. These terminals are privately owned and are essentially holding facilities for gasoline. There is no segregation of brand at these facilities, just stockpiles of fuel.

The local gas stations then send their trucks to the terminal to buy a load of fuel for sale at their station. En-route to the gas station the truck driver may mix an additive to the fuel depending on what brand it is being sold under (Chevron, Shell, etc.) and then pump the fuel into the underground tanks at the station. What you end up with is the exact same gasoline at every station, minus the additives. There is no discernible way to know where your gasoline came from. Even though a gas station has a BP logo, Shell may have been the one to refine the oil.

The same essentially goes for other oil based products.

What is the point in all of this? Well, the idea that one can boycott BP and make it go under is based on the false premise that one can distinguish BP gasoline from any other. In all of this, people are looking for someone to blame, to make pay and they’ve understandably gone after BP. However, at the same time, these same people could actually be making a difference by volunteering to help clean birds or scoop up crude. But, I guess it’s easier to attempt to boycott something that is near impossible to boycott rather than actually doing something.

Other posts that may interest you:

1. Kill Off Comments?
2. Another Monday
3. Weekends

Live TV by Ustream

Can’t see any video above? You can watch the live podcast here.

Other posts that may interest you:

1. I hate being sick (and Google video ads)
2. A Year of Firsts
3. How Trains Stay on the Tracks

It is my belief that the public sector should be good stewards of our tax dollars, just like we should be good stewards of our own money. Though, that may not be the best gauge with the number of Americans in debt slowly rising. What brought me to this notion of responsibility in the public sector? Observations. It seems as though efficiencies have been lost simply because they are not needed when one is spending someone else’s money. I believe it’s endemic to the idea that funds are unlimited, therefore one can spend whatever one likes. But shouldn’t it be the opposite? Shouldn’t efficiency be the norm, not the exception? Sure, we should not skimp when it comes to things that are absolutely necessary, but to spend for the sake of spending (to seal in one’s budget) is beyond wasteful, it’s idiotic.

Instead of school districts buying iPads, focus on calculators, paper, or other necessities. Technology will come eventually, but the goal is to provide education, not the newest gear, to students. The same applies to city and state services. The budgets need to be adjusted to run lean and mean. These things do not generate revenue so why should they be treated like they do? If a private company was to come in and take over a city service, I guarantee that they could find places where there is significant, unnecessary spending taking place. Not only could that company make the spending go away but they could keep service levels the same, if not improve them.

There is no reason that our public officials cannot be good spenders of our money, it’s simply a choice. Of course there might be some downgrade in service, but the end result of keeping the service around rather than possibly losing it when the budget becomes unsustainable seems worth it. With the current way we are doing things, something has to give, the question is when. We can keep that “when” at bay and still employ people and provide services that are necessary for the general public to go about their daily lives.

So, what do you think? Should the public sector be fiscally responsible or should they be free to spend as they see fit?

Other posts that may interest you:

1. money and the internet…
2. Education and the Silent Trillion
3. The U.N.

Federal, state and local taxes — including income, property, sales and other taxes — consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. That rate is far below the historic average of 12% for the last half-century. The overall tax burden hit bottom in December at 8.8.% of income before rising slightly in the first three months of 2010.

“The idea that taxes are high right now is pretty much nuts,” says Michael Ettlinger, head of economic policy at the liberal Center for American Progress.

First, I have to point out that I think it’s hilarious what some of these lobbying groups call themselves (Center for American Progress). Don’t get me wrong, the Republicans have some funny ones too. Maybe if we just called them what they were, lobbyists, life would be a little more drab, but at least it would be less confusing.

Now, on to the real point. I don’t disagree that tax bills were lower in 2009, but I think the idea that lower taxes are what people who are unhappy with the administration want is asinine. In the USA Today article, Dennis Cauchon actually touches on the real issue, then skims right over it; The issue of smaller government with less need for our tax dollars. If the government was to run a tighter ship then tax bills could be even lower, imagine that! The other issue that the article really doesn’t address is that of the recession. If the recession was starting or in full swing in 2008, then people surely lost their jobs in 2009, making tax bills smaller out of attrition in the workplace.

Anyway, my point in all of this is, less of a tax burden is great, but when there isn’t enough money to support the budget, we should be worried. I’m sure a few years ago Greeks were glad that their tax bills were lower, now I’m betting they would just like a job.

Other posts that may interest you:

1. On the Tea Parties
2. wow
3. 2 Parts Bailout, 1 Part Stimulus