Dammit Obama

I’m apparently having a week of breaking resolutions. I wasn’t going to say anything bad about Obama until he was in office and started screwing things up, but he apparently couldn’t wait that long.

On Feb 17, analog TV should be no more. The conversion to digital has been a long drawn out process, for which we have already paid a ridiculous price in commercials and other time wasters, and well over a billion dollars. The conversion will retire a dinosaur of a technology that has been bogging down huge swaths of prime spectrum that could be used for far more useful new technologies. The spectrum has been sold. New products that will use the new digital service are everywhere and have been sold for years. They have a better picture and better features.

Now Barack Obama puts out a last minute memo asking that the conversion be delayed until mid-summer. Heaven forbid anyone illiterate and living in a cave might be surprised to find their television not working and have to venture into reality long enough to figure out why. What we really should have done is just cut the TV resolution in half every month until everyone gets sick enough of it to get their crap together and convert.

Update: The Chairman of the FCC, Kevin Martin, has now come out at CES and said about Obama’s request, “[W]e’ve spent a lot of time and energy getting ready for the February 17 date,” “I am concerned about the consumer confusion that would be created.”

Update: Obama has named June 12 as the date he would like the switch to digital to be postponed to.

Compromise

“The fellow who says he’ll meet you halfway usually thinks he’s standing on the dividing line.” -Orlando Battista

When you hear the top political candidates speak, one of the more common qualifications you hear them push is their ability to get compromise between democrats and republicans. What does a bipartisan compromise mean in America?  There are a few ways we break the deadlock.

• One is when individual representatives decide to sacrifice their convictions on the current issue in exchange for pushing through their own pet project they know would never fly otherwise. We call this pork.
• Another is to remove all the parts of the bill that are offensive to anyone, usually removing the taxes that will pay for the project, or the regulations on how it will be used.
• Or they can just spread panic and try to push it through under public pressure before realization and regret set in.
• Or they can just reallocate the money from something vital and force the other side to re-fund that (as seen with the Iraq surge, and California budget under Schwarzenegger)

None of these are helpful. The second example, splitting the difference, is what most often appeals to the public. This is like having each party with a hand on the steering wheel. The Democrats wanting to turn left, the republicans right; meanwhile the media is in the back seat rooting for the underdog.  We will hit the center divider every time.

 

There are ways to affect compromise that aren’t dirty. An example would be this plan put forth by Bob Ingles. He proposes starting up a carbon tax (democrats want), but offsetting the tax by reducing taxes elsewhere, such as income taxes (republican opposition evaporates). I’m a fan of taxing problems to fund solutions. Pollution is a much bigger problem than income.  If we give the free market incentive to clean up, they will do so. Since this is as much a behavioral issue as a technological one, I would consider it progress. Imperfect progress (for much the same reason as traffic cameras), but still far better than the business as usual methods of compromise.

Speed Camera Pimping

It looks like people are now taking advantage of this new, guilty until proven innocent folly in order to hurt their rivals. ‘Speed Camera Pimping“, as it is being called (Plate Cloning in Europe) is the act of putting a printout of someone else’s licence plate on your car and then intentionally zipping through red lights in order to rack up tickets. The city has a conflict of interest in this case since it is far easier for them to continue to accept these vast revenues than to solve the problem.

The Most Basic of Economic Principles

If you can solve this brain teaser from a 1932 issue of Modern Mechanics, you may just be a step ahead of your average congressman when it comes to fixing the economy.

Unnecessary Censorship, 2008 Election Edition

 

This still cracks me up. I get so sick of excessive censorship. It is nice to see someone so competently illustrating the idiocy of it all. It reminds me of reverse graffiti.

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