Government

A word that taking on an increasingly negative connotation by the day, across the world. A word for which we will consult the Dictionary, nay Wiki..

Obviously Wiki tells you the meaning as understood by the lay internet person, ergo the LCM of this blogs readers..

"A government is the organization,
that is the governing authority of a political unit,
the ruling power in a political society,
and the apparatus through which a governing body functions and exercises authority.

Government,

with the authority to make laws,
to adjudicate disputes,
and to issue administrative decisions,
and with a monopoly of authorized force where it fails to persuade,
is an indispensable means, proximately, to the peace of communal life.

A compulsory territorial monopolist of protection and jurisdiction equipped with the power to tax without unanimous consent.
Statist theorists maintain that the necessity of government derives from the fact that the people need to live in communities, yet personal autonomy must be constrained in these communities.

Thank you Wiki for the definition !!

If you look at the ground reality

We work hard
We pay taxes (no choice there!)
The taxes go to the government
That tax money gets redistributed to things that the majority of the governed would not approve of
The folks who do the redistibuting get compensated for doing this and

the redistribution of tax money has the following effect

a. we work more
b. we get paid less for working more
c. we pay more taxes on the smaller amount we make while working more

Sometimes I wonder if the last eight years in the USA were under "government" or some kind of dictatorship.

These days it is hard to find a few people with a clean tax record to run the country!

Bah!

As a dude who has always worked his butt off and paid his taxes, maybe I should go for a government position?

Then again, will the government corrupt me? If yes, then it is better to stick to my day job, no?

San asked me innocently "I don't like how our tax money is being given to people who make lousy cars, fraudulent banks etc. How can I make sure my tax is used properly?!"

Gave the longest Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh I could remember. My innocent lovely wife, if only we could control how our tax money was spent!!!

Maybe just like they ask us in the IRS 1040 EZ in the

Presidential Election Campaign section:

"Check here if you, or your spouse if a joint return, want $3 to go to this fund" You (check box) | Spouse (check box)

they would also ask

"Check here if you, or your spouse if a joint return, want 15% to go to the Lenders bailout" You (check box) | Spouse (check box)

"Check here if you, or your spouse if a joint return, want 10% to go to the Insurance Bailout" You (check box) | Spouse (check box)

"Check here if you, or your spouse if a joint return, want 10% to go to the Bank Bailout" You (check box) | Spouse (check box)

"Check here if you, or your spouse if a joint return, want %5 to go to the Big3 auto Industry Bailout" You (check box) | Spouse (check box)

"Check here if you, or your spouse if a joint return, want 1% to go to the Porn Industry Bailout" You (check box) | Spouse (check box)

etc.

etc.

That would be some day!

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The null vote

It is time to vote for the next President, a few local government positions, some propositions etc.

The ballot becons and with pen in hand the two voting adults in the house are discussing things, much to the amusement of the non voting adult and the kids!

What is there to discuss?

Yeah sure, the wife saw the last debate and converted to Obama.. She was actually swayed momentarily by the hockey mom earlier with the tongue clicking and cuteness, but somehow the whole stance on education and choice from the "old dude" turned her.

Asked her why Obama appealed to her and the answer was

This guy says "we can do it" and the old guy says "I will do it for you".. Somehow that was perceived as not associating with the voter! Good, good, one more vote is good..

Now, that said, what is there to discuss?

Proposition 8, of course. Last week there was a huge rally at the local public park with a few thousand red T-Shirts with placards saying "Marriage is one man one woman", Vote yes on 8 , Honk if you agree etc..

People drove by honking or giving their finger to the crowd which was 99% asian (mostly Chinese, vietnamese looking folk) who make up a majority in cupertino and my guess is that they are all very religious church going folks. There were even some local groups sporting church paraphranelia.

In any case, a middle aged white man approached us and said "you are registered voters , yes?" and we said "yes" and he went on to ask us about India, which part, etc. etc. and said "please vote yes on 8 or we lose our values".. they will start teaching our kids in kindergarten that it is okay for a guy to marry a guy!

"our values"?!? But we hardly met!

Now lets look at reality here and try to answer some of these questions..

a. What percent of the population is gay?

b. Do the gay population have a choice in being gay?

c. Is this really about kids being taught in kindergarten that "guys can marry guys"?

d. Would that really change a straight child from turning gay or if not not taught, change a gay child from becoming gay?

e. Are there straight and gay children?

f. At what age does a child know a preference? (if you read Desmond Morris's "the naked ape" which I think is a fantastic anthropology book for novices, you will find that most humans go through a hate-love-hate phase.. initially boys find girls yukkie, then they bond a lot with boys, then they suddenly find girls attractive)

g. What percentage of the teaching population is gay?

i. How many teachers will actually bother to mention to the students (especially in kindergarten) about sex?

j. How many will further venture to the topic of same sex?

k. What are the chances of any of the books explicitly dedicating a paragraph or a chapter to same sex marriage?

l. How much do our students listen to their teachers?

m. What has any of this got to do with marriage?

n. Is marriage "one man one woman" or does it get expanded to "one man one woman at a time"? or "one woman one man at a time"?

o. Wasn't the whole idea to give equal rights like (emergency room visitation, legal custody, will and testament stuff, family health insurance, transfer of assets on death etc.) to gay couples?

p. What if the dude who came and told me about "our values" has a teenage kid who he does not know is gay, yet?

q. Doesn't cupertino have the higest local population with at least a M.S.degree or higher in every household?

r. How come that population is not able to rationalize the reasoning behind prop 8?

s. How come the dude was able to scare my wife to believe that somehow our kids would be turned gay by their kindergarden teacher and her dreams of having grandkids were trashed momentarily?

t. If cupertino has this fate, what chance does this proposition stand elsewhere?

u. Why is this more important than my 401k?

v. What of the poor gay couple who have lost all their 401k?

w. Why is the default "yes" on this proposition a vote against civil rights?

x. Why should anyone who thinks that same sex couples should have rights be branded as gay, or less macho, or be branded as "value less"?

y. Didn't they have rallies like this a hundred years ago saying "vote yes" for women not to have voting rights?

z. Didn't they have similar rallies fifty years ago saying "vote yes" so blacks cannot vote?

aa. Is California ready for that level of tolerance?

ab. Does this have anything to with a blue vs. red state or it is a different demographic that drives this?

ac. Should I stop now?

My brain is doing 400 GHz again. Need to go stick in the refridgerator..

Last time it was a null vote in this house for Hillary vs. Obama.

This time it might be a null vote on prop 8!

I leave you with lots of questions, no good answers.

Tomorrow is another day.

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Responsible voting?

Lak's post got me into a chain of thought..

yeah yeah.. it is a long chain, but here is the abridged version!

India : (color TV, bag of rice, free clothes) :: US : free money

so the voting populace, a majority of which seems to be very gullible, will vote for short term gains..

It is a democracy. If there were a majority of responsible people and they actually had a say in things, we would not be where we are now, would we?

So, why should we for one second assume that the responsible ones will have an upper hand in this election?

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No country for sales men -updated

The US Vice Presidential debate is about to begin...

here is my prediction...(I can always eat my words later)

US is a country where people are used to buying something that is priced at 299.99, and is on "blowout" sale at 99.99, when any TD and H would know that the real thing is worth 14.99!!

GWB pulled off the "I am stupid", "I am really stupid" routine till he changed it around in a debate where suddenly he pulled some punches with Gore and went on to do the same thing with Kerry..

Is Palin playing the same game?

Let us see..

An update after the debate:

6:02 : Sundar is all excited and posts soemthing on his blog.. turns on TV!
6:04 : San walks by and exclaims "who is she?" and I go "What?" this is Sarah Palin!!! She brushes aside my surprise and goes on her merry way..
6:10 : Palin seems to have no stutter, even knows "facts" , there are numerals thrown in her speech and just when she starts things like "I have only been at this five weeks!"...
6:15 my jaw drops and I am thinking.. (well, Obama has no experience.. but on a chance that McCain has an aneurism after the SEC tells him the real story behind the bailout, will Palin say things like "I have only been at this a few months and I pressed the wrong button"? when she is President.. especially when she gets that call at 3AM!!!!).. anyways, I digress..
6:16:00 : "I have to go Navrathri shopping. there are guests coming tomorrow". When I come back, I don't want to hear a single complaint. Better make sure the kids are ready for bed when I come back!
6:16:05 : !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhh

6:16:10 hear front door shut

6:16:15 "Daddy, I want to go somewhere too!" - says the little one!
After some haggling, muting TV, trying to read body language of debaters, then giving Jr. a bath ..

6:45 "I am trying to watch this movie. Seems to be a good movie!" This was Sivappadhigaaram, a movie title that translates to bloody tale, aired on SUN TV (Tamil channel) to commemorate the non-violent Mahatma Gandhi's birthday!!!!

7:40:00 In van on way to blockbuster (turn on radio).. there is an analysis of the debate!!! and snippets of audio! Yippeeeee

7:40:30 Jr. and LO in unison "Socha Hai" podu (play Socha Hai)

7:41 kids, please listen to this. I will quiz you on this. your future depends on what you hear (silence for a few seconds)

7:41:30 SOCHA HAI PODU, NOW !!

7:42 : turn on the CD player...

Sometimes I think that there are little Joe Biden-Sarah Palin debates in our house all the time. In fact, San maybe our home grown version of Sarah Palin! She might make me take down this post, because she is more powerful in all sense compared to me.. but it is true. She does not care much for facts, does not know much about the bailout, congress, etc. etc.. Not that she is not capable of knowing, but chooses not to! While I am busy listening to NPR or any other news radio, her only thought is to wait for a chance to switch to ARR music..

On the other hand I come across as some elitist ass who cares too much instead of going about the day to day living. True, no?

Those of you who managed to see the debate in full, can tell me if the first part of this post held true or not!

Going to take a lesson from San and focus more on Navrathri for the next few days..

The Kondaikadalai vs. pattani debate is of more value than the one that was just missed!

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A few fail the many

Watched the movie "Who killed the electric car?" recently. It was a documentary and the fact that it was put on top of the blockbuster online queue drew a lot of criticism from the wife and my queueing prvileges have been revoked for even putting this movie on the list!

Being the pro-green dude that I have become, it was an extremely difficult documentary to watch. Even more difficult that the Al Gore documentary. If Al Gore's "An inconvenient truth" showed us where the world is headed and beseeched us to find solutions, this movie was a reality check.

The solutions are already there. We just won't let them out! The best part of the film was I got to see the Ovshinsky's (Stan and Iris) who between them hold 200 patents, came up with so many things that cross my world today be it solar cells, Nickel metal hydride batteries, fuel cells, Chalcogenide based Phase Change Memories (PCM's) etc. etc. It was my dream to meet them in person some day! The couple had actually come up with a cheap long lasting battery technology, that made the electric car, cost competitive against gasoline based cars.

Apparently, Chevron bought a major stake in their company and shelved the technology because it threatens the existance of the gasoline based car as we know it!

Why would I buy a Prius if there was an EV1 option? I do not know!!

This post is not about the electric EV1 or Prius or environmentalism or technology.

It is about how a few people who decide the fate of many invariably make decisions which do not comprehend the responsibility of that decision making. It is almost a disease with politicians today, that when it comes to making right decisions, they invariably do what is right (economically for them, in their minds, at that time, or for their interests) as opposed to doing the morally right thing (which would be the greatest good for the greater many, right by the planet, looking forward to the future).

I would also be the worlds greatest bigot if I expected politicians and leaders to do that when an average citizen of the world cannot do the same thing, more particularly, if I cannot do that!

Given a choice between spending extra to solar power our home and continuing with the power grid, we chose the power grid. Given a choice to sell the old car and buy a Prius, we chose to keep the old car as long as it runs and save money. The same thing happened with a lawn in the backyard vs. synthetic turf! So many similar choices where we could have made a difference to the world or aorund us where the economics of the situation trumps the dogooder options.

In a world where it is each man for himself, where states protect their vested interests by erecting dams to control river water flows, where humans murder fellow humans by the hundreds of thousands every year in the name of religion, resources, security, and many other such things which really have no boundaries if you look deep enough, there is no hope for the many to expect the chosen few to do right by them. There is not even much hope for the many to expect the other people described by "the many" do the right thing!

Why have I suddenly become so self absorbed, self deprecating, guilty, etc. etc. Well in a way, my internal justification for doing a lot of things in this life was that technology would make this world a better place. After watching this movie, it has become apparent that the only technology that will make it into the world and its people are those that do not threaten today's rich in anyway.

Now that is a depressing thought, isn't it?

ps. This does not mean I will curl up into a ball and go sleep in the dark. Far from it. Life goes on. One can always hope that Ratan Tata will make a solar powered vehicle that gives the "Nano" a run for its money, or the Chinese will realize that they could get out of oil dependence and pollution by going to small Electric Vehicles. Yes! We can keep dreaming. It could happen....

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