What makes a high Tax bracket Indian, a Democrat?

The election is over and Obama continues to be President. I am happy that he gets more time to continue the good things he has done in the last few years and also reflect to change his strategy on accomplishing the things he said he would but failed. 

My parents were not watching the election on TV as the only TV that plays local channels is in our bedroom. The TV in the living room has only south Indian Tamil Channels. So they got to watch the election result as covered by the Tamil channels a good 12 hours after they happened. 

When I came home their first comment was "We saw the details of the US Election and how Obama won by ~300 to Romney's ~200 and we are surprised that you said last night it was a close election. How is 300 to 200 a close election?"

Also they are saying "Obama is anti-Indian and this is not good for India! So why did you vote for him?"

Surely, readers of this blog know my Political leaning on Internet based tests show me to be a "Liberal Democrat" and my lifes experiences in India and in the US which is going to cross the 50% mark soon have got me to this point (yes, came to this country when I was 20 and now I am going to be 40!).

Still how does one answer the "Obama being anti-Indian" question? Where are they getting that from? Guess the IT corridor in India is not happy with Obama's tirade against "American jobs going overseas" and the media picks up on it.

As for me, it is great to live the American dream. Really! Came to this country with ~1000$ of borrowed money.. 

$1050 to be precise and was shocked to learn that opening a bank account cost me ~25$. Almost cried at the bank. The USA was as capitalist as Capitalism was allowed to get but one realized pretty quickly that if you worked you got rewarded. There were no gotchas or at least that was the perception. Didn't realize that there were a lot of Americans who were less fortunate than me at that point who did not have access to what I had!

At the end of the day, all said and done, it was my late Grandpa who made me a democrat without realizing what he was doing..

He taught me "Lokah samastha sukhino bhavantu" which crudely translates to "everywhere everything be happy so it be"!

It was basically a "live and let live" philosophy that he came to after what he went through in his life which somehow made me associate with the "we are all in this together" statement that is a cornerstone of the Democratic party. 

We as a family make good money. We are both educated and we live in Cupertino which is not cheap. We live in an expensive house which comes with a high mortgage and property tax, not to mention our income tax, sales tax, gasoline tax, etc. etc. Most of our friends, especially desi's ask me "dude, you vote for Obama knowing he is going to take money from you and give it away to folks who don't deserve it? Your taxes are going to go up? Why do you want to work so hard for a bunch of folks who don't work so hard?" and that usually makes me go on a long winded speech which goes like this..

I have worked very hard to make a lot of people above me richer. Don't think those people exactly deserved my hard work considering the compensation wasn't fair. So the whole deserve thing is moot! I associate with folks who work hard and get shafted by the system.  

Yes, my taxes are going to go up, but will take that gladly if it is a short term thing that will help solve the long term problems in the country. Have put 10% of my paycheck in a 401k retirement account over the last 15 years only to see that it is value is not anywhere close to what it should be because some unknown hedge fund manager is gambling with that money and is getting richer at my expense and all my smartness is not enough to stop that or track that!

As for the people who don't work hard, it is probably a very small minority that takes advantage of the system. It is true that me and my roommate in Philadelphia walked 7 blocks to the nearest supermarket after what was our "first snow storm" (both of us were from Chennai and had never been in snow before and that happiness quickly wore off when we realized that going to the grocery store by foot and having to haul milk was very painful in snow) and we saw a big 6'6" guy who must have been at least 300 lbs with rippling muscles carried a cartful of groceries and he paid for it with food stamps. We didn't know what food stamps were till that day. He hauled it into his car and drove off. Why an able bodied guy like that had to use stamps was beyond us! One cannot use exceptions to make rules. For every instance of stamp use like that I have observed in those days, have seen hard working single parents and grandmas trying to raise good kids in that same neighborhood with stamps.

There will be exceptions to everything, but to quote my grandfather "when one finger in the hand grows too long, you either have to cut the finger off or you have to lose your hand as it loses its functionality!". That was his way of saying "grow.. but let others grow with you as you grow and prosper!" 

Do I do enough for people around me? Probably not! Do I try? Definitely yes!

In a country where you can work hard and prosper and one can pursue their own happiness as their only goal, there are a large group of people who believe that wellness for all is the path to wellness for oneself and that is reassuring!

To all my desi friends and relatives here and in India who wonder why a high tax bracket Desi is voting democrat that is my long winded answer..

A party that has a diverse crowd of young and old, straight or gay, red, white, black, yellow, brown and beige people that watches a president give a speech at 12:30 AM in Chicago that stands together as a true representation of the melting pot these United States are, appeals to me. 

As a technologist who spends a lot of time explaining complicated things to folks in layman terms, the fact that there are folks who believe the earth is not flat and is much older than 9000 years who will be in charge of our technological future appeals to me.

The short of it is "live and let live" appeals to me! 

Now it is time to hope that the President goes through with his promised immigration reform!

Jr. speaks

Yesterday afternoon, everyone in Jr.'s class got to watch a videotape of the Obama inauguration in their auditorium.

She aced the quiz on who is who, what the inauguration is about etc. when we asked her about the video.

Daddy, was driving on Lawrence expressway after dropping off kids at daycare and just reached work when Obama started speaking! While there was a temptation to stay in the van and listen to the radio, work called and knowing that the thing was being recorded at home anyways, went in to work.

While watching the inaugural speech, Jr. looked up and asked me

"Daddy, can only a man be president?"

I said "why do you ask that? Of course not, a woman can be a president!"

Jr. : Which woman was president?

Me : No one so far. But we did not have black President's either.. now we have a black president. we will have a woman President soon!

Jr. : I want to be President!

Me : I ask you to copy three sentences from the book and you made six mistakes! You see how long he is speaking without making any mistakes? First learn to write without mistakes and then you can talk of becoming the President!

Jr. : Okayyyyy! I will write without making misakes.. (stomped on the floor and walked out!)

For starters, the new President has provided motivational material for a few hours in this house!

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Chuck Norris for President

This post is about "A tale of two countries", USA and India -the perspective of a F1->H1B->NRI->OCI

Before we barge into the perspective (of What? Why? When? etc.), let us get some definitions cleared.

F1 - the student visa on which the fresh off the boat Narayanan landed in the US of A, fifteen plus years ago

H1B - the work visa that changed the economy of the still single, but doctoral graduate ten plus years ago

NRI - Non Resident Indian, a change brought about by taking up permanent residency in the united states, also known as "getting a green card", seven years ago.

OCI - Overseas Citizen of India, the latest change that came with American citizenship two plus years ago, which defaulted the Indian Citizenship to an Overseas Citizenship.

Based on the last weeks news, you have won, if you bet that this post was about the economy, the reaction to the Lehman collapse, etc. Considering the way things are going, it should be obvious that you have not "won" anything, except the bet.

There should be one fact that will be out in the open before anyone judges this post as a meandearing, from a person who came to the US of A with exactly $ 1,050, and is now "living the American Dream" (as one of my Israeli buddies puts it). Since that fateful day fifteen odd years ago when I entered this country to the present, I have been a liberal democrat. I may not have known it by that name, but rest assured, those set of "values" if that is what one calls those, have not changed much.

That said, this post is more about, how my opinion of the USA changed and is continuing to change, based on how intimate I get with the day to day workings of this great country.

The last part was not sarcastic. I do believe that the USA is a great country. At the end of the day, as a collective people, they somehow get policy right. Was so sure of it, in my naive grad school days.

Granted, my view of America was not all that great in the early nineties and Hollywood did not help much. Like in all those Chuck Norris movies where four hundred and thirty five international bodies fall, so the special task force, can rescue that one American hostage who actually looks like his only contribution to his country was to improve the economy by eating a dozen donuts a day. I wanted to be Chuck Norris, and if that was not an option, at least be rescued by Chuck Norris after I ate a dozen donuts and was trapped in an airplane!

All the Americans around me made me feel that being American was like being born again. No, not "born again" as in the Christian sense, but rather "special" like in Tamizh when they ask you "Nee enna rendu thadavai pirandhiya?" ("Are you so special that you were born twice?"). You almost got the feeling that your strength would increase by a factor of 435 if you became American overnight. This theory especially gains momentum after you have read way too many Asterix comics which involve a certain magic potion.

Towards the end of my school days, a lot of things reshaped my view of America. There was talks of restricting immigrant workers, which did not go through, the one person who practically was looked up to by every desi graduate student turning out to be just another liar in the oval office, a simultaneous change of government in India with a nationalist party bent on testing nuclear weapons, a sudden surge in the bank balance thanks to a full time job, having as much fun doing R&D compared to being a not so well paid post doctoral researcher, being respected for doing what one likes to do, tasting "freedom" in a sense it had never been enjoyed before, owning a car, filling up at a gas tank on a regular basis, learning to fill more complicated tax forms than the 1040 EZ, and the list goes on.

During this time, America was the "in thing"! It was a sure bet. A place that held me in awe, simply because I could do what I wanted to do, as long as it was legal and no one would care. It was also a place where a "go getter" attitude was a plus and there was no run in with policy! To top things off, Chuck Norris was now "Walker, Texas ranger" and would grace our screens twice a week, not to mention the reruns. We were introduced to Texas. In a way Chuck gave us a preview to GWB in ways that only we could imagine.

That is when we got married and had dependents, bought and sold property, started accounts in stock trading houses to understand "quick money", lived through black tuesday and learnt some valuable lessons which were already available to us for free, had we only listened to people who had been there before. We were NRI's going through some questions on where to live, raise family, citizenship, voting, taxes, schooling...again a list that goes on and on.

One thing that was a surprise was 9/11, GWB and the rise of religious fundamentalism in the USA. After you get a dozen forwarded emails from people you know and work with, which talk about the "wrath of the eagle" mentioned in the Bible and how Iraq had it coming etc. etc., you start getting cynical, frustrated and then just plain astounded and ask yourself "How come I never saw this side of America before?" , "Was it always there?" or it is just coming out of the woodwork after Cheney runs his proxy dictatorship? not to mention other questions like "what if I dont like this war?", "How come no one has the balls to stop this?" etc. etc.

That is when a profound realization hit me!

When on trips to India, I complained about the local cop who takes a bribe for no reason by stopping you on some non existant pretext, or questioned the medical shop guy who would say "no change" and give me unwanted candy instead of the three rupees he owes me on the 20 I gave him, people around me (mostly family) would attribute my contention to my "American-ness"!

and now for the big realization..or realisation if you prefer,

This so called American-ness is only limited to showing some temper and gall at localized injustices at the everyday level with people who do not make as much money as you. You still do not get to question MK or Jayalalitha or Ramadoss (local politicians) for fear of retalliation. This option is not available to us in the USA if you make money and are above the poverty line. You don't get to see such things in your day to day life. The guy at the store hands you back a penny when you purchased something for 79.99 and you hand him eighty dollars. The cops here flag you, hand you a ticket, and off you go to court. For the most part, you know the law and try to stay within it.

When it comes to bigger things like the Iraq war, government spending, EPA, oil drilling, defense spending, security, freedom, bailouts for irresponsible people, etc. one is left in much the same boat, be it in India or the USA. Your voice is pretty much drowned. California, considered the fifth largest economy in the world (sure it is in the top ten at least) has been going without a budget for months and the common people who were hit by this have not been able to do much, with officials "they" elected!

At a much higher level, the machinery of politics is oiled by the same grease, irrespective of India or USA.

Only, the currency is different!

Now that we are American Citizens and OCI's, we do not think that commandos will be storming in to rescue us anytime soon from any impending crisis.

The day to day life, although a little more stressful, goes on with the knowledge that somehow the people who make way more money than us will get hit more and they will have the money and power to plug this hole! I know, I know. We are being selfish here. But is that not what got everyone to the point we are in now?

It is high time Chuck Norris took over as president of the USA. He can kick the crap out of the bad guys on Wall street and Main Street and put his "star" on the US dollar!

Being born and raised in the great state of Tamilnadu in India, which has been ruled by movie legends for the last thirty plus years, it is in my blood now, to hope for Chuckie to come and solve all our problems with his high kick. If we can expect MGR to solve all problems with the same ease with which he won swashbuckling swordfights with Nambiar, why not Chuck Norris?

I will say it again, Chuck Norris for President!

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Freedom is relative ..

Before you assume that there is some typo in the title and I am trying to talk about any relatives, let me stop you right there!

This post is about "Freedom" and how it is not absolute. It is relative.

To make my point, take a healthy young lion living in a simple 20 square meter zoo cage. It probably feels oppressesed, trapped, etc. etc. and has definitely lost its freedom (in this case freedom of movement). Take the same lion and move it to the middle of a 20 acre park which has a simulated savannah and a fake lake with a few Gazelles which it can hunt every now and then. It probably feels free. It would not bother the lion that the 20 acre perimeter has electrified fences or other mechanisms which would endanger its life, far more than the boundaries of the cage, because as far as its eyes can see, it is "free to move"! It might feel trapped when it gets near the perimeter!

Now, who am I and what have I done to Sundar? Nothing really. While driving back from work today, my thought process, which is prone to wandering in the absence of enough caffeine, sugar or starch for a whole afternoon, went to explore the meaning of freedom. This thought was triggered (as many others in the past), by the public radio news report in the background which said that the President of the USA has asked the White House Counsel, Harriet Miers to ignore a subpoena and not show up for questioning! by a committee investigating the selective firing of Judiciary folks!

My sugar starved brain asked myself a few questions in the following order:

Is the President of the US above the Law ?
Can he actually tell who can and cannot show up when summoned by the Judiciary branch?
Is this because he IS the Law of the land?
Oh wait, wasn't that answer to that question "the constitution" ?
Did I not read my Citizenship test material right about the various branches of government?
Did we not hang a dude in another country in the name of bringing a former head of state to Justice and say things like "no one is above the law! and the laws of that country (which were practically rewritten by the USA) are holding that dude accountable for his actions" etc. etc. ?
Can any leader of any country be above the law of that land and not answer to the people or the law governing that land?

Well, the answer to the last question at least, is a big NO! We all saw how Saddam was brought to "Justice"!. Before you flame me and say "are you supporting Saddam ?" , "he was a dictator who deserved death", "he tortured and killed so many people" etc. etc. I will make it very very clear. This is not about Saddam's death being deserved or not, this is not a pro or anti Saddam Hussein point I am trying to make here (for the record, he deserved what was dished out by his own people!). It is purely to elucidate the fact he was held accountable for his actions by people in his country with their laws (at least according to the world media) with a lot of publicity for "no one is above the law in a democratic land! See what the power of demoscary.. er..democracy can do!".

What definitely strikes me as odd is that we in the USA are supposed to live in a :
Democracy,
Free Country,
Country ruled by the people,
etc. etc.

all of which are supposedly lacking in dictatorial, theocratic, third world nations, which is feeding the demand for "the democratizers" (think of them as Ghostbusters, except they look like ordinary military dudes without any cool gadgets, well.. they are ordinary military dudes!) aka "liberators", "peacekeepers", "nation rebuilders", etc. etc.

This freedom is very weak and definitely "relative". It is more a perception of freedom than freedom itself, much like the case of the lion in a fake safari! When pushed to the boundaries, this freedom is as fickle as the freedom in those third world countries. How else can you explain what is happening today? A majority of the populace is struggling to implement a plan to end an occupation in a foreign land, but is really impotent as long as one man has enough power to just do what he feels like doing?

I do not know! I am still new to this constituion thing and I know I have a lot of catching up to do! Sometimes when I think that a big part of my salary which goes in taxes is directly being spent on buying one way tickets to the middle east for American kids who do not have any other options after high school, or kill Iraqi innocents in the name of liberating them, I have difficulty sleeping.

So what is the freedom that I still have? I have the Freedom of the Mouse and Keyboard! I could still write this post and put it on the internet! I can tell the Gallup poll guy (who always calls me in the evening exactly when I am asking god, why he gave me only two hands and not four to handle two kids) that I do not support the war and I want the American troops back!

I can voice my opinion that instead of sending those kids who joined the services because of a lack of other choices, to die in Iraq, give them interest free loans to get college degrees or better give them a free higher education! As for those kids that really went to the Armed services because that was their calling, instead of rebuilding Iraq, ask them to support rebuilding of all those ghost towns in the USA which have lost their local economy to international competition and start securing this country at its own borders. There are plenty of people still sneaking across all borders who could be a threat to national security (if we are to believe the same world media).

Now that I have written this, I can stop thinking of myself as a toothless lion and go run around in my fake grassland.

Give me a F
Give me a R
Give me some E's..

Gooooooooooooooo FREE country!!

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