Oh yeah, that tuition debate

I've been fairly lucky. College has not really cost me a whole ton of money. In fact, by the time I'm done with college, I probably won't even rack up $15,000 worth of student loans. But that's the beauty of attending the University of Houston, which despite the lack of cultural and educational recognition in comparison to the two institutions located in Austin and College Station, the school provides the best bang for your buck in post-secondary education at least here in Texas.

I've heard three arguments about the cost of collegiate education and what to do about it -- one from Presidential candidate Ron Paul, one from PayPal founder Peter Thiel, and another from Mark Cuban.

Ron Paul, in yet another item he attributes the federal government for fucking up, claims that federal government involvement has driven up the price of tuition at colleges. His general argument is that because of governmental involvement in the subsidizing of education, it has allowed colleges to raise tuition to outrageous levels. Paul is advocating for the divorce of government and education because of his strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.

Thiel, in an interview with the conservative publication The National Review, opined that education is merely another economic bubble that is waiting to burst. He took it from a business standpoint for he believed that collegiate education had little return on investment. I would assume this comes from the fact that a lot of students emerge from college broke, up their neck in debt, and many times do not find jobs right away in the degree that they spent four, five, and six years working on.

Cuban wrote in his blog that student loans should be capped at $2,000. He feels that it would lead to a decrease in tuition costs because he thinks that the amount that can be secured by students through loans allows for colleges to charge more and more for tuition.

The cost of tuition has skyrocketed so much to the point where student debt has overtaken credit card debt to become the biggest debt crisis in the United States. In fact, the total amount of student debt in the United States has cracked $1 trillion. Ouch.

There's three reasons why most of us go or went to college -- one, we believe(d) that it is the only sensible path to a much more comfortable living; two, because our parents, teachers, and other peers instill(ed) in us the value of college, or three, both of the aforementioned reasons. It's especially true now as more and more people go to college than ever before.

There has been a major culture shift in the United States and the rising cost of tuition reflects that. However, I would stop short of saying that a supply-demand curve could be applied to it because any sort of equilibrium price that would exist is absolutely imaginary. As the United States transformed from mainly a blue-collar economy to a more service and information economy, businesses that specialized in providing services and information put more and more stock in having a collegiate-educated workforce, which spurred a greater demand for post-secondary education, which in turn led a rise in tuition as colleges had to find a way to pay to provide for more students. Not to mention, colleges and universities have seen a decrease in funding from state government since the 1970s (thus putting the burden of educational funding on the federal government), which led to even greater rises in tuition as enrollment continued to increase. While many students (including myself) still turn to the federal government loans for financial aid (which accounted for over 60% of financial aid that 2007-2008 graduates received), most higher education institutions are relying on additional private sources (donations) for funding in addition to tuition.

In short, I do believe that out of control tuition increases would have occurred even if the Higher Education Act of 1965 was never signed into law by President Johnson. I think more than anything the perceived value of higher education, through changes economic climate, drove up tuition costs. As higher education institutions started to cater to more students these institutions became more driven to provide more for their students, if it was by way of better residential facilities, better on-campus technology, better educational talent, better degree programs, or even additional degrees being offered and awarded.

So in response to each of the arguments:

I vehemently disagree with Ron Paul about blaming government intervention with rising tuition costs. Tuition was already rising in the 1960s as it is and as the economy transitioned away from blue collar jobs to service and information jobs, thus adding more value to post-secondary education, the explosion in the cost of tuition was going to happen regardless of whether or not the federal government stepped in and started subsidizing college students' education. Ironically the free market champion can actually blame the market: as the United States increasingly de-industrialized the economy as the information revolution started to take hold in the 1980s and 1990s, it sparked a movement amongst students to enroll in community colleges and four year universities to even remotely have a chance a comfortable living. And even then for many that has not proven to be a reality.

I also disagree with fellow libertarian Thiel, who fails to get that there's no real such thing as a legitimate, quantitative return on investment on education because any perceived return on investment is subjective. Literally, someone who went to college, from undergraduate to medical school and residency, totaling 12 years in college could say that they had a poor return on investment on their education if they questioned the value of making $160,000 a year yet be saddled with nearly $130,000 in student debt while someone else could be in the exact same situation and argue the opposite. Furthermore, education isn't a bubble -- if the only real way to make a decent living in today's service and information economy is to acquire the necessary knowledge to participate in today's service and information economy then students are going to turn to robust higher education.

I also disagree with Cuban for virtually the same reasons as I disagree with Paul: collegiate tuition rose because more students started to find more value in education as government funding for it (especially from the states) decreased for it. Like I said, even if the Higher Education Act of 1965 was never enacted, tuition would have still skyrocketed at a faster rate than inflation because of the transition away from a blue collar driven industrial economy.

Furthermore, I think what has to be analyzed, in my opinion, is what should and what shouldn't higher institutions of learning should force students to pay for and what should or shouldn't higher institutions of learning be providing for. How much should faculty really be paid? How much money do schools really need to function? Those are the questions that we really have to be asking before we can really start a discussion on how to lower the cost of tuition here in the United States

Me, Myself, and the Austrians, and the Keynesians.

If you ever read anything by Austrivangelist Ron Paul and Keynepologist Paul Krugman (I refer to both of them in humor because of Ron Paul's preaching of the Austrian school and Krugman's tireless defense of Keynes theories), it's obvious that one economic school resents the other. However, I give credit to both -- Paul is well versed and educated in Austrian theory and Krugman has won a Nobel Prize on Economics.

Most of you probably don't really know about the Austrian theory or the Keynesian theory, at least by name. However, nearly all of you know some form of it colloquially.

Austrian theory champions free markets, tying the money supply to the gold standard, believe credit cycles fuel business cycles, believe that inflation only comes in the form of monetary supply growth, and a rejection of math as a form of economic analysis. In Layman's terms, respectively: its that lassiez-faire concept you learned in U.S. history, its exchanging money for gold, it's securing loans and credit cards to buy more shit, it's things costing too much because there's too much money, and it's math being unable to predict what humans can do. Give credit where credit is due to the Austrians -- Hayek was screaming bloody murder about the prospects of a financial collapse early in 1929. You probably have read about what happened in October of that year. Paul raised red flags about the housing bubble as early as 2002.

On the other hand, Keynesian theory (even if it somewhat deviated from Keynes original theories as time went on), is the advocacy of government involvement in the economy, in the form of fiscal policy from the central bank, a large public sector to complement the private sector, and through government investment (spending) in the economy. A better way to put it is government stimuli, government banks, government stimulus programs, and government bailouts. The reasoning behind government intervention, according to Keynesians, that pretty much the free market can't do everything by itself. A cornerstone to Keynesian thought is the belief that aggregate demand is the preeminent driver of the economy. In the course of U.S. history, Keynesian economics seen its effect in the New Deal programs of the Great Depression, the post-World War II era, and the omnibus stimulus programs of the Bush and Obama administrations.

I believe that aggregate demand drives the economy, that the public sector is actually a valuable asset to the economy, that government can be good to promote economic stability, and the free market has the propensity to fuck up. I guess I can put on my Keynesian hat.

I believe that yes, access to credit can fuel demand, that loose credit is disastrous, that the free market side of the economy is what really puts our food on the table,  and unbridled confidence in the government to act as an insurance agency for an economy can prove extremely damaging to government fiscal policy. Well, I guess I can put on my Austrian hat as well.

At the same time, before the era of the Federal Reserve and the American mixed economy, there were still bubbles, recessions, and depressions. Railroad bubbles, fueled by unstable financing, set off economic depressions in 1873 (which, lasting until 1879, remains the longest period of economic contraction in U.S. history and was the first economic event to be called "The Great Depression") and again in 1893 (which was actually seen as worse than the event of 1873-79). The United States actually had three severe recessions in the 20th century before the Great Depression (in 1907, in 1918-1919 after World War I, and then the second part of that post-World War I recession in 1920-1921). In a demonstration of how bad things were -- it was J.P. Morgan himself that bailed out the U.S. Treasury in 1893 and Morgan inspired New York bankers to rally to reestablish confidence in the economy in 1907.

By the way, it was Panic of 1907, along with the numerous bank runs that had been taking places intermittently in the years previous, that gave birth to the Federal Reserve in 1913.

So taking history into consideration, it should be recognized economic booms and busts are standard, no matter what economic theory we subscribe to. There will still be economic bubbles that will plateau and then burst. There will still be credit bubbles because throughout the course of the past few centuries of human history, we've proven that no matter how hard we try, not everything can be paid up front and the acceptance of deferred payments will always be a cornerstone to an economy. There are winners and losers and capitalism; it can be argued its a mathematical outcome; but those that are "losers" in the capitalist economy can bring socioeconomic chaos.

There has to be a stabilizing check and balance on the free market -- of which government serves that role. I am not one to have total blind faith in the free market. Governments do make mistakes; we've seen plenty of them and thus I won't have total blind faith in the government, either. However, I'd rather have government involved in the economy than not be involved in it.

The Keynesian hat stays. I'll always err on the side of the mixed economy.

My apologies, Dr. Paul.

The Same Old NBA

The NBA is back. Like most others, I'm struggling to give a damn.

Nonetheless here we are less than two weeks before the season tips off on Christmas Day, and there are two glaring storylines persisting that illustrates the disarray of the National Basketball Association.

Kaiser David Stern, in a move out of egotistically driven, short-sighted stupidity, voided a trade between the Los Angeles Lakers, the Houston Rockets, and the New Orleans Hornets in the incident known as "The Trade for Chris Paul That Technically Happened, but Kaiser Stern Said It Never Happened." Sure the Rockets were getting fucked over in the trade anyway, but now the Rockets are stuck with two players (Luis Scola and Kevin Martin) who are hurt with no moves on the horizon to even rectify this by distraction, considering the Memphis Grizzlies beat their offer for Marc Gasol. The Lakers lost a major part of what was one of the greatest back courts ever assembled in the history of the National Basketball Association in Lamar Odom as part of the trade-fail fallout. The New Orleans Hornets ended up having to settle for a weaker package from the L.A. Clippers for Chris Paul.

The soon-to-be Brooklyn New Jersey Nets and the Orlando Magic are biting their own collective nails because of how much Dwight Howard means or could mean to the futures of each organization. It does not really help that the unhappy center probably has no real clue as to what the hell he really wants to do with himself.

In other words, it's the same old theme of small-market teams can't hold on to players and here comes the usual suspects stockpiling on talent.

Yet, in the end, it's the same old NBA.

I guess the real difference in today's NBA is that four teams (Lakers, Celtics, Heat, and Spurs), instead of two teams like it was in the 1980s (the Lakers and the Celtics) or one team in the 1990s (the Bulls), dominate the entire league. In addition, today's dominant quartet also differ in that, while the Lakers and Heat can count three of the best players in the NBA on their squads (Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Dwayne Wade), the three individually are not leagues beyond the rest of the premier players in the NBA. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird effectively ran the NBA in the 1980s, even with rising stars such as Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, and Charles Barkley. Jordan ran the NBA in the 1990s. And what I mean by "ran" is that the road to success that any other team was going to embark on during those eras ran through Johnson, Bird, and Jordan. Bryant, James, and Wade have not reached that point, even if Bryant's Lakers have made 3 straight NBA finals appearances and James and Wade form arguably the best 1-2 punch in the league since Bryant and Shaq.

Yet, it is the same old NBA as to where it is a lot more difficult to compete in this league than it should be. There's a reason with Howard wants to leave the Orlando Magic -- even he sees that unless the Magic waits years to build up cash or completely tanks their season, the Magic will never acquire a top-tier point guard or power forward. It's the reason why Chris Paul wants to leave New Orleans -- he knows he'll never see any robust talent around him to where he'll get a ring unless, like I said for Orlando, they lounge around and build up cash, or play for a lottery pick. And just wait about 3 years -- it will probably be the same situation in Chicago with Derrick Rose, even though Rose has a decent supporting cast around him.

Note two things:

• Since 1999, only three teams have won the Western Conference Championship in the NBA -- that's the Lakers, the Spurs, and the Mavericks.
• In each of the 3 years that an Eastern Conference team won the NBA title - (2004 with the Pistons, 2006 with the Heat, and 2008 with the Celtics), the Eastern Conference playoff seeding featured at least one team with a losing record -- in fact, the 2004 Eastern Conference Playoffs featured a 36-46 Boston Celtics team. The 2007-2008 Boston Celtics and the 2010-2011 Miami Heat are the only two teams since the 1997-1998 Chicago Bulls to even have home court advantage in the NBA Finals.

While the Lakers, Spurs, and Mavericks are all solid, competitive franchises in their own right, it is also a testament to the reality that there's no parity in the NBA -- as in, its not a wide open league in terms of who will win a league championship, unlike in the NFL, the NHL, and MLB. What that snowballs into is fan bases writing their own teams off, meaning no money for the franchises, meaning even further that teams, as I said before, will either wait and build up cash or hope that they end up with 50 or 60 losses. While I'll admit that I am a fan of the Los Angeles Lakers, I am a bigger fan of basketball, and NBA basketball would vastly be more enjoyable if it wasn't just yet another season of the usual suspects.

If I Were A Poor Black Kid...

The other day, I probably read the most idealistic op-ed ever. And I mean ever.

Let me begin by saying that I did not grow up with a family that was well off. My mom and my grandparents financed their cost of living primarily by credit, and indeed we're paying for it now. However, I lived a pretty comfortable life growing up. I was never abused. I went to school. I got good grades. I only ended up with a GED instead of a high school diploma because of issues surrounding a half credit. I'm presently in the middle of my seventh school year taking of either being in college or taking collegiate courses.

At the same time, I grew up with a luxury that is a cornerstone of suburban life -- stability. Stability is what people drove people in the suburbs in the first place. White Americans fled the urban core for the suburbs in the white flight eras of the 1960s and 1970s, for a culture of stability, for they resented the change brought on by black Americans moving into their neighborhoods. Black Americans fled to suburbia increasingly in the 1990s and 2000s for a more stable, healthy climate as opposed to the turbulence of the inner city. Families are more apt to settle in the suburban world because of the stable, family-friendly environment. But of course, I am well aware that stability is indeed a perception.

Gene Marks, the author of the piece that is the namesake of this post, wrote a list of things that he would do if he was "a poor black kid" in the inner city. He reasoned that his children were no smarter than the kids coming out of the 'hood, and thus a lot of his reasoning is based upon a vicariously distorted, romanticized view of himself as a progressive, education-hungry "poor black kid" in America. He meant well, he really did, and he said a lot of stuff that, if pursued, could lead a poor black kid to some measure of success. However, he still falls into the same trap that most suburbanites fall into when it comes to commentating about issues of the inner city -- "if I can do it, you can do it, too, and if it's available to you, you can do this, and you'll be successful" -- completely ignoring what is really at the genesis as to why many inner-city black children fall into a pattern of mediocrity.

It's rooted in the climate and more importantly -- the culture that they were raised in. While it would sound synonymous, I differentiate climate being more local (as in local in the home) in comparison to culture, which refers to the community. The one thing that I've never seen written very often about in the editorial press, such as the one that inspired this post, is the entire culture that is brought about by low incomes and poverty. Sociologists have written about it but few social commentary pieces when it comes to the plight of inner city black children ignore it aside from how low incomes and poverty create a much more fertile ground for criminal activity. Some of it is a passive aggressiveness of an entire community, some of it is a lack of hope of an entire community, but a lot of it is rooted in socially desecrating patterns that, unfortunately, do not get broken.

The cornerstone of inner city life is survival. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about that. Ignore the more sexual hedonistic, materialistic, and misogynistic shit that you hear about in popular hip-hop music. It's really about survival. And because of the stakes getting raised higher because of the impoverished culture, survival takes precedent. And because its more about survival and less about stability, there exists a value structure that is completely different than what is in the suburbs or in more affluent neighborhoods. Think about, especially for those that are reading this and live in Houston -- how can Gulfton in Southwest Houston be one of the most dangerous areas in the entire city, yet Bellaire, a city that is an enclave within the city of Houston and sits one mile east of Gulfton, can be one of the safest areas in Greater Houston? Same thing can be said for the Spring Branch area of Houston versus the Memorial area of Houston that sits to the south of Spring Branch across the Katy Freeway. A different culture spurs a different climate which is going to spur different results.

A survival culture and stability culture are different and sequential. You have to survive before you can achieve stability. If you're in the suburbs and you're not fighting for your own survival, then all you're left to fight for is either achieving stability or maintaining it. What this translates to for children growing up are less stressors, which will provide children the ability to do better academically, to do better socially, and to be better off in general than their inner city counterparts. I'm not saying that there isn't a survival culture in the suburbs, however, because it exists, but not to the rampant, widespread degree of the inner city where its an affliction on a wider swath of a demographic. I also want to make it known that I'm not saying "better off" in terms of superiority, either. Middle class and wealthy suburban kids, or hell, middle class and wealthy urban kids statistically fare better academically (better grades, high school graduation, and collegiate attendance), socially (less likely to be involved in crime), and better off (quality of life), than poor kids from the inner city or even poor kids in the suburbs because of the different climate of which the culture they are apart of spurs.

In short, and really the whole point of this post is this: the survival culture creates a different value system. Good grades and education is important, yes, but if whole point of making it in inner city dystopia is doing what you can to survive and that mantra fuels a troubled climate in the household which creates issues at schools and on the streets, then good grades and education is not going to carry weight. It's especially true when it comes to young black men my age -- the reason why the likelihood of inner city black men getting killed or going to prison is so high because of climate they were raised in, fueled by the culture that is crafted by low incomes and poverty.

So going back to what Marks wrote about: it's idealistic, not because there aren't any poor inner-city black children that aren't studious, because believe me, there are many, but because the climate that the grow up in as a consequence of a survival culture generally doesn't provide for it. I guess the best way to put in terms of attempting to summarize the survival culture is the point of instant gratification as compared to eventual, worthwhile payoff. If Marks was really a "poor black kid" in the inner city, then he'd see for himself why many of the things that he would supposedly do would almost never occur. It's easy to say vicariously what you would do in someone's situation until you actually get why they're in that situation in the first place.

Greatest Fallacy Ever: The Middle Class

We as human beings like balance. When there are differences, we tend to want to compromise for a resolution. When there are polarizing views, we tend to want to take a middle view as we all find something to agree with or disagree with no matter what side we're standing on. We generally believe that absolution is mere idealism because out of every one person that conforms, there's another that's serving as a renegade.

So it's no surprise that we developed the concept of the middle class here in the United States, really taking shape in the postwar years of the 1950s and 1960s as many Americans, many for the first time, were able to participate in the economy in ways that they were never able to before, exercising their power of choice in a favorable economic climate -- even if poverty levels were at 20% (and dropping by 1959) and a lot of the economic boom was only enjoyed by whites. The American middle class became sacred ground -- those that believe they are middle class live by it, adore and resent the rich, pity and resent the poor, and in the midst of it developed an "it should be about us" attitude.

The reality is that the middle class is the biggest fallacy to ever be devised out of mythical Americana.

There's only two socioeconomic classes -- those that can weather the economic storm with little scathing and those that can weather the economic storm with massive consequences, largely debt. Observe the following three things:

• According to a graph produced by CNN Money with data from IRS and analysis from Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, the average American income had only gradually increased in the years between 1917 and 2008, with it being largely stagnated since 1988. However, the top 1% in income earners have see their incomes rise 33% in the years between 1988 and 2008. Cost of living inflation has the greatest adverse effect on those making average incomes, and to mitigate cost of living increases against incomes that are not really going anywhere, people generally had to turn to increased borrowing (i.e. credit cards). (Source CNN Money)
• That same article cited three main factors -- outsourcing, American economic transition, and the decline of unions -- that contributed to incomes largely being stagnant for the wide majority of Americans. Give credit to technological advances as well, even though it was not nearly as credited as the first three things I mentioned. Wealthier Americans have more to gain from a company having a solid economy of scale (when the average cost to produce something falls against increasing input, which pretty much forms the basic motivation for outsourcing) generally because of capital gains. (Source CNN Money)
• American household debt is standing at 114% (through the first quarter of 2011), down from the peak of 130% in 2007. While debt is a weight that affects everybody, you have to take something into consideration -- the lower your income, the less liquid your assets are, because most likely you have liabilities tied to those said assets (i.e. auto home, home loan, or massive credit card debt). I will note that considering home loans and auto loans are harder to come by now because banks realize that granting easy credit is a stupid fucking practice and people in general cutting back on expenses (thus inhibiting consumerism), the debt to income ratio will go down, but I expect it to remain over 100% for a while. (source: Wall Street Journal).

There's two further viewpoints that can be made. I'm going to express each along with the flaw in both:

The first thing that can be said, at least for those that can weather an economic storm, is that these said people are smart with their money. They don't live outside their means. Their consumerism is in harmonic balance with their individual buying power, as they will not make economic choices that they cannot pay for either immediately or within due time with confidence. A further argument beyond that is that these people that have money and are financially happy are "driven". They're "go-getters". They "realize" that capitalism is an economic system that "rewards" and not "gives".

The issue with that view is that that's not the absolute reason why these said people are in good financial health, especially the extremely wealthy. Higher incomes provide additional insulation against any major changes in the economy that could pose an adverse direct effect. The majority of Americans went into poor to bad financial health because their increased dependence on borrowed money -- i.e., increasing costs to finance a car, to buy a home, to finance college tuition, and to finance day to day expense either necessities or luxuries.

The second is that the wealthy are hording the money, the wealthy have eroded the middle class, and all government does is either cater to the very rich or very poor. The middle class has been victimized. The illegal aliens are ruining the American middle class. It's the whole American economic system versus the middle class.

It's not really the sole reason why the so called "middle class" is being "attacked". As the CNN Money article noted, because of the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs (as companies increasingly found it lucrative to hire in places with a lower cost of living with favorable exchange rates as it is indeed cheaper), the United States economy is shifting from hard skilled, blue collar economy to a soft skilled, white collar economy which gives even increased value to collegiate education. In essence, because of the outsourcing of work that has provided increased competition for job seekers amongst each other, it causes a downward force on wages (hell, Adam Smith said it himself). Ironically (and I say this because Adam Smith is seen as the preeminent champion of free market, lassiez-faire economics), Karl Marx actually wrote about what happens when companies becomes motivated by profit at the expense of the worker, which loosely concurs Smith's argument, and illustrates what is happening today.

The truth is the middle class never really existed. When adjusting for inflation, as evidenced in the graph, average incomes have largely remained stagnant for the past 70 years, except for the gradual increase in the post-World War II years. We could get into a further argument about the role of inflation, but it only confirms that you either can make it in the economy or you can't. Even if the money supply was backed by specie, it wouldn't change the fact that economic cycles still exist, wages wouldn't change for most, and inflation would still exist. In fact, you can look here to see how violent inflation rates were during the years under the gold standard, and especially during the years of the Bretton Woods system (1944 - 1971). In truth, wages are generally nominal -- that's the reality of a fiat currency -- and the real value of your wages is only as good as how much you can exercise your power of choice freely. You may make $60,000 a year but if your total yearly financial obligations average out to say $70,000, then that $60,000 doesn't look as alluring.

The Power of Liberty, Part I

Just what do I really mean by the power of liberty?

The power of liberty means that I can choose to live my life free of the shackles of collectivist and corporatist thought.

The power of liberty means that I can choose to live my life free of religious indoctrination.

The power of liberty means that I can choose to live my life in peace.

The power of liberty means that I can choose to live my life because I have been given that inalienable right.

The power of liberty means that I can choose to live my life to my own terms and conditions, so as long as I respect the human rights of others.

The power of liberty means that I can choose to live my life to suit myself, so as long as I respect the human rights of others, and conformity should not be my primary goal.

The power of liberty means that I can choose to live my life free of any curse that is spoken of by those who think we're in control of the universe.

The power of liberty means that I can choose to live my life with the view that freedom is my ultimate goal.

And most of all, the power of liberty means that I can choose to live my life by walking down my own road, planned and paved by me, and be truly honest with myself about it.

The power of liberty is real and it's sacred to me.

Could we learn something from the Canadian model?

I came across a highly interesting column concerning early 1990s Canada, who which saw their debt to GDP ratio skyrocket, slow growth stemming from high interest rates, and downgrades by the major credit rating agencies. Canada's welfare state grew under Prime Ministers William Lyon Mackenzie King, Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau, and Brian Mulroney, but reached a point that by the 1980s, fiscal issues stemming from the expansive social programs along with the slowing growth were looming and would eventually explode heading into the 1990s. Further exacerbating this issue was the weakness of the Canadian dollar.

After a Liberal Party budget released in 1994 to widespread criticism for the fact that it still included spending increases despite the numerous reforms that were included in the budget package, Chretien, then Finance Minister Paul Martin, and the rest of the Liberal Party broke out the scissors, shears, axes, chainsaws -- whatever adjective that describes cutting that you want to use -- and took to reducing Canada's debt.

Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio reached its all time peak in 1995-96 in the midst of the implements of the cuts. Growth actually did stagnate, according to a CBIC study, whenever Martin called for widespread spending freezes in 1996. Chretien would push for departments to cut budgets -- which ranged from as little as 5% to as much as 65%. In addition, the ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases were 7 to 1, as Chretien would note in his interview with Reuters it was about "what was needed most." The spending cuts did have adverse effects as Canada's Medicare system suffered budget cuts that lengthened medical waiting lists (which is what you hear of constantly when United States conservatives deride the Canadian healthcare system) and put many provinces in a serious bind as they depended on the federal government for funding of some services.

The final component of the turnaround came when the Bank of Canada lowered interest rates in 1996, allowing Canada to finally reap the benefits of the fairly positive global economy, spurred by the United States and China's economic growth. Canada's budget returned to black ink in 1997 and remained so until the global financial crash and North American auto industry crash of 2008 and 2009. There's also the fundamental difference between the Canadian outcome from the recession as opposed to the outcome in the United States -- Canada emerged from it a year later as the most fiscally healthy country of all the G7 nations.

There are two key things about the success of Canada -- for one, the Canadian government scaled back to a more manageable proportion of size and role versus population it is supposed to serve. Let's not get confused here -- Canadian social programs are held to high regard and are fairly popular in Canada, even though some of the Canadians I spoke to complain about the Goods and Service Tax.  In addition, and probably the most important thing, is that the Canadian government was largely united in tackling the deficit.

However, here in the present-day United States, we're treated to ideological warfare between a left that is sick of concessions and a right that is exercising reactionary power play. Austrian economists such as presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-TX) argue for spending cuts, tax cuts, and reduced government while Keynesian economists such as Nobel laureate professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman that argue against draconian cuts because of the harm they would do to the economy. I cite Paul as an example because Paul has demonstrated to be the only person on the Republican side that truly has an understanding of economic theory. I cite Krugman, not because of him being a Nobel Prize winner in economics, but because he is the largest trumpeter for the mixed economy.

The Canadian government's austerity push in the mid-1990s proved both of them to be right. As stated before, spending freeze mandates and tax cuts actually stagnated Canadian economic growth (proving Krugman right), while at the same time allowed the Canadian government to become leaner and more efficient (proving Paul right). However, the fundamental difference was how instrumental the central bank was in Canada's recovery -- something that would be to the chagrin of Paul, but not exactly -- the Bank of Canada decided to finally rectify years of poor monetary policy by reducing interest rates. The Federal Reserve's monetary policy is pointless -- low interest rates really only work when banks see credit extension as an asset and not a liability.

The true value of Canada's turnaround is not necessarily about luck; its about how political leaders put aside ideology for the greater good of a nation in recognition of what needed to be done. The Liberal Party cutting spending is similar to the Republican Party reversing Bush era tax cuts, but as much as the Liberal Party hated to do it (as then Finance Minister Paul Martin once disclosed), the Party had to set aside its ideological platform of social welfare expansion for the greater good of Canada. The Liberal Party actually demonstrated that neither political party has been able to demonstrate down here -- putting aside a staunch ideology stance to bring needed stability to the country instead of only having a narrow minded view through the eyeglasses of their beliefs as to how to achieve it. The greatest failure, in my opinion, of Washington these days is that a political party's need to triumph in political chess is outweighing getting anything done -- especially in the case of the Republican Party.

There was an additional footnote that Chretien and others noted that politicians can still win elections despite massive austerity measures. However, one thing that kept Chretien in power for 10 years as Prime Minister was the growth of the Canadian economy in the late 90s to the early 2000s. If people can see a beneficial payoff of a given administration, then people will keep that administration in power. People saw the payoff in keeping Ronald Reagan in power in 1984, Bill Clinton in 1996, and George W. Bush in 2004.

So what is the greatest lesson that can be learned from the Canadian austerity model of the 1990s? Its not the spending cuts and tax cuts and those said cuts exceeding, by proportion, increased taxation. The reason why the measures taken by the Liberal Party of the mid-1990s worked for Canada is because Canada provided a welfare state that was way too big for a population to be able to pay for and had an economical system that allowed for the federal government to carry too much weight in the mixed economy balance. The issue in the United States is less about the welfare state and more about entitlement spending and an eroding tax base augmented by a complicated tax code that actually does more bad than good to the fiscal health of the United States. The biggest lesson learned is that the controlling Liberal Party set aside ideology to solve a problem. The United States government needs to solve problems first and worry about how that problem solving abides to ideology second (preferably, not really worry about it at all). A continued failure to do that will only exacerbate problems and quite possibly lead the United States to that "decline" from the perch of secured supremacy in an insecure world.

On The Subject of Abuse

I'm going to tell two different stories in this blog post -- the one that the media has been covering in a frenzy and one that should serve as more than just a plaintive footnote, but won't.

The first story, of course, is the Penn State sex scandal, where former Nittany Lion defensive coordinator and professor emiterus Jerry Sandusky has been accused of sexually abusing young boys over the course of the past 15 years (or longer, for that the earliest reported incident was in the mid-1990s). It occurred at Sandusky's private residence and even on the Penn State campus -- apparently under the noses of Penn State administrators and now former Penn State head coach Joe Paterno. I'll save discussion of whether or not there was any merit to have Paterno terminated after over 60 years at Penn State for another post. The details of the abuse is absolutely disgusting and I feel deep empathy for the boys, now young men, that had their lives ruined. The coping strategy -- for both men and women that have endured years of sexual abuse -- is brutal. There's nothing that makes me angrier than innocent children having their innocence stripped at the hands of a predator that has pedophilia running through their veins.

Let's face it -- we're going to talk for years about the purported failure of Penn State to act, considering that the University Police, who has the same jurisdiction as the state police of Pennsylvania, did not take a more proactive role in pursuing an aggressive investigation into these allegations which could have prevented additional abuse. And who knows whether or not Sandusky has abused other young boys even in the past year, two years, or even three years as the targeted boys were from his annual camp. I would have to unfortunately err with the belief that Sandusky has continued his abuse because as my government professor once told my class that there is no such thing as rehabilitating pedophilia. It's the same conversation we have about the Catholic Church, which undoubtedly has a legacy of abuse that extends for centuries. It's heartbreaking.

The second story I'm going to tell you is about Ashley Billasano, a high school student of suburban Houston. After over 100 posts on Twitter of an emotional catharsis revealing the abuse she had suffered from at the hands of family members and other men, she ended her young life after attempting previously a month before. She was frustrated and depressed over the fact that she never received justice for the abuse that had endured. What is a damn shame, unfortunately, that there are more stories out there of young people getting abused, too scared to tell, cries falling on deaf ears, and justice not being served.

That is a theme that too many can speak of -- justice not being served. Lackadaisical police work, parents simply not giving a shit, courts enforcing laws that are rather weak when it comes to abuse. Yes, an argument can be made against those that choose to remain silent out of fear and shame, but an overwhelming majority of the time, the silence is not forever and they will speak up.  And on speaking up, whoever, listens or actually does the speaking, it is a call to action, for that now there is a moral obligation to do what needs to be done to keep the predators from preying. But of course, there is not anything that's absolute.

Granted, some people move on to have healthy and productive lives. But this is not a story about if one person can then another person can too. That mentality is foolish and unrealistic, because human emotion is human emotion, and I would think that the whole point of counseling should not necessarily about focusing on what worked on others previously but focusing on what will help the victim specifically. Humanity is a cruel and complex species, with saviors and savages of all shapes, colors, cultures, and ethnic backgrounds, and for what it is worth, it is in our nature to bring about a range of things in a continuum of pleasure and pain on to others and ourselves. Yet, abuse is about one brings pain to others for their own gratification, whether emotional, mental, or in the case of this post, perverse.

I'm trying not to sound too idealist. There's too many caveats to where any points that I am making can be absolute. What can be said, however, is that I hope that anybody that has been abused or is being abused -- and this is going beyond sexual abuse -- overcome their suppressing fear and speak up and act. Save yourself. Save others. Your voice is vital. And hopefully much as possible can be done about justice not being served in the wake of abuse because it's a reality that's not only painful, but can cost lives. There is no such thing as rehabilitation for pedophilia: pedophiles need permanent incarceration.

Love Is The Investment

Here I am trying to be all philosophical again. This time on a subject that I really don't care to be philosophical about -- relationships.

Human emotion and the human mindset are strange things to attempt to be objective about, even for those that take part in the scientific field that requires objectivity. It's a strange thing for me to be objective about for I've certainly run the gauntlet of emotions and thoughts daily and I am certain that I am not the only one.

I'd rather that than live life stoic and nihilist, though whatever meaning I get out of living is of my own judgment.

Historically, I've whined and bitched about getting cheated on, flaked out on, used, blown off, screwed over, this, and that, but none of my whining and bitching was particularly constructive and it was just good whining. As usual, if you're consistently feeling undervalued and unappreciated, your self concept is going to go south. There some people I know that, after piss poor relationship after piss poor relationship, have a self concept and self-esteem so catastrophically low, that they have written themselves off as a lost cause. I've been there and done that. But yes, life is whatever one makes of it. I can look back at all the past attempted endeavors in a relationship and say that it was not meant to be. Or I can say that it's probably better it didn't happen. Or I can say anything that is a synonym for hindsight being 20/20. But what if your vision is better than 20/20? All right, I'm digressing.

Going back to my own personal philosophy of life being a business, a relationship is a partnership. Just like any business, the partnership has to be strong, cooperative, and most importantly, balanced. A partnership is not much of a partnership if it's dominated by one side or one side is not living up to their end of the bargain. It's a partnership in the observable sense, but it's clearly not something that's sustainable. Same as a relationship -- if someone's dominating too much or if someone's not living up to their end of the bargain, then it's not sustainable. That's fairly obvious. However, your foresight has to be clearer than your hindsight for you to realize that and do something about it.

Staying with that philosophy, the corollary is that love is an investment. And just like any investment it is indeed a crapshoot as to what kind of return you will get on it. You may profess all the love and adulation and belief in the world to someone and yet it will pay you no dividends, just like having faith in a stock that could eventually reap no benefits. But there are many times that an investment is worthwhile; a loving investment that is solid and productive that leads to a healthy, prosperous, and stable relationship. However, the bottom line is people invest because they want the payoff, in the case of the relationship -- one that lasts. Which leads to my next point.

Just like in the markets, there are those invest liberally and invest conservatively -- as in, there are those that will invest in as many stocks they can and hopefully there will be one that turns into a clear winner and then there are those that look to make sure that a prospective stock is sound and has room for growth before they put their money towards it. Just like relationships. There are those that will burn through relationships trying to find a winner and then there are those that will sit around until they found what's right for them. I'll admit, I'm in the latter camp.

The truth is, no matter how frequent or how brave or how whatever you are in your approach of finding somebody, it is indeed a game of chance and it is obviously better to know what you have sooner than later, even though its never conclusive. It's the fact that it is never conclusive at the outset and it's only conclusive when a resolution (a dissolving of the relationship or the maintaining of one) is what makes or breaks your self-esteem and self-concept, is what determines who you end up with, is what determines how many times you'll give somebody a second chance, is what determines if you'll play a Nash equilibrium game against yourself, and the list goes on.

Something can be learned from good investments and bad investments. What can be learned from a good investment is that you found a formula of what works. Granted, there's no telling if that formula that a formula works permanently, but it has to be a fluid formula that allows for evolution. A relationship is an evolving investment, an evolving partnership for stagnation only means damnation for the relationship.

As for the bad investment, you can take away what's not working. After a series of bad investments, of which I hope you can recover from, you'll have a clearer picture of what isn't working, whether it is the character of the people you get involved with, whatever faults that they have that you were willing to put up with, or whatever faults that you have that keep a relationship from being successful. Hopefully you will not get caught in the stagnation trap -- as in, the fairy tale that you had at 15 years old, should not be the same fairy tale that you have at 20, which should not be the same fairy tale that you have at 35, and certainly should not be the same fairy tale that you have at 45. 

However, allow me to say this: this is more a philosophical post, not an advice column. If you want advice then here it is: your most rewarding relationship will be a loving investment that you do not have make apologies for. You don't have to make apologies for yourself. You don't have to apologize to yourself. It will be an investment that comes naturally, where dividends and payoffs will be measured in love and happiness instead of pain and despair. This advice will not work for everybody, because indeed life is whatever you make it, but it goes back to what I more or less said in the power of living -- that there is value in this so-called life to be had if you're willing to open yourself up to it.

3 Surprising Teams in the NHL

Toronto Maple Leafs (from MapleLeafs.com, edited heavily by myself). FAIR USE.

Now that an exhilarating postseason of Major League Baseball has concluded, I can turn my attention to my first love -- the National Hockey League. Despite the fact that most teams are a little more than just 1/9th into their season, there are five teams that are standing out right now as surprises. Whether they keep up their early momentum into a Stanley Cup Playoff berth remains seen (I think these three teams will), but considering where that position these teams are coming from, it's still a remarkable start.

I'll start with the Toronto Maple Leafs, whom at long last, may finally be gelling under the Burke-Wilson Era. The Leafs have a special place in my heart as they were the first hockey team I truly followed when I started watching the NHL around 10 years ago. Phil Kessel enters November as the league's leading scorer in goals and total points. Joffrey Lupul and Mikhail Gravboski have also been instrumental in Toronto's top five offensive attack. Captain Dion Phaneuf is off to a strong start manning the blueline (which he credits his defensive partner Carl Gunarsson), and if he keeps this up he'll definitely shed his "overrated" image. My concern is the goaltending -- James Reimer is currently injured and Jonas Gustavsson is consistently inconsistent. However, what will be key for the Leafs besides a healthy James Reimer will be improving its special teams play -- while the Leafs are running in the middle of the pack in terms in their power play, they are putrid in their penalty killing which is near the cellar of the NHL.

LOOK FOR: Reimer to go back to being the starter once he gets healthy. The Leafs are not going anywhere with Gustavsson in goal.

Youth is in full bloom in Edmonton, and the Oilers are beginning November in a three way tie at the top of the Western Conference standings because of it. Rookie Ryan-Nugent-Hopkins is already making his case as the early leader in the Calder Memorial Trophy race by being the first player since The Great One himself to record 11 points in his first 11 NHL games. Second year players Jordan Eberle and Taylor Hall have contributed to strong play on the offensive side of the puck. However, the glaring story of the revival in the Canadian prarie is 38-year-old veteran Nikolai Khabibulin, who is leading the league in goals-against-average and save percentage.  Khabibulin has formed a very good tandem with Devan Dubnyk in the early going, forming quite a two headed monster behind the pipes. Edmonton will make the playoffs -- but I expect Vancouver to wake up and win the Northwest Division.

LOOK FOR: Dubnyk to get more starts than what would be the norm for a back up goalie.

Finally, its the curious case of the Ottawa Senators, after losing five of their first six games, the Sens didn't lose another game in the month of October, rattling off six straight wins. Jason Spezza is among the league leaders in scoring. Winger Milan Michalek is leading the team in goals scored while workhorse defenseman Erik Karlsson has racked up 12 assists. I hope Daniel Alfredsson gets healthy because the team needs him and, as one of my favorite players to follow over the years, hope that he rebounds after last year. The Senators have been proving they win the close games, with five of their last six wins being only by one goal, including two by shootout. That is a testament to the play of Craig Anderson, who settled down now that after allowing 16 goals in his first three starts (losing two of them), he's allowed just 15 in his last five starts (all wins).   However, despite the six game winning streak to close out October, the Senators still have glaring issues on the penalty kill (they ended the month 29th in the NHL).

LOOK FOR: As the Senators somewhat settle down defensively, look for their penalty kill percentage improve.

An honorable mention go out to the Colorado Avalanche, which is having a youth revival of its own.

Final Thoughts on the 2011 Major League Baseball Season

Allow me by first saying that I wholeheartedly hate the St. Louis Cardinals. As an Astros fan, I'm already been conditioned to can't stand them. The Cardinals have ruined, in a way, four seasons for me (2001, 2004, 2006, and 2011)  However, they have some of the best fans in Major League Baseball and for what it's worth, St. Louis is the quintessential baseball town. But it still doesn't change the hatred I have for the team. Nonetheless, before I hate any team and before I love any team, I am a baseball fan first.

Which is why the 2011 World Series is one of the best World Series ever played, the second best World Series played since 1991 (the only World Series better since then is the 2001 World Series, even though the 2002 Series had its moments). I'm guessing every 10 years or so we are in for a treat. Aside from the Cardinals blowing out the Rangers in Game 3 and an anti-climatic Game 6 where the Rangers could not solve Chris Carpenter in anyway, shape, or form, the remaining five games, including the breathtaking classic slugfest of Game 6, was intense and exciting.

And this World Series is exactly what baseball needed.

This is the highest rated World Series not to include the Boston Red Sox or the New York Yankees since 2002 when the San Francisco Giants lost to the then-Anaheim Angels. It served as the culmination of one of the greatest postseasons in recent memory, as 38 out of 41 possible games were played. The World Series featured two teams -- a Rangers team that was widely seen as one of the most complete teams in all of the Major Leagues and a Cardinals team that had Lady Luck on their side from the conclusion of the regular season to the final fly-out of the World Series. What a story Cardinals fans will be able to tell for generations and this eclipses their improbable championship runs of 1964 and 2006, which I'll write about in a separate post.

I can't stress how badly baseball needed this World Series. The World Series was increasingly becoming an afterthought, especially with the absence of the pop culture phenoms Yankees and Red Sox. This World Series should serve as a reminder as to why baseball, despite the long season and the slow pace of the games, is, was, and always will be the true heart and soul of American sports, no matter how many football fans try to dispute this fact. It's the only game where you'll never be able to rattle off how many hits Sid Bream had in his career, but you'll always remember the slow runner for beating out Barry Bonds throw at Fulton County Stadium with the late, great Atlanta Braves announcer Skip Caray screaming "Braves win! Braves win! Braves win!". It's the only game that you'll never remember how many teams Aaron Boone played for but you'll always remember that moonshot to left against the Boston Red Sox in 2003. The Shot Heard Around The World in 1951. Bill Mazeroski in 1960. Bob Gibson sinking a dynasty in 1964. "We'll see you tomorrow night," says Jack Buck after Kirby Puckett's game winning shot in 1991. The Stolen Base that ended the Yankees season in 2004. And now, one pitcher, one arm, and an 11th World Series title to the one of the most storied franchises in the senior circuit in 2011.

With the 2011 World Series, baseball has showed that it can be in the national conscience without it's two most popular franchises being involved in the final stage. It took timely hitting and breathtaking pitching performances. It took home runs that set the pace. It took too many men being left on base. It took promising seasons ending in heart break. It took one team that was apparently anointed as the chosen team by the baseball gods. It took the Boston Red Sox beating themselves out of a postseason berth. It took Delmon Young bashing the Yankees out of the playoffs. It took Chris Carpenter matching wits and pitches with Roy Halladay. It took a baseball renaissance in Milwaukee. It took the venerable Rangers bullpen against the comeback kids from Tampa Bay and the darlings of a depressed city and state in the Detroit Tigers. It took the Cardinals surviving from being a strike away from oblivion not once, but twice. There were so many great stories about this postseason that led to an amazing World Series that it could not be covered all in this post.


I hate the fact that the Cardinals won, but I guess in a way its poetic justice. Here's a team that was left for dead at the beginning of September and they kept playing. They kept showing up everyday and competing. And from there things seemed to go into their favor, just as they did when they stormed up on the Philadelphia Phillies in 1964 and fended off the Houston Astros in 2006. The Cardinals crashed the party when the Phillies finished off the Braves in the last week of the season. Ironically, they would then rid the Phillies in the Division Series. In the NLCS, they kept the Brewers from doing what they did better than any other team in the National League -- winning at home. And finally, in the World Series, the Cardinals were simply clutch when faced with being one strike away from their season ending.

What a story.

What a World Series.

What a postseason.

What a game baseball is.

More On Occupy Wall Street

If anybody has ever been in sales, then you'll know who Grant Cardone is because either somebody reference his training or forced you to watch it. In the car business, I was only referenced to it. His high-energy, positive motivational work has made him pretty much the prominent speaker for the sales profession, and his entrepreneurial work has been covered by the mass media. In fact, he has his own show, Turnaround King, on National Geographic.

If you're looking for a post for me bashing his contributions for the Church of Scientology, you won't find it in this post. Scientology is a joke and not really worth my time shitting on.

What this post is about, however, is his comments made on a Phoenix television station that he uploaded on this account on YouTube describing the Occupy Wall Street movement as a distraction. Many people continue to dismiss that Occupy Wall Street is nothing more than a movement of lazy, anti-capitalist Americans that want a handout. He also noted that he has never seen anything that looks like the mighty 1% of Americans oppressing the other 99%.

Hmm...

Before I get into that, allow me to digress for a moment.  The "American Dream" has been always romanced into a quasi-rags-to-riches story, as hard work, persistence, and dedication will pay off into comfortable living. That's a reasonable statement, and why not? People, such as Grant Cardone can tell that story. It's his story of making his wealth from dirt by taking a sales job and his reinforcement of the entrepreneurial spirit is what sold him so many damn books in the first place. It's a good story.

Same thing can be said about the late Steve Jobs -- his love of technology, his demand for perfection, and his savvy marketing skills brought him great wealth and reverence as the greatest technology executive ever. He too has a rags-to-riches story, from founding Apple in his parents garage to taking Apple to vanguard status in computing and telecommunications.

However, let's not confine ourselves to idealism. You can give your effort to anything and then still come out with nothing. That happens. Especially in sales. There are more people who don't experience what they deem to be success than those that would consider themselves successful and the unsuccessful/successful discrepancy is massive. Capitalism is a crapshoot, but I didn't tell you that.

I recognize that capitalism is a crapshoot. I've been in sales. I'm still in sales, by way of transitioning into the insurance industry. However, I'm also attempting to get a degree in business so I can head to the energy sector. I'm just like a good chunk of the people down in Wall Street -- broke, balancing school and work, and hoping for a payoff with my degree. I also realize that I have a real chance to fall flat on my face, and there is also a chance that if I do fall on my face, it can be as much my fault as it isn't my fault.

I wrote before that there are winners and losers in capitalism. Someone argued with me that this was a result of a mathematical outcome. I'm inclined to agree with him; its just the result of that said mathematical outcome is what brought thousands of people to Wall Street and as such, it moves past being just a mathematical outcome.

I also came up with the concept of "corporate arielism". Some of you would consider it a far fetched idea -- that corporations and the extremely wealthy want the other 99% or so to accept the fact that they have the income, they run the show, and they're in the driver's seat.
 
What I mean by the driver's seat is that they have the financial means necessary to solve many issues that the vast amount of Americans can't. Those issues can be anything; the financial means could be exercised in anyway -- whether its just throwing money at liabilities, throwing money in to invest, or throwing money to lobby politicians.

What I mean by how they run the show is that for better or for worse, they get called on to spur the economy. That's either through increased consumption, increased investment, or paying more in taxes. The monetarists and the Keynesians and the well off and the dirt poor turn to the 1% for all three reasons (give or take what category you fall into, you either are calling on all three, two of, or one of those things listed above). It's the Gospel of Wealth versus Social Darwinism.

What I mean by having the income is self explanatory. Then again, it is not self explanatory. There's a wide range of topics from commerce to capital gains. I don't count on your attention span to be that wide. It's not me being unable to make a point here; its me basically saying that they have an ability to generate income through the means that they have that most people don't have.

In short, the top 1% represent the "winners" in the economic game of capitalism. That's where Grant Cardone is. Good for him. Makes for a hell of a story to tell. However, his story won't get repeated 310 million times over.

I will have to dispute his notion that government has never fixed an economy. The United States government has fixed an economy before. It's called entering into World War II.

I will dispute his assertion that the Occupy Wall Street movement is a distraction; it's a necessary movement to address the issue that is going to dominate this century -- the income disparity with a corollary addressing financial greed and the corporate state. That's the gripes. In their eyes, its financial greed that wrecked the market place, the corporate state that allowed for it, and now greater income disparity as a result of it. They're pretty much right -- a free market will never truly behave itself, no matter how many times libertarians and conservatives will argue otherwise; Washington will hear big business loudest; and the income disparity, no matter how much people will argue that it is just a mathematical outcome as a result of capitalism, will continue at an increasingly unsustainable pace.

However, its not a political movement. It's a movement to bring awareness and to push for action, for there are those that work hard and still struggle. For there are those that seek to better themselves with education and degrees that are supposed to provide for a better pay day and a better life and still struggle. For there are those that can't afford to take care of themselves or see what issues with their health they may have. For there are those that can't find full time work, not because they don't want to, but because they can't. For there are those that are upset that as they struggle to make ends meet in the wake of the financial system's collapse, those in the driver seats of the financial sector have never been held accountable for the damage done -- in their eyes an injustice.

There are others, like Grant Cardone -- mainly conservative pundits and bloggers who believe in the "American Dream" of work hard brings rewards -- that only want to open their mouths to discredit the whole movement. However, what these pundits and bloggers fail to realize, that every tried and true system has an end game to it. Yet, the end game doesn't have to be doom and gloom, if we just use our heads.

The Confederate Flag

Proposed license plate (Houston Chronicle/Texas Department of Transportation). FAIR USE: I am only using this image for educational purposes only as it has to do with the subject of this post.

I'm writing this in response to a story that I saw posted on the Houston Chronicle's website about local political critics ramping up their campaign against the proposed allowance of a Confederate insignia to be on Texas license plates, which will be voted on by the Texas Department of Transportation next month. The proposal is sponsored by Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson on behalf of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The group plans on using the proceeds from custom license plate purchases to mark Confederate graves and build monuments for Confederate heroes. In turn, they will share the proceeds with the Texas General Land Office.

I went to school with a guy that had a girlfriend who bought him a Texas Confederate belt. The belt did not really offend me because he was not really a racist (even though he tried to act like one) and he did it out of Southern pride and not out of white racial supremacy. Or so I think. I haven't spoke to him in years so I could never really quiz him on his intentions. To tell you the truth, I really could care less. When it comes to racial issues I see it like this -- you're entitled to your opinion, however, if you have an issue with the color of my skin do not allow it to get to a point where you're interfering with my right to my own life. That's when we have problems.

It is indeed understandable as to why the Confederate flag offends the majority of Americans and not just black Americans. The Confederacy's Constitution guaranteed slavery and Southern politicians justified it by invoking a twisted interpretation of the Biblical story of Ham in the Bible. There are indeed those that use the Confederate flag to not only show off their Southern pride, but also as a racial intimidation tactic in support of white supremacy. Yet, at the same time, even the Confederate flag has increasingly began to take an avant-garde meaning to it -- as just a mere display of Southern pride and heritage. It is the avant-garde meaning that the Sons of Confederate Veterans and Land Commissioner Patterson are sticking to in their campaign for the insignia.

It goes back to freedom of speech. You're guaranteed the freedom of speech so as long as you are not putting others lives in danger. If the TxDOT allowed for the Confederate flag to be put on license plates, it would not interfere with others quality of life, however it might affect those that choose to have the Confederate flag on the license plate because they're going to stick out and the judgment calls will roll in. However, the formation and the existence of Confederacy was one of the many markers that was a part of the unfortunate first three centuries of American society, where there was widespread, legalized disenfranchisement based on the color of one's skin. But the Confederate flag manifested itself from being a flag of a nation that institutionalized racism to being a flag of a distinct part of the country with its own culture and distinctive heritage. Now, how much you are willing to accept the latter is up to each and every one of you, but personally I have accepted the "heritage not hate" aspect of the Confederate flag.

On a personal note, I'm not bothered by the Confederate flag. I've seen it flown, I've seen it on window decals, I've seen it on bumper stickers, I've seen it on online profiles -- you get the point. There's no point in oppressing or trying to cover up history, no matter how unpleasant. If you wish to fly the Confederate flag or display it in the name of heritage, fine. If you do so out of racist means, that's fine too, so as long as you do not interfere with my life and my right to live.

The Ron Paul Plan

I spent three days trying to write this, because I kept getting interrupted.

Ron Paul released his plan to "Restore America" which includes cutting $1 trillion in federal government spending during his Paul's first year in office (2013) and is schedule to deliver a balanced budget in 2015. Before I get into that, I want to start with Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.

Paul's strict-interpretation view of the United States Constitution is in the vein of Jefferson, who believed in lassiez-faire economics, a limited central government, state rights, and a non-interventionist foreign policy. Like Paul, Jefferson believed that it was the duty of government to ensure the protection of individual liberty -- at least for Paul, augmenting the Bill of Rights with the basic belief that government should just stay out of private lives. This is a generalization, but in fairness it does capture the major premise of Paul's political beliefs in comparison to Jefferson's philosophy on what's proper American democracy.

The unique feature about the American Constitution is how ambiguous it was when it was composed and ratified as to how it should be interpreted, not withstanding the Federalist Papers, whom scholars and jurists use as the source of intent with the Constitution -- something that James Madison, one of the authors, didn't intend. Jefferson, along with primary Constitution author Madison, disliked the idea of a strong national government because, although not explicitly stated, would go against the whole point of fighting for and winning independence from Britain. Their rival, Federalist Party leader Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury in the United States, pushed for a more "loose" interpretation of the Constitution that would provide for a stronger central government, spearheaded by a strong military, the assumption of state debt by the federal government, and a central banking system.

Don't worry: I'm not trying to delve deep into American history so much to the point where you feel like you're sitting in a history class. The reason why I'm bringing this up is because the debate between Jefferson and Hamilton over what's really the proper  of the Constitution is relevant to today because in the wake of exploding federal debt, we're now coming to the point here in the United States where the size of government in proportion to the population is coming in to question. As most of the people that have regularly read my blog know, I've written about this already.

Paul believes that government is too big, that the central bank is the root of all evil, personal responsibility must be promoted, and his budget plan looked to resolve these issues and more. You can view his plan here.

So here's the itemized list, for those that do not want to read:

• The termination of the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of Education
• Abolish the Transportation Security Administration
• End corporate subsidies
• Abolish foreign aid
• Ending all foreign wars and entanglements
• Lower the corporate tax rate to 15% and eliminate the death tax
• Repeal of "Obamacare", the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and terminate all "onerous" reforms by Executive Order
• Audit the Federal Reserve and "implement competing currency legislation"
• Cut the Federal workforce by 10%, cut Congressional pay, and take an executive pay cut
• Spending freezes on various departments and agencies including Medicaid, State Children Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), Food Stamps, Child Nutrition, the Department of Justice, Agriculture, Transportation, State, Homeland Security, Food & Drug Administration (FDA), Centers of Disease Control (CDC), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

So, here's the score card:

• Generally, most people do not really see the point of any of those five agencies existing. However, that largely comes from an ignorance from what functions they serve and why the departments are seen as useless. The Department of Energy is responsible for nuclear waste, and the focus of the department is cleaning up the mess left behind by the Cold War and has never seen any worthwhile investment in the department until the Obama administration. The Department of the Interior manages all lands owned by the federal government which suffers from severe backlog and has a history of corruption -- who the hell will buy these lands in a privatization move is anybody's guess. The Department of Commerce does a lot -- from administering the Census, to promoting economic growth, to monitoring the weather, to establishing industrial and technological standards; I would assume that most of these duties would move to the private sector, which will produce mixed results. The Department of Housing and Urban Development provides a means for the poor to acquire housing even though the real issue with HUD is the quality of housing.
  
  The Department of Education is a different story because throughout the existence of the Department, its Constitutionality has been debated, with opponents citing the Tenth Amendment and the lack of the mention of education in the Constitution with proponents citing the Commerce Clause. A significant function of the Department of Education is providing collegiate student aid. Other than that, a lot of the functions of the Department of Education are largely symbolic. The only way that the Department of Education would work is if the American educational system would be nationalized to provide for a uniform, mandatory educational system across the States. In other words, the first four would be better served overhauled more so than absent; as for the Department of Education, it either has to go the way of the chopping block like Paul desires or actually become a full blown regulatory body.
• The Transportation Security Administration's failure is in personnel and in training. Some people only consider the TSA to create only a false sense of security, considering the massive undercover failure in 2006 and the harassment controversy of 2010. However, the creation of the TSA was wholly reactionary and it has been cultivated with inefficiencies since its genesis. However, I think an airline security system has a place -- just not the TSA.
• The ending of corporate subsidies and the rollback of the corporate income tax go hand in hand. However, Paul's plan did not make any specific mention of the closing of corporate tax loopholes, which allows most corporations to avoid paying the 30+% corporate income tax. Paul's website noted that the latter should spur domestic American investment by allowing companies to repatriate capital without facing taxation. This is assuming that these corporations find it more lucrative to invest domestically than to put their foot in the door of globalization. Companies use taxation as an excuse, which is fair, but companies are going to go where labor is cheapest and they can make the biggest return on their investment (i.e., Asia).
• Paul aims to get out of the foreign aid and foreign war business, returning the United States to a non-interventionist foreign policy. There's an upside and there's a downside to that -- the upside that it saves money. The downside is that rooted in whether you not you believe in the "Gospel of Wealth That Can Cover My Ass".
• The federal workforce and the political pay cut: it's nice, but it's political grandstanding.
• "ObamaCare's" failure is not doing anything to address exploding health care costs. In cutting Medicaid and Medicare funding, Paul isn't either. In fact, it's putting too much of a gamble into the private sector, which will be overran by additional health care costs, causing the cost of acquiring health care services to skyrocket as insurance companies try to maintain their profits.
• The Dodd-Frank Act was called a disaster by Paul in a recent debate that levied a cost of $1 trillion on Americans. I don't think that much, but the Durbin Amendment is a screw job and it's why I have to pay $60 a year to use my debit card with Bank of America. I don't think the financial markets should go unregulated, but even I think most of the Dodd-Frank act is rooted in garbage.
• The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 does two things: forces companies to use proper accounting purposes while at the same time costing companies a whole hell of a lot of money to be compliant. While some people blame the Sarbanes-Oxley act for a drop in IPOs (Initial Public Offering, or when a company goes offers stock to investors; with a Wall Street editorial recording a low figure for 2008), it dropped below 100 in 2001 (before it was passed), averaged over 200 IPOs a year from 2003-2007, dropped back down to 32 in 2008, increasing to 63 in 2009, and 157 in 2010. However, American firms would be better served if the they were forced to comply with IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards).
• Most of the spending freezes are made with the intent of passing more responsibility to the states and the free market. I hope Paul realizes that the added responsibility to the states would be passed on to the constituencies by way of more taxes. It's inevitable if the States have a desire to remain solvent for that I can assure you that austerity measures really won't fly here in the United States. Not to mention, the free market can't be the solution to everything. 
• He wants to bring back the gold standard. Only issue is that there's more currency than could be supported by gold.

In short, Paul's plan is a wishlist that's partially unrealistic. Any executive order he enforces will come back to bite him as an abuse of power and a violation of his libertarian stance. Most of these dissolution of the departments and federal spending cuts would result in chaos that most consumers and states would not be ready to incur, since most of the resulting burden would be passed on to them. However, I give him credit: at least he came up with a more coherent plan than laughable draconian shit fest of Paul Ryan's budget.

Yes, media, Ron Paul is relevant

Official United States Congressional Photo of Ron Paul (2007)

"We furnish the Presidential race." - Somebody in some media organization that decided that the most compelling presidential race will be the one that is the most salacious.

Maybe there is a point to Ron Paul being somewhat ignored by the mainstream media -- he currently does not lead in any of the major polls for Republican candidates and there's only moderate awareness of him compared to Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, and Rick Perry. However, the truth is that the mainstream media shoves Romney, Cain, and Perry down our throats, along with Michelle Bachmann and Chris Christie, despite the fact that Bachmann is not even a relevant candidate and Christie has no intentions in running. Aside from the fact that Paul is the most prominent American libertarian since Barry Goldwater, Paul has very little the media would want to salivate over: he doesn't utter comments in stupidity (Perry), has no controversy surrounding his religion (Romney), and he does not have a catchy tax plan (Cain).

I have to applaud Ron Paul despite the fact that I disagree vehemently with his economic views. He doesn't live for the political sideshow, his views have been largely consistent, and for the most part he practices what he preaches. He never maxes out his Congressional office budget and he has not enrolled in any Congressional pension plan. There's nothing really controversial about him (okay, there was the newsletter issue that he actually handled pretty damn well in my book). Not even his comments about the United States involvement in the Middle East. He doesn't even live for the soundbite. He doesn't have any political feuds. At least Andrew Napolitano gives him face time.

Paul doesn't get any attention in any of the presidential debates, which is something I really don't get. Rick Santorum is a pop conservative, Bachmann uses too much hyperbole, Perry aims for shock value, Jon Huntsman is a narcissist, Gary Johnson is way out in left field, and Romney is actually a moderate who is trying way too hard to appeal to conservatives. Paul offers solutions and political beliefs that can be subject to debate on an intellectual level, which is something that cannot be said about the rest of the Republican candidates (all right, I'll give Romney some credit). As a corollary to that, Paul professes far superior knowledge of the issues and offers said solutions that are far more coherent. Whether or not media outlets such as Fox, CNN, or even Bloomberg are intimidated by Paul or just trying to milk Romney versus ______ so much is up to all of you to decide, though I'll personally vote for the latter.

Overall, besides the media's infatuation with Romney versus ________, the media's real issue with Ron Paul is that he's not really a pop candidate -- as in, a candidate that the media can easily make a generalization about. He's not a party personality or a personality of a movement. Or, in other words, he's Ron Paul, a libertarian, instead of Ron Paul, the GOP superstar or Ron Paul, the darling of the Tea Party. He is truly his own man and his own candidate and he refrains from political grandstanding and pandering so that he can score constituency points through the media. That's what his followers adore about him. Consequently, that's why the media seems bored with him.

Notwithstanding, there's no guarantee that if Paul got even more media exposure that he would be a candidate that would be setting the world on fire. Considering that he is the most coherent Republican presidential candidate, he probably would set the world on fire, at least for the GOP. However, it is clear that if Ron Paul's candidacy is not successful, then it will be largely the fault of the mainstream media, who the American public will turn to be educated about the candidates, that consistently push him to being the candidate for libertarian political underground. When considering that, it is a damn shame that the media is doing a disservice to the American public with the debates: the debates should be more about a forum to get to know where all the candidates stand and not a political grandstanding and pandering showcase.

Yet, while most of the country remains ignorant to Ron Paul, he still continues to raise money at an aggressive pace with a series of successful Internet-based money bombs and donation drives. Paul still has a populist appeal that could resonate with more and more voters as the primary season begins to heat up at the beginning of the 2012 calendar year. Make no mistake about it: despite the fact that he is not a media darling, he is still a relevant candidate. It's my hope, personally in at least for the sake of healthy, sensible American political discourse, that Paul does not remain lost in the shadows of political mainstream media engineering.