Seeping Matter

Check out this touching video.  It is a tribute to Sgt. Daniel Gurr, who was killed in action in Afghanistan in August 2011.  Sgt. Gurr grew up in the Uintah Basin, where I’m from.

I feel a great debt of appreciation and gratitude for the men and women who have served and serve today in our country’s military.  Despite the troubles our country faces, it is still the greatest on earth.  There are many billions of people worldwide who don’t enjoy the prosperity and freedom offered to everyone in the United States, and we who live here are very fortunate to enjoy these blessings.  It is because of the courage and conviction of countless others like Sgt. Gurr that we experience the blessings we do here, and I am truly grateful.

What I have to say next is not meant to qualify my previous statement at all.

I think one of the biggest snow jobs our government leaders have sold the American public within the past decade is that these wars are actually necessary.  I cannot count the times I’ve heard statements similar to those I just gave, but worded something like this:  “I’m so grateful for those in our armed forces who are fighting to keep our country free.”

If I were saying it, I’d say it like this:  “I’m so grateful for those in our armed forces who are serving and fighting because they love America and want to keep it free.”  That’s how I truly feel.  But let’s not get confused:  Our military forces are not really fighting for American freedom in the Middle East.

That’s why I’m getting so frustrated to hear about these young people dying in military service in these wars.  Their sacrifice is no less honorable, their deaths no less tragic.  I’m getting frustrated because these are the future of America, some of the best and most noble we have, and their lives are being spent in pointless pursuits at the whims of egotistical government leaders to satisfy selfish, personal motives and political agendas.

The purpose of our military is for national defense.  It is to protect our citizens and our freedoms.  Preemptive strike and the invasion of sovereign nations is not what national defense is about.  It is wonderful that we honor the lives of our fallen servicemen and women.  I suggest we start honoring the lives of those who still live by bringing them home and allowing them to instead build the future of America.

Usually when they take a great book and try to make a movie from it, the movie ends up being a disappointment to some degree.  I’m hard-pressed to think of a better example of this than Starship Troopers.  The book, Starship Troopers, is an absolute must-read, not for it’s compelling story (although it is a good story), but for the great lessons the author, Robert Heinlein, teaches in the context of the book.  The movie, Starship Troopers, was typical Paul Verhoeven fare, which means it was mostly an excuse for sex, nudity, and graphic violence, with a backhanded jab at Mormons tossed in for good measure.

In the book Heinlein suggests a future (the book was written in 1960) where the military force is primarily a volunteer force, i.e. not conscripted soldiers.  In this future, military service, while entirely optional, is prerequisite to citizenship.  Citizens have rights that the non-citizens don’t, like voting.  In sum, in the Starship Troopers world, you don’t gain the rights of citizenship via birth or age, you gain them via military service.

So military service is prerequisite to the right to vote.  Why?  Through the book’s dialogue, Heinlein points out that those who have served in the military have internalized the value of choosing what’s best for the majority over what’s best for the individual.  In the military, an infantryman will take point on a scouting expedition, at great personal peril, because it is better for his platoon to have someone on point.  The platoon, in turn, takes the expedition because it is better for the military campaign.  And likewise, the entire armed force will engage in battle because it is for the best benefit of those living in the country, even though it puts their lives at jeopardy.

(I admit, these statements perhaps only questionably apply to current US military engagements, which I believe have motives of questionable integrity.  This I say with no disrespect and with full appreciation and gratitude for all those who serve.  It’s the people sending them there I wonder about.  But I digress.)

I remember reading that point from Heinlein:  Those in power to vote should have internalized the principle of being able to choose the good of the majority over their individual desires.  It’s something I’ve tried to consider when I’m evaluating political issues and candidates.  It’s something I don’t see a lot of.  I see many who align behind a political stance or candidate because it will benefit them personally.  It makes you wonder how many of our country’s current crises might be related to this type of thinking, and how many of these crises could be rectified if instead we’d start making choices based on what will be best for the largest number of people rather than what will be best for us individually.

So Mitt Romney is running for President again, which means it is time for the mainstream media to start debates about whether or not a Mormon is fit to serve as President, because, apparently, freedom of religion applies less to Mormons than to the rest of America. But I digress.

Anyway, because of all the fuss about “dangerous” Mormons, I think it is probably worthwhile to point out that Mormons, also, will be voting for the person they feel best represents their views, not the person who happens to be of the same religion.  This specifically applies to me, and unless Romney changes his platform, I won’t be voting for him.

I’ll tell you why.  Interestingly, my reasons are based very specifically on Mormon beliefs, primarily from the Book of Mormon which I happen to regard as scripture like the Bible.  I realize that people reading this post may disagree on that, or may not even believe in God at all.  That’s fine with me.  I’m not going to be teaching doctrine here, just recalling some anecdotes from the Book of Mormon.

For nearly ten years now we’ve been involved in a war on terror.  We’ve invaded a number of sovereign nations like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya in order to fight this war.  Our goal has been to eradicate Al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization our government has blamed for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.  Since the war began, there have been roughly twice the number of American lives lost in fighting the war as were lost on the day of the terrorist attacks.  Put another way, over the past ten years it has been more likely for an American to die fighting terrorists than from a terrorist attack itself.

In Book of Mormon times, a group existed for decades that caused similar problems to the mainstream public.  This group would hide in the hills and wilderness, occasionally sneaking into the cities to create mayhem.  Often the purpose was to assassinate government officials or other high-profile individuals.  They would also terrorize the public, steal food and supplies, or simply recruit (or intimidate or coerce) others into joining with them.  Many of the members of this group lived covertly among the mainstream public within the cities themselves, coordinating with the rest of the group in secret and facilitating the group in carrying out their aims.

Sound familiar?  It should.  Was this a terrorist group?  Well, the people were certainly terrified.  It was certainly a goal of this group to create that feeling of terror and to drive  people into joining out of fear of the alternative.  This group sounds much like how we define terrorist groups today.

So the million dollar question is this:  How did the people back then deal with this terrorist group?

Answer:  Poorly.

A few different approaches were tried.  The people tried to infiltrate the group, sending in their own spies, executing those they caught, etc.  This approach was tried over the course of years but it had very little effect.  In fact, no approach had any real impact at all unless it also involved radical, gut-wrenching change within the mainstream public also.

After a while, the people began fighting so intently with the terrorist organization that it became pretty all-consuming.  The prophet of the time asked God to send a famine, thinking that it would be better for people to become humbled by famine than to continue with the violence.  The famine continued for over three years.  By the end of the famine, all of the members of the terrorist organization were dead.

How many years of peace before the terrorist organization resurfaced?  Four years.

Things got bad again.  So bad, in fact, that the leader of the terrorist organization announced his intent to invade and take over the entire country.  The country’s leaders refused to surrender.  Instead, the leaders asked all of the people in the entire country to move to a single, central location where they could concentrate all of the strength of the people against the terrorist group.  Thousand and thousands of people lost their homes and farms and livelihoods as they relocated to the center of the country.  The terrorist group destroyed cities, farms, and roads as they made their way to the center of the country, but ultimately after a great war the people prevailed as the terrorist organization was wiped out.

After a four year war, extensive destruction, and the loss of tens upon tens of thousands of lives on both sides, how many years of peace before the terrorist organization resurfaced?  This time it was better:  A whopping eight years.  But it wasn’t long until the terrorist group was operating in full swing again.

Mormons believe that after Jesus Christ was crucified and resurrected, he appeared to the people in America (we believe this is what he meant when he said “other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice” (John 10:16)).  The Book of Mormon describes that in the days between when Christ was crucified and when he was resurrected, there was horrible, massive destruction across the face of the entire land in America.  This destruction killed all of the members of this terrorist group and many others.  But this destruction alone didn’t end the reign of terror.  It was the visit of Christ, which brought about a deep and complete change in all of the surviving people, which ended the reign of terror in the land.

In other words, it was only when people preferred righteousness to wickedness that they were successful in eradicating the terrorist group for any length of time.  This time, it was over 200 years before the group appeared again.

I don’t necessarily expect you to believe this account, especially if you aren’t Mormon.  But Mitt Romney is a Mormon, and he should believe it.  He should know that our current approach to ridding the world of terror is NEVER going to work.

You may not like it — my guess is most Americans don’t, and sometimes even I don’t like it myself — but the only way to rid the world of terror in any meaningful and enduring way is to choose righteousness over wickedness.  We can’t decide to tolerate some wickedness, like extramarital sex, or pornography, or “legal” but dishonest business relations, and yet aspire to rid the world of those who sin differently.  Evil escalates to greater evil, such that even small indiscretions start us toward a path that ends in murder, violence, and war unless we take steps to reverse the path.  Sorry, bud.  That is the way it goes.

Mitt Romney should know this.  We should be getting out of the war and bringing our troops home immediately.  We are fighting a fight that cannot be won, and the fighting of this fight is only making things worse.

When Al-Qaeda attacked on 9/11, everyone asked the wrong question, which basically amounted to figuring out how to get vengeance.  But exacting vengeance is always an evil-minded endeavor, even if done legally.  Even seeking “justice” in this case is misguided.  According to Wikipedia, current counts range between about 75,000 to 1,176,000 citizens of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan that have been killed in the conflict.  How many are required to obtain justice for the 3000 who died on 9/11?

The question we should have been asking ourselves is:  Could we have done anything to prevent this?  I seem to recall Osama bin Laden referring to the USA as an “infidel nation.”  Here’s some synonyms of infidel:  heathen, heretic, profane, immoral, crude, foul, obscene, sinful, wicked.  Seems an apt description to me.  Would the attacks have taken place if the American public, as a whole, were better described as moral, ethical, trustworthy, and honest?

I’m looking for a presidential candidate who recognizes this war as the very expensive temper tantrum it is and who will end it as soon as possible.  I’m looking for a presidential candidate who has the courage to stand in front of the country and tell us that we are wrong, that we are behaving wrongly, that the terrible predicaments we are finding ourselves in is a result of our own prideful, selfish, and evil choices, and that the only way out is to sacrifice and return to be a more noble, kind, honest, and humble people.

Sorry Mitt, but you aren’t the guy.

(I’m not 100% sure he reads my blog, but you never know…)

Well, it’s that time of year again.  Boise State, Utah, and TCU are all undefeated, there’s lots of talk about “strength of schedule” and “if they had to play in the (insert favorite BCS conference), they wouldn’t be undefeated,” comments which are neither provable nor within the realm of control of the schools in question.

But it is also time to vote, and I know how many of you are simply floundering with confusion at how you should proceed.  Thankfully, I’m here to tell you what to do.  Aren’t you glad you read this blog!

Of course, I would never presume to tell you which candidate to vote for.  If you need that, just ask the candidates themselves; they will tell you whom to vote for.  I’ve just got three pointers, advice I plan to follow myself.

Elect candidates who pledge fiscal responsibility. When I start to boil down many of our country’s problems to their essence, which I tend to do, this is a place where I generally end up:  Our country is not willing to live within its own means.

Many of the citizens aren’t either.  We want to have nice things now and pay for them later.  Sometimes we make such a decision with some degree of foresight and intelligence; sometimes we do it without any planning at all, proceeding instead on a vague hope to pay for it later; sometimes we don’t even give it that much thought.  Sometimes the things for which we are going into debt are completely frivolous, but not always.  We might justify buying that video camera on credit because our kids are not going to be so little forever, etc.

Fact is, living outside our means is not a path to wealth or prosperity, and we all know it.  Why do we allow our government to behave differently?

I can only assume that we do this because we are hoping that somehow we, individually, can start getting things without earning them, and when candidates run for office on the same principle, we are attracted to the idea.  It’s time for us to start electing government officials that are willing to operate the government under the same constraints that we operate under.

For years we’ve had a government operate by spending more and more money on more and more government programs without having a viable plan for even paying off the debt, let alone actually having the money to pay for it beforehand.  It should come as no surprise when our corporations and private citizens get themselves into irreparable trouble by operating under the same financial principles as our government.

This simply cannot continue, and fixing it is up to you.  Don’t vote for candidates with silver tongues; vote for those who have as a part of their platform a return to fiscal responsibility.

Elect candidates who pledge a return to adherence to the Constitution. So here’s where we are now.  We have a national constitution which describes how our government will run.  And we have a national government.  What we do not have is a national government that operates according to the national constitution which describes how it will operate.  Instead, we declare war without involving Congress; we have judges creating law instead of interpreting it; we pass Patriot Acts which legalize the arrest and imprisonment of citizens without due process of law; we allow a federal government to create more and more law and regulation instead of leaving powers to states.

What will it take to return?  It will require electing officials that are more concerned with constitutionality than popularity and correctness than power.  If you’re considering a candidate who hasn’t explicitly expressed a return to Constitutional principles as a part of his platform, you can be pretty sure it doesn’t matter to him at all.

Don’t throw away your vote. How do you throw away your vote?  By not voting for the candidate you think is best.  Voting isn’t about trying to pick the winner.  It’s about making your opinion known and casting your vote for the person you think best represents you.  So don’t throw away your vote:  Vote for the person you think will represent you best.

Wired Magazine this month is giving high praise to Tesla Motors, among others, in a cover article talking about the long-awaited arrival of electric cars.  And really, how can you not like the Tesla Roadster S?  With a 245 mile range it is actually a reasonably practical electric car (unlike the Volt’s 40 mile range), and with a 0-60 time of 3.7 seconds it can really get up and move too.  I’m a bit short the cash, otherwise, I might actually buy one.

Until I remember I could get myself a pretty sweet Porsche 911 GT3 or an Audi R8 for about the same price.  But anyway…

Truthfully, I do think it is great that some companies are taking the plunge to build electric vehicles.  I’m not sure they have enough of a market to survive without significant government incentives, and I don’t think most people could currently justify the cost without government rebates.  But I do appreciate them trying to improve our environment with electric vehicles.

Problem is, I think we’re spending a lot of effort and billions of dollars in the wrong place.

Top Gear did a bit of a presentation on this in the first episode of Season 11 when they did a mileage comparison between the Toyota Prius and a BMW M3 Coupé.  In the test they drove the Prius for ten laps around the test track, and let the M3 follow along behind, just keeping up.  Despite having over 300 more horsepower, twice the number of cylinders, and nearly three times the displacement, the M3 still managed to get better fuel economy than the Prius for the same level of (admittedly boring) performance.

Additionally, the M3 didn’t require a large number of batteries placed along the underside of the car.  Top Gear claimed that the nickel for these batteries is mined in Canada, then shipped to Europe for refinement, then to China for processing, then for Japan for manufacturing.  Fossil fuels (primarily diesel, I would imagine) are transporting this material all along the way I’d expect.

All of this fails to mention that if you buy an electric car like a Volt or a Tesla, you will be plugging it into the wall every so often to charge the batteries.  In most places in America you’ll be using electricity that was generated from coal, gasoline, or natural gas; I read somewhere that about 70% of the electricity in the United States is generated by burning fossil fuels.

So, for the sake of discussion, let’s consider the upcoming Chevy Volt, a rather smart-looking true electric car with a gasoline-powered failover engine (not an electric-gas hybrid like the Prius).  If you get one, you’ll likely spend an extra $20000 for a new Volt over a comparably-featured gas-powered vehicle.  (We are not including the government rebate here, since that is fake savings anyway.  Where do you think that money comes from?)  Assuming the gas-powered vehicle gets 30 mpg, at $4 per gallon for gasoline, you will need to drive your Volt 150,000 miles on electricity only in order to make back the money you spent on a more efficient car.  Since the Volt can only go about 40 miles on a charge before the gas engine kicks in, that’s a minimum of 3750 40-mile round trips you will have to make, or two such trips daily for 5 years.

Of course, some of those trips won’t be 40 miles, so you’ll need more trips to make the money back; some of those trips will be longer and will end up using gasoline anyway.

Obviously we’ve assumed here that the cost of electricity is zero, which is certainly not true.  Trying to pin down a cost for the electricity to run a Volt for 40 miles is more effort than I want to make, but without question you’ll have to drive your Volt a lot more than 150,000 miles to break even.

In fact, currently I think it’s fair to say that you probably will never make back the money you spent up front for an “efficient” vehicle.  And maybe you are okay with that.  You know, maybe you get a lot of pride out of feeling like you are doing good for the environment, or at least, out of feeling the admiration of those around you for doing good for the environment.  Some may call this being smug, but I’ll give you the benefit of doubt here.

If that applies to you, and therefore you are willing to spend an extra $20000 for an electric car, we have to conclude that, ultimately, you are paying the money in order to preserve the environment, even if it ends up costing you personally.  So don’t you think you should be sure it is actually preserving the environment?  Wouldn’t it be nice to know that, at a minimum, the gasoline you will save over the lifespan of the car will not be offset by the extra fossil fuels used to manufacture this car (as compared to a regular car) or by the fossil fuels used to generate the electricity that powers your car?

Because if the carbon footprint created by operating an electric car cannot offset the carbon footprint required to build the car and supply its power, what exactly are you paying for?

The reality is, the electric car is sort of a red herring.  It’s a path that the environmental lobby is pushing to keep us busy enough to ignore the real problem.  The real problem is not gasoline powered cars:  It’s electricity.  Until we adopt better ways of generating clean electricity, electric cars have no hope of making a big enough impact to solve the power consumption problem.

There’s lots of great alternatives for electric power plants:  Solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, wind, and nuclear, to name a few of the most obvious.  The problem is, the environmental lobby doesn’t like any of these alternatives either.  So they redirect us toward solving the electric cars problem while the real problem — clean power — continues to mostly elude us.  It is frustrating that we continue to allow our focus to be redirected to a tactic that cannot win at the expense of one that can.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

- Constitution of the United States of America, Amendment 1

Thus begins the first sentence of the first amendment of the Bill of Rights.  I think it is significant that, among all the rights that our founding fathers sought to establish and preserve, this was the very first one they thought of.  And for good reason:  An individual’s religion is central to their value system, to the way they think about things and view the world’s problems and potential solutions.  You cannot preserve freedom without preserving free exercise of religion.

A lot is being said these days about the intention of individuals of the Islamic faith to build a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City.  It is disappointing that many of those voicing opposition to the mosque are elected government officials, many in federal positions such as the United States Congress.  Surely they know that our constitution prohibits government involvement in restricting the establishment or free exercise of a religion.  I’ve particularly been surprised to hear many high-profile conservative voices expressing opposition; I would have thought, if anything, that they would be a bit more inclined to defend free exercise of religion.

I guess by now I should have learned not to expect too much from government officials by way of intelligent or rational behavior.

I can only assume that many people voicing concerns lack familiarity with Muslims.  I can’t say to be an expert in the religion either.  But I have known a number of them, off and on, over the past 20 or so years of my life.  None of them have threatened to kill me or blow anything up.  In fact, they seem to be pretty much normal people.

As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I can empathize a bit with these Muslim friends I have.  I think they are misunderstood, much like we Mormons are.  Contrary to what people may think, I don’t have any horns, I only have one wife, and I’m allowed to use electricity and everything.  We’re actually fairly normal people, and so are Muslims as far as I can tell.

I think some of this misunderstanding comes from the actions of radicals who profess to be of our faiths.  You have radical self-proclaimed Mormons who create polygamist cults, have multiple spouses, and marry 14-year-old girls.  You have radical self-proclaimed Muslims who hijack airplanes and crash them into buildings.  Polygamist “Mormons” are not following LDS beliefs and are excommunicated when discovered; perhaps something similar happens with terrorist “Muslims.”  Those polygamist “Mormons” are frustrating and humiliating to those of us trying to live a normal, LDS lifestyle; I know my Muslim friends have similar feelings about terrorist “Muslims.”

Sometimes people point to passages in the Koran that presumably encourage radical behavior as evidence that the Islamic faith endorses such behavior.  I haven’t read the Koran so I can’t speak too authoritatively about that.  But I have read the Bible, which Mormons regard as scripture.  I only hope these people who criticize Muslims for their Koran don’t read the Bible, particularly sections such as Genesis 22, where the prophet Abraham takes his son Isaac into the wilderness to sacrifice him on an altar.  Otherwise, these people would have the same complaint against not only Mormons but every Christian and Jewish faith.  I mean, what kind of people would regard a man who would kill his own son as a righteous prophet of God?

I’ll tell you who:  People who are willing to read the entire story in context.  People who are willing to understand what can be learned from such an event.  People who are willing to acknowledge that believing in goodness of Abraham in particular or the veracity of the Bible in general, or even learning the lessons that are meant to be learned therein, doesn’t mean that we should be expected to re-enact the specific behaviors discussed.

Not many years ago, the LDS church began construction of a temple in Belmont, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston.  Citizens there expressed concern about the planned construction and even filed a lawsuit to prevent certain elements of the planned construction from taking place.  I can only imagine how difficult this must have been for those of my faith who were involved.  On the one hand I’m sure they wanted to establish good relationships with the community and especially nearby neighbors and have only positive feelings towards the LDS church.  On the other hand, the land had been purchased specifically for that purpose, and the building planned for construction met with the zoning laws for that particular piece of land.

All of this sounds pretty similar to the case of the Muslim mosque at Ground Zero today.  It is privately owned land; current zoning for that land allows the mosque to be built;  lawfully constructing and building a mosque is a peaceable exercise of their religion that is protected by the First Amendment.  It seems pretty clear that unless the government oversteps the bounds of the constitution (which, unfortunately, seems rather common lately), the construction and operation of the mosque should be allowed.

Truthfully, I’d hope our government would do more than just allow it.  I’d hope our government would use it’s enforcing power to defend and protect the right of Muslims to free exercise of their religion at that mosque against those who would infringe upon those rights.  Our government did not do that with my 19th century Mormon ancestors, who eventually had to leave the country to be able to practice their religion.  To see the rights of these Muslim citizens protected would be a good sign to me that things are better now than they were 150 years ago.

Since my logic is irrefutable, the only argument left for those opposing the mosque is that constructing one at Ground Zero is insensitive to the families of those who were killed that dreadful day.  The fact is that Muslims were among those killed when the buildings collapsed, so if it is insensitive, it is insensitive to Muslims as well as those of any other (or no) faith.  But whether it really is insensitive is certainly an opinion, not a fact, and is subject to interpretation; presumably the thinking is that people may be offended by it.  However, people get offended for lots of reasons.  Whether the mosque at Ground Zero offends me is pretty much up to me.

Unlike religious freedom, there is nothing in the Constitution anywhere that preserves my right to never be offended.  In fact, the very nature of the First Amendment pretty much guarantees that I’ll eventually run across something that offends me, if I choose to take such offense.  Part of being an American means having some degree of tolerance of other people’s rights so that you can have yours.  Even if I don’t agree with the mosque or the Muslim faith, it is important that I defend their right to build it, so that my right to do the same will likewise be preserved when I need it someday.

Ars reported today on a new bill being entertained in US Congress.  The bill essentially would make it lawful to require a domain registrar to stop resolving DNS requests to web sites believed to be making pirated intellectual property available.

This is one of those things that seems like a good idea until you really give it some thought.  Of course, a big hint that it is a bad idea:  Orrin Hatch’s name is attached to it, again.  Just when I thought the guy was done hurting America…

Anyway, consider what’s being suggested here.  An organization, like the MPAA (specifically mentioned in the article), sees that a large number of DNS requests to EvilPiracySite.net are being resolved through some DNS service.  The MPAA successfully petitions a court order for an injunction on this DNS service to stop resolution of EvilPiracySite.net to its proper IP address; instead, it returns something like “No route to host” or similar.

The problem is, who decides whether the content of that website is pirated content?  The plaintiff?  The MPAA and RIAA definitions of “fair use” are certainly not mainstream and not what most reasonable people would consider rational.  Is the MPAA going to go to court and then submit this decision to a panel of domain experts?  The US government isn’t exactly known for their use of domain experts; clearly, this bill is one example of them failing to consult with anyone who knows anything about how the internet works.  Consider also the ridiculous state of the US patent office, or the DMCA.

Of course, shutting down a single DNS server is hardly going to address the MPAA’s (or any other plaintiff’s) problem in a satisfactory way.  They will need to successfully target probably hundreds or even thousands of DNS servers to make an impact, and will have to do it for probably hundreds or thousands of DNS names.  Surely each request for injunction cannot be submitted to a expert panel.  Likely, one of two things will happen:

1. Courts will pretty much just grant these injunctions based on the request of the plaintiff alone, OR
2. Courts will only be able to service the really wealthy organizations (who can pay the court costs), leaving small plaintiffs, who actually could benefit from such a law, out in the dark

If the answer is #2, the law seems to be pretty one-sided in favor of a few small corporations with no real positive effect on the average American.  If your answer is “so what?”, remember that the government is supposed to be for the people, not only for a few wealthy corporations with lobbying budgets.  We shouldn’t be passing laws that don’t have a clear positive effect on the general public.

If the answer is #1, that might even be worse.  Since when do we pass laws such that the plaintiff alone can leverage the law to his exclusive benefit, without any oversight or check?

The funny thing is, many of these “illegal” web sites are run outside of the United States.  I say “illegal” in quotes because, remember, they are located outside of the United States, and legality is defined by a country’s legal system.  Our government often makes the mistake of referring to them as being illegal because they would be illegal if they were located within the US.  But since they often are not, calling them illegal is truly just blatant misinformation.  I’m no expert on the laws of a foreign country, so I don’t know whether the website is legal or not.  But one thing I do know is that citizens of a foreign country, and businesses incorporated within that country, aren’t subject to US law.  Why should they be?

Oddly, the people complaining the most about all of this never complained when they were rolling in the dough from these same foreign countries.  Take the MPAA again.  They produce and license a movie in the United States and protect it under US intellectual property laws.  Then someone gets a great idea:  “I know!  Let’s also sell this movie in Russia!  There are millions of people in Russia!  We can make even more money by selling this movie in Russia!”  Never was any thought given to the fact that Russian IP law may be viewed differently than US IP law, or that perhaps it isn’t even enforced, or perhaps they don’t believe in IP law anyway.

The MPAA was perfectly happy to leverage US trade laws to their specific advantage when they were selling the movie abroad.  But suddenly, when people that live abroad start doing things that violate US IP law, the MPAA wants the US to spend the money to enforce US law in foreign countries, in order to protect their own pockets.  Surely the MPAA would even be in favor of us going to war, if necessary, to defend their fiscal interests.  That hardly sounds like the best thing for the US as a whole.

I’m on a tangent here, I realize.  I’m trying to make a point here, though, which is to state what this bill is really about:  It’s a way for large, wealthy, IP-based corporations to use US law to enforce sanctions against organizations that may not even be US organizations, all because, in the opinion of the plaintiff, those organizations might violate US law, even if they operate entirely legally in their own country.  And to do it, we will block things at the DNS level to accomplish it.

So in other words, we will essentially create a closed network where Americans can only go to web sites that are approved by the US government, and those approvals will be based on what the wealthiest among us think it is acceptable for us to visit.  I mean, really, isn’t that where this is headed?

Doesn’t that concern you?

When I first heard about our country’s new CARS program, my reaction was, “Hey!  Free money if I trade in my Durango for a new SUV!  Despite the dumb name, this seems like an excellent plan!  Almost too good to be true!”

Of course, that should make us stop and think about it.

And I have.  I have some problems with this new plan.  I get the sales pitch:  Make it easier to buy a new, more fuel-efficient vehicle.  Help out the auto makers by increasing sales.  Help out the environment by replacing a number of higher-pollution vehicles with lower-pollution vehicles.  Reduce our oil dependency by replacing a number of less efficient vehicles with more efficient vehicles.  And I get a new car.  Everybody wins!

Well, I do have a number of problems with it.

I have a nomenclature problem.  I don’t understand why we have to come up with a cute little acronym name for this program.  It is also known as “Cash for Clunkers,” which is equally dumb.  My 1998 Durango, which definitely qualifies for the full $4500 rebate, has been a great vehicle for me, runs quite well, and is definitely not a clunker by my definition.  This lets you know what sort of vehicle standards the folks in Washington have, and how disconnected they are from the world in which their constituents live.

I have a fundamental problem.  It should not be the place of the government to get involved in consumer affairs like this.  We’ve had a lot of ever-increasing government intervention in society over the last 60+ years, but rarely has this intervention actually done any good; often it hurts more than it actually helps.

I have a financial problem.  Where does all of this money come from?  Well, ultimately it has to come from the pockets of the taxpayers, either in increased taxes or in increased prices due to inflation caused by printing money to cover it.

I have a principle problem.  Taking a perfectly good, functioning vehicle and scrapping it is flat-out wasteful.  There’s this part of my being that screams out that we can’t expect a net good to come from a plan that isn’t founded in solid principles.

I have an economics problem.  Junking these cars will have an inflationary effect on the general price of cars.  It’s simple supply and demand.  Given a closed ecosystem with 100 car owners with one car each, suppose 10 are new and 20 qualify for the CARS program.  Under normal conditions, we might assume that twenty people are buying a car each year, half of them are buying new and half are buying used, and so ten cars are cycling through the ecosystem per year.  Now you inject CARS into the mix.  There will be people participating who might normally not have bought this year at all, or who might have bought this year but would normally have bought used instead of new.  If half of the 20 participate, and half of those would not have normally bought this year at all, that means instead of 10 new cars entering the ecosystem we have 18, if my math is right.  To balance it, there must be 18 older cars leaving the ecosystem instead of the normal 10.  What you end up with is fewer used cars — 82% are used instead of 90% — and the average car value has gone up.  But note that, at best, the economic condition of the people in the group hasn’t changed.  In fact, it should have gone down by around $400 per person ($3500 to 4500 times ten participants, divided among all 100 participants).  With fewer used vehicles in the ecosystem but the same number of buyers, the demand for used vehicles will go up, driving up the price of used vehicles.

So if you already own a used vehicle in that ecosystem it is only partially bad, because the value of your used car should be higher now.  It’s only a problem if you want to buy.  But I’m not sure this will help automakers beyond this year.  What effect will higher used-car values have on new car sales?  I think you could just as easily argue that it will hurt as much as it will help.

At any rate, it causes yet another economic bubble.  This program artificially inflates the market for car sales and makes adjustments to the ecosystem, based not on the GDP of the people in the ecosystem but on government intervention to make affordable a good that is less affordable if free market economics are left to do their thing.  The government tried this same tactic with the general housing market, and I think history shows that did not turn out too well.

So what we really have here is yet another government program with a dumb name, based on poor principles, with dubious economics at best, that you and I get to pay for.

It’s doubtful it will do anything but hurt us in the long term.  Which is why I’m considering participating.  I mean, if I have to pay for it anyway, I might as well get a new SUV and $4500 out of the deal.

Watch and learn, my children.

My people, there is an epidemic.  It is serious and problematic.  We must take action to address this epidemic.  The epidemic is US Congressional Dumbness.

Now, some people, like Orrin Hatch, are beyond saving.  He is simply too dumb to be helped.  He is a lost cause and will unfortunately continue to infect other US congresspersons with Dumbness.  Our only hope here is to try to contain, minimize the damage, and hopefully quarantine these poor experienced congresspersons with Advanced Dumbness, like Senator Hatch, from the rest who may not yet be infected, or may only be experiencing Early Stage Dumbness.

Evidence of this disease abounds.  One example of such evidence is the recently enacted CPISA which, among other things, made off-highway vehicles targeted toward youth aged under 13 ILLEGAL – not because they are unsafe, but because they contain too much lead.

I do admit, there have been countless times since I bought my KX 250 5 years ago when I’ve gone out to look at it and found my children sucking on it.  I softly and gently tell them, “ARE YOU INSANE?!?  DON’T YOU KNOW THAT THING HAS LEAD IN IT?!?  ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL YOURSELF?!?  HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU NOT TO SUCK ON MY MOTORCYCLE?!?!?”  This might be why my kids tend to walk into walls and accidentally stab themselves in the eye with a fork while eating.

Nevertheless, this is no excuse for outlawing children’s off-highway vehicles.  I want freedom for myself and my children, even if it means my children are free to break into the motorcycle shed and gnaw on the exhaust pipe.  Being patriotic, I decided I should fight this disease in this case and write my congresspersons.

Here is the context of the e-mail I sent:

Dear [congressperson]:

I wish to express my concern about some of the unintended effects of CPISA that recently went into effect; namely, the restriction on youth-oriented off-highway vehicles targeted by section 101(a) of that act.

Motorcycle and ATV riding is a very popular family activity in our state, a family activity now threatened by this act.  Because of the popularity, this act will also have a very real economic impact on our state.  And speaking personally, this act threatens the sports of Motocross and Supercross, some of the fastest growing spectator sports in the country and a favorite of my father, brother, sons, and myself, because it chokes the pipeline of new talent being introduced to the sport.

While these impacts are very real to Utah, Utah is not the only state affected by this obvious oversight.  Little children do not generally bite, chew, or suck on motorcycles and ATVs, so the health risk from lead contamination to children from these vehicles is small to non-existent, and not even worth discussing.

I hope you will agree with me and do your best to have this situation addressed so that my children, and children all across the country, are free again to participate in this sport.  I look forward to hearing back from you on your success in this endeavor.

You too can help fight US Congressional Dumbness in this case.  To do so, simply go to this website of a US Congressmen who seems free of the disease and send in the form.