why it is, I will almost never yield the right-of-way to a taxi.
I was driving down Mission Street during rush hour. Traffic was not awful, but it was not light either. I was stopped at a traffic light. The cross street was a two way street, I think it was 4th but it could have been 5th or 3rd. It was a block from the Metreon.
A taxi was approaching in the right lane, and as the car in front of me was not tailgating, he managed to wedge his nose into the space between him and the car in front of him. When the light changed and the lead car entered the intersection, the taxi finished pulling into the lane and promptly signaled for a left turn.
Of course, nobody else made the light. This is Mission Street at rush hour, the taxi was not going to be able to make the turn until the light changed. I knew it, the driver in front of me knew it, the taxi driver knew it.
So he knew before he did that he was not going to make his turn any faster, but he would block anyone else from making the light. There was nobody behind me when he got there, he could have easily pulled in there. But that did not give him the opportunity to be an asshole.
What can we do about it, other than encourage everyone to tailgate? How about this.
If you are in a taxi, and the driver does something like that, something rude and completely unnecessary. Don't give him a tip. And then, when you pay him, tell him why you didn't give him a tip.
A long time ago, I read a quote from Larry Ellison. I do not know if it was a real quote, or something made up by someone who didn't like him. The quote was, "It is not enough to win, somebody has to lose". But my point is that there are enough people with that attitude, that taxi drivers will still get tips from people who think being an asshole is manly. So maybe it will not change anything.
But wouldn't it feel great?
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Friday, August 23, 2013
Thursday, August 8, 2013
The other shoe
So now we know that the target was not only terrorism. It may have started that way in the minds of some., but that NSA data is finding it's way into other hands.
The DEA and the IRS are getting this stuff. Does anyone care to wager that this is not the last recipient that we will find out about.
To paint a broad brush that everyone is a potential terrorist, and therefore all of their electronic communications are fair game, but only for 'national security' of course, was already a stretch. But of course it was never going to stop there.
And of course it will not stop with the DEA and the IRS either. We are all suspects now, and for the moment it is about whether or not we may be committing a crime. The more people get there hand on this information, it will be used for more and different purposes.
Just the way San Diego Mayor Bob Filner used information he gained as a member of congress to target women who had been victims of sexual harassment and rape, to help select his own targets, so you will find others with access to the NSA data using it for their own purposes.
Got any secrets? Not anymore!
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The DEA and the IRS are getting this stuff. Does anyone care to wager that this is not the last recipient that we will find out about.
To paint a broad brush that everyone is a potential terrorist, and therefore all of their electronic communications are fair game, but only for 'national security' of course, was already a stretch. But of course it was never going to stop there.
And of course it will not stop with the DEA and the IRS either. We are all suspects now, and for the moment it is about whether or not we may be committing a crime. The more people get there hand on this information, it will be used for more and different purposes.
Just the way San Diego Mayor Bob Filner used information he gained as a member of congress to target women who had been victims of sexual harassment and rape, to help select his own targets, so you will find others with access to the NSA data using it for their own purposes.
Got any secrets? Not anymore!
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Sunday, June 2, 2013
Who stood up for you, who stood up for the corporations
There has been a lot written about the Monsanto Protection Act, that was slipped into Farm Bill in a house committee before passage. If you don't know much about it, you can read about it here, here, and here. Opposition has appeared from both the left and the right on this one, but that has not stopped Republicans from lining up to support it.
When Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) introduced an amendment to strip that from the bill in the Senate, it was blocked by Ayotte (R-NH), Burr (R-NC), Coburn (R-OK), Crapo (R-ID), Cruz (R-TX), Enzi (R-WY), Fischer (R-NE), Graham (R-SC), Grassley (R-IA), Heller (R-NV), Inhofe (R-OK), Johnson (R-WI), Kirk (R-IL), Lee (R-UT), McCain (R-AZ), Paul (R-KY), Portman (R-OH), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Rubio (R-FL), Scott (R-SC), Tester (D-MT), Toomey (R-PA), Vitter (R-LA), Flake (R-AZ),and Moran (R-KS). Yes, there was one Democrat on the list too.
There was another attempt to amend the bill, one that would have allowed individual states to have GMO labeling requirements. This amendment (refer to SEC. 12213 on this page) would protect states from being sued for enacting DMO labeling laws. The amendment was resoundingly defeated, and the opposition included a number of surprising names.
Voting against were Alexander (R-TN), Ayotte (R-NH), Baldwin (D-WI), Barrasso (R-WY), Baucus (D-MT), Blunt (R-MO), Boozman (R-AR), Brown (D-OH), Burr (R-NC), Carper (D-DE), Casey (D-PA), Chambliss (R-GA), Coats (R-IN), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Collins (R-ME), Coons (D-DE), Corker (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX), Cowan (D-MA), Crapo (R-ID), Cruz (R-TX), Donnelly (D-IN), Durbin (D-IL), Enzi (R-WY), Fischer (R-NE), Franken (D-MN), Gillibrand (D-NY), Graham (R-SC), Grassley (R-IA), Hagan (D-NC), Harkin (D-IA), Hatch (R-UT), Heitkamp (D-ND), Heller (R-NV), Hoeven (R-ND), Inhofe (R-OK), Isakson (R-GA), Johanns (R-NE), Johnson (D-SD), Johnson (R-WI), Kaine (D-VA), Kirk (R-IL), Klobuchar (D-MN), Landrieu (D-LA), Lee (R-UT), Levin (D-MI), McCain (R-AZ), McCaskill (D-MO), McConnell (R-KY), Menendez (D-NJ), Moran (R-KS), Nelson (D-FL), Paul (R-KY), Portman (R-OH), Pryor (D-AR), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Rubio (R-FL), Scott (R-SC), Sessions (R-AL), Shaheen (D-NH), Shelby (R-AL), Stabenow (D-MI), Thune (R-SD), Toomey (R-PA), Udall (D-CO), Vitter (R-LA), Warner (D-VA), Warren (D-MA), Wicker (R-MS).
Now the bill has not yet cleared the Senate, it will be taken up again after the June recess. You know who they are now, time to hold their feet to the fire.
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When Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) introduced an amendment to strip that from the bill in the Senate, it was blocked by Ayotte (R-NH), Burr (R-NC), Coburn (R-OK), Crapo (R-ID), Cruz (R-TX), Enzi (R-WY), Fischer (R-NE), Graham (R-SC), Grassley (R-IA), Heller (R-NV), Inhofe (R-OK), Johnson (R-WI), Kirk (R-IL), Lee (R-UT), McCain (R-AZ), Paul (R-KY), Portman (R-OH), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Rubio (R-FL), Scott (R-SC), Tester (D-MT), Toomey (R-PA), Vitter (R-LA), Flake (R-AZ),and Moran (R-KS). Yes, there was one Democrat on the list too.
There was another attempt to amend the bill, one that would have allowed individual states to have GMO labeling requirements. This amendment (refer to SEC. 12213 on this page) would protect states from being sued for enacting DMO labeling laws. The amendment was resoundingly defeated, and the opposition included a number of surprising names.
Voting against were Alexander (R-TN), Ayotte (R-NH), Baldwin (D-WI), Barrasso (R-WY), Baucus (D-MT), Blunt (R-MO), Boozman (R-AR), Brown (D-OH), Burr (R-NC), Carper (D-DE), Casey (D-PA), Chambliss (R-GA), Coats (R-IN), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Collins (R-ME), Coons (D-DE), Corker (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX), Cowan (D-MA), Crapo (R-ID), Cruz (R-TX), Donnelly (D-IN), Durbin (D-IL), Enzi (R-WY), Fischer (R-NE), Franken (D-MN), Gillibrand (D-NY), Graham (R-SC), Grassley (R-IA), Hagan (D-NC), Harkin (D-IA), Hatch (R-UT), Heitkamp (D-ND), Heller (R-NV), Hoeven (R-ND), Inhofe (R-OK), Isakson (R-GA), Johanns (R-NE), Johnson (D-SD), Johnson (R-WI), Kaine (D-VA), Kirk (R-IL), Klobuchar (D-MN), Landrieu (D-LA), Lee (R-UT), Levin (D-MI), McCain (R-AZ), McCaskill (D-MO), McConnell (R-KY), Menendez (D-NJ), Moran (R-KS), Nelson (D-FL), Paul (R-KY), Portman (R-OH), Pryor (D-AR), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Rubio (R-FL), Scott (R-SC), Sessions (R-AL), Shaheen (D-NH), Shelby (R-AL), Stabenow (D-MI), Thune (R-SD), Toomey (R-PA), Udall (D-CO), Vitter (R-LA), Warner (D-VA), Warren (D-MA), Wicker (R-MS).
Now the bill has not yet cleared the Senate, it will be taken up again after the June recess. You know who they are now, time to hold their feet to the fire.
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Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Try this and watch Corporate America run away from Citizens United
OK, I know Americans have short attention spans so here is a brief recap.
A little after 6 in the evening, on September 9th, 2010, there was an explosion in the California city of San Bruno. A gas line exploded, killing 8 people and destroying 38 homes. The owner of the was pipeline was Pacific Gas and Electric. It was later revealed that 100 million dollars that was supposed to be used for safety operations was diverted to executive pay, including bonuses.
The California Public Utilities Commission is considering levying a 2.25 billion dollar fine against Pacific Gas and Electric. That is exactly the wrong thing to do.
They correct thing to do? Charge Pacific Gas and Electric with negligent homicide, or even first degree murder.
The Citizen's United decision says corporations are people. If people commit murder, they go to jail, even face the death penalty. Here is the perfect case to put a lie to that.
The San Bruno district attorney should be filing murder changers against Pacific Gas and Electric. It was their job to ensure the safety of the pipeline, they had the money to do it, they used the money for something else.
When people are killed in a bank robbery, it is first degree murder. It does not matter if the robbers planned to kill someone. They walked into a bank with guns prepared to kill someone.
This is the same. The corporation stole money, and in the process, and as a consequence, people died. If a corporation is a person then that corporation must face the same penalties as any other person would face.
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A little after 6 in the evening, on September 9th, 2010, there was an explosion in the California city of San Bruno. A gas line exploded, killing 8 people and destroying 38 homes. The owner of the was pipeline was Pacific Gas and Electric. It was later revealed that 100 million dollars that was supposed to be used for safety operations was diverted to executive pay, including bonuses.
The California Public Utilities Commission is considering levying a 2.25 billion dollar fine against Pacific Gas and Electric. That is exactly the wrong thing to do.
They correct thing to do? Charge Pacific Gas and Electric with negligent homicide, or even first degree murder.
The Citizen's United decision says corporations are people. If people commit murder, they go to jail, even face the death penalty. Here is the perfect case to put a lie to that.
The San Bruno district attorney should be filing murder changers against Pacific Gas and Electric. It was their job to ensure the safety of the pipeline, they had the money to do it, they used the money for something else.
When people are killed in a bank robbery, it is first degree murder. It does not matter if the robbers planned to kill someone. They walked into a bank with guns prepared to kill someone.
This is the same. The corporation stole money, and in the process, and as a consequence, people died. If a corporation is a person then that corporation must face the same penalties as any other person would face.
Tweet
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Nostalgia for the days of dial-up
Remember 2400 baud modems? Many of you, of course, will not. But even so, you are experiencing the same thing we did back then. I am talking about waiting for pages to load.
As bandwidth has grown, so has the density of pages. Many pages have far more advertisement density than content density. So much so that it takes as much time to load the pages as it did back in the days of 2400 baud.
I think that Yahoo email is a perfect example. Try opening their latest and greatest email without at least a T1 line. More than three quarters of the time I try it, the page gets so bogged down in loading flashy ads that the messenger app never does load. Or the the inbox only half loads. You can see the emails but you cannot select them.
And I do not mean to single out poor Yahoo as the only culprit. There seem to be more offenders than not these days. How many articles never get read because we just get tired of waiting for the damned page to load and so we close the window and move on?
We have all this bandwidth band but we are still waiting for pages to load. If you want your content to draw eyeballs to the ads, then build your pages so the content loads first! Because if all I see are ads and the content still hasn't loaded, I'm leaving.
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As bandwidth has grown, so has the density of pages. Many pages have far more advertisement density than content density. So much so that it takes as much time to load the pages as it did back in the days of 2400 baud.
I think that Yahoo email is a perfect example. Try opening their latest and greatest email without at least a T1 line. More than three quarters of the time I try it, the page gets so bogged down in loading flashy ads that the messenger app never does load. Or the the inbox only half loads. You can see the emails but you cannot select them.
And I do not mean to single out poor Yahoo as the only culprit. There seem to be more offenders than not these days. How many articles never get read because we just get tired of waiting for the damned page to load and so we close the window and move on?
We have all this bandwidth band but we are still waiting for pages to load. If you want your content to draw eyeballs to the ads, then build your pages so the content loads first! Because if all I see are ads and the content still hasn't loaded, I'm leaving.
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Friday, March 15, 2013
Yes, he really is that evil
I just got through watching the Showtime documentary The world according to Dick Cheney. It reaffirmed every bad thing that I ever thought about him. He really was a Svengali, leading the hapless Bush around by the nose for his entire first term. But what is worse is, he remains happy in the damage he inflicted upon the United States.
He fundamentally changed this country from one where the rule of law mattered, to one where only expediency matters. It know longer matters whether we are the good guys or the bad guys, as long as we win, within his warped definition of winning. That Iran has become the major power in the region as a result of our crippling the only nation strong enough to counter them? When asked about regrets, he said he would do it all over again. While that was never addressed in the interviews, I am sure his solution would be still another war.
That he squandered all the sympathy and good will we had acquired after the September 11th attacks, creating a whole new generation of enemies? Apparently no regrets there either. He turned the United States from the beacon of hope we have tried to represent to the world to the school bully shaking down the other kids for their lunch money. The concept that his actions created more danger in the world, not less, is beyond his understanding.
He set a standard, a tone, that still exists. Laws are for the little people to follow, the lash that keeps them behind the plow, while the powerful may ignore them with impunity. That is true in this country which has become a Security State, and it is true in how this country behaves in relation to it's international obligations.
He argued with Bush for Scooter Libby to be pardoned, but he would never come clean, that Libby was only trying to protect him. His loyalty only goes so far. A Chicken Hawk to the end.
While the program presented some opposing thoughts to a number of Cheney's views, there were very few tough questions asked, and few challenges to his assertions. Yet despite the kid gloves with which the former vice president was handled, he still came off as an soulless ideologue who was uninterested in any fact which might conflict with what he had made up his mind he wanted to do.
It appears to me that in many ways he accomplished his main goal, which was to mold the United States into his own image. He removed morality and justice from the equation, making us mirror images of the evil we found ourselves confronted with back on September 11th. Will we ever recover?
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He fundamentally changed this country from one where the rule of law mattered, to one where only expediency matters. It know longer matters whether we are the good guys or the bad guys, as long as we win, within his warped definition of winning. That Iran has become the major power in the region as a result of our crippling the only nation strong enough to counter them? When asked about regrets, he said he would do it all over again. While that was never addressed in the interviews, I am sure his solution would be still another war.
That he squandered all the sympathy and good will we had acquired after the September 11th attacks, creating a whole new generation of enemies? Apparently no regrets there either. He turned the United States from the beacon of hope we have tried to represent to the world to the school bully shaking down the other kids for their lunch money. The concept that his actions created more danger in the world, not less, is beyond his understanding.
He set a standard, a tone, that still exists. Laws are for the little people to follow, the lash that keeps them behind the plow, while the powerful may ignore them with impunity. That is true in this country which has become a Security State, and it is true in how this country behaves in relation to it's international obligations.
He argued with Bush for Scooter Libby to be pardoned, but he would never come clean, that Libby was only trying to protect him. His loyalty only goes so far. A Chicken Hawk to the end.
While the program presented some opposing thoughts to a number of Cheney's views, there were very few tough questions asked, and few challenges to his assertions. Yet despite the kid gloves with which the former vice president was handled, he still came off as an soulless ideologue who was uninterested in any fact which might conflict with what he had made up his mind he wanted to do.
It appears to me that in many ways he accomplished his main goal, which was to mold the United States into his own image. He removed morality and justice from the equation, making us mirror images of the evil we found ourselves confronted with back on September 11th. Will we ever recover?
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Sunday, March 10, 2013
You'd think I could just leave it alone
I really should stop myself, but I was reading another one of those absurd Yahoo news reports. This one was in their Finance section, talking about Social Security. The news stories themselves are usually pretty innocuous stuff. Nothing that took too much thinking to compose, but if the author stays away from trying to interpret the facts they have copied from Wikipedia then mostly harmless. It is the moronic comments that get my blood pressure going.
Now the idiots who simply make fun of the the left, or the right for that matter, I can just gloss over. It is the ones who parrot solutions that they have no comprehension of that I find most irritating. You know the old adage. better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and confirm it.
And the one 'solution' that I keep reading is to privatize Social Security. I wonder how many of them (those not being paid by Karl Rove and his ilk) have any idea what that really means.
Put simply, the goal of Social Security is to replace some subset of your income when you are no longer able to work. It does that by levying a tax on both employers and employees, and investing the money in US government debt. That is nowhere near the highest possible return on the money, but it is the safest. The cost of overhead is somewhere between 0.7% and 1.0% (I have seen figures quoted in that range from a number of sources). How would you replace that.
Tell everyone you're on your own? That's like telling everyone that they have to be their own doctor! Imagine a minimum wage cashier in 7-11 being told to invest this money for their retirement. Stock market, gold futures, mutual funds, or any Ponzi scheme that comes along, it is all up to him.
I do invest for my retirement, and doing so intelligently is not an easy thing. I pay for advise not because I am stupid but because I am not a professional investor. I maintain a diversified portfolio of stocks and mutual funds. The older I get the less time I would have to replace this money. And if the market should tank, just before I have to retire, I am screwed. But I would still survive. If I were on the bottom rung of society, without the other assets I have accumulated in my life, it would mean homelessness.
How about government approved mutual funds? In order to be eligible for investment, they would need to meet certain criteria. We have seen just how well that has worked in the veterans benefits and student loan industry. For profit colleges with absurdly low graduation rates, who exist only to suck students dry and then throw them away have been running rampant for years now. Can you imagine the next time the debate for funding the people who would police these funds came around?
The people who are in favor of privatizing Social Security are the same ones who think we spend too much on food inspectors and who try to hamstring any attempt to rein in rampant abuses of consumers. They continue to block the appointment of anyone to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau because they consider such things as contracts written in plain English to be an unfair burden on business. You really think they will regulate the investment vehicles for Social Security?
Privatizing Social Security is just code for taking the money and turning it into additional bonuses for investment bankers. People like me, who can afford to pay for professional advise, and have the education and the time to devote to monitoring their investments, will do OK. The people for who Social Security will be the difference between a modest retirement and living in a cardboard box, those are the ones that would suffer.
And the ones who are pushing these concept? They know that too.
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Now the idiots who simply make fun of the the left, or the right for that matter, I can just gloss over. It is the ones who parrot solutions that they have no comprehension of that I find most irritating. You know the old adage. better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and confirm it.
And the one 'solution' that I keep reading is to privatize Social Security. I wonder how many of them (those not being paid by Karl Rove and his ilk) have any idea what that really means.
Put simply, the goal of Social Security is to replace some subset of your income when you are no longer able to work. It does that by levying a tax on both employers and employees, and investing the money in US government debt. That is nowhere near the highest possible return on the money, but it is the safest. The cost of overhead is somewhere between 0.7% and 1.0% (I have seen figures quoted in that range from a number of sources). How would you replace that.
Tell everyone you're on your own? That's like telling everyone that they have to be their own doctor! Imagine a minimum wage cashier in 7-11 being told to invest this money for their retirement. Stock market, gold futures, mutual funds, or any Ponzi scheme that comes along, it is all up to him.
I do invest for my retirement, and doing so intelligently is not an easy thing. I pay for advise not because I am stupid but because I am not a professional investor. I maintain a diversified portfolio of stocks and mutual funds. The older I get the less time I would have to replace this money. And if the market should tank, just before I have to retire, I am screwed. But I would still survive. If I were on the bottom rung of society, without the other assets I have accumulated in my life, it would mean homelessness.
How about government approved mutual funds? In order to be eligible for investment, they would need to meet certain criteria. We have seen just how well that has worked in the veterans benefits and student loan industry. For profit colleges with absurdly low graduation rates, who exist only to suck students dry and then throw them away have been running rampant for years now. Can you imagine the next time the debate for funding the people who would police these funds came around?
The people who are in favor of privatizing Social Security are the same ones who think we spend too much on food inspectors and who try to hamstring any attempt to rein in rampant abuses of consumers. They continue to block the appointment of anyone to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau because they consider such things as contracts written in plain English to be an unfair burden on business. You really think they will regulate the investment vehicles for Social Security?
Privatizing Social Security is just code for taking the money and turning it into additional bonuses for investment bankers. People like me, who can afford to pay for professional advise, and have the education and the time to devote to monitoring their investments, will do OK. The people for who Social Security will be the difference between a modest retirement and living in a cardboard box, those are the ones that would suffer.
And the ones who are pushing these concept? They know that too.
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